Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonencapsulated Streptococcus pneumoniae: Emergence and Pathogenesis

ABSTRACT While significant protection from pneumococcal disease has been achieved by the use of polysaccharide and polysaccharide-protein conjugate vaccines, capsule-independent protection has been limited by serotype replacement along with disease caused by nonencapsulated Streptococcus pneumoniae (NESp). NESp strains compose approximately 3% to 19% of asymptomatic carriage isolates and harbor multiple antibiotic resistance genes. Surface proteins unique to NESp enhance colonization and virulence despite the lack of a capsule even though the capsule has been thought to be required for pneumococcal pathogenesis. Genes for pneumococcal surface proteins replace the capsular polysaccharide (cps) locus in some NESp isolates, and these proteins aid in pneumococcal colonization and otitis media (OM). NESp strains have been isolated from patients with invasive and noninvasive pneumococcal disease, but noninvasive diseases, specifically, conjunctivitis (85%) and OM (8%), are of higher prevalence. Conjunctival strains are commonly of the so-called classical NESp lineages defined by multilocus sequence types (STs) ST344 and ST448, while sporadic NESp lineages such as ST1106 are more commonly isolated from patients with other diseases. Interestingly, sporadic lineages have significantly higher rates of recombination than classical lineages. Higher rates of recombination can lead to increased acquisition of antibiotic resistance and virulence factors, increasing the risk of disease and hindering treatment. NESp strains are a significant proportion of the pneumococcal population, can cause disease, and may be increasing in prevalence in the population due to effects on the pneumococcal niche caused by pneumococcal vaccines. Current vaccines are ineffective against NESp, and further research is necessary to develop vaccines effective against both encapsulated and nonencapsulated pneumococci.
Online news report headlines of Education Malaysia Global Services

This research aims to reveal the representations of the Education Malaysia Global Services (EMGS) policy change on the new visa application procedure announced in 2013 and to unravel the ways in which ideology and context shape the discourse surrounding EMGS through an analysis of news report headlines. Using Critical Discourse Analysis on the themes and lexical choices of headlines from the period of February 2013 to April 2014, the general characteristics of the news reports headlines disclose that there are ideological differences at play and these ideologies are reflected differently according to the sources of the headlines. In Malaysian media, the reporting on EMGS has been framed according to the political stance of newspapers: in a positive supportive way by the government linked media; The NST, BERNAMA and The Star, and in a negative way in the alternative, or non-government linked media; Malaysiakini and Borneo Post. In the global media (UK, US, Singapore, Brunei) newspapers (The Straits Times, Investor News, Asia One, The Sunday Times) also highlight a negative view on the policy change. These reporting styles show differences in situational context and ideology that shaped the discourse of the headlines, contributing significantly to the portrayal of EMGS, especially to potential students from all around the world in particular ways.
Pilot-based estimation of time-varying multipath channels

Reliable coherent communication over multipath wireless channels requires accurate estimation of time-varying channel parameters. For coherent estimation, a key channel characteristic is the coherence time that approximately corresponds to the interval over which the channel parameters remain strongly correlated. We address linear MMSE estimation of code division multiple access (CDMA) multipath channels based on a pilot transmission. We derive a simple characterization of the estimator in terms of a bank of filters. We show that the estimator performance is primarily governed by an effective SNR that is proportional to the coherence time. We also propose two suboptimal estimators that are easy to implement and demonstrate that they deliver near-optimal performance if properly designed.
TRADE LIBERALIZATION IMPACT ON PAKISTAN’S IMPORT: THE ECONOMETRIC EVIDENCE

Utilizing the alternative econometric tools, this study analyzed for the impact of trade liberalization on Pakistan’s real import demand during the period of 1981-2010. Whereby extend the standard import demand by including import duties ratio and alternative dummies for high liberalization episodes. In results provide new trade elasticity estimates i.e. real income of the country follows by relative import prices largely explains the country’s demand for imports with expected positive and negative signs respectively. Further, depicts that reforms in trade policy in favour of trade liberalization has encouraged significantly Pakistan’s imports demand during the period.
Prevalence of tobacco use among Class 10 students in an urban field practice area, Bangalore: a cross sectional study

Objectives: To study prevalence and perception of tobacco use among 10th Standard students in an urban field practice area in Bangalore Background: Smoking is the most widespread , modern social disease worldwide; and one tobacco-related death occurring every 8 seconds in India, whereas avoiding tobacco adds 20 yrs to the life of a teenager. Efficient preventive programs implemented among adolescents would considerably lower the morbidity and mortality in adults for chronic diseases. Materials and methods: High schools of the urban field practice area were selected by simple random sampling. Data was collected by self-administering of pre-structured questionnaire to all Class 10 students of each of the selected schools. Results: Overall prevalence of tobacco use was 17.9% . There was a statistically significant association between gender, parental influence and tobacco use among students (p<0.001). Majority of the students first used tobacco between age of 12 to 15 years. Among boys who use tobacco, smoking is more common and among girls, use of smokeless forms of tobacco is more common.70. 6% students were aware that smoking is harmful to health. Conclusion: It is feasible and worthwhile to identify the nature of tobacco use among high school students. The results imply the importance of primordial prevention targeting the adolescent age group, to increase awareness of the hazards of tobacco use on health, in order to reduce the tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in adulthood.
Perceiving Others' Personalities: Examining the Dimensionality, Assumed Similarity to the Self, and Stability of Perceiver Effects Perceiver Effects: Definitional and Conceptual Issues

In interpersonal perception, " perceiver effects " are tendencies of perceivers to see other people in a particular way. Two studies of naturalistic interactions examined perceiver effects for personality traits: seeing a typical other as sympathetic or quarrelsome, responsible or careless, and so forth. Several basic questions were addressed. First, are perceiver effects organized as a global evaluative halo, or do perceptions of different traits vary in distinct ways? Second, does assumed similarity (as evidenced by self-perceiver correlations) reflect broad evaluative consistency or trait-specific content? Third, are perceiver effects a manifestation of stable beliefs about the generalized other, or do they form in specific contexts as group-specific stereotypes? Findings indicated that perceiver effects were better described by a differentiated, multidimensional structure with both trait-specific content and a higher order global evaluation factor. Assumed similarity was at least partially attributable to trait-specific content, not just to broad evaluative similarity between self and others. Perceiver effects were correlated with gender and attachment style, but in newly formed groups, they became more stable over time, suggesting that they grew dynamically as group stereotypes. Implications for the interpretation of perceiver effects and for research on personality assessment and psychopathology are discussed. What a most extraordinary child! " Then she frowned. She's " glad " I punished her, and I " mustn't feel bad one bit, " and she's going to " love to live " with me! Well, upon my soul! In Eleanor Porter's novel Pollyanna, the title character deals with the ups and downs of life by playing the " glad game, " in which she strives to always see the good in every situation and in every person. To a modern psychologist's eye, the glad game combines several distinct mental processes and attributes, including optimism, reappraisal, and self-efficacy beliefs. The word Pollyannaish has evolved in everyday language into a synonym for an extreme and rigidly positive outlook, but psychologists recognize that even within relatively normal populations, people may exhibit some Pollyanna-like tendencies to varying degrees. In the present investigation, we examined an aspect of Pollyanna's outlook: tendencies or biases in perceiving other people's personalities. Specifically, we investigated perceptions of a typical " other " —tendencies to believe that other people are responsible or careless, supportive or quarrelsome, open-minded or closed. These general perceptions of others—what we call perceiver effects (after Kenny, 1994)—are important to understand for a variety of reasons. Methodologically, many …
Street capital

Most of Pierre Bourdieu's work describes struggles over symbolic capital and hierarchies among the economic and cultural elite. However, his theories and concepts are not exclusive to studies of those with power. By using Bourdieu's conceptualizations of social space, capital and habitus, the article discusses the hierarchies and struggles over symbolic capital at the bottom of societies. The analysis is grounded in interviews and fieldwork with ethnic minority youths on the streets of Oslo, Norway. Analysing the violence among the young men, the article argues that marginalized ethnic minorities and certain groups of refugees use particular strategies in order to accumulate symbolic capital. They have embodied experiences that can be transformed into forms of `street capital' favourable in a violent street culture.
Earnings Management and the Market Performance of Acquiring Firms

I examine the market's efficiency in processing manipulated accounting reports and provide an explanation for the post-merger underperformance anomaly. I find strong evidence suggesting that acquiring firms overstate their earnings in the quarter preceding a stock swap announcement. I also find evidence of a reversal of the stock price effects of the earnings management in the days leading to the merger announcement. However, the pre-merger reversal is only partial. There is evidence of a post-merger reversal of the stock price effects of the pre-merger earnings management. The results suggest that the extant evidence of post-merger underperformance by acquiring firms is partly attributable to the reversal of the price effects of earnings management. The study also suggests that the post-merger reversal is not fully anticipated by financial analysts in the month immediately following the merger announcement. However, consistent with suggestions in the financial press that managers guide analysts' forecasts to "beatable" levels, the effect of the earnings management reversal seems to be reflected in the consensus analysts' forecasts by the time of the subsequent quarterly earnings releases.
THE ORIGINS OF THE SOVEREIGN DEBT OF ITALY: A COMMON POOL ISSUE?

Italy has the third largest public debt of the World in absolute terms and the eighth when it is GDP weighted. In addition, Italy presents the largest and most persistent development gap among its regional economies in the group of the advanced countries. Is there a link between these two facts? We present evidence in favor of a relationship between these two empirical facts by reconstructing the entire dynamics of national public deficit as a weighted sum of four macro regional deficits (Northeast, Northwest, Centre and South) . We show that the ultimate cause of the accumulation of public debt in Italy lies in the extraordinary fiscal imbalance of the Southern regions. We then focus on the determinants of the regional public deficits and their persistence. Thanks to the reconstruction of the regional deficit time series we are able to test empirically many of the several theoretical approaches suggested in the literature, including the geographically dispersed interest approach not yet considered for the Italian case. This approach turns out to be one of the best candidates to account for the size and persistence of Southern regional deficits. The whole evidence suggests the existence of a pork barrel mechanism coupled with a complex geo-political equilibrium that has allowed the Southern regions of Italy to generate deficits so large and persistent that they hoard the entire Italian National debt.
Ensuring legitimacy through rhetorical changes?: A longitudinal interpretation of the environmental disclosures of a leading Finnish chemical company

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to shed further light on how corporate environmental disclosures are used to respond to institutional pressures stemming from the social context. Design/methodology/approach - Interpretive textual analysis is applied to discuss how the environmental disclosures of a leading Finnish chemical company developed during the period 1972-2005. This discussion is accompanied by an analysis of the social and institutional context in which the company has been operating. The development of the disclosures is reflected against changing social and institutional pressures identified from the perspective of new institutional sociology. Findings - The results show that during these 34 years there have been major transitions in the rhetoric used by the case company in its environmental disclosures. These transitions coincide with changes in the social and institutional context. It is argued that the case company has adjusted its disclosures to respond to the varying institutional pressures in order to maintain a legitimate position in society. Research limitations/implications - The subjective nature of the interpretive approach and the use of a single case limit the generalisability of the results. However, the longitudinal approach is argued to produce valuable insights on how corporate disclosures are used as a communication tool to portray the organisation in a certain light. Originality/value - The study adds to a growing body of literature using interpretive approaches in deconstructing corporate disclosures. The influence exerted by social and institutional pressures on corporate disclosures is highlighted, further research avenues can therefore be proposed.
Noise Reduction of Switched Reluctance Motor With High Number of Poles by Novel Simplified Current Waveform at Low Speed and Low Torque Region

In this paper, the theoretical strategy and experimental results for noise reduction of a switched reluctance motor with a high number of poles are presented using a novel simplified current profile at low speed and low torque region. The noise reduction is carried out by the principle of reducing the variation of the sum of radial forces. The variation of the sum of three-phase radial forces of the A-phase tooth, the B-phase tooth, and the C-phase tooth is a cause of vibration and acoustic noise. Thus, the variation of the sum of these forces is aimed to be minimized by current profiling. In this paper, a simple current waveform with reduced harmonic order is proposed. This has advantages of low rate of change of the current, easy current regulation, low root mean square (rms) and peak currents, low torque ripple, and higher efficiency. An improved current regulation method is also implemented. In experiment, it has been found that significant noise and vibration reductions can be achieved with the proposed current waveform.
What Do We Know About the Interactions Between Trade and the Environment? A Survey of the Literature

Does trade liberalization increase (global) environmental degradation? Do environmental regulations hinder the competitiveness of domestic industries against their foreign rivals? Can trade policies be used as an enforcement tool for the international environmental agreements to protect the global environment? We present a survey of the trade and the environment literature from these perspectives. Mainstream economic argumentthat free trade is bene cial to every participanthas been questioned by many authors who formally consider environmental consequences of trade liberalization in their studies. Secondly, the supposedly adverse e ects of environmental policies on international competitiveness have not been supported by empirical studies. Finally, it has been shown that free riding on the contribution to global environmental protection of other countries becomes less likely when the countries are trade partners to each other.
Potential landscape of high dimensional nonlinear stochastic dynamics and rare transitions with large noise

Quantifying stochastic processes is essential to understand many natural phenomena, particularly in biology, including cell-fate decision in developmental processes as well as genesis and progression of cancers. While various attempts have been made to construct potential landscape in high dimensional systems and to estimate rare transitions, they are practically limited to cases where either noise is small or detailed balance condition holds. A general and practical approach to investigate nonequilibrium systems typically subject to finite or large multiplicative noise and breakdown of detailed balance remains elusive. Here, we formulate a computational framework to address this important problem. The current approach is based on a least "action" principle to efficiently calculate potential landscapes of systems under arbitrary noise strength and without detailed balance. With the deterministic stability structure preserving A-type stochastic integration, the potential barrier between different (local) stable stables is directly computable. The prevailing methods such as those based on WKB or Freidlin-Wentzell quasi-potential theory can be classified into the case of the present framework under small noise limit. We demonstrate our approach in a numerically accurate manner through explicitly solvable examples. We further apply the method to investigate the role of noise on tumor heterogeneity in a 38 dimensional network model for prostate cancer, and provide a new strategy on controlling cell populations by manipulating noise strength.
Recent Advancements in Ray tracing-based Volume Rendering Techniques

Recent developments in ray tracing algorithms have shown that interactive high-quality volume rendering is no longer unreachable even for softwarebased implementations. Compared to graphics board and custom hardware implementations they offer additional benefits, e.g. support for large models and for integration with different types of data set topologies. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art in ray tracing based volume rendering algorithms. Comparisons to current GPU implementations show strengths and drawbacks of different approaches.
Proteomic Identification of Differentially Expressed Proteins between Male and Female Plants in Pistacia chinensis

Pistacia chinensis is a strict dioecious plant with male and female flowers in individuals. In China, P. chinensis is widely planted for biodiesel oil due to high oil content in seeds. In practice it requires to grow more female plants for biodiesel production. At present, there are still no reliable methods for sex determination during the long juvenile stage of this species. In order to develop protein molecular markers for sex determination in P. chinensis, proteomic approach was used to identify differentially expressed proteins between male and female plants. Vegetative organs (leaf and stem) rather than reproductive organs/tissues were used for protein extraction so as to develop protein markers which can be used in siblings before flowering. Protein was extracted using a phenol-based protocol. By using two-dimensional electrophoresis, a total of 10 protein spots were found to be differentially expressed in leaf and stem between both sexes, of which 7 were successfully identified by mass spectrometry and matched to 6 functional proteins such as NB-ARC domain containing protein, light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein, asorbate peroxidase (APX), eukaryotic translation initiation factor 5A2, temperature-induced lipocalin (TIL) and phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK). The sex-related difference displayed in a tissue-specific way, especially in stem. PGK existed in high abundance in stem phloem in the female, but was almost not detected in the male; APX and two TIL species were highly abundant in the stem of male plants, while their abundance was much lower in female plants. Moreover, these abundance differences were further confirmed in individual plants. Hence, it is assumed that APX, PGK and TIL might be promising candidates to serve as protein molecular markers for sex determination in P. chinensis. Our results form the basis for a further understanding of the biochemical mechanisms of sex determination in P. chinensis.
A CAUSATIVE ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING EMPLOYED PERSONNEL AS LOYAL CUSTOMERS OF WIRELESS TELECOM INDUSTRY IN BANGLADESH

This study has scrutinized the patterns and directions of influence of trust, corporate image and switching cost on employees of various private and public organizations as loyal customers of Wireless Telecom Industry in Bangladesh. Consequently, a random sample of 615 employed personnel from different public and private organizations have been surveyed at systematically chosen eleven shopping malls in Dhaka Metropolitan City with a self administered close ended questionnaire. After rejecting the incomplete feedbacks, reliability of data, normality and existence of multicollinearity has been tested for correlation and regression analysis. Bivariate correlation, standard multiple regression and sequential multiple regression analysis has been conducted in required stages to address the objective of the study. According to the inferences drawn here, it is hoped that findings attained in this study will assist the service providing operators of Bangladeshi Wireless Telecom Industry to craft their marketing strategy with regard to the attainment of sustainable competitive advantage in log run.
A Life-Size and Near Real-Time Test of Irrigation Scheduling with a Sentinel-2 Like Time Series (SPOT4-Take5) in Morocco

This paper describes the setting and results of a real-time experiment of irrigation scheduling by a time series of optical satellite images under real conditions, which was carried out on durum wheat in the Haouz plain (Marrakech, Morocco), during the 2012/13 agricultural season. For the purpose of this experiment, the irrigation of a reference plot was driven by the farmer according to, mainly empirical, irrigation scheduling while test plot irrigations were being managed following the FAO-56 method, driven by remote sensing. Images were issued from the SPOT4 (Take5) data set, which aimed at delivering image time series at a decametric resolution with less than five-day satellite overpass similar to the time