Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Locus of Invention: The Dynamics of Network Communities and Firms’ Invention Productivity

Departing from prior research analyzing the implications of social structure for actors’ outcomes by applying either an ego network or a global network perspective, this study examines the implications of network communities for the invention productivity of firms. Network communities represent dense and nonoverlapping structural groups of actors in a social system. A network community lens helps identify new ways to study firms’ access to diverse knowledge inputs in a dynamic system of interorganizational relationships. Specifically, we examine how the membership dynamics of a network community affect the invention productivity of member firms by either enabling or constraining access to broad, diverse knowledge inputs. Our findings suggest, first, that a firm reaps the greatest invention benefits in a network community with moderate levels of membership turnover. Second, a firm attains the greatest invention productivity when its own rate of movement across different network communities is moderate. Third, we find that community members located in the core of their network community can benefit more from membership dynamics and prior community affiliations than those on its periphery. In empirical analyses, we use the evolving community structure of the network of interorganizational partnerships in the global computer industry over 1981–2001 to predict firms’ patenting rates.
A Novel Medial Soft Tissue Release Method for Varus Deformity during Total Knee Arthroplasty: Femoral Origin Release of the Medial Collateral Ligament

Introduction Numerous methods of medial soft tissue release for severe varus deformity during total knee arthroplasty (TKA) have been reported. These include tibial stripping of the superficial medial collateral ligament (MCL), pie-crusting technique, and medial epicondylar osteotomy. However, there are inherent disadvantages in these techniques. Authors hereby present a novel quantitative method: femoral origin release of the medial collateral ligament (FORM). Surgical Technique For medial tightness remaining even after the release of the deep MCL and semimembranosus, the FORM is initiated with identification of the femoral insertion area of the MCL with the knee in flexion. Starting from the most posterior part of the femoral insertion, one third of the MCL femoral insertion is released from its attachment. If necessary, further sequential medial release is performed. Materials and Methods Seventeen knees that underwent the FORM were evaluated for radiological and clinical outcomes. Results Regardless of the extent of the FORM, no knees showed residual valgus instability at 24 weeks after surgery. Conclusions As the FORM is performed in a stepwise manner, fine adjustment during medial release might be beneficial to prevent inadvertent over-release of the medial structures of the knee.
Normative Stock Exchange and Speculative Activities: Critique and Empirical Verification

This study reviews Tag el-Dini's (1996) paper and raises the possibilities that his organizational models may create other kinds of inefficiency. Furthermore, using Canadian stock data I extended his study and found that excess speculative activities (bubbles) do not add any information to the stock markets. Consequently, according to our empirical evidence, in light of Tag el-Dini's view, to achieve an efficient and stable stock market a highly regulatory normative stock exchange is needed. In this regard this study proposes that the government ensures that the investors in the stock markets have comprehensive knowledge of the stock market mechanism and levies tax on short-term horizon investment.
Phenotypic detection of broad-spectrum beta-lactamases in microbiological practice

Summary Background Enterobacteriaceae producing ESBL and AmpC enzymes can be associated with failure of antibiotic therapy and related morbidity and mortality. Their routine detection in microbiology laboratories is still a problem. The aim of this study was to compare the sensitivity of selected phenotypic methods. Material/Methods A total of 106 strains of the Enterobacteriaceae family were tested, in which molecular biology methods confirmed the presence of genes encoding ESBL or AmpC. In ESBL-positive strains, the sensitivity of the ESBL Etest (AB Biodisk) and a modified double-disk synergy test (DDST) were evaluated. AmpC strains were tested by a modified AmpC disk method using 3-aminophenylboronic acid. For simultaneous detection of ESBL and AmpC, the microdilution method with a modified set of antimicrobial agents was used. Results The sensitivity of the ESBL Etest was 95%; the modified DDST yielded 100% sensitivity for ESBL producers and the AmpC test correctly detected 95% of AmpC-positive strains. The sensitivity of the modified microdilution method was 87% and 95% for ESBL and AmpC beta lactamases, respectively. Conclusions The detection of ESBL and AmpC beta lactamases should be based on specific phenotypic methods such as the modified DDST, ESBL Etest, AmpC disk test and the modified microdilution method.
An experimental evidence-based computational paradigm for new logic-gates in neuronal activity

We propose a new experimentally corroborated paradigm in which the functionality of the brain's logic-gates depends on the history of their activity, e.g. an OR-gate that turns into a XOR-gate over time. Our results are based on an experimental procedure where conditioned stimulations were enforced on circuits of neurons embedded within a large-scale network of cortical cells in vitro. The underlying biological mechanism is the unavoidable increase of neuronal response latency to ongoing stimulations, which imposes a non-uniform gradual stretching of network delays.
Inclusive/exclusive talent management, responsible leadership and organizational downsizing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on three Egyptian public business schools in an attempt to explore the effect of inclusive/exclusive talent management on the organizational downsizing of academics and the mediating role of responsible leadership.Design/methodology/approachA total of 330 academics were contacted and given a set of questionnaires. After three follow-ups, a total of 240 responses were collected with a response rate of 72.73 percent. Multiple regressions were employed to show how much variation in organizational downsizing can be explained by inclusive/exclusive talent management and responsible leadership.FindingsThe findings highlighted a very weak statistical association between academics’ inclusive talent management and organizational downsizing, whereas a strong statistical association has been discovered between exclusive talent management and organizational downsizing. Statistical analysis showed that responsible leadership has no role in mediating the relationship between inclusive/exclusive talent management of academics and their downsizing.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors have focused on only three Egyptian public business schools, the matter that may limit opportunities to generalize the results of this study to private business schools and other faculties in Egypt. Future research could use a double source method.Practical implicationsBy preparing a set of academic competences, business schools will be able to classify their academic staff into talented and non-talented, and accordingly they can initiate their tailored downsizing strategies. Furthermore, undertaking a responsible strategy of downsizing, which includes and is not limited to justifying the need to decrease academic staff numbers to guarantee post-redundancy care practices for laid-off academics may alleviate many of the negative psychological, societal and economic consequences of downsizing.Originality/valueThis paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management and higher education literature, in which empirical studies on the relationship between talent management and academics’ organizational downsizing have been limited until now. This may create better research opportunities for cross-disciplinary papers that should be done by HR, higher education and leadership scholars.
Hybrid algorithms for recommending new items

Despite recommender systems based on collaborative filtering typically outperform content-based systems in terms of recommendation quality, they suffer from the new item problem, i.e., they are not able to recommend items that have few or no ratings. This problem is particularly acute in TV applications, where the catalog of available items (e.g., TV programs) is very dynamic. On the contrary, content-based recommender systems are able to recommend both old and new items but the general quality of the recommendations in terms of relevance to the users is low. In this article we present two different approaches for building hybrid collaborative+content recommender systems, whose purpose is to produce relevant recommendations, while overcoming the new item issue. The approaches have been tested on two datasets: a version of the well--known Movielens dataset enriched with content meta--data, and an implicit dataset collected from 15'000 IPTV users over a period of six months.
Observation Likelihood Model Design and Failure Recovery Scheme Toward Reliable Localization of Mobile Robots

Although there have been many researches on mobile robot localization, it is still difficult to obtain reliable localization performance in a human co-existing real environment. Reliability of localization is highly dependent upon developer's experiences because uncertainty is caused by a variety of reasons. We have developed a range sensor based integrated localization scheme for various indoor service robots. Through the experience, we found out that there are several significant experimental issues. In this paper, we provide useful solutions for following questions which are frequently faced with in practical applications: 1) How to design an observation likelihood model? 2) How to detect the localization failure? 3) How to recover from the localization failure? We present design guidelines of observation likelihood model. Localization failure detection and recovery schemes are presented by focusing on abrupt wheel slippage. Experiments were carried out in a typical office building environment. The proposed scheme to identify the localizer status is useful in practical environments. Moreover, the semi-global localization is a computationally efficient recovery scheme from localization failure. The results of experiments and analysis clearly present the usefulness of proposed solutions.
Excess Volatility and UK Investment Trusts

The issue of whether or not asset prices are more volatile than the underlying fundamentals is an empirical question with implications for market efficiency. Recent research suggests that the volatility of closed end fund returns in the USA is significantly higher than the returns on assets held by the funds. This has been attributed to noise trading as closed-end fund shares are predominantly held by individual investors. This study demonstrates that UK investment trust returns exhibit similar excess volatility in spite of the prevalence of institutional investors. However, big investment trusts in terms of market capitalisation show greater excess volatility than small trusts. Although most of the excess volatility appears to be idiosyncratic, investor sentiment index is the most important variable associated with residual returns. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2005.
Creatures of habit (and control): a multi-level learning perspective on the modulation of congruency effects

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) describes the finding that congruency effects in classic probes of selective attention (like the Stroop, Simon, and flanker tasks) are smaller following an incongruent than following a congruent trial. The past two decades have generated a large literature on determinants and boundary conditions for the CSE and similar, congruency-proportion based modulations of congruency effects. A prolonged and heated theoretical discussion has been guided primarily by a historically motivated dichotomy between “top-down control” versus “associative bottom-up” explanations for these effects. In the present article, I attempt to integrate and contextualize the major empirical findings in this field by arguing that CSEs (and related effects) are best understood as reflecting a composite of multiple levels of learning that differ in their level of abstraction. Specifically, learning does not only involve the trial-by-trial encoding, binding, and cued retrieval of specific stimulus–response associations, but also of more abstract trial features. Moreover, these more abstract trial or event features can be both external, such as the spatial and temporal context in which a stimulus occurs, as well as internal, like the experience of difficulty, and the attentional control settings that were employed in dealing with the stimulus. From this perspective, top-down control and bottom-up priming processes work in concert rather than in opposition. They represent different levels of abstraction in the same learning scheme and they serve a single, common goal: forming memory ensembles that will facilitate fast and appropriate responding to recurring stimuli or events in the environment.
Robust 2D Fisher Barycenter Contour

In this paper, the algorithm for 2D shape matching and retrieval is developed by using Fisher Barycenter Contour (FBcC). First, the shape is represented into 3D format using the signed enclosed area at each scale level of Barycenter Contour (BcC). Because of high dimension of the feature representation, the Eigen Barycenter Contour (EBcC) is applied for dimensionality reduction. Then, the Fisher Barycenter Contour (FBcC) is used for making discrimination. Finally, the similarity is measured using the normalized cross correlation. The experimentation is tested on MPEG-7 contour shape database CE-1 part B of 1400 image shapes. The experimental results illustrate that our approach gives very high retrieval efficiency (or Bulls-eye test) of 89.60% and 98.62% using two parameters, shape signature and its power spectrum respectively, when comparing with all the existing methods.
Computoser - rule-based, probability-driven algorithmic music composition

This paper presents the Computoser hybrid probability/rule based algorithm for music composition (this http URL) and provides a reference implementation. It addresses the issues of unpleasantness and lack of variation exhibited by many existing approaches by combining the two methods (basing the parameters of the rules on data obtained from preliminary analysis). A sample of 500+ musical pieces was analyzed to derive probabilities for musical characteristics and events (e.g. scale, tempo, intervals). The algorithm was constructed to produce musical pieces using the derived probabilities combined with a large set of composition rules, which were obtained and structured after studying established composition practices. Generated pieces were published on the Computoser website where evaluation was performed by listeners. The feedback was positive (58.4% approval), asserting the merits of the undertaken approach. The paper compares this hybrid approach to other approaches to algorithmic composition and presents a survey of the pleasantness of the resulting music.
Semi-classical stability of AdS NUT instantons

The semi-classical stability of several AdS NUT instantons is studied. Throughout, the notion of stability is that of stability at the one-loop level of Euclidean quantum gravity. Instabilities manifest themselves as negative eigenmodes of a modified Lichnerowicz Laplacian acting on the transverse, traceless perturbations. An instability is found for one branch of the AdS-Taub-Bolt family of metrics and it is argued that the other branch is stable. It is also argued that the AdS-Taub-NUT family of metrics is stable. A component of the continuous spectrum of the modified Lichnerowicz operator on all three families of metrics is found.
Binary Division Power Models for High-Level Power Estimation of FPGA-Based DSP Circuits

Power models are at the heart of high-level estimation methods used for industrial power evaluation of FPGA-based electronic designs. In this paper, probabilistic power estimation models of binary divider IP cores implemented in reconfigurable logic are presented. The models are ready for use at the algorithmic and RTL levels of the design flow and are simulation-independent, thus resulting in fast estimation times. The only parameters the model needs are the bit-widths of the operator inputs and their signal statistics: mean values, variances and autocorrelation coefficients. Based on these parameters and taking into account the particular logic structure of the binary divider cores, analytical probabilistic formulas are used to calculate the overall switching activity in the circuits-the main cause of dynamic power consumption. Estimates are compared with both real on-board measurements and estimates from the simulation-based tool XPower from Xilinx. Results show that the mean relative estimation errors are within 10% of on-board measurements or low-level estimates, and the average time to obtain power estimates using the proposed models is only 135 ms.
On the number and nature of faults found by random testing

Intuition suggests that random testing should exhibit a considerable difference in the number of faults detected by two different runs of equal duration. As a consequence, random testing would be rather unpredictable. This article first evaluates the variance over time of the number of faults detected by randomly testing object‐oriented software that is equipped with contracts. It presents the results of an empirical study based on 1215 h of randomly testing 27 Eiffel classes, each with 30 seeds of the random number generator. The analysis of over 6 million failures triggered during the experiments shows that the relative number of faults detected by random testing over time is predictable, but that different runs of the random test case generator detect different faults. The experiment also suggests that the random testing quickly finds faults: the first failure is likely to be triggered within 30 s. The second part of this article evaluates the nature of the faults found by random testing. To this end, it first explains a fault classification scheme, which is also used to compare the faults found through random testing with those found through manual testing and with those found in field use of the software and recorded in user incident reports. The results of the comparisons show that each technique is good at uncovering different kinds of faults. None of the techniques subsumes any of the others; each brings distinct contributions. This supports a more general conclusion on comparisons between testing strategies: the number of detected faults is too coarse a criterion for such comparisons—the nature of faults must also be considered. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Relay Selection for Simultaneous Information Transmission and Wireless Energy Transfer: A Tradeoff Perspective

In certain applications, relay terminals can be employed to simultaneously deliver information and energy to a designated receiver and a set of radio frequency (RF) energy harvesters, respectively. In such scenarios, the relay that is preferable for information transmission does not necessarily coincide with the relay that is preferable for energy transfer, since the corresponding channels fade independently. Relay selection thus entails a tradeoff between the efficiency of the information transmission to the receiver and the amount of energy transferred to the energy harvesters. The study of this tradeoff is the subject on which this work mainly focuses. Specifically, we investigate the dependence of the ergodic capacity and the outage probability of the information transmission to the receiver on the amount of energy transferred to the RF energy harvesters. We propose a relay selection policy that yields the optimal tradeoff in a maximum capacity/minimum outage probability sense, for a given energy transfer constraint. We also propose two suboptimal relay selection methods that apply to scenarios with limited availability of channel state information. Additionally, we propose a suboptimal scheme which approximates the optimal scheme for the special case of two relays and facilitates performance analysis. Interesting insights on the aforementioned tradeoffs are unveiled.
A Taxonomy of Obfuscating Transformations

It has become more and more common to distribute software in forms that retain most or all of the information present in the original source code. An important example is Java bytecode. Since such codes are easy to decompile, they increase the risk of malicious reverse engineering attacks. In this paper we review several techniques for technical protection of software secrets. We will argue that automatic code obfuscation is currently the most viable method for preventing reverse engineering. We then describe the design of a code obfuscator, a tool which converts a program into an equivalent one that is more diicult to understand and reverse engineer. The obfuscator is based on the application of code transformations, in many cases similar to those used by compiler optimizers. We describe a large number of such transformations, classify them, and evaluate them with respect to their potency (To what degree is a human reader confused? ), resilience (How well are automatic deobfuscation attacks resisted? ), and cost (How much overhead is added to the application? ). We nally discuss some possible deobfuscation techniques (such as program slicing) and possible countermeasures an obfuscator could employ against them.
Cancer Control in Bangladesh

Cancer is predicted to be an increasingly important cause of morbidity and mortality in Bangladesh in the next few decades. The estimated incidence of 12.7 million new cancer cases will rise to 21.4 million by 2030. More than two-thirds of the total expenditure on health is through out-of-pocket payments. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, cancer is the sixth leading cause of death. International Agency for Research on Cancer has estimated cancer-related death rates in Bangladesh to be 7.5% in 2005 and 13% in 2030. The two leading causes are in males are lung and oral cancer and in females are breast cancer and cervical cancer. Bangladesh is now in severe shortage of radiation therapy machines, hospital bed, trained oncologists, medical radiation physicists and technologists. Bangladesh having different cancers associated with smoking and smokeless tobacco use, Human papilloma virus infection, Hepatitis B and C infection, Helicobacter Pylori infection, arsenic contaminated groundwater, availability of chemical carcinogens mainly formalin treated fruits, fish and vegetables at open market, tannery waste contaminated with chromium (which is used for poultry feed and fish feed preparation). A World Health Organization study revealed the annual cost of illnesses in Bangladesh attributable to tobacco usage is US$ 500 million and the total annual benefit from the tobacco sector is US$ 305 million as tax revenue. Bangladesh has developed a National Cancer Control Strategy and Action Plan with the aim of delivering a universal, quality-based and timely service. Cancer prevention through tobacco control, health promotion and vaccination program, cancer early detection program for oral cavity, breast and cervix has initiated. Cancer detection and diagnostic facilities will be made available at medical colleges and district- hospitals and establish a referral chain. National capacity development, more cancer research will allow Bangladesh to deal effectively and efficiently with the cancer problems through evidence-based decision making.