Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Person-job fit as a moderator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance

Information systems development requires developer skills and abilities that may go beyond traditional technical expertise. The IS development environment provides a rich arena for the interplay of emotional intelligence, creativity, and performance where these variables are likely to play a significant role. Based on a synthesis of the IS and other relevant literature, this paper presents a model that identifies the influence of emotional intelligence and creativity on job performance. The model also identifies the likely moderating influence of person-job fit in the relationships of EI and creativity to job performance for IS professionals. The paper outlines an empirical study that plans to investigate and test the proposed model.
Non-homogeneous two-rack model for distributed storage systems

In the traditional two-rack distributed storage system (DSS) model, due to the assumption that the storage capacity of each node is the same, the minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) point becomes infeasible. In this paper, we design a new non-homogeneous two-rack model by proposing a generalization of the threshold function used to compute the tradeoff curve. We prove that by having the nodes in the rack with higher regenerating bandwidth stores more information, all the points on the tradeoff curve, including the MBR point, become feasible. Finally, we show how the non-homogeneous two-rack model outperforms the traditional model in the tradeoff curve between the storage per node and the repair bandwidth.
Acid gastroesophageal reflux and intensity of symptoms in children with gastroesophageal reflux disease. Comparison of primary gastroesophageal reflux and gastroesophageal reflux secondary to food allergy.

UNLABELLED The ability to differentiate between primary and secondary causes of gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is extremely important during the diagnostic procedure. At the same time, the quality of symptoms and the intensity of the course of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) should be estimated. Acid GER is assessed using 24-hour esophageal pH monitoring; the results of this diagnostic test should always be interpreted alongside the clinical picture. PURPOSE To establish the interdependence between the intensity of the clinical symptoms and the acid reflux index in children with primary GER and GER secondary to cow's milk protein allergy (CMA) and/or other food allergies (FA). MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 138 children of various ages with symptoms of GERD were included in the study. The diagnostic procedure included 24-hour pH monitoring of the esophagus with a 2-channel probe (distal and proximal lead). For this purpose, ESPGAN diagnostic criteria were implemented. The type and intensity of typical manifestations of GERD were assessed with the help of our own scoring system. This diagnostic and therapeutic algorithm which includes an oral food challenge test, was applied to 138 children in order to differentiate primary GER from GER secondary to CMA/FA. RESULTS Primary GERD was diagnosed in 76 patients (55.1%) with a mean age: x=25.20 months+/-27.28 (group 1) and GERD secondary to CMA/FA was confirmed in 62 children (44.9%) with a mean age: x=21.53 months+/-17.79 (group 2). The most important pH-metric parameter analyzed in study groups 1 and 2 was the GER index: total and supine. An assessment of the intensity of symptoms and a comparative analysis of intensity was evaluated against the GER index: total and supine. Among study group 1, the following gradation of symptoms was found: in 31 children (40.8%)-degree 3, in 33 children (43.4%)-degree 4, and in 12 children (15.8%)-degree 5, whereas among the patients in group 2:25 (40.3%) were in degree 3, 27 (43.6%) were in degree 4, and 10 (16.1%) were in degree 5. It was estimated that the higher the GER result in both total and supine positions (for both leads), the higher the level of symptoms noted. This interdependence was demonstrated for both groups. CONCLUSIONS In seeking to determine any etiopathogenetic connection between primary GER or GER secondary to CMA/FA and their clinical consequences, 24-hour esophageal pH monitoring with a 2-channel probe is recommended, since it provides for better clinical control of GERD and its appropriate treatment.
Gene Expression of ERβ Isoforms in Laser Microdissected Human Breast Cancers: Implications for Gene Expression Analyses

Background: Despite many published studies on ERβ, progress towards understanding its role in breast cancer remains slow. This is largely due to discordant data between mRNA and protein studies as well as failure to take into account the biologically distinct ERβ isoforms and their heterogeneous expression profile. Methods: We compared expression of ERβ, -2 and -5 genes in HB2 and MCF-7 breast cell lines, primary breast fibroblasts (n=5) and whole tissue and laser microdissected epithelial and stromal cells obtained from 25 human breast tumours. Results: Our study shows that the level of gene expression of ERβ isoforms depends on the cell population within a given tumour and varies dramatically in different cellular compartments. This has implications for gene expression analyses and could explain some of the contradictory data published to date, rendering “grind and bind” analyses of ERβ uninformative. Conclusions: With the technology now available, we suggest a more refined approach be adopted to help resolve some of the controversy surrounding ERβ.
The Antecedents of Customer Loyalty in Malaysian Retailing : Capitalizing the Strategic Tool

Customer loyalty is one of the important strategies for retailers to develop competitive edge. Despite the importance of customer loyalty, there is still a lack of comprehensive work to explain how customers develop loyalty to a particular store and how that loyalty can be maintained. The purpose of this study is to determine the antecedents of customer loyalty from both attitudinal perspective (cognitive loyalty, affective loyalty, & conative loyalty) and behavioral perspective (action loyalty). The findings disclose that the antecedents of cognitive loyalty are the components of store image, namely, service quality, product quality, store atmosphere, and promotion activity. The antecedents for affective loyalty are customer satisfaction, loyalty program, and retailer brand equity, while the antecedent for conative loyalty is customer commitment. Likewise, the antecedents for action loyalty are conative loyalty, customer commitment, and customer satisfaction. The study identifies three strategic tools that dominate attitudinal aspects, namely, store image, loyalty program, and retailer brand equity. Thus, these strategic tools provide retailers with a direction in strategy formulation, which allows them to capitalize customer loyalty as a means of gaining competitive advantage.
Bullying and Peer Victimisation from a Social Cognitive Perspective: Development and Evaluation of the Cool Schools Program

There were two primary areas of focus for this thesis. The first was to identify what changes had occurred in bullying behaviour in Australian secondary schools compared to findings of those of the previous decade. Evaluating this involved a cross sectional study of 618 students from Year 8 through to Year 12. The main findings were in line with previous research in that boys were still more likely to report being bullied, although group bullying had increased for boys. Younger students were more likely than older students to report bullying. There was a meaningful increase in the percentage of students feeling unsafe at school from bullying. Male and female students were equally as likely to be a participant in group bullying. However, the reasons for bullying differed across year levels. The second component of this thesis was to develop and evaluate an intervention program based on a theoretical premise involving social cognitive theory. This intervention involved 958 students from five Queensland secondary schools who participated in a 10-week program. The Cool Schools Peer Relationships Program was found to help reduce bullying behaviour through increased resiliency, relational skills building and improved mental health outcomes in those students who participated. Moreover, outcomes were greater for students with a lower initial capacity for resiliency against bullying. The implementation of a program such as the Cool Schools Peer Relationships program allows for increased awareness and support, a reduction in bully type behaviours and a greater sense of safety in the school community. Due to the context of this study there were limitations to the research. Traditionally, school settings present many challenges when conducting field research, and this was complicated by two influential events that occurred during the data collection period. Bullying and victimisation from a social cognitive perspective iii. The cross-sectional data were collected less than one-month after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 and the secondary school that comprised the control group for the intervention study was subjected to several arson attacks. Bullying and victimisation from a social cognitive perspective iv.
Coping Style and Quality of Life in Elderly Patients with Vision Disturbances

Purpose. This study aims at evaluating coping style and quality of life in patients with glaucoma and cataract. Methods. The participants were patients (N = 237, 130F; mean age: M = 67,8; SD = 9,5) with low vision caused by cataract (N = 188) and glaucoma (N = 49) who answered the Quality of Life Questionnaire (QOLQ) by Schalock and Keith. The participants were divided by means of cluster analysis (k-means) according to coping styles measured by CISS (Endler and Parker) into three groups: (1) high mobilization for coping, (2) task-oriented coping, and (3) low mobilization for coping. Results. In all the group, a general quality of life was moderately lowered; however, in task-oriented group it was relatively high. Moreover, task-oriented group had significantly lower level of anxiety (STAI), hopelessness (HS), and loneliness (UCLA LS-R) and higher level of self-esteem (SES) in comparison to the patients from high mobilization and low mobilization for coping. Conclusions. In an old age, adaptive coping with vision disturbances does not necessarily mean flexibility in combining all coping styles, but rather task-oriented coping and an ability to use social support. Extreme mobilization for coping seems not adaptive similarly like low mobilization for coping because it violates balance between environmental requirements and personal resources.
An Implementation and Experiment with the Nested Generalized Exemplars Algorithm

This NRL NCARAI technical note (AIC-95-003) describes work with Salzberg's (1991) NGE. I recently implemented this algorithm and have run a few case studies. The purpose of this note is to publicize this implementation and note a curious result while using it. This implementation of NGE is available at under my WWW address (see above) indexed under software.
On the Contingent Value of Dynamic Capabilities for Competitive Advantage: The Nonlinear Moderating Effect of Environmental Dynamism

This article suggests that dynamic capabilities can give the firm competitive advantage, but this effect is contingent on the level of dynamism of the firm’s external environment. A nonlinear, inverse U-shaped moderation is proposed, implying that the relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage is strongest under intermediate levels of dynamism but comparatively weaker when dynamism is low or high. This proposition is tested using data on alliance management capability and new product development capability, two specific dynamic capabilities widely recognized in prior research. Results based on longitudinal key informant data from 279 firms support the account that these dynamic capabilities are more strongly associated with competitive advantage in moderately dynamic than in stable or highly dynamic environments.
Reference-Free Validation of Short Read Data

Background High-throughput DNA sequencing techniques offer the ability to rapidly and cheaply sequence material such as whole genomes. However, the short-read data produced by these techniques can be biased or compromised at several stages in the sequencing process; the sources and properties of some of these biases are not always known. Accurate assessment of bias is required for experimental quality control, genome assembly, and interpretation of coverage results. An additional challenge is that, for new genomes or material from an unidentified source, there may be no reference available against which the reads can be checked. Results We propose analytical methods for identifying biases in a collection of short reads, without recourse to a reference. These, in conjunction with existing approaches, comprise a methodology that can be used to quantify the quality of a set of reads. Our methods involve use of three different measures: analysis of base calls; analysis of k-mers; and analysis of distributions of k-mers. We apply our methodology to wide range of short read data and show that, surprisingly, strong biases appear to be present. These include gross overrepresentation of some poly-base sequences, per-position biases towards some bases, and apparent preferences for some starting positions over others. Conclusions The existence of biases in short read data is known, but they appear to be greater and more diverse than identified in previous literature. Statistical analysis of a set of short reads can help identify issues prior to assembly or resequencing, and should help guide chemical or statistical methods for bias rectification.
The potential for vertical bone regeneration via maxillary periosteal elevation.

BACKGROUND While many studies have been performed on the characteristics and regenerative capacity of long bone periosteum, the craniofacial periosteum remains poorly understood. AIM The aim of this study was to investigate the potential for a maxillary periosteum tunnelling procedure to induce vertical alveolar bone regeneration. MATERIALS AND METHODS We employed a murine injury model that activates skeletal stem cells in the periosteum without overtly damaging the underlying cortical bone, preserving the integrity of the long bone and maxilla, and avoiding the introduction of pathological motion at the injury site. Further, we introduced a collagen sponge to serve as a scaffold, providing the necessary space for vertical bone regeneration. RESULTS Periosteal elevation alone resulted in bone formation in the tibia and delayed bone resorption in the maxilla. With the presence of the collagen sponge, new bone formation occurred in the maxilla. CONCLUSIONS Periosteal response to injury varies with anatomical location, so conclusions from long bone studies should not be extrapolated for craniofacial applications. Murine maxillary periosteum has the osteogenic potential to induce vertical alveolar bone regeneration.
Protein Complexes Discovery Based on Protein-Protein Interaction Data via a Regularized Sparse Generative Network Model

Detecting protein complexes from protein interaction networks is one major task in the postgenome era. Previous developed computational algorithms identifying complexes mainly focus on graph partition or dense region finding. Most of these traditional algorithms cannot discover overlapping complexes which really exist in the protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. Even if some density-based methods have been developed to identify overlapping complexes, they are not able to discover complexes that include peripheral proteins. In this study, motivated by recent successful application of generative network model to describe the generation process of PPI networks and to detect communities from social networks, we develop a regularized sparse generative network model (RSGNM), by adding another process that generates propensities using exponential distribution and incorporating Laplacian regularizer into an existing generative network model, for protein complexes identification. By assuming that the propensities are generated using exponential distribution, the estimators of propensities will be sparse, which not only has good biological interpretation but also helps to control the overlapping rate among detected complexes. And the Laplacian regularizer will lead to the estimators of propensities more smooth on interaction networks. Experimental results on three yeast PPI networks show that RSGNM outperforms six previous competing algorithms in terms of the quality of detected complexes. In addition, RSGNM is able to detect overlapping complexes and complexes including peripheral proteins simultaneously. These results give new insights about the importance of generative network models in protein complexes identification.
Using standardised patients to measure physicians' practice: validation study using audio recordings

Abstract Objective: To assess the validity of standardised patients to measure the quality of physicians' practice. Design: Validation study of standardised patients' assessments. Physicians saw unannounced standardised patients presenting with common outpatient conditions. The standardised patients covertly tape recorded their visit and completed a checklist of quality criteria immediately afterwards. Their assessments were compared against independent assessments of the recordings by a trained medical records abstractor. Setting: Four general internal medicine primary care clinics in California. Participants: 144 randomly selected consenting physicians. Main outcome measures: Rates of agreement between the patients' assessments and independent assessment. Results: 40 visits, one per standardised patient, were recorded. The overall rate of agreement between the standardised patients' checklists and the independent assessment of the audio transcripts was 91% (κ. Disaggregating the data by medical condition, site, level of physicians' training, and domain (stage of the consultation) gave similar rates of agreement. Sensitivity of the standardised patients' assessments was 95%, and specificity was 85%. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve was 90%. Conclusions: Standardised patients' assessments seem to be a valid measure of the quality of physicians' care for a variety of common medical conditions in actual outpatient settings. Properly trained standardised patients compare well with independent assessment of recordings of the consultations and may justify their use as a “gold standard” in comparing the quality of care across sites or evaluating data obtained from other sources, such as medical records and clinical vignettes.
Comparison of Neurological Function in Males and Females from Two Substrains of C57BL/6 Mice

The C57BL/6 (B6) mouse is the background strain most frequently used for genetically-modified mice. Previous studies have found significant behavioral and genetic differences between the B6J (The Jackson Laboratory) and B6N substrains (National Institutes of Health); however, most studies employed only male mice. We performed a comprehensive battery of motor function and learning and memory tests on male and female mice from both substrains. The B6N male mice had greater improvement in the rotarod test. In contrast, B6J female mice had longer latencies to falling from the rotarod. In the Morris water maze (MWM), B6J males had significantly shorter latencies to finding the hidden platform. However, B6N females had significantly shorter path lengths in the reversal and shifted-reduced phases. In open field locomotor activity, B6J males had higher activity levels, whereas B6N females took longer to habituate. In the fear conditioning test, B6N males had a significantly longer time freezing in the new context compared with B6J males, but no significant differences were found in contextual or cued tests. In summary, our findings demonstrate the importance of testing both males and females in neurobehavioral studies. Both factors (sex and substrain) must be taken into account when designing developmental neurotoxicology studies.
Lattice Path Enumeration and Toeplitz Matrices

This paper is about counting lattice paths. Examples are the paths counted by Catalan, Motzkin or Schroder numbers. We identify lattice paths with walks on some path-like graph. The entries of the nth power of the adjacency matrix are the number of paths of length n with prescribed start and end position. The adjacency matrices turn out to be Toeplitz matrices. Explicit expressions for eigenvalues and eigenvectors of these matrices are known. This yields expressions for the numbers of paths in the form of trigonometric sums. We give many examples of known sequences that have such expressions. We also deal with cases where no explicit expressions for eigenvalues and eigenvec- tors of the relevant matrices are known. In some of these cases it is possible to use the characteristic polynomial to get linear recurrence relations for the numbers in question.
Associations of Cumulative Sun Exposure and Phenotypic Characteristics with Histologic Solar Elastosis

Background: Solar elastosis adjacent to melanomas in histologic sections is regarded as an indicator of sun exposure, although the associations of UV exposure and phenotype with solar elastosis are yet to be fully explored. Methods: The study included 2,589 incident primary melanoma patients with assessment of histologic solar elastosis in the population-based Genes, Environment, and Melanoma study. Ambient erythemal UV (UVE) at places of residence and sun exposure hours, including body site–specific exposure, were collected. We examined the association of cumulative site-specific and non–site-specific sun exposure hours and ambient UVE with solar elastosis in multivariable models adjusted for age, sex, center, pigmentary characteristics, nevi, and, where relevant, body site. Results: Solar elastosis was associated most strongly with site-specific UVE [odds ratio (OR) for top exposure quartile, 5.20; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 3.40-7.96; P for trend <0.001] and also with site-specific sun exposure (OR for top quartile, 5.12; 95% CI, 3.35-7.83; P for trend <0.001). Older age (OR at >70 years, 7.69; 95% CI, 5.14-11.52; P for trend < 0.001) and having more than 10 back nevi (OR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61-0.97; P = 0.03) were independently associated with solar elastosis. Conclusion: Solar elastosis had a strong association with higher site-specific UVE dose, older age, and fewer nevi. Impact: Solar elastosis could be a useful biomarker of lifetime site-specific UV. Future research is needed to explore whether age represents more than simple accumulation of sun exposure and to determine why people with more nevi may be less prone to solar elastosis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(11); 2932–41. ©2010 AACR.