Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introduced Alien Plant Species in the Neotropics: the Panama Case

Non-insular tropical biomes appear relatively resistant to invasive alien species (IAS). While some argue fewer IAS in continental tropical communities is the result of the complexity of species-rich communities (e.g., Elton's biological resistance hypothesis), others suggest lack of IAS might reflect fewer invasion opportunities, which could change with time. In effect, deforestation may lead to the simplification of tropical habitats, thus reducing biological resistance. Little is known about the current status of alien plants species, factors contributing to their spread and IAS in non-insular tropical systems. Here I report on the status of alien plant species in relation to area, number of native and endemics species, population, forest cover and cultivated area across provinces of Panama. Alien plant species comprise nearly 4 percent of the flora and was positively correlated with the number of native plant species (r = 0.84, P < 0.001) and while this pattern runs counter to Elton's premise, it is consistent with other landscape-scale studies. In Panama, the number of alien plant species is explained by population density (r= 0.91, P < 0.01) and potentially linked to disturbance, albeit coarsely, as the proportion of aliens negatively correlates with forest cover (r = 0.69, P < 0.05). Thus, despite high diversity, these results portray disturbed tropical forests becoming dotted with introduced alien species. While few species seem to become invasive in the continental tropics, rapid land use change could promote the success of IAS representing serious consequences for tropical countries' economies and biodiversity.
The Political Economy of Africa's Emergent Middle Class: Retrospect and Prospects

This special issue introduction provides a historical perspective in order to contextualize the political economy of Africa's emergent middle class. In doing so, three overarching research questions are discussed to better understand the middle class' transformative potential. First, who constitute Africa's middle class and how has this concept changed over time? Second, what dynamics explain the growth of this group? Third, what are the implications of the middle class for good governance and pro-poor policies? The contributions of each of the articles in the special issue to answering these specific questions for Africa's contemporary middle class are then briefly discussed. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Cefepime monotherapy is as effective as ceftriaxone plus amikacin in pediatric patients with cancer and high-risk febrile neutropenia in a randomized comparison.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The empirical use of antibiotic therapy is widely accepted for patients with fever and neutropenia during cancer chemotherapy. The use of intravenous monotherapy with broad-spectrum antibiotics in patients at high risk for complications is an appropriate alternative. However, few data are available for pediatric patients. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of cefepime (CFP) monotherapy with ceftriaxone plus amikacin (CFT+AK) in children and adolescents with febrile neutropenia (FN). METHODS A prospective randomized open study of patients with lymphoma or leukemia who had fever and neutropenia during chemotherapy was conducted. Patients were randomized to receive CFP or CFT+AK. The randomization was based on number lists. RESULTS Fifty seven patients with 125 episodes of fever and neutropenia were evaluated (CFP, 62 episodes; CFT+AK, 63 episodes). The mean neutrophil count at admission to hospital was 118.6 cells/mm(3) for patients in the CFP group and 107 cells/mm(3) for patients in the CFT+AK group. The mean duration of neutropenia was 9 days for the CFP group and 8 days for the CFT+AK group. Analysis of only the first episodes for each patient showed that CFP treatment was successful for 65.5% of episodes and CFT+AK was successful for 64.3% of episodes. The overall rates of success with modification were 90% for the CFP group and 89% for the CFT+AK group. No major treatment-emergent toxicity was reported. CONCLUSION Monotherapy with CFP seems to be as effective and safe as CFT+AK for initial empirical therapy in children and adolescents with FN.
Comparison of PWM and SIN aging of insulating material subjected to surface discharges

The electric stress created on an insulation system depends on the type of applied voltage stimulus. Real insulating systems often contain defects of different types e.g. cavities, voids within dielectric materials or at boundaries between the dielectric and the conductor which are sources of PD at large enough electric field. These defects can arise in the technological manufacturing processes or due to exploitation stresses. The paper will present comparison of aging test of insulating material subjected to surface discharges at pulse-width modulated (PWM) and sinusoidal (SIN) waveforms. Special focus and novel research aspect will refer to the interface between insulating material and conductor, subjected to PWM or SIN like stimuli. The paper presents experimental results of interaction of conductor on the mechanism of surface discharges in the insulation system. The dedicated test setup will be designed to perform experiments with various dielectric materials. Cooper electrode will be investigated, within specially prepared insulation samples composed of ethylene propylene rubber (EPR) and cross linked polyethylene (XLPE). For obtaining the correlation between the electrical stresses due to surface discharges on the polymer surface and their morphological changes of structure the following investigations were performed on samples: optical microscopy surface analysis, microstructural analysis of polymer surface by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), elemental analysis with Energy Dispersion Spectroscopy (EDS), microstructural surface roughness analysis. Comparison of those results for both PWM and SIN will reveal the impact of voltage stimuli in defined setup.
Exploration and Exploitation Across Three Resource Classes: Market/Customer Intelligence, Brands/Bonds, and Technologies/Processes

Purpose. Long-run corporate success requires engagement in two types of innovative activities: exploitation and exploration. However, earlier research has focused on exploration and exploitation concerning a firm’s technologies. The purpose of the present article is to explicitly examine exploration and exploitation related to customers and markets.Design/methodology/approach. The article is conceptual in nature, based on marketing, strategic management, and organization literatures.Findings. The article explains the logic of exploration-exploitation with respect to two market-related resource classes – (1) the firm’s knowledge of markets and customers (market/customer intelligence) and (2) market actors’ knowledge of and bonds to the firm (brands/bonds) – as viewed in combination with the resource class of (3) technologies, processes, and products (technologies/processes). The distinction of these three resource classes enables a three-dimensional conceptualization of the ideal types of a firm’s business development projects, which are seen as combinations of exploration and exploitation of resources across the three classes. The article also introduces the notions of multidimensionality of exploration-exploitation within the resource classes and relativity of resource newness. Originality/value. The article explicates how firms can orient their exploration and exploitation strategies not only on the technology dimension but also on the dimensions of market/customer intelligence and brands/bonds.
Mechanism of T cell hyporesponsiveness to HBcAg is associated with regulatory T cells in chronic hepatitis B.

AIM To study the mechanisms of hyporesponsiveness of HBV-specific CD4+ T cells by testing TH1 and TH2 commitment and regulatory T cells. METHODS Nine patients with chronic hepatitis B were enrolled. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were stimulated with HBcAg or HBsAg to evaluate their potential to commit to TH1 and TH2 differentiation. HBcAg-specific activity of regulatory T cells was evaluated by staining with antibodies to CD4, CD25, CTLA-4 and interleukin-10. The role of regulatory T cells was further assessed by treatment with anti-interleukin-10 antibody and depletion of CD4+CD25+ cells. RESULTS Level of mRNAs for T-bet, IL-12R beta2 and IL-4 was significantly lower in the patients than in healthy subjects with HBcAg stimulation. Although populations of CD4+CD25highCTLA-4+ T cells were not different between the patients and healthy subjects, IL-10 secreting cells were found in CD4+ cells and CD4+CD25+ cells in the patients in response to HBcAg, and they were not found in cells which were stimulated with HBsAg. Addition of anti-IL-10 antibody recovered the amount of HBcAg-specific TH1 antibody compared with control antibody (P < 0.01, 0.34% +/- 0.12% vs 0.15% +/- 0.04%). Deletion of CD4+CD25+ T cells increased the amount of HBcAg-specific TH1 antibody when compared with lymphocytes reconstituted using regulatory T cells (P < 0.01, 0.03% +/- 0.02% vs 0.18% +/- 0.05%). CONCLUSION The results indicate that the mechanism of T cell hyporesponsiveness to HBcAg includes activation of HBcAg-induced regulatory T cells in contrast to an increase in TH2-committed cells in response to HBsAg.
A Dempster-Shafer theory based witness trustworthiness model to cope with unfair ratings in e-marketplace

Reputation systems have contributed much to resisting against the threats from malicious seller agents in electronic marketplaces. Buyer agents can benefit from modeling the reputation of seller agents to make a decision on which seller to have transaction with. However, the existence of unfair ratings decreases the accuracy of the seller agents' reputation evaluation, which will lead to inappropriate sellers to be selected and hence harm buyers' profits. In this paper, to address the problem of unfair ratings, we propose a witness trustworthiness model based on Dempster-Shafer theory to evaluate the trustworthiness of a witness's ratings regarding a particular seller. The proposed approach uses local and global ratings together to model a witness's trustworthiness which is specific for different sellers. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can effectively address the problem of unfair ratings and outperform the comparative approaches, especially when collusion attacks exist.
Star formation in molecular cores - III. The effect of the turbulent power spectrum

We investigate the effect of the turbulent power spectrum ($P(k) \propto k^{-n}$, with $n = 3,\,4\;{\rm or}\;5$) on the fragmentation of low-mass cores, by means of SPH simulations. We adopt initial density profiles and low levels of turbulence based on observation, and for each n -value we conduct an ensemble of simulations with different initial seeds for the turbulent velocity field, so as to obtain reasonable statistics. We find that when power is concentrated at larger scales (i.e. for larger n ), more protostellar objects form and there is a higher proportion of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. This is in direct contrast with the recent results of Delgado Donate et al., presumably because they adopted much higher levels of turbulence.
An analysis of scholarly productivity in United States academic anaesthesiologists by citation bibliometrics

The h‐index is used to evaluate scholarly productivity in academic medicine, but has not been extensively used in anaesthesia. We analysed the publications, citations, citations per publication and h‐index from 1996 to date using the Scopus® database for 1630 (1120 men, 510 women) for faculty members from 24 randomly selected US academic anaesthesiology departments The median (interquartile range [range]) h‐index of US academic anaesthesiologists was 1 [0–5 (0–44)] with 3 [0–18 (0–398)] total publications, 24 [0–187 (0–8515)] total citations, and 5 [0–14 (0–252)] citations per publication. Faculty members in departments with National Institutes of Health funding were more productive than colleagues in departments with little or no government funding. The h‐index increased significantly between successive academic ranks concomitant with increases in the number of publications and total citations. Men had higher median h‐index than women concomitant with more publications and citations, but the number of citations per publication was similar between groups. Our results suggest that h‐index is a reasonable indicator of scholarly productivity in anaesthesia. The results may help comparisons of academic productivity across countries and may be used to assess whether new initiatives designed to reverse recent declines in academic anaesthetic are working.
Social Capital, Socioeconomic Status, and Health-Related Quality of Life Among Older Adults in Bogotá (Colombia)

Objective: The main goal of this study was to evaluate the relationship between levels of cognitive social capital and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Methods: A multilevel, cross-sectional study was conducted in 2007 in Bogotá Colombia. A total of 1,907 older adults completed the Spanish version of the Short Form of Health Survey (SF-8) to assess HRQOL. Cognitive dimension of social capital was assessed. Hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to determine the associations between social capital variables and HRQOL. Results: Only 20% to 25% of the population reported trust in others and shared values. A total of 93% percent reported that people in their neighborhood would try to take advantage of them if given a chance. Higher social capital indicators were positively associated with the mental and physical dimensions of HRQOL. Discussion: Results from this study support evidence on the disintegration of the Colombian society, which may be influenced by high levels of social inequality.
Sociology of Culture and Cultural Practices: The Transformative Power of Institutions

Foreword: A new perspective. Terry Nichols Clark, University of Chicago Preface: An invitation to think about culture: An institutional approach Chapter 1: Sociologists and Culture Chapter 2: Culture's Publics Chapter 3: Explaining Social and Cultural Hierarchies Chapter 4: The Question of Democratization of Culture Chapter 5: Contemporary Reorientations Chapter 6: The Work of the Institution: The Democratization of Culture in the Light of the Legacy of the TNP Chapter 7: The Influence of Mediation Apparatuses on the Structuring of Cultural Practices: The Pompidou Center's "Correspondents" Chapter 8: The Discourse of the "Failure" of the Democratization of Culture: Sociological Observation or Ideological Assertion?
THE 2010 BERNARD B. BRODIE AWARD LECTURE Structure and Function of Cytochromes P450 2B: From Mechanism-Based Inactivators to X-Ray Crystal Structures and Back

This article reviews work from the author dating back to 1978 and dealing with the structural basis of cytochrome P450 function utilizing available contemporary techniques. Early studies used mechanism-based inactivators that bound to the protein moiety of hepatic P450s to try to localize the active site. Subsequent studies employed cDNA cloning, heterologous expression, site-directed mutagenesis, and homology modeling based on multiple bacterial P450 X-ray crystal structures to predict the active sites of CYP2B enzymes with considerable accuracy. Breakthroughs in engineering and expression of mammalian P450s enabled our first X-ray crystal structure of ligand-free rabbit P450 2B4. To date we have solved eleven 2B4 and three human CYP2B6 structures, which represent four significantly different conformations. The plasticity of CYP2B4 has been confirmed by deuterium exchange mass spectrometry and is substantiated by molecular dynamics simulations. In addition to major movement of secondary structure elements, more subtle reorientation of active site side chains, especially Phe 206, Phe 297, and Glu 301, contributes to the ability of CYP2B enzymes to bind various ligands. Isothermal titration calorimetry has proven to be a useful tool for studying the thermodynamics of ligand binding to CYP2B4 and CYP2B6, and NMR has enabled study of ligand binding orientation in solution as an adjunct to X-ray crystallography. A major challenge remains to harness the power of the various approaches to facilitate prediction of CYP2B specificity and inhibition.
PERILAKU MENYONTEK DITINJAU DARI KEPERCAYAAN DIRI

Kepercayaan diri adalah suatu bagian dari kehidupan yang unik dan berharga. Dengan kepercayaan diri yang dimiliki diharapkan ketika menyelesaikan tugas atau ujian di sekolah, siswa akan percaya pada kemampuan yang dimiliki sehingga perilaku menyontek dapat dihindari. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara kepercayaan diri dengan perilaku menyontek. Hipotesis yang diajukan oleh penulis adalah ada hubungan antara kepercayaan diri dengan perilaku menyontek. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah siswa SMA Negeri 1 Surakarta. Teknik pengambilan sampel dalam penelitian ini cluster non random sampling. Alat ukur dalam penelitian ini menggunakan skala kepercayaan diri dan skala perilaku menyontek. Analisis data yang dipergunakan dalam penelitian ini menggunakan bantuan SPSS 15.00 dengan analisis product moment untuk mengukur hubungan antara kepercayaan diri dengan perilaku menyontek. Berdasarkan perhitungan diperoleh hasil analisis data menunjukkan ada koefisien korelasi (r) sebesar - 0,425 dengan p = 0,000 (p<0,01), yang artinya terdapat hubungan negatif yang sangat sigifikan antara kepercayaan diri dengan perilaku menyontek. Kesimpulan dari hasil penelitian adalah ada hubungan negatif yang sangat signifikan antara kepercayaan diri dengan perilaku menyontek. Hal ini berarti variabel kepercayaan diri dengan segala aspek di dalamnya dapat digunakan sebagai prediktor untuk mengukur perilaku menyontek, artinya semakin tinggi kepercayaan diri maka semakin rendah perilaku menyontek.
Blinded‐Reader Comparison of Magnetic Resonance Angiography and Duplex Ultrasonography for Carotid Artery Bifurcation Stenosis

Background and Purpose We compared two-dimensional time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and duplex ultrasonography with arteriography for the detection of 70% to 99% stenoses at the carotid artery bifurcation (ie, surgical disease according to findings of the North American Carotid Endarterectomy Trial). Methods Three blinded readers independently measured stenoses on MRA in 73 vessels from 38 patients. Duplex ultrasonography was available in 66 vessels from 35 of these patients, and blinded reading was performed by one reader. Comparison was made to arteriography. Results Magnetic resonance angiography demonstrated a sensitivity of 92.4%, specificity of 74.5%, and negative predictive value of 95.8% for 70% to 99% stenoses. Interobserver agreement was high (κ=0.91). Absence of signal at stenoses with evidence of distal flow usually, but not always, corresponded to surgical disease. Duplex ultrasonography demonstrated a sensitivity of 81.0%, specificity of 82.2%, and negative predictive value of 90.2% for surgical disease. There was no significant difference between MRA and duplex ultrasonography for the sensitivity or specificity in detecting 70% to 99% stenoses (P>.1, exact form of the McNemar test). MRA had no false positives or false negatives for complete occlusions of the carotid artery, whereas duplex ultrasonography missed one occlusion and falsely called two patent vessels occluded. In seven cases, both MRA and duplex ultrasonography overestimated stenoses to miscategorize them as surgical disease. Conclusions Although the sensitivity and specificity of MRA and duplex ultrasonography are not significantly different for distinguishing surgical and nonsurgical degrees of stenosis at the carotid bifurcation, MRA has some advantages that may make it the screening test of choice. Concordant MRA and duplex ultrasonography for surgical disease does not necessarily obviate the need for catheter arteriography.
Experimental Study on Breakdown of Mobility Universality in $\langle 100\rangle$-Directed (110)-Oriented pMOSFETs

This paper describes experimental determination of the value of eta in (110)-oriented SOI pMOSFETs by changing the SOI thickness and temperature. It is found for the first time that in the case of a lang100rang-directed channel, eta should be larger than unity, which implies the collapse of the mobility universality, when temperature is low or SOI thickness is ultimately thin. Possible mechanisms of the breakdown of the mobility universality are discussed
Use of Virtual Classroom: Summarized Opinion of the Stakeholders in the Learning-Teaching Process

Nowadays, the use of ICTs in education is proof of innovation, quality, and ease of access. Aware of this challenge, higher education institutions are making efforts in line with technological advances by incorporating tools that promote more and better learning results. The aim of this investigation is to determine how much backing Moodle virtual classrooms provide to support classroom work at the university in the case study. Moodle can be used to improve, renovate and motivate the teaching-learning process in the classroom. To confirm this hypothesis, we conducted a summary of previous research carried out from the perspective of students, teachers and authorities, and considered the agreements and disagreements among these groups. We evaluated perceived usefulness, ease of use and other variables to validate the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of the investigation. The results show that Moodle virtual classrooms are an accepted tool in terms of obtained benefits. We also determined that it is necessary to implement training in using Moodle, as well having policies and incentives to increase its use.
Diversity combining and eigencombining performance and complexity comparison for estimated channels

Conventionally, antenna arrays apply maximal-ratio combining (MRC) directly to received signals. However, the performance of MRC compensates for its high numerical complexity only for low antenna correlation, i.e., rarely, for space-limited base-stations in actual scenarios, where the azimuth spread (AS) is random and predominantly small. Maximal-ratio eigencombining (MREC), i.e., MRC of the outputs of a partial Karhunen-Loeve Transform (KLT) of the received signals, can attain available diversity gain more efficiently. Herein, MREC is adapted to the AS with a bias-variance trade-off criterion (BVTC) that selects for KLT dominant eigenvectors of the channel correlation matrix that are computed with a deflation-based projection-approximation subspace tracking (PASTd) algorithm. Optimum and suboptimum channel fading estimation and weight-signal combining are evaluated. Simulations indicate that PASTd-BVTC-based suboptimum MREC with optimum fading estimation can perform similarly to the much more complex optimum-MRC approach.
Workplace basics : the essential skills employers want

Setting standards for competency at work the foundation - learning how to learn basic competency skills - reading, writing and computation communication skills - speaking and listening effectively adaptability skills - solving problems and thinking creatively developmental skills - managing personal and professional growth group effectiveness skills - working with others influencing skills - making a difference a blueprint for success.