Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial Property of Hydrocolloid Impression Material Incorporated with Silver Nanoparticles Against Staphylococcus Aureus

Dental impressions can easily become contaminated with patient’s blood and saliva which are capable of transmitting infectious diseases to dental personnel. The addition of antimicrobial agents into impression materials could be effective in reducing the chances of cross-infection. Silver nanoparticles have been applied in dentistry as a potent antimicrobial agent. This study aims to evaluate the in vitro antimicrobial efficacy of silver nanoparticles incorporated to irreversible hydrocolloid impression material against Staphylococcus aureus . Silver nanoparticles (AgZrPO 4 , National Direct Network Company, Thailand) at concentrations of 0.25%, 0.50%, 1.00% and 1.50% w/w were added to powder of impression materials (Kromopan, Lascod, Ilaty). Impression material samples were prepared on sterile plate in accordance with manufacturer’s instruction. After setting, a 100 microliter of S. aureus ATCC6538 suspension (10 6 cells/mL) were inoculated on the surface of the impression sample and left for 10 minutes. The amount of S. aureus on the surface was quantified using imprint technique on Mannitol Salt agar. Impression materials incorporated with AgZrPO 4 showed antimicrobial property against S. aureus (up to 95% reduction) compared with control (impression material without AgZrPO 4 ). Even though the mechanism of antimicrobial action was not clearly understood, AgZrPO 4 incorporated to impression material was demonstrated to possess an inhibitory effect against pathogenic bacteria. Further studies are needed to investigate physical properties of the material and the clinical usage.
Big data, big risks

The ‘big data’ literature, academic as well as professional, has a very strong focus on opportunities. Far less attention has been paid to the threats that arise from repurposing data, consolidating data from multiple sources, applying analytical tools to the resulting collections, drawing inferences, and acting on them. On the basis of a review of quality factors in ‘big data’ and ‘big data analytics’, illustrated by means of scenario analysis, this paper draws attention to the moral and legal responsibility of computing researchers and professionals to temper their excitement, and apply reality checks to their promotional activities.
A Review of Information Quality Research - Develop a Research Agenda

: Recognizing the substantial development of information quality research, this review article analyzes three major aspects of information quality research: information quality assessment, information quality management and contextual information quality. Information quality assessment is analyzed by three components: information quality problem, dimension and assessment methodology. Information quality management is analyzed from three perspectives: quality management, information management and knowledge management. Following an overview of contextual information quality, this article analyzes information quality research in the context of information system and decision making. The analyzing results reveal the potential research streams and current research limitations of information quality. Aiming at bridging the research gaps, we conclude by providing the research issues for future information quality research and implications for empirical applications.
Is There a Correlation between Body Weight and Awareness of Healthy Life Style Components in Children

Background: Incidence of obesity in children is increasing worldwide. Healthy eating and exercise are the major components of a healthy life style in the community. Objective: we aim to assess the knowledge of healthy eating and exercise in children of varying weight and to explore the correlation between knowledge and bodyweight. Method: School children are invited to fill in a 2 questions quiz about healthy life style. BMI is calculated and children are classified into obese, overweight, normal and underweight. Answers are scored and results compared for different categories of the BMI. Results: 445 children participated. Age range (mean) was 7 - 13 (10) years. 67 were obese, 59 overweight, 237 normal weight and 34 were underweight. In the food question, 22%, 20%, 23% 15% of obese, overweight, underweight and normal weight children respectively gave wrong answers compared to 17.5%, 15% and 14.7%, 13.3% for the exercise question. Neither of the results was statistically significant. Boys are more knowledgeable about exercise than girls (P = 0.03). Conclusion: There is no difference in the level of knowledge about healthy eating and exercise among children with varying body weights. Tackling children behavior and attitude towards food and exercise is as important as improving their knowledge.
Two-Stage Two-Locus Models in Genome-Wide Association

Studies in model organisms suggest that epistasis may play an important role in the etiology of complex diseases and traits in humans. With the era of large-scale genome-wide association studies fast approaching, it is important to quantify whether it will be possible to detect interacting loci using realistic sample sizes in humans and to what extent undetected epistasis will adversely affect power to detect association when single-locus approaches are employed. We therefore investigated the power to detect association for an extensive range of two-locus quantitative trait models that incorporated varying degrees of epistasis. We compared the power to detect association using a single-locus model that ignored interaction effects, a full two-locus model that allowed for interactions, and, most important, two two-stage strategies whereby a subset of loci initially identified using single-locus tests were analyzed using the full two-locus model. Despite the penalty introduced by multiple testing, fitting the full two-locus model performed better than single-locus tests for many of the situations considered, particularly when compared with attempts to detect both individual loci. Using a two-stage strategy reduced the computational burden associated with performing an exhaustive two-locus search across the genome but was not as powerful as the exhaustive search when loci interacted. Two-stage approaches also increased the risk of missing interacting loci that contributed little effect at the margins. Based on our extensive simulations, our results suggest that an exhaustive search involving all pairwise combinations of markers across the genome might provide a useful complement to single-locus scans in identifying interacting loci that contribute to moderate proportions of the phenotypic variance.
Identifying Bioaccumulative Halogenated Organic Compounds Using a Nontargeted Analytical Approach: Seabirds as Sentinels

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are typically monitored via targeted mass spectrometry, which potentially identifies only a fraction of the contaminants actually present in environmental samples. With new anthropogenic compounds continuously introduced to the environment, novel and proactive approaches that provide a comprehensive alternative to targeted methods are needed in order to more completely characterize the diversity of known and unknown compounds likely to cause adverse effects. Nontargeted mass spectrometry attempts to extensively screen for compounds, providing a feasible approach for identifying contaminants that warrant future monitoring. We employed a nontargeted analytical method using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC/TOF-MS) to characterize halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) in California Black skimmer (Rynchops niger) eggs. Our study identified 111 HOCs; 84 of these compounds were regularly detected via targeted approaches, while 27 were classified as typically unmonitored or unknown. Typically unmonitored compounds of note in bird eggs included tris(4-chlorophenyl)methane (TCPM), tris(4-chlorophenyl)methanol (TCPMOH), triclosan, permethrin, heptachloro-1'-methyl-1,2'-bipyrrole (MBP), as well as four halogenated unknown compounds that could not be identified through database searching or the literature. The presence of these compounds in Black skimmer eggs suggests they are persistent, bioaccumulative, potentially biomagnifying, and maternally transferring. Our results highlight the utility and importance of employing nontargeted analytical tools to assess true contaminant burdens in organisms, as well as to demonstrate the value in using environmental sentinels to proactively identify novel contaminants.
Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Convergence for Incompressible Miscible Displacement Problems of Low Regularity

In this article we analyze the numerical approximation of incompressible miscible displacement problems with a combined mixed finite element and discontinuous Galerkin method under minimal regularity assumptions. The main result is that sequences of discrete solutions weakly accumulate at weak solutions of the continuous problem. In order to deal with the nonconformity of the method and to avoid overpenalization of jumps across interelement boundaries, the careful construction of a reflexive subspace of the space of bounded variation, which compactly embeds into $L^2(\Omega)$, and of a lifting operator, which is compatible with the nonlinear diffusion coefficient, are required. An equivalent skew-symmetric formulation of the convection and reaction terms of the nonlinear partial differential equation allows us to avoid flux limitation and nonetheless leads to an unconditionally stable and convergent numerical method. Numerical experiments underline the robustness of the proposed algorithm.
Transcriptome Profiling of the Intoxication Response of Tenebrio molitor Larvae to Bacillus thuringiensis Cry3Aa Protoxin

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crystal (Cry) proteins are effective against a select number of insect pests, but improvements are needed to increase efficacy and decrease time to mortality for coleopteran pests. To gain insight into the Bt intoxication process in Coleoptera, we performed RNA-Seq on cDNA generated from the guts of Tenebrio molitor larvae that consumed either a control diet or a diet containing Cry3Aa protoxin. Approximately 134,090 and 124,287 sequence reads from the control and Cry3Aa-treated groups were assembled into 1,318 and 1,140 contigs, respectively. Enrichment analyses indicated that functions associated with mitochondrial respiration, signalling, maintenance of cell structure, membrane integrity, protein recycling/synthesis, and glycosyl hydrolases were significantly increased in Cry3Aa-treated larvae, whereas functions associated with many metabolic processes were reduced, especially glycolysis, tricarboxylic acid cycle, and fatty acid synthesis. Microarray analysis was used to evaluate temporal changes in gene expression after 6, 12 or 24 h of Cry3Aa exposure. Overall, microarray analysis indicated that transcripts related to allergens, chitin-binding proteins, glycosyl hydrolases, and tubulins were induced, and those related to immunity and metabolism were repressed in Cry3Aa-intoxicated larvae. The 24 h microarray data validated most of the RNA-Seq data. Of the three intoxication intervals, larvae demonstrated more differential expression of transcripts after 12 h exposure to Cry3Aa. Gene expression examined by three different methods in control vs. Cry3Aa-treated larvae at the 24 h time point indicated that transcripts encoding proteins with chitin-binding domain 3 were the most differentially expressed in Cry3Aa-intoxicated larvae. Overall, the data suggest that T. molitor larvae mount a complex response to Cry3Aa during the initial 24 h of intoxication. Data from this study represent the largest genetic sequence dataset for T. molitor to date. Furthermore, the methods in this study are useful for comparative analyses in organisms lacking a sequenced genome.
Community Structures in Bipartite Networks: A Dual-Projection Approach

Identifying communities or clusters in networked systems has received much attention across the physical and social sciences. Most of this work focuses on single layer or one-mode networks, including social networks between people or hyperlinks between websites. Multilayer or multi-mode networks, such as affiliation networks linking people to organizations, receive much less attention in this literature. Common strategies for discovering the community structure of multi-mode networks identify the communities of each mode simultaneously. Here I show that this combined approach is ineffective at discovering community structures when there are an unequal number of communities between the modes of a multi-mode network. I propose a dual-projection alternative for detecting communities in multi-mode networks that overcomes this shortcoming. The evaluation of synthetic networks with known community structures reveals that the dual-projection approach outperforms the combined approach when there are a different number of communities in the various modes. At the same time, results show that the dual-projection approach is as effective as the combined strategy when the number of communities is the same between the modes.
Firm Investments and Expected Equity Returns 1 Job Market Paper

This paper provides a comprehensive firm level analysis of the relation between a firm’s capital investment and its equity return. We find that firm capital investment is negatively associated with future equity returns in the time-series. In the cross-section, portfolios of firms with low investment growth rates or low investment capital ratios have significantly higher expected returns than portfolios of firms with high investment growth rates or investment capital ratios. With a stochastic discount factor, a standard investment model can generate the same predictive patterns of investments as in the data. Furthermore, an investment growth factor, which is the return difference between low investment stocks and high investment stocks, contains similar information as HML and can explain the value effect as well as HML.
Fourier domain scoring: a novel document ranking method

Current document retrieval methods use a vector space similarity measure to give scores of relevance to documents when related to a specific query. The central problem with these methods is that they neglect any spatial information within the documents in question. We present a new method, called Fourier Domain Scoring (FDS), which takes advantage of this spatial information, via the Fourier transform, to give a more accurate ordering of relevance to a document set. We show that FDS gives an improvement in precision over the vector space similarity measures for the common case of Web like queries, and it gives similar results to the vector space measures for longer queries.
Cell cycle alteration and decreased cell proliferation in the hippocampal dentate gyrus and in the neocortical germinal matrix of fetuses with down syndrome and in Ts65Dn mice

Down syndrome (DS), the leading genetic cause of mental retardation, is characterized by reduced number of cortical neurons and brain size. The occurrence of these defects starting from early life stages points at altered developmental neurogenesis as their major determinant. The goal of our study was to obtain comparative evidence for impaired neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) of DS fetuses and Ts65Dn mice, an animal model for DS. Cell proliferation in human fetuses was evaluated with Ki‐67 (a marker of cells in S + G2 + M phases of cell cycle) and cyclin A (a marker of cells in S phase) immunohistochemistry. We found that in the DG of DS fetuses the number of proliferating cells was notably reduced when compared with controls. A similar reduction was observed in the germinal matrix of the lateral ventricle. In both structures, DS fetuses showed a reduced ratio between cyclin A‐ and Ki‐67‐positive cells when compared with controls, indicating that they had a reduced number of cycling cells in S phase. In the DG of P2 Ts65Dn mice cell proliferation, assessed 2 h after an injection of bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), was notably reduced, similarly to DS fetuses. After 28 days, Ts65Dn mice had still less BrdU‐positive cells than controls. Phenotypic analysis of the surviving cells showed that Ts65Dn mice had a percent number of cells with astrocytic phenotype larger than controls. Using phospho‐histone H3 immunohistochemistry we found that both DS fetuses and P2 Ts65Dn mice had a higher number of proliferating cells in G2 and a smaller number of cells in M phase of cell cycle. Results provide novel evidence for proliferation impairment in the hippocampal DG of the DS fetal brain, comparable to that of the P2 mouse model, and suggest that cell cycle alterations may be critical determinants of the reduced proliferation potency. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Market States and Momentum

We test overreaction theories of short-run momentum and long-run reversal in the cross section of stock returns. Momentum profits depend on the state of the market, as predicted. From 1929 to 1995, the mean monthly momentum profit following positive market returns is 0.93%, whereas the mean profit following negative market returns is −0.37%. The up-market momentum reverses in the long-run. Our results are robust to the conditioning information in macroeconomic factors. Moreover, we find that macroeconomic factors are unable to explain momentum profits after simple methodological adjustments to take account of microstructure concerns. SEVERAL BEHAVIORAL THEORIES have been developed to jointly explain the shortrun cross-sectional momentum in stock returns documented by Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) and the long-run cross-sectional reversal in stock returns documented by DeBondt and Thaler (1985). 1 Daniel, Hirshleifer, and Subrahmanyam (1998; hereafter DHS) and Hong and Stein (1999; hereafter HS) each employ different behavioral or cognitive biases to explain these anomalies. 2, 3
Rapid diversification and dispersal during periods of global warming by plethodontid salamanders

A phylogeny and timescale derived from analyses of multilocus nuclear DNA sequences for Holarctic genera of plethodontid salamanders reveal them to be an old radiation whose common ancestor diverged from sister taxa in the late Jurassic and underwent rapid diversification during the late Cretaceous. A North American origin of plethodontids was followed by a continental-wide diversification, not necessarily centered only in the Appalachian region. The colonization of Eurasia by plethodontids most likely occurred once, by dispersal during the late Cretaceous. Subsequent diversification in Asia led to the origin of Hydromantes and Karsenia, with the former then dispersing both to Europe and back to North America. Salamanders underwent rapid episodes of diversification and dispersal that coincided with major global warming events during the late Cretaceous and again during the Paleocene–Eocene thermal optimum. The major clades of plethodontids were established during these episodes, contemporaneously with similar phenomena in angiosperms, arthropods, birds, and mammals. Periods of global warming may have promoted diversification and both inter- and transcontinental dispersal in northern hemisphere salamanders by making available terrain that shortened dispersal routes and offered new opportunities for adaptive and vicariant evolution.
Improving New Product Quality: An Empirical Study of Product Development Teams in Taiwan

ABSTRACT The role of team and organizational factors affecting new product quality and their interactions as moderating the effects are examined. Results from a domestic study suggest that new product quality is positively affected by information capability in the team and quality orientation in the firm; in contrast, it is negatively related to the innovativeness of the new product as seen by the firm and speed-to-market pressure in the team. However, teams' information capabilities alleviate the negative effect of innovativeness on quality. Quality orientation lessens the relationship between information capability and new product quality. Functional diversity and tenure diversity do not affect new product quality. In addition, managerial implications and directions for future research are proposed.
Assessing the Equivalence of Paper, Mobile Phone, and Tablet Survey Responses at a Community Mental Health Center Using Equivalent Halves of a ‘Gold-Standard’ Depression Item Bank

Background The computerized administration of self-report psychiatric diagnostic and outcomes assessments has risen in popularity. If results are similar enough across different administration modalities, then new administration technologies can be used interchangeably and the choice of technology can be based on other factors, such as convenience in the study design. An assessment based on item response theory (IRT), such as the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression item bank, offers new possibilities for assessing the effect of technology choice upon results. Objective To create equivalent halves of the PROMIS depression item bank and to use these halves to compare survey responses and user satisfaction among administration modalities—paper, mobile phone, or tablet—with a community mental health care population. Methods The 28 PROMIS depression items were divided into 2 halves based on content and simulations with an established PROMIS response data set. A total of 129 participants were recruited from an outpatient public sector mental health clinic based in Memphis. All participants took both nonoverlapping halves of the PROMIS IRT-based depression items (Part A and Part B): once using paper and pencil, and once using either a mobile phone or tablet. An 8-cell randomization was done on technology used, order of technologies used, and order of PROMIS Parts A and B. Both Parts A and B were administered as fixed-length assessments and both were scored using published PROMIS IRT parameters and algorithms. Results All 129 participants received either Part A or B via paper assessment. Participants were also administered the opposite assessment, 63 using a mobile phone and 66 using a tablet. There was no significant difference in item response scores for Part A versus B. All 3 of the technologies yielded essentially identical assessment results and equivalent satisfaction levels. Conclusions Our findings show that the PROMIS depression assessment can be divided into 2 equivalent halves, with the potential to simplify future experimental methodologies. Among community mental health care recipients, the PROMIS items function similarly whether administered via paper, tablet, or mobile phone. User satisfaction across modalities was also similar. Because paper, tablet, and mobile phone administrations yielded similar results, the choice of technology should be based on factors such as convenience and can even be changed during a study without adversely affecting the comparability of results.