Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer xenocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism: The development and validation of scales of constructs influencing attitudes towards foreign product consumption

CONSUMER XENOCENTRISM AND CONSUMER COSMOPOLITANISM: THE DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF SCALES OF CONSTRUCTS INFLUENCING ATTITUDES TOWARDS FOREIGN PRODUCT CONSUMPTION by STEVEN J. LAWRENCE December 2012 Advisor: Dr. Abhijit Biswas Major: Business (Marketing) Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Like many other attributes, consumers exhibit varying degrees of preference with regard to foreign and domestic products. Some consumers have preferences for domestic products while other, seemingly similar, consumers prefer the foreign counterpart. Product quality differences aside, we aim to investigate the attitudinal constructs behind the varying preferences among consumers as they relate to foreign and domestic products. The author created two new scales for the measurement of the consumer xenocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism constructs. The consumer xenocentrism scale is intended to measure consumers’ favorable orientations to products from outside their membership group. The consumer cosmopolitanism scale is designed to measure consumers’ openness to new ideas and tendency to address functional needs with the kind of products or services that best deliver the desired function, regardless of tradition or social influence.
A comparison of Named-Entity Disambiguation and Word Sense Disambiguation

Named Entity Disambiguation (NED) is the task of linking a named-entity mention to an instance in a knowledge-base, typically Wikipedia-derived resources like DBpedia. This task is closely related to word-sense disambiguation (WSD), where the mention of an open-class word is linked to a concept in a knowledge-base, typically WordNet. This paper analyzes the relation between two annotated datasets on NED and WSD, highlighting the commonalities and differences. We detail the methods to construct a NED system following the WSD word-expert approach, where we need a dictionary and one classifier is built for each target entity mention string. Constructing a dictionary for NED proved challenging, and although similarity and ambiguity are higher for NED, the results are also higher due to the larger number of training data, and the more crisp and skewed meaning differences.
Measurement of the quenching factor of Na recoils in NaI(Tl)

Measurements of the quenching factor for sodium recoils in a 5 cm diameter NaI(Tl) crystal at room temperature have been made at a dedicated neutron facility at the University of Sheffield. The crystal has been exposed to 2.45 MeV mono-energetic neutrons generated by a Sodern GENIE 16 neutron generator, yielding nuclear recoils of energies between 10 and 100 keVnr. A cylindrical BC501A detector has been used to tag neutrons that scatter off sodium nuclei in the crystal. Cuts on pulse shape and time of flight have been performed on pulses recorded by an Acqiris DC265 digitiser with a 2 ns sampling time. Measured quenching factors of Na nuclei range from 19% to 26% in good agreement with other experiments, and a value of 25.2±6.4% has been determined for 10 keV sodium recoils. From pulse shape analysis, the mean times of pulses from electron and nuclear recoils have been compared down to 2 keVee. The experimental results are compared to those predicted by Lindhard theory, simulated by the SRIM Monte Carlo code, and a preliminary curve calculated by Prof. Akira Hitachi.
Bone mineral density in osteoarthritis

The inverse relation between osteoporosis and osteoarthritis has long been considered in the literature. This review looks at current evidence to support this relation, concentrating on studies published since 1998. The review also summarizes previous large studies investigating this relation. Recent studies indicate higher bone mineral density as measured by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry in subjects with osteoarthritis at a distant site, but suggest less association with hand osteoarthritis. Genetic work has sought to explain this association and this too is discussed. There is some indication that a higher bone density may not protect against fracture in these subjects, due to the increased risk of falls.
Numerical and Analytical Methods for Variational Inequalities and Related Problems with Applications

1 Department of Mathematics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China 2 Department of Mathematics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA 3 Mathematics Department, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan 4 Department of Applied Mathematics, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan 5 School of Mathematics and LPMC, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Follicular Dendritic Cells and Dissemination of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

ABSTRACT The contribution of immune system cells to the propagation of transmissible encephalopathies is not well understood. To determine how follicular dendritic cells (FDC) may act, we challenged lymphotoxin β null and wild-type (wt) controls with a Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) agent. There was only a small difference in incubation time to clinical disease even after peripheral challenge with low infectious doses (31 in a total of 410 days). Brain pathology with extensive microglial infiltration, identified by keratan sulfate, as well as astrocytic hypertrophy, was also equivalent in all groups despite the fact that null mice had neither FDC nor splenic metallophilic macrophages that filter particulate antigen. Because FDC accumulate pathologic prion protein (PrP) in infected but not wt mice, we studied the cellular distribution of PrP by confocal microscopy. The majority of pathologic PrP collected on the plasma membrane of FDC, as identified by the Ca+2-binding protein S100A. This surface distribution suggested that agent aggregated with pathologic PrP might spread by cell-to-cell contacts. While several types of leukocytes may be involved in agent dissemination, cells of myeloid lineage were found to be infectious. Moreover, perivascular tracks of microglia and abnormal PrP after intraperitoneal inoculation were consistent with hematogenous spread. In summary, FDC are not required for CJD agent spread from the periphery, although FDC may enhance spread through surface accumulation of pathologic PrP. While it is still not clear where the infectious agent replicates, macrophages can sequester appreciable levels of infectivity and hence act as reservoirs for prolonged latent infection.
Pre-Therapy : Reaching Contact Impaired Clients

Part 1. Garry Prouty: The foundations of Pre-Therapy. Formative Experiences Pre-Therapy and Existential Phenomenology The Theroy of Pre-Therapy The Practice of Pre-Therapy Pre-Symbolic Theory Newer Applications of Pre-Therapy Further Thoughts. Part 2. Dion Van Werde: Pre-Therapy Applied on a Psychiatric Ward. Missions Statements A Contact Milieu Afterthoughts. Part 3. Marlis Portner: Pre-Therapy in Europe. The Pre-Therapy Project in Sint-Amandus Futher Evolutions of Pre-Therapy Concluding Thoughts.
The effect of omega-3 on the serum visfatin concentration in patients with type II diabetes

BACKGROUND: Visfatin is an adipocytokine which is secreted from adipose tissue and can affect on the diabetes inflammatory reaction and also serum lipids level. On the other hand, Omega-3 can also prevent formation of insulin resistance. In the present study, the effect of Omega-3 on the serum visfatin concentration was evaluated. METHODS: 71 women with type II diabetes were randomly assigned to the group that took Omega-3 capsules or control group with placebo capsules. In the first step, study subjects filled a questionnaire collecting their age, height, weight, waist circumference, and hip circumference. Also their blood samples were taken for blood tests. In the second step, the intervention was done for 8 weeks and in the third step the aforementioned were collected again. In the blood samples visfatin and lipid profiles (low density lipoprotein [LDL], high density lipoprotein [HDL], triglyceride [TG], and cholesterol), glucose and HbA1c were measured. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in serum visfatin level between Omega-3 and placebo groups before the intervention (p = 0.14), while after the intervention, the mean serum visfatin level in the Omega-3 group was significantly higher (p < 0.001). In addition, the mean difference between the serum visfatin level before and after the intervention in both groups was significant (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study showed an increase in visfatin level following consuming Omega-3 fats but according to controversial issues on insulin-like function of visfatin, the effects of Omega-3 on diabetes should be studied more in further studies.
The Impact of Official Development Aid on Maternal and Reproductive Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review

Background Progress toward meeting Millennium Development Goal 5, which aims to improve maternal and reproductive health outcomes, is behind schedule. This is despite ever increasing volumes of official development aid targeting the goal, calling into question the distribution and efficacy of aid. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness represented a global commitment to reform aid practices in order to improve development outcomes, encouraging a shift toward collaborative aid arrangements which support the national plans of aid recipient countries (and discouraging unaligned donor projects). Methods and Findings We conducted a systematic review to summarise the evidence of the impact on MDG 5 outcomes of official development aid delivered in line with Paris aid effectiveness principles and to compare this with the impact of aid in general on MDG 5 outcomes. Searches of electronic databases identified 30 studies reporting aid-funded interventions designed to improve maternal and reproductive health outcomes. Aid interventions appear to be associated with small improvements in the MDG indicators, although it is not clear whether changes are happening because of the manner in which aid is delivered. The data do not allow for a meaningful comparison between Paris style and general aid. The review identified discernible gaps in the evidence base on aid interventions targeting MDG 5, notably on indicators MDG 5.4 (adolescent birth rate) and 5.6 (unmet need for family planning). Discussion This review presents the first systematic review of the impact of official development aid delivered according to the Paris principles and aid delivered outside this framework on MDG 5 outcomes. Its findings point to major gaps in the evidence base and should be used to inform new approaches and methodologies aimed at measuring the impact of official development aid.
Robust heat shock induces eIF2α-phosphorylation-independent assembly of stress granules containing eIF3 and 40S ribosomal subunits in budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Environmental stresses inducing translation arrest are accompanied by the deposition of translational components into stress granules (SGs) serving as mRNA triage sites. It has recently been reported that, in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, formation of SGs occurs as a result of a prolonged glucose starvation. However, these SGs did not contain eIF3, one of hallmarks of mammalian SGs. We have analyzed the effect of robust heat shock on distribution of eIF3a/Tif32p/Rpg1p and showed that it results in the formation of eIF3a accumulations containing other eIF3 subunits, known yeast SG components and small but not large ribosomal subunits and eIF2α/Sui2p. Interestingly, under these conditions, Dcp2p and Dhh1p P-body markers also colocalized with eIF3a. Microscopic analyses of the edc3Δlsm4ΔC mutant demonstrated that different scaffolding proteins are required to induce SGs upon robust heat shock as opposed to glucose deprivation. Even though eIF2α became phosphorylated under these stress conditions, the decrease in polysomes and formation of SGs occurred independently of phosphorylation of eIF2α. We conclude that under specific stress conditions, such as robust heat shock, yeast SGs do contain eIF3 and 40S ribosomes and utilize alternative routes for their assembly.
The Relaxed Investor with Partial Information

We consider an investor in a financial market consisting of a riskless bond and several risky assets. The price processes of the risky assets are geometric Brownian motions where either the drifts are modeled as random variables assuming a constant volatility matrix or the volatility matrix is considered random and drifts are assumed to be constant. The investor is only able to observe the asset prices but not all the model parameters and hence information is only partial. A Bayesian approach is used with known prior distributions for the random model parameters. We assume that the investor can only trade at discrete-time points which are multiples of $h>0$ and investigate the loss in expected utility of terminal wealth which is due to the fact that the investor cannot trade and observe continuously. It turns out that in general a discretization gap appears, i.e., for $h\to 0$ the expected utility of the h-investor does not converge to the expected utility of the continuous investor. This is in contrast to results under full information in [L.C. G. Rogers, Finance Stoch. , 5(2001), pp. 131–154]. We also present simple asymptotically optimal portfolio strategies for the discrete-time problem. Our results are illustrated by some numerical examples.
Desorption atmospheric pressure photoionization high-resolution mass spectrometry: a complementary approach for the chemical analysis of atmospheric aerosols.

RATIONALE On-line chemical characterization methods of atmospheric aerosols are essential to increase our understanding of physicochemical processes in the atmosphere, and to study biosphere-atmosphere interactions. Several techniques, including aerosol mass spectrometry, are nowadays available, but they all suffer from some disadvantages. In this research, desorption atmospheric pressure photoionization high-resolution (Orbitrap) mass spectrometry (DAPPI-HRMS) is introduced as a complementary technique for the fast analysis of aerosol chemical composition without the need for sample preparation. METHODS Atmospheric aerosols from city air were collected on a filter, desorbed in a DAPPI source with a hot stream of toluene and nitrogen, and ionized using a vacuum ultraviolet lamp at atmospheric pressure. To study the applicability of the technique for ambient aerosol analysis, several samples were collected onto filters and analyzed, with the focus being on selected organic acids. To compare the DAPPI-HRMS data with results obtained by an established method, each filter sample was divided into two equal parts, and the second half of the filter was extracted and analyzed by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS). RESULTS The DAPPI results agreed with the measured aerosol particle number. In addition to the targeted acids, the LC/MS and DAPPI-HRMS methods were found to detect different compounds, thus providing complementary information about the aerosol samples. CONCLUSIONS DAPPI-HRMS showed several important oxidation products of terpenes, and numerous compounds were tentatively identified. Thanks to the soft ionization, high mass resolution, fast analysis, simplicity and on-line applicability, the proposed methodology has high potential in the field of atmospheric research.
Abundances and Energy Spectra of Corotating Interaction Region Heavy Ions Observed during Solar Cycle 23

Using instruments on the ACE spacecraft, we surveyed the heavy-ion spectra and composition over the range He-Fe for 41 corotating interaction regions (CIRs) during 1998-2007. Below ~1 MeV nucleon−1 the spectra are power laws in kinetic energy nucleon−1 with an average spectral index of 2.51 ± 0.10, rolling over above ~1 MeV nucleon−1 to power-law spectra with an average index of 4.47 ± 0.17. The spectral shapes for different species are similar, leading to relative abundances that are constant over our energy range, even though the intensities cover up to 8 orders of magnitude. Relative to oxygen, the measured abundances at 385 keV nucleon−1 for 4He, C, N, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ca, and Fe are 273 ± 72, 0.760 ± 0.023, 0.143 ± 0.005, 0.206 ± 0.009, 0.148 ± 0.006, 0.095 ± 0.005, 0.028 ± 0.002, 0.007 ± 0.001, and 0.088 ± 0.007, respectively. Except for an overabundance of 4He and Ne, the abundances are quite close to that of the fast solar wind. We have found 3He/4He ratios to be enhanced over solar wind values in ~40% of the CIRs. The Fe/O ratio in individual CIRs is observed to vary over a factor of ~10 and is strongly correlated with the solar wind Fe/O ratio measured 2-4 days preceding each CIR. Taken together with previous studies showing the presence of pickup He+ in CIRs, the observational data provide evidence that CIR energetic particles are accelerated out of a suprathermal ion pool that includes heated solar wind ions, pickup ions, and remnant suprathermals from impulsive solar energetic particle events.
An exploration of the nature of transformative learning and transformative pedagogy in a high school English context

This study explores the nature of learning that transforms established frames of reference for those who engage in it. It also explores the nature of pedagogy that is likely to foster this transformative learning. It is based on the explorations of the teacher-researcher as she reflects on the learning experiences of some of her students and on her own teaching practice. The teacher-researcher's reflections emanate from her experiences teaching high school English to Years 10 and 11 students within a co-educational school in Sydney. Through engaging in hermeneutic phenomenological research, the teacher-researcher explores the types of learning contexts and pedagogical approaches that may be effective in fostering transformative learning. The literature review highlights the fact that explorations of the nature of transformative learning and transformative pedagogy have occurred almost exclusively within the domain of adult education and many researchers have expressed the view that this is a uniquely adult phenomenon. In exploring the transformative learning experiences of students between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, this study calls into question the view that only adults may experience transformative learning. It also raises awareness about the significance of transformative pedagogy in a high school context. The study highlights a number of pedagogical practices that are potentially transformative and concludes that transformative learning is most effectively fostered through relational forms of knowing emerging in dialogical learning contexts. Critical reflection is seen as being central to transformative learning and the importance of both affective and cognitive dimensions in the process of critical reflection is emphasised. Within a high school English context, the value of introducing students to a range of texts that may expose them to alternative ways of seeing is highlighted. The study demonstrates that integral to transformative pedagogy is the importance of providing students with both challenging learning experiences and with scaffolds designed to equip them to meet these challenges. The personally transformative nature of engaging in teacher-research is also highlighted and this is seen to have implications for models of staff professional development within schools. Reference is made to the limitations of the study, including those associated with being a teacher-researcher. As with other phenomenological studies, the findings do not purport to have direct and specific relevance to other contexts, although they may prove interesting to others interested in fostering transformative learning through transformative pedagogy.
Expression Patterns ofJagged, Delta1, Notch1, Notch2,andNotch3Genes Identify Ligand–Receptor Pairs That May Function in Neural Development

Notch genes encode receptors for a signaling pathway that regulates neurogenesis. The DSL (Delta/Serrate/lag-2) genes encode ligands that bind and activate Notch. In situ hybridization was used to determine the spatiotemporal expression of Notch1, Notch2, and Notch3, and the DSL ligands, Jagged and Delta 1, in an effort to identify potential ligand-receptor pairs that function during development of the rat nervous system. Here we describe both distinct and overlapping expression patterns for these genes in neural progenitors that form both the central and the peripheral nervous systems. The punctate expression patterns we detected for Jagged and Delta 1 are consistent with their role in mediating lateral inhibition, a process proposed to regulate neural determination. Furthermore, within the ventricular zone of the neural tube and retina, Jagged and Delta 1 were expressed in complementary regions, suggesting that different DSL-Notch combinations may direct the development of distinct neural subtypes.
Landmark image classification using 3D point clouds

Most of the existing approaches for landmark image classification utilize either holistic features or interest of points in the whole image to train the classification model, which may lead to unsatisfactory result due to involvement of much information non-located on the landmark in the training process. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to improve landmark image classification result via a process of 2D to 3D reconstruction and 3D to 2D projection of iconic landmark images. Particularly, we first select iconic images from labeled landmark image collections to reconstruct a 3D landmark represented in point clouds. Then, 3D point clouds are projected back onto the same iconic images to obtain the landmark-region of each iconic image and subsequently extract SIFT features from the landmark-region to construct a k-dimensional tree (kd-tree) for each landmark. This process is able to filter out noise points corresponding to clutter background and non-landmark objects in the iconic images. Finally, the unlabeled images can be classified into predefined landmark categories based on the amount of matched feature points between the image features and the kd-trees. The experimental result and comparison with the state-of-the-art demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Complete assignments of 1H and 13C NMR data for 10 phenylethanoid glycosides

Ten phenylethanoid glycosides, including two new ones, isolated from the aerial parts of the mangrove plant Acanthus ilicifolius were identified. The first complete assignments of the 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts for these glycosides were achieved by means of 2D NMR techniques, including 1H–1H COSY, TOCSY, HSQC and HMBC spectra. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.