Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clusters within a general adult population of alcohol abstainers.

BACKGROUND Our previous study found that alcohol abstainers use acute services more and preventative services less than safe level drinkers. The observed relationships between four categories of alcohol consumption and service use were J-shaped for acute services and inverted J-shaped for preventive services. The aim of this paper was to further investigate these relationships. METHODS The design was a health and lifestyle survey of 41 000 randomly-sampled adults in SE England. The response rate was 60%. Distinctive subgroups within the alcohol abstainer group were investigated using cluster analysis, based on socio-demographic and health status variables. Odds ratios for services use for the abstainer clusters, and three alcohol consumption groups were estimated from a logistic regression model which included age, social class, ethnic group, employment status, household composition, whether the respondent was a carer, smoking habit, use of private health insurance, and health status. RESULTS Two clusters were formed for both males and females. Cluster 1 comprised, on average, older, frailer, and more disabled people. Cluster 2 comprised younger, healthier people, a greater proportion of whom belonged to ethnic minority groups. Cluster 2 had similar rates of use of Accident & Emergency, GP, optician, and dental services compared with safe level drinkers. Cluster 1's rates differed from those of both Cluster 2 and safe level drinkers in almost all instances. CONCLUSIONS The J- and inverted J-shaped relationships between alcohol consumption and service use are partly explained by a subgroup of abstainers who are older, of less good health, and who use hospital, clinic, and domiciliary healthcare services much more than safe level drinkers.
Substitutes or Complements? A Framework for Investigating the Dynamic Interplay of IS Outsourcing Governance Mechanisms

Studies investigating the question whether contractual and relational governance are substitutes or complements have been based on contradictory conceptualizations and have produced conflicting research results. This caused a controversial debate in the field of IS outsourcing concerning the relationship of governance mechanisms. Thus, the goal of this study is to clarify these inconsistencies. For this purpose we revisit the relationship between contractual and relational governance using a refined conceptual framework, which breaks down contractual and relational governance along two dimensions: foundation and action. Based on our framework, we conducted 21 semistructured interviews at a global bank for a post-hoc analysis of governance mechanisms within five IS outsourcing projects. Our preliminary results reveal the existence of dynamic patterns of interaction between the foundation dimension (contract, trust) and the corresponding action dimension (formal control, informal control) of contractual and relational governance. In contrast to previous research, they explain complementarity and substitution as the outcome of dynamic interactions between the two governance dimensions of our framework.
The relationship among parenting styles, academic self-concept, academic motivation and students’ academic achievement in Fasilo Secondary School: Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

The main purpose of this research was to examine the relationship among the parenting styles, academic self concept, academic motivation and students’ academic achievement. The sample for this research consisted of 136 from Fasilo secondary school students using stratified random sampling of which 82 males and 54 females from a population of 970 students consisting grade 9 th and 10 th . Data analysis was done descriptively by using the means and standard deviations. Besides that, inferential statistical methods such as the Pearson-r, Multiple Regression and independent t-test techniques were also used to determine the relationship between the factors analyzed. Research results revealed that out of the four specific parenting styles, the authoritative style has the medium correlation ‘r’ value that is 0.327 at the significance level of 0.05 with academic achievement. The authoritarian style also has negative significant relationship with achievement, with ‘r’ value of -0.225 at the significance level of 0.05 with academic achievement. Besides that, the permissive parenting style has negative significant relationship with achievement, with its ‘r’ value of -0.366 at the significance level of 0.05 with academic achievement. However, there is no significant relationship between the neglectful parenting styles with achievement. Results also show that there is a significant relationship among the academic self concept(r=0.209), intrinsic motivation(r=0.248), extrinsic motivation(r=0.222) with academic achievement at the significance level of 0.05. The multi-regression analysis indicated that authoritative, Authoritarian, permissive, neglected, self-concept, intrinsic motivation and extract motivation were affected by 47.6% of the variable in the academic achievement, so that great attention was given for the contribution of parenting styles, self-concept and academic motivation for academic achievement. The two-sample t-test indicated that as group males scored significantly higher academic achievement than females in all predictor variables. However, Female students scored high mean score than male counterparts in Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, Self-concept, Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. On the other, there was no difference mean between males and females with respect to neglectful parenting style and academic achievement was found to be statistically not significant. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that, at the school level parent education programs should be incorporated and parents and teachers should come together as collaborators in enhancing the academic achievement of students. K e y w o r d s: Academic Achievement, Academic self-content, Parenting style, Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation
Group Lending under Dynamic Incentives as a Borrower Discipline Device

In recent years group lending has become an increasingly utilized tool for providing credit access to the poor in developing countries. Using empirical results from first-hand field research on Guatemalan borrowing groups, this paper develops a simple game-theoretic model of group lending. Results from the model show that through peer monitoring, the threat of group expulsion, and the safety net of intragroup credit insurance, group lending mitigates some risky investment behavior that would otherwise occur under an individual borrowing contract. The credible threat of social sanctions against group members who misallocate borrowed capital further reduces instances of such behavior. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Rethinking graduate employability: the role of capital, individual attributes and context

ABSTRACT Graduate employability has become a key driver for universities in Australia and the UK. In response to increasing pressure from governments and employer groups, universities have adopted a range of generic skill-based learning outcomes which, when embedded into degree programs, are expected to increase graduate employability and therefore improve graduate employment outcomes. In addition, many universities are now including internships, work placements and international study in their programmes with the aim of enhancing graduate employment prospects. This somewhat instrumental approach to graduate employability does not, however, take into account other critical factors. Drawing on the broader employability literature, this article develops a framework that incorporates six key dimensions – human capital, social capital, individual attributes, individual behaviours, perceived employability and labour market factors – to help explore and explain the concept of graduate employability.
AQsort: Scalable Multi-Array In-Place Sorting with OpenMP

A new multi-threaded variant of the quicksort algorithm called AQsort and its C++/OpenMP implementation are presented. AQsort operates in place and was primarily designed for high-performance computing (HPC) runtime environments. It can work with multiple arrays at once; such a functionality is frequently required in HPC and cannot be accomplished with standard C pointer-based or C++ iterator-based approach. An extensive study is provided that evaluates AQsort experimentally and compares its performance with modern multi-threaded implementations of in-place and out-of-place sorting algorithms based on OpenMP, Cilk Plus, and Intel TBB. The measurements were conducted on several leading-edge HPC architectures, namely Cray XE6 nodes with AMD Bulldozer CPUs, Cray XC40 nodes with Intel Hasswell CPUs, IBM BlueGene/Q nodes, and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. The obtained results show that AQsort provides good scalability and sorting performance generally comparable to its competitors. In particular cases, the performance of AQsort may be slightly lower, which is the price for its universality and ability to work with substantially larger amounts of data.
WM-CS-2008-07 College of William & Mary Department of Computer Science WM-CS-2008-07 Active Set Identification without Derivatives

We consider active set identification for linearly constrained optimization problems in the absence of explicit information about the derivative of the objective function. We focus on generating set search methods, a class of derivative-free direct search methods. We begin by presenting some general results on active set identification that are not tied to any particular algorithm. These general results are sufficiently strong that, given a sequence of iterates converging to a Karush–Kuhn– Tucker point, they allow us to identify binding constraints for which there are nonzero multipliers. We then discuss why these general results, which are posed in terms of the direction of steepest descent, apply to generating set search, even though these methods do not have explicit recourse to derivatives. Nevertheless, there is a clearly identifiable subsequence of iterations at which we can reliably estimate the set of constraints that are binding at a solution. We discuss how active set estimation can be used to accelerate generating set search methods and illustrate the appreciable improvement that can result using several examples from the CUTEr test suite. We also introduce two algorithmic refinements for generating set search methods. The first expands the subsequence of iterations at which we can make inferences about stationarity. The second is a more flexible step acceptance criterion.
Prominence enhances voicelessness and not place distinction in English voiceless sibilants

Prominence and prosodic strengthening make (at least some) segmental articulations more extreme, potentially enhancing acoustic contrasts. Here we found that prominence alone does not modulate the acoustic distinctiveness of the English sibilant place (/s/ vs. /ʃ/) contrast, although speakers can produce the sibilants more distinctively when contrasting with a minimal pair. Furthermore, we found evidence that sibilants at the end of prominent syllables were produced with an earlier glottal opening gesture. This produced more breathiness in the vowel and often an [h]-like segment between the vowel and the sibilant. This is consistent with the observation that prominence increases the glottal opening gestures as has been previously observed for prosodic strengthening of initial voiceless stops. Here we extend this observation to sibilants as well as codas of prominent syllables. Our results also suggest that prominence modulates gestural constrictions and not acoustic contrasts directly.
A Survey on Energy Conserving Mechanisms for the Internet of Things: Wireless Networking Aspects

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging key technology for future industries and everyday lives of people, where a myriad of battery operated sensors, actuators, and smart objects are connected to the Internet to provide services such as mobile healthcare, intelligent transport system, environmental monitoring, etc. Since energy efficiency is of utmost importance to these battery constrained IoT devices, IoT-related standards and research works have focused on the device energy conserving issues. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on energy conserving issues and solutions in using diverse wireless radio access technologies for IoT connectivity, e.g., the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) machine type communications, IEEE 802.11ah, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and Z-Wave. We look into the literature in broad areas of standardization, academic research, and industry development, and structurally summarize the energy conserving solutions based on several technical criteria. We also propose future research directions regarding energy conserving issues in wireless networking-based IoT.
GRB 090902B: AFTERGLOW OBSERVATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The optical-infrared afterglow of the Large Area Telescope (LAT)-detected long-duration burst, GRB 090902B, has been observed by several instruments. The earliest detection by ROTSE-IIIa occurred 80 minutes after detection by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor instrument on board the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, revealing a bright afterglow and a decay slope suggestive of a reverse shock origin. Subsequent optical-IR observations followed the light curve for 6.5 days. The temporal and spectral behavior at optical-infrared frequencies is consistent with synchrotron fireball model predictions; the cooling break lies between optical and XRT frequencies ∼1.9 days after the burst. The inferred electron energy index is p = 1.8 ± 0.2, which would however imply an X-ray decay slope flatter than observed. The XRT and LAT data have similar spectral indices and the observed steeper value of the LAT temporal index is marginally consistent with the predicted temporal decay in the radiative regime of the forward shock model. Absence of a jet break during the first 6 days implies a collimation-corrected γ-ray energy Eγ > 2.2 × 1052 erg, one of the highest ever seen in a long-duration gamma-ray bursts. More events combining GeV photon emission with multiwavelength observations will be required to constrain the nature of the central engine powering these energetic explosions and to explore the correlations between energetic quanta and afterglow emission.
Novel Broadside-Coupled Bandpass Filters Using Both Microstrip and Coplanar-Waveguide Resonators

Novel quasi-elliptic coupled-resonator bandpass filters with wider fractional bandwidth are proposed. By using the broadside-coupled mechanism to couple the half-wavelength microstrip resonators and the quarter-wavelength coplanar-waveguide (CPW) resonators together with introducing two CPW shorted stubs, the required mixed and magnetic couplings associated with the resonators may be enhanced so that a wider bandwidth cross-coupled filter may be realized. Specifically, a fourth-order quasi-elliptic broadside-coupled bandpass filter with a center frequency at f0=1.48 GHz, a minimum insertion loss of 0.68 dB, and a wider 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 34.6% is implemented, and its stopband is extended up to 6 GHz (4f0) with a rejection better than 20 dB
Sentimental product recommendation

This paper describes a novel approach to product recommendation that is based on opinionated product descriptions that are automatically mined from user-generated product reviews. We present a recommendation ranking strategy that combines similarity and sentiment to suggest products that are similar but superior to a query product according to the opinion of reviewers. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach across a variety of Amazon product domains.
Enhancing Astrocytic Lysosome Biogenesis Facilitates Aβ Clearance and Attenuates Amyloid Plaque Pathogenesis

In sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD), impaired Aβ removal contributes to elevated extracellular Aβ levels that drive amyloid plaque pathogenesis. Extracellular proteolysis, export across the blood–brain barrier, and cellular uptake facilitate physiologic Aβ clearance. Astrocytes can take up and degrade Aβ, but it remains unclear whether this function is insufficient in AD or can be enhanced to accelerate Aβ removal. Additionally, age-related dysfunction of lysosomes, the major degradative organelles wherein Aβ localizes after uptake, has been implicated in amyloid plaque pathogenesis. We tested the hypothesis that enhancing lysosomal function in astrocytes with transcription factor EB (TFEB), a master regulator of lysosome biogenesis, would promote Aβ uptake and catabolism and attenuate plaque pathogenesis. Exogenous TFEB localized to the nucleus with transcriptional induction of lysosomal biogenesis and function in vitro. This resulted in significantly accelerated uptake of exogenously applied Aβ42, with increased localization to and degradation within lysosomes in C17.2 cells and primary astrocytes, indicating that TFEB is sufficient to coordinately enhance uptake, trafficking, and degradation of Aβ. Stereotactic injection of adeno-associated viral particles carrying TFEB driven by a glial fibrillary acidic protein promoter was used to achieve astrocyte-specific expression in the hippocampus of APP/PS1 transgenic mice. Exogenous TFEB localized to astrocyte nuclei and enhanced lysosome function, resulting in reduced Aβ levels and shortened half-life in the brain interstitial fluid and reduced amyloid plaque load in the hippocampus compared with control virus-injected mice. Therefore, activation of TFEB in astrocytes is an effective strategy to restore adequate Aβ removal and counter amyloid plaque pathogenesis in AD.
Analyzing the returns of the first transaction satisfaction on intention to purchase and willingness to pay: Evidence for new food products

The present study sheds light on the kind of relationships that link first transaction consumer satisfaction (CS), purchase intention, and willingness to pay for new food products. The article presents a comparative evaluation of linear and nonlinear quadratic and cubic specifications used to assess the relationships involved. The study uses empirical evidence from three product-testing field experiments with consumers in different natural settings such as at-home and out-of-home. Statistical tests with structural equation modeling reveal that, for new food products, the CS–purchase intention relationship is characterized by a nonlinear functional form with increasing marginal returns, while the CS–willingness to pay relationship is defined by a linear functional form with constant marginal returns. The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge that so far has mainly described the relationship between cumulative CS and profit chain outcomes in the context of established products (brands). We discuss the implications for managers responsible for launching new food products and give hints on allocating resources to the most probable customers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Metalearning for Gene Expression Data Classification

Machine Learning techniques have been largely applied to the problem of class prediction in microarray data. Nevertheless, current approaches to select appropriate methods for such task often result unsatisfactory in many ways, instigating the need for the development of tools to automate the process. In this context, the authors introduce the use of metalearning in the specific domain of gene expression classification. Experiments with the KNN-ranking method for algorithm recommendation applied for 49 datasets yielded successful results.
Spatial and Semantic Validation of Secondary Food Source Data

Governmental and commercial lists of food retailers are often used to measure food environments and foodscapes for health and nutritional research. Information about the validity of such secondary food source data is relevant to understanding the potential and limitations of its application. This study assesses the validity of two government lists of food retailer locations and types by comparing them to direct field observations, including an assessment of whether pre-classification of the directories can reduce the need for field observation. Lists of food retailers were obtained from the Central Business Register (CVR) and the Smiley directory. For each directory, the positive prediction value (PPV) and sensitivity were calculated as measures of completeness and thematic accuracy, respectively. Standard deviation was calculated as a measure of geographic accuracy. The effect of the pre-classification was measured through the calculation of PPV, sensitivity and negative prediction value (NPV). The application of either CVR or Smiley as a measure of the food environment would result in a misrepresentation. The pre-classification based on the food retailer names was found to be a valid method for identifying approximately 80% of the food retailers and limiting the need for field observation.
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Tacrolimus versus Ciclosporin as Primary Immunosuppression After Liver Transplant

Background and Aims Several meta-analyses comparing ciclosporin with tacrolimus have been conducted since the 1994 publication of the tacrolimus registration trials, but most captured data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) predating recent improvements in waiting list prioritization, induction protocols and concomitant medications. The present study comprised a systematic review and meta-analysis of ciclosporin and tacrolimus in liver transplant recipients using studies published since January 2000. Methods Searches of PubMed, the Cochrane Library and EMBASE identified RCTs of tacrolimus and ciclosporin as the immunosuppressant in adult primary liver transplant recipients, published between January 2000 and August 6, 2014. A random effects meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the relative risk of death, graft loss, acute rejection (AR), new-onset diabetes after transplantation (NODAT) and hypertension with tacrolimus relative to ciclosporin at 12 months. Results The literature search identified 11 RCTs comparing ciclosporin with tacrolimus. Relative to ciclosporin, tacrolimus was associated with significantly improved outcomes in terms of patient mortality (risk ratio [RR] with ciclosporin of 1.26; 95% confidence interval [95%CI] 1.01–1.58). Tacrolimus was superior to ciclosporin in terms of hypertension (RR with ciclosporin 1.26; 95%CI 1.07–1.47), but inferior in terms of NODAT (RR with ciclosporin 0.60; 95%CI 0.47–0.77). There were no significant differences between ciclosporin and tacrolimus in terms of graft loss or AR. Conclusions Meta-analysis of RCTs published since 2000 showed tacrolimus to be superior to ciclosporin in terms of patient mortality and hypertension, while ciclosporin was superior in terms of NODAT. No significant differences were identified in terms of graft loss or AR. These findings provide further evidence supporting the use of tacrolimus as the cornerstone of immunosuppressive therapy in liver transplant recipients.