Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differentiation-defective phenotypes revealed by large-scale analyses of human pluripotent stem cells

Significance In the past few years, findings have been controversial in regard to whether human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are distinct from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in their molecular signatures and differentiation properties. In this study, hiPSCs and hESCs have overlapping variations in molecular signatures such as RNA expression and DNA methylation. However, some hiPSC clones retained a significant number of undifferentiated cells even after neural differentiation culture and formed teratoma when transplanted into mouse brains. These differentiation-defective hiPSC clones were marked by higher expression levels of several genes, including those expressed from long terminal repeats of specific human endogenous retroviruses. They need to be identified and eliminated prior to applications in regenerative medicine. We examined the gene expression and DNA methylation of 49 human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and 10 human embryonic stem cells and found overlapped variations in gene expression and DNA methylation in the two types of human pluripotent stem cell lines. Comparisons of the in vitro neural differentiation of 40 hiPSCs and 10 human embryonic stem cells showed that seven hiPSC clones retained a significant number of undifferentiated cells even after neural differentiation culture and formed teratoma when transplanted into mouse brains. These differentiation-defective hiPSC clones were marked by higher expression levels of several genes, including those expressed from long terminal repeats of specific human endogenous retroviruses. These data demonstrated a subset of hiPSC lines that have aberrant gene expression and defective potential in neural differentiation, which need to be identified and eliminated before applications in regenerative medicine.
Lancaster University Management School Working Paper 2010 / 031 Hysteresis Effects under CIR Interest Rates

Most decision making research in real options focuses on revenue uncertainty assuming discount rates remain constant. However, for many decisions revenue or cost streams are relatively static and investment is driven by interest rate uncertainty, for example the decision to invest in durable machinery and equipment. Using interest rate models from Cox et al. (1985b), we generalize the work of Ingersoll and Ross (1992) in two ways. Firstly, we include real options on perpetuities (in addition to zero coupon cash flows). Secondly, we incorporate abandonment or disinvestment as well as investment options, and thus model interest rate hysteresis (parallel to revenue uncertainty in Dixit (1989a)). Under stochastic interest rates, economic hysteresis is found to be significant, even for small sunk costs.
Quantitative Real-Time PCR Analysis of Fecal Lactobacillus Species in Infants Receiving a Prebiotic Infant Formula

ABSTRACT The developing intestinal microbiota of breast-fed infants is considered to play an important role in the priming of the infants' mucosal and systemic immunity. Generally, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus predominate the microbiota of breast-fed infants. In intervention trials it has been shown that lactobacilli can exert beneficial effects on, for example, diarrhea and atopy. However, the Lactobacillus species distribution in breast-fed or formula-fed infants has not yet been determined in great detail. For accurate enumeration of different lactobacilli, duplex 5′ nuclease assays, targeted on rRNA intergenic spacer regions, were developed for Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Lactobacillus fermentum, Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus reuteri, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus. The designed and validated assays were used to determine the amounts of different Lactobacillus species in fecal samples of infants receiving a standard formula (SF) or a standard formula supplemented with galacto- and fructo-oligosaccharides in a 9:1 ratio (OSF). A breast-fed group (BF) was studied in parallel as a reference. During the 6-week intervention period a significant increase was shown in total percentage of fecal lactobacilli in the BF group (0.8% ± 0.3% versus 4.1% ± 1.5%) and the OSF group (0.8% ± 0.3% versus 4.4% ± 1.4%). The Lactobacillus species distribution in the OSF group was comparable to breast-fed infants, with relatively high levels of L. acidophilus, L. paracasei, and L. casei. The SF-fed infants, on the other hand, contained more L. delbrueckii and less L. paracasei compared to breast-fed infants and OSF-fed infants. An infant milk formula containing a specific mixture of prebiotics is able to induce a microbiota that closely resembles the microbiota of BF infants.
‘It’s just a very male industry’: gender and work in UK design agencies

Abstract The article focuses upon gender divisions of labour in the UK design sector as a means of highlighting a relatively understudied segment of the creative industries. Drawing upon a wider study of design consultancy firms across London, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle, it considers how configurations of gender division are bound up with everyday representations of design labour. The article reveals how associations between craft, skill and masculinity appear, and are reinforced in design practice. It also points to the ways in which design work is valorised within and through constructed geographies of difference between London and the regions, emphasising that hegemonic masculinities are reinforced and reproduced in reference to understandings of activities in place.
Factors Influencing Consumers' Online Purchase Intention: A Study among University Students in Malaysia

E-Commerce is one of the crucial trading methods worldwide. Hence, it is important to understand consumers’ online purchase intention. This research aims to examine factors that influence consumers’ online purchase intention among university students in Malaysia. Quantitative research approach has been adapted in this research by distributing online questionnaires to 250 Malaysian university students aged between 20-29 years old, who possess experience in online purchases. Findings of this research have discovered that trust, perceived usefulness and subjective norm are the significant factors in predicting online purchase intention. However, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment are not significant in predicting the variance in online purchase intention. The findings also revealed that subjective norm is the most significant predicting factor on online purchase intention among university students in Malaysia. Findings of this research will provide online marketers with a better understanding on online purchase intention which enable them to direct effective online marketing strategies.
Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy versus nasogastric tube feeding for patients with head and neck cancer: a systematic review

There are two main enteral feeding strategies—namely nasogastric (NG) tube feeding and percutaneous gastrostomy—used to improve the nutritional status of patients with head and neck cancer (HNC). But up till now there has been no consistent evidence about which method of enteral feeding is the optimal method for this patient group. To compare the effectiveness of percutaneous gastrostomy and NGT feeding in patients with HNC, relevant literature was identified through Medline, Embase, Pubmed, Cochrane, Wiley and manual searches. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-experimental studies comparing percutaneous gastrostomy—including percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) and percutaneous fluoroscopic gastrostomy (PFG) —with NG for HNC patients. Data extraction recorded characteristics of intervention, type of study and factors that contributed to the methodological quality of the individual studies. Data were then compared with respect to nutritional status, duration of feeding, complications, radiotherapy delays, disease-free survival and overall survival. Methodological quality of RCTs and non-experimental studies were assessed with separate standard grading scales. It became apparent from our studies that both feeding strategies have advantages and disadvantages.
Optimal computing budget allocation for multi-objective simulation models

Simulation plays a vital role in identifying the best system design from among a set of competing designs. To improve simulation efficiency, ranking and selection techniques are often used to determine the number of simulation replications required so that a pre-specified level of correct selection is guaranteed at a modest possible computational expense. As most real-life systems are multi-objective in nature, in this paper, we consider a multi-objective ranking and selection problem, where the system designs are evaluated in terms of more than one performance measure. We incorporate the concept of Pareto optimality into the ranking and selection scheme, and try to find all of the non-dominated designs rather than a single "best" one. A simple sequential solution method is proposed to allocate the simulation replications. Computational results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient in terms of the total number of replications needed to find the Pareto set.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 the Landscape Configuration of Zoonotic Transmission of Ebola Virus Disease in West and Central Africa: Interaction between Population Density and Vegetation Cover

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is an emerging infectious disease of zoonotic origin that has been responsible for high mortality and significant social disruption in West and Central Africa. Zoonotic transmission of EVD requires contact between susceptible human hosts and the reservoir species for Ebolaviruses, which are believed to be fruit bats. Nevertheless, features of the landscape that may facilitate such points of contact have not yet been adequately identified. Nor have spatial dependencies between zoonotic EVD transmission and landscape structures been delineated. This investigation sought to describe the spatial relationship between zoonotic EVD transmission events, or spillovers, and population density and vegetation cover. An inhomoge-neous Poisson process model was fitted to all precisely geolocated zoonotic transmissions of EVD in West and Central Africa. Population density was strongly associated with spillover; however, there was significant interaction between population density and green vegetation cover. In areas of very low population density, increasing vegetation cover was associated with a decrease in risk of zoonotic transmission, but as population density increased in a given area, increasing vegetation cover was associated with increased risk of zoonotic transmission. This study showed that the spatial dependencies of Ebolavirus spillover were associated with the distribution of population density and vegetation cover in the landscape, even after controlling for climate and altitude. While this is an observational study, and thus precludes direct causal inference, the findings do highlight areas that may be at risk for zoonotic EVD transmission based on the spatial configuration of important features of the landscape.
Law enforcement executive and principal perspectives on school safety measures

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the perspectives of law enforcement executives and public school principals regarding school resource officers (SROs), armed teachers, and armed school administrators in order to inform the policy discussion surrounding school safety issues. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilizes data collected from two surveys that were sent to law enforcement executives and public school principals in South Carolina. Respondents were asked about their experience with SROs and their perspectives on these officers’ ability to maintain school safety. Both groups of respondents were also asked about their attitudes regarding arming school employees. Findings – There is a large amount of support for SROs from both law enforcement executives and principals. However, in general, both groups of respondents do not believe armed administrators or armed teachers to be an effective school safety strategy. Originality/value – SROs have been the primary strategy adopted by s.
The nature of teacher reflective practice in an unforgiving learning environment

This study supported Schon's notions of reflective practice as being applicable to teachers involved in teaching physical activities in the context of unforgiving learning environments and specifically to teachers in the sport diving community. According to Schon, one's ability to recognize patterns and act effectively and efficiently in situations of uniqueness and uncertainty depends upon one's capacity to frame problems. In doing so, one draws upon a repertoire of past experience arid ways of capturing that experience which enables the development of the ability to reframe problems in light of information gathered from the direct experience. Reframing occurs through the processes of reflection-in-action and reflection-onaction and is a response to an internal dialogue related to the action setting, in which something has not happened as expected, thus producing a curious or intrigued response. A number of issues specific to teacher reflection in unforgiving learning environments emanated from the analysis of one sport diving teacher engaged in teaching an entry-level sport diving course which involved three different teaching environments (the classroom setting, the confined water [pool] and open water [ocean] environments). Three research questions guided the analysis. In answer to the first research question: What factors do sport diving practitioners reflect upon in each of the three environments? six reflective themes were identified in this case study with five being common across the three teaching environments and the remainder being specific to the classroom environment. The common themes were: a trusting relationship, the necessity of teacher control, to see the 'unforgivingness' of the environment, learning from one's practice, challenges to one's practice and understanding one's practice. In answer to the second research question: What influences the reflective process? the analysis revealed thirteen underlying or influencing factors or dispositions across the three teaching environments with eight of them being common to either two, or all three, of the environments. In answer to the third research question: What is the nature of sport diving practitioners' reflective practice? five categories have been used to address the analysis: 1) across environment related, 2) classroom and confined water (pool) related, 3) confined water (pool) and open water (ocean) related 4) classroom and open water (ocean) related and 5) specific to one environment. The reflection process documented in this study suggested that Schon's notion of reflective practice is very applicable to the professional development of sport diving as his conception of reflection applies to the three areas of teaching which exist in unforgiving learning environments: the problem solving disposition of teacher reflection, the learning from one's practice, and the probing of internal dialogue. The Nature of Teacher Reflective Practice iii
A Semi-Supervised Feature Clustering Algorithm with Application to Word Sense Disambiguation

In this paper we investigate an application of feature clustering for word sense disambiguation, and propose a semisupervised feature clustering algorithm. Compared with other feature clustering methods (ex. supervised feature clustering), it can infer the distribution of class labels over (unseen) features unavailable in training data (labeled data) by the use of the distribution of class labels over (seen) features available in training data. Thus, it can deal with both seen and unseen features in feature clustering process. Our experimental results show that feature clustering can aggressively reduce the dimensionality of feature space, while still maintaining state of the art sense disambiguation accuracy. Furthermore, when combined with a semi-supervised WSD algorithm, semi-supervised feature clustering outperforms other dimensionality reduction techniques, which indicates that using unlabeled data in learning process helps to improve the performance of feature clustering and sense disambiguation.
Managing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in children: review of recent developments

Purpose of review Childhood multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis is an emerging disease with increasing numbers being recognized. This review presents recent developments in childhood MDR tuberculosis. Recent findings New molecular-based diagnostic tests, although not optimal, have reduced the difficulty in confirming the diagnosis of MDR tuberculosis in children. However, the importance of making a diagnosis of probable MDR tuberculosis has been reaffirmed by contact tracing studies showing 80–90% of child contacts of MDR tuberculosis cases who develop disease have MDR tuberculosis themselves. Prevention of MDR tuberculosis in child contacts with appropriate preventive treatment regimens is supported by new observational data and deserves further study. When diagnosed and treated appropriately, outcomes for MDR tuberculosis and even extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in children are good, despite limited pharmacokinetic data on second-line drugs. Novel anti-tuberculosis drugs and regimens are becoming available and should be studied in children for dose-finding and safety. Recording and reporting of MDR tuberculosis in children are frequently poor, leading to inaccurate estimates of disease burden and suboptimal resource planning. Summary Rapid diagnosis and appropriate treatment results in good outcomes in the majority of children with MDR tuberculosis. Additional research on optimal diagnosis, prevention and treatment of MDR tuberculosis in children remains a high priority.
The IEEE 802.11g standard for high data rate WLANs

Continuous WLAN public acceptance comes with increasing demand for provision of higher data rates. Building on this context, the IEEE published the IEEE 802.11g standard for providing data rates of up to 54 Mb/s at the 2.4 GHz band. This article presents the new features of IEEE 802.11g and, using an open source C++-based simulation tool, evaluates both the performance and effectiveness of these features compared to the older IEEE 802.11 standard versions.
Perceptual Coding of Narrowband Audio Signals

New applications such as Internet broadcast and communications, consumer multimedia products, digital AM broadcast and satellite networks are emerging. Those applications require moderate audio quality without annoying artifacts at bit rates below 16 kbit/s. Although speech coders provide high speech quality at bit rates around 8 kbit/s, they perform poorly when encoding audio signals. In this thesis, we present a novel transform coding paradigm based on the characteristics of the human hearing system. The proposed encoder, i.e., Narrowband Perceptual Audio Coder (NPAC), can accommodate a wide range of narrowband audio inputs without annoying artifacts at bit rates down to 8 kbit/s. NPAC employs a variety of algorithms to remove the perceptually irrelevant parts and statistical redundancies of the input signal. The new algorithms used in NPAC include a perceptual error measure in training the codebooks and selecting the best codewords, perceptually-based bit allocation algorithms and an adaptive predictive scheme to vector quantize the scale factors. The proposed encoder has moderate complexity and delivers good quality for narrowband audio inputs at around 1 bit/sample. Informal subjective tests have been conducted to compare the performance of NPAC with an 8 kbit/s commercially-available audio coder. The tests results show that NPAC performs better for both music and speech inputs.
Development of Achievement Test: Validity and Reliability Study for Achievement Test on Matter Changing.

For "Matter Changing" unit included in the Secondary School 5th Grade Science Program, it is intended to develop a test conforming the gains described in the program, and that can determine students' achievements. For this purpose, a multiple-choice test of 48 questions is arranged, consisting of 8 questions for each gain included in the training program. The test, of which the content validity is reviewed and ensured by 2 chemistry domain experts and 2 science lecturers, is applied to 354 6th grade students (ages 11-12) in the Black Sea Region of Turkey, in a city centre. Item analysis of the test is carried out and 16 items of which the distinctiveness are below 0,30 are excluded from the test. As a result of item analysis the average difficulty of the questions are estimated to be 0,38 and it is seen that their difficulty level is intermediate. Likewise, the average distinctiveness of the questions are estimated to be 0,38 and it is seen that the distinctiveness strength of the questions are well. After the questions are excluded, Kuder Richardson-20 reliability coefficient is estimated to be 0,763. As a result of the study, an effective and reliable achievement test including 32 questions with intermediate difficulty level and well distinction strength created for "Matter Changing" unit is brought to the science education. Keywords: Validity, reliability, matter changing, science.
Student Moon Observations and Spatial-Scientific Reasoning

Relationships between sixth grade students' moon journaling and students' spatial-scientific reasoning after implementation of an Earth/Space unit were examined. Teachers used the project-based Realistic Explorations in Astronomical Learning curriculum. We used a regression model to analyze the relationship between the students' Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI) post-test score variables and several predictors, including moon journal score, number of moon journal entries, student gender, teacher experience, and pre-test score. The model shows that students who performed better on moon journals, both in terms of overall score and number of entries, tended to score higher on the LPCI. For every 1 point increase in the overall moon journal score, participants scored 0.18 points (out of 20) or nearly 1% point higher on the LPCI post-test when holding constant the effects of the other two predictors. Similarly, students who increased their scores by 1 point in the overall moon journal score scored approximately 1% higher in the Periodic Patterns (PP) and Geometric Spatial Visualization (GSV) domains of the LPCI. Also, student gender and teacher experience were shown to be significant predictors of post-GSV scores on the LPCI in addition to the pre-test scores, overall moon journal score, and number of entries that were also significant predictors on the LPCI overall score and the PP domain. This study is unique in the purposeful link created between student moon observations and spatial skills. The use of moon journals distinguishes this study further by fostering scientific observation along with skills from across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.