Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Utilization decision towards LMS for blended learning in distance education: Modeling the effects of personality factors in exclusivity

Over the decades, personality factors (attitude, self-efficacy, anxiety and computer experience) have pervaded the underpinning determinants of behavioural intentions to accept and use emerging technologies, chiefly in purviews where integration is into the working processes that may be pro traditional. The chasm in the literature has been how these technology personality factors extensively relate within and among themselves in a definite model exclusive to these factors, and their overall variance explained in usage intentions. In view of this, the study adopted a quantitative design and employed the questionnaire for data collection from 267 distance education tutors from a countrywide spread. Findings from structural equation modeling (SEM) technique revealed ‘technology attitude’ and ‘technology experience’ to be major predictors of usage intentions. The direct effects of technology anxiety and self-efficacy on behavioural intention were fully mediated by technology attitude. Non-linear relationships showed that technology self-efficacy, experience and anxiety were all antecedents of attitude towards LMS, while ‘technology experience’ alone determined ‘technology self-efficacy’. The Important-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) revealed attitude as the most important and performing construct in determining behavioural intention. Technology attitude had technology related self-efficacy as its most important and performing construct determinant. The overall variance explained by the derived model was 35%. The study recommended that technology attitude and experience should be prioritized in LMS-related blended learning implementation in distance education. It further proposed that future studies include moderators on technology personality factors in determining usage intentions to further improve the model’s robustness.
Salix purpurea Stimulates the Expression of Specific Bacterial Xenobiotic Degradation Genes in a Soil Contaminated with Hydrocarbons

The objectives of this study were to uncover Salix purpurea-microbe xenobiotic degradation systems that could be harnessed in rhizoremediation, and to identify microorganisms that are likely involved in these partnerships. To do so, we tested S. purpurea‘s ability to stimulate the expression of 10 marker microbial oxygenase genes in a soil contaminated with hydrocarbons. In what appeared to be a detoxification rhizosphere effect, transcripts encoding for alkane 1-monooxygenases, cytochrome P450 monooxygenases, laccase/polyphenol oxidases, and biphenyl 2,3-dioxygenase small subunits were significantly more abundant in the vicinity of the plant's roots than in bulk soil. This gene expression induction is consistent with willows' known rhizoremediation capabilities, and suggests the existence of S. purpurea-microbe systems that target many organic contaminants of interest (i.e. C4-C16 alkanes, fluoranthene, anthracene, benzo(a)pyrene, biphenyl, polychlorinated biphenyls). An enhanced expression of the 4 genes was also observed within the bacterial orders Actinomycetales, Rhodospirillales, Burkholderiales, Alteromonadales, Solirubrobacterales, Caulobacterales, and Rhizobiales, which suggest that members of these taxa are active participants in the exposed partnerships. Although the expression of the other 6 marker genes did not appear to be stimulated by the plant at the community level, signs of additional systems that rest on their expression by members of the orders Solirubrobacterales, Sphingomonadales, Actinomycetales, and Sphingobacteriales were observed. Our study presents the first transcriptomics-based identification of microbes whose xenobiotic degradation activity in soil appears stimulated by a plant. It paints a portrait that contrasts with the current views on these consortia's composition, and opens the door for the development of laboratory test models geared towards the identification of root exudate characteristics that limit the efficiency of current willow-based rhizoremediation applications.
The effectiveness of voice-on and voice-off instruction on ASL vocabulary acquisition

Whether to use spoken English for the instruction of American Sign Language (ASL) is a pedagogical debate for those teaching hearing second language learners. Previous investigations have found the use of learners’ first language to be beneficial for vocabulary acquisition. Studies on sign languages, however, have found that a class taught completely using signs is more beneficial than a class that incorporates spoken English, although the cognitive theory of multimedia learning argues that receiving input in various modalities fosters learning. In the present study, the efficacy of voice-on or voice-off instruction for acquisition of ASL vocabulary is examined. Twenty-six hearing adult students in an ASL class received either voice-on (spoken English) or voice-off (ASL only) instruction for 13 vocabulary items. They completed a comprehension test in the pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest, as well as a production test in the immediate and delayed posttest. The results showed significant improvements over time for both conditions for comprehension and production; however, no differences between the two conditions were observed.
Homology of the zero-set of a nilpotent vector field on a flag manifold

0.1. Let X be a linear transformation of a finite-dimensional vector space V. The configuration of flags in V which are fixed by X has rather remarkable properties when X is unipotent. Though this case is especially interesting, the proper generality in which to study such configurations is in the theory of reductive algebraic groups, where their definition can be reformulated in the language of Borel subalgebras as follows. Let G be a connected reductive group over C, with Lie algebra g, and let N E g be a nilpotent element. Let q be the variety of all Borel subalgebras of g and let
Systemic Chemotherapy in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most lethal cancers. These patients often have multiple symptoms, and integrated supportive care is critical in helping them remain well for as long as possible. Fluorouracil-based chemotherapy is known to improve overall survival (OS) by approximately 3 months, compared to the best supportive care alone. A 1997 study comparing gemcitabine and fluorouracil treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer patients showed an improvement in OS of 1 month in patients receiving gemcitabine. Over the next 10 years, multiple randomized studies compared single-agent gemcitabine with combination chemotherapy and showed no effective survival improvement. However, the addition of erlotinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor, was associated with a significant improvement in OS of approximately 2 weeks. However, adoption of this regimen has not been widespread because of its limited effect and added toxicity. Two clinical trials have recently prolonged OS in advanced pancreatic cancer patients by almost 1 year. The first compared FOLFIRINOX with gemcitabine alone, and was associated with a significant improvement in median survival. The second compared gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel with gemcitabine alone, and was associated with improvements in OS. At present, these regimens are considered standard treatment for patients with good performance statuses.
A Proposal for Software Ecosystems Engineering

Software Ecosystems (SECOs) have emerged as an approach to improve software reuse in industry considering relations among companies and stakeholders. Companies and organizations have opened up their platforms and artifacts to others, including partners and third-part developers around the world. This changes the traditional software industry because it requires mature research in software architecture, component-based software engineering and software product line in a market and business environment. In this sense, this paper presents an initial proposal for SECOs engineering in order to outline a set of steps that combines three different dimensions of SECOs and joins different perspectives in SECOs research literature through a survey. In this paper, the focus is on the first dimension, that is, architecture. A preliminary analysis done by the Brazilian Software Reuse Lab's SECOs at COPPE/UFRJ points out that several concepts presented at IWSECO 2009 and IWSECO 2010 can be connected in a broader SE approach.
Unraveling the Mechanisms of Reputation and Alliance Formation: A Study of Venture Capital Syndication in China

Extant research shows that resources are significant to a firm’s choice of alliance formation. We focus on an important form of intangible resource – firm reputation – and examine how it affects a firm’s propensity to form alliances. We propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between a firm’s reputation and its likelihood of alliance formation, resulting from the opposing mechanisms of opportunity and need. We also examine how this relationship may vary across two contingencies: (1) foreign and domestic firms; and (2) different levels of institutional development. Empirical analyses of China’s venture capital (VC) industry provide support for our hypotheses.
Recent Advances on optimum-Path Forest for Data Classification: Supervised, Semi-Supervised, and Unsupervised Learning

Although one can find several pattern recognition techniques out there, there is still room for improvements and new approaches. In this book chapter, we revisited the Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) classifier, which has been evaluated over the last years in a number of applications that consider supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised learning problems. We also presented a brief compilation of a number of previous works that employed OPF in different research fields, that range from remote sensing image classification to medical data analysis.
On the pseudospectrum of elliptic quadratic differential operators

We study the pseudospectrum of a class of non-selfadjoint differential operators. Our work consists in a detailed study of the microlocal properties, which rule the spectral stability or instability phenomena appearing under small perturbations for elliptic quadratic differential operators. The class of elliptic quadratic differential operators stands for the class of operators defined in the Weyl quantization by complex-valued elliptic quadratic symbols. We establish in this paper a simple necessary and sufficient condition on the Weyl symbol of these operators, which ensures the stability of their spectra. When this condition is violated, we prove that it occurs some strong spectral instabilities for the high energies of these operators, in some regions which can be far away from their spectra. We give a precise geometrical description of them, which explains the results obtained for these operators in some numerical simulations giving the computation of false eigenvalues far from their spectra by algorithms for eigenvalues computing.
Effects of Nitrogen Mustard on the Physicochemical Properties of Mouse Fibroblast Deoxyribonucleic Acid *

agents has received considerable experimental at tention during the last few years, and a variety of mechanisms of action have been postulated to ac count for the effect. Much of this investigation has centered on the interaction of these agents with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (1, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13, 19â€”9292)following the initial suggestion by Elmore et at. (8) that sulfur mustard probably attacked the phosphate moieties of the DNA molecule. Rut man et at. (14) have suggested that the biological effectiveness of the mustards may not bear any quantitative relation to the extent of alkylation; rather, the specific type of reaction may be more important than the gross extent of the reaction. Drysdale et at. (6) and Trams et a! (19), however, have discussed the possibility that the attack on the DNA molecule may not represent the specific mechanism of action of these cytotoxic compounds and that other reactions may be of more impor tance. It must be conceded, therefore, that the specific chemical reaction with the DNA molecule or other cellular constituent that is responsible for the growth-inhibitory and cytotoxic effects of
A Monthly Double-blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International E-journal -included in the International Serial Directories Recapitalisation and Bank Performance: Evidence from Banks in Nigeria a Monthly Double-blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International E-journal -included in the

This study examined the relationship between recapitalization and banks performance in Nigeria. In order achieve the objective of the study, a time series data was generated for 2000 to 2009 periods. The data was analysed using independent t-test and the study found that net interest margin, funding cost, significantly increases in post-recapitalisation period. On the other hand the study found an insignificant decrease in return on assets of banks after recapitalised. Therefore, the study concluded that the policy (recapitalisation) would subject banks (especially the small banks) in the country into severe liquidity crisis. The study recommended among others, that recapitalization policy should be undertaken with pinch of salt because the major obstacle facing Nigerian banks is not peculiar with shortage of capital. Therefore, only banks with acute shortage of capital should be coercing to increase their capital to enable them enjoy economic scale of operation. Similarly an Islamic banks should be established with branches in Muslims dominated areas, this is based on the experiences of the countries practicing such unique banking were not immune to global economic crisis. It is widely recognised that the financial system plays a crucial roles in promoting economic development by separating the saving and investment functions. Investment in all economics sectors, particularly the real sector, made possible by the financial resources in the financial system, increases the quantum of goods and services. The financial system includes banking institution are important economic agents in the payment system. Bank facilitate economic transaction between various national and international economic units and by so doing, it encourages trade, commerce and industry (Sani, 2004). It is needless to say that, banking system is able to play the positive role in economic development only if it is functioning efficiently. However, if repressed, inefficient and incapable of providing timely and quality services, the banking system could become a major hindrance to economic growth and development It is on record that in spite of government's effort to protect the banks failure does occur. Endogenous factors such as bad management, or exogenous ones such as economic recession usually precipitate such failures. Sometimes both factors combine to bring distress to banks, and when that happens, depositors particularly the small ones, are the most affected. The lesson of distress in Nigeria, swept the banking sector and systematic distress gripped the finance house sub-sector. The banking sector failure had serious implication for the financial system and by …
Relationship of ASLR and motor control impairment tests in physically active individuals with and without low back pain

With high rates of active population experiencing undiagnosed, nonspecific low back pain, a new approach is needed with consideration of dysfunctional movement patters that may lead to chronic back pain. Active straight leg raise (ASLR) is widely used diagnostic tests for LBP, but there is a lack of evidence of association with other clinical parameters, and functional analyses used in evaluation of LBP. Hence, the primary aim of this study is to investigate association of ASLR test with the movement deficiencies in muscles and joints responsible for lumbo-pelvic stability in populations with and without low back pain. 100 physically active participants with (n=50) and without LBP (n=50) volunteered for the study. One-way ANOVA was used to examine for potential differences between two groups, and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to examine the pattern of relationships between the measured variables. Participants without pain had significantly higher ASLR score (p < 0.001), demonstrated better hamstring flexibility (p < 0.001) and better gluteal activation pattern (p < 0.01). On the other hand, participants with LBP had greater incidence of pelvic rotation during knee flexion, and hip internal rotation, relative to participants without LBP (p < 0.001). Results also demonstrate that participants with pain scored largely 1 on the ASLR which was also associated with hamstring tightness, calf tightness, limited trunk flexion, hypo-mobility of the trunk, and posterior pelvic tilt. These findings indicate a strong association of low back pain 1 dmtrjkovac888@gmail.com SPORT – Science & Practice, Vol. 8, No2, 2018 6  with functional movement impairment and weakness in movement motor control. ASLR test should be used conjunction with other functional evolution tests to isolate the cause of LBP in physically active individuals.
Joint Design of Tx-Rx Beamformers in MIMO Downlink Channel

We consider a single-cell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink channel where linear transmission and reception strategy is employed. The base station (BS) transmitter is equipped with a scheduler using a simple opportunistic beamforming strategy, which associates an intended user for each of the transmitted data streams. For the case when the channel of the scheduled users is available at the BS, we propose a general method for joint design of the transmit and the receive beamformers according to different optimization criteria, including weighted sum rate maximization, weighted sum mean square error minimization, minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) maximization and sum power minimization under a minimum SINR constraint. The proposed method can handle multiple antennas at the BS and at the mobile user with single and/or multiple data streams per scheduled user. The optimization problems encountered in the beamformer design (e.g., covariance rank constraint) are not convex in general. Therefore, the problem of finding the global optimum is intrinsically nontractable. However, by exploiting the uplink-downlink SINR duality, we decompose the original optimization problem as a series of simpler optimization problems which can be efficiently solved by using standard convex optimization tools. Even though each subproblem is optimally solved, there is no guarantee that the global optimum has been found due to the nonconvexity of the problem. However, the simulations show that the algorithms converge fast to a solution, which can be a local optimum, but is still efficient.
CMB contraints on primordial non-Gaussianity from the bispectrum (f(NL)) and trispectrum (g(NL) and tau(NL)) and a new consistency test of single-field inflation

We outline the expected constraints on non-Gaussianity from the cosmic microwave background with current and future experiments, focusing on both the third (f{sub NL}) and fourth-order (g{sub NL} and {tau}{sub NL}) amplitudes of the local configuration or non-Gaussianity. The experimental focus is the skewness (two-to-one) and kurtosis (two-to-two and three-to-one) power spectra from weighted maps. In addition to a measurement of {tau}{sub NL} and g{sub NL} with WMAP 5-year data, our study provides the first forecasts for future constraints on g{sub NL}. We describe how these statistics can be corrected for the mask and cut-sky through a window function, bypassing the need to compute linear terms that were introduced for the previous-generation non-Gaussianity statistics, such as the skewness estimator. We discus the ratio A{sub NL}={tau}{sub NL}/(6f{sub NL}/5){sup 2} as an additional test of single-field inflationary models and discuss the physical significance of each statistic. Using these estimators with WMAP 5-Year V+W-band data out to l{sub max}=600 we constrain the cubic order non-Gaussianity parameters {tau}{sub NL}, and g{sub NL} and find -7.4<g{sub NL}/10{sup 5}<8.2 and -0.6<{tau}{sub NL}/10{sup 4}<3.3 improving the previous COBE-based limit on {tau}{sub NL}<10{sup 8} nearly 4 orders of magnitude with WMAP.
Comparison of Single Ti6Al4V Struts Made Using Selective Laser Melting and Electron Beam Melting Subject to Part Orientation

The use of additive manufacturing technologies to produce lightweight or functional structures is widespread. Especially Ti6Al4V plays an important role in this development field and parts are manufactured and analyzed with the aim to characterize the mechanical properties of open-porous structures and to generate scaffolds with properties specific to their intended application. An SLM and an EBM process were used respectively to fabricate the Ti6Al4V single struts. For mechanical characterization, uniaxial compression tests and hardness measurements were conducted. Furthermore, the struts were manufactured in different orientations for the determination of the mechanical properties. Roughness measurements and a microscopic characterization of the struts were also carried out. Some parts were characterized following heat treatment (hot isostatic pressing). A functional correlation was found between the compressive strength and the slenderness ratio (λ) as well as the equivalent diameter (d) and the height (L) of EBM and SLM parts. Hardness investigations revealed considerable differences related to the microstructure. An influence of heat treatment as well as of orientation could be determined. In this work, we demonstrate the influence of the fabrication quality of single struts, the roughness and the microstructure on mechanical properties as a function of orientation.
Substructure and Scatter in the Mass-Temperature Relations of Simulated Clusters

Galaxy clusters exhibit regular scaling relations among their bulk properties. These relations establish vital links between halo mass and cluster observables. Precision cosmology studies that depend on these links benefit from a better understanding of scatter in the mass-observable scaling relations. Here, we study the role of merger processes in introducing scatter into the M − TX relation, using a sample of 121 galaxy clusters simulated with radiative cooling and supernova feedback, along with three statistics previously proposed to measure X-ray surface brightness substructure. These are the centroid variation (w), the axial ratio (η), and the power ratios (P20 and P30). We find that in this set of simulated clusters, each substructure measure is correlated with a cluster’s departures δ ln TX and δ ln M from the mean M − TX relation, both for emission-weighted temperatures TEW and for spectroscopic-like temperatures TSL, in the sense that clusters with more substructure tend to be cooler at a given halo mass. In all cases, a three-parameter fit to the M − TX relation that includes substructure information has less scatter than a two-parameter fit to the basic M − TX relation.