Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discussion Paper No . 348 How Does Innovation Affect Worker Well-being ?

We explore the effects of management innovations on worker well-being using private sector linked employer-employee data for Britain. We find management innovations are associated with lower worker well-being and lower job satisfaction, an effect which becomes more pronounced when we account for the endogeneity of innovation. This is the case for three different count measures of innovation – a global measure of innovation and measures for labour innovations and capital innovations. The effects are ameliorated when workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Key-words: innovation; well-being; job satisfaction; trade unions JEL-codes: J28; J51; J81; L23; 031 Acknowledgement: We are grateful to participants at the European Association of Labour Economists 2009 Conference in Tallinn, and seminar participants at the Paris School of Economics, the University of Lancaster and the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE for comments. We thank the Norwegian Research Council for funding (grant No. 173591/S20). This work is also part of the research activity at ESOP, University of Oslo, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Alex Bryson thanks the sponsors of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 (Department for Business Innovation and Skills, Acas, ESRC and PSI) and the UK Data Archive for access to the WERS data. Corresponding author: Alex Bryson, e-mail: a.bryson@niesr.ac. uk.
Relationship between Neuropathic Pain and Obesity

Objectives. Overweight negatively affects musculoskeletal health; hence obesity is considered a risk factor for osteoarthritis and chronic low back pain. This was conducted to determine if obesity affects neuropathic pain, usually considered unrelated to the weight-load on the musculoskeletal system. Methods. Using a cut-off body mass index value of 25, 44 patients with neuropathic pain were grouped into a “high-BMI” group and a “normal-BMI” group. Results. The numeric rating scale of the high-BMI group was significantly higher than that of the normal-weight group (P < 0.05). The total NPSI scores were significantly higher (P < 0.01), and the paroxysmal pain and the negative symptoms were more serious in the high-BMI group than in the normal-BMI group. The high-BMI subjects also had significantly higher SF-MPQ scores (P < 0.05). However, both physical and mental health status on the SF-36 were comparable between the groups. Discussion. Neuropathic pain that did not arise from musculoskeletal damage was higher in the high-BMI patients. Paroxysmal pain was more severe, suggesting that neural damage might be aggravated by obesity-associated inflammation. These findings should have needed to be confirmed in future studies.
Loss and reduced expression of PTEN correlate with advanced-stage gastric carcinoma

Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) is a tumor suppressor involved in multiple cell processes. To investigate the role of PTEN in the development of gastric carcinoma, we determined the expression pattern of PTEN in primary gastric carcinoma and in paired adjacent non-neoplastic tissue. We also determined the correlation of PTEN expression with clinicopathological characteristics and patient survival. Overall, 159 gastric carcinomas and 151 paired adjacent non-neoplastic tissues were used in the present study. PTEN expression was determined using tissue microarrays and immunohistochemistry. The clinical sensitivity and specificity of PTEN expression were calculated using receiver operator characteristic curves. Results showed that the loss of cytoplasmic PTEN was significantly more frequent in carcinoma tissue compared with adjacent non-neoplastic tissue (62 vs. 5%, respectively; P<0.0001). PTEN expression was markedly downregulated in carcinoma tissues compared with adjacent non-neoplastic tissues. The loss of cytoplasmic PTEN expression was positively correlated with histological stage (P=0.016). The loss of nuclear or total PTEN, and downregulation of total PTEN expression, was significantly different between American Joint Committee on Cancer tumors of stage I and stages II–IV. A low cytoplasmic or total PTEN expression showed high clinical sensitivity and specificity for gastric carcinoma. However, PTEN expression was not significantly associated with overall or 3-year survival rates. The findings of the present study indicated that PTEN expression may be a molecular diagnostic marker for gastric cancer. Thus, the loss or reduced expression of PTEN potentially correlate with advanced stages of gastric carcinoma.
Increasing Returns to Scale and Nonlinear Endogenous Fluctuations in a Simple Overlapping Generations Models: A Pedagogical Note

We study the role of increasing returns (in production) on the emergence of nonlinear endogenous fluctuations in a simple overlapping generations model. We specify conditions for the occurrence of local flip and Hopf bifurcations in terms of relevant parameters. We, also, present orbits exhibiting endogenous fluctuations, for some numerical examples. Our results, in compliance with other recent works, suggest that the environment in which endogenous fluctuations can emerge approaches those considered more plausible when there are increasing returns to scale.
KOMUNIKASI IMAM SHAFIE DALAM PENYEBARAN ISLAM

Imam Shafie, the founder of Mazhab Shafie used various methods of communications in his attempt to spread Islam throughout the Arabs world and Asia, until it reach Malaysia. His noble personel nature has helped him to become a good communicator, and thus helped influencing people to embrace Islam. In spreading the teachings of Islam, Imam Shafie employed various communications skill such as verbal (vocal) and written (nonvocal) communications as well as excellent interpersonal methods, and these have impressive impact on the expression of Islam. As a good communicator, he also provided valuable information and guidance, and used his persuasion skills to attract people toward embracing and practicing Islam.
Effect of meal composition on postprandial lipid concentrations and lipoprotein particle numbers: A randomized cross-over study

Background It is unclear how high-protein (HP) and high-monounsaturated fat (HMF) meals affect postprandial blood lipids and lipoprotein particle numbers (LPN). Purpose To compare a HP versus a HMF meal on postprandial lipid and LPN responses. Methods Twenty-four participants (age: 36.3±15.0 years; body mass index: 23.6±2.0 kg/m2; 45.8% female) were fed a HP (31.9% energy from protein) and a HMF (35.2% fat and 20.7% monounsaturated fat) meal in a randomized cross-over trial design. Energy and carbohydrate content were the same across meals. Blood samples were drawn in the fasting state and 3 hour postprandial state, and assessed for lipids and LPN. Results Repeated measures analysis showed a significant (p<0.05) treatment by time interaction effect for triglycerides (TG), the primary variable, total high-density lipoprotein particles (T-HDLP) and T-HDLP minus large-buoyant high-density lipoprotein 2b (T-HDLP—LB-HDL2b). HP versus HMF condition led to significantly lower TG at 120 (geometric mean: 90.1 (95% confidence interval (CI): 76.4–106.3) vs. 146.5 (124.2–172.9) mg/dL) and 180 (101.4 (83.1–123.8) vs. 148.7 (121.9–181.4) mg/dL) min and higher T-HDLP at 120 (mean difference: 297.3 (95% CI: 48.6–545.9) nmol/L) and 180 (291.6 (15.8–567.5) nmol/L) min. The difference in T-HDLP by condition was due to the significantly higher small-dense HDLP (T-HDLP—LB-HDL2b) during HP versus HMF condition at 120 (mean difference: 452.6 (95% CI: 177.4–727.9) nmol/L) and 180 (496.8 (263.1–730.6) nmol/L) min. Area under the curve analysis showed that HP versus HMF condition led to significantly lower TG, non-HDLP, and very-low-density lipoprotein particles (VLDLP) responses but significantly less favorable responses in LB-HDL2b particles, T-HDLP—LB-HDL2b, and LB-HDL2b/T-HDLP ratio. Conclusion The HP meal led to lower TG, non-HDLP, and VLDLP but less favorable LB-HDL2b, small-dense HDLP, and LB-HDL2b/T-HDLP ratio responses versus a HMF meal. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings over multiple meals.
Regulation of root morphogenesis in arbuscular mycorrhizae: what role do fungal exudates, phosphate, sugars and hormones play in lateral root formation?

BACKGROUND Arbuscular mycorrhizae (AMs) form a widespread root-fungus symbiosis that improves plant phosphate (Pi) acquisition and modifies the physiology and development of host plants. Increased branching is recognized as a general feature of AM roots, and has been interpreted as a means of increasing suitable sites for colonization. Fungal exudates, which are involved in the dialogue between AM fungi and their host during the pre-colonization phase, play a well-documented role in lateral root (LR) formation. In addition, the increased Pi content of AM plants, in relation to Pi-starved controls, as well as changes in the delivery of carbohydrates to the roots and modulation of phytohormone concentration, transport and sensitivity, are probably involved in increasing root system branching. SCOPE This review discusses the possible causes of increased branching in AM plants. The differential root responses to Pi, sugars and hormones of potential AM host species are also highlighted and discussed in comparison with those of the non-host Arabidopsis thaliana. CONCLUSIONS Fungal exudates are probably the main compounds regulating AM root morphogenesis during the first colonization steps, while a complex network of interactions governs root development in established AMs. Colonization and high Pi act synergistically to increase root branching, and sugar transport towards the arbusculated cells may contribute to LR formation. In addition, AM colonization and high Pi generally increase auxin and cytokinin and decrease ethylene and strigolactone levels. With the exception of cytokinins, which seem to regulate mainly the root:shoot biomass ratio, these hormones play a leading role in governing root morphogenesis, with strigolactones and ethylene blocking LR formation in the non-colonized, Pi-starved plants, and auxin inducing them in colonized plants, or in plants grown under high Pi conditions.
Dilatation structures in sub-riemannian geometry

Based on the notion of dilatation structure arXiv:math/0608536, we give an intrinsic treatment to sub-riemannian geometry, started in the paper arXiv:0706.3644 . Here we prove that regular sub-riemannian manifolds admit dilatation structures. From the existence of normal frames proved by Bellaiche we deduce the rest of the properties of regular sub-riemannian manifolds by using the formalism of dilatation structures.
Study on particle swarm optimization algorithm with local interpolation search

Based on the analysis of the basic Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), a PSO with local interpolation search (PSOlis) is proposed with interpolation methods. The improved PSO takes full advantage of the best location of individual particles and the better position among particles to modify the best location of the individual particles. The experiments with test functions show that PSOlis has better convergence accuracy and faster convergence speed than the basic PSO.
Rating-Boosted Latent Topics: Understanding Users and Items with Ratings and Reviews

The performance of a recommendation system relies heavily on the feedback of users. Most of the traditional recommendation algorithms based only on historical ratings will encounter several difficulties given the problem of data sparsity. Users' feedback usually contains rich textual reviews in addition to numerical ratings. In this paper, we exploit textual review information, as well as ratings, to model user preferences and item features in a shared topic space and subsequently introduce them into a matrix factorization model for recommendation. To this end, the data sparsity problem is alleviated and good interpretability of the recommendation results is gained. Another contribution of this work is that we model the item feature distributions with rating-boosted reviews which combine textual reviews with user sentiments. Experimental results on 26 real-world datasets from Amazon demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the rating prediction accuracy compared with various state-of-the-art models, such as LFM, HFT, CTR and RMR models. And much higher improvement is achieved for users who have few ratings, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed approach for sparse data. Moreover, our method also benefits much from reviews on top-N recommendation tasks.
The Paradox of New Members in the Council of Ministers: A Noncooperative Approach

Power indices suggest that adding new members to a voting body may increase the power of an existing member, even if the number of votes of all existing members and the decision rule remain constant. This phenomenon is known as the paradox of new members. This paper shows that the paradox has theoretically occurred in the EU using the leading model of legislative bargaining. Furthermore, it is possible for a majority of members to be in favor of enlargement, even if voters are bargaining over a fixed budget.
Efficient context switching for the stack cache: implementation and analysis

The design of tailored hardware has proven a successful strategy to reduce the timing analysis overhead for (hard) real-time systems. The stack cache is an example of such a design that has been proven to provide good average-case performance, while being easy to analyze. So far, however, the analysis of the stack cache was limited to individual tasks, ignoring aspects related to multitasking. A major drawback of the original stack cache design is that, due to its simplicity, it cannot hold the data of multiple tasks at the same time. Consequently, the entire cache content needs to be saved and restored when a task is preempted. We propose (a) an analysis exploiting the simplicity of the stack cache to bound the overhead induced by task preemption and (b) an extension of the design that allows to (partially) hide the overhead by virtualizing stack caches.
Accumulation of Stable Full-Length Circular Group I Intron RNAs during Heat-Shock

Group I introns in nuclear ribosomal RNA of eukaryotic microorganisms are processed by splicing or circularization. The latter results in formation of full-length circular introns without ligation of the exons and has been proposed to be active in intron mobility. We applied qRT-PCR to estimate the copy number of circular intron RNA from the myxomycete Didymium iridis. In exponentially growing amoebae, the circular introns are nuclear and found in 70 copies per cell. During heat-shock, the circular form is up-regulated to more than 500 copies per cell. The intron harbours two ribozymes that have the potential to linearize the circle. To understand the structural features that maintain circle integrity, we performed chemical and enzymatic probing of the splicing ribozyme combined with molecular modeling to arrive at models of the inactive circular form and its active linear counterpart. We show that the two forms have the same overall structure but differ in key parts, including the catalytic core element P7 and the junctions at which reactions take place. These differences explain the relative stability of the circular species, demonstrate how it is prone to react with a target molecule for circle integration and thus supports the notion that the circular form is a biologically significant molecule possibly with a role in intron mobility.
FlexLevel: A novel NAND flash storage system design for LDPC latency reduction

LDPC code is introduced in NAND flash memory to handle high BER (bit error rate) incurred by technology scaling. Despite strong error correction capability, LDPC decoding induces long NAND flash read latency. In this work, we propose FlexLevel - a robust NAND flash storage system design to improve data reliability and read efficiency affected by the LDPC operations. FlexLevel first reduces BER by enlarging noise margins via Vth (threshold voltage) level reduction. It reduces the sensing levels of LDPC but also causes loss of storage capacity. To compensate this capacity loss with minimum impact on read performance, FlexLevel identifies the data with high LDPC overhead and only applies the Vth level reduction technique to those data. Experimental results show that compared with state-of-the-art, FlexLevel can achieve up to 33% read speedup with very moderate capacity loss.
Impacts of Test Suite's Class Imbalance on Spectrum-Based Fault Localization Techniques

Spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL) uses the execution results of test cases to debug. There are two types of SBFL techniques: one using conventional slices, and the other using metamorphic slices. This paper investigates the ratio between non-violated and violated metamorphic test groups of test suites for SBFL techniques using metamorphic slices. We have observed that the higher the ratio of passed metamorphic test groups to failed metamorphic test groups, the less effective the SBFL techniques using metamorphic slices. This observation is consistent with what has been observed in SBFL techniques using conventional slices. Besides, a new real-life fault in schedule2 of Siemens Suite is identified in our experiments.
A cross-sectional assessment of health-related quality of life among type 2 diabetes patients in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Objective: This study aimed to describe the health-related quality of life profile among type 2 diabetes patients in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Method: A cross-sectional study was undertaken using a cohort of 75 patients attending the University Diabetic Centre at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. EuroQoL-5 dimension (EQ-5D) scale was used for the assessment of health-related quality of life. EQ-5D was scored using values derived from the UK general population survey. Inferential statistics were applied to evaluate associations between study variables. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20.0 was used for data analysis; p <0.05 was set as the level of statistical significance. Results: Fifty-eight (77.35%) respondents were male with a mean 12.6 ± 8.4 years of history of diabetes. Thirty-four (45.3%) were categorised into the age group of 45–55 years with a mean age of 54 ± 9.2 years. Forty-four (58.7%) were using oral hypoglycaemic agents and 40 (53.3%) had a university level of education. A moderate level of health-related quality of life (0.70 ± 0.22) was measured in the study cohort. Gender was significantly associated with health-related quality of life scores (p = 0.001). The mean EQ-5D score was lower in females compared to male patients (0.58 ± 0.23 vs 0.74 ± 0.20). There were no statistically significant associations between health-related quality of life scores and age groups, duration of diabetes, marital status, educational level and type of treatment. Conclusion: This study has highlighted that Saudi diabetes patients have low levels of health-related quality of life. Healthcare professionals need to consider this when planning holistic patient treatment approaches.
Dangers of Using Political Preference Functions in Political Economy Analysis: Examples from U.S. Ethanol Policy

Rausser and Freebairn (1974) proposed a method for empirically measuring the political power of interest groups competing in real-world political economies. In the first half of the 1990s, staunch criticism of PPF methodology appeared. Von Cramon-Taubadel (1992) obtained counter-intuitive results in PPF simulations using a simple model of EU wheat and barley policy instrument use. Bullock (1994) emphasized that PPF methodology requires that observed policy be Pareto efficient policy, which requires researchers to manipulate the dimensions of their models so that the number of interest groups is exactly one more than the number of policy instruments. He concluded “[PPF methods] need not reveal anything meaningful about interest group political power, and may incorrectly measure the direction of transfers” (Bullock 1994, p. 347). The criticisms of the PPF approach were cogent, published in leading agricultural economics journals, and deserved carefully argued response from anyone wishing to continue publishing PPF research. None came forth, even though many PPF studies appeared since. In the present article we provide a step-by-step demonstration of the potential pitfalls of the PPF approach. For our purpose in this article is to once again critique PPF methodology, but this time in a more methodical and less abstract fashion, in hopes of catching and keeping the attention of the upcoming generation’s agricultural political economists. For concreteness, we have chosen a model of U.S. ethanol policy for our simulations. We build the model so that its economic agents can be aggregated or divided into various groups of different sizes, and its several policy instruments can be included or excluded from the model. In these ways, our model is flexible enough for us to use it to illustrate the various issues of model dimension that confront the potential PPF modeler.
Predictors of the Dose-Effect Relationship regarding Unilateral Inferior Rectus Muscle Recession in Patients with Thyroid Eye Disease

Purpose. To evaluate whether inferior rectus muscle (IRM) thickness, the degree of adipose change in the IRM, smoking status, and the previous history of orbital radiotherapy can predict the dose-effect relationship regarding unilateral IRM recession in thyroid eye disease (TED). Methods. Twenty-five patients were retrospectively reviewed. We calculated the largest IRM cross-sectional area and evaluated the degree of adipose change in the IRM using magnetic resonance imaging. The degree of adipose change and smoking status were classified using grading scales (0–3); previous orbital radiotherapy was graded as 0 when a history was not available and 1 when it was available. The correlation between the dose-effect relationship and the hypothesized predictive factors was evaluated using stepwise multiple regression analysis. Results. The multiple regression model, with the exception of the history of the previous orbital radiotherapy, estimated a significant dose-effect relationship for the parameters evaluated (Y DOSE-EFFECT = 0.013X IRM AREA − 0.222X ADIPOSE − 0.102X SMOKING + 1.694; r = 0.668; adjusted r 2 = 0.367; P = 0.005). Conclusions. The dose-effect relationship regarding unilateral IRM recession in TED could be predicted using IRM thickness, degree of intramuscular adipose change, and smoking status but could not be predicted using the previous orbital radiotherapy history.
ACTonFOOD: opportunities of ACT to address food addiction

Being overweight is a growing problem worldwide, and is becoming an epidemic both in Europe and the United States. Recent reports show that 64% of U.S. adults are overweight, and this a rate continues to rise (Lifshitz and Lifshitz, 2014). In the United States, the economic burden on the healthcare system related to this issue is approximately 100 billion dollars (Cawley et al., 2014; Specchia et al., 2015). The economic burden Europe is similar to that in the United States (Pietrabissa et al., 2012; Lehnert et al., 2014).