Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning-Oriented Sales Management Control: The Case of a Pharmaceutical Company

ABSTRACT Purpose: The primary goal was to identify organizational conditions for developing a learning-oriented behavioral control system, an issue that has been neglected in previous studies. Design/Methodology/Approach: The authors conducted a case study of Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim (NBI). Findings: We found that a behavior-based sales management control system facilitates learning by salespersons when 1) the focus is on skill development, 2) fewer key performance indicators are being used, and 3) supportive supervision and knowledge sharing are promoted. Research Limitations: Because this was a single case study, it is necessary to investigate other cases in other countries and to compare the results with those of NBI to develop theories about learning-oriented behavior control systems. Practical Implications: In the early stages of sales reform, sales managers and medical representatives should not use multiple process indicators for multiple evaluations; rather, they should use a small number of process indicators (e.g., number of visits per day) so that all individuals concerned about a problem can share information and promote improvement.
Integration of a Leap Motion Controller with the HoloLens to enable improved gesture interactions

of the master’s thesis Author Nestor Köhler Title Integration of a Leap Motion Controller with the HoloLens to enable improved gesture interactions Degree programme Computer, Communication and Information Sciences Major Computer Science Code of major SCI3042 Supervisor Prof. Tapio Takala Advisor D.Tech. Teemu Kinnunen Date 26.11. 2017 Number of pages 84+1 Language English
The impact of higher education on the living standards of female graduates

There have been many studies of the impact of higher education (HE) on the wages and earnings of graduates. However, for working women, the variation in wages only explains 30% of the variance in net family income. To understand the overall impact of HE on the living standards of female graduates, we explore the wider impact of HE. We exploit the rich cohort study data in the UK to show that, for women, acquiring HE quali cations increases net family income by around 20%. We fi nd that this increase is driven by higher wages, more working hours and assortative mating, which drives higher partner earnings. We show that the impact on women's own earnings is more important in their early 30s but the role of assortative mating becomes increasingly important at older ages. We compare two cohorts of women born 12 years apart and we show that the overall impact of HE on incomes has remained relatively unchanged. The impact on female labour supply has increased slightly, but this has been counteracted by a smaller wage effect. The role of assortative mating has become no less important. These results shed new light on the benefi ts for women of pursuing HE in the context of ever increasing participation rates.
An Empirical Analysis of Internet Use by U.S. Farmers

The Internet may reduce constraints on a farmer's ability to receive and manage information, regardless of where the farm is located or when the information is used. Using a count data estimation procedure, this study attempts to examine the key farm, operator, regional, and household characteristics that influence the number of Internet applications used by farm households. Findings indicate that educational level of the farm operator, farm size, farm diversification, off-farm income, off-farm investments, and regional location of the farm have a significant impact on the number of Internet applications used.
Motility and acrosomal integrity of frozen rabbit spermatozoa as affected by different extenders, cryoprotectants and packaging methods.

In a first trial semen from twenty NZW rabbit bucks was used to study the effects of different extenders (Tris–yolk fructose, lactose–yolk citrate and sucrose–yolk citrate), type and level of cryoprotectant (glycerol or dimethylsulfoxide) on motility and acrosome integrity percentages of frozen rabbit spermatozoa. In a second trial the effect of packaging method (straws or pellets) of frozen rabbit semen on sperm motility and acrosome integrity was also studied. The results showed that sucrose–yolk citrate and tris–yolk fructose extenders were significantly (P<0.01) better than lactose–yolk citrate extender in maintaining high motility and acrosomal integrity. The 2% glycerol or 4% dimethylsulfoxide levels gave significantly (P<0.01) higher motility and acrosomal integrity for frozen rabbit bucks spermatozoa. Post–thaw motility and acrosomal integrity were significantly better when semen of rabbit bucks was packaged in straws rather than in pellets.
Deep Learning Approach for Automatic Classification of Ocular and Cardiac Artifacts in MEG Data

We propose an artifact classification scheme based on a combined deep and convolutional neural network (DCNN) model, to automatically identify cardiac and ocular artifacts from neuromagnetic data, without the need for additional electrocardiogram (ECG) and electrooculogram (EOG) recordings. From independent components, the model uses both the spatial and temporal information of the decomposed magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. In total, 7122 samples were used after data augmentation, in which task and nontask related MEG recordings from 48 subjects served as the database for this study. Artifact rejection was applied using the combined model, which achieved a sensitivity and specificity of 91.8% and 97.4%, respectively. The overall accuracy of the model was validated using a cross-validation test and revealed a median accuracy of 94.4%, indicating high reliability of the DCNN-based artifact removal in task and nontask related MEG experiments. The major advantages of the proposed method are as follows: (1) it is a fully automated and user independent workflow of artifact classification in MEG data; (2) once the model is trained there is no need for auxiliary signal recordings; (3) the flexibility in the model design and training allows for various modalities (MEG/EEG) and various sensor types.
Characterization of a Multiseeded (msd1) Mutant of Sorghum for Increasing Grain Yield

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) has branched panicles with primary, secondary, and tertiary branches. These in�耀orescence branches are composed of a terminal triplet spikelet, con- sisting of one sessile (directly attached to the branch) and two pedicellate (spikelets attached to the branch through a short pedicel), followed by one or more spikelet pairs (one sessile and one pedicellate). In BTx623, and most sorghum lines, only the sessile spikelets can develop into seeds and the pedicellate spikelets, occasion- ally developing anthers, eventually abort. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of a stable multiseeded (msd1) mutant of sorghum (in BTx623 background, referred to as wild-type (WT)) in which both sessile and pedicellate spike- lets are fertile. In addition, this mutant displayed increased length and total number of primary and secondary in�耀orescence branches. Genetic analysis showed that this multiseeded mutation is a recessive trait. Pedicellate spikelets in msd1 mutants exhibited complete �耀ower with func - tional ovary and anthers, of which 75 to 95% can develop into viable seeds. The individual msd1 seeds are smaller than WT; however, the results indicated that this reduction in seed weight can be compensated by the increase in seed num- ber. The total seed weight per panicle in msd1 mutants was increased by 30 to 40% as com- pared to the WT. Further experiments are needed to demonstrate whether the msd1 mutation can increase grain yield under �耀eld conditions. Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Unit, Cropping Systems Research Lab. , USDA-ARS, 3810 4th St., Lubbock, TX 79415. Mention of trade names or commercial products in this publication is solely for the purpose of providing speci�耀c information and does not imply recommen - dation or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Received 26 Aug. 2013. *Corresponding author (zhanguo.xin@ars.usda.gov). Abbreviation: WT, wild-type.
A New Perspective in Designing Delayed Feedback Control for Thermo-Acoustic Instabilities (TAI)

This article suggests the deployment of a unique mathematical tool for assessing the thermo-acoustic instability (TAI) in a Rijke tube and proposes an analytical design strategy for its feedback control. A widely accepted characteristic of TAI is its time-delayed dynamics, which originate from the regenerative acoustic coupling terms. Linear systems theory has also evolved on similar classes of problems especially in recent years. This document offers a bridge between the two veins of research. We first review the analytical model of the TAI phenomenon, which renders a set of delayed differential equations. Then, we apply a new mathematical tool called the cluster treatment of characteristic roots (CTCR) paradigm on this dynamics. CTCR provides non-conservative and exhaustive stability predictions for this class of systems. This capability is employed for both uncontrolled and feedback-controlled Rijke tube structures. The findings are unique from two angles: (i) stability declarations are made in the parametric space of the system, such as geometric dimensions (much differently from the peer studies that are at best point-wise evaluations), and (ii) these declared sets of stable operating parameters are exhaustive (i.e., for a given system no other parametric selection can provide stability). These capabilities become crucial when designing thermoacoustically stable combustors as well as determining their operating conditions. As a highlight contribution in this article, for those operating conditions that induce instability, we offer a methodology to synthesize a feedback control law that can recover stability, again utilizing the CTCR paradigm. Example case studies and analytical justifications of these novelties are provided.
Protective Effects of Elaeagnus angustifolia Leaf Extract against Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury in Isolated Rat Heart

The purpose of this study is to clarify the cardioprotective property of the aqueous extract of Elaeagnus angustifolia L. leaf (EA) against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury in isolated rat heart. The myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury model of isolated rat heart was set up by the use of improved Langendorff retrograde perfusion technology. Compared with the ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) group, the aqueous extract of Elaeagnus angustifolia L. leaf (0.5 mg/mL, 1.0 mg/mL) pretreatment markedly improved the coronary flow (CF) and raised left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP) and maximum rise/down velocity (max). The infarct size of the EA-treated hearts was smaller than that of I/R group. After treatment with EA, the superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity increased; malondialdehyde (MDA) and protein carbonyl content reduced more obviously () than that of I/R injury myocardial tissue. Conclusion. Results from the present study showed that the aqueous extract of Elaeagnus angustifolia L. leaf has obvious protective effects on myocardial I/R injury, which may be related to the improvement of myocardial oxidative stress states.
Monitoring the temperature and reverberation delay of the circumnuclear hot dust in NGC 4151

A hot, dusty torus located around the outer edge of the broad-line region of AGNs is a fundamental ingredient in unified AGN models. While the existence of circumnuclear dust around AGNs at pc-scale radii is now widely accepted, questions about the origin, evolution and long-term stability of these dust tori remain unsettled. We used reverberation mapping of the hot circumnuclear dust in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151, to monitor its temperature and reverberation lag as a function of the varying accretion disk brightness. We carried out multiband, multiepoch photometric observations of the nucleus of NGC 4151 in the z,Y, J,H, and K bands for 29 epochs from 2010 January to 2014 June, supported by new near-infrared and optical spectroscopic observations, and archived WISE data. We see no signatures of dust destruction due to sublimation in our data, since they show no increase in the hot dust reverberation delay directly correlated with substantial accretion disk flux increases in the observed period. Instead, we find that the hot dust in NGC 4151 appears to merely heat up, and the hot dust temperature closely tracks the accretion disk luminosity variations. We find indications of a decreased reverberation delay within the observed period from τ = 42.5 ± 4.0 days in 2010 to τ = 29.6 ± 1.7 days in 2013-2014. Such a varying reverberation radius on longer timescales would explain the intrinsic scatter observed in the radius-luminosity relation of dust around AGNs. Our observations rule out that a second, larger dust component within a 100-light-day radius from the source contributes significantly to the observed near-infrared flux in this galaxy.
Improved Expressivity Through Dendritic Neural Networks

A typical biological neuron, such as a pyramidal neuron of the neocortex, receives thousands of afferent synaptic inputs on its dendrite tree and sends the efferent axonal output downstream. In typical artificial neural networks, dendrite trees are modeled as linear structures that funnel weighted synaptic inputs to the cell bodies. However, numerous experimental and theoretical studies have shown that dendritic arbors are far more than simple linear accumulators. That is, synaptic inputs can actively modulate their neighboring synaptic activities; therefore, the dendritic structures are highly nonlinear. In this study, we model such local nonlinearity of dendritic trees with our dendritic neural network (DENN) structure and apply this structure to typical machine learning tasks. Equipped with localized nonlinearities, DENNs can attain greater model expressivity than regular neural networks while maintaining efficient network inference. Such strength is evidenced by the increased fitting power when we train DENNs with supervised machine learning tasks. We also empirically show that the locality structure can improve the generalization performance of DENNs, as exemplified by DENNs outranking naive deep neural network architectures when tested on 121 classification tasks from the UCI machine learning repository.
OF RISER WITH BUOYANCY ELEMENTS : FORCED MOTION TEST AND NUMERICAL PREDICTION

Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR) is an attractive deep water riser concept. When subjected to vortex induced vibrations (VIV), the vortex shedding process of the buoyancy element and the bare riser section will be different due to the difference in diameter. VIV responses can be strongly influenced by the dimension of the buoyancy element and its arrangement. Empirical VIV prediction programs, such as VIVANA, SHEAR7 and VIVA, are widely used by the industry for design against VIV loads. However, there is lack of hydrodynamic data to be used in these programs when buoyancy elements are present. Experiment to obtain hydrodynamic data for riser with staggered buoyancy elements was carried out in the towing tank in SINTEF Ocean. A rigid cylinder section with three staggered buoyancy elements was subjected to harmonic forced cross-flow (CF) motions. Hydrodynamic forces on one of the buoyancy elements were directly measured in addition to the measured forces at both ends of the test section. Two buoyancy element configurations were tested and the corresponding hydrodynamic data are compared with that of a bare cylinder. The obtained hydrodynamic data was also used in VIV prediction software and good prediction against existing flexible cylinder staggered buoyancy element VIV test data was achieved. A roadmap to achieve an optimal SLWR design by combining different experimental and numerical methods is suggested. NOMENCLATURE VIV Vortex induced vibration CF Cross-flow IL In-line Re Reynolds number FFdd Drag force CCdd Drag coefficient CCee Excitation (lift) coefficient CCaa Added mass coefficient AA Displacement amplitude (m) LLrr , LLbb Length of the bare riser, buoyancy element (m) LLcc Spacing between two buoyancy elements (m) DDrr , DDbb Diameter of the bare riser, buoyancy element (m) UU Towing speed (m/s) ffoooocc Oscillation frequency of the test cylinder
A STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ACCEPTANCE IN HALO BCA

Contact Center is a form of Customer Relationship Management, where customers can interact with a company through its single point of contact and serves mainly as a tool for the company to maintain its service to the customers. Contact center is generally operated by many Agents and can accepts thousands of phone calls every day, depending on the company’s scale and customer base. In order to correctly serve the customers, Agents need to understand many knowledge which the company has, and this is the main reason why Agents need to master the company’s Knowledge Management System (KMS). Inability of Agents to interact with the KMS will be a serious problem for the company. In this paper, we studied the acceptance of Halo Info, a form of KMS in one of the biggest banking contact center in Indonesia, called Halo BCA. We used modified TAM version 2, with a total of 11 variables, 31 indicators, and 12 hypotheses. The research instrument was a 31 items questionnaire. We gathered 283 respondent data, and analyzed it using PLS-SEM. The research findings are: Usage Behaviour (UB) is significantly affected by Intention to Use (IU); IU is proven to be greatly affected by Perceived Ease of Use (PEU), Perceived Usefulness (PU), and Subjective Norm (SN); PEU is significantly affected by System Self-Efficacy (SSE) and Interface Usability (IUSB); PU is significantly affected by Job Relevance (JR) and PEU, but is not significantly affected by Output Quality (OQ), Image (I), Result Demonstrability (RD), and SN.
The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education THE EFFECTS OF THE SELF-REGULATED WRITING STRATEGY ON THE WRITING PROCESS OF GENERAL EDUCATION STUDENTS

Students struggle throughout the writing process often due to a lack of planning, organization, focus, and meta-cognitive abilities. Students’ with these difficulties generally produce shorter, choppier, and surface level writing riddled with mechanical errors. The efficacy of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model developed by researchers Graham and Harris on students with learning disabilities has been researched and the results have been positive. However, there has been little research conducted on the effects of SRSD in the general education population. The current study examines the effects of the SRSD model on the writing abilities of five general education students. The study examined success rates from baseline to postassessment on both length and quality of writing. Students were taught to apply a persuasive writing strategy and self-monitor and regulate their use of the strategy. Instruction was delivered whole group in a series of eight-hour sessions.
Modelling soil erosion at European scale: towards harmonization and reproducibility

Abstract. Soil erosion by water is one of the most widespread forms of soil degradation. The loss of soil as a result of erosion can lead to decline in organic matter and nutrient contents, breakdown of soil structure and reduction of the water-holding capacity. Measuring soil loss across the whole landscape is impractical and thus research is needed to improve methods of estimating soil erosion with computational modelling, upon which integrated assessment and mitigation strategies may be based. Despite the efforts, the prediction value of existing models is still limited, especially at regional and continental scale, because a systematic knowledge of local climatological and soil parameters is often unavailable. A new approach for modelling soil erosion at regional scale is here proposed. It is based on the joint use of low-data-demanding models and innovative techniques for better estimating model inputs. The proposed modelling architecture has at its basis the semantic array programming paradigm and a strong effort towards computational reproducibility. An extended version of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) has been implemented merging different empirical rainfall-erosivity equations within a climatic ensemble model and adding a new factor for a better consideration of soil stoniness within the model. Pan-European soil erosion rates by water have been estimated through the use of publicly available data sets and locally reliable empirical relationships. The accuracy of the results is corroborated by a visual plausibility check (63% of a random sample of grid cells are accurate, 83% at least moderately accurate, bootstrap p ≤ 0.05). A comparison with country-level statistics of pre-existing European soil erosion maps is also provided.
Vacuum Condensate Picture of Quantum Gravity

In quantum gravity perturbation theory in Newton’s constant G is known to be badly divergent, and as a result not very useful. Nevertheless, some of the most interesting phenomena in physics are often associated with non-analytic behavior in the coupling constant and the existence of nontrivial quantum condensates. It is therefore possible that pathologies encountered in the case of gravity are more likely the result of inadequate analytical treatment, and not necessarily a reflection of some intrinsic insurmountable problem. The nonperturbative treatment of quantum gravity via the Regge–Wheeler lattice path integral formulation reveals the existence of a new phase involving a nontrivial gravitational vacuum condensate, and a new set of scaling exponents characterizing both the running of G and the long-distance behavior of invariant correlation functions. The appearance of such a gravitational condensate is viewed as analogous to the (equally nonperturbative) gluon and chiral condensates known to describe the physical vacuum of QCD. The resulting quantum theory of gravity is highly constrained, and its physical predictions are found to depend only on one adjustable parameter, a genuinely nonperturbative scale ξ in many ways analogous to the scaling violation parameter Λ M ¯ S of QCD. Recent results point to significant deviations from classical gravity on distance scales approaching the effective infrared cutoff set by the observed cosmological constant. Such subtle quantum effects are expected to be initially small on current cosmological scales, but could become detectable in future high precision satellite experiments.
Twentieth century North Atlantic jet variability

Long records of the latitude and speed of the North Atlantic eddy‐driven jet stream since 1871 are presented from the newly available Twentieth Century Reanalysis. These jet variations underlie the variability associated with patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and have considerable societal impact through variations in the prevailing westerly winds. While the NAO combines variations in the latitude and speed of the jet, these two characteristics are shown to have quite different seasonal cycles and interannual variability, suggesting that they may have different dynamical influences.
16-23S rRNA Spacer Region Polymorphism in Gangetic River Water Isolates of Salmonella

Salmonella is one of the major pathogenic bacteria present in contaminated water. 16-23S rRNA spacer region has been reported to be polymorphic at serovar level in Salmonella. Salmonella isolates obtained from Ganges river water were studied for 16-23S rRNA spacer region polymorphism. Thirty three isolates belonging to eight serovars (S. Typhimurium, S. Abuja, S. Pantypridd, S. Lagos, S. Chinkual, S. Zwickau, S. Goldenberg and S. Oritamerin) were studied for the polymorphism. Out of 33 isolates, 15 different profiles were observed no serovar specific profile. Our findings indicate that 16-23S rRNA spacer region is not specific at serovar level, but can be used for differentiation of different Salmonella isolates.