Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of bulge failure status for power battery packs at high temperatures based on ERT

High temperature easily cause bulge, leakage and other security problems of power battery packs, which become the main bottleneck in new energy vehicles development. This research has investigated bulge failure status for power battery packs at high temperatures based on ERT. Firstly, the measurement principle of internal apparent resistivity of power battery is discussed, and a three-dimensional (3D) flexible sensor device is put forward. Secondly, characteristics of high temperatures and apparent resistivity of aluminum shell LiFePO4 LIB are analyzed through experiments. And apparent resistivity distribution of bulge failure status for power battery packs at high temperatures is determined. Finally, the critical conditions for evaluating the failure status of power battery are analyzed. It is found that the trend of apparent resistivity change gently in saturation zone (90 C~140 C) and collapses in mutation zone (140 C to 160 C) abruptly. Meanwhile, the failure process of aluminum shell LiFePO4 LIB is instantaneous and prone to bulging. The critical conditions bulge failure status for power battery at high temperatures are determined, namely failure transition ranges from 140 C to 150 C, battery bulge begins from 140 C, the complete failure occurs at 150 C.
University Student Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to gain an empirical understanding of students' overall satisfaction with their academic university experiences. A hierarchal model is used as a framework for this analysis. Fifteen hypotheses are formulated and tested, in order to identify the dimensions of service quality as perceived by university students, to examine students' overall satisfaction with influential factors such as tuition fees (price) and university image, and to determine the impact of students' overall satisfaction on favourable future behavioural intentions. Students' perceptions of these constructs are compared using demographic factors such as gender, age, and ethnicity. Statistical support is found for the use of a hierarchical model, three primary dimensions, and ten sub-dimensions. In addition, the results support a relationship between service quality and price; service quality, image, and satisfaction; and satisfaction and favourable future behavioual intentions. However, there is no statistical support for a relationship between price and satisfaction. The results also suggest that students' perceptions of the constructs are primarily influenced by their ethnicity and year of study. The results of this analysis contribute to the service marketing theory by providing empirically–based insight into satisfaction and service quality constructs in the higher education sector. This study will assist higher education management developing and implementing a market-oriented service strategy, in order to achieve a high quality of service, enhance students' level of satisfaction and create favourable future behavioural intentions. 1
I/Q mismatch compensation using adaptive decorrelation in a low-IF receiver in 90-nm CMOS process

We present a single multiplier based adaptive I/Q mismatch compensation circuit for narrowband quadrature receivers. Adaptive decorrelation between I and Q channel data is used for correcting gain and phase mismatches. Adaptation step size is computed from L/sub 1/-norm inverse power measurement and a gear-shifting mechanism is used that allows fast initial convergence and slow adaptation on actual burst data. Image rejection ratio in excess of 50 dB is reported for GSM receiver after compensation allowing the receiver to use IF frequencies higher than half of the channel bandwidth. The presented mismatch compensation circuit is implemented as part of a single-chip GSM wireless transceiver fabricated in a 90-nm digital CMOS process. The presented techniques are, however, equally applicable to other narrowband packet-based applications.
Relation Between the Longitudinal Development of Personality Characteristics and Biological and Lifestyle Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease

Objective This study was undertaken to assess the stability of personality characteristics (ie, inadequacy, rigidity, dominance, self-sufficiency, and social inadequacy) over a 15-year period covering adolescence and young adulthood and to analyze the longitudinal relationships between personality characteristics and both biological (ie, lipoproteins, blood pressure, and body fatness) and lifestyle (ie, physical activity, dietary intake, smoking, and alcohol consumption) risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods The data were derived from the Amsterdam Growth and Health Study, an observational longitudinal study in which, over a period from 13 to 27 years of age, six repeated measurements were performed on 181 subjects. Both the stability analysis and the analysis of the longitudinal relationships were performed by generalized estimating equations (GEE). This method is suitable for both continuous and dichotomous outcome variables, by using all available longitudinal data. Results Stability coefficients for the personality characteristics varied between 0.39 for self-sufficiency and dominance and 0.53 for social inadequacy. Self-sufficiency was inversely related to total serum cholesterol (only male subjects) and body fatness; inadequacy was inversely related to systolic blood pressure. Dominance (female subjects) was positively related to body fatness and social inadequacy (male subjects) was positively related to total serum cholesterol. Furthermore, inadequacy was positively related to smoking behavior. Social inadequacy and rigidity were inversely related to smoking behavior. Self-sufficiency was inversely related to alcohol consumption. Conclusions Over a period of 15 years, personality characteristics showed marginal stability. Weak relationships were found between personality characteristics and both biological and lifestyle CHD risk factors.
Amnesia Following Damage to the Mammillary Bodies

It is not known whether lesions of the mammillary body per se can produce significant memory impairment in humans.The amnesia reported in patients with lesions in the mammillary bodies may have been produced by lesions coexisting in other memory-related areas, such as the medial thalamus, mammillothalamic tract, descending columns of the fornix, or amygdalofugal pathways. We describe a patient who developed anterograde amnesia following damage to the basal hypothalamus involving the mammillary bodies. The cause was a cystic craniopharyngioma. After surgical removal of the tumor, his memory function improved but remained considerably impaired, especially on delayed recall. Postsurgical MRI revealed small, atrophic mammillary bodies without residual tumor. There was no obvious evidence of damage to the hypothalamus. We therefore conclude that our patient's amnesia resulted from mammillary body lesions alone. NEUROLOGY 1997;48: 160-165
Reperfusion injury of the periosteal microcirculation

relating to the subject of the thesis Varga R, Gera L, Kaszaki J, Szabó A, Ghyczy M, Boros M. Phosphatidylcholine treatment improves the periosteal microcirculation following hindlimb ischemia and reperfusion. European Surgical Research 36 (S1):14. 2004.
A Theory of Generalized Inverses Applied to Robotics

Robokcs research has made extensive use of techniques based on me Moore-Penrose inverse, or generalized inverse, of matri als. Recently it has been pointed out how noninvariant results may, in general, be obtained by applying these techniques to other areas of robotics, namely hybrid control and inverse ve locity kinematics. Unfortunately, the problems are not restricted to just these particular areas in robotics but are connected with misleading definitions of the metric properties of the six- dimensional wrench and twist vector spaces used in robotics. The current definitions lead to inconsistent results (i.e., results that are not invariant with respect to changes in the reference frame andlor changes in the dimensional units used to express the problem. As a matter of fact, given a linear system u = Ax, where the matrix A may be singular, the Moore-Penrose theory of generalized inverses may be properly and directly applied only when the vector space U of vector u and the vector space X of vector x are inner product spaces. Arbitrary assignment of Euclidean inner products to the space U and X when the vectors u and x have elements with different physical units can lead to inconsistent and noninvariant results. In this article the problem of inconsistent, noninvariant solutions X s to u = Ax in robotics is briefly reviewed and a general theory for com puting consistent, gauge-invariant solutions to nonhomogeneous systems of the form u = Ax is developed. In addition, the dual relationship between rigid-body kinematics and statics is de fined formally as a particular, linear algebraic system whose solution system is also a dual system. Examples illustrate the theory.
Central Banks as Lenders of Last Resort: Experiences During the 2007-10 Crisis and Lessons for the Future

During the 2007-2010 financial crisis, central banks accumulated a vast amount of experience in acting as lender of last resort. This paper reviews the various ways that central banks provided emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) during the crisis, and discusses issues for the design of ELA arising from that experience. In a number of ways, the emergency liquidity assistance since 2007 has largely adhered to Bagehot's dictums of lending freely against good collateral to solvent institutions at a penalty rate. But there were many exceptions to these rules. Those exceptions illuminate the situations where the lender of last resort role of central banks is most difficult. They also highlight key challenges in designing lender of last resort policies going forward.
Customer Acquisition and Retention Spending: An Analytical Model and Empirical Investigation in Wireless Telecommunications Markets

Strategic resource allocation in growth markets is always a challenging task. This is especially true when it comes to determining the level of investments and expenditures for customer acquisition and retention in competitive and dynamic market environments. This study develops an analytical model to examine firms’ investments in customer acquisition and retention for a new service; it develops hypotheses drawing on analytical findings and tests them with firm-level operating data of wireless telecommunications markets from 41 countries during 1999–2007. The empirical investigation shows that a firm's acquisition cost per customer is more sensitive to market position and competition than retention cost per customer. Furthermore, whereas firms leading in market share, on average, do not have a cost advantage over other firms in retaining customers, they have a substantial cost advantage in acquiring customers, and this advantage tends to increase with market penetration. The study results provide guidelines for firms’ strategic resource allocation for customer acquisition and retention in competitive service markets.
Tax Aggressiveness and Auditor Resignation

We examine the relation between client tax aggressiveness and auditor’s resignation decision. Consistent with the agency view of tax avoidance which suggests that client tax aggressiveness can increase litigation and reputational risk to auditors and increase the potential conflict with managers, we find a positive association between our proxies for tax aggressiveness and the likelihood that an auditor resigns from an audit engagement. Further, this association is stronger when external monitoring of the client firm is less effective, when there is greater potential for agency problems in the client firm, and when the economic importance of the fees received from the client firm is lower. Overall, our study identifies client tax risk as an important determinant of auditors’ resignation. This result should be of interest to auditors who actively manage client audit risks and to tax authorities who have incentives to identify firms with abusive tax reporting behavior.
Market Segmentation and Investor Sentiments: Examining Chinese A- and B-Shares

In this paper, we examine Chinese firms that issue both A- and B-shares in mainland China (SHSE and SZSE), which offers us a precious opportunity to study the influence of investor sentiments, holding other factors constant, on the twin stocks. We find B-share returns to commove with foreign market significantly before domestic investors enter the market and non-significantly after their entry. Thus, investor sentiments are found to be priced. Our findings are supported by evidences at both firm level and market level.
COMPARING THE SUCCESS OF NATIVE AND IMMIGRANT JOB SEARCH IN THE UK

A major issue in the immigration debate concerns whether immigrants take jobs away from natives. In this paper, we present new evidence on the job search methods used by immigrants, and the success of immigrants relative to natives in gaining employment through the different job search methods, in the UK context. Our main findings are (1) that immigrant job search is less successful than that of natives using all job search methods, (2) that immigrants are at least as likely to gain employment through informal job search methods as via verifiable routes and (3) that the probability of successful job search increases with years since migration. Our findings imply that immigrants may not effectively compete for jobs with natives, which may help to explain why immigration has been found to have little impact on native employment in the UK.
Consumer willingness to pay for locally grown products: the case of South Carolina

A contingent valuation framework is used to evaluate South Carolina consumers' willingness to pay for the “locally grown” characteristic (defined here as South Carolina grown) in produce and animal products and to identify the sociodemographic characteristics affecting consumer preferences for this characteristic. Findings show that South Carolina consumers are willing to pay an average premium of 27% for local produce and 23% for local animal products. Premiums for local products are influenced by age, gender, and income as well as by perceived product quality, a desire to support the local economy, patronage of farmers markets, and consumer ties to agriculture. lJEL Categories: D12, Q13r. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The impact of modes of entry and resource fit on modes of exit by multibusiness firms

This study examines the choices of modes of entry and exit in the process of new business exploration. We find that exit mode choices are determined by a different set of factors from those that are important for the entry mode decision and the exit decision per se. Our study indicates that when the resource profiles of a parent firm and the business unit are more dissimilar, and there has been less development of firm‐specific idiosyncratic assets, firms are more likely to sell businesses than dissolve them. Further, the study reports a strong relationship between the mode of exit from a line of business (sell‐off vs. dissolution) and the original mode of entry (acquisition versus internal development). Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
HINDLIMB DEFORMITIES (ECTROMELIA, ECTRODACTYLY) IN FREE-LIVING ANURANS FROM AGRICULTURAL HABITATS

High prevalences of hindlimb deformities were recorded in wild-caught green frogs (Rana clamitans), northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens), American toads (Bufo americanus), and bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) from agricultural sites exposed to pesticide runoff in the St. Lawrence River Valley of Québec, Canada, between July and September 1992 and 1993. Of 853 metamorphosing anurans examined in 14 farmland habitats, 106 (12%; range 0 to 69%) had severe degrees of ectromelia and ectrodactyly, compared to only two (0.7%; range 0 to 7.7%) of 271 in 12 control sites. However, the variation in the proportion of deformities among sites was too large to conclude that there was a significant difference between control and pesticide-exposed habitats. Clinical signs varied and were characterized by segmental hypoplasia or agenesis of affected limbs. Conspicuous abnormalities interfered with swimming and hopping, and likely constituted a survival handicap. Because of circumstances and the frequency of these malformations in nine distinct habitats, and in three different species from one of our study sites, we propose a teratogenic action of exogenous factors. Despite the fact that many biotic and abiotic agents are potentially harmful to limb development, agricultural contaminants were suspected as primary aggressors. Thus, clinical examination and frequency of deformities in anurans might be an economical screening tool to assess ecosystem health and the presence of environmental contaminants.
Optic nerve fibre counts and retinal ganglion cell counts during development of Xenopus laevis (Daudin).

An account is given of the development of the optic nerve in Xenopus laevis (Daudin). The stages studied were 35, 38, 46, 52, 58, immediately post-metamorphosis (66), the juvenile of six months from metamorphosis and the adult. Fibre counts were made from complete electron micrograph montages for all the stages investigated including the adult. Corresponding ganglion cell counts were made from sections prepared by light microscopic histology from stage 46 upwards. The large increase found in the ganglion cell population during development was also found in the optic nerve fibre counts. There was an approximate 1 : 1 relationship between the optic nerve fibres and the retinal ganglion cells. The number of fibres increased from less than 1,000 (stage 35) to 59,000 (six-month-old juvenile). The older adult animal possessed fewer unmyelinated fibres than the six month old juvenile, but twice as many myelinated fibres, so producing a smaller total number. It seems that the process of myelination continues well into adult life.
[Tear film function of patients with type 2 diabetes].

OBJECTIVE To study the tear film function of patients with type 2 diabetes and to investigate the risk factors of dry eye in these patients. METHODS Totally 111 patients with type 2 diabetes and 100 age- and sex-matched control subjects were studied. Tear film function was evaluated by dry eye syndrome, tear breaking up time (BUT), corneal fluorescein staining, Schirmer I test (SIt), and tear film lipid layer observation with tear scope. Dye eye score was calculated with the results of these tests. RESULTS When compared with the controls, patients with type 2 diabetes showed higher dry eye score (diabetics 3.28 +/- 1.56, control 2.31 +/- 1.50, P < 0.01) and faster BUT [diabetics (6.50 +/- 4.84) s, control (12.26 +/- 7.16) s, P < 0.01], but similar SIt [diabetics (10.61 +/- 6.86) s, control (10.92 +/- 7.05) s, P > 0.05]. More diabetic patients were diagnosed as dry eye(diabetics 19.8%, control 8.0%, P < 0.05). According to their retinopathy, the diabetic patients were divided into three groups: without diabetic retinopathy (DR), with background DR, and with proliferative DR. For these three groups, the dry eye scores were 2.95 +/- 1.50, 3.38 +/- 1.48 and 4.11 +/- 1.60, respectively (P < 0.01); the SIt were (10.95 +/- 6.89) mm, (11.71 +/- 7.30) mm and (7.63 +/- 5.20) mm, respectively (P > 0.05); the BUT were (7.53 +/- 5.23) s, (5.88 +/- 4.10) s and (4.47 +/- 4.17) s (P < 0.05). Patients with DR were then devided into two groups: with photocoagulation and without photocoagulation. For these two groups, the dry eye scores were 4.71 +/- 1.14 and 3.26 +/- 1.15, respectively (P < 0.01); the BUT were (2.93 +/- 2.06) s and (6.26 +/- 4.36) s, respectively (P < 0.01); the SIt were (7.21 +/- 6.51) mm and (11.33 +/- 6.73) mm, respectively (P < 0.05); the rates of corneal fluorescein staining were 50.0% and 17.9%, respectively (P < 0.05). Dry eye score had a good correlation with diabetic retinopathy and photocoagulation (P < 0.01), but was poorly correlaed with age, gender, insulin, duration of diabetes mellitus, and metabolic control (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Patients with type 2 diabetes tend to develop tear film dysfunction. The disorders of tear film quantity and quality seem relevant to the stage of diabetic retinopathy and photocoagulation.
Benchmarking performance indicators for banks

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to construct a performance evaluation of banks with the stock market taken into consideration.Design/methodology/approach – Grey relation analysis (GRA), a concept borrowed from the study of industry and increasingly applied to commerce, is used to evaluate the relative performance of three major banks in Australia. The purpose of using GRA is to reduce the number of financial indicators by selecting representative indicators from financial statement analysis.Findings – Benchmarking performance indicators are essentially finding the representative indicator from the existing ratios most commonly used in financial analysis to assess business operational performance. The paper compares the GRA results from the financial statement analyses and shows the same result can be obtained.Research limitations/implications – This paper conducted a review of literature and five‐power analysis to aggregate financial ratios appropriate for the analysis. This method may result in incomp.
Perfluoroalkyl compounds in relation to life‐history and reproductive parameters in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from Sarasota Bay, Florida, USA

Perfluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs) were determined in plasma, milk, and urine of free‐ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from Sarasota Bay (FL, USA) during three winter and two summer capture‐and‐release programs (2002‐2005). Plasma and urine samples were extracted using an ion‐pairing method. Perfluoroalkyl compounds were extracted from milk samples using acetonitrile, and extracts were cleaned with graphitized nonporous carbon. All extracts were analyzed by high‐performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Mean seasonal sum of PFCs (ΣPFCs) detected in dolphin plasma ranged from 530 to 927 ng/g wet weight. No significant differences (p > 0.05) were found in concentrations between seasons, suggesting a constant exposure to PFCs. Overall, blubber thickness of dolphins did not correlate with PFC concentrations in plasma, suggesting an absence of PFC sequestration in blubber. Sexually immature calves (age, <10 years; mean ΣPFCs, 1,410 ± 780 ng/g wet wt) were significantly more contaminated (p < 0.001) than their mothers (mean ΣPFCs, 366 ± 351 ng/g wet wt). The reproductive history of females had a significant role in the burden of PFC contamination; PFC concentrations in nulliparous females (females that have not been observed with calves) were significantly greater than those detected in uniparous females (females that have been observed with one calf), suggesting an off‐loading of PFCs during or after parturition. To investigate this hypothesis, PFCs were analyzed in milk samples (n = 10; mean ΣPFCs, 134 ± 76.1 ng/g wet wt), confirming a maternal transfer of PFCs through lactation in dolphins. Results from the present study showed that young and developing bottlenose dolphins are highly exposed to PFCs. These chemicals also were detected in urine (mean ΣPFCs, 26.6 ± 79 ng/g wet wt), indicating that the urinary system is an important pathway of PFC depuration in dolphins.