Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dependency analysis in constraint negotiation

Problems in engineering design are constraint-oriented and often involve multiple perspectives. Designers must consider not only functional requirements of a product but also its life-cycle perspectives. Each perspective has its own set of constraints which may contain conflicting or unsatisfied requirements. A human designer can not be aware of all constraints and design alternatives all the time. The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to assist designers in negotiation of constraints. A network model is proposed to represent relationships among design variables. An algorithm is developed to derive dependencies between design variables and goals. Based on the dependencies obtained, design modifications are generated for resolving conflicts. In the second part of the paper, a fuzzy-logic-based approach is used to model imprecise dependencies between variables in the case when no sufficient quantitative information is available. The approach proposed can be used to increase the amount of information provided to the designers for making decisions. >
Perceived Benefits and Barriers Associated with the Female Condom among African-American Adults

This study examined perceived benefits and barriers associated with intentions to use the female condom among a sample of 143 African-American adults in Milwaukee, USA. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire. Aesthetics and contraceptive efficacy predicted women's intentions to use the female condom with a main sex partner. For men, intentions to use the device with a main partner were predicted by beliefs that the female condom is affordable, would prevent STDs, that their partner would not be angry about female condom use, and knowing how to use the device. Interventions to promote this device need to be tailored differently for men and women.
The political future of ASEAN after the Asian crisis

The 1997 Asian financial crisis has been a debilitating experience for the ASEAN countries, with attendant political transformation and economic readjustment. Regional unity has also been affected: ASEAN appears to lack resolve and cohesion as well as the ability to forge common action. While political change has been effected and more open systems are in place, ASEAN countries now seem set to bounce back with renewed vigour and a business-as-usual approach to their economies. However, ASEAN’s revitalization into the next century will significantly depend on the region's most important polity, Indonesia, the country most affected by the crisis and now undergoing substantive change.
Predictors of quality of life of hemodialysis patients in India

Little is known about the quality of life and survival in the patients on maintenance hemodialysis (HD) in India. Poor nutrition and dialysis noncompliance is common. This study investigates the factors that affect the quality of life (QoL) in HD patients in India. This cross-sectional study included 78 patients on HD for ≥ two months. Demographic, nutritional, functional subjective global assessment and Kidney Disease Quality of Life (KDQOL-36) assessments were done. Predictors of QoL were assessed by regression analysis. The mean calorie and protein intake were 1245 ± 116.9 kcal and 0.86 ± 0.19 g/kg/day respectively. Male gender (OR = 9.68), serum parathyroid hormone PTH <150 pg/ml (OR = 0.03), age ≤65 years (OR = 1.25), no catheter use (OR = 1.9) and hospitalizations (OR = 0.11), were independent predictors of total score ≥50. Independent predictors of physical component summary (PCS) >25 were male gender (OR = 5.06) and urine output at start of dialysis (OR = 1.05). Independent predictors of mental component summary (MCS) ≥25 were male gender (OR = 11.02), serum PTH > 150 pg/ml (OR = 0.15), daily protein intake of >0.8 g/kg and caloric intake >20 K.cal/kg (OR = 10.8). Patients with urine output >1 liter per day had more hypotensive episodes during dialysis (r = 0.56, P = 0.045), more headaches (r = 0.63, P = 0.006) but that did not affect the PCS significantly. Low PTH (<150 pg/ml) (OR = 1.29), multiple access failures (OR = 3.36) and total score ≤50 (OR = 0.09) were independently associated with increased hospitalization. Males, patients with serum PTH >150 pg/ml and those not on catheter had better total score. Though patients with higher urine output had better PCS, those with output >1 liter had higher incidence of hypotension and dialysis-related headache. Protein-energy malnutrition affected the MCS significantly. Dialysis noncompliance seen in one-fourth of the population did not affect the scores significantly.
Education, Industry, Trade and Development in Asia-Pacific Countries in 1980-99

We compare the economic development of Asia-Pacific countries in the 20th century with world average, and analyse the evolution of education, fertility, population and economic growth in Asia-Pacific countries at the end of the 20th century, showing that, after centuries of slow economic development, many Asian countries have experienced an important take-off during the last two decades of that century, mainly thanks to the increase in the educational level of population and industrialization. It is important to remark the positive role of education in economic development as it contributes to moderate population growth, industrial investment per inhabitant and real income per inhabitant.
Geographic Opportunity and Neomalthusian Willingness: Boundaries, Shared Rivers, and Conflict

International conflict has been analyzed extensively through the framework of opportunity and willingness. Opportunity has mainly been operationalized as physical proximity. Willingness has been measured in a number of ways, and remains a somewhat more elusive concept. Several scholars have called for boundary length to represent opportunity. Heeding such calls, Harvey Starr has used GIS methods to generate boundary length for 1993 and has found it to be associated with increased propensity to conflict. A number of his measures of willingness were not. Using a new and much more extensive dataset on boundary length for the entire Correlates of War period, this article finds very different results. We study the relationship with shared rivers and water scarcity as measures of neomalthusian factors in willingness over a 110-year period. The results indicate that the neomalthusian factors are significant although not dramatic in their effects. Boundary length, while associated with conflict in a bivariate analysis, fades into insignificance when the neomalthusian willingness measures are introduced. Work on this article was supported by the Research Council of Norway and started when Kathryn Furlong was a research assistant at PRIO on an internship funded by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. We are grateful to several PRIO colleagues – Naima Mouhleb, Håvard Strand, and Lars Wilhelmsen in particular – for help at various stages of the process. A presentation of the new boundary data used in this article is found in Furlong and Gleditsch (2003), where we record our gratitude to all of those who helped in generating that dataset. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 44th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Portland, OR 25 February–1 March 2003 and at the Joint Sessions of Workshops, European Consortium for Political Research, Edinburgh, March 28–April 2, 2003. We are grateful to participants at both meetings for comments. The replication data to this article can be found on http://www.prio. no/cscw/datasets. We also acknowledge the very useful comments of Harvey Starr and an anonymous referee for this journal.
A model of e-commerce adoption (MOCA): consumer's perceptions and behaviours

ABSTRACT The paper analyses factors that usually influence the adoption of online commerce, focusing in particular on how social influence acts in this process considering in particular an Italian sample. It investigates about the actual transaction behaviour, and not just the intention to shop online. Starting from analysing technology acceptance models of literature, the paper proposes and empirically validates a new model for e-commerce adoption. A self-administered survey approach was used to collect data from a sample of different ages, genders and educational levels by using a structured questionnaire. Empirical data were analysed using correlation and regression analysis. Results showed that social influence, usability and perceived usefulness are predictors of the frequency of use and then, of e-commerce adoption. The paper gives both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the e-commerce literature by designing and testing a model for predicting online consumers’ behaviour and enhancing the e-commerce adoption understanding.
How great leaders avoid disaster: the value of contingency planning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss how leaders can benefit from better contingency planning.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a viewpoint from an acclaimed organizational advisor and specialist in strategic planning.Findings – The paper gives examples of good and bad contingency planning, and offers advice on how to put together a plan.Practical implications – This paper will help managers develop and implement better strategic contingency plans.Originality/value – This paper will be very useful for practitioners wanting to learn about contingency planning, or considering whether to write a plan or not. It gives clear step‐by‐step instructions, and uses well‐known examples from practice.
Modeling Credit Contagion via the Updating of Fragile Beliefs

We propose an equilibrium model for defaultable bonds that are subject to contagion risk. Contagion arises because agents with "fragile beliefs" are uncertain about the underlying economic state and its probability. Estimation on sovereign European credit default swaps (CDS) data shows that agents require a time-varying risk premium for bearing state uncertainty. The model outperforms affine specifications with the same number of state variables, suggesting that there are important nonlinearities in credit spreads that are captured by our model. Contagion drives most of the variation in CDS spreads, especially before the crisis. However, economic fundamentals account for a significant fraction during the crisis.
Two classes of fatty acid acylated proteins exist in eukaryotic cells.

Labelling of cultured cells with [3H]palmitic and [3H]myristic acids demonstrates that each of these fatty acids modifies a substantially different subset of cellular proteins. Hydroxylamine treatment can be used to differentiate sensitive thioester linkages to palmitate from insensitive amide linkages to myristate. Several palmitoylated proteins are surface‐oriented glycoproteins while all of the myristylated proteins appear to be internal. Myristate addition is much more tightly coupled to protein synthesis than palmitoylation, which is able to continue at a reduced level even in the prolonged absence of protein synthesis. Acyl proteins patterns were affected both qualitatively and quantitatively by transformation and growth status. The preferential addition of palmitate to the transferrin receptor and myristate to pp60src, and the absence of these modifications from several other proteins is reported. We propose a nomenclature for fatty acyl proteins based on these observations.
Improvement of dewatering characteristics by co-digestion of rice straw with sewage sludge

ABSTRACT A continuous mesophilic co-digestion of sewage sludge and softened rice straw was conducted and the dewatering characteristics of digested sludge were evaluated by a dewatering experiment using a belt press. The digestion was operated with solid retention time (SRT) of 25 days, and the feeding ratio of sludge to rice straw was 1:0.5 (total solids base). After 129 days of stable operation, the properties of digested sludge were analysed; then five kinds of cationic coagulants were tested to select the optimal coagulants for dewatering, and two coagulants were selected and used in the dewatering experiment because of lower doses and lower moisture of sludge cakes. Sludge property analysis showed that by the addition of rice straw, the fibrous materials in the digested sludge increased remarkably and the normalized capillary suction time (CST) decreased significantly, indicating that the dewatering properties was improved. The results of dewatering experiment showed that by the addition of rice straw, specific filtration rate of digested sludge increased by 81.2% and 174.6%, respectively; water content of dewatered sludge cakes decreased by 8.2% and 13.4%, respectively. The dewaterability of digested sludge was suggested to be improved due to rice straw addition.
How Does Cognitive Bias Modification Affect Anxiety? Mediation Analyses and Experimental Data

Background: There is overwhelming evidence that anxiety is associated with the tendency to interpret information negatively. The causal relationship between this interpretive bias and anxiety has been examined by modifying interpretive bias and examining effects on anxiety. A crucial assumption is that the effect of the procedure on anxiety is mediated by change in interpretive bias rather than being a direct effect of the procedure. Surprisingly, this had not previously been tested. Aim: The aim is to test whether altered interpretive bias, following Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I), affected anxiety. Method: Mediational path analyses were conducted to test the hypothesis that changes in anxiety are due to changes in interpretive bias. A separate experiment was conducted to test which elements of the procedure could be responsible for a direct mood effect. Results: Results from mediation analyses suggested that changes in trait anxiety, after performing CBM-I, were indeed caused by an altered interpretive bias, whilst changes in state anxiety appear to be caused by the procedure itself. The subsequent experiment showed that state anxiety effects could be due to exposure to valenced materials. Conclusions: Changed state anxiety observed after CBM-I is not a valid indicator of a causal relationship. The finding that CBM-I affected interpretive bias, which in turn affected trait anxiety, supports the assumption of a causal relationship between interpretive bias and trait anxiety. This is promising in light of possible clinical implications.
Chemotherapy followed by modified donor lymphocyte infusion as a treatment for relapsed acute leukemia after haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation without in vitro T‐cell depletion: superior outcomes compared with chemotherapy alone and an analysis of prognostic factors

We retrospectively compared the antileukemic effects of chemotherapy alone and chemotherapy followed by modified donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) in 82 patients with relapsed acute leukemia after haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) without in vitro T‐cell depletion. We also investigated prognostic factors in patients receiving chemotherapy followed by modified DLI. Thirty‐two patients received chemotherapy alone, and the remaining 50 patients received chemotherapy followed by modified DLI. In patients receiving chemotherapy followed by modified DLI, complete remission rate was significantly higher (64.0% vs. 12.5%, P = 0.000), the incidence of relapse was significantly lower (50.0% vs. 100.0%, P = 0.000), and disease‐free survival was significantly improved (36.0% vs. 0.0%, P = 0.000) compared with patients receiving chemotherapy alone. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that patients with chronic graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD) after intervention (P = 0.000) and patients receiving chemotherapy followed by modified DLI (P = 0.037) were associated with a lower relapse rate. Furthermore, in patients receiving chemotherapy followed by modified DLI, multivariate analysis demonstrated that chronic GVHD after modified DLI (P = 0.039) and duration of minimal residual disease (MRD) (−) ≥4 months after modified DLI (P = 0.001) were associated with a lower relapse rate. Our study is the first to suggest that chemotherapy followed by modified DLI is associated with stronger antileukemic effects and better survival in relapsed acute leukemia after haploidentical HSCT without in vitro T‐cell depletion. Furthermore, our study suggests that lack of chronic GVHD and duration of MRD (−) <4 months after modified DLI are associated with higher relapse rates in patients receiving chemotherapy followed by modified DLI.
BENCHMARKING AS A MIXED METAPHOR: DISENTANGLING ASSUMPTIONS OF COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION*

Examination of the management literature on benchmarking reveals that the concept conveys a mixed metaphor. While collaboration among benchmarking partners is advocated, description of benchmarking practice is dominated by principles and language that convey notions of competition. The ‘competitive’ approach to benchmarking is due to four narrow, constricting assumptions: (1) that the motivation behind benchmarking is to improve and reduce a performance gap relative to some superior comparison other, (2) that benchmarking is a formal, organizationally sanctioned means of competing with others, including partners, (3) that benchmarking involves comparison through measurement or marking, and (4) that benchmarking is an activity initiated (and assessable) by one party. Two opposing concepts of benchmarking (as competition) and benchmarking (as collaboration) are introduced to develop a model for predicting the degree of competition and/or collaboration involved in relationships between benchmarking parties. Key factors within this model include context, activities, partnership and outcomes.
Site-Specific Crop Management: Adoption Patterns and Incentives

This article examines the current level and likely trends in adoption of a variety of technologies for site-specific crop management in four north-central states. It also explores the extent to which farmers are jointly adopting multiple components. Technology adoption theories are applied to rationalize the observed selectivity in adoption. Farmer responses reveal that uncertainty in returns due to adoption, high costs of adoption, and lack of demonstrated effects of the advanced site-specific technologies on yields and input-use are some of the major reasons for current low rates of adoption and for the piecemeal approach to site-specific crop management.
Imaging of intrarenal haemodynamics and oxygen metabolism

The interruption of blood flow results in impaired oxygenation and metabolism. This can lead to electrophysiological changes, functional impairment and symptoms in quick succession. Quantitative measures of organ perfusion, perfusion reserve and tissue oxygenation are crucial to assess normal tissue metabolism and function. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a number of quantitative methods to assess physiology in the kidney. Blood oxygenation level‐dependent (BOLD) MRI provides a method for the assessment of oxygenation. Blood flow to the kidney can be assessed using phase contrast MRI. Dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI and arterial spin labelling (ASL) provide methods to assess tissue perfusion, ASL using the magnetization of endogenous water protons and thus providing a non‐invasive method to assess perfusion. The application of diffusion‐weighted MRI allows molecular motion in the kidney to be measured. Novel techniques can also be used to assess oxygenation in the renal arteries and veins and, combined with flow measures, provide an estimation of oxygen metabolism. Magnetic resonance imaging provides a synergy of non‐invasive techniques to study renal function and the demand for these techniques is likely to be driven by the incentive to avoid the use of contrast media, to avoid radiation and to avoid complications with intervention procedures.
Developing a Valid and Reliable Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES) among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: Iranian Version

Introduction: This study aimed to develop valid and reliable scale with the intention of measure Coping Self-efficacy (CSES) of Iranian type 2 diabetic patients. Patients and Methods: Validity and reliability of Iranian version of Coping Self-efficacy Scale (CSES) were measured by a cross-sectional study. Content validity, reliability and cultural equivalency were appraised through qualitative and quantitative study on 260 participants who have type 2 diabetes. Results: Reliability and validity of the scale and its four subscales, such as “stop unpleasant emotions and thoughts” (a = 0.92) “used problem-focused coping” (a = 0.71), Self-efficacy on diabetes problem solving (a = 0.74) and “get support from friends and family” (a = 0.67) were approved explicitly by a psychometric analysis; these show that the scale was slightly valid and reliable on the study setting. An intraclass correlation coefficient was satisfactory (p < 0.001). Criterion validity between total scale and metabolic control Index (HbA1c) of type 2 diabetic patients was significant (p < 0.001) and showed indirect correlation with the domains of the scale. Conclusion: Study findings supported the reliability and validity of the Iranian version of new Coping Self-efficacy-24 for measuring Coping Selfefficacy among Iranian type 2 diabetic patients. Based on our finding, we would like to recommend appropriate interventions in the future.
Overexpression and Hypomethylation of Flap Endonuclease 1 Gene in Breast and Other Cancers

Flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1) is a structure-specific nuclease best known for its critical roles in Okazaki fragment maturation, DNA repair, and apoptosis-induced DNA fragmentation. Functional deficiencies in FEN1, in the forms of somatic mutations and polymorphisms, have recently been shown to lead to autoimmunity, chronic inflammation, and predisposition to and progression of cancer. To explore how FEN1 contributes to cancer progression, we examined FEN1 expression using 241 matched pairs of cancer and corresponding normal tissues on a gene expression profiling array and validated differential expression by quantitative real-time PCR and immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, we defined the minimum promoter of human FEN1 and examined the methylation statuses of the 5′ region of the gene in paired breast cancer tissues. We show that FEN1 is significantly up-regulated in multiple cancers and the aberrant expression of FEN1 is associated with hypomethylation of the CpG island within the FEN1 promoter in tumor cells. The overexpression and promoter hypomethylation of FEN1 may serve as biomarkers for monitoring the progression of cancers. (Mol Cancer Res 2008;6(11):1710–7)