Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Web Content Accessibility Levels in Spanish Official Online Education Environments

Diversity-based designing, or the goal of ensuring that web-based information is accessible to as many diverse users as possible, has received growing international acceptance in recent years, with many countries introducing legislation to enforce it. This paper analyses web content accessibility levels in Spanish education portals according to the international guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Additionally, it suggests the calculation of an inaccessibility rate as a tool for measuring the degree of non-compliance with WAI Guidelines 2.0 as well as illustrating the significant gap that separates people with disabilities from digital education environments (with a 7.77% average). A total of twenty-one educational web portals with two different web depth levels (42 sampling units) were assessed for this purpose using the automated analysis tool Web Accessibility Test 2.0 (TAW, for its initials in Spanish). The present study reveals a general trend towards non-compliance with the technical accessibility recommendations issued by the W3C-WAI group (97.62% of the websites examined present mistakes in Level A conformance). Furthermore, despite the increasingly high number of legal and regulatory measures about accessibility, their practical application still remains unsatisfactory. A greater level of involvement must be assumed in order to raise awareness and enhance training efforts towards accessibility in the context of collective Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), since this represents not only a necessity but also an ethical, social, political and legal commitment to be assumed by society.
[Helicobacter pylori infection and its correlation with gastrointestinal symptoms and outcome of pregnancy].

OBJECTIVE The present study intended to investigate whether there was a relationship between pregnant women with dyspeptic complaints and with and without Helicobacter pylori infection in the first and second trimester of pregnancy. METHODS H.pylori seropositivity was determined in 146 (aged 20 to 40 years) antenatal patients at 10 to 23 weeks gestation. H.Pylori ser um Immunoglobulin IgG antibody concentrations were determined by enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay (ELISA). Age, obesity, parity, outcome of pregnancy and dyspeptic symptoms were registered in the patients' medical records. Chi-square and Student's t-test were used for statistical analysis of the data. RESULTS Prevalence of H.pylori infection in the population studied was 65.7% (96 of 146). H pylori infection was not associated with parity, preterm delivery, obesity or with dyspeptic symptoms. Women positive for H.pylori IgG were older (30, 45 +/- 6.87 vs 27, 96 +/- 7.44, p= 0.045565*) than H. pylori negative patients. CONCLUSION In this study there was no association of H pylori infection with dyspeptic symptoms in pregnancy, nor was its presence associated with obesity, parity and outcome of pregnancy.
Intentional Turnover of the Administrative Staff in a Private Faith-Based Higher Institution, Southwest Nigeria

This study examined the problem of turnover intention among the administrative personnel in a Private Faith-Based higher institution, Southwest Nigeria, focusing on the fringe benefits accrued to them and fringe benefits not accrued to them. Given this, the study investigated the comfortability of the administrative officers working with inadequate fringe benefits. It also investigated factors that make administrative officers prone to voluntary turnover and gender composition of the affected personnel. The questionnaire was used to collect information from respondents (N=231). Drawing from data retrieved from records, the study came out with 14 fringe benefits accrued to the administrative staff and 14 fringe benefits not accrued to them. Examination of the result reveals that a majority (86.6%) of the respondents were not comfortable working without adequate fringe benefits as against 7.8% who were comfortable. The Chi-Square statistical instrument was used to test the only hypothesis formulated. The p-value was observed to be statistically significant at p =. 000 DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015. v6n2s1p424
Species-Dependent Mechanisms Regulating Glucose-Dependent GLP-1 Secretion?

Since the discovery of glucagon-like peptide 17–36NH2 (GLP-1) as an “incretin” hormone (1), numerous GLP-1 receptor agonists and incretin hormone degradation (dipeptidyl peptidase 4) inhibitors have been developed for the treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes (2). The success of these therapeutics in reducing HbA1c levels, as well as decreasing body weight and exerting cardioprotective actions in the case of the agonists, has been well established, and incretin-based drugs are now recommended for dual-therapy management of type 2 diabetes (3). However, considerable interest has been engendered in a third possible approach to GLP-1–based therapy, that being enhancement of endogenous secretion, either alone or with a degradation inhibitor (4). GLP-1 is secreted by the endocrine L cell of the intestinal epithelium in rodents and humans (5). GLP-1 release is stimulated by ingested nutrients, including glucose, although neural and hormonal secretagogues have also been described (4). However, a thorough understanding of the molecular underpinnings of human L-cell secretory responses is critical if GLP-1 secretagogues are to be considered for therapeutic use. L cells are diffusely scattered through the gut epithelium, providing a major challenge to their study (5). Furthermore, although the advent of techniques to fluorescently label murine L cells has enabled their isolation, purified L cells fail to survive in vitro (6). Consequently, the cellular mechanisms underlying GLP-1 secretion by the primary murine L cell are now commonly studied using heterogeneous cultures derived from isolated crypts (6,7). Such in vitro models have been generated from all regions …
Enumeration of Campylobacter in New Zealand recreational and drinking waters

Aims: To use a published polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for the detection and identification of thermotolerant Campylobacter species (Camp. jejuni, Camp. coli and Camp. lari) in tandem with a Most Probable Number (MPN) technique to enumerate these species in water samples.
Non-major histocompatibility complex-restricted cytotoxic activity of blood mononuclear cells stimulated with secreted mycobacterial proteins and other mycobacterial antigens

Several observations indicate that non-major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-restricted cytotoxicity, mediated for example by natural killer cells and lymphokine-activated killer cells, may serve as an important antimicrobial defense mechanism. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influences of different mycobacterial antigens on non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity and further to investigate the ways by which various lymphocyte subpopulations contribute to the development of this cytotoxicity. Non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity was induced following stimulation of mononuclear cells with tuberculin purified protein derivative, Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), short- and long-term culture filtrates of virulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv, and 30-31-kDa secreted mycobacterial protein. These antigens also induced proliferation and production of gamma interferon. The CD4+ cells proliferated and expressed interleukin-2 receptors following stimulation with mycobacterial antigens. Depletion studies after antigen stimulation showed that the cytotoxic effector cells were CD16+ CD56+ and CD4-; the CD4+ cells alone did not mediate non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity. To evaluate the influence of CD4+ cells on the development of non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity, blood mononuclear cells were depleted of CD4+ cells before antigen stimulation. When mononuclear cells were incubated with purified protein derivative or short-term culture filtrate in the absence of CD4+ cells, cytotoxic activity was reduced. This reduction was abolished by interleukin-2 but not by gamma interferon. We conclude that several mycobacterial antigens are able to induce non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity. This study indicates that non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity following stimulation with mycobacterial antigens is induced by cytokines released by antigen-specific activated CD4+ cells.
Development of an aromatherapy service at a Cancer Centre

The aromatherapy service at the Cancer Support and Information Centre (CSIC) of this regional Cancer Centre has been continually assessed since its inception in 1993. New methods of assessing complementary therapies, based on the ‘therapy-as-practised’, have been explored. The present study evaluates the service following changes made after an initial pilot. The professional aromatherapist developed an evaluation tool, and formal questionnaires were limited to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). HADS was completed before and after a course of six aromatherapy sessions. Of 89 patients referred, 58 patients completed the six sessions. Referrals were made by health professionals working in the Cancer Centre and in the CSIC. The majority of patients were female with breast cancer and were receiving radical oncological treatment. Tension, stress and anxiety/fear were the most common reasons for referral, and this was reflected in high initial HADS scores. There were significant improvements in HADS scores in the 58 patients completing the course (mean anxiety, depression, and combined scores dropped from 8.9 to 6.2, 6.1 to 4.0 and 15.0 to 10.2, respectively, P < 0.001). Fifty per cent or more of the sample reported a significant improvement in the eight most commonly assessed symptoms. The therapist was initially cautious about using questionnaires, but she gained confidence in using HADS as an assessment tool. The areas covered by her own evaluation tools were broadly comparable to established instruments such as the EORTC QLQ-C30. We conclude that aromatherapy massage has a role in reducing psychological distress, and improving symptom control in cancer patients. Further service evaluation is needed to promote appropriate referral and effective planning of treatment, and to justify cost. Given the multifaceted nature of complementary therapies, the need to develop new research methodologies is acknowledged.
Purchasing organization involvement in risk assessments, contingency plans, and risk management: an exploratory study

Purchasing organizations use various strategies and techniques to minimize the chance and impact of detrimental events occurring in the supply base. Supply risk assessments are a necessary first step in managing those risks. An analysis of in‐depth interviews with purchasing professionals from nine companies indicates that purchasing organizations often create contingency plans, and implement process‐improvement and buffer strategies in response to perceived supply risks discovered in assessments. Even though risk assessments, contingency plans, and risk management efforts are generally acknowledged as being important, many of those interviewed believed that there was not enough done in their organizations to mitigate supply‐related risks.
Crosslinked chitosan/poly (vinyl alcohol) blends with proton conductivity characteristic

Chitosan is a polymer which is easily obtained from the deacetylation of chitin, the second most abundant natural polymer. It offers attractive chemical and physical properties, including those required to obtain membranes. In this study, chitosan in chloridric acid solution was chemically modified with sulfosuccinic acid (SSA), which acts as a crosslinking agent and proton donor. The chloridric acid medium promotes the crosslinking reaction through inducing the protonation of free carboxyl groups. The membrane was obtained through casting of poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVAL) and chitosan-SSA solution. The influence of the SSA content on the crosslinking degree of the chitosan was evaluated through FTIR analysis. The ion exchange capacity (IEC) and water absorption values were also related to the SSA content in the systems. The physicochemical characteristics, such as the proton and electrical conductivity values, indicated the viability of the utilization of these materials as polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM) in fuel cells.
Computing The Quality of Experience in Network Modeled by a Markov Modulated Fluid Model

The amount of streaming traffic has grown enormously in the last years and is expected to continue to grow. However, the Internet still provides only best-efforts and therefore the traffic streaming are distorted by fluctuations in the available bandwidth on the Internet. In this paper we develop an analytical approach to study Quality of user Experience (QoE) for streaming by considering a MMFM (Markov Modulated Fluid Model) that accurately approximates the queuing behaviour for network traffic exhibiting LRD (Long Range Dependence) behaviour. We consider the starvation probability (the probability of interruption in video playback) as well as start-up delay (initial waiting time) as the QoE metrics. We compute the distribution of starvation as well as start-up delay using partial differential equation (PDEs) and solve them using the Laplace Transform. We illustrate the results with the cases of the two-state Markov Modulated Fluid Model (MMFM) that is the most used in multimedia applications. We compare our analytical model with simulation results using ns-3 [17] under various operating parameters.
Structural credit risk models in banking with applications to the Financial Crisis

OF THE THESIS Structural Credit Risk Models in Banking with Applications to the Financial Crisis by Michael B. Imerman Thesis directors: Professors Ren-Raw Chen and Ben J. Sopranzetti This dissertation uses structural credit risk models to analyze banking institutions during the recent financial crisis. The first essay proposes a dynamic approach to estimating bank capital requirements with a structural credit risk model. The model highlights the fact that static measures of capital adequacy, such as a fixed percentage of assets, do not capture the true condition of a financial institution. Rather, a dynamic approach that is forward-looking and tied to market conditions is more appropriate in setting capital requirements. Furthermore, the structural credit risk model demonstrates how market information and the liability structure can be used to compute default probabilities, which can then be used as a point of reference for setting capital requirements. The results indicate that capital requirements may be timevarying and conditional upon the health of the particular bank and the financial system as
A New Cooperative Marketing Strategy for Agricultural Products in Bangladesh

Bangladesh, an agro based country where 17.3% of GDP comes from agriculture. Despite being an agro based country, the farmers do not get proper price for their products due to improper marketing system of agricultural products. Our field survey in two villages reveals that there are many intermediaries in the market who take the major portion of the benefits. Those intermediaries create artificial shortage of supply which also forces the consumers to pay more. The survey on vegetables and rice market explores that farmers are bound to sell their products to the intermediaries at lower price due to improper marketing systems. A producer organization or growers’ cooperative can be established to reduce the plethora of intermediaries from the supply chain of agricultural products. The establishment of cooperative ensuring the participation of local farmers can ensure fair price for the growers and consumers with the direct marketing system.
From comparing capitalisms to the politics of institutional change

ABSTRACT The notion of distinct national varieties or systems of capitalism gained considerable currency in the last two decades. This review essay highlights three theoretical premises which define what we call the comparative capitalisms (CC) approach to political economy: First, national economies are characterized by distinct institutional configurations; second, these configurations are a source of comparative institutional advantage; and third, the configurations are stabilized by institutional path dependence. Within these common premises, the CC literature contains a number of competing theories and we highlight the fundamental distinctions among them and draw out their respective limitations. We specifically examine the role of politics within the CC literature and how emerging conceptions of politics may contribute to understanding institutional change in capitalist systems.
Lexical syntax for statistical machine translation

Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) is by far the most dominant paradigm of Machine Translation. This can be justified by many reasons, such as accuracy, scalability, computational efficiency and fast adaptation to new languages and domains. However, current approaches of Phrase-based SMT lacks the capabilities of producing more grammatical translations and handling long-range reordering while maintaining the grammatical structure of the translation output. Recently, SMT researchers started to focus on extending Phrase-based SMT systems with syntactic knowledge; however, the previous techniques have limited capabilities due to introducing redundantly ambiguous syntactic structures and using decoders with limited language models, and with a high computational cost. In this thesis, we extend Phrase-based SMT with lexical syntactic descriptions that localize global syntactic information on the word without introducing syntactic redundant ambiguity. We presente a novel model of Phrase-based SMT which integrates linguistic lexical descriptions —supertags— into the target language model and the target side of the translation model. We conduct extensive experiments in two language pairs, Arabic– English and German–English, which show significant improvements over the state-ofthe- art Phrase-based SMT systems. Moreover, we introduce a novel Incremental Dependency-based Syntactic Language Model (IDLM) based on wide-coverage CCG incremental parsing which we integrate into a direct translation SMT system. Our proposed approach is the first to integrate full dependency parsing in SMT systems with a very attractive computational cost since it deploys the linear decoders widely used in Phrase–based SMT systems. The experimental results show a good improvement over a top-ranked state-of-the-art system.
Efficacy of Entecavir Switch Therapy in Chronic Hepatitis B Patients with Incomplete Virological Response to Telbivudine

Background The roadmap concept suggests the use of on-treatment HBV DNA to guide treatment strategy of chronic hepatitis B patients treated by telbivudine. Our aim was to validate the roadmap approach of entecavir switch therapy in patients with incomplete response to telbivudine. Methods Consecutive chronic hepatitis B patients on telbivudine monotherapy were studied. Incomplete virological response was defined as detectable HBV DNA after 6–12 months of treatment. Maintained virological response was defined as undetectable HBV DNA until the last follow-up. Results Among the 79 patients on telbivudine, 39 (49%) had undetectable HBV DNA after 6–12 months of telbivudine treatment and 40 (51%) had incomplete virological response. In total, 33 incomplete responders switched to entecavir at 11 months (6–23), and 26 (79%) achieved maintained virological response after 25 months (4–46). Low HBV DNA level before switch therapy was the independent factor associated with maintained virological response to entecavir (P=0.01). A total of 24 of 25 (96%) patients with HBV DNA<2,000 IU/ml, versus 2 of 8 (25%) patients with HBV DNA≥2,000 IU/ml, had maintained virological response after switching to entecavir. Although rtM204I and/or rtL180M was detected in 3 of 7 patients with incomplete virological response to entecavir, none of the patients with HBV DNA<2,000 IU/ml during telbivudine treatment harboured these amino acid substitutions. Conclusions Roadmap approach using entecavir switch at month 6–12 among incomplete responders to telbivudine is recommended if the HBV DNA is <2,000 IU/ml at the time of switching.
Monitoring yeast physiology during very high gravity wort fermentations by frequent analysis of gene expression

Brewer's yeast experiences constantly changing environmental conditions during wort fermentation. Cells can rapidly adapt to changing surroundings by transcriptional regulation. Changes in genomic expression can indicate the physiological condition of yeast in the brewing process. We monitored, using the transcript analysis with aid of affinity capture (TRAC) method, the expression of some 70 selected genes relevant to wort fermentation at high frequency through 9–10 day fermentations of very high gravity wort (25°P) by an industrial lager strain. Rapid changes in expression occurred during the first hours of fermentations for several genes, e.g. genes involved in maltose metabolism, glycolysis and ergosterol synthesis were strongly upregulated 2–6 h after pitching. By the time yeast growth had stopped (72 h) and total sugars had dropped by about 50%, most selected genes had passed their highest expression levels and total mRNA was less than half the levels during growth. There was an unexpected upregulation of some genes of oxygen‐requiring pathways during the final fermentation stages. For five genes, expression of both the Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. bayanus components of the hybrid lager strain were determined. Expression profiles were either markedly different (ADH1, ERG3) or very similar (MALx1, ILV5, ATF1) between these two components. By frequent analysis of a chosen set of genes, TRAC provided a detailed and dynamic picture of the physiological state of the fermenting yeast. This approach offers a possible way to monitor and optimize the performance of yeast in a complex process environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wealth Effects of Banking M&As: Evidence from Emu Countries

This paper examines abnormal stock returns for bidders and targets' shareholders of a sample of banking merger and acquisition transactions occurred in European Monetary Union (EMU) countries during the 1997-2001 period. Additionally, an explanation of such effects on bidder shareholders' wealth is also explored. Main findings indicate that shareholders of acquiring firms loose upon announcement of a bid, while shareholders of targets yield positive results only when a shorter period of analysis is considered. Combined returns also seem sensitive to the event-window employed and should be cautiously interpreted since we fail to find statistical significance at the usual levels. The results suggest that cash paid transactions and bidder size are both positively and significantly related to bidder's abnormal returns, while bidder profitability is negatively related with bidders' share price performance around the announcement date.