Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism

"Churchland and Hooker have collected ten papers by prominent philosophers of science which challenge van Fraassen's thesis from a variety of realist perspectives. Together with van Fraassen's extensive reply . these articles provide a comprehensive picture of the current debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists. "-Jeffrey Bub and David MacCallum, "Foundations of Physics Letters"
Efeitos da responsabilização na tomada de decisão ética

Quando determinam a aceitabilidade etica de uma decisao, as pessoas tendem a tomar as consequencias como base do seu julgamento. Especificamente, uma decisao etica tende a ser mais aceitavel quando as consequencias sao apresentadas como positivas. O presente estudo (N=251) examina os efeitos da responsabilizacao (prestacao de contas a terceiros) sobre o julgamento da aceitabilidade de uma decisao eticamente dubia, cujas consequencias se apresentam como positivas, neutras ou negativas. Os resultados indicam que os participantes que esperam ter de prestar contas sobre o seu julgamento, comparativamente com os nao responsabilizados, mostram-se mais severos quanto a aceitabilidade da decisao quando as consequencias sao positivas ou neutras. Neste caso, os participantes tendem a considerar a decisao eticamente inaceitavel, independentemente de estarem ou nao responsabilizadas. Os resultados sao discutidos no âmbito dos modelos teoricos da responsabilizacao, sendo destacada a relevância desta para o escrutinio de natureza etica nos processos de decisao nas organizacoes.
Close relationship between immunoglobulin secreting‐cells and Epstein–Barr virus reservoir in patients infected with HIV

Individuals infected with HIV have higher circulating Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) DNA load compared to healthy carriers. This study investigated whether level of spontaneous immunoglobulin secreting cells, one of the major hallmarks of HIV infection, is associated with an increase of EBV DNA load in PBMCs and the spontaneous EBV lytic cycle ex vivo in patients infected with HIV. Spontaneous virus production by cells infected with EBV and EBV DNA loads in PBMCs from which CD8+ T‐cells were removed were measured in 20 HIV‐aviremic and 14 HIV‐viremic patients. The number of circulating immunoglobulin‐secreting cells (Ig‐SCs) and CD8+ T‐lymphocyte activation were also investigated. Patients with detectable HIV RNA in plasma exhibited higher spontaneous ex vivo EBV secretion and higher levels of EBV DNA in PBMCs than their aviremic counterparts. In the two groups observed, a positive correlation was found between PBMCs EBV DNA viral load and Ig‐SCs, CD38bright expression on CD8+ T‐cells and EBV DNA load in cell culture supernatants. These findings suggest that B‐cell polyclonal activation and B‐cell terminal differentiation into Ig‐SCs may fuel EBV DNA reservoir and promote EBV production ex vivo in patients infected with HIV. J. Med. Virol. 86:30–37, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
How Organisational Support Facilitates the Relationship Between Expatriate Adjustment and Commitment: A Case Study on Finnish Expatriate Managers in China

This Master’s thesis researches key factors which impact expatriate adjustment in expatriate managers. Furthermore, the research aims to find a linkage between successful adjustment and affective expatriate commitment. Due to the highly globalised business world of today, expatriation has become a norm in the workplace, however companies still struggle with maintaining the commitment of the expatriate managers, leading to loss of significant skill and investment. Thus, the end-target of the research study is to provide recommendations for multinational companies sending expatriates on foreign assignments. The key objectives of this study are threefold. Firstly, the study aims to examine which factors influence adjustment in expatriate managers. Secondly, it aims to examine the linkage between expatriate adjustment and commitment. Thirdly, the study examines the role of organisational support in facilitating the relationship between expatriate adjustment and commitment. The research is approached with a qualitative tradition. The data collection is conducted with semi-structured interviews with past expatriate managers. The research study is approached from a case study perspective, focusing on Finnish expatriate managers who have completed assignments in China. Six past expatriate managers were interviewed for the sake of the research. The sample used was relatively homogenous, as all the expatriate managers had somewhat similar demographic backgrounds. All the collected data was transcribed and coded using thematic analysis. The research study has three main findings. Firstly, it concludes that the expatriate adjustment process is a highly complex one and is impacted by myriad factors. Furthermore, the research observes that adjustment is subjective in nature, therefore effects each expatriate in an individual manner. Secondly, the research study identifies a two-directional connection between expatriate adjustment and commitment and notes that ensuring affective commitment in expatriate managers is a highly beneficial long-term investment. Thirdly, the study observes that multinational companies need to find a balance between organisational support and trust. The thesis identifies four recommendations for multinational companies: time, trust, train and tailor. Firstly, companies need to give expatriate managers enough time to prepare for their assignments, so they can acquire any needed country-specific skills. Secondly, expatriate managers should be trusted with relatively loose reins in their professional lives, as they will be more likely to have strong workplace morale and strive for high performance. Thirdly, companies should offer expatriate managers both pre-departure and in-country training to enhance their adjustment and satisfaction. The extent and type of training required is determined by the host country in question. Lastly, expatriate training should be tailored to the specific needs of the expatriate manager.
Branch Standards as the Possible Way of Optimizing of Capital Structure of the Concrete Firm

This article is about the problem of optimizing of the capital structure of the concrete firm and about the possibility to use the passive way of optimizing of this capital structure on the basis of the so-called Branch standards. Branch standards are defined as some average indebtedness that the firms are trying to follow. There are a lot of theories available, but the final process of optimizing of the capital structure of the concrete firm is very complicated and it is necessary to cope with a lot of application problems. Besides Traditional theory, none of the further theories offer some concrete recommended optimal indebtedness. For that reason, the possibility to optimize the capital structure based on the passive way is represented besides other things by the so-called Branch standards. The aim of this article is to judge if it is possible to identify this average indebtedness in different branches and in different countries. The hypothesis was stated that it is possible only in selected branches in selected countries. The research is realized in the six selected branches: Railroads, Beverages, Steel, Paper Production, Tobacco, and Electrical Equipment in the Czech Republic and in USA. Data for the years 2008-2016 were obtained from the system Albertina Data at the University of Economics in Prague and from the web pages of Prof. Aswath Damodaran in USA. There were identified so-called Branch standards in the Czech Republic for the branches Railroads 45%, Beverages 50%, Tobacco 50%, and Electrical Equipment 40%. There are also identified so-called Branch standards in USA for the branches Railroads 40% and Paper Production 40%-50%. For the branch Paper Production in the Czech Republic and for the branch Beverages in USA were identified ranges of 40%-45% and 40%-50% respectively. The so-called Branch standards were not stated for the branch Steel in both countries and for the branches Tobacco and Electrical Equipment in USA. The values were verified by the data for the year 2016 and the so-called Branch standards were confirmed excluding the branch Steel in both countries and the branches Tobacco and Electrical Equipment in the US.
Proton MR Spectroscopy: Higher Right Anterior Cingulate N-Acetylaspartate/Choline Ratio in Asperger Syndrome Compared with Healthy Controls

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: One former study reported higher prefrontal N-acetylaspartate (NAA) levels in patients with Asperger syndrome (AS). The objective of the current study was to test the hypothesis that patients with AS would have higher dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex NAA/creatine (Cr) and that NAA/Cr would be correlated with symptom severity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: NAA/choline (Cho), NAA/Cr, and Cho/Cr values revealed by 1H-MR spectroscopy in 14 right-handed male patients with AS (6 medicated with risperidone), 17–38 years of age, diagnosed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, criteria were compared with those of 21 right-handed male controls frequency-matched by age and intelligence quotient scores. RESULTS: Patients with AS had significantly higher anterior cingulate NAA/Cho levels (z = −2.18, P = .028); there was a statistical trend for higher anterior cingulate NAA/Cr (z = −1.81, P = .069) that was significant when only the unmedicated patients with AS were taken into account (z = −1.95, P = .050). There were no significant differences in dorsolateral prefrontal MR spectroscopy values. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that individuals with AS had higher NAA/Cho levels in the right anterior cingulate compared with healthy controls and that higher anterior cingulate NAA/Cho levels were correlated with higher Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale total scores.
Serotonin Modulates Expression of VIP and GRP mRNA via the 5-HT1B Receptor in the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus of the Rat

The expression of vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) changes depending on light. VIP mRNA increases and GRP mRNA decreases in the light phase, while they do not show change without light. In the present study we investigated the involvement of serotonin (5-HT) in the expression of VIP and GRP messenger RNA in the SCN of the rat. The decrease in VIP mRNA and the increase in GRP mRNA in the light phase were amplified by 5-HT depletion using 5,6-dihydroxytryptamine injected into the lateral ventricle. These enhancements due to 5-HT depletion were reversed to control levels by applying 5-HT(1B) agonists TFMPP and CGS12066A, but not a 5-HT(1A)/5-HT(7) agonist, 8-OH-DPAT. The 5-HT(1B) receptor is known to exist on the terminals of the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT). Therefore, next we investigated the morphological relationship of RHT and 5-HT terminals by double-labeling immunocytochemistry and demonstrated that 5-HT-immunoreactive fibers and cholera toxin B subunit-labeled RHT terminals were intermingled in the ventrolateral SCN, and 5-HT axon processes had close contact with RHT terminals. Collectively, these pharmacological and morphological results suggest that 5-HT afferents from raphe nuclei modulate VIP and GRP expression in neurons of the ventrolateral SCN by activating the 5-HT(1B) receptor in the RHT.
A Spatial–Contextual Support Vector Machine for Remotely Sensed Image Classification

Recent studies show that hyperspectral image classification techniques that use both spectral and spatial information are more suitable, effective, and robust than those that use only spectral information. Using a spatial-contextual term, this study modifies the decision function and constraints of a support vector machine (SVM) and proposes two kinds of spatial-contextual SVMs for hyperspectral image classification. One machine, which is based on the concept of Markov random fields (MRFs), uses the spatial information in the original space (SCSVM). The other machine uses the spatial information in the feature space (SCSVMF), i.e., the nearest neighbors in the feature space. The SCSVM is better able to classify pixels of different class labels with similar spectral values and deal with data that have no clear numerical interpretation. To evaluate the effectiveness of SCSVM, the experiments in this study compare the performances of other classifiers: an SVM, a context-sensitive semisupervised SVM, a maximum likelihood (ML) classifier, a Bayesian contextual classifier based on MRFs (ML_MRF), and nearest neighbor classifier. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves good classification performance on famous hyperspectral images (the Indian Pine site (IPS) and the Washington, DC mall data sets). The overall classification accuracy of the hyperspectral image of the IPS data set with 16 classes is 95.5%. The kappa accuracy is up to 94.9%, and the average accuracy of each class is up to 94.2%.
Local Banks, Credit Supply, and House Prices

I study the effects of an increase in the supply of local mortgage credit on local house prices and employment by exploiting a natural experiment from Switzerland. In mid-2008, losses in U.S. security holdings triggered a migration of dissatisfied retail customers from a large, universal bank, UBS, to homogeneous local mortgage lenders. Mortgage lenders located close to UBS branches experienced larger inflows of deposits, regardless of their investment opportunities. Using variation in the geographic distance between UBS branches and local mortgage lenders as an instrument for deposit growth, I find that banks with an exogenous positive funding shock invest in strict accordance with their specialization (that is, local mortgage lending). Consequently, house price gains in neighborhoods around affected banks were more than 50 percent greater than those in neighborhoods around unaffected banks. I also find an increase in the number of employees at small firms, reliant on real estate collateral, in the former set of neighborhoods. My results show that local-mortgage-oriented banks affect house prices through the supply of credit and that bank specialization thereby plays an important role in the allocation of capital across sectors.
Architecture of the Smc5/6 Complex of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Reveals a Unique Interaction between the Nse5-6 Subcomplex and the Hinge Regions of Smc5 and Smc6*

The evolutionarily conserved structural maintenance of chromosome (SMC) proteins forms the core structures of three multisubunit complexes as follows: cohesin, condensin, and the Smc5/6 complex. These complexes play crucial roles in different aspects of chromosomal organization, duplication, and segregation. Although the architectures of cohesin and condensin are better understood, that of the more recently identified Smc5/6 complex remains to be elucidated. We have previously shown that the Smc5/6 complex of Saccharomyces cerevisiae contains Smc5, Smc6, and six non-SMC elements (Nse1–6). In this study, we investigated the architecture of the budding yeast Smc5/6 complex employing the yeast two-hybrid assay as well as in vitro biochemical approaches using purified recombinant proteins. These analyses revealed that Smc5 and Smc6 associate with each other at their hinge regions and constitute the backbone of the complex, whereas the Nse1–6 subunits form three distinct subcomplexes/entities that interact with different regions of Smc5 and Smc6. The Nse1, -3, and -4 subunits form a stable subcomplex that binds to the head and the adjacent coiled-coil region of Smc5. Nse2 binds to the middle of the coiled-coil region of Smc5. Nse5 and Nse6 interact with each other and, as a heterodimer, bind to the hinge regions of Smc5 and Smc6. These findings provide new insights into the structures of the Smc5/6 complex and lay the foundation for further investigations into the mechanism of its functions.
Affecting brand loyalty intention: The effects of UGC and shopping searches via Facebook

ABSTRACT Despite the fact that social networking sites (SNSs) provide new opportunities for firms and brands, there is still a little understanding of how user-generated contents (UGC) and shopping-related research via Facebook (FB) affects brand loyalty intention in the luxury fashion context. The present work develops a conceptual model to empirically analyze how brand loyalty intention is affected by customers’ trust in a brand’s FB page, by their willingness to utilize brand’s FB page for shopping-related searches, and by three different types of UGC: peer recommendations, informational support and emotional support. In order to fulfill this aim, the study examines 277 Millennials and the Victoria’s Secret FB page. Structural equation model results reveal that online shopping-related searches, peer recommendations and social support have significant positive effects on customers’ trust. Moreover, the research points out a significant positive effect between customers’ trust and their brand loyalty intention, supporting marketers to better understand the role played by trusted UGC. The research provides interesting insights, for both academic and practitioners, because it contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the field of brand and social media marketing. Moreover, UGC, especially informational support, could enable firms to influence consumers’ behavior positively and to transform their brands’ FB pages into trusted ones.
Regulation of active sodium and potassium transport in the distal colon of the rat. Role of the aldosterone and glucocorticoid receptors.

To determine whether mineralocorticosteroids and glucocorticosteroids have specific effects on colonic electrolyte transport, we compared the effect of aldosterone and RU 28362, a glucocorticoid receptor-specific agonist that does not bind to the aldosterone receptor, on unidirectional Na, Cl, and K fluxes across isolated mucosa of the rat distal colon. Continuous infusion of aldosterone for 7 d produced changes in four specific transport processes: induction of both active electrogenic, amiloride-sensitive sodium absorption and active electrogenic potassium secretion, enhancement of active electroneutral potassium absorption, and inhibition of electroneutral Na-Cl absorption, the predominant transport process in this epithelium. In contrast, continuous infusion of RU 28362 for 1-11 d produced a sustained increase in electroneutral Na-Cl absorption. This glucocorticoid receptor-specific agonist did not induce electrogenic sodium absorption nor affect either potassium absorption or secretion. These studies demonstrate that aldosterone (i.e., mineralocorticoid) and glucocorticoid receptors modulate separate and specific changes in active sodium and potassium transport. These results suggest that other glucocorticoids (e.g., dexamethasone, methylprednisolone) are not glucocorticoid receptor-specific and that their effects on electrogenic sodium absorption and potassium transport most likely represent the binding of these agonists to the aldosterone receptor.
Predicting the course of functional limitation among older adults with knee pain: do local signs, symptoms and radiographs add anything to general indicators?

Objective: To determine the additional prognostic value of clinical history, physical examination and x-ray findings to a previously derived simple generic model (age, body mass index, anxiety and pain severity) in a cohort of older adults with knee pain. Methods: Prospective cohort study in community-dwelling adults in North Staffordshire. 621 participants (aged ⩾50 years) reporting knee pain who attended a research clinic at recruitment and were followed up by postal questionnaire at 18 months. Poor functional outcome was measured by the Physical Functioning Scale of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) at 18-month follow-up defined in 60% of participants. Results: Three clinical history variables (bilateral knee pain, duration of morning stiffness and inactivity gelling) were independently associated with poor outcome. The addition of the “clinical history” model to the “generic” model led to a statistical improvement in model fit (likelihood ratio (LR) = 24.84, p = 0.001). Two physical examination variables (knee tender point count and single-leg balance) were independently associated with poor outcome but did not lead to a significant improvement when added to the “clinical history and generic” model (LR = 6.34, p = 0.50). Functional outcome was significantly associated with severity of knee radiographic osteoarthritis (OA), but did not lead to any improvement in fit when added to the “generic, clinical history and physical examination” model (LR = 1.86, p = 0.39). Conclusions: Clinical history, physical examination and severity of radiographic knee OA are of limited value over generic factors when trying to predict which older adults with knee pain will experience progressive or persistent functional difficulties.
When Posting About Products on Social Media Backfires: The Negative Effects of Consumer Identity Signaling on Product Interest

Consumers frequently express themselves by posting about products on social media. Because consumers can use physical products to signal their identities, posting about products on social media may be a way for consumers to virtually signal identity. The authors propose that there are conditions in which this action can paradoxically reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions. Five experiments demonstrate that posting products on social media that are framed as being identity-relevant can reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions for the same and similar products, as this action allows consumers to virtually signal their identity, fulfilling identity-signaling needs. Fortunately for retailers, the authors suggest theoretically and managerially relevant moderators that attenuate this negative effect on intent to purchase. These findings have important implications for how firms can conduct social media marketing to minimize negative purchase outcomes.
Strategic Pricing Response and Optimization in Operations Management

This chapter reviews how rational customers or buyers should respond to fi rms’ pricing decisions and how fi rms should optimize prices as a consequence of these strategic responses. The key departure from standard economic and marketing pricing research is that either customers or fi rms are simultaneously faced with other operational choices, such as capacity sizing and inventory control, which are of central interest to operations management researchers. The chapter covers four broad areas and it is intended to serve as a selective rather than comprehensive review of the extensive literature.
NIEL Scaling: Comparison With Measured Defect Introduction Rate in Silicon

At low ion energies, the approximation of independent collisions between atoms starts to break down. The displacement damage threshold seems to be far less steep than the one used traditionally within the BCA approach. It has been shown in a previous paper that the Non Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL) of low energy electrons is greatly modified by the use of a smoother threshold. In order to validate the approach, NIEL values are compared with a large set of bibliographic data. It is shown that the modified "effective" NIEL model simulates quite well the introduction rates energy dependence for both protons and electrons. The model is able to reproduce the difference in absolute defect introduction rate for n and p-type silicon by means of the parameter (fsurv) that account for the fraction of defect surviving recombination. This difference is then connected to the corresponding discrepancy between the diffusion length damage factors observed in n-Si and p-Si materials. It allows in the case of electrons to scale the diffusion length degradation with a single characteristic curve.