Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Brand Personality-Marker Attributes on Purchasing Intention: The Role of Emotionality

Marketing researchers employ the Five-Factor Model to describe branded products using attributes of human personality. “Marker attributes” used to elicit these brand personality attributes may be related to consumers' intention to purchase. Two connected studies, carried out on two samples of 91 and 557 participants, respectively, indicated that brand personality-marker attributes predict intention to purchase, but only to the extent that such attributes are “vivid” and, in particular, when they elicit emotional responses (i.e., when they are emotionally interesting). These findings have several implications for people involved in developing strategies for advertising.
Accumulation of Methane, Acetone, and Nitrogen in the Inspired Gas during Closed‐Circuit Anesthesia

During closed-circuit anesthesia, the patient's inspired gas may become progressively contaminated by nonanesthetic gases. We studied the concentrations of methane, acetone, and nitrogen as nonanesthetic gas contaminants in the circuit gas of 16 cases during closed-circuit anesthesia. After a “short” period of denitrogenation (6–8 min), average nitrogen concentration in the closed circuit increased from 6.4 to 16.2%, methane from 4.3 to 22.4 ppm, and acetone from 0.3 to 2.2 ppm. After “long” denitrogenation (33 min), average nitrogen concentration in the closed circuit increased from 1.0 to 5.1%, methane from 3.7 to 17.9 ppm, and acetone from 1.3 to 5.9 ppm. It is concluded that gases stored in tissues or produced within the body can appear in the patient's expired gas during closed-circuit anesthesia. Intermittent flushing of the circuit with high flow gases is suggested to remove these contaminants.
Memory-Efficient Parametric Semiglobal Matching

Accurate stereo matching for depth extraction requires a large memory space, which restricts its use in resource-limited systems. The problem is aggravated by the recent trend of applications requiring significantly high pixel resolution and disparity levels. To alleviate the high memory requirement, we propose to represent the aggregation costs as a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) function. Only a set of GMM parameters is stored and used instead of all the costs for each pixel. We also propose GMM parameter update-based aggregation along multiple paths. To preserve the accuracy of the disparity map, we employ a depth confidence measure and propose an update rule for the slanted surface of an object. Experimental results over the KITTI dataset show that the proposed method reduces the memory requirement to less than 5% of that of semiglobal matching, while the accuracy is maintained at the level of state-of-the-art semiglobal and local methods.
BESTIMMUNG PHYSIKALISCHER EIGENSCHAFTEN DES ZEMENTSTEINS

FUER DAS KRIECHEN DES ZEMENTSTEINS WERDEN, AUSGEHEND VON DEN ELEMENTEN DER REAKTIONSKINETIK, DIE ALLGEMEINE KRIECHGLEICHUNG ABGELEITET UND DER EINFLUSS DER VERSCHIEDENEN PARAMETER DISKUTIERT SOWIE DER UEBERGANG VOM KRIECHEN DES REINEN ZEMENTSTEINS ZU DEM DES MOERTELS. DIE ZUSAMMENHAENGE ZWISCHEN KRIECHEN UND RELAXATION WERDEN AUFGEZEIGT. DAS MIKROGEFUEGE DES ZEMENTSTEINS WURDE MITTELS SORPTIONSMESSUNGEN UNTERSUCHT. MIT HILFE DES MOESSBAUER-EFFEKTS WURDE DAS SYSTEM DER FERRITISCHEN LOESUNGEN IM ZEMENTSTEIN ERFASST. DER ZUSAMMENHANG ZWISCHEN DER FESTIGKEIT DES ZEMENTSTEINS UND DER OBERFLAECHENENERGIE WIRD DISKUTIERT. AN VERSCHIEDENEN ZEMENTSORTEN UND KLINKERKOMPONENTEN WURDE DAS REMISSIONSSPEKTRUM GEMESSEN UND AN DEN HAUPTKOMPONENTEN DES PORTLANDZEMENTS DEREN THERMOLUMINESZENT. (A*).
Comparison between Near Retinoscopy and Cycloplegic Retinoscopy in the Refraction of Infants and Children

We investigated the validity of replacing cycloplegic retinoscopy with a noncycloplegic, “near” retinoscopy technique. We refracted a group of 31 infants (<2 years) and 43 children (>2 years) with both techniques, grading our level of confidence in the result. Near retinoscopy gave on average a less hypermetropic result than cycloplegic retinoscopy by 0.39 D. The difference was significant in infants and for low levels of examiner confidence. However, a repeatability study showed that much of the variability in the infant group could be attributed to the poor repeatability of either retinoscopy technique. Agreement between the two techniques is improved by changing the suggested adjustment factor from 1.25 to 1.00 D for children and to 0.75 D for infants.
Crohn's Disease Complicated with Duodenocolic Fistula: A Case Report

A 62-year-old woman with a history of CD for 13 years and hepatitis B virus infection was admitted because of general weakness, body weight loss (4 kg in 5 months), and pitting edema on the legs for 1 month. The patient had undergone previous surgeries for left leg fracture and a thyroid nodular goiter. A follow-up colonoscopy within 5 years before this admission demonstrated inflammation with edematous and ulcerated mucosa at the ascending colon and ileal-cecal valve. Before the current admission, the Montreal classification for CD of this patient was A3 (age, >40), L2 (colonic involvement), B1 (non-stricturing, non-penetrating pattern). She had chronic diarrhea and was receiving regular therapy with mesalazine (1,000 mg twice a day) and azathioprine (50 mg per day) and intermittent therapy with prednisolone (10 mg twice a day) for 2 years. Furthermore, she regularly received entecavir to control hepatitis B. However, the frequency of diarrhea had increased (from twice per day to 7-8 times per day) in recent weeks. Two weeks before this admission, the patient visited another hospital where an upper gastrointestinal barium series showed irregularity at Crohn’s Disease Complicated with Duodenocolic Fistula: A Case Report
On confidence and consequence: the certainty and importance of self-knowledge.

Belief certainty and belief importance represent 2 relatively independent forms of investment in the self-concept. Three studies suggested that whereas certainty is associated with epistemic (i.e., rational or informational) factors, importance is more closely associated with emotive (i.e., emotional and motivational) factors. A 4th study explored the implications of certainty and importance for the temporal stability of people's self-views and revealed that whereas belief certainty was associated with the stability of both positive and negative beliefs, belief importance was associated with the stability of positive beliefs only. The implications of belief investment for the verification-enhancement debate and for the structure and measurement of the self-concept are discussed.
Blood Viscosity of Psychotics and Nonpsychotics under Stress

Summary An ultrasonic instrument was used to measure continuously the changes in blood viscosity of 3 groups of experimental subjects. Group 1, 4 neurotic patients showing no overt anxiety, and Group 2, neurotic subjects showing overt anxiety, were subjected to a mild stress. No behavioral or physiological changes were noted in the first group. Behavioral evidence of increased anxiety was associated with the rise in blood viscosity in Group 2. Group 3, 6 psychotic subjects, were tested just prior to the administration of electroshock therapy; these subjects all showed intense anxiety. Significant blood viscosity increases were noted in this group. These findings were found to be consistent with previous studies of changes in blood coagulation in emotional stress. Pertinence of the results to further study of blood viscosity changes under emotional stress, especially in thromboembolic diseases, was suggested.
Predicting meeting participants' note-taking from previously uttered dialogue acts

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered shortly before writing. Design/methodology/approach This novel approach of providing cues for finding important meeting events that would be worth recording in a meeting summary looks at temporal overlaps of multiple people’s note-taking. This research uses data of 124 meetings taken from the AMI meeting corpus. Findings The results show that several machine learning methods that the authors compared were able to classify the data significantly better than a random approach. The best model, decision trees with feature selection, achieved 70 per cent accuracy for the binary distinction writing for any number of participants simultaneously or no writing, whereas the performance for a more fine-grained distinction of the number of participants taking notes showed only about 30 per cent accuracy. Research limitations/implications The findings suggest that meeting participants take personal notes in accordance with the utterance of previously uttered speech acts, particularly dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. However, further research is necessary to examine other domains and to determine in what way this behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents. Practical implications The reader of an Information Systems (IS) journal would be interested in this paper because the work described and the findings gained could lead to the development of novel information systems that facilitate the work for businesses and individuals. Innovative meeting capture and retrieval applications, satisfying automatic summaries of important meeting points and sophisticated note-taking tools that suggest content automatically could make people’s daily lives more convenient in the future. Social implications There are wider implications in terms of productivity and efficiency. Business value is increased for the organisation, as human knowledge is built more or less automatically. There are also cognitive and social implications for individuals and possibly an impact on the society as a whole. It is also important for globalisation, social media and mobile devices. Originality/value The topic is new and original, as there has not been much research on it yet. Similar work was carried out recently (Murray, 2015; Bothin and Clough 2014). This is why it is relevant to an IS journal and interesting for the reader. In particular, dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. This behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.
Nonlinear Control Analysis on Nonholonomic Dynamic Systems with Affine Constraints

This paper deals with nonholonomic control systems subject to affine constraints. We first derive several preliminary properties of nonholonomic dynamic systems with affine constraints (NDSAC). We then investigate local accessibility and local controllability of the NDSAC based on both Sussmann's theorem and linear approximation approaches. Conditions for local asymptotic stabilizability of the NDSAC by linear state feedback and nonlinear smooth state feedback are also derived. Finally, two physical examples are illustrated to confirm the results.
Ability of Hypnosis to Facilitate Movement Through Stages of Change for Smoking Cessation

Abstract On the basis of the transtheoretical model of change, we hypothesized that hypnosis would facilitate significantly greater movement through the stages of change toward smoking cessation in contrast to psychoeducation. Thirty participants were pretested for hypnotizability using the Elkins Hypnotizability Scale (EHS). Participants’ readiness for change was assessed using the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment scale (URICA). The EHS relaxation induction was used to induce hypnosis. Hypnotic suggestions addressed motivation and ambivalence. The URICA was administered following the intervention and at a 10-day follow-up. Two-factor split-plot ANOVAs showed significant changes within groups on the contemplation subscale (p = .002), action subscale (p = .00007), and the number of cigarettes smoked per day (p = .003).
Cloning and nucleotide sequence of bisC, the structural gene for biotin sulfoxide reductase in Escherichia coli

Clones of the Escherichia coli bisC locus have been isolated by complementing a bisC mutant for growth with d-biotin d-sulfoxide as a biotin source. The complementation properties of deletions and Tn5 insertions located the bisC gene to a 3.7-kilobase-pair (kbp) segment, 3.3 kbp of which has been sequenced. A single open reading frame of 2,178 bp, capable of encoding a polypeptide of molecular weight 80,905, was found. In vitro transcription of plasmids carrying the wild-type sequence and deletion and insertion mutants showed that BisC complementation correlated perfectly with production of a polypeptide whose measured molecular weight (79,000) does not differ significantly from 80,905.
Age, gender and early morning highway accidents

Accident register data, time budget studies and road traffic flow data were used to compute the age and gender‐dependent relative risk [odds ratio (OR)] of being involved in a driving accident in which the driver was injured or killed. Alcohol‐related accidents were excluded from the analysis. The results showed that the night‐time risk, compared with that of the forenoon, was dramatically increased (OR=5) for young drivers (18–24 years) and reduced for old (65+) drivers. In direct comparison, the young drivers had 5–10 times higher risk of being involved in an accident during late night than during the forenoon, with the excess risk during the daytime being considerably lower. Women had a less pronounced night‐time peak than men. In direct comparison, men had twice as high a risk as women during the late night hours. The results clearly demonstrate a strong effect of young age on night‐time accident risk, together with a moderate effect of (male) gender.
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Increases Pulsatile Growth Hormone Secretion and Circulating Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 in a Time-Dependent Manner in Men With Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Randomized Sham-Controlled Study in a a study.

Study Objectives: To assess the time-dependent effect of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), on insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) and pulsatile growth hormone (GH) secretion. Design: A randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled, parallel group study. Participants: Sixty-five middle-aged men moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea. Intervention: Active (n = 34) or sham (n = 31) CPAP for 12 weeks, followed by 12 weeks of active CPAP (n = 65). Measurements and Results: Fasting morning IGF-1, IGFBP-3, and IGFBP-1 blood levels at 0, 6, 12, and 24 weeks. Overnight GH secretion was calculated by mathematical deconvolution of serial GH measurements from serum samples collected every 10 min (22:00-06:00) during simultaneous polysomnography in a subset of 18 men (active n = 11, sham n = 7) at week 12. Active, compared with sham, CPAP increased IGF-1 at 12 weeks (P = 0.006), but not at 6 weeks (P = 0.44). Changes in IGFBP-3 and IGFBP-1 were not different between groups at 6 or 12 weeks (all P ≥ 0.15). At week 24, there was a further increase in IGF-1 and a decrease in IGFBP-1 in the pooled group (P = 0.0001 and 0.046, respectively). In the subset, total (P = 0.001) and pulsatile (P = 0.002) GH secretion, mean GH concentration (P = 0.002), mass of GH secreted per pulse (P = 0.01) and pulse frequency (P = 0.04) were all higher after 12 weeks of CPAP compared with sham. Basal secretion, interpulse regularity, and GH regularity were not different between groups (all P > 0.11). Conclusions: Twelve weeks, but not 6 weeks, of CPAP increases IGF-1, with a further increase after 24 weeks. Total and pulsatile GH secretion, secretory burst mass and pulse frequency are also increased by 12 weeks. CPAP improves specific elements of the GH/IGF-1 axis in a time-dependent manner.
A general screening method for acidic, neutral, and basic drugs in whole blood using the Oasis MCX column.

Solid-phase extraction (SPE) is becoming a commonly used extraction technique. Most existing SPE methods extract a single drug from a relatively clean biological matrix (e.g., plasma, serum, or urine) using a silica-based column. These methods, however, are generally not satisfactory for forensic applications because the majority of biological samples are not as clean (e.g., whole blood, bile, tissues). Silica-based columns also may have reproducibility and stability problems. Polymer-based columns have been developed to overcome some of these limitations. In this study, sequential extraction of acidic, neutral, and basic drugs from whole blood using a polymer-based column, Oasis MCX, was undertaken. The extraction procedure developed involved a conditioning step using methanol followed by water; a three-step wash sequence using water, 0.1 M hydrochloric acid, then water/methanol (95:5); and two elution steps. One elution step was for acidic and neutral drugs utilizing acetone/chloroform (1:1), and a second used ethyl acetate/ammonium hydroxide (98:2) for basic drugs. Of the drugs tested, 75% were extractable from whole blood and detectable at therapeutic concentrations. Good recoveries and clean extracts were achieved for the basic drugs; however, the extracts were not as clean for acidic drugs. Unfortunately, the Oasis MCX procedure was not suitable for extracting all drugs (e.g., benzodiazepines).
Effect of sunflower-seed oil or linseed oil on milk fatty acid secretion and lipogenic gene expression in goats fed hay-based diets

Plant oils in the diet are known to alter milk fat composition owing to changes in the supply of fatty acid precursors and/or activity of lipogenic enzymes in the mammary gland. Thirteen mid-lactating Alpine goats were used in a 3×3 Latin square design with 28-d periods to evaluate possible mechanisms regulating milk fat synthesis and fatty acid composition on grass hay-based diets containing none (H) or 55 g/kg diet dry matter of sunflower-seed oil (HSO) or linseed oil (HLO). Inclusion of oils in the diet had no effect on milk yield but enhanced (P<0·05) milk fat secretion. Compared with the control, HLO and HSO decreased (P<0·05) C10–C16 secretion and increased (P<0·05) C18 output in milk, responses that were accompanied by reductions in milk fat cis-9 14:1/14:0, cis-9 18:1/18:0 and cis-9, trans-11 18:2/cis-9 18:1 concentration ratios. Plant oil supplements decreased (P<0·05) mammary stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) activity but had no effect on SCD mRNA. Treatments had no effect on glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, malic enzyme and glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase activity, or mRNA abundance and/or activity of lipoprotein lipase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase and fatty acid synthase in mammary, hepatic or adipose tissue. The results provided little support for milk fatty acid secretion responses to HLO and HSO being mediated via changes in mammary, hepatic or adipose mRNA abundance or in the activity of key lipogenic enzymes. In conclusion, plant oils in the diet enhance milk fat synthesis, alter milk fatty acid composition and specifically inhibit mammary SCD activity in the goat. Furthermore, the results suggest that the regulation of mammary lipogenesis in response to plant oils appears related to factors other than altered mammary gene expression or potential lipogenic enzyme activity.
Smoking and white matter hyperintensity progression

Objective: Our objective was to examine the link between smoking and smoking history, including smoking intensity and cessation, overall and by race, in a biracial prospective cohort study. Methods: A subset of Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study participants (n = 972, 49% black) completed brain MRI scans twice (1993–1995 and 2004–2006). We defined white matter hyperintensity (WMH) progression as an increase of ≥2 points on the 9-point Cardiovascular Health Study scale across scans. Participants reported information on smoking behavior at the baseline MRI and at 2 prior study visits, approximately 3 and 6 years before baseline. We used adjusted logistic regression to evaluate the association between smoking variables and WMH progression in the total sample and separately by race (black and white). Results: We found WMH progression in 23% of participants (30% of black participants, 17% of white participants). Overall, being a current smoker 6 years before baseline was associated with WMH progression. In race-stratified analyses, we found adverse associations with smoking status at multiple time points and persistent smoking in white but not in black participants. However, we found no statistical support for effect modification by race for most of these analyses. Increasing pack-years of smoking was associated with greater risk of WMH progression, while time since quitting and age at smoking initiation were not associated with WMH progression, with little indication of differences in these associations by race. Conclusions: Our findings concur with previous studies suggesting a relationship between smoking and WMH progression, and further demonstrate a dose-dependent association.
Thermodynamics and dynamics of histidine-binding protein, the water-soluble receptor of histidine permease. Implications for the transport of high and low affinity ligands.

The bacterial histidine permease is a model system for ABC transporters (traffic ATPases). The water-soluble receptor of this permease, HisJ, binds L-histidine and L-arginine (tightly) and L-lysine and L-ornithine (less tightly) in the periplasm, interacts with the membrane-bound complex (HisQMP2) and induces its ATPase activity, which results in ligand translocation. HisJ is a two-domain protein; in the absence of ligand, the cleft between two domains is open and binding of substrate stabilizes the closed conformation. Surprisingly, various liganded HisJ forms display substantial differences in their physicochemical characteristics and capacity to induce the ATPase. This is due to either different effects of the individual ligands on the respective closed structures, or to different equilibria being reached for each ligand between the open liganded form and the closed liganded form [Wolf, A. , Lee, K.C. , Kirsch, J.F. & Ames, G.F. -L. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 21243-21250]. In this work, time-resolved measurements of the decay of intrinsic HisJ fluorescence and of the decay of the anisotropy of the fluorescence, as well as the analysis of the steady-state near UV CD and fluorescence spectra, rule out the model in which the differences between liganded complexes reflect different equilibria. The decay of the anisotropy of the fluorescence shows that liganded complexes differ dramatically in their large-scale conformational dynamics. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves for the HisJ thermal unfolding are well described by a scheme of equilibrium two-state unfolding of two independent domains, which can be ascribed to the two-domain structure of HisJ. This is true both for apo-HisJ at various pH values, and for HisJ in the presence of its ligands at varying concentrations, at pH 8.3. The DSC and structural data suggest that all ligands interact more extensively with the larger domain. A qualitative model for the HisJ conformational dynamics employing the idea of a twisting movement of the domains is proposed, which explains the difference in the efficacy of the ATPase induction by the various liganded HisJ forms.