Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Customer Preferences with Regard to Correspondence from an Energy Company

Purpose: To examine customer preferences with regard to correspondence from a major energy company and how they differ by generation. Design/Methodology/Approach: This article presents the results of a qualitative research on different preferences demonstrated by two segments of customers of a large energy company – young customers under 40 years of age, and mature customers, over 40 years of age – with regard to the correspondence received. The research question was formulated as follow, do the identified groups of customers have different preferences regarding the indicated elements of business letters? The energy company provided sample letter templates and participated in adapting the research scenario to the specific nature of the industry. Findings: Based on the research results, it was possible to answer the research question posed – in part, the preferences of young and mature customers with regard to correspondence from the energy company are the same, and in part, they differ significantly. Practical Implications: Areas of common and different preferences for selected recipient segments as well as recommendations for the visual layout of the letters and their content were identified. Recommendations, derived from literature studies and qualitative research findings, were produced. Originality/value: The originality and value of the study are given by the fact that this area – correspondence from a large company is poorly researched and not exhaustively discussed in the available literature. Few researchers have addressed this important area of customer communication, especially in the current pandemic situation. The energy company may incorporate the produced recommendations into its customer communication strategy.
Comparison of the functional and radiological outcomes of vascularized and non-vascularized bone graft options in the treatment of scaphoid nonunion

Objectives This study aims to compare the functional and radiological outcomes of the patients with scaphoid waist nonunion treated with non-vascularized bone graft and vascularized bone graft options. Patients and methods Between January 2016 and February 2020, a total of 24 patients (22 males, 2 females; mean age: 30.6±9.4 years; range, 18 to 66 years) with scaphoid waist nonunion who were treated with vascularized or non-vascularized bone graft were retrospectively analyzed. Of these patients, eight were treated with iliac crest non-vascularized bone graft (IC-NBG), seven with vascularized free medial femoral condyle (MFC) graft, and nine with 1,2-intercompartmental supraretinacular artery pedicled vascularized bone graft (1,2-ICSRA-VBG). The grip strength, flexion, extension, radial deviation, ulnar deviation angles were measured and compared to the contralateral hand for functional outcomes. Union rates, the scaphoid height-to-length ratio, the lateral intrascaphoid angle (LISA) were evaluated for radiological outcomes. The Mayo Wrist Score, Visual Analog Scale (VAS) score, and Quick Disability of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (Q-DASH) Questionnaire score were calculated. Results Union was observed in seven (87.5%) patients after IC-NBG, in six (85.7%) patients after MFC bone graft and nine (100%) patients in the treatment group with 1,2-ICSRA-VBG. There were no statistically significant differences among the IC-NBG, MFC and 1,2-ICSRA-VBG groups in terms of the union rates, the scaphoid height-to-length ratio, VAS score, Q-DASH score, grip strength and flexion, ulnar deviation, radial deviation angles after surgery (p>0.05). However, extension was statistically lower in the MFC group than IC-NBG and 1,2-ICSRA-VBG groups after surgery. The Mayo score was better in the IC-NBG group than MFC and 1,2-ICSRA-VBG, indicating a statistically significant difference (p<0.05). Conclusion Based on our study results, we suggest to use IC-NBG for scaphoid waist nonunion as the primary procedure, as the union rates are comparable with the MFC and 1,2-ICSRA-VBG techniques and it has advantages such as shorter operation time, easier technique, no special experience requirement, and better functional outcomes.
Does sustainability sell? Market responses to sustainability certification

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of two projects aimed at testing market responses to the first‐ever fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) independently certified as sustainable.Design/methodology/approach – The method used comprised three phases: independent sustainability certification of products using a full life cycle assessment; nationwide roll‐out of seven certified household products in retail outlets throughout New Zealand, and trials of certified lamb meat in three butcher shops in Brisbane, Australia; and monitoring of sales data and consumer responses to certified products.Findings – Record sales averaging +52 per cent above historical were achieved and sustained for the seven household products over a period of 18 months. Certified lamb meat product was well received, with 95 per cent of customers surveyed indicating that they would consider buying certified meat in future.Practical implications – The paper indicates that there is consumer demand for products that ar.
Microscopic Simulation Model of Traffic Operations at Intersections in Malfunction Flash Mode

From time to time, intersection signal hardware malfunctions. In many instances, such a malfunction results in the intersection falling into a flashing operation. While in this mode, the signal indications presented to motorists may be red–red (R-R) flash (i.e., flashing red indications presented to all movements) or yellow–red flash (Y-R) (i.e., flashing yellow indications to the mainline movement and flashing red to all other movements). Transportation agencies must select one of these flash modes for intersection malfunction flash events. To help agencies develop flash mode policies, operational comparisons of Y-R and R-R flash are simulated over a range of volume demands at the intersection of two roadways with two lanes each. Driver behavior at the flashing intersection is modeled according to field data collected at more than 40 instances of malfunction flash. Results indicate that the common assumption that Y-R malfunction flash keeps the mainline moving is often incorrect. Under conditions of low side street volume, this assumption may hold true; however, as major and minor street volumes increase, intersection operation increasingly mirrors that of an all-way-stop-controlled intersection. The key findings are that both Y-R and R-R flash provide reasonable performance at relatively low major and minor street volumes, and both break down at higher volumes. Only over a limited range of traffic demands will Y-R flash provide a significantly better operational performance than will R-R flash.
Structural Modifications to DNA-Binding Polyamides for Improved Biological Activity in Cell Culture

Polyamides are a class of synthetic small molecules that recognize DNA in a sequence-specific fashion through a network of hydrogen bonds formed with bonding partners in the floor of the minor groove. The binding affinity of polyamides is comparable to that of numerous DNA-binding proteins, and polyamides have been shown to displace DNA-binding proteins. As such, they present a powerful opportunity to modulate expression levels of genes vital to human health. The cellular permeability and biological activity of polyamides has presented an impediment in moving from in vitro to in vivo work that was partially removed by the discovery that fluorescein dyes facilitate cell entry. The work described here details recent advances in modifications to the C-terminal polyamide linker, linkage and tail groups that improve the endogenous inducible gene regulation activity of polyamides in cell culture.
Multimodal therapy for treatment of equine back pain: a report of 15 cases

Abstract Back pain and diseases of the spine are considered significant problems in equine sports and veterinary medicine. This article reports a multimodal approach to the treatment of equine back pain using ozonized platelet rich plasma (PRP), dynamic mobilization exercises, and therapeutic shoeing in 15 horses involved in the vaquejada discipline. Fifteen American Quarter Horses of both sexes engaged in vaquejada in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, with a mean age of 8.61 ? 1.73 years were examined at a training center for lower performance diagnostics or back pain. A complete clinical examination was performed on all horses at rest to determine the general conformation and alterations in posture, symmetry, and curvature of the spine. The horses were examined while walking and trotting in straight lines and circles to determine the presence of lameness and/or gait asymmetry. Spinal abnormalities on clinical examination were classified on a scale of 0 to 5 based on the following parameters: degree of response to pain from back palpation, hypertonicity of the back muscles, stiffness of the thoracolumbar joint, and physical dysfunction. After physical examination, ultrasound was performed to identify the cause of the thoracolumbar pain. The therapeutic protocol consisted of the intralesional application of ozonized PRP combined with therapeutic ultrasound, dynamic mobilization exercises, and therapeutic shoeing. All treated animals returned to sports activities at a higher level of performance than at the beginning of the treatment. Six months after treatment, telephone contact was made with the owner or trainer to determine if the back pain had relapsed. None of the animals relapsed during this period, and they participated in vaquejada normally.
Albumin permeability across endothelial monolayers under long-term shear stress

Endothelial cells lining the inner surface of blood vessels regulate the exchange of molecules between the blood and the vessel wall. This study investigates the effect of long-term shear stress on macromolecule permeability across endothelial monolayers. In vitro system to measure transendothelial permeability to tetramethylrhodamine conjugated albumin under shear stress was developed. The temporal variation in albumin permeability under 1Pa and 4Pa over 48h was quantified using a fluorescence spectrophotometer. At 4Pa, albumin permeability did not show a statistical significant change over 48h. Under shear stress of 1Pa, the average albumin permeability between 12 and 30h was 2.5-fold higher than the average between 0 and 6h. Under shear stress of 1Pa, the average albumin permeability between 36 and 48h was 1.8-fold higher than the average between 12 and 30h. These results show that both the magnitude of, and the length of exposure to, shear stress regulate transendothelial permeability.
Defense Expenditures and Economic Growth in Israel: The Indirect Link

Evidence from Israel suggests that economic growth may benefit from increased investment rates and cuts in defense spending - in other words, an economic `peace dividend'. Recent scholarly work, however, focusing on short-term, direct impacts, has provided little evidence for the existence of such a peace dividend in other parts of the world or in Israel itself. In this article, we address these competing views by exploring some important indirect, longer-term effects of defense spending on the Israeli macroeconomy. Our results indicate that a short-term focus fails to reveal the process through which a small, positive economic peace dividend appears to be operating in Israel. Rather, the main features of this process are indirect, long-term, and nuanced, operating through investment, delayed several years, with non-military government spending acting as a crucial intervening variable in the process. Whether the decline of defense spending will continue to be associated with rapid economic growth in Israel is problematic. However, like the defense-economy linkage in Israel, so too may the peace dividend operate indirectly and only in the long term. Our analysis shows that these linkages are not static, but change in important and dramatic ways over time.
Definition of contact stress in friction units on the basis of the acoustic emission method

Abstract The following results of acoustic emission signals researches were obtained during the change in contact stress. It is shown that the theoretical regularity of change in average level of the acoustic emission resulting signal at contact stress has a linear character. Analogical regularity is received during experimental researches. It is showed that the sensitivity of the acoustic emission method and the precision of determining contact stresses are considerably better, than the tensometry method. The recording of the moment when friction unit seize begins is also considerably more precise.
Immunohistochemistry for Thymidine Kinase-1 (TK1): A Potential Tool for the Prognostic Stratification of Breast Cancer Patients

Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequent non-cutaneous malignancy in women. Histological grade, expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors (ER and PgR), overexpression/amplification of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) oncogene, and proliferative activity measured with ki-67 provide important information on the biological features of BC and guide treatment choices. However, a biomarker that allows a more accurate prognostic stratification is still lacking. Thymidine kinase-1 (TK1), a ubiquitous enzyme involved in the pyrimidine nucleotide recovery pathway, is a cell-proliferation marker with potential prognostic and predictive impacts in BC. Eighty (80) cases of invasive BC with a long-term follow-up were retrospectively selected, and clinicopathological data were collected for each patient. TK1 tissue expression was evaluated immunohistochemically. Data suggested that TK1 expression levels are positively correlated with ER and PgR expression, and negatively correlated with HER2 status and the impact on patients’ distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS): in detail, among patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy, lower TK1 levels are correlated with better DRFS. Therefore, these results contribute to furthering the knowledge of TK1, suggesting a possible and important role of this enzyme as a biomarker in the stratification of BC patients.
An Update on Semen Physiology, Technologies, and Selection Techniques for the Advancement of In Vitro Equine Embryo Production: Section II

Simple Summary In order to improve fertilization and pregnancy rates within artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization techniques in horses, producers may choose to select the best sperm within an ejaculate. In this paper, we review conventional and novel methods of sperm selection. Abstract As the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and in vitro embryo production (IVP) expand in the equine industry, it has become necessary to further our understanding of available semen selection techniques. This segment of our two-section review will focus on the selection of spermatozoa based on quality and sex for equine intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), as well as current and future developments in sperm sorting technologies. Ultimately, novel methods of semen selection will be assessed based on their efficacy in other species and their relevance and future application towards ARTs in the horse.
Dairy products as sources of methanogens for humans

Methanogens are detected in human gut from the first moments of life and there is a diversification of methanogens during infancy. However, the sources of acquisition of methanogens are not well elucidated. We therefore investigated 56 dairy products as potential sources of methanogens by applying molecular biology. In the presence of negative controls, we obtained an overall prevalence of methanogens in 85.7% (48/56) of samples by real-time PCR. Further PCR-sequencing identified 73.2% (41/56) of Methanobrevibacter smithii. We also found for the first time in dairy products 1.8% (1/56) of Methanobrevibacter oralis, 7.1% (4/56) of Methanobrevibacter millerae, 1.8% (1/56) of Methanobrevibacter ruminantium, 1.8% (1/56) of Methanocorpusculum sp. We observed a significant presence (p-value=0.001) of methanogens in fermented dairy products compared to unfermented dairy products. This study gives credit to the fact that dairy products could be considered as a source of methanogens for humans, especially for children.
Joint Access Point Placement and Power-Channel-Resource-Unit Assignment for IEEE 802.11ax-Based Dense WiFi Network With QoS Requirements

IEEE 802.11ax is the standard for the new generation WiFi networks. In this paper, we formulate the problem of joint access point (AP) placement and power-channel-resource unit assignment for 802.11ax-based dense WiFi. The objective is to minimize the number of APs. Two quality-of-service (QoS) requirements are to be fulfilled: (1) a two-tier throughput requirement which ensures that the throughput of each station is good enough, and (2) a fault tolerance requirement which ensures that the stations could still use WiFi even when some APs fail. We prove that this problem is NP-hard. To tackle this problem, we first develop an analytic model to derive the throughput of each station under the OFDMA mechanism and a widely used interference model. We then design a heuristic algorithm to find high-quality solutions with polynomial time complexity. Simulation results under both fixed-user and mobile-user cases show that: (1) when the area is small (50 × 50 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\rm m^2$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="qiu-ieq1-3129596.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>), our algorithm gives the optimal solutions; when the area is larger (80 × 60 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\rm m^2$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="qiu-ieq2-3129596.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>), our algorithm can reduce the number of APs by 34.9-87.7% as compared to the Random and Greedy algorithms. (2) Our algorithm can always get feasible solutions that fulfill the QoS requirements.
Node-level indicators of soft faults in wireless sensor networks

Faults in wireless sensor nodes tend to be the norm rather than the exception. Our paper addresses the following problems: How can we make sure the sensed data has not been distorted by faults? And when we experience anomalies in the sensed data, how can we distinguish between rare but correctly measured events and incorrect data due to faults? The focus of this paper is specifically on soft faults, because (i) they deteriorate the data quality and (ii) are hard to distinguish from irregular but correct events. Many papers on how to detect soft faults have been proposed, but they mostly rely on assumptions on the network's deployment or the nature of the collected data. Therefore, they are insufficient as they can miss faults or misinterpret correct data. In this paper, our key idea is to augment the existing fault-detection approaches with node-level information as additional input. Our contribution is to show the existence of such node-level information that can improve (i) the detection of soft faults and (ii) the distinction between faults and events. This node-level information - called fault indicators - can then be included in existing fault detection schemes. Based on practical experiments, we show that using such fault indicators indeed improves the detection rate and reduces the risk of missing fault-induced variations of sensor data.
Simple methods and tools to determine the mechanical strength of adobe in rural areas

In rural areas, especially in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), it is very difficult to access to data on building materials, to properly design the buildings. In particular, the raw earth is difficult to characterize, even where it is commonly used. Its parameters vary greatly depending on the manufacture techniques and on the composition of particle size of the soil used, which is different from place to place. To design raw-earth structures, it is crucial to know a value of compressive strength to use in calculations. Unfortunately, in many places of the world, it is not possible to define these values for unfired clay bricks (f b,r,mean ) involving laboratory equipment normally used by official certifiers. For this reason, the crushing tests of specimens have to be performed using simple tools that can be easily carried out even in places where advanced technologies are lacking. The research has been organized in the following phases: to design and implement two test tools (Nutcracker’s method and simple lever method); to test an adequate number of specimens suitable for the purpose, using both laboratory instruments and the two implemented tools; to compare the obtained results, in order to assess the reliability of the instruments and the followed procedure to obtain an actually usable value of f b,r,mean . The experimental trials have led to the following conclusions: the Nutcracker’s method is perfectly suitable for the intended purpose; on the contrary, the simple lever method has proved to be not usable in practice.
A Method for Representing Non-Standard Waveform in Factory Tests Using Impulse Waveforms

The standard 1.2/50 lightning impulse test has been important for factory testing equipment and evaluating their performance in electrical systems. In practice, however, such equipment is subject to non-standard waveform (NSW) of high frequencies, which may not be covered by standard tests. To overcome this difficulty, the present article outlines a method that simulates NSW in laboratory tests. Based on multiresolution wavelet analysis, the method considers the correlation between amplitude and entropy in the decomposition levels between waveforms. To that end, changes are proposed to the following parameters of standard impulse tests: amplitude, cut-off instant, and front time. The results show that, mostly, the combination of a lightning impulse waveform (LIW) with impulse waves cut at different times, sufficiently represent the NSW. Only when the NSW's density falls predominantly in a frequency range above 3.125 MHz, will there be need for a complementary LIW with a steep front time. The method's application allows manufacturers and concessionaires to subject the equipment to conditions that properly represent the NSW effects, through lightning impulse tests carried out at the factory.