Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Oxford Handbook of Reference

Reference, the ability to refer to and pick out entities, is essential to human language and thought/cognition. The chapters in this volume attempt to provide a state of the art overview of this ability. The book is divided into two sections. The chapters in Part I, Foundations, are concerned with basic questions related to different types of referring expression and their interpretation. They address questions about the role of the speaker (including speaker intentions) and of the addressee, as well as the contribution of (the semantics of) the linguistic forms themselves, in establishing reference. They are also concerned with the nature of such concepts as definite and indefinite reference and specificity and the conditions under which reference may fail. The chapters in Part II, Implications and Applications, address questions about the acquisition of reference by children, and the processing of reference in the brain (neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics) as well as by machines, including robots (computational linguistics).
The Relationship between Ambivalence over Emotional Expression and Health-Related Quality of Life and Adherence to Treatment in Cancer Patients: The Mediating Role of Depression and Social Support: A Descriptive Study

Background and Objectives: Ambivalence over emotional expression plays an important role in quality of life and adherence to treatment in cancer patients. The aim of this study was to determine the mediating role of depression and social support in the relationship between ambivalence and quality of life and adherence to treatment in cancer patients. Materials and Methods: The present study was descriptive and based on structural equation modeling. For this purpose, 206 cancer patients referred to Dezful medical centers in 2020 were selected by convenience sampling method and completed questionnaires of ambivalence over emotional expression, quality of life, adherence to treatment, depression, and social support. Data were analyzed using statistical methods of structural equation modeling and Pearson’s correlation. Results: The results showed that there was a negative and significant relationship between ambivalence and quality of life (β=-0.183), depression and adherence (β=-0.178) (p<0.05), ambivalence and social support (β=-0.411), between depression and quality of life (β=-0.288) (p<0.01) and a positive and significant relationship between ambivalence and depression (β=0.441), social support and quality of life (β=0.221), social support and adherence to treatment (β=0.249) (p<0.01). The mediating role of depression and social support variables was confirmed. Conclusion: Considering the mediating role of depression and social support in the relationship between ambivalence and quality of life and adherence to treatment, it is recommended in psychological therapies, in the first place, the variable of ambivalence to be examined and evaluated and the important role of mediating variables to be considered.
Evaluate the Contribution of the Mixture Components on the Longevity and Performance of FC-5

The focus of the project was to evaluate how to improve the longevity of Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)’s FC-5 mixtures. In particular, what FC-5 mixture components have the greatest impact on improving the cracking and durability of the FC-5 mixture. The data mining of FDOT Pavement Management System (PMS) database, provided valuable information regarding typical service life of FC-5 mixtures. Combined with material datasheets from production, the fatigue and durability of the FC-5 mixtures was found to be a function of the effective asphalt content of the mix, with little to no influence from traffic and pavement structure. This was further validated during an extensive field visit. Laboratory testing consisted evaluating current mix design procedures, finer nominal aggregate size (NMAS) FC-5 mixtures, and the influence of production tolerances on the durability, cracking, and rutting performance. The research conducted showed that asphalt contents could be increased by up to 0.6% if Pie-Plate testing was conducted using the PG76-22 and ARB-12 proposed for the mix. A 9.5 mm NMAS FC-5 mixture improves durability and fatigue performance over the current 12.5 mm NMAS FC-5, but rutting issues were observed in the Hamburg test, especially with the ARB-12 asphalt binder. Current production tolerances for FC-5 mixtures seem appropriate, except for the 0.6% reduction in binder content and the finer side of the gradation tolerance for ARB-12 binders. The 0.6% below optimum asphalt content tolerance resulted in mixtures with poor Overlay Tester fatigue performance and higher Cantabro Abrasion Loss values. ARB-12 asphalt binders may create stability issues when FC-5 gradations are on the finer side of the production tolerance, as it is hypothesized that the residual crumb rubber was pushing the aggregate skeleton apart. Stone-on-stone contact verification using the Voids in Coarse Aggregate (VCA) approach would help to rectify this potential issue.
Factors associated with chronic kidney disease in HIV+ patients in Albert Luthuli Municipality of South Africa

Background: Current research indicates that chronic kidney disease is a global problem which poses a major health threat to people of poor countries who have HIV/AIDS and are on antiretroviral treatment. In this study, the prevalence of chronic kidney disease and the factors associated with it were investigated among the HIV/AIDS patients in a rural community of South Africa. Methods: A cohort of HIV+ terminal ill patients was retrospectively followed from 2010 to 2017 until chronic kidney disease was diagnosed or until the end of the observation period at two hospitals (Carolina and Embhuleni). Patient information was obtained from the routine hospitals’ records, and the data were analysed using logistic regression and survival analysis (Kaplan-Meier hazard functions and ratios, and log-rank tests) methods. Results: Out of a random sample of 357 HIV/AIDS patients, 53 patients (14.85%) had chronic kidney disease. The factors associated with chronic kidney disease were: Gender (p-value<0.0024); Age (p-value<0.0420); Baseline creatinine (p-value<0.0116); Baseline alanine transaminase (p-value<0.0111); Treatment regimen 1 (p-value<0.0001); ART adherence (poor, fair, good) (p-value<0.0005); Hospital (p-value<0.0001); and Lost to follow-up (ye, no) (p-value<0.0069). Discussion: Whilst antiretroviral treatment is associated with some improvement in virology and immunology in HIV-infected patients, research is still needed for the assessment of the impact of ART and other risk factors on renal function in marginalised communities in Africa. Conclusion: The research findings on HIV+ patients in Albert Luthuli Municipality concurred with several previous research findings on risk factors to CKD. The expected action to alleviate the health threat due to CKD in South Africa is to educate the nation on prevention, early detection and on the management of the disease. The study established diverse baseline statistics against which future research may be based.
Feature Construction Using Evolution-COnstructed Features For General Object Recognition

Feature Construction Using Evolution-COnstructed Features for General Object Recognition Kirt Dwayne Lillywhite Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Doctor of Philosophy Object recognition is a well studied but extremely challenging field. Human detection is an especially important part of object recognition as it has played a role in machine and human interaction, biometrics, unmanned vehicles, as well as tracking and surveillance. We first present a hardware implementation of the successful Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) method for human detection. The implementation significantly speeds up the method achieving 38 frames a second on VGA video while testing 11,160 sliding windows per frame. The accuracy remains comparable to the CPU implementation. Analysis of the HOG method and other popular object recognition methods led to a novel approach for object detection using a feature construction method called Evolution-COnstructed (ECO) features. Most other approaches rely on human experts to construct features for object recognition. ECO features are automatically constructed by uniquely employing a standard genetic algorithm to discover series of transforms that are highly discriminative. Using ECO features provides several advantages over other object detection algorithms including: no need for a human expert to build feature sets or tune their parameters, ability to generate specialized feature sets for different objects, and no limitations to certain types of image sources. We show in our experiments that ECO features perform better or comparable with state-of-the-art object recognition algorithms making it the first feature construction method to compete with features created by human experts at general object recognition. An analysis is given of ECO features which includes a visualization of ECO features and improvements made to the algorithm.
Impacts of ISO 9000 on business performances: a literature review

Total quality management is from a decade an important and useful organizational system for increasing companies' competitiveness, by optimizing processes with a particular focus on the customer. Among all the methodologies, ISO 9000 certification is one of the most common and recognized approaches for the benefits of the companies that decide to implement it. Several studies have been conducted in literature, presenting some important impacts of the ISO 9000 on the companies' performances. Due to the vast number of works, a classification of the main impacts of ISO 9000 on the principle business performances is needed. The aim of this paper is to present a literature review on this topic and classify the findings, in order to fix the results as the most important areas of company influenced by the certification. Finally the barriers and pitfalls for a successful ISO 9000 certification are presented, furnishing details for overcome this issue.
Relationships between Knowledge, Technology Recipient, Technology Supplier, Relationship Characteristics and Degree of Inter-Firm Technology Transfer

The purpose of this paper is to accentuate on the relationships between knowledge, technology recipient, technology supplier and relationship characteristics and degree of inter-firm technology transfer. A conceptual framework was developed and a review of relevant literature was conducted. Building on the integrated knowledge-based view and organizational learning perspectives, and previous technology transfers models, this study proposes a model in providing explanations on the relationships between technology transfer characteristics and degree of technology transfer. This model also conceptualizes the relationship between the degree of technology transfer and local firms’ performance, specifically at corporate and human resource performance. Building on intra and inter-firm KT literature this paper extends the literature by conceptualizing the relationships between four critical dimensions of TTCHARS (KCHAR, TRCHAR, TSCHAR, and RCHAR) and TTDEG in a single holistic model to explain the relationships between each group of TTCHARS and degree of inter-firm TT in IJVs.
Health Beliefs Associated with Preventive Health Behaviors for COVID-19: Findings in a Sample Drawn from a Major City in Iran (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Background: To date, in the absence of effective treatment and successful vaccines, the COVID-19 pandemic has become the most important threat to public health. OBJECTIVE Objectives: This study was conducted in Saveh city, of Iran, in 2020. Of interest were how health beliefs (taken from the Health Belief’s Model [HBM]), demographic characteristics, and general health behaviors (e.g., smoking) relate to COVID-19 preventative behaviors (e.g., hand-washing). METHODS Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, a multi-stage randomized sampling method was used and 486 people (250 males and 236 females) recruited from health centers in Saveh city, Iran, participated. Data were collected through a self-administered multi‑part questionnaire, which included sociodemographic information, health behaviors, and constructs associated with HBM. Data were analyzed using independent t-tests, ANOVA, and multiple regression in SPSS version 21. RESULTS Results: Perceived disease susceptibility (β=0.44, p<0.001), self-efficacy to enact preventative behaviors (β=0.24, p<0.01), education (β=0.20, p<0.001), non-smoking status (β=0.14, p<0.01), marital status (β=0.10, p<0.03), and perceived barriers to disease preventative behaviors (β=-0.10, p<0.04) were important predictors of prevention practices for COVID-19. Perceived susceptibility, self-efficacy, barriers, and socio-demographic constructs (education, smoking, and marital status) accounted for 61.4% (adjusted R2) of the variance associated with preventive behavior for COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS Conclusion: To improve control strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic, public health initiatives are needed to enhance perceived susceptibility to the disease and improve self-efficacy to perform preventative behaviors in spite of perceived barriers.
Operations model for utilities using wind-generator arrays. Final report

The report develops the effects that various combinations of wind regime, array configuration and penetrations, and system characteristics have on system variables such as area control error, frequency, interchange power and spinning reserve. The characteristics of the combinations causing system operating stress or operating problems are denoted and methods for estimating effects on a simplified and on a detailed simulation basis are reported. Methods for reducing operating problems are suggested and involve array configurations, penetration, unit commitment and dispatch changes, and wind generator controls. The limitation of the work reported is not in the utility operations simulation, which is very detailed, but in the array models which have not been verified by experimental data from large wind generator arrays.
The roles of E-Tmod in mechanotransduction and cardiac myofibrillogenesis

Sarcomeres comprise the backbone of striated muscles, serving structural roles and providing contractile drive essential to cardiac functions. Among the components of the actomyosin complex that form the building blocks of sarcomeres, Erythrocyte Tropomodulin (E-Tmod) belongs to a special category of capping proteins known to regulate actin monomer polymerization. While E-Tmod⁻ʹ⁻ is embryonically lethal with the phenotype of severe cardiac underdevelopment and impaired contractility, E-Tmod⁺ʹ⁻ mice survived through adulthood with a relatively mild phenotype of reduced right ventricular (RV) size. Through organ culture of the day post coitus (dpc) 9.5 E-Tmod⁻ʹ⁻ mouse hearts, we established that E-Tmod is required to sustain, but not to initiate, the heartbeats. Expression analysis also revealed that E-Tmod knockout caused the down-regulation of [alpha]-Tropomyosin ([alpha]-TM) and troponin, which are essential genes for Ca ²⁺ dependent contractile function. This finding suggested that E-Tmod influences cardiac contraction through modulating the TM- troponin complex. Hypertrophy is common adaptive response of postnatal cardiomyocytes subjected to stress overload, which requires the synthesis of additional sarcomere components to increase the cell size. Hypoxia stress overload remodels the underdeveloped RV of the E-Tmod⁺ʹ⁻ mice to the size of the wildtypes. Mechanical stretch and shear stress also elevated E-Tmod in both wildtype and siRNA E-Tmod knockdown myocytes. These results demonstrated that E-Tmod is up-regulated during hypertrophic process and that partial reduction of the E- Tmod (both E-Tmod⁺ʹ⁻ and siRNA-treated cardiomyocytes) does not affect the ability of the cardiomyocytes to undergo mechanically induced adaptive hypertrophy. We have provided the direct expression evidence for the critical role of E-Tmod in the correlation between developmental evolution of ventricular diastolic function and changes in ventricular myoarchitecture. The present investigation also showed for the first time that alteration in E-Tmod directly affects the expressions of TM, actin, and troponins during myofibrillogenesis, as well as mechanical stretch induced hypertrophy. Therefore, our study suggests that E-Tmod is not simply a passive structural molecule, but plays important roles in the transcriptional regulation of multiple components of the sarcomeric thin filament
Management Information Systems and Performance Measurement for the Electronic Library:eLib Supporting Study (MIEL2) Final Report

Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of many expert colleagues in the preparation of this work. We are particularly grateful for the input of the participants in the Expert Workshop held on 16 th May 1997 in Preston, for that of Professor Charles McClure who provided an update on American work in this field and for the time given by members of SCONUL's Advisory Committee on Performance Indicators (ACPI). Finally we would wish to express our thanks to colleagues in CERLIM, and in particular to Shelagh Fisher, for their suggestions, advice and assistance.
A Complex Approach to UXO Discrimination: Combining Advanced EMI Forward Models and Statistical Signal Processing

Abstract : The research described in this report was conducted in fulfillment of Project MM-1572, A Complex Approach to UXO Discrimination: Combining Advanced EMI Forward and Statistical Signal Processing, submitted to the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) in response to the Munitions Management Statement of Need MMSON-07-04, Advanced Technologies for Detection, Discrimination, and Remediation of Munitions and Explosives of Concern (MEC): UXO Technology. The well-known and prohibitive cost of carefully excavating all geophysical anomalies detected at lands contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) is one of the greatest impediments to performing an efficient and thorough cleanup of former battlefields and of Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE) sites. Innovative discrimination techniques are required that can quickly and reliably distinguish between hazardous UXO and non-hazardous metallic items. The key to success lies in the development of advanced processing techniques that can analyze and process sophisticated magnetic or electromagnetic induction data, with its novel waveforms, ever improving quality, and vector or tensor character, so as to maximize the probability of correct classification and minimize the falsealarm rate.
THE IM P ACT OF INFORM A TION SECURITY BREACHES ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE BREACHED FIRMS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIG A TION

This study investigates the impact of information security breaches on firm performance. Unlike previous studies that used an event study methodology, we used a matched-sample comparison analysis to investigate the impact of securi ty breaches on firm performance. To investigate this impact, we considered subsequent four quarters following the security breach and determine if the breached firms’ performance decreased compared to that of the peer firms (control group). Although the breached firms’ sales and operating income did not decrease in the subsequent quarters following the breach, return on assets decreased in the third quarter. Also, performance of the control firms was h igher compared to that of the treatment firms in general. However, the breached firms’ sales increased significantly in the fourth quarter compared to those of the control firms.
Effect of Dietary Magnesium and Calcium on Reducing the Risk of Atherosclerosis in High-Fat Diet Fed Rats

Atherosclerosis is a complex chronic arterial disease that results from the deposition of lipids within the arterial walls which leads to formation of characteristic plaques making the arteries narrower, harder or completely blocked. The rupture of these plaques causes local thrombosis, leading to occlusion of the affected artery [1]. The principle clinical manifestations of the disease include ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke and peripheral arterial disease [2]. This has become the significant cause of vascular disease worldwide and number one cause of global mortality [3]. According to WHO report, around 17.7 million people died from cardiovascular disease in 2015 which represents 31% of the total global deaths [4]. The major risk factor for the development of atherosclerosis is hypercholesterolemia, indicating elevation of body’s Total Cholesterol (TC) and LowDensity Lipoprotein Cholesterol (LDL-C) levels [4]. Therefore, foods rich in saturated fat and cholesterol are particularly responsible for the surge of circulating cholesterol levels [5].
Benchmark study on the use of simplified structural codes to predict the ultimate strength of a damaged ship hull

The objective of the paper is to evaluate the ability of simplified structural analysis methods, based on the Smith formulation to predict the ultimate strength of a damaged ship. Such methods are now widely accepted as a reliable and fast way to obtain the longitudinal strength of an intact ship. In order to extend these methods to damaged ships, first a benchmark study on the intact ship was performed in order for the differences between the methods to be evaluated. Afterwards the methods are applied to the same ship section but with damage, which was defined by removing the structural elements from the affected areas. These, in turn, were obtained from a previous study in which a collision was simulated using a finite element model. Results obtained for the ultimate strength were compared against each other and with the results of the finite element analysis. Aside from some exceptions, the results of the approximate methods agreed well with each other for the intact and damaged conditions. The simplified methods are more conservative than the finite element analysis in hogging while they seem to give a very good approximation to the result for sagging with some of them overestimating this value.
REMOTE CENTER OF COMPLIANCE RECONSIDERED

ABSTRACTRemotecenter-of-compliancedeviceshavelongbeenusedtofacilitateinsertionforassemblyoperations.Anewanalysiswithamoreaccuratemodelbettercharacterizestheinterestingprop-ertiesofremotecompliance.Thecenterlocationandsti®nessesarepresentedasnondimensionalratiosthatareonlyfunctionsofgeometricalpropertiesandPoisson'sratio.Importantresultsshow:i)thehighsensitivityofthecenterlocationandii)thein-verserelationshipbetweenlinearandangularlateralsti®nesses.1 INTRODUCTION A common assembly task is the mating of parts byinsertion, such as placing a motor shaft into a bearing.For close tolerances, jamming can occur when using auto-mated equipment such as robots. One solution is to usesensing, feedback, and compensation but has signi¯cantcosts in design, o peration, and maintenance. A very suc-cessful mechanical alternat ive called the Remote Center-of-Compliance (RCC) device was develop ed at Draper Labo-ratories by Whitney and coworkers [2]-[5], [10]-[12]. Thesedevices are seemingly v ery well known and are described inmostroboticstextbooks. Theyhavebeensold commerciallyby severa lvendors.Figure 1 shows an insertion strategy. When a linearmisalignment occurs, a contact force translates the shaftaway. When an angular misalignment occurs, a contactmoment turns the shaft about the tip to straighten it. Thistype of action can be achieved by simulating linear andangular springs acting at the tip point. The point has beencontactforceparallel translationresultant momentparallel rotation