Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
USING STRUCTURE EQUATION MODELING TO CONSTRUCT STUDENT SATISFACTION MODELS FOR PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES OF PAKISTAN

Globalization and privatization of higher education across the globe have an immense influence over the delivery of service called ‘higher education’. Private universities are in search of Business Excellence Models (BEMS) in competitive global world. They are struggling to build their image and reputation so that they can attract customers and public funding. University image has much to do with establishing the brand in market to attract quality students and faculty and it can be best assured through service quality and student satisfaction. Brown and Mazzarol (2009) have suggested that the university reputation or the institutional image has strong relationship with the perceived loyalty and belongingness with the institution. According to them the student satisfaction had weak and indeterminate link with the service quality of both types “human ware” (people and processes) and “hardware” (tangibles and facilities). A quantitative study was conducted in seven private Pakistani universities to assess students’ perceptions of service quality and the process of reputation-building. The study examines the interaction of students’ perception about the image and satisfaction with service delivery to procure customer satisfaction models predicting future sustainability of the market for the universities. Results suggest that leadership marks the difference; it is the planning and delivering of the most obligatory service—higher education— which is making the desired outcomes reachable to customers and earning outreach to the future market.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK: A personality-based perspective on concerns and intention to self-isolate

Objectives. Public behaviour change is necessary to contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Based on the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) framework, this study presents an examination of individual differences in some relevant psychological factors. Design. Cross-sectional psychometric. Methods. UK respondents ( N = 202) completed a personality questionnaire (RST-PQ), measuresofillnessattitudes,concernsabouttheimpactofcoronavirusonhealthservicesand socio-economicinfrastructures,personalsafety,andlikelihoodofvoluntaryself-isolation. Results. Respondents most concerned were older, had negative illness attitudes, and scored higher on reward reactivity (RR), indicating the motivation to take positive approach action despite prevailing worry/anxiety. Personal safety concerns were highest in those with negative illness attitudes and higher ﬁght – ﬂight – freeze system (FFFS, reﬂecting fear/avoidance) scores. Results suggest people are experiencing psychological conﬂict: between the urge to stay safe (FFFF-related) and the desire to maintain a normal, pleasurable (RR-related) life. Ways of ameliorating conﬂict may include maladaptive behaviours (panic buying), reﬂecting reward-related displacement activity. Intended self-isolation related to FFFS, but also low behavioural inhibition system (related to anxiety) scores. Older people reported themselves less likely to self-isolate. Conclusions. Interventions need to consider individual differences in psychological factors in behaviour change, and we discuss relevant literature to inform policy makers and communicators.
A Novel Pseudo-Direct-Drive Permanent-Magnet Machine with Less Magnet

Magnetic gears (MGs), an alternative to conventional mechanical gearboxes, have been extensively studied in the last decade. By combining the MG and the conventional permanent-magnet (PM) machine into one frame, different MG-integrated PM machines with a high torque density are obtained, among which the pseudo-direct-drive PM machine (PDD) features both a good torque capability and a high power factor with an acceptable structural complexity. However, the stator PM array in the conventional PDD obstructs the magnetic path and reduces the excitation torque due to the coils. Another problem is the large amount of PMs which increases the overall cost. In this paper, we propose a novel topology which has a reduced PM amount with an improved torque density. The working principles of the proposed PDD are analyzed theoretically and its performance is validated by time-stepping finite-element method (TS-FEM). A comparison study with the conventional topology is conducted to show its merits.
Comparative Phytochemical and Antibacterial Properties of Piper betle Leave Extracts from Barguna and Moheshkhali, Bangladesh

Background: Leaves of Piper betle are frequently used in South and Southeast Asia for traditional treatment and as a mouth freshener. Our purpose was to compare the phytochemical and antimicrobial properties of betel leaves from Barguna and Moheshkhali against Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli. Methods: We extracted the betel leaves with acetone and ethanol according to the standard procedure. The extracts were analyzed for the presence of phytochemical properties by a standard procedure, antibacterial susceptibility by agar well diffusion method, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) by broth dilution assay and functional groups were obtained by FT-IR spectroscopic analysis. Results: We found the presence of a good number of phytochemicals in both Barguna and Moheshkhali extracts. In most of the cases, extracts of Moheshkhali leaves showed a greater zone of inhibition than Barguna extracts. Acetonic and ethanolic extracts of Barguna showed the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) from 2.12 to 4.25 mg/mL, where Moheshkhali extracts showed between 2.12-8.5 mg/mL. The functional groups obtained by FT-IR spectra analysis were compared for the extracts. Conclusion: Betel leaves can be utilized to augment the shelf life of foods, treatments and boost up immunity following comprehensive studies.
Electronic Journal of Qualitative Theory of Differential Equations

This paper presents new results on the bifurcation of medium and small limit cycles from the periodic orbits surrounding a cubic center or from the cubic center that have a rational first integral of degree 2 respectively, when they are perturbed inside the class of all discontinuous piecewise cubic polynomial differential systems with the straight line of discontinuity y = 0. We obtain that the maximum number of medium limit cycles that can bifurcate from the periodic orbits surrounding the cubic center is 9 using the first order averaging method, and the maximum number of small limit cycles that can appear in a Hopf bifurcation at the cubic center is 6 using the fifth order averaging method. Moreover, both of the numbers can be reached by analyzing the number of simple zeros of the obtained averaged functions. In some sense, our results generalize the results in [Appl. Math. Comput. 250(2015), 887–907], Theorems 1 and 2 to the piecewise systems class.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ALTERNATIVE TRADING REGIMES

While common sense would indicate that trade and growth are positively correlated, it is not clear, both from theoretical and empirical perspectives, whether or not trade is a proximate determinant of economic growth. We try to elucidate the ambiguities in the literature, by studying the nexus between trade share and growth by comparing three different groups of countries: historical EEC, the extreme case of CMEA customs union, and a group of European transitional economies (TEs) (largely now in the EU). Our main fi nding, by applying static and dynamic panel estimators, is that the coeffi cient of real openness has the incorrect sign for the former two samples but has the correct sign for the third. The positive link between openness and growth for the last group of countries is robust to changes in the empirical indicator of openness in the growth regressions (inter and intra-industry trade indicators). JEL Classifi cation: O47; O42; E22.
Representations and Restitutions of African Traditional Healing Systems

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Representations and Restitutions of African Traditional Healing Systems Michael Urbasch
Modeling the Impact of Raising the Retirement Age on Unemployment and Wages in Russia

The article assesses the impact of raising the retirement age on unemployment and wages in Russia. The study defines two tasks in order to model this impact. The first task requires to calculate the change in the average wage, provided that the number of jobs will meet the increased need. In the second task, the number of jobs is steady. The modeling of the impact was assessed by constructing a regression relationship between wages and unemployment, and differences in age groups were taken into account by introducing fictitious shift and tilt variables into the model. The article presents the results of modeling for the case of raising the retirement age by one year. According to calculations completed for the first and second task, after raising the retirement age by one year, the wages will decline. These calculations have shown that, even under favorable conditions in the Russian labor market, the wages will fall and, therefore, it would be impossible to ensure the financial stability of the pension system by raising the retirement age. Lower wages will reduce the revenues of the Pension Fund of Russia, while higher unemployment rate will increase the expenses on unemployment benefits.
Di usion and In uence in Twitter

Social networking and microblogging integrating services, such as Twitter, have been gaining popularity in recent years. In this context, the study of user activity and information ow raises several interesting questions, with important real life implications, such as user in uence prediction and information ow optimization. In this paper we study how to di erentiate users given their activity. We focus just on user activity, ignoring the content of messages a user exchanged. Unlike previous work that focus on user activity and content of messages user exchanged, we take into consideration both social interactions and tweeting patterns, which allow us to pro le users according to their activity patterns. We also present an approach to detect opinion spikes based on the user behaviour and inference of opinion posts.
The Effect of Education Through Cyberspace on Breastfeeding Efficacy of Primiparous Women in Shahroud in 2018: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Use your device to scan and read the article online Introduction: To start and continue breastfeeding, primiparous women have many challenges. Breastfeeding self-efficacy is an important psychological and motivational variable, but is also modifiable for the continuation of nutrition with mother milk. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of education through cyberspace on breastfeeding in women with their first birth.
Point-Of-Care CAR T-Cell Production (ARI-0001) Using a Closed Semi-automatic Bioreactor: Experience From an Academic Phase I Clinical Trial

Development of semi-automated devices that can reduce the hands-on time and standardize the production of clinical-grade CAR T-cells, such as CliniMACS Prodigy from Miltenyi, is key to facilitate the development of CAR T-cell therapies, especially in academic institutions. However, the feasibility of manufacturing CAR T-cell products from heavily pre-treated patients with this system has not been demonstrated yet. Here we report and characterize the production of 28 CAR T-cell products in the context of a phase I clinical trial for CD19+ B-cell malignancies (NCT03144583). The system includes CD4-CD8 cell selection, lentiviral transduction and T-cell expansion using IL-7/IL-15. Twenty-seven out of 28 CAR T-cell products manufactured met the full list of specifications and were considered valid products. Ex vivo cell expansion lasted an average of 8.5 days and had a mean transduction rate of 30.6 ± 13.44%. All products obtained presented cytotoxic activity against CD19+ cells and were proficient in the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Expansion kinetics was slower in patient's cells compared to healthy donor's cells. However, product potency was comparable. CAR T-cell subset phenotype was highly variable among patients and largely determined by the initial product. TCM and TEM were the predominant T-cell phenotypes obtained. 38.7% of CAR T-cells obtained presented a TN or TCM phenotype, in average, which are the subsets capable of establishing a long-lasting T-cell memory in patients. An in-depth analysis to identify individual factors contributing to the optimal T-cell phenotype revealed that ex vivo cell expansion leads to reduced numbers of TN, TSCM, and TEFF cells, while TCM cells increase, both due to cell expansion and CAR-expression. Overall, our results show for the first time that clinical-grade production of CAR T-cells for heavily pre-treated patients using CliniMACS Prodigy system is feasible, and that the obtained products meet the current quality standards of the field. Reduced ex vivo expansion may yield CAR T-cell products with increased persistence in vivo.
A study on the attenuating effects of neuregulin-1 on cognitive function impairments and its action mechanisms in an Alzheimer’s disease animal model

Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of dementia, is a chronic neurodegenerative disease causing progressive impairment of memory and other cognitive functions. Pathologically, AD brain is characterized by two types of lesion: senile or neuritic plaques and neurofi brillary tangles. It has been proposed that AD is a synaptic failure. Loss of synapses at a fine structural level as well as reduction in synaptic markers have been well documented in early and late stages of AD and have been shown to correlate well with the extent of cognitive deficits. The neuregulin (NRG) family of epidermal growth factor-related proteins is composed of a wide variety of soluble and membrane-bound proteins that mediate their effects via the tyrosine kinase receptors ErbB2 ErbB4. In the nervous system, the functions of NRG1 are essential for peripheral myelination, the establishment and maintenance of the neuromuscular and sensorimotor systems and the plasticity of cortical neuronal circuits. Heterozygous NRG1KO mice show impairments in prepulse inhibition and working memory. Methods & Results: In this study, I demonstrate that an intracerebroventricular infusion of NRG1 attenuates the cognitive function impairments in 13-monthold Tg2576 mice, an animal model of AD. NRG1 was found to rescue the reduction in the number of dendritic spines density in the brain tissues of Tg2576 mice, compared to vehicle-infused mice based on Golgi-Cox staining. This result was also corroborated in vitro in which NRG1 attenuates the
Modeling the heterogeneity of sodium and calcium homeostasis between cortical and hippocampal astrocytes and its impact on bioenergetics

Emerging evidence indicates that neuronal activity-evoked changes in sodium concentration in astrocytes Naa represent a special form of excitability, which is tightly linked to all other major ions in the astrocyte and extracellular space, as well as to bioenergetics, neurotransmitter uptake, and neurovascular coupling. Recently, one of us reported that Naa transients in the neocortex have a significantly higher amplitude than those in the hippocampus. Based on the extensive data from that study, here we develop a detailed biophysical model to further understand the origin of this heterogeneity and how it affects bioenergetics in the astrocytes. In addition to closely fitting the observed experimental Naa changes under different conditions, our model shows that the heterogeneity in Naa signaling leads to substantial differences in the dynamics of astrocytic Ca2+ signals in the two brain regions, and leaves cortical astrocytes more susceptible to Na+ and Ca2+ overload under metabolic stress. The model also predicts that activity-evoked Naa transients result in significantly larger ATP consumption in cortical astrocytes than in the hippocampus. The difference in ATP consumption is mainly due to the different expression levels of NMDA receptors in the two regions. We confirm predictions from our model experimentally by fluorescence-based measurement of glutamate-induced changes in ATP levels in neocortical and hippocampal astrocytes in the absence and presence of the NMDA receptor's antagonist (2R)-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid.
Physician-friendly predictive model: Application to vasopressors administration prediction

Objective: Proposal and evaluation of a predictive model for predicting vasopressors administration within one or two hours. We aim at obtaining predictive results similar or better than the results of the state of the art with the advantage that the predictions can be easily interpreted by physicians. Materials and Methods: We considered a cohort of 25 871 intensive care unit patients, in which 22 459 did not receive vasopressors and 3 412 received vasopressors. We applied a k-Nearest Neighbor to each medical feature separately (local prediction) and we chose the most frequent prediction among the local predictions as the final prediction. Moreover, we used a feature selection process based on the characteristics of the data. Results: Using the proposed model and the five most important features (systolic blood pressure, mean blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, respiration rate and body temperature), we achieved AUCs of 0.908 and 0.902, for one or two hour predictions, respectively. Discussion: The results achieved are similar to the state of the art, with the advantage that our model uses a smaller number of features and is able to provide the necessary context for physicians to accept or reject a prediction. Conclusion: We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve good results with simple predictive algorithms and a focus on the interpretability of predictions by physicians.
A qualitative research on selected performance indicators for investment decision process: a framework for fintech startups in Turkey

Purpose- The purpose of this study is to help investors in their decision-making process in funding Financial Technology (FinTech) Startups by developing a framework of key performance indicators for effective financial resource allocation. A better understanding of investors’ point of view for FinTech Startups is also targeted. Methodology- The study is conducted as structured face-to-face interviews with a sample of four angel investors and four venture capitals. In the interviews, selected indicators from the literature and finance industry experts’ declarations were presented in four groups: Firm, Owner/Founder, Financial or Marketing/Procurement Characteristics. It was asked whether these indicators were used in the decision-making process or were there extra indicators not listed here. Findings- The widely accepted indicators were found shareholder structure, experience of major decision makers, increase in net sales, existence and amount of VC or other funding, number of clients, serving to consumers or businesses and expected developments in the startup’s sector. Conclusion- Results of this study may help investors in their decision-making process in funding FinTech Startups FinTech startups are also targeted to have a better understanding of investors’ point of view. This study contributes to the common understanding on investment dynamics in Turkish FinTech ecosystem, which is expected to have a major role in FinTech industry.
Towards high-resolution large-scale multi-view stereo

Boosted by the Middlebury challenge, the precision of dense multi-view stereovision methods has increased drastically in the past few years. Yet, most methods, although they perform well on this benchmark, are still inapplicable to large-scale data sets taken under uncontrolled conditions. In this paper, we propose a multi-view stereo pipeline able to deal at the same time with very large scenes while still producing highly detailed reconstructions within very reasonable time. The keys to these benefits are twofold: (i) a minimum s-t cut based global optimization that transforms a dense point cloud into a visibility consistent mesh, followed by (ii) a mesh-based variational refinement that captures small details, smartly handling photo-consistency, regularization and adaptive resolution. Our method has been tested on numerous large-scale outdoor scenes. The accuracy of our reconstructions is also measured on the recent dense multi-view benchmark proposed by Strecha et al., showing our results to compare more than favorably with the current state-of-the-art.
Incomplete Stent Apposition and Very Late Stent Thrombosis After Drug-Eluting Stent Implantation

Background— Stent thrombosis may occur late after drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation, and its cause remains unknown. The present study investigated differences of the stented segment between patients with and without very late stent thrombosis with the use of intravascular ultrasound. Methods and Results— Since January 2004, patients presenting with very late stent thrombosis (>1 year) after DES implantation underwent intravascular ultrasound. Findings in patients with very late stent thrombosis were compared with intravascular ultrasound routinely obtained 8 months after DES implantation in 144 control patients, who did not experience stent thrombosis for ≥2 years. Very late stent thrombosis was encountered in 13 patients at a mean of 630±166 days after DES implantation. Compared with DES controls, patients with very late stent thrombosis had longer lesions (23.9±16.0 versus 13.3±7.9 mm; P<0.001) and stents (34.6±22.4 versus 18.6±9.5 mm; P<0.001), more stents per lesion (1.6±0.9 versus 1.1±0.4; P<0.00.
International Bank Lending and Corporate Debt Structure

Using a cross-country sample of bank-dependent public ﬁrms, we study the international spillovers of a change in banking regulation on corporate borrowing. For identiﬁcation we examine how US ﬁrms’ liabilities vis-`a-vis banks, nonbank lenders, and bond markets evolve after an increase in capital requirements implemented by the European Banking Authority (EBA) in 2011. We ﬁnd that US ﬁrms experience a reduction in credit lines but not in term loans from EU banks. In addition, US ﬁrms are able to compensate for reductions in credit lines from EU banks by securing liquidity facilities from US nonbank ﬁnancial institutions without increasing borrowing from US corporate bond markets. These results suggest that diversiﬁed domestic loan markets, in which banks and nonbank ﬁnancial institutions lend to corporations, can help overcome cuts in cross-border bank funding.
Paper SPACE RADIATION PROTECTION ISSUES

VThe complex charged particle environments in space pose considerable challenges with regard to potential health consequences that can impact mission design and crew selection. The lack of knowledge of the biological effects of different ions in isolation and in combination is a particular concern because the risk uncertainties are very high for both cancer and noncancer late effects. Reducing the uncertainties is of high priority. Two principal components of space radiation each raise different concerns. Solar particle events (SPE) occur sporadically and are comprised primarily of lowto moderate-energy protons. Galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) is isotropic and relatively invariant in dose rate. GCR is also dominated by protons, but the energy range is wider than in SPE. In addition, the contribution of other light and heavy ions to the health risks from GCRmust be addressed. This paper will introduce the principal issues under consideration for space radiation protection. Health Phys. 103(5):556Y567; 2012