Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated Marketing Communications: Provenance, Practice and Principles

Advertising transforms commodities (e.g., cars, chips, and computers) into brands (e.g., BMW, Pentium, Dell). By building strong brands, it enables companies to charge price premiums, gain competitive advantage, and sustain long-run profitability. Consequently, companies typically spend several millions of dollars on marketing communications and, collectively, they spend about $250 billion each year on advertising alone a sum that exceeds the gross domestic product (at purchasing parity) of 85% of the nations of the world, which includes the developed economies like Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In this course, we will cover issues of designing and implementing advertising and promotional plans. Specifically, we study the institutional aspects of advertising, consumer behavior, assessing ad effectiveness and allocation, creative strategy, use & abuse of consumer and trade promotions, PR & placement, social media and the emerging media landscape. We will discuss the role of “integrating” all the marketing communication activities (e.g., television, print, PR, direct mail, and the new media) to achieve synergistic impact. The course focuses on managerial aspects of decision-making for building brands profitably.
Quality and Fertility Assessments of Municipal Solid Waste Compost Produced from Cleaner Development Mechanism Compost Projects: A Case Study from Uganda

Despite the fact that compost projects under the Cleaner Development Mechanism (CDM) have been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, there is a paucity of information on the quality of compost produced from the compost plants. This study fills this gap by evaluating the properties of MSWC produced from 12 CDM plants in Uganda based on quality and fertilizing indices. pH, Pb N, K, P, Mn, Cd, Ca, Mg, Cu, Fe, Cr, Zn, OC, and CN levels differed significantly between locations. MSWC’s Fertility Indices (FI) ranged from 1.9 to 2.9, with Mbarara having the highest (2.9) and Soroti having the lowest (1.9). Fort Portal, Mbarara, Kasese, and Masindi have Clean Indices (CI) ranging from 3.8 to 4.9. According to the results of the fertility and Clean Indices analysis, all MSW composts generated at CDM facilities have low fertilizing capacity and poor quality and are classified as Class RU-1, which does not meet international and national compost criteria. As a result, these composts cannot be utilized as fertilizers and can only be used as soil conditioners under certain conditions. Windrow composting has been proven to be a viable method for lowering huge amounts of organic municipal solid waste in urban areas, and it can be scaled up to other parts of the world according to this study. Authorities must, however, engage urban citizens in waste separation at the source and MSWC enrichment with organic sources. This will aid in improving its quality and fertilizing capacity, as well as in ensuring that the MSWC produced is uniform and suited for use in agriculture and the market.
The Accuracy of Endometrial Sampling and Clinical Affecting Factors as a Predictor of Final Surgical Pathology in Endometrial Cancer

Background : We conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the correlation between preoperative and final histologic diagnoses of endometrial cancer and to identify clinicopathologic factors associated with the concordance between initial and final hysterectomy specimens. Methods : Patients who underwent primary surgical treatment for endometrial cancer at our institute from January 2016 through December 2020 were enrolled. The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) grade and histologic subtype in the pathologic reports were recorded. The level of agreement of tumor grade and histologic type were analyzed. Results : A total of 425 cases were recruited. The overall level of agreement between preoperative grading was moderate according to kappa statistics ( κ = 0.469, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.385, 0.553). Furthermore, agreement related to the histologic subtype was substantial ( κ = 0.778, 95% CI: 0.682, 0.874). The most frequently used endometrial sampling methods were the office endometrial sampling and endometrial curettage (49.2% and 32%, respectively). Among each diagnostic method, manual vacuum aspiration and endometrial curettage had high tumor grade correlation between the preoperative sampling and final pathology ( κ = 0.743, 95% CI: 0.549, 0.937 and κ = 0.624, 95% CI: 0.512, 0.736, respectively). Negative peritoneal cytology was was the significant factor associated with concordance between preoperative endometrial sampling and final surgical pathology, with an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 2.01 (95% CI: 1.03, 3.92; p = 0.040). Conclusions : Regardless of the different diagnostic methods, preoperative endometrial biopsy has limitations in predicting tumor grade compared with final hysterectomy specimens in women with endometrial cancer.
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO THE CHARACTERI- ZATION OF BOWED STRING INSTRUMENTS: THE MUSICAL ACOUSTICS LAB IN CREMONA

The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the research project of the Musical Acoustics Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, recently established in the premises of the Violin Museum of Cremona. The research is focused on the characterization of bowed string instruments using methods from different disciplines: from material to vibrometric analysis and modelling, from acoustic radiance prediction to measurement and timbral analysis. This plethora of multimodal information is not just collected but jointly analysed and fused using machine intelligence methodologies. The techniques of analysis are described and some preliminary results are presented.
Regulatory strategies for smartphone use and problematic internet use in adolescence

: Self-regulation is a basic skill that can prevent problematic In- ternet and smartphone use in adolescence (LaRose et al., 2003). The present study explored regulation strategies in the use of this device, as well as the relationships between such strategies and the background variables of Caplan's (2010) model, to identify those adolescents who present high or low negative consequences of Internet use. With a representative sample of adolescents from 1st to 4th year of secondary education in the Community of Madrid ( N = 524, M age = 13.57, SD = 1.24, Range= 12-17), our results indicated that parents were the ones who regulated smartphone use in about half of the adolescents. Self-regulation deficit with cognitive rumina-tion, parent intervention to regulate the use of this device and the variables of Caplan’s (2010) model -except for online emotional regulation- were significant predictors to identify those adolescents who showed high or low negative consequences. Educational implications and future lines of research are also discussed.
Investigating the Roles of Document Presentation and Reading Interactions on Different Aspects of Multiple Document Comprehension

Abstract The present study examined reading interactions and multiple document comprehension of 108 university students who read five partly conflicting documents on a health-related issue. Documents were presented on a large touch interface that either enabled a simultaneous or imposed a sequential presentation of the documents. None of the three multiple document comprehension measures (number of intertextual connections in essays, score in source-content mapping task, and number of source names recalled) was affected by document presentation. However, in the sequential condition, the number of revisits to documents was positively related to memory for source names and source-content integration, but not to intertextual integration. Conversely, in the simultaneous condition, participants who grouped documents during reading showed greater intertextual and source-content integration, but no greater memory for source names than those who had not grouped documents. To conclude, reading interactions played a more important role in readers’ multiple document comprehension than document presentation.
Determination of Long Chain Chlorinated Paraffins in Soils and Sediments by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HR-MS)

Abstract Long-chain chlorinated paraffins (LCCPs) have gained attention due to their bioaccumulation and toxicity. However, their determination is hindered by low vapor pressure and limited elution from gas chromatography columns. In this study, ammonium acetate (CH3COONH4) was employed as the mobile phase additive and directly applied to high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with Orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-Orbitrap HRMS). Acetate adducts [M + CH3COO]– were selected for quantifying the LCCPs. The mass spectral parameters, such as the radio frequency lens percentage, vaporizer, ion transfer tube temperature, and spray voltage, were optimized. A new analytical strategy for LCCPs was established based on HPLC-Orbitrap HRMS. The accuracy, limits of detection (LOD), and limits of quantification (LOQ) were equal to 94.8% to 109.4%, 7.9 to 16.0 pg/μL, and 26.3 to 53.3 pg/μL for the LCCPs, respectively. The linear range was between 0.04 and 10.0 ng/μL with R2 values of 0.999 for the LCCPs. The relative standard deviations for intra-day and inter-day precision were from 0.5% to 3.3% and from 0.7% to 7.2%, respectively. This method was validated using 20 sediment and soil samples. For the first time, highly chlorinated (Cl>15) and longer carbon chain length (C>36) homologues of LCCPs were observed in soil. The method was suitable for determining LCCPs while avoiding modified instruments and eliminating the incompatibility of CH2Cl2 with the HPLC mobile phase. Further measurements are required of sediment, soil, and air to better characterize LCCPs in the environment.
FIRA: Fine-Grained Graph-Based Code Change Representation for Automated Commit Message Generation

Commit messages summarize code changes of each commit in nat-ural language, which help developers understand code changes without digging into detailed implementations and play an essen-tial role in comprehending software evolution. To alleviate human efforts in writing commit messages, researchers have proposed var-ious automated techniques to generate commit messages, including template-based, information retrieval-based, and learning-based techniques. Although promising, previous techniques have limited effectiveness due to their coarse-grained code change representations. This work proposes a novel commit message generation technique, FIRA, which first represents code changes via fine-grained graphs and then learns to generate commit messages automati-cally. Different from previous techniques, FIRA represents the code changes with fine-grained graphs, which explicitly describe the code edit operations between the old version and the new version, and code tokens at different granularities (i.e., sub-tokens and integral tokens). Based on the graph-based representation, FIRA generates commit messages by a generation model, which includes a graph-neural-network-based encoder and a transformer-based decoder. To make both sub-tokens and integral tokens as available ingredients for commit message generation, the decoder is further incorporated with a novel dual copy mechanism. We further per-form an extensive study to evaluate the effectiveness of FIRA. Our quantitative results show that FIRA outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in terms of BLEU, ROUGE-L, and METEOR; and our ablation analysis further shows that major components in our technique both positively contribute to the effectiveness of FIRA. In addition, we further perform a human study to evaluate the quality of generated commit messages from the perspective of developers, and the results consistently show the effectiveness of FIRA over the compared techniques.
A Technical and Economic Analysis on Optimal Thermal Insulation Thickness for Existing Office Building in Mediterranean Climates

At present, the office buildings built in Italy before the first energy regulations of the '70s show a growing energy consumption for heating and cooling. The electrical energy demand for summer cooling is increasing, too. Among the possible strategies, thermal insulation of the building envelope is a common solution to reduce energy needs. However, in buildings with high internal thermal loads and/or located in climates characterized by warm summers and mild winters, an excessive insulation thickness, although in compliance with legal requirements, may be counterproductive. In this paper, by using a dynamic energy simulation software (Design Builder), a case study is analyzed concerning the energetic and economic impacts of thermal insulation applied on the external side of an existing office building. The chosen Mediterranean localities are Palermo, Rome, Milan and Cairo. Increasing internal thermal loads (10, 20, 30 W/m) are considered. The results show that hyper-insulation of buildings is not convenient in the considered climates. In two localities (Palermo and Rome), the optimal insulation thickness is lower than that needed to meet the regulations on energy saving in buildings. Finally, PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) index for some disadvantaged rooms is shown to consider also the thermal comfort requirements.
Recent Advances in Biocatalysis for Drug Synthesis

Biocatalysis is constantly providing novel options for the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In addition to drug development and manufacturing, biocatalysis also plays a role in drug discovery and can support many active ingredient syntheses at an early stage to build up entire scaffolds in a targeted and preparative manner. Recent progress in recruiting new enzymes by genome mining and screening or adapting their substrate, as well as product scope, by protein engineering has made biocatalysts a competitive tool applied in academic and industrial spheres. This is especially true for the advances in the field of nonribosomal peptide synthesis and enzyme cascades that are expanding the capabilities for the discovery and synthesis of new bioactive compounds via biotransformation. Here we highlight some of the most recent developments to add to the portfolio of biocatalysis with special relevance for the synthesis and late-stage functionalization of APIs, in order to bypass pure chemical processes.
The Significance of Systemic Inflammation Markers in Intrahepatic Recurrence of Early-Stage Hepatocellular Carcinoma after Curative Treatment

Simple Summary This retrospective study using the prospectively collected registry data of newly diagnosed, previously untreated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) evaluates the significance of systemic inflammatory markers (SIMs) to intrahepatic recurrence (IHR) after curative treatment. Out of 4076 patients who met the inclusion criteria, 52.6% experienced IHR. SIMs, including pre-treatment platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), post-treatment changes of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio PLR, and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio were significantly associated with the prognosis of early-stage HCC patients who received initial curative treatment. The prognostic significances of SIMs were consistent for IHR-free survival, early and late IHR, and overall survival. Abstract Systemic inflammatory markers (SIMs) are known to be associated with carcinogenesis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We evaluated the significance of SIMs in intrahepatic recurrence (IHR) of early-stage HCC after curative treatment. This study was performed using prospectively collected registry data of newly diagnosed, previously untreated HCC between 2005 and 2017 at a single institution. Inclusion criteria were patients with Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage 0 or A, who underwent curative treatment. Pre-treatment and post-treatment values of platelet, neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and lymphocyte/monocyte ratio (LMR) were analyzed with previously well-known risk factors of HCC to identify factors associated with IHR-free survival (IHRFS), early IHR, and late IHR. Of 4076 patients, 2142 patients (52.6%) experienced IHR, with early IHR in 1018 patients (25.0%) and late IHR in 1124 patients (27.6%). Pre-treatment platelet count and PLR and post-treatment worsening of NLR, PLR, and LMR were independently associated with IHRFS. Pre-treatment platelet count and post-treatment worsening of NLR, PLR, and LMR were significantly related to both early and late IHR. Pre-treatment values and post-treatment changes in SIMs were significant factors of IHR in early-stage HCC, independent of previously well-known risk factors of HCC.
Tinted Glass Curtain Wall and its Implications on the Occupants' Health - Case Study of a Tight Office Building in Algiers

Today in Algiers, we can observe the tendency from designers to envelop the new office buildings by glass curtain walls. To conciliate between outdoor image of modernity and indoor needs of privacy and sun rays protection; the most used glass is tinted and reflective on outdoors. Through this glass tint, the natural light is highly reduced in offices, particularly those non-exposed to sunshine, and the lighting environment becomes almost static with very low changing levels of sensation. In this paper, our interest is focused on effects of this lighting environment on the occupants' health, especially the visual and biopsychological effects. The results of survey undertaken in a tight office building situated in Algiers, have shown some negative effects as eyes' strain, tiredness, deficiency in notion of time, etc., disturbing the occupants in their work tasks.
Roles of abscisic acid in regulating ripening and quality of strawberry, a model non-climacteric fruit

Abstract Abscisic acid (ABA) is a dominant regulator of ripening and quality in non-climacteric fruits. Strawberry is regarded as a model non-climacteric fruit due to its extensive genetic studies and proven suitability for transgenic approaches to understanding gene function. Strawberry research has contributed to studies on color, flavor development, and fruit softening, and in recent years ABA has been established as a core regulator of strawberry fruit ripening, whereas ethylene plays this role in climacteric fruits. Despite this major difference, several components of the interacting genetic regulatory network in strawberry, such as MADS-box and NAC transcription factors, are similar to those that operate in climacteric fruit. In this review, we summarize recent advances in understanding the role of ABA biosynthesis and signaling and the regulatory network of transcription factors and other phytohormones in strawberry fruit ripening. In addition to providing an update on its ripening, we discuss how strawberry research has helped generate a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of non-climacteric fruit ripening and focus attention on the use of strawberry as a model platform for ripening studies.
The effect of precipitation pH and temperature of The Mg/Al Hydrotalcite synthesis on the glucose isomerization

The application of glucose-isomerase as a biocatalyst in glucose isomerization requires a long time and complex conditions. Mg/Al hydrotalcite is considered to substitute the utilization of enzyme as the catalyst in this process. Mg/Al hydrotalcite was generated by coprecipitation of Mg(NO3)2.6H2O and Al(NO3)3.9H2O. The crystal quality of Mg/Al hydrotalcite is influenced by pH and temperature during the synthesis process. We evaluated the catalytic performance of Mg/Al hydrotalcite which is generated on various precipitation pH and temperatures by isomerizing glucose into fructose. The Mg/Al hydrotalcite was carried out in Mg/Al molar ratio 3:1 for 18 h. The characteristic of the Mg/Al hydrotalcite catalyst was done Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR), X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD), and the Brunauer Emmett-Teller (BET). In addition, statistical analysis by the response surface methodology (RSM) was used to determine the optimum condition of the synthesis process in the range pH of 7.5 to 10.5 and the temperature range of 25ºC to 65ºC. The result suggests that the maximum catalyst mass was reached at precipitation pH 9 and 45ºC. In this condition, the isomerization process obtained the highest yield and selectivity of 20.14% and 62.40%, respectively.
Discovering Top-k Profitable Patterns for Smart Manufacturing

In the past, many studies were developed to discover useful knowledge from rich data for decision-making in wide applications in Internet of Things and Web of Things, such as smart manufacturing. Utility-driven pattern mining (UPM) technology is famous in knowledge discovering domain. However, one of the biggest issues of UPM is the setting of a suitable minimum utility threshold (minUtil). The higher minUtil is, the fewer interesting patterns are obtained. Conversely, the lower minUtil is, the more useless patterns are discovered. In this paper, we propose a solution for discovering top-k profitable patterns with average-utility measure, which can be applied to manufacturing. The average-utility of a pattern, w.r. t its corresponding length, can be used to fairly measure the pattern. The proposed new upper-bounds on average-utility are tighter than previous upper-bounds. Moreover, based on these upper-bounds, the novel PPT algorithm utilizes merging and projection techniques to greatly reduce the search space. By adopting several threshold raising strategies, the PPT algorithm can discover correct top-k patterns in a short time. We also implemented the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithm on real and synthetic datasets. The experimental results reveal that the algorithm not only get a complete set of top-k interesting patterns, but also works better than the state-of-the-art algorithm in terms of runtime, memory consumption and scalability. Especially, the proposed algorithm performs very well on dense datasets.
Mucosal Viral Infection In Situ Provide Innate Immune Protection against Cutting Edge: Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells

Dendritic cells (DCs) are powerful APCs capable of activating naive lymphocytes. Of the DC subfamilies, plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) are unique in that they secrete high levels of type I IFNs in response to viruses but their role in inducing adaptive immunity remains di-visive. In this study, we examined the importance of pDCs and their ability to recognize a virus through TLR9 in immunity against genital HSV-2 infection. We show that a low number of pDCs survey the vaginal mucosa at steady state. Upon infection, pDCs are recruited to the vagina and produce large amounts of type I IFNs in a TLR9-dependent manner and suppress local viral replication. Although pDCs are critical in innate defense against genital herpes challenge, adaptive Th1 immunity developed normally in the absence of pDCs. Thus, by way of migrating directly into the peripheral mucosa, pDCs act strictly as innate antiviral effector cells against mucosal viral infection in situ. The Journal of Immunology, 2006, 177: 7510 –7514. 3 ac-ids