Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Perivascular and Intramuscular Applied Botulinum Toxin A Pretreatment on Muscle Flap Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury and Chemical Delay

Background and Purpose Muscle flaps are known to be prone to local ischemia more than other flaps. The local and systemic injury that ensues after reperfusion of ischemic skeletal muscle is an important clinical problem in flap surgery. Flap delay may be applied chemically or sympathetically. Early use of botulinum toxin A (Btx-A) in muscle flap surgery relied on chemical denervation; however, in our study, we tried to emphasize a possible chemical delay mechanism of Btx-A, through the release of substance P and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Methods Pretreatment with perivascular or intramuscular Btx-A was applied 1 week before the flap elevation, 3.5 units in 2 experimental groups each containing 8 Sprague-Dawley rats. The control groups (2 groups, each containing 8 rats) received 0.07 mL saline perivascularly and intramuscularly. The right gastrocnemius muscle flap was used as the experimental model. Ischemia-reperfusion cycle was applied to all groups. On the seventh day, the gastrocnemius flap was elevated, and perivascular tissues were observed macroscopically. Comparisons between perivascular Btx-A and intramuscular Btx-A groups were made, and the animals were killed. Muscle biopsies were taken. Damaged myocytes were counted using McCormack technique, and chemical delay was shown as angiogenesis, lymphocyte counts, and edema formation with VEGF3-R, CGRP, and substance P markers as immunohistochemical staining. Results The amount of muscle necrosis was the highest in intramuscular Btx-A admitted groups. The intramuscular and perivascular Btx-A groups showed significant angiogenesis scored blindly by the senior pathologist. Conclusions Potential role of Btx-A in ischemic preconditioning of muscle flaps achieved through the release of substance P, CGRP, and VEGF was investigated. Chemical delay was shown objectively by Btx-applied groups.
Corporate Social Performance versus Financial Performance of the Romanian Firms

This article analyses the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance at the level of a panel of 62 Romanian companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The first challenge was measuring of the social performance. A new social performance measurement system was developed based on which the CSP Index was obtained. The GRI criteria for reporting, the channel of communication chosen by the companies, as well as the level of detail of the published information were taken into account. The estimation of the regression model was made using the CSP Index as the dependent variable and the financial indicators (return on assets, return on equity, sales growth, average number of employees, total sales, market value added, PER index) as the independent variables. The panel regression analysis done to highlight the fixed or random effects at the company level indicated a relatively weak causal relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance. The social performance may also depend on other variables that are not included in the model, although, the general conclusion was that the social performance of Romanian companies is relatively low, but in an ascending evolution.
The impact of terrorism on U.S. defence contractors’ stock returns

This paper examines the effect of terrorist attacks in the United States on stock returns of U.S. defence companies for the period from 1995 to 2016. The focus is on four major attacks: Oklahoma, New York City, Boston and Orlando. A short-term event study and a CAR-regression analysis are performed. The results show no effect after the Oklahoma bombing, whereas after the 9/11 attacks a significant positive effect is observed. The attacks in Boston and Orlando result in negative abnormal returns. Furthermore, the severity of an attack has a considerable positive impact on defence stocks. Revenues from defence have a slightly positive effect, while a companies’ size and return on assets do not affect the returns of defence stocks.
Implementation of Walsh function generator of order 64 using LUT cascades

This paper introduces an application of lookup table (LUT) cascades to a design of a Walsh function generator for 64 outputs. By using LUT cascades, the Walsh functions of order 64 can be easily generated. Such function generator can be used in LSI testing, CDMA, image and signal processing.
Quantitative trace element imaging using PIXE and the nuclear microprobe

The X‐ray spectra of pure elements, excited using MeV energy beam of protons from the nuclear microprobe, have known spectra signatures. This makes X‐ray spectra for more complex mixtures amenable to decomposition into contributions from the component elements. By devising this procedure as a matrix operation that transforms directly from spectrum vector to elemental concentration vector, the decomposition can be performed very efficiently enabling the real‐time projection of the component element signals. In the case of a raster‐scanned beam, with data that contain position information for each X‐ray event, this approach enables the real‐time projection of component element spatial distribution images. This paper describes the matrix transform approach called dynamic analysis (DA), which enables on‐line real‐time imaging of major and trace elements using proton‐induced X‐ray emission (PIXE). The method also provides off‐line iterative yield corrections to these images to compensate for changing sample composition across an image area. The resulting images are quantitative in two respects: (1) they resolve the pure element components and strongly reject interferences from other elements and (2) they can be directly interrogated for sample composition at each pixel, over areas, or along lines across the image area, with accuracy comparable to microanalytical point analysis methods. The paper describes the DA method, presents tests, and discusses its application to quantitative major and trace element imaging in geology. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol 11, 219–230, 2000
Difficulties of Standard Arabic Phonemes Spoken by Non-Arab Primary School Children based on Formant Frequencies

Problem statement: The study of Malaysian Arabic phoneme is rarely found which make the references work difficult. Specific guideline on Malaysian subject is not found even though a lot of acoustic and phonetics research has been done on other languages such as English, French and Chinese. Approach: This study discussed about the correct and simplest way of Arabic phonemes pronunciation in Malay accent. The International Phonetic Alphabet of Arabic chart was considered as the reference of every recorded speech samples using Malaysian children for their sound localization (makhraj point) of every alphabet. The recorded sound was analysed to determine the origin of each alphabet data by measuring its formant frequencies. The consonants of Standard Arabic (SA) phonemes were studied and the appropriate place of articulation of every phoneme was measured through its formant. Results: Only seven out of 25 consonants of SA phonemes of the children’s samples did not give the appropriate formants value. The formants are /kof/, [ ? ], /zo/, [ ? ], /kho/, [ ,[? /gheyn/, [ ? ], /ha/, [ ? ], /ain/, [ ? ] & /ha/, [] which consider as the difficult SA to utter among Malaysian children. Conclusion/Recommendations: The values obtained are used as the reference of the database for our recognition system.
Stages of conceptual change in humans and robots

There is strong empirical and theoretical evidence in psychology that human development follows a stage-like progression throughout the lifespan. Development is marked by relative stability, punctuated by periods of rapid and profound conceptual change. However, the driving forces behind these bursts of change are poorly understood. In this paper I examine a growing body of evidence that developmental change can emerge through a process of rational, statistical inference as a learner interacts with his or her environment. I briefly introduce the main idea behind statistical (bayesian) inference over structured hypothesis spaces, and then explore the specific domain of number learning with unique implications on the emergence of stages in human development.
Random mutagenesis of human cytochrome p450 2A6 and screening with indole oxidation products.

Cytochrome P450 (P450) 2A6 mutants from randomized libraries generated in the substrate recognition sequence (SRS) regions were screened in Escherichia coli on the basis of indole metabolism. SRS 3 and 4 libraries yielded colonies that produced indigo at least as well as wild-type (WT) P450 2A6, and some colonies were consistently more blue upon replating. One mutant, F209T, showed indole 3-hydroxylation WT. The double mutant L240C/N297Q consistently produced very blue colonies. Five mutants yielded mixtures of pigments from indole different than WT, as judged by visible spectra and HPLC of products. When bacteria expressing the mutants were grown in the presence of each of 26 substituted indoles, a variety of patterns of formation of different dyes was seen with several of the mutants. This approach has potential value in understanding P450 2A6 function and generating new dyestuffs and other products.
Notice of RetractionThe influence of trust on electronic banking adoption: Views of Malaysian university lecturers

The past electronic service literatures have proposed that trust is strongly associated with attitudes toward services, and online purchasing behaviors. Trust is the cornerstone for a successful and lasting relationship with the customer it largely determines the customer's future behavior and loyalty towards the business. The main objective of this research paper is to investigate the relationship between trust and electronic banking adoption. This empirical research involved 307 respondents those completely response the questionnaire from a total of 511 questionnaires distributed in three universities located in the northern states. As a result, trust was found positively influence e-banking adoption. As an implication, the banks have to ensure that e-banking services fully satisfied their customer to ensure a repeat usage and loyalty among them. Somehow, future research must investigate other factors as the antecedent for electronic banking adoption. Other initiative is to consider a model testing in difference context of electronic service to see any generalization on the research result.
Three BioNLP Tools Powered by a Biological Lexicon

In this paper, we demonstrate three NLP applications of the BioLexicon, which is a lexical resource tailored to the biology domain. The applications consist of a dictionary-based POS tagger, a syntactic parser, and query processing for biomedical information retrieval. Biological terminology is a major barrier to the accurate processing of literature within biology domain. In order to address this problem, we have constructed the BioLexicon using both manual and semiautomatic methods. We demonstrate the utility of the biology-oriented lexicon within three separate NLP applications.
Rigid Body Based Location Technology for Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

As an optimization problem, precision location requires sufficient constraints to warrant unique location estimation. The algorithm to determine the constraint sufficiency is the locatability algorithm. For the classic triangulation in two dimensions, locatability algorithm examines if a sensor node has at least 3 non-collinear reference node (RN) neighbors. This condition is often not met in most ad hoc sensor networks due to the low RN density. Progressive location was developed to turn a located sensor node into an induced RN which in turn is used to locate other sensor nodes. But even after applying progressive location, a lot of sensor nodes are still left un-locatable. A holistic approach, the rigid body (RB) based location technology, is proposed to group together sensors and RNs in a sensor network to form globally rigid bodies (GRBs) and cooperatively estimate sensor locations. The key differentiator of the technology is its locatability algorithm, a bottom-up procedure to identify GRBs in an anchor-free network and to determine the locatabilities of GRBs by grounding the network. The algorithm consists of four processes (node categorization, bilateration extension, trilateration extension, and tri-connectivity test) and locatability rules. It is shown that a bilateratively rigid sub-network is a strongly rigid graph and requires only the tri-connectivity to become globally rigid. Rules are provided for the locatability determination of rigid bodies and their associated sensor nodes. Simulation results show that the RB-based location algorithm locates drastically more sensor nodes than triangulation and progressive location algorithms especially when RNs are sparse
Macroscopic Mechanical Constitutive Characterization of Through-Silicon-via-Based 3-D Integration

Through-silicon-via (TSV)-based 3-D integrated circuit (IC) integration (herein termed 3-D TSV IC technology) generally comprises several TSV chips, each of which may be composed of a significant number of continuously aligned TSVs and microjoints with complex geometry and structure. Directly assessing their thermal-mechanical responses and hence reliability through the finite-element analysis (FEA) can be very challenging. In this paper, an elasticity/FEA-based macroscopic mechanical constitutive characterization technique incorporated with a global/local FE (GLFE) submodeling approach is proposed for effectively simulating the thermal-mechanical behaviors of 3-D TSV IC packages. The focus of the macroscopic mechanical constitutive characterization is placed on the prediction of the effective coefficients of thermal expansion (CTEs) of the TSV chips. The predicted effective CTEs are compared with those of two simplified analytical estimates based on rule-of-mixture and energy methods. In addition, the dependence of the effective CTEs on some essential geometry parameters is also examined, by which approximate mathematical formulas in the form of global response surface (RS) are constructed using an RS methodology. The proposed methodology is tested on a high-density, fine-pitch 3-D TSV IC package, where its effectiveness is demonstrated through a comparison with those of two baseline FEA models. Results show that the proposed methodology could efficiently and accurately predict the thermal-mechanical behaviors of the 3-D TSV IC package. In addition, the predicted effective CTEs of the TSV chips show a strong dependence on the geometry of the TSV chip structure. At the permissible range of the geometry parameters, the TSV chip structure reveals a CTE transverse isotropy, where the out-of-plane ones tend to be larger than the in-plane ones.
B7-H1 shapes T-cell–mediated brain endothelial cell dysfunction and regional encephalitogenicity in spontaneous CNS autoimmunity

Significance A crucial step in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), is transmigration of pathogenic T cells across the blood–brain barrier. These T cells mediate inflammation and subsequent lesion formation in the CNS. However, molecular mechanisms underlying lesion distribution and formation are not well understood. We here show that genetic ablation of a single immunoregulatory molecule on T cells, B7-homolog 1 (B7-H1), causes local endothelial dysfunction and determines lesion topography in a spontaneous mouse model of CNS autoimmunity. These findings can lead to new therapeutic approaches in targeting pathogenic T cell responses in MS. Molecular mechanisms that determine lesion localization or phenotype variation in multiple sclerosis are mostly unidentified. Although transmigration of activated encephalitogenic T cells across the blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a crucial step in the disease pathogenesis of CNS autoimmunity, the consequences on brain endothelial barrier integrity upon interaction with such T cells and subsequent lesion formation and distribution are largely unknown. We made use of a transgenic spontaneous mouse model of CNS autoimmunity characterized by inflammatory demyelinating lesions confined to optic nerves and spinal cord (OSE mice). Genetic ablation of a single immune-regulatory molecule in this model [i.e., B7-homolog 1 (B7-H1, PD-L1)] not only significantly increased incidence of spontaneous CNS autoimmunity and aggravated disease course, especially in the later stages of disease, but also importantly resulted in encephalitogenic T-cell infiltration and lesion formation in normally unaffected brain regions, such as the cerebrum and cerebellum. Interestingly, B7-H1 ablation on myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein-specific CD4+ T cells, but not on antigen-presenting cells, amplified T-cell effector functions, such as IFN-γ and granzyme B production. Therefore, these T cells were rendered more capable of eliciting cell contact-dependent brain endothelial cell dysfunction and increased barrier permeability in an in vitro model of the BBB. Our findings suggest that a single immune-regulatory molecule on T cells can be ultimately responsible for localized BBB breakdown, and thus substantial changes in lesion topography in the context of CNS autoimmunity.
C18. Modified CAMShift algorithm for adaptive window tracking

This paper introduces a proposed modified approach of an end-to-end technique for moving targets tracking. The tracking technique is processed on a real-time video stream from a single Pan, Tilt, and Zoom (PTZ) camera. The proposed approach is a prolongation of the Continuously Adaptive Mean Shift (CAMShift) algorithm applications. Sever variations in target shape, size and luminosity can be dealt better using this algorithm. Window difference technique is used to deal with the change in target shape and size. An estimator is used to deal with luminosity changes. A proper size of tracking window is built with minor extra computational overhead. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Improving the Predictive Accuracy of Hurricane Power Outage Forecasts Using Generalized Additive Models

Electric power is a critical infrastructure service after hurricanes, and rapid restoration of electric power is important in order to minimize losses in the impacted areas. However, rapid restoration of electric power after a hurricane depends on obtaining the necessary resources, primarily repair crews and materials, before the hurricane makes landfall and then appropriately deploying these resources as soon as possible after the hurricane. This, in turn, depends on having sound estimates of both the overall severity of the storm and the relative risk of power outages in different areas. Past studies have developed statistical, regression‐based approaches for estimating the number of power outages in advance of an approaching hurricane. However, these approaches have either not been applicable for future events or have had lower predictive accuracy than desired. This article shows that a different type of regression model, a generalized additive model (GAM), can outperform the types of models used previously. This is done by developing and validating a GAM based on power outage data during past hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region and comparing the results from this model to the previously used generalized linear models.
The Impact of Market Orientation, Product Advantage, and Launch Proficiency on New Product Performance and Organizational Performance

Some scholars have suggested recently that a market-oriented culture leads to superior performance, at least in part, because of the new products that are developed and are brought to market. Others have reinforced this wisdom by revealing that a market-oriented culture enhances organizational innovativeness and new product success, both of which in turn improve organizational performance. These scholars do not reveal, however, through which new product development (NPD) activities a market-oriented culture is converted into superior performance. To determine how critical NPD activities are for a market-oriented firm to achieve superior performance, our study uses data from 126 firms in The Netherlands to investigate the structural relationships among market orientation, new product advantage, the proficiency in new product launch activities, new product performance, and organizational performance. We focus on product advantage—because product benefits typically form the compelling reasons for customers to buy the new product—and on the launch proficiency—as the launch stage represents the most costly and risky part of the NPD process. Focusing on the launch stage also is relevant because it is only during the launch that it will become evident whether a market orientation has crystallized into a superior product in the eyes of the customer. The results provide evidence that a market orientation is related positively to product advantage and to the proficiency in market testing, launch budgeting, launch strategy, and launch tactics. Product advantage and the proficiency in launch tactics are related positively to new product performance, which itself is related positively to organizational performance. Market orientation has no direct relationship to new product performance and to organizational performance. An important implication of our study is that the impact of a market orientation on organizational performance is channeled through the effects of a market orientation on product advantage and launch proficiency; subsequently through the effects of product advantage and the proficiency in launch tactics on new product performance; and finally through the effect of new product performance on organizational performance. These channeling effects are much more subtle and complex than the direct relationship of market orientation on organizational performance previously assumed. Another implication of our study is that the impact of a market orientation on performance occurs through the launch activities rather than being pervasive to all organizational processes and activities. A reason for this finding may be that NPD is the one element of the marketing mix that predominantly is the responsibility of the firm, whereas promotion and distribution often are in control of organizations outside the firm (e.g., advertising agencies, major retailers) and whereas the channel or the market often dictates the price. Both implications provide ample opportunities for further research on market orientation and NPD.
D‐score: A search engine independent MD‐score

While peptides carrying PTMs are routinely identified in gel‐free MS, the localization of the PTMs onto the peptide sequences remains challenging. Search engine scores of secondary peptide matches have been used in different approaches in order to infer the quality of site inference, by penalizing the localization whenever the search engine similarly scored two candidate peptides with different site assignments. In the present work, we show how the estimation of posterior error probabilities for peptide candidates allows the estimation of a PTM score called the D‐score, for multiple search engine studies. We demonstrate the applicability of this score to three popular search engines: Mascot, OMSSA, and X! Tandem, and evaluate its performance using an already published high resolution data set of synthetic phosphopeptides. For those peptides with phosphorylation site inference uncertainty, the number of spectrum matches with correctly localized phosphorylation increased by up to 25.7% when compared to using Mascot alone, although the actual increase depended on the fragmentation method used. Since this method relies only on search engine scores, it can be readily applied to the scoring of the localization of virtually any modification at no additional experimental or in silico cost.