Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A zero-inflated Poisson model for insertion tolerance analysis of genes based on Tn-seq data

MOTIVATION Transposon insertion sequencing (Tn-seq) is an emerging technology that combines transposon mutagenesis with next-generation sequencing technologies for the identification of genes related to bacterial survival. The resulting data from Tn-seq experiments consist of sequence reads mapped to millions of potential transposon insertion sites and a large portion of insertion sites have zero mapped reads. Novel statistical method for Tn-seq data analysis is needed to infer functions of genes on bacterial growth. RESULTS In this article, we propose a zero-inflated Poisson model for analyzing the Tn-seq data that are high-dimensional and with an excess of zeros. Maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters are obtained using an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, and pseudogenes are utilized to construct appropriate statistical tests for the transposon insertion tolerance of normal genes of interest. We propose a multiple testing procedure that categorizes genes into each of the three states, hypo-tolerant, tolerant and hyper-tolerant, while controlling the false discovery rate. We evaluate the proposed method with simulation studies and apply the proposed method to a real Tn-seq data from an experiment that studied the bacterial pathogen, Campylobacter jejuniAvailability and implementation: We provide R code for implementing our proposed method at http://github.com/ffliu/TnSeq A user's guide with example data analysis is also available there. CONTACT pliu@iastate.edu SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The ICT revolution in consumer product markets

New information and communication technology (ICT) makes consumers better informed about available products, product quality and prices, which mitigates problems of asymmetric information. The entry of firms is facilitated, competition and economic efficiency is boosted and the market powers of households increased. Firms are likely to respond by increased product and price differentiation. There will also be considerable changes in the division of tasks between firms and households. But important obstacles to these developments are technological vulnerability, quality problems in the information on the Internet, cognitive limitations of individuals and weaknesses in the product‐delivery infrastructure in connection with Internet trade.
Phospholipids-based microbubbles sonoporation pore size and reseal of cell membrane cultured in vitro.

OBJECTIVE To investigate phospholipids-based microbubbles induced sonoporation and cell membrane reseal in vitro under various conditions. METHODS A breast cancer cell line SK-BR-3 was used to investigate ultrasonic sonoporation under various conditions. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) scanning techniques were employed to observe the change of membrane pores. RESULTS Normal SK-BR-3 cells membrane pores were evenly distributed and less than 1 microm. After ultrasound exposure, membrane pores were enlarged at different degree depending on ultrasound exposure durations, filling gas species and microbubble suspension concentration. With microbubble suspension concentration being increased to 5% or ultrasound exposure reached 30 s, membrane pores in fluorocarbon (C(3)F(8) or SF(6))-filled microbubble groups exceeded 1 microm, which were significantly larger than that of air-filled microbubble group. Membrane pores were about 2-3 microm under ultrasound 60 s with 5% fluorocarbon-filled microbubble suspension. After 24 h of incubation, most of the enlarged membrane pores could reseal to normal size, which corresponded to cell viability. CONCLUSIONS Membrane pores can be obviously enlarged by ultrasonic sonoporation of fluorocarbon-filled microbubbles, whose reseal time depended on ultrasound exposure duration and microbubble suspension concentration.
Size and Efficiency: Evidence from Portugal

With Europe’s financial crisis, it is known that the Eurozone, in particular, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece, is among the regions that are the most affected. In Portugal, the financial crisis caused huge concern with the efficiency of public expenses, not just within the government, but from society as a whole. As such, the understanding of efficiency in public management is indispensable. It is known that various elements can, when combined, determine the efficiency of entities, including public ones. This article seeks to examine the relationship that exists between the size of municipalities and the efficiency of public management in Portugal. A size indicator was created for this, and then the values determined by this indicator were related to efficiency as measured by DEA methodology (Data Envelopment Analysis). This research is justified given the importance of understanding ways to stimulate public policies that improve efficiency in the public sector. The results indicate a strong positive relationship between size and efficiency, thus larger sub-regions would be more efficient.
Consumers’ evolving definition and expectations for local foods

Purpose – Although locally sourced and produced foods are a growing trend in food marketing, they are not yet clearly understood nor consistently defined. There is no lack of definitions currently offered, however, based on expanding, evolving, and sometimes conflicting, dimensions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate various emerging definitional elements of local foods to determine which elements may be as important to food shoppers today as the prevailing food miles definition. Design/methodology/approach – A shopper survey is fielded and repeated measures ANOVA conducted to measure the relative importance of various definitional elements, assess where shoppers expect to acquire local foods, the price premium they are willing to pay, and differences that may exist across customer groups. Findings – The study finds that consumers do consider other definitional elements as important as distance in their definition of local foods and they expect to find them in secondary outlets beyond farmers mar.
Financial Goals Choices and Performance of Firms in Malaysia

The objectives of the study are (a) to ascertain the financial goals pursued by companies in Malaysia and (b) to find out the relationship between firms financial performance and stated financial goals. Data on the financial goals are collected from 41 KLSE listed firms through a questionnaire. An analysis of the relationship between the financial goals pursued by these firms and their actual performance is conducted using dummy variables for financial goals. The results of the questionnaire analysis are: (a) Firms in Malaysia follow multiple financial goals. (b) A very few firms consider maximization of market value per share as their primary goal in the financial decision-making. (c) From the overall rank ordering of the financial goals, the following four goals could be isolated as more important in practice: (i) maximization of operating profit before interest and taxes (PBIT); (ii) maximizing the rate of return on equity (ROE); (iii) maximizing the growth rate in earnings per share (EPS); and (iv) ensuring that funds are available. The cross section study of the selected sample companies reveals that the pursuit of the goal of maximizing PBIT is positively related to the accounting-based financial performance. However, pursuing the goal of maximizing ROE has no relationship with the actual performance measured by ROE, and it has a negative relationship with the financial performance measure of ROA. The financial goals pursued by firms in Malaysia have no relation with market-to-book value as a measure of performance.
Infant hearing screening

Purpose of reviewInfant hearing screening has progressed markedly over the past year. Although uncommon in the past, now almost 95% of infants in the United States are screened for hearing loss. Recent literature has expanded on several important components of hearing screening. Recent findingsA major revision of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on infant hearing screening was published. This statement identifies a number of important principles and guidelines for infant hearing screening. Improvements in diagnostic techniques have been described including the need for auditory brainstem response screening in premature infants. Risk factors for congenital-hearing loss have been updated. An etiologic diagnosis for infants with hearing loss is increasingly possible with advances in genetics and molecular diagnosis. Finally, several articles provide further information on optimizing follow-up and diagnostic testing as well as early intervention. SummaryDespite the challenges still present in infant hearing screening, screening continues to identify infants at a very young age, and improve the early communication skills of infants with hearing loss through early diagnosis and early intervention.
Nondestructive sampling of living systems using in vivo solid-phase microextraction.

Nondestructive Sampling of Living Systems Using in Vivo Solid-Phase Microextraction Gangfeng Ouyang,* Dajana Vuckovic, and Janusz Pawliszyn* MOEKeyLaboratory of Aquatic Product Safety/KLGHEI of Environment andEnergyChemistry, School ofChemistry andChemical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada
Understanding Male Hotel Spa-Goers in Hong Kong

This study aimed to understand male spa-goers (a growing customer segment) in Hong Kong hotel spas by examining empirical data collected via questionnaire surveys. The results of the study indicate that the most cited reason why male spa-goers patronized a hotel spa was relaxation, and the most consumed service was body massage. The importance–performance analysis categorized 30 spa-related attributes into the four quadrants calling for hotel spa management's attention in reexamining their spa operations and features. Furthermore, five performance factors were derived: Environment, Reliability, Service Experience, Value, and Augmented Service Quality. In particular, the Environment factor was the common factor that significantly influenced male hotel spa-goers' overall satisfaction, likelihood to revisit, and likelihood to recommend. Implications are discussed.
The Distribution of On‐Licence Beer and Cider Consumption and its Personality Determinants among Young Men

Projects that personality is an important determinant of consumption of beer and cider along with age, sex and social class. Identifies an extensive programme of personality research in this study, and goes on to complete a study of 18‐21 year old males to test predictions, based on Eysenck's theory and this is based in England and compared to most other countries with regard to nationalism and cultures. Concludes that the highest consuming group is 18‐24 year olds, which has a per capita consumption 2.7 times higher than the lowest group ‐ the over‐50's. Suggests that the results herein show the study of personality is likely to be of great importance in understanding individual differences in patterns of drinks market consumption.
Exploring Media Convergence: Evidence from Italy

The evolution of media and devices is enabling the ubiquitous and multi-device access to media and information, so that a media mutual contamination is in play. New forms of user interactions with media, in which different devices are used simultaneously in different contexts, have emerged. These new interactions are significantly impacting on users' attitudes towards the media and their way of searching and generating content. Such a change, called “media convergence”, has a strong potential impact on marketing and communication processes, but as yet has not been deeply analysed in the literature. This paper presents the outcomes of several studies aimed at exploring media convergence on the demand-side to advance possible implications for marketers and managers.
Corporate branding and corporate brand performance

Corporate branding necessitates a different management approach. It requires greater emphasis on factors internal to the organisation, paying greater attention to the role of employees in the brand building process. This paper explores the implications of corporate branding for the management of internal brand resources. We describe a model for managing brands through narrowing the gap between a brand’s identity and its reputation and, building on this, identify three key factors that affect brand perceptions and brand performance. Finally, we review some of the mechanisms that may be used to facilitate greater congruence of brand perceptions within the brand team and communication of a brand’s identity to employees.
Typical island micro-grid operation analysis

Island micro-grid is an effective means to solve island power supply problem, and its practical operation effect has been paid more and more attention. On the basis of analysis Dong'ao island micro-grid demonstration project operation situation in 2015 year, this paper summarizes the system operation effects and existing problems in Dong'ao island micro-grid, which will provides a useful reference for the micro-grid planning construction and control operation in our country.
Applying a behavioural and operational diagnostic typology of competitive intelligence practice: empirical evidence from the SME sector in Turkey

This paper reports on an empirical study conducted within the SME sector in the city of Istanbul, Turkey. The findings from this study enabled the creation of a behavioural and operational typology of competitive intelligence practice, one developed from the work of S. Wright, D.W. Pickton and J. Callow (2002. Competitive intelligence in UK firms: A typology. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 20, 349–360). Using responses to questions which indicated a type of behaviour or operational stance towards the various strands of CI practice under review it has been possible to identify areas where improvements could be made to reach an ideal situation which could garner significant competitive advantage for the SMEs surveyed.
Avoiding Misuse of New Information Technologies: Legal and Societal Considerations

A variety of new information technologies have emerged that clearly can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing programs. However, the use of technologies such as computer matching or automatic order-entry systems to support marketing programs also can lead to legal and societal difficulties. The authors review the types of problems that marketers could encounter when using new information technologies. Particular attention is paid to the possibilities of being charged with (1) participating in collusive information exchanges, (2) maintaining an illegal “essential facility,” (3) storing or transmitting inaccurate and harmful information, and (4) violating the privacy rights of individuals. They offer ideas about how marketing managers and researchers can reduce the chances of facing these types of problems.
Using DRBD over Wide Area Networks

Summary This document describes our experiences with using the Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) open-source storage technology in a Wide Area Network (WAN). It focuses on two aspects: data replication (the basic DRBD functionality) and virtual machine migration (using DRBD as a supporting technology). We provide an overview of existing literature and describe our own experiments with using DRBD in the SURFnet WAN environment, showing that DRBD is a versatile product that can be applied to a range of different applications. The experiments give administrators and users of DRBD a clear impression of what can be expected from this technology – when storage nodes are far apart – and show that opensource technology can be successfully applied to build sophisticated storage environments.
Networked Organizations: A Strategic Cost Management Perspective

Networked organizations are receiving increasing attention in the management literature because of their perceived success in terms of fast growth, increased flexibility and efficiency of operations, lower overhead costs, and effective competitive positioning. For all firms, the choice of which activities to perform internally and which to outsource is a critical issue. Cost information can play a fundamental role in the decision about how much "market" and how much "hierarchy. " Indeed, outsourcing is, basically, a cost and benefits evaluation. Management accounting and strategic management studies have, so far, not addressed this perspective explicitly. Management accounting is too internally focused on the costs of the firm rather than the entire supply chain. The strategic management perspective, on the contrary, focuses its attention on the supply chain, but only deals very generally with those transaction costs which emerge in using the market. Both approaches fall short in providing a well articulated financial rationale for which activities should be outsourced and which should be entrusted to the market. Neither approach does much to help managers understand where value is created in the value chain, the costs of the activities involved or their cost drivers. Strategic cost management (SCM) studies provide a useful cost analysis framework which is too often missing in the strategic decision making process. Competitive analysis, value or supply chain mapping, and cost driver analysis are, in particular, the tools of SCM. The aim of this paper is to apply SMC to the theory of networked organizations. In this paper we will use SCM to explain the Italian motor bike industry where both vertically integrated and network organizations exist. In particular, we will try to interpret different firms performance by comparing their value chains and their positions along the value system. The financial impact of the complexity involved in these different organization models and its impact on profitability and competitive position is our main theme.
Q-Andrew: a consolidated QOS management framework

Converged IP networks consist of diverse technologies and support both legacy and emerging services. Different vendors use separate management systems to achieve similar goals. Manual provisioning today represents a large portion of the total effort required to manage a complex IP network. A consolidated Quality-of-Service policy is difficult to implement in heterogeneous networks. Creating and maintaining such policies is very demanding in terms of operations. For this reason, reducing operational costs while improving Quality-of-Service Management is only possible through a consolidated approach to network management. To leverage operations in converged IP networks, we propose the following: – A mechanism to automatically generate consistent configurations across a network with equipment from different vendors; – A framework definition such that network element configurations can be specified using a common model; – Applying some of the methods proposed to an application that can be used in a real network with diverse technologies and equipment vendors.
The 'user organisation': structure and governance in an open source project

User communities are a valuable source of innovation, where user-specfic ideas and prototypes are developed and shared freely. Firms have begun to acknowledge the extent of their value at each stage of the innovation process, often resulting in commercially successful products. The current understanding of user communities, however, relies heavily on the study of software developers working on established open source projects. In recent years, with the emergence of web-based information and communication technology, open source projects and hacker communities have become much more complex, supporting a wider range of contributions from a diverse group of actors. While these technological advances have led to changes in the collaborative innovation, they have not been re ected in the user innovation literature. Using the CyanogenMod project as a case study, this study explores how a user community manages multiple forms of contributions for the creation of multiple products and services. This study finds that the multiple forms of contributions create a number of communities of practice within the project, each with its own governance mechanism and leadership structure. In addition, the findings show that the activities of the different communities within the project are managed centrally by a separate leadership team who are responsible for setting and implementing long-term plans for the direction of the project as a whole. In light of these findings, this study proposes that the governance and social structures observed in the CyanogenMod project resemble a User Organisation rather than a user community, where the control over the stages of innovation can give users control over the direction and outcomes of the project.
Semi-Supervised Learning for Surface EMG-based Gesture Recognition

Conventionally, gesture recognition based on nonintrusive muscle-computer interfaces required a strongly-supervised learning algorithm and a large amount of labeled training signals of surface electromyography (sEMG). In this work, we show that temporal relationship of sEMG signals and data glove provides implicit supervisory signal for learning the gesture recognition model. To demonstrate this, we present a semi-supervised learning framework with a novel Siamese architecture for sEMG-based gesture recognition. Specifically, we employ auxiliary tasks to learn visual representation; predicting the temporal order of two consecutive sEMG frames; and, optionally, predicting the statistics of 3D hand pose with a sEMG frame. Experiments on the NinaPro, CapgMyo and cslhdemg datasets validate the efficacy of our proposed approach, especially when the labeled samples are very scarce.
The Influence of Multiple Store Environment Cues on Perceived Merchandise Value and Patronage Intentions

Research on how store environment cues influence consumers' store choice decision criteria, such as perceived merchandise value and shopping experience costs, is sparse. Especially absent is research on the simultaneous impact of multiple store environment cues. The authors propose a comprehensive store choice model that includes (1) three types of store environment cues (social, design, and ambient) as exogenous constructs, (2) various store choice criteria (including shopping experience costs that heretofore have not been included in store choice models) as mediating constructs, and (3) store patronage intentions as the endogenous construct. They then empirically examine the extent to which environmental cues influence consumers' assessments of a store on various store choice criteria and how those assessments, in turn, influence patronage intentions. The results of two different studies provide support for the model. The authors conclude by discussing the results to develop an agenda for additional research and explore managerial implications.
Prostate Cancer DESNT : A Poor Prognosis Category of Human Prostate Cancer

Bogdan-Alexandru Luca a,b,y, Daniel S. Brewer b,c,y,z, Dylan R. Edwards , Sandra Edwards , Hayley C. Whitaker , Sue Merson , Nening Dennis , Rosalin A. Cooper , Steven Hazell , Anne Y. Warren , The CancerMap Groupx, Rosalind Eeles , Andy G. Lynch , Helen Ross-Adams , Alastair D. Lamb , David E. Neal , Krishna Sethia , Robert D. Mills , Richard Y. Ball , Helen Curley , Jeremy Clark , Vincent Moulton a,z, Colin S. Cooper b,*,z