Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Semantic Collaborative Filtering for Learning Objects Recommendation

The present paper proposes a personalized recommendation approach of learning objects (LOs) within an online Community of Practice (CoP). Three strategies of recommendation have been proposed: (1) a semantic filtering (SemF) by member’s interests; (2) a collaborative filtering (CF) based on the member’s expertise level; and (3) a semantic collaborative filtering combining in different ways the two approaches. The expertise level of a member is calculated in relation to all of his domains of expertise using the domain knowledge ontology (DKOnto). A similarity measure is proposed based on a set of rules which cover all the possible cases for the relative positions of two domains in DKOnto. In order to illustrate our work, some preliminary results of experimentation have been presented.
Assessing the Effectiveness of Consumers' Rankings of Selected Meat Attributes in Expanding Goat Meat Consumption in the Southern United States

Results suggest that consumers of goat meat are more likely to rank taste, freshness, and cooking time as very imporÂ­tant attributes when buying fresh meat. Those who have never eaten goat meat are more likely to regard appearance, presence of USDA label, and being boneless as very important drivers of their purchase decisions.
Risk and supply chain management: creating a research agenda

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to develop a research agenda for risk and supply chain management. This is achieved by reviewing the literature on supply chain risk and locating it within the general literature on risk.Design/methodology/approach – A review of the general literature on risk and the specific literature on supply chain risk was undertaken.Findings – The paper shows that there are a number of key debates in the general literature on risk, especially in terms of qualitative versus quantitative approaches, which need to be recognised by those seeking to apply risk theory and risk management approaches to supply chains. In addition, the paper shows that the application of risk theory to supply chain management is still in its early stages and that the models of supply chain risk which have been proposed need to be tested empirically.Research limitations/implications – This is a literature review and, therefore, is based on secondary rather than primary sources.Practical implications – The pa.
Impact of Corporate Restructuring on Value Creation in the Nigerian Banking Industry

This study aims at determining the impact of corporate restructuring on the creation of shareholder value in the Nigerian banking industry. Secondary data are collected in respect of all the 21 banks listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The data are analysed using the Difference in Means (Descriptive Statistics) Method. The study establishes the fact that in the Nigerian banking industry, mergers, acquisitions and capital restructuring have significant impacts on value creation; but capital restructuring has the greatest positive impact on the creation of shareholder value. It is also found that most banks have to restructure as a result of problems like weaknesses in corporate governance, weak ownership structure, conflict of interest between management and shareholders, environmental problems, and internal problems. The findings of this study imply that banks involved in mergers may not be able to create or enhance value for their shareholders. It is recommended that industry regulators and practitioners seeking to create value for shareholders should, among other things, focus on capital restructuring and acquisition and strategies that favour growth, expansion and performance improvement.
Rapid nonradioactive assay for the detection of the common French Canadian tyrosinemia type I mutation

Hereditary tyrosinemia type I is a severe autosoma1 recessive metabolic disease caused by deficiency of fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase (FAH), the last enzyme in the catabolic pathway of tyrosine. The disease is common in the SaguenayLac-St-Jean region of Eastern Quebec. We recently showed that a single splice mutation (IVS 12 + 5 G+A) accounts for 90% of mutant chromosomes in this region and that 28% of tyrosinemia reveals worldwide (Grompe et al., 1994). We here report a simple test for this mutation, based on an artificial allele-specific restriction endonuclease site introduced by PCR (Ward et al., 1991). In contrast to the previously described allele-specific oligonucleotide assay, this method does not require radioactivity and is suitable for the efficient analysis of single samples. Genomic DNA (100 ng) was amplified with primers MG 058 and MG 114, yielding a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) product of 132 bp. Amplification of the wild-type allele introduces an RsaI restriction site, whereas the splice mutation sequence does not. Thus, PCR followed by RsaI digestion can be used for genotyping. The primer sequences were MG 058: 5’-GTACATGTACTGGACGATGCTG-3’; and MG
The Impact of Immune Responses on the Asexual Erythrocytic Stages of Plasmodium and the Implication for Vaccine Development

Natural immunity against malaria is acquired after repeated infections for an extended period of time resulting in a state of immunological non-responsiveness against the malaria parasite. This state ultimately prevents the onset of severe disease such as cerebral malaria thereby reducing the risk of death from malaria. Individuals with acquired natural immunity to malaria still harbor parasites (albeit in low densities) in the blood, and therefore natural immunity against malaria is not sterile. For this reason, natural immunity to malaria cannot be compared to immunity achieved against other diseases where the immune response neutralizes and eliminates the pathogen. The second hallmark of natural immunity to malaria is that protection wanes once a “protected” individual leaves the malaria-endemic area indicating that protection depends on continued antigen exposure. Immunity to malaria is stageand species-specific and distinct immune mechanisms confer protection against the different developmental stages of the parasite. In the case of blood stage infection, passive transfer experiments with purified human immunoglobulins derived from immune individuals living in malaria-endemic areas have demonstrated that antibodies can mediate protection (Cohen et al., 1961; Butcher et al., 1970; BouharounTayoun et al., 1990). Mechanistic studies revealed that the effect of blood stage-specific antibodies on the asexual erythrocytic parasite depends on their antigen-specificity; antibodies can bind to merozoites, opsonize and target them towards phagocytic cells of the host (Groux and Gysin, 1990), or prevent invasion of new erythrocytes (Perkins, 1991). Once infected, antibodies against asexual blood stage antigens such as Pf332 or MSP-1 inhibit the intra-erythrocytic development of Plasmodium falciparum (Ahlborg et al., 1996; Siddique et al., 1998; Bergmann-Leitner et al., 2009). Antibodies directed to antigens expressed by sexual erythrocytic stages (gametocytes) have been shown to prevent transmission of malaria by blocking either the infection of the mosquito or the development in the mosquito (Lavazec and Bourqouin, 2008). As will be outlined in this chapter, it becomes increasingly clear that a blood stage vaccine may never be able to induce sterile protection, but can prevent mortality. Why bother developing blood stage vaccines? Extensive studies characterizing
How Do Regulators Influence Mortgage Risk: Evidence from an Emerging Market

To understand the effects of regulation on mortgage risk, it is instructive to track the history of regulatory changes in a country rather than to rely entirely on cross-country evidence that can be contaminated by unobserved heterogeneity. However, in developed countries with fairly stable systems of financial regulation, it is difficult to track these effects. We employ loan-level data on over a million loans disbursed in India over the 1995 to 2010 period to understand how fast-changing regulation impacted mortgage lending and risk. We find evidence that regulation has important effects on mortgage rates and delinquencies in both the time-series and the cross-section.
Weak GPS signal acquisition using antenna diversity

Signal acquisition is the first operation stage of a GPS receiver that detects the presence of GPS signals and provides a coarse estimate of the code delay and Doppler frequency. GPS signal acquisition becomes a challenging problem when the signal is subject to attenuation and multipath fading. In practice, standard methods such as extending the integration time without any aiding information to increase processing gain are not always sufficient to acquire weak signals. This difficulty can be characterized by the probability of detection, false alarm and mean acquisition time. This paper exploits spatial antenna diversity to mitigate the multipath fading effect in the acquisition process. Equal gain combining of two independent antennas is considered in a standalone processing strategy. The performance is evaluated in terms of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC). The theoretical analysis is compared with Monte Carlo simulations and real GPS data results. Experimental results demonstrate the improvement of detection probability and enhanced immunity against false alarms in dense multipath environments.
Only two of the five zinc fingers of the eukaryotic transcriptional repressor PRDI-BF1 are required for sequence-specific DNA binding

The eukaryotic transcriptional repressor PRDI-BF1 contains five zinc fingers of the C2H2 type, and the protein binds specifically to PRDI, a 14-bp regulatory element of the beta interferon gene promoter. We have investigated the amino acid sequence requirements for specific binding to PRDI and found that the five zinc fingers and a short stretch of amino acids N terminal to the first finger are necessary and sufficient for PRDI-specific binding. The contribution of individual zinc fingers to DNA binding was investigated by inserting them in various combinations into another zinc finger-containing DNA-binding protein whose own fingers had been removed. We found that insertion of PRDI-BF1 zinc fingers 1 and 2 confer PRDI-binding activity on the recipient protein. In contrast, the insertion of PRDI-BF1 zinc fingers 2 through 5, the insertion of zinc finger 1 or 2 alone, and the insertion of zinc fingers 1 and 2 in reverse order did not confer PRDI-binding activity. We conclude that the first two PRDI-BF1 zinc fingers together are sufficient for the sequence-specific recognition of PRDI.
Thermal Safe High Level Test Synthesis for Hierarchical Testability

High temperature in test process may invalidate a test due to extra delay, or even damage the circuit under test. Therefore, a thermal-safe test can avoid undesirable yield loss due to the extra delay induced by high temperature. Traditional high level test synthesis approaches just improve hierarchical testability of circuits and minimize test application time. If the thermal effects are ignored, the higher test power density may produce unacceptable high temperature even though thermal management is carried out in the functional mode. Since the thermal-aware design cannot achieve thermal-safe hierarchical testing, a thermal-safe high level test synthesis approach is proposed in this paper to deal with this problem. In the proposed test synthesis procedure, the given temperature constraints will be satisfied in the test environment construction process. Experimental results show that the proposed test synthesis method can provide thermal-safe hierarchical test and shorten test application time compared to conventional high-level test synthesis approaches.
Crustal stress field in southern California and its implications for fault mechanics

We present a new, high spatial resolution image of stress orientation in southern California based on the inversion of earthquake focal mechanisms. We use this image to study the mechanics of faulting in the plate boundary region. The stress field contains significant spatial heterogeneity, which in some cases appears to be a result of the complexity of faulting and in other cases appears to be a cause. Temporal changes in the stress field are also observed, primarily related to major earthquakes. The observed 15° (±10°) rotation of the stress axes due to the 1992 M7.3 Landers mainshock implies that the deviatoric stress magnitude in the crust is low, of the order of 10 MPa. This suggests that active faults in southern California are weak. The maximum principal stress axis near the San Andreas Fault is often at ∼50° to the fault strike, indicating that the shear stress on the fault is comparable to the deviatoric stress. The San Andreas in southern California may therefore be a weak fault in a low-strength crust.
The effect of audit firm tenure in artificial rotation on audit quality

This study aimed to examine the effect of auditor tenure in artificial rotation on audit quality. Tenure shows the relationship between the audit firms and a client that is measured in years. Artificial rotation of auditor (audit firm) indicates a condition that, conceptually, there has been a change of auditors leading to the auditor relationship with the client to be disconnected, whereas substantive auditor-client relationship is ongoing. Formally, the auditor does not violate the rules and is still able to audit for the same client. Yet, in the long-term, it could affect the audit quality. The longer auditor tenure, the closer auditor-client relationship is. Thus, the auditor accommodates the interests of the client at the client's financial statements, including the practice of discretionary accruals as a proxy for audit quality. The samples were selected by purposive sampling method of the companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange from the year 2002-2010, with multiple linear regression approach. It shows that tenure, and total assets do not affect the quality of the audit while the size of the audit firm, and debt statistically have significant effect on audit quality. Future studies may extend the period of observation, and using other audit quality measures, such as fraud, and the propensity of auditor to issue going concern opinion.
Corporate Social Reporting in India: An Analysis of Bombay Stock Exchange Listed Companies

Corporate Social Responsibility is all about how a company responds to emerging societal priorities and expectations and produces an overall positive impact on society. Over the years initiatives taken by companies in the area of CSR are increasing at greater pace. The paper focuses on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures made by 30 BSE listed companies, constituting Sensex as on 1st April 2012 across various industries. Content analysis methodology was used with the purpose of examining the incidence of CSR disclosures in the annual reports. Separate CSR related reports, directors’ report, chairman’s report and sustainability reports given in the annual reports of the companies in the year 2011-2012 were analyzed at depth for analysis purpose. The findings of the study reveal that 100% of the companies taken in sample are making CSR disclosures in one form or the other form. Safety and healthcare is the trend of CSR disclosures. 77% of companies are focusing in this area. 53% of the companies disclose social accounting information using monetary as well non monetary format. The paper discovers that Directors report is the most popular location where CSR information is disclosed by companies in India.
An alternative phase II/III design for continuous endpoints

The success rate of drug development has been declined dramatically in recent years and the current paradigm of drug development is no longer functioning. It requires a major undertaking on breakthrough strategies and methodology for designs to minimize sample sizes and to shorten duration of the development. We propose an alternative phase II/III design based on continuous efficacy endpoints, which consists of two stages: a selection stage and a confirmation stage. For the selection stage, a randomized parallel design with several doses with a placebo group is employed for selection of doses. After the best dose is chosen, the patients of the selected dose group and placebo group continue to enter the confirmation stage. New patients will also be recruited and randomized to receive the selected dose or placebo group. The final analysis is performed with the cumulative data of patients from both stages. With the pre‐specified probabilities of rejecting the drug at each stage, sample sizes and critical values for both stages can be determined. As it is a single trial with controlling overall type I and II error rates, the proposed phase II/III adaptive design may not only reduce the sample size but also improve the success rate. An example illustrates the applications of the proposed phase II/III adaptive design. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Characterization of the Signaling Domain of the NO-Responsive Regulator NorR from Ralstonia eutropha H16 by Site-Directed Mutagenesis

ABSTRACT In Ralstonia eutropha H16, the nitric oxide (NO)-responsive transcriptional activator NorR controls the expression of a dicistronic operon that encodes a membrane-bound NO reductase, NorB, and a protein of unknown function, NorA. The N-terminal domain (NTD) of NorR is responsible for perception of the signal molecule, nitric oxide. Thirteen out of 29 conserved residues of the NTD were exchanged by site-directed mutagenesis. Replacement of R63, R72, D93, D96, C112, D130, or F137 strongly decreased NorR-dependent promoter activation, while the exchange of Y95 or H110 led to an increase in promoter activity compared to that of the wild type. A purified truncated NorR comprising only the NTD (NorR-NTD) contained one iron atom per molecule and was able to bind NO in the as-isolated state. Based on the iron content of NorR-NTD proteins with single amino acid replacements, residues R72, D93, D96, C112, and D130 are likely candidates for iron ligands. Residues R63, Y95, and H110 appear not to be involved in NO binding but may take part in subsequent steps of the signal transduction mechanism of NorR.
Efficient and Distributed DBScan Algorithm Using MapReduce to Detect Density Areas on Traffic Data

Trafi¬c information in big cities can be collected by GPS in vehicles or trafi¬c radar, or even gathered from tweets. This information can be used to complement information generated by cameras and physical sensors in order to guide the actions of public agents in the short and long term. It is also useful to support decisions of drivers related to displacement through the city in real time or near-real time. Through these data it is possible to analyze where the density areas are within the city in order to discover portions of the city that has more probability to have trafi¬c jams. Such discovery may help the search for effective reengineering trafi¬c solutions in the context of smart cities. This paper presents a new distributed and efi¬cient strategy of the DBScan algorithm that uses MapReduce to detect which are the density areas. Experiment results coni¬rm that our strategy is scalable and efi¬cient to deal with a great amount of data than others competitors
Technological and Organizational Changes as Determinants of the Skill Bias: Evidence from a Panel of Italian Firms

Recent empirical literature has introduced the "kill Biased Organizational Change" hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skiled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries. In this paper, a specific branch of the Italian capital goods industry is analyzed, that producing specialized industrial machinery; from the estimation of a transcendental logarithmic firm cost function it turns out that skill upgrading is not a consequence of technological change alone, but is also an effect of the overall reorganization of the firm, which in turn may be linked to technological change.
Cancer Therapy : Preclinical Synergistic Effect between Erlotinib and MEK Inhibitors in KRAS Wild-Type Human Pancreatic Cancer Cells

Purpose: The combination of erlotinib and gemcitabine has shown a small but statistically significant survival advantage when compared with gemcitabine alone in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. However, the overall survival rate with the erlotinib and gemcitabine combination is still low. In this study, we sought to identify gene targets that, when inhibited, would enhance the activity of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted therapies in pancreatic cancer cells. Experimental Design: A high-throughput RNA interference (RNAi) screen was carried out to identify candidate genes. Selected gene hits were further confirmed and mechanisms of action were further investigated using various assays. Results: Six gene hits from siRNA screening were confirmed to significantly sensitize BxPC-3 pancreatic cancer cells to erlotinib. One of the hits, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) 1, was selected for further mechanistic studies. Combination treatments of erlotinib and two MAP kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitors, RDEA119 and AZD6244, showed significant synergistic effect for both combinations (RDEA119–erlotinib and AZD6244–erlotinib) compared with the corresponding single drug treatments in pancreatic cancer cell lines with wild-type KRAS (BxPC-3 and Hs 700T) but not in cell lines with mutant KRAS (MIA PaCa-2 and PANC-1). The enhanced antitumor activity of the combination treatment was further verified in the BxPC-3 andMIA PaCa-2mouse xenograft model. Examination of theMAPK signaling pathway by Western blotting indicated effective inhibition of the EGFR signaling by the drug combination in KRAS wild-type cells but not in KRAS mutant cells. Conclusions:Overall, our results suggest that combination therapy of an EGFR andMEK inhibitors may have enhanced efficacy in patients with pancreatic cancer. Clin Cancer Res; 17(9); 2744–56. 2011 AACR.
Small firm internationalisation and the objective characteristics of managers: An importer's relationship marketing perspective

As a result of competitive pressures, firms are transitioning to international sourcing and initiating complex relationships with suppliers. Despite a lack of inward internationalisation research, there is progressive support for the importance of importing. Heavier focus has been placed on downstream efforts in past years, despite the fact that many factors affecting exporting also influence importing. For small and medium sized enterprises (SME), the psychic distance construct is especially important for internationalisation behaviour but there is little evidence on how perceptual psychic distance, that is the individual’s experiences, influences the buyer-seller relationship. This study draws on internationalisation process theory and commitment-trust theory, in an effort to describe the relationship between objective characteristics (i.e. language, cultural background, education and international experience) and relationship marketing (trust and commitment). The study utilises a holistic, multiple case study design to gain a deeper understanding of the inherent complexities of the relationships in dyads and how objective characteristics, which reduce psychic distance, can facilitate trust and commitment development between importers and exporters.
Investigating entrepreneurial intensity and capability among South African exporting firms

II DECLARATION VI DEDICATION VII LIST OF TABLES XIII LIST OF FIGURES XVIII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 1 1.2 CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 3 1.2. 1 SOUTH AFRICAN EXPORTS 6 1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT 7 1.3. 1 MAIN PROBLEM 7 1.3. 2 SUB-PROBLEMS 7 1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 7 1.5 DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 11 1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS 11 1.7 ASSUMPTIONS 14 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 15 2.