Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why build an integrated EEG-NIRS? About the advantages of hybrid bio-acquisition hardware

Objective: In medical applications, neuroscience and brain-computer interface research, bimodal acquisition of brain activity using Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is at the moment achieved by combining separate commercial devices. We have investigated quantitatively whether dedicated hybrid systems exhibit more advantageous properties. Methods: We studied intermodality electrical crosstalk and timing jitter in two separate and one hybrid EEG-NIRS acquisition device. Results: Analysis revealed significantly higher impact of electrical NIRS current crosstalk into the EEG inputs and timing jitters between EEG-NIRS markers in separate devices compared to the hybrid system. Conclusion: The results support hybrid acquisition systems to be advantageous in setups that require high performance in timing and signal quality.
Images of Romania as a potential holiday destination

Based on a randomly selected sample of respondents from four different urban areas in Western Europe: Munich (Germany), Oporto (Portugal), Leon (Spain) and Bournemouth (UK), this paper adds to knowledge on destination image in two ways. First, it provides international comparisons of the same destination within Europe: Romania. Second, it focuses on rural areas as a potential destination. The main message coming out of the results presented is that Romania has much to do in terms of developing and presenting an attractive image to potential visitors from the rest of Europe.
Replacement of glutamine with the dipeptide derivative alanyl-glutamine enhances in vitro maturation of porcine oocytes and development of embryos

Summary The presence of glutamine (Gln) in in vitro maturation (IVM) and in vitro culture (IVC) medium is a more potent factor for improving porcine oocyte and embryo development than other amino acids. However Gln is inherently unstable and spontaneously breaks down into ammonia, and therefore interferes with proper development. To avoid this adverse effect, Gln was replaced in the present study with its stable dipeptide derivative alanyl-glutamine (Ala-Gln) and the effects of this replacement on porcine IVM and IVC were evaluated. Replacement of Gln with Ala-Gln during IVM did not improve nuclear maturation, however numbers of early cleaved embryos were significantly increased after activation. Blastocyst formation rates were also significantly improved by using Ala-Gln during IVM. Replacement of Gln with Ala-Gln during IVC significantly increased total cell numbers in blastocysts. Blastocyst formation rate was also significantly higher when Ala-Gln was used in both IVM and IVC. In conclusion, the use of Ala-Gln rather than Gln gives better results for development in both porcine IVM and IVC.
Perceptions of Information Systems Objectives: A Comparison of IS Professionals from the United States and Korea

Abstract Information Systems (IS) professionals from the United States and Korea were surveyed to explore potential similarities and differences in their views on the importance of various IS objectives. The IS objectives investigated were classified according to the level of IS impact on organizations: system, user, strategic, and organizational. Overall the results indicated that the IS professionals viewed the system level objective as the most important and the organizational level objective as the least important. In addition, the results revealed that the IS professionals from the U.S. rated the system level objective as less important but rated the user and strategic level objectives as more important than did the IS professionals from Korea. The difference in the perceived relative importance of the organizational level objective was not significant. The results also demonstrated that individuals who perceived the system level objective as more important than the other objectives also perceived a higher success rate on IS projects. The results were discussed in terms of the effects of cultural influences on global IS development and potential inaccurate perceptions of IS success.
A digitally modulated mm-Wave cartesian beamforming transmitter with quadrature spatial combining

With fast-growing demand for high-speed mobile communications and highly saturated spectral usage below 10GHz, mm-Wave frequency bands are emerging as the key playground for future high-data-rate wireless standards. Recent years have witnessed vast technology development on V-band (60GHz) Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and E-band (80GHz) point-to-point cellular backhauls. However, existing integrated CMOS mm-Wave solutions have relatively poor energy efficiency, especially for the transmitter (TX). This is mainly due to the use of traditional Class-A Power Amplifiers (PAs) that provide good linearity but suffer from low efficiency. In addition, the efficiency of Class-A PAs drop dramatically at power back-offs, making these transmitters even less efficient when conveying non-constant envelope signals. State-of-the-art mm-Wave Class-A PAs show less than 5% efficiency at 6dB back-off [1,2].
Extremely thermostable D-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase from the eubacterium Thermotoga maritima.

D-Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) from Thermotoga maritima, a hyperthermophilic eubacterium, has been isolated in pure crystalline form. The enzyme is a homotetramer with a subunit molecular mass of 37 kDa. The sedimentation coefficient of the native enzyme is 7.3 X 10(-13)s, the isoelectric point is 4.6, and the specific absorption coefficient A1%, 1cm 280nm = 8.4. The enzyme shows extreme thermal stability: differential scanning calorimetry yields a transition temperature (Tm) of 109 degrees C for the NAD-saturated enzyme. Thermal deactivation occurs at T greater than 90 degrees C. The physicochemical characteristics of the enzyme suggest that its gross structure must be very similar to the structure of GAPDHs from mesophilic sources. The amino acid composition does not confirm the known "traffic rules" of thermal adaptation, apart from the Lys----Arg exchange. One reactive and at least two buried SH groups can be titrated with 5,5'-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoate). The highly reactive SH group is probably the active-site cysteine residue common to all known GAPDHs. The activation energy of the glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate oxidation reaction decreases with increasing temperature. This functional behavior can be correlated with the temperature-dependent changes of both the intrinsic fluorescence and the near-UV circular dichroism; both indicate a temperature-dependent structural reorganization of the enzyme. Hydrogen-deuterium exchange reveals significantly increased rigidity of the thermophilic enzyme if compared to mesophilic GAPDHs at 25 degrees C, thus indicating that the conformational flexibility is similar at the corresponding physiological temperatures. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Sun‐sign astrology in market segmentation: an empirical investigation

Demographic segmentation variables are cheap and easy to measure, while psychographic variables are more expensive and harder to measure, but can provide more insight into consumers’ psychology. Suggests that a prima facie case exists for the suitability of astrology as a segmentation variable with the potential to combine the measurement advantages of demographics with the psychological insights of psychographics and to create segments which are measurable, substantial, exhaustive, stable over time, and relatively accessible. Tests the premise empirically using results from a Government data set, the British General Household Survey. The analyses show that astrology does have a significant, and sometimes predictable, effect on behavior in the leisure, tobacco, and drinks markets. Discusses managerial implications of the results in terms of market segmentation and promotion.
Artemis: sequence visualization and annotation

SUMMARY Artemis is a DNA sequence visualization and annotation tool that allows the results of any analysis or sets of analyses to be viewed in the context of the sequence and its six-frame translation. Artemis is especially useful in analysing the compact genomes of bacteria, archaea and lower eukaryotes, and will cope with sequences of any size from small genes to whole genomes. It is implemented in Java, and can be run on any suitable platform. Sequences and annotation can be read and written directly in EMBL, GenBank and GFF format. AVAILABITLTY: Artemis is available under the GNU General Public License from http://www.sanger. ac.uk/Software/Artemis
Surveillance of screening-detected cancers (colon and rectum, breast, and cervix) - United States, 2004-2006.

PROBLEM/CONDITION: Population-based screening is conducted to detect diseases or other conditions in persons before symptoms appear; effective screening leads to early detection and treatment, thereby reducing disease-associated morbidity and mortality. Based on systematic reviews of the evidence of the benefits and harms and assessments of the net benefit of screening, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends population-based screening for colon and rectum cancer, female breast cancer, and uterine cervix cancer. Few publications have used national data to examine the stage at diagnosis of these screening-amenable cancers. REPORTING PERIOD COVERED: 2004-2006. DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEMS: Data were obtained from cancer registries affiliated with CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) and the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Combined data from the NPCR and SEER programs provide the best source of information on national population-based cancer incidence. Data on cancer screening were obtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This report provides stage-specific cancer incidence rates and screening prevalence by demographic characteristics and U.S. state. RESULTS: Approximately half of colorectal and cervical cancer cases and one third of breast cancer cases were diagnosed at a late stage of disease. Incidence rates of late-stage cancer differed by age, race/ethnicity, and state. Incidence rates of late-stage colorectal cancer increased with age and were highest among black men and women. Incidence rates of late-stage breast cancer were highest among women aged 60-79 years and black women. Incidence rates of late-stage cervical cancer were highest among women aged 50-79 years and Hispanic women. The percentage of persons who received recommended screening differed by age, race/ethnicity, and state. INTERPRETATION: Differences in late-stage cancer incidence rates might be explained partially by differences in screening use. PUBLIC HEALTH ACTION: The findings in this report emphasize the need for ongoing population-based surveillance and reporting to monitor late-stage cancer incidence trends. Screening can identify colorectal, cervical, and breast cancers in earlier and more treatable stages of disease. Multiple factors, including individual characteristics and health behaviors as well as provider and clinical systems factors, might account for why certain populations are underscreened. Cancer control planners, including comprehensive cancer-control programs, can use late-stage cancer incidence and screening prevalence data to identify populations that would benefit from interventions to increase screening utilization and to monitor performance of early detection programs.
Learning Networks from Random Walk-Based Node Similarities

Digital presence in the world of online social media entails significant privacy risks. In this work we consider a privacy threat to a social network in which an attacker has access to a subset of random walk-based node similarities, such as effective resistances (i.e., commute times) or personalized PageRank scores. Using these similarities, the attacker's goal is to infer as much information as possible about the underlying network, including any remaining unknown pairwise node similarities and edges. For the effective resistance metric, we show that with just a small subset of measurements, the attacker can learn a large fraction of edges in a social network, even when the measurements are noisy. We also show that it is possible to learn a graph which accurately matches the underlying network on all other effective resistances. This second observation is interesting from a data mining perspective, since it can be expensive to accurately compute all effective resistances. As an alternative, our graphs learned from just a subset of approximate effective resistances can be used as surrogates in a wide range of applications that use effective resistances to probe graph structure, including for graph clustering, node centrality evaluation, and anomaly detection. We obtain our results by formalizing the graph learning objective mathematically, using two optimization problems. One formulation is convex and can be solved provably in polynomial time. The other is not, but we solve it efficiently with projected gradient and coordinate descent. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods on a number of social networks obtained from Facebook. We also discuss how our methods can be generalized to other random walk-based similarities, such as personalized PageRank. Our code is available at this https URL
Unsupervised learning for spectral data analysis as a novel sensor for identifying rodent infestation in urban environments

Rodent urine is known to fluoresce. This research aims to use spectral imaging data to detect rodent activity via chromophores. We introduce unsupervised learning techniques for classification and clustering of rodent urine samples from the spectral data directly. We classify and compare the rodent urine against additional chemical compounds such as human urine and coffee to validate our analysis and models. In order to facilitate the visualisation of the chemical compound's spectral data, we use manifold techniques for spectral clustering visualisation.
Effects of Personality on Service Quality in Business Transactions

This study describes the relationships among a salesperson's personality, similarity in terms of personality between salesperson and purchase representative (rep), and service quality perceived by purchase reps. The following findings were obtained: (1) agreeableness of a salesperson was negatively related to the responsiveness perceived by purchase reps; (2) salesperson neuroticism was negatively related to purchase rep perceptions of assurance, empathy, and overall service quality; and (3) the similarity in extraversion between salesperson and purchase reps was negatively correlated with purchase rep perceptions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and overall service quality.
Expectation as the Driving Force for Entry and Exit in the Turbulent Russian Market

Summary The market activities of international firms are now in unstable markets. Their decisions on how to act in such markets depend on their expectations of the future. The aim of this paper is to analyse the process of change in the expectations of a Swedish firm operating in the Russian market and facing dramatic market changes. To study the expectation behaviour of the firm, a longitudinal method covering the period from 1986 to 1993 is employed. The paper examines the expectation change process and the way the firm builds up its future market operation in order to penetrate, expand, and then exit from the Russian market. The absence of stability forced the firm to function either without any experiential knowledge or with knowledge that constantly lost its value. The thrust of this paper is grounded in the explanation that the basis of market activities rests on three forms of expectations: institutional, relationship, and network. The expectation view captured in the study is process-based and was explored through the concepts of commitment and knowledge from the internationalisation process model.
Communities of Practice in Clinical Education: Do we (need to) trust our leaders?

Research concerning leadership had focused on formal leaders. These conventional ‘leadership’ positions mask crucial activities within communities of practice (COP). Wegner (2000), claims developing informal leaders is a critical element of community success and leadership itself essential in wider organisational success. Little literature exists clarifying the role of the informal leader or how these leaders encourage performance in academia. The research concerning clinical educators is even more inadequate.
Lipopolysaccharides from Pseudomonas maltophilia. Structural studies of the side-chain, core, and lipid-A regions of the lipopolysaccharide from strain NCTC 10257.

Structural studies have been carried out on the O-specific polysaccharide, the core oligosaccharide, and the lipid A from the lipopolysaccharide of Pseudomonas maltophilia NCTC 10257. By means of 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a tetrasaccharide repeating-unit for the O-specific polymer has been confirmed. However, the data suggest that the L-rhamnopyranosyl residue at the branching point has the alpha configuration rather than beta as proposed previously [Neal, D.J. and Wilkinson, S.G. (1979) Carbohydr. Res. 69, 191-201]. The core oligosaccharide contains residues of D-glucose, D-mannose phosphate, D-galactosamine (not N-acetylated), D-galacturonic acid, and a 3-deoxyoctulosonic acid (but no aldoheptose). A partial structure for the oligosaccharide is proposed. Lipid A is based on phosphorylated glucosamine residues, with N-fatty acyl and O-fatty acyl substituents. The major fatty acids are 9-methyldecanoic acid, 2-hydroxy-9-methyldecanoic acid, 3-hydroxy-9-methyldecanoic acid (each ester-linked), 3-hydroxydodecanoic acid, and 3-hydroxy-11-methyldodecanoic acid (both mainly amide-linked). The results of this study provide further evidence for a relationship between P. maltophilia and some Xanthomonas species.
Growing Pains: Audit Quality and Office Growth

This study provides evidence on how local office growth affects audit quality. We predict that significant recent growth will temporarily stress office resources, leading to a negative relation between office-level growth and audit quality. To test this prediction, we examine a sample of 17,062 firm-year observations from 2005-2010. Results indicate a consistent negative relation between changes in volume of audit work and audit quality. Specifically, clients of offices that experience increases in workload over the prior year have greater absolute discretionary accruals as well as an increased likelihood of restatement. Our tests also indicate that the effect of office growth is transient and vanishes after one year. We find limited evidence that the size of the auditor’s national network of offices partially mitigates the negative effects of office growth on audit quality. We further show that proxies for audit quality are negatively related to office-level growth from new and existing clients. These findings are robust to controls for client and auditor characteristics as well as alternative specifications of growth. Taken together, evidence indicates that while larger offices provide higher audit quality, the benefits of office size are not realized immediately and rapid growth temporarily impairs audit quality. These results are informative to regulators concerned with audit quality and to practitioners charged with adjusting to office growth.
Public-Sector Reform Initiatives in Development Cooperation: A Case Study of the Kyrgyz Rural Advisory Service RAS

Public-sector reform initiatives as part of development cooperation challenge many agricultural support services in developing countries of Central Asia. This article analyses the application of the results-based payment system in the Kyrgyz Rural Advisory Service (RAS) and identifies key determinants that are likely to influence its effective adaptation. The article is based on a literature review of public-sector reforms in developing countries, donor agencies' program documents, and participatory action research of the authors. The results from this research indicate that although the RAS develops in a positive way under the new system, it directed its accountability towards the donors, rather than towards local actors. Crucial impediments to the effective implementation of the results-based payment system are first and foremost institutional uncertainty and the limits of management capacity. These non-intentional reform effects, which are to some extent directly opposed to the underlying theories, are discussed in the article.
Effect of IQ Mismatch Compensation in an Optical Coherent OFDM Receiver

The performance enhancement using the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure (GSOP) for compensating transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) in-phase/quadrature (IQ) mismatch in the coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing system is investigated. The analytic result containing frequency offset is presented to describe the different behavior of Tx and Rx IQ mismatch. Bit-error-rate curves measured at back-to-back and 1040-km transmission over single-mode fiber indicate that the GSOP is more efficient to compensate of Rx IQ mismatch than Tx IQ mismatch.
Social assistance, gender, and the aged in South Africa

This paper reviews the history of the noncontributory social pension in South Africa, as well as recent work on the distributional and poverty-alleviating effects of this program. The pension has a strong gender dimension, reaching three times as many women as men, and has an unambiguous impact on reducing household poverty, particularly among Black South African households. The existing literature also suggests that the pension reaches unintended beneficiaries within households and that strongly gender-differentiated patterns emerge both in the sharing of pension incomes by pensioners and in the behavioral responses of other household members to pension receipt.