Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Critical success factors for cross‐functional teamwork in new product development

There is consensus that the effective implementation of cross-functional teams is critical to new product success. However, such teams face particular challenges because of well-documented barriers between functions. Furthermore, there is little evidence-based guidance for practitioners on how to achieve effective cross-functional teamwork. In order to address this gap, the literature on cross-functional teamwork was analysed to identify critical success factors. Using a heuristic team effectiveness model, these were categorized into six groups: task design, group composition, organizational context, internal processes, external processes and group psychosocial traits. Recent theory on group effectiveness has increasingly recognized the significance of a supportive organizational context, and this is particularly pertinent for cross-functional teams. Key success factors include strategic alignment between functions, a climate supportive of teamwork and team-based accountability. The findings are integrated into a diagnostic model which is intended to be of practical benefit to people designing, leading and facilitating cross-functional new product development teams.
An active memory as a model for information fusion

Information fusion is a mandatory prerequisite for cognitive vision systems. These are vision systems that apply rea- soning and learning on different levels of abstraction and corre- spondingly have to deal with hypotheses from different categori- cal domains. Following some principles of human cognition, we present an approach to information fusion that closely couples reasoning and representation. We will discuss how processes like probabilistic contextual reasoning as well as functional and non- functional requirements in storing data from different sources can be integrated by a unified XML based data representation. Due to the interaction between active processes and data storage, we call our approach an active memory. Performance results of an implemented system as well as an evaluation of data fusion from contextual inference will be presented.
Temporal Processing of Audiovisual Stimuli Is Enhanced in Musicians: Evidence from Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

Numerous studies have demonstrated that the structural and functional differences between professional musicians and non-musicians are not only found within a single modality, but also with regard to multisensory integration. In this study we have combined psychophysical with neurophysiological measurements investigating the processing of non-musical, synchronous or various levels of asynchronous audiovisual events. We hypothesize that long-term multisensory experience alters temporal audiovisual processing already at a non-musical stage. Behaviorally, musicians scored significantly better than non-musicians in judging whether the auditory and visual stimuli were synchronous or asynchronous. At the neural level, the statistical analysis for the audiovisual asynchronous response revealed three clusters of activations including the ACC and the SFG and two bilaterally located activations in IFG and STG in both groups. Musicians, in comparison to the non-musicians, responded to synchronous audiovisual events with enhanced neuronal activity in a broad left posterior temporal region that covers the STG, the insula and the Postcentral Gyrus. Musicians also showed significantly greater activation in the left Cerebellum, when confronted with an audiovisual asynchrony. Taken together, our MEG results form a strong indication that long-term musical training alters the basic audiovisual temporal processing already in an early stage (direct after the auditory N1 wave), while the psychophysical results indicate that musical training may also provide behavioral benefits in the accuracy of the estimates regarding the timing of audiovisual events.
Representing self‐in‐society: education for citizenship and the social‐subjects curriculum in Scotland

The documented social‐subjects curricula for Scottish 5–16 year olds are analysed for representations of ‘self‐in‐society’. Such representations are important in Scotland because it is expected that the new Education‐for‐Citizenship framework will in part be delivered through the social subjects. However, citizenship education is also relevant throughout the UK and beyond and our analysis of the social subjects has wider relevance. An ideal‐type analysis was used on documents including national guidelines, examination syllabuses, examination papers, and assessor instructions. Our analysis suggests that in these documents: the self is seen as an abstract; people are understood by category; society is the sum of discrete institutions; self‐in‐society is fully defined; and this representation of society is not contested. This representation becomes increasingly exclusive with age/ability and may be linked to assumed modes of curricular division, teaching and assessment. We discuss how this overall picture might affect students’ sense of ‘agency’ in the light of citizenship education. We conclude that the social‐subjects’ curricular representation of self‐in‐society may not fully support the Scottish Education‐for‐Citizenship framework.
Cooperative relay design for energy efficient cell capacity improvements

The effect of relaying in terms of energy efficiency is an important and interesting issue in cellular communications. In this paper, two relaying schemes for uplink are analyzed and compared in the context of cellular systems: Simple relaying (SR), where a user is served either by a relay node or the base station, and Cooperative Relaying (CR), where a user is served by the relay node, the base station or both in a cooperative manner. For the relaying a specific relay network topology is proposed where the relay nodes are deployed at the edge of each cell. The two schemes are analyzed in terms of cell capacity, provided through bit error analysis, and energy efficiency, and are compared to a baseline scheme that is based on a macro network topology with no relays. Based on the proposed relay network topology and the Decode-and-Forward relaying mechanism, this study focuses on finding out the optimal access path between a user and its serving base station. The optimization is performed according to a utility function which targets to maximizing cell capacity and energy efficiency. By choosing the optimal access path while decreasing the energy consumption per user, both cell capacity and energy efficiency of the wireless network are improved. By means of numerical simulations, it is shown that the relay schemes fully outperform the baseline wireless network without relays in both cell capacity and energy efficiency. In all simulation scenarios the CR scheme is the best performing scheme showing a gain around 33% in terms of cell capacity and a gain around 190% in terms of energy efficiency on average over the baseline. Further improvements are expected by utilizing more efficient cooperative relay schemes which will be exploited in the future work.
Diffuse X‐ray emission from late‐type galaxy haloes

Current theories of galaxy formation predict that spiral galaxies are embedded in a reservoir of hot gas. This gas is able to cool on to the galaxy, replenishing cold gas that is consumed by star formation. Estimates of the X-ray luminosity emitted in the cooling region suggest a bolometric luminosity of the order of 10×1041 erg s−1 in massive systems. We have used ROSAT PSPC data to search for extended X-ray emission from the haloes of three nearby, massive, late-type galaxies: NGC 2841, 4594 and 5529. We infer 95 per cent upper limits on the bolometric X-ray luminosities of the haloes of NGC 2841, 4594 and 5529 of 0.4, 1.2 and 3.8×1041 erg s−1 respectively. Thus, the true luminosity lies well below the straightforward theoretical prediction. We discuss this discrepancy and suggest a number of ways in which the theoretical model might be brought into agreement with the observational results. A possible solution is that the gravitational potentials of the dark matter haloes of these galaxies are weaker than assumed in the current model. Alternatively, the present-day accretion may be substantially less than is required on average to build the disc over the Hubble time. Our results are, however, based on only three galaxies, none of which is ideal for this kind of study. A larger data set is required to explore this important problem further.
Categories and Paradigms. On Underspecification in Russian Declension

In morphological systems of the agglutinative type we sometimes encounter a nearly perfect one-to-one relation between form and function. Turkish inflectional morphology is, of course, the standard textbook example. Things seem to be quite different in systems of the flexive type. Declension in Contemporary Standard Russian (henceforth Russian, for short) may be cited as a typical example: We find, among other things, cumulative markers, “synonymous” endings (e.g., dative singular noun forms in -i, -e, or -u), and “homonymous” endings (e.g., -i, genitive, dative, and prepositional singular). True, some endings are more of an agglutinative nature, being bound to a specific case-number combination and applying across declensions, e.g., -am (dative plural, all nouns); and some cross the boundaries of word classes, e.g., -o, which serves as the nominative/accusative singular ending of neuter forms of pronouns (and adjectives) and as the nominative/accusative singular ending of (most) neuter nouns as well. Still, many observers have been struck by the impression that what we face here are rather uneconomic or even, so to speak, unnatural structures. But perhaps flexive systems are not as complicated as they seem. What seems to be uneconomic complexity may be, at least partially, an artifact of uneconomic descriptions.1
Neurological signs in parents of schizophrenic patients

&NA; The importance of neurological abnormalities in relatives of schizophrenic patients is not completely clear and has been questioned. The hypothesis that neurological abnormalities are trait markers for a vulnerability to develop schizophrenia was tested in 32 parents of patients with schizophrenia and 34 healthy controls. A comprehensive and standardized neurological assessment battery was used. The examiners were blind as to whether they tested a parent of a patient or a healthy control. Four function domains were investigated; higher cerebral functions, cranial nerve functions, general motor functions and gait. There were no significant differences between parents of patients and healthy controls on any of the neurological function domains, or on the total number of neurological abnormalities. No difference was found between parents with a positive family history of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, parents with a negative family history and controls. Results suggest that the neurological functions investigated are not related to a genetic liability to develop schizophrenia.
Whole-Genome Analysis of Exserohilum rostratum from an Outbreak of Fungal Meningitis and Other Infections

ABSTRACT Exserohilum rostratum was the cause of most cases of fungal meningitis and other infections associated with the injection of contaminated methylprednisolone acetate produced by the New England Compounding Center (NECC). Until this outbreak, very few human cases of Exserohilum infection had been reported, and very little was known about this dematiaceous fungus, which usually infects plants. Here, we report using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) for the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and phylogenetic analysis to investigate the molecular origin of the outbreak using 22 isolates of E. rostratum retrieved from 19 case patients with meningitis or epidural/spinal abscesses, 6 isolates from contaminated NECC vials, and 7 isolates unrelated to the outbreak. Our analysis indicates that all 28 isolates associated with the outbreak had nearly identical genomes of 33.8 Mb. A total of 8 SNPs were detected among the outbreak genomes, with no more than 2 SNPs separating any 2 of the 28 genomes. The outbreak genomes were separated from the next most closely related control strain by ∼136,000 SNPs. We also observed significant genomic variability among strains unrelated to the outbreak, which may suggest the possibility of cryptic speciation in E. rostratum.
The Career Transition Process

Today’s society, shaped by demographic changes and a global economy, has created different employment trends and work lives that result in adults’ engaging in postretirement second careers. This phenomenon is a common occurrence in rapidly aging societies like Korea. This qualitative study examined the postretirement career transition process of Korean middle-aged adults. In-depth interviews were held with nine individuals ranging from 48 to 65 years identified as postretirement workers following voluntary retirement from private and public sectors. Data analysis revealed four phases in the career transition process: experiencing disequilibrium in a previous career, reflecting on self and context, making new professional connections and changes, and committing to new careers. The career transition was also a process involving different modes of learning, leading to the conclusion that the career transition process is essentially a learning process in which individuals acquire new perspectives and meaning in a new role.
Permanent waves : the making of the American beauty shop

Throughout the twentieth century, beauty shops have been places where women could enjoy the company of other women, exchange information, and share secrets. The female equivalent of barbershops, they have been institutions vital to community formation and social change. But while the beauty shop created community, it also reflected the racial segregation that has so profoundly shaped American society. Links between style, race, and identity were so intertwined that for much of the beauty shop's history, black and white hairdressing industries were largely separate entities with separate concerns. While African American hair-care workers embraced the chance to be independent from white control, negotiated the meanings of hair straightening, and joined in larger political struggles that challenged Jim Crow, white female hairdressers were embroiled in struggles over self-definition and opposition to their industry's emphasis on male achievement. Yet despite their differences, black and white hairdressers shared common stakes as battles were waged over issues of work, skill, and professionalism unique to women's service work. Permanent Waves traces the development of the American beauty shop, from its largely separate racial origins, through white recognition of the "ethnic market," to the present day.
IRIS Segmentation: Detecting Pupil, Limbus and Eyelids

This paper presents an active contour model to accurately detect pupil boundary in order to improve the performance of iris recognition systems. The contour model takes into consideration that an actual pupil boundary is a near-circular contour rather than a perfect circle. Two types of controlling force models, introduced as internal and external forces, are designed to properly activate the contour and locate it over the pupil boundary. The internal forces are designed to smooth the curve as well as to keep it close to a circular shape by pushing the contour vertices to their local radial mean. The external forces, which are responsible for pulling the contour vertices toward the pupil boundary, are designed based on a circular-curve gradient measurement with a proper angular range with respect to the contour center. In addition, an iterative algorithm has been developed in order to capture limbus and eyelids. The developed algorithm iteratively searches the limbus and eyelids boundaries and excludes the detected eyelids areas that cover the iris. Excluding the eyelids leads to a more precise search for limbus in the next iteration and the search is completed when the circular parameters of the limbus converge to fixed values. The eyelid contours are modeled as elliptic curves considering the spherical shape of an eyeball and the search is based on the expected contour in different degrees of eye openness.
Feature-Dependent Sensitive Periods in the Development of Complex Sound Representation

Simple tonal stimuli can shape spectral tuning of cortical neurons during an early epoch of brain development. The effects of complex sound experience on cortical development remain to be determined. We exposed rat pups to a frequency-modulated (FM) sweep in different time windows during early development, and examined the effects of such sensory experience on sound representations in the primary auditory cortex (AI). We found that early exposure to a FM sound resulted in altered characteristic frequency representations and broadened spectral tuning in AI neurons, whereas later exposure to the same sound only led to greater selectivity for the sweep rate and direction of the experienced FM sound. These results indicate that cortical representations of different acoustic features are shaped by complex sounds in a series of distinct sensitive periods.
Assessing Electronic Cigarette-Related Tweets for Sentiment and Content Using Supervised Machine Learning

Background Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) continue to be a growing topic among social media users, especially on Twitter. The ability to analyze conversations about e-cigarettes in real-time can provide important insight into trends in the public’s knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs surrounding e-cigarettes, and subsequently guide public health interventions. Objective Our aim was to establish a supervised machine learning algorithm to build predictive classification models that assess Twitter data for a range of factors related to e-cigarettes. Methods Manual content analysis was conducted for 17,098 tweets. These tweets were coded for five categories: e-cigarette relevance, sentiment, user description, genre, and theme. Machine learning classification models were then built for each of these five categories, and word groupings (n-grams) were used to define the feature space for each classifier. Results Predictive performance scores for classification models indicated that the models correctly labeled the tweets with the appropriate variables between 68.40% and 99.34% of the time, and the percentage of maximum possible improvement over a random baseline that was achieved by the classification models ranged from 41.59% to 80.62%. Classifiers with the highest performance scores that also achieved the highest percentage of the maximum possible improvement over a random baseline were Policy/Government (performance: 0.94; % improvement: 80.62%), Relevance (performance: 0.94; % improvement: 75.26%), Ad or Promotion (performance: 0.89; % improvement: 72.69%), and Marketing (performance: 0.91; % improvement: 72.56%). The most appropriate word-grouping unit (n-gram) was 1 for the majority of classifiers. Performance continued to marginally increase with the size of the training dataset of manually annotated data, but eventually leveled off. Even at low dataset sizes of 4000 observations, performance characteristics were fairly sound. Conclusions Social media outlets like Twitter can uncover real-time snapshots of personal sentiment, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior that are not as accessible, at this scale, through any other offline platform. Using the vast data available through social media presents an opportunity for social science and public health methodologies to utilize computational methodologies to enhance and extend research and practice. This study was successful in automating a complex five-category manual content analysis of e-cigarette-related content on Twitter using machine learning techniques. The study details machine learning model specifications that provided the best accuracy for data related to e-cigarettes, as well as a replicable methodology to allow extension of these methods to additional topics.
Real-time and Precise Self Collision Detection System for Humanoid Robots

In this paper, we describe the real-time and precise self collision detection system that does not reduce the number of polygons and checks more than 100 collision pairs in real-time by using AABB based collision detection libraries. Previous researches on collision detection of humanoid robots which reduce collision pairs or simplify a shape of a robot has disadvantages such as increasing the dangerousness or decreasing range of movement. However our self collision detection system uses detailed geometric model and collision pairs as many as possible. We have experimentally evaluated collision detection libraries on a real-time self collision detection application of a humanoid robot. This experiment suggests that AABBs based method is much faster than conventional OBBs based method. Finally, we demonstrated real-time collision detection and avoidance function that automatically stops entire motion if self collision occurs using HRP2 humanoid robot.
Group size, group status and trait valence as determinants of intergroup bias: Stereotyping in Finland and Sweden

The effects of group size, group status and trait valence (positive or negative stereotypes of in- and outgroup) on intergroup bias was studied in nation-wide probability samples of majority and minority groups in Finland and Sweden, (N = 2479). Ethnolinguistic vitality was used as a proxy for status. It is argued that the specific history of real-life intergroup relations has to be duly acknowledged when predicting main and interactive effects on intergroup bias in natural contexts. Supporting the predictions made, numerical group size showed a stable main effect; members of numerical minorities showed more bias than members of numerical majorities, regardless of trait valence. While status had no main effect, there was a significant interaction between status and size as well as between status and trait valence: intergroup bias was highest in the high status minority, and low status groups showed less bias than high status groups on negatively valenced traits. In fact, minority members showed the reverse of PNAE. In addition, majority members favoured the outgroup on negatively valenced traits, but favoured their ingroup on positively valenced traits. Different explanations for these results are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Cerebral blood volume maps with dynamic contrast-enhanced T1-weighted FLASH imaging: normal values and preliminary clinical results.

PURPOSE In this article we investigate the application of a method that uses the relaxation effect of bolus-like injected Gd-DTPA to quantify regional cerebral blood volume (rCBV). The aim of the study was to determine if the method provides correct rCBV values in healthy subjects as well as to obtain additional diagnostic information for patients with a glioma or stroke. METHOD Twenty healthy subjects, 12 patients with brain infarctions, and 18 patients with gliomas were examined. A series of 64 sequential images of one slice was recorded during bolus transit with a FLASH sequence. The measured signal intensity-time curves were converted pixel-wise to concentration-time curves from which the rCBV images were calculated applying the indicator dilution method. RESULTS An average value for gray and white matter of 4.4 +/- 1.6 vol% was obtained for the group of healthy subjects. The grading of the tumors could be classified according to the differences of their corresponding rCBV values. Fifty percent of the infarct patients had to be excluded from the analysis in the acute phase due to mispositioning of the slice and data degradation by gross motion artifact. Different rCBV values were found for areas that develop later into gliotic scars or cystic necrosis. CONCLUSION The proposed method is easy to apply in clinical routine MR investigations and provides valuable information for noninvasive, preoperative assessment of tumor grading. It can also provide additional criteria for estimating the histological outcome and with it the degree of ischemia in stroke patients.