Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consent for transfusion

All patients have the legal and ethical right before they agree to treatment to receive adequate information on the aims, benefits, and risks of the treatment. In Britain this is firmly stated in the patient's charter, as well as being highlighted by the Medical Defence Union1 and the Medical Protection Society2 in their publications. It is also emphasised as a doctor's duty by the General Medical Council: “In particular as a doctor you must give patients information in a way they can understand; respect the rights of patients to be fully involved in decisions about their care. ”3 During most transactions between patients and doctors consent is implied, but when a procedure is likely to carry a substantial or material risk the right is usually interpreted as asking patients to provide express written consent. In the United Kingdom, …
A robust method for determining instants of major excitations in voiced speech

We propose a method for determining the instants of significant excitation in speech signals using the negative derivative of the unwrapped phase (group delay) function of the short time Fourier transform. Here significant excitation refers primarily to the instants of glottal closure in voiced speech. The method computes the average slope of the unwrapped phase spectrum as a function of time. The instants where the phase slope function makes a positive zero-crossing correspond to the major excitations in the signal. For an analysis window size in the range of one to two pitch periods, these instants coincide with the instants of glottal closure in each pitch period. The method is robust, as it depends only on the average phase slope value, and further, it depends only on the positive zero-crossing instants of the average phase slope function.
On Smoothing Exact Penalty Functions for Convex Constrained Optimization

A quadratic smoothing approximation to nondifferentiable exact penalty functions for convex constrained optimization is proposed and its properties are established. The smoothing approximation is used as the basis of an algorithm for solving problems with (i) embedded network structures, and (ii) nonlinear minimax problems. Extensive numerical results with large-scale problems illustrate the efficiency of this approach.
Affine invariant local features based on novel keypoint detection and grouping

Feature detection is an important topic in computer vision and image processing. In this paper we propose a fixed-iteration algorithm to detect keypoints based on a ridge-type image. We also present a method to group all keypoints on the same edge to form a new affine invariant feature for recognition in images. Experimental results show that the proposed method finds keypoints more exactly and stably than other methods and has good repeatability.
Managing Customers for Value

This article provides an introduction to and overview of this special issue on “Managing Customers for Value. ” The field of customer management has grown rapidly in recent years, with significant research examining approaches with which firms can manage customers as key assets. Starting with the notion that firms seek to maximize customer lifetime value and customer equity, the authors identify eight key challenges that firms and researchers face in understanding, managing, and implementing successful customer management strategies. The authors then present an organizing framework and use it to offer an overview of the rest of the special issue, outlining how each of the remaining articles in the special issue (each addressing one of the key challenges) fits into the framework. Based on a synthesis of the overall insights from the articles, the authors conclude with a research agenda that highlights potentially fruitful avenues for further investigation.
Interictal Infraslow Activity in Stereoelectroencephalography: From Focus to Network

Purpose: Infraslow activity (ISA) occurring during the interictal state in focal epilepsy is largely unstudied. In this exploratory analysis, the authors aimed to characterize features of interictal ISA in a cohort of patients studied by stereoelectroencephography. Methods: The interictal stereoelectroencephography records for 15 consecutive adult patients were retrospectively analyzed, after application of both conventional (1.6–70 Hz) and infraslow (0.01–0.1 Hz) bandpass filters. Visual analysis was complemented by time–frequency analysis to quantify the change in ISA power over hours. Linear correlation coefficient (R) calculations were used to map interictal connectivity in the infraslow band. Results: Interictal ISA background fluctuations were present throughout the interictal state in all patients, manifesting as recurrent and stereotyped oscillations. These oscillations had an apparent modulatory effect on conventional-band activities and spikes (“spike-crested oscillations”). In the infraslow band, the correlations between electrode contacts were shown to have a stable structure over time. Conclusions: Infraslow activity exists as a fundamental component of wideband cortical dynamics in focal epilepsy, with features suggestive of scale-free (1/f) dynamics: evidence of phase-amplitude coupling and functional connectivity in the infraslow band. Rather than viewed as a focal paroxysmal activity, interictal ISA may be better understood as a network process, although this requires further study.
Balancing the act: the implications of jointly pursuing internal customer orientation and external customer orientation

Abstract Current marketing paradigms recognise a need for organisations to create value for both internal and external customers. However, jointly pursuing an internal and external customer focus has been argued to be both synergistic and contradictory. Using cluster analysis, this paper develops a typology on the basis of employees’ perceptions of their organisation’s joint pursuit of internal and external customer orientation. This allows an examination of the joint implications of these strategic postures on organisational processes, including information generation, information dissemination, training, communication and human resource practices. The results suggest that employees have the most positive perceptions of organisational processes when they perceive the organisation pursues a strong internal orientation, followed by those organisations that are jointly strong on internal and external customer orientation.
Glial Cell Migration in the Eye Disc

Any complex nervous system is made out of two major cell types, neurons and glial cells. A hallmark of glial cells is their pronounced ability to migrate. En route to their final destinations, glial cells are generally guided by neuronal signals. Here we show that in the developing visual system of Drosophila glial cell migration is largely controlled by glial–glial interactions and occurs independently of axonal contact. Differentiation into wrapping glia is initiated close to the morphogenetic furrow. Using single cell labeling experiments we identified six distinct glial cell types in the eye disc. The migratory glial population is separated from the wrapping glial cells by the so-called carpet cells, extraordinary large glial cells, each covering a surface area of ∼10,000 epithelial cells. Subsequent cell ablation experiments demonstrate that the carpet glia regulates glial migration in the eye disc epithelium and suggest a new model underlying glial migration and differentiation in the developing visual system.
Prognostic Relevance of Basal Cytokeratin Expression in Operable Breast Cancer

Objective: We investigated whether basal cytokeratin (CK5/6 or CK17) expression had an impact on survival in patients with operable breast cancer. Methods: Expression of CK5/6 or CK17 was analyzed by immunohistochemistry in 195 women with breast cancer. Results: In total, 72 (37%) tumor samples were regarded as being positive for CK5/6 or CK17. The basal-like phenotype as defined by basal cytokeratin expression, lack of estrogen receptor (ER) and absence of HER2 overexpression was found in 48 (25%) cases. Positive staining for CK5/6 or CK17 was associated with worse prognosis when compared with patients negative for basal cytokeratins in all cases (5-year cancer-specific survival rate 59.4 vs. 77.5%, p = 0.0273) and in the node-negative group (70.5 vs. 90.8%, p = 0.0208) but not in the node-positive group (43.9 vs. 65.4%, p = 0.1182). To determine the real prognostic value of basal cytokeratins, survival in a group of ER-negative patients was analyzed depending on CK5/6 or CK 17 expression. No influence on survival was observed. The outcome of patients whose cancers were positive for cyclin E regardless of ER status was not changed by CK5/6 or CK17 expression. In multivariate analysis, independent prognostic factors affecting survival in the whole group included: nodal involvement, HER2 status and cyclin E expression. Neither ER status nor basal cytokeratin expression retained statistical significance. Conclusion: We demonstrated that the poor prognosis associated with the basal-like phenotype of breast cancer was determined by ER absence and cyclin E expression and not by CK5/6 or CK17 expression.
Workplace safety

Unsafe work environments have clear consequences for both individuals and organizations. As such, an ever-expanding research base is providing a greater understanding of the factors that affect workplace safety across organizational levels. However, despite scientific advances, the workplace safety literature suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical integration that makes it difficult for organizational scientists to gain a comprehensive sense of (a) what we currently know about workplace safety and (b) what we have yet to learn. This review addresses these shortcomings. First, the authors provide a formal definition of workplace safety and then create an integrated safety model (ISM) based on existing theory to summarize current theoretical expectations with regard to workplace safety. Second, the authors conduct a targeted review of the safety literature and compare extant empirical findings with the ISM. Finally, the authors use the results of this review to articulate gaps between theory and research and then make recommendations for both theoretical and empirical improvements to guide and integrate future workplace safety research.
Analysis of Energy Consumption in the Process of Manufacturing Technology Upgrade

Manufacturing industry is the mining of natural material resources and agricultural production of raw materials and processing,which becomes the production department by providing other sectors of economy with the means of production and by providing consumer goods for the society.China's manufacturing industry provides strong support for national economic development,but with the manufacturing industry technology upgrading and speeding up,its existing energy consumption level also increases.To guarantee the developing tendency of the manufacturing industry,it is necessary to look for the right way to reduce energy consumption in the process of the technological development,so that economic development can maintain the sustainable foundation strength.
An Efficient Algorithm for On-the-Fly Data Race Detection Using an Epoch-Based Technique

Data races represent the most notorious class of concurrency bugs in multithreaded programs. To detect data races precisely and efficiently during the execution of multithreaded programs, the epoch-based FastTrack technique has been employed. However, FastTrack has time and space complexities that depend on the maximum parallelism of the program to partially maintain expensive data structures, such as vector clocks. This paper presents an efficient algorithm, called iFT, that uses only the epochs of the access histories. Unlike FastTrack, our algorithm requires O(1) operations to maintain an access history and locate data races, without any switching between epochs and vector clocks. We implement this algorithm on top of the Pin binary instrumentation framework and compare it with other on-the-fly detection algorithms, including FastTrack, which uses a state-of-the-art happens-before analysis algorithm. Empirical results using the PARSEC benchmark show that iFT reduces the average runtime and memory overhead to 84% and 37%, respectively, of those of FastTrack.
Analyzing Web 2.0 Internet Users in Order to Drive Innovation in Distribution Strategy of Luxury Watches

While luxury watch industry is discussing whether to allow some distributors selling on the WEB 1.0, Internet users are gathering into communities on the WEB 2.0. Watch companies do not really believe in the necessity of being on the Internet in order to meet their customers. On the contrary, we assumed that luxury watches customers are heavy Internet users and are prone to buy over the Net. In order to confirm our hypothesis, we analyzed WEB 2.0 messages according to the netnography methodology (1). We identified and selected specific blogs dealing with luxury watches with the aim of revealing the actual Internet users thinking about luxury watches. The results give some insights about the attitudes of WEB 2.0 users toward luxury watches that can be used in order to innovate and launch new distribution and service web offerings for the luxury watch industry. Watch customers are playing and living in the WEB 2.0 era whereas luxury watches are vacillating about selling or not selling through authorized intermediaries. This industry could be a good case illustrating a market driven innovation process.
Parallelism and recursion in message passing libraries: an efficient methodology

Nested parallelism appears naturally in many applications. It is required whenever a function performing parallel statements needs to call a subroutine using parallelism. A particular case occurs when the function is recursive. Nested parallelism is to parallel programming as basic as nested loops to sequential programming. Despite this, most existing parallel languages do not provide this feature. This paper presents a new methodology to expand message passing libraries (MPL) with nested parallelism. The tool to support the methodology has processor virtualization, load balancing, pipeline parallelism and collective operations, among other features. The computational results prove that the performance obtained is comparable to that obtained using classical message passing programs. Since the methodology does not force the programmer to leave the MPL environment, all the efficiency and portability of the MPL model is preserved. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Challenges and potential of the Semantic Web for tourism

The paper explores tourism challenges and potential of the Semantic Web from a theoretical and industry perspective. It first examines tourism business networks and explores a main theme of network interoperability - data standards- followed by technology deficiencies of Web 1.0 and 2.0 and Semantic Web solutions. It then explicates Semantic opportunities and challenges for tourism, including an industry perspective through a qualitative approach. Industry leaders considered that the new Web era was imminent and heralded benefits for supply and demand side interoperability, although management and technical challenges could impede progress and delay realisation.
Biochemical Characterization of P4-ATPase Mutations Identified in Patients with Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis*

Background: Mutations in the P4-ATPase ATP8B1 cause progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC). Results: Homologous mutations in yeast P4-ATPase Dnf2p alter enzyme activity and subunit interaction phenotypes. Conclusion: This approach provides a method for characterizing the pathological basis of PFIC mutations. Significance: This approach identifies residues involved in substrate binding and a potential path for phospholipid movement. Mutations in the P4-ATPase ATP8B1 cause the inherited liver disease progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis. Several of these mutations are located in conserved regions of the transmembrane domain associated with substrate binding and transport. Assays for P4-ATPase-mediated transport in living yeast cells were developed and used to characterize the specificity and kinetic parameters of this transport. Progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis mutations were introduced into the yeast plasma membrane P4-ATPase Dnf2p, and the effect of these mutations on its catalysis of phospholipid transport were determined. The results of these measurements have implications for the basis of the disease and for the mechanism of phospholipid transit through the enzyme during the reaction cycle.
Effects of shoe heel height on the end-point and joint kinematics of the locomotor system when crossing obstacles of different heights

Abstract High-heeled shoes increase the risk of falling during walking, especially in the presence of obstacles. The study aimed to compare the end-point (foot/shoe) trajectories and joint angles of the lower extremities in 12 healthy females crossing obstacles of different heights while barefoot and when wearing narrow-heeled shoes (heel heights: 3.9, 6.3 and 7.3 cm). During obstacle-crossing, young females in narrow-heeled shoes maintained the same leading toe-clearance as when barefoot, irrespective of the heel height, primarily through increased plantarflexion of the leading swing ankle. However, the shoe heel-clearance was significantly reduced when compared with barefoot, presumably related to the difficulty in precisely sensing the position of the shoe-heel tip. With an increasing obstacle height, the toe-clearance, heel-clearance and shoe heel-clearance were reduced linearly, indicating an increasing risk of tripping over the obstacle. The results will be helpful for the design and development of strategies to reduce the risk of falling when wearing narrow-heeled shoes. Practitioner Summary: Knowledge of the influence of narrow-heeled shoes and obstacles on lower limb joint and end-point kinematics helps in shoe design to address fall risks. Compared to barefoot, narrow-heeled shoes reduced shoe heel-clearances, which were further reduced linearly with increasing obstacle height, indicating an increasing risk of tripping over the obstacle.
Strategic trading and manipulation with spot market power

When a spot market monopolist has a position in a corresponding futures market, he has an incentive to deviate from the spot market optimum to make this position more profitable. Rational futures market makers take this into account when setting prices. We show that the monopolist, by randomizing his futures market position, can strategically exploit his market power at the expense of other futures market participants. Furthermore, traders without market power can manipulate futures prices by hiding their orders behind the monopolist's strategic trades. The moral hazard problem stemming from spot market power thus provides a venue for strategic trading and manipulation that parallels the adverse selection problem stemming from inside information.
Cage Versus Noncage Laying-Hen Housings: Respiratory Exposures

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to compare the personal respiratory exposures of poultry workers in three different types of layer housing under commercial production conditions. Workers were randomly assigned to each of conventional cage, enriched cage, and aviary barns in a crossover repeated-measures design for three observation periods over the hens’ lifetime. Inhalable and fine particulate matter (PM) and endotoxin in both size fractions were assessed by personal and area samplers over the work shift. Concentrations of inhalable PM, PM2.5 (PM with an aerodynamic diameter <2.5 μm), and endotoxin in both size fractions were higher in aviary than either the conventional or enriched barns. Geometric means (95% confidence intervals [CIs]) of inhalable PM and endotoxin for the aviary, conventional, and enriched barns were 8.9 (6.8–11.5) mg/m3 and 7517.9 (5403.2–10,460.2) EU/m3, 3.7 (2.8–4.8) mg/m3 and 1655.7 (1144.6–2395.2) EU/m3, 2.4 (1.8–3.3) mg/m3 and 1404.8 (983.3–2007.0) EU/m3, respectively. Area samplers recorded a lower mean inhalable PM concentration and higher PM2.5 concentration than personal samplers. Ammonia concentrations were low throughout three monitoring seasons. These findings show that the aviary barns pose higher respiratory exposures to poultry workers than either conventional or enriched barns.
The Scarring Effects of Youth Joblessness in Sri Lanka

Retrospective data on labor market spells for successive cohorts of school leavers in Sri Lanka are used to examine whether early spells of joblessness lead to subsequent difficulty in finding or keeping a job. A matching method based on the Joffee and Rosenbaum (1999) balancing score approach is used to generate pairs of school leavers that have similar expected levels of joblessness but that differ in realized levels of joblessness. Assuming that youth are not able to perfectly control whether they are employed or not employed, we argue that marginal differences in joblessness between otherwise observationally equivalent youth can be viewed similarly to a regression discontinuity in experienced joblessness. We find evidence of scarring in that spending the first year after leaving school without a job or training increases subsequent time spent jobless by between 11 to 16%.
The Types of KM Strategies in Manufacturing Firms

Based on the usage levels of target costing systems (TCS) and information technology (IT) infrastructure, this study aimed to develop a framework useful for classifying four types of knowledge management (KM) strategies in manufacturing firms: explorative, exploitative, mixed and negative. The framework was developed and suggested. We also empirically confirmed the framework that proposes four types of KM strategies in manufacturing firms.
On the Method of Moments for Estimation in Latent Variable Models. (Sur la méthode des moments pour d'estimation des modèles à variable latentes)

Latent linear models are powerful probabilistic tools for extracting useful latent structure from otherwise unstructured data and have proved useful in numerous applications such as natural language processing and computer vision. However, the estimation and inference are often intractable for many latent linear models and one has to make use of approximate methods often with no recovery guarantees. An alternative approach, which has been popular lately, are methods based on the method of moments. These methods often have guarantees of exact recovery in the idealized setting of an infinite data sample and well specified models, but they also often come with theoretical guarantees in cases where this is not exactly satisfied. This is opposed to more standard and widely used methods based on variational inference and sampling and, therefore, makes moment matching-based methods especially interesting. In this thesis, we focus on moment matching-based estimation methods for different latent linear models. Using a close connection with independent component analysis, which is a well studied tool from the signal processing literature, we introduce several semiparametric models in the topic modeling context and for multi-view models and develop moment matching-based methods for the estimation in these models. These methods come with improved sample complexity results compared to the previously proposed methods. The models are supplemented with the identifiability guarantees, which is a necessary property to ensure their interpretability. This is opposed to some other widely used models, which are unidentifiable. For all mentioned models, we perform extensive experimental comparison of the proposed algorithms on both synthetic and real datasets and demonstrate their promising practical performance.