Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Display Characteristics on Visual Exploratory Search Behavior

Visual information search is a combination of two distinct types of behavior. Goal-directed search behavior occurs when consumers use stored search routines to collect information in a deliberate manner. In contrast, exploratory search behavior occurs when consumers are confronted with multiple pieces of information but have little stored knowledge about how to proceed with the information gathering. This article reports on an investigation into exploratory search behavior and attempts to establish a connection between the layout of objects in a display and the amount of attention devoted to each of these objects. The research has implications for catalog page layout and visual merchandising. Copyright 1998 by the University of Chicago.
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control procurement audit report, January 1, 1993 - December 31, 1995

Submit your sealed package to either of the following addresses: MAILING ADDRESS: SC DHEC – Public Health Contracts Bureau of Business Management 2600 Bull Street Columbia, SC 29201 PHYSICAL ADDRESS: SC DHEC – Public Health Contracts Bureau of Business Management Columbia Mills Building – 4th Floor 301 Gervais Street Columbia, SC 29201 See additional Physical Address Information below Number of Copies to be submitted: One (1) original and three (3) bound, hard copies marked as “Copy”
Antecedents and effect of internet implementation for trade shows

Purpose – Taking the dynamic capability and institutional perspectives, this study seeks to examine how capability‐driven and institution‐driven factors influence usage of internet technology in trade show markets. The current study also examines the influence of the usage of the internet for trade show marketing on performance of trade shows.Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling was undertaken to test the research model in a sample of 414 exhibitors at the Chinese Export Commodity Fair.Findings – Overall, the results point to the powerful influence of the usage of the internet for trade show marketing on trade show performance as perceived by exhibitors. The specific results also reveal that, while a website's capability in providing quality information facilitates the usage of the company website for pre‐show promotion, an exhibitor's legitimacy motive of using its website to build up the company image contributes to the usage of the company website for at‐show selling, and the firm.
Perioperative Gabapentinoids: Choice of Agent, Dose, Timing, and Effects on Chronic Postsurgical Pain

HE gabapentinoids pregabalin and gabapentin are both indicated for the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia and as adjuvant therapy for seizure disorders. Pregabalin is additionally approved for the treatment of fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain associated with diabetes mellitus or spinal cord injury. There are now more than 100 clinical trials examining the use of gabapentin perioperatively to reduce postoperative pain and a smaller but growing number of clinical trials examining the efficacy of pregabalin. As a body of work, they support the conclusion that perioperative use of gabapentinoids reduces early postoperative pain and opioid use. 1–3 This article describes how this body of work may inform a surgeon’s or anesthesiologist’s optimization of perioperative use of gabapentinoids, including choice of agent, dose, timing, and duration of therapy. In addition, we described the less clear data for and against gabapentinoid efficacy in preventing the emergence of chronic postsurgical pain.
Logistics chain analysis of a wheat-milling company: a basis for developing efficiency models for transport activities

This paper develops a methodological approach that is meant to compute and assess the financial efficiency of transport activities within a company. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated by using 1998/99 data and information from the Upper Egypt wheat-milling company. It starts by constructing two logistics chains that simulate the process involved in the wheat-milling business in Egypt. These chains are used as the basis for identifying types of transported commodities, unique transport phases, trip origins and destinations of each of these phases as well as the transport modes and providers involved. This is followed by compiling and synthesizing for each transport phase a number of origin/destination matrices representing operational data and generic operational variables. In addition, similar size matrices are synthesized to represent transport costs and transport revenues. Manipulations of the developed matrices are undertaken to compute financial efficiency for transport activities as well as to develop disaggregate route-based cost and revenue allocation models for transported wheat and flour. These are used in identifying profitable and non-profitable transport routes. Such conclusion assists in re-pricing transport services along certain routes, or termination of operation of other routes. On Sabbatical Leave to Department of Urban and Regional Planning, College of Architecture and Planning, King Faisal University, PO Box 2397 Dammam 31451, Saudi Arabia; Fax: 966-3-8578739
Inhibitory effect of somatostatin on insulin secretion is not mediated via the CNS.

The inhibitory effect of somatostatin (SST) on insulin secretion in vivo is attributed to a direct effect on pancreatic beta cells, but this is inconsistent with some in vitro results in which exogenous SST is ineffective in inhibiting secretion from isolated islets. We therefore investigated whether insulin secretion from the pancreatic islets may partly be regulated by an indirect effect of SST mediated via the CNS. Islet hormone secretion was assessed in vitro by perifusion and static incubations of isolated islets and in vivo by i.v. or i.c. v. administration of the SST analogue BIM23014C with an i.v. glucose challenge to conscious, chronically catheterised rats. Hormone content of samples was assessed by ELISA or RIA and blood glucose levels using a glucose meter. Exogenous SST14/SST28 or BIM23014C did not inhibit the release of insulin from isolated rodent islets in vitro, whereas peripheral i.v. administration of BIM23014C (7.5 μg) with glucose (1 g/kg) led to decreased plasma insulin content (2.3±0.5 ng insulin/ml versus 4.5±0.5 ng/ml at t=5 min, P<0.001) and elevated blood glucose levels compared with those of the controls (29.19±1.3 mmol/l versus 23.5±1.7 mmol/l, P<0.05). In contrast, central i.c. v. injection of BIM23014C (0.75 μg) had no significant effect on either plasma insulin (3.3±0.4 ng/ml, P>0.05) or blood glucose levels (23.5±1.7 mmol/l, P>0.05) although i.v. administration of this dose increased blood glucose concentrations (32.3±0.7 mmol/l, P<0.01). BIM23014C did not measurably alter plasma glucagon, SST, GLP1 or catecholamine levels whether injected i.v. or i.c. v. These results indicate that SST does not suppress insulin secretion by a centrally mediated effect but acts peripherally on islet cells.
Where in the world are "permanently reinvested" foreign earnings?

This study uses permanently reinvested earnings (PRE) reported in U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) financial statements, combined with detailed information on foreign affiliate assets to estimate the location and composition of PRE. We use these estimates to gain an understanding of the motivations for PRE designations, and thus implications of reported PRE for firms’ growth and liquidity, as well as the potential effects of U.S. tax reform. Our analysis suggests that PRE designations are driven by earnings incentives and growth – 94 percent of PRE is located in affiliates that would require recognition of an expected repatriation tax expense, and 60 percent of PRE is in high growth affiliates. While our estimates suggest that most PRE are associated with unrecognized repatriation tax obligations, the existence of some PRE in high tax jurisdictions reduces the potential tax revenue associated with PRE. We also find that, for firms in overall non-binding foreign tax credit positions, a significantly greater proportion of PRE in low-tax jurisdictions is held in cash, relative to high-tax jurisdictions, suggesting liquidity implications arising from the current tax system.
Active management of labour: current knowledge and research issues

Abstract Objectives : To review the evidence that the package of labour interventions collectively called “active management” - namely, strict diagnostic criteria for labour, early amniotomy, early use of oxytocin, and continuous professional support - reduce rates of caesarean sections and operative vaginal delivery in first labours. Design : Review of observational data, supplemented by evidence from four separate overviews of relevant randomised trials previously published as part of the Cochrane Collaboration pregnancy and childbirth database. Results : Observational data do not permit a clear conclusion. There have been no randomised trials of the total package of active management or of the use of strict diagnostic criteria alone, but trials of early amniotomy, early oxytocin, and these interventions combined do not suggest that these interventions are effective in reducing rates of caesarean sections or operative vaginal deliveries. In contrast, the provision of continuous professional support in labour seems to reduce both types of operative delivery, although the effect on caesarean sections is confined to those settings where non-professional companions are not normally present in labour. Conclusions : Delivery units should endeavour to provide continuous professional support in labour, but routine use of amniotomy and early oxytocin is not recommended.
Online 3D Bin Packing with Constrained Deep Reinforcement Learning

We solve a challenging yet practically useful variant of 3D Bin Packing Problem (3D-BPP). In our problem, the agent has limited information about the items to be packed into a single bin, and an item must be packed immediately after its arrival without buffering or readjusting. The item's placement also subjects to the constraints of order dependence and physical stability. We formulate this online 3D-BPP as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). To solve the problem, we propose an effective and easy-to-implement constrained deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method under the actor-critic framework. In particular, we introduce a prediction-and-projection scheme: The agent first predicts a feasibility mask for the placement actions as an auxiliary task and then uses the mask to modulate the action probabilities output by the actor during training. Such supervision and projection facilitate the agent to learn feasible policies very efficiently. Our method can be easily extended to handle lookahead items, multi-bin packing, and item re-orienting. We have conducted extensive evaluation showing that the learned policy significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. A preliminary user study even suggests that our method might attain a human-level performance.
Face Recognition Based on Circularly Symmetrical Gabor Transforms and Collaborative Representation

Compared to the traditional Gabor transform, the circularly symmetrical Gabor transform (CSGT) not only retains the characteristics of local and multi-resolution analysis, but also has the remarkable advantages of less redundancy and rotational invariance. Simultaneously, the collaborative representation-based classification with regularized least square (CRC-RLS) overcomes the shortcoming of the high computational complexity in the sparse representation-based classification (SRC). However, both classification algorithms still use the global features of the image, ignoring the importance of local features in the face images. In this paper, the face images are first mapped onto the CSGT domain, and then the amplitude images are chosen as the sample images. Finally, CRC is used to classify different faces. The experimental results on AR, FERET and Extended Yale B face databases show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher recognition rates and better robustness.
A multiresolution DCT-based blind blur quality measure

The paper deals with assessing blur amount in images. Blur is a common artefact that attenuates the high frequency components of an image. The main idea turns on analysing the frequency response at transitions through resolutions. To achieve that, the histogram of the multiresolution DCT coefficients is modelled by using an exponential probability density function (pdf). The steepness of the pdf is used as a cue to characterize the blur effect. Faithful scores are obtained while testing the proposed approach on five image collections. The proposed measure is validated on the JPEG2000 lossy compression algorithm and the Lucy-Richardson iterative deblurring approach.
Surface energy-tunable iso decyl acrylate based molds for low pressure-nanoimprint lithography

We presented surface energy-tunable nanoscale molds for unconventional lithography. The mold is highly robust, transparent, has a minimized haze, does not contain additives, and is a non-fluorinated isodecyl acrylate and trimethylolpropane triacrylate based polymer. By changing the mixing ratio of the polymer components, the cross-linking density, mechanical modulus, and surface energy (crucial factors in low pressure ((1–2) × 105 N m−2) low pressure-nanoimprint lithography (LP-NIL)), can be controlled. To verify these properties of the molds, we also characterized the surface energy by measuring the contact angles and calculating the work of adhesion among the wafer, polymer film, and mold for successful demolding in nanoscale structures. Moreover, the molds showed high optical clarity and precisely tunable mechanical and surface properties, capable of replicating sub-100 nm patterns by thermal LP-NIL and UV-NIL.
Targeted transgene expression in rat brain using lentiviral vectors

Direct gene transfer to the adult brain is dependent on vectors that transduce non‐dividing cells, such as lentiviral vectors. Another aspect of the development of gene therapy to the brain is the need for cell‐specific transgene expression. Expression from vesicular stomatitis virus G‐protein (VSV‐G) pseudotyped lentiviral vectors has been reported to be mainly neuron specific in the brain. We constructed cell‐specific lentiviral vectors using the neuron‐specific enolase (rNSE) or the glial fibrillary acidic protein (hGFAP) promoters and compared them to the ubiquitous human cytomegalovirus promoter (hCMV), a hybrid CMV/β‐actin promoter (CAG) and the promoter for human elongation factor 1α (EF1α). Our results showed that the hGFAP promoter was expressed only in glial cells, whereas rNSE was purely neuron specific, showing that VSV‐G is pantropic in the rat striatum. We conclude that the VSV‐G allows transduction of both glial and neuronal cells and the promoter dictates in what cell type the transgene will be expressed. The expression of transgenes exclusively in astrocytes would allow for local delivery of secreted transgene products, such as glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), circumventing the anterograde transport that may induce unwanted side effects. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Responses in divergence of opinion to earnings announcements: evidence from American depository receipts

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between investors' divergence of opinions and the asset prices of foreign stocks and also examine the effect of home market country-level factors on the influence of divergency of opinions on stock price.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ panel data estimation with fixed effects to examine the host market response in divergent opinions to the earnings announcements. The paper uses the American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of 42 countries from 1985 to 2011.FindingsThe authors find a negative relationship between differences of opinions and excess quarterly earnings announcement returns, and investors do process information asymmetrically based on good and bad earnings shocks. In addition, the authors find the negative relationship between divergent opinions and excess earnings announcement returns in ADRs is more pronounced in countries with short-sales restrictions, while other home-market country-level factors – the enforcement of insider trading law, legal origin, investor protection and rating on accounting standard – do not influence the relationship between investors' divergency of opinion and stock returns.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first to bring asymmetric effects on convergence in Miller framework and enhance the understanding of price convergence documented in Miller (1977). In addition, this study incorporates home-market country-level factors in explaining the relationship between investors' divergency of opinions and stock returns.
A QMRA for the Transmission of ESBL‐Producing Escherichia coli and Campylobacter from Poultry Farms to Humans Through Flies

The public health significance of transmission of ESBL‐producing Escherichia coli and Campylobacter from poultry farms to humans through flies was investigated using a worst‐case risk model. Human exposure was modeled by the fraction of contaminated flies, the number of specific bacteria per fly, the number of flies leaving the poultry farm, and the number of positive poultry houses in the Netherlands. Simplified risk calculations for transmission through consumption of chicken fillet were used for comparison, in terms of the number of human exposures, the total human exposure, and, for Campylobacter only, the number of human cases of illness. Comparing estimates of the worst‐case risk of transmission through flies with estimates of the real risk of chicken fillet consumption, the number of human exposures to ESBL‐producing E. coli was higher for chicken fillet as compared with flies, but the total level of exposure was higher for flies. For Campylobacter, risk values were nearly consistently higher for transmission through flies than for chicken fillet consumption. This indicates that the public health risk of transmission of both ESBL‐producing E. coli and Campylobacter to humans through flies might be of importance. It justifies further modeling of transmission through flies for which additional data (fly emigration, human exposure) are required. Similar analyses of other environmental transmission routes from poultry farms are suggested to precede further investigations into flies.
State- and trait-greed, its impact on risky decision-making and underlying neural mechanisms

We investigated whether greed would predict risky decision-making and recorded neural responses during a monetary gambling task using the electroencephalogram. We found that individuals high in trait-greed took higher risks to maximize monetary outcome. Furthermore, this relation was moderated by state-greed; specifically, trait-greed had a stronger impact on risky decision-making when activated by situational characteristics. On the neural level, greedy individuals showed a specific response to favorable and unfavorable outcomes. Specifically, they had a reduced feedback-related negativity-difference score to these events, indicating that they might have difficulty in learning from experience, especially from mistakes and negative feedback. It is concluded that greed may explain risky and reckless behavior in diverse settings, such as investment banking, and may account for phenomena such as stock market bubbles.
Study of Surfactant Additives for the Manufacture of Warm Mix Asphalt: From Laboratory Design to Asphalt Plant Manufacture

Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA), manufactured at a lower temperature than the traditional Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), allows for important economic and environmental benefits when considered for application in roads. Nonetheless, despite the benefits, its application in pavement for roads is not as widespread as desired from an environmental point of view; more in-depth studies to investigate its development and wider applicability are required. Thus, the present paper aims to contribute to the implementation of this cleaner technology to produce WMA (based on chemical additives) for its application in pavement for roads, including from the stage of the design of the material in the laboratory (by selecting the most appropriate manufacturing temperature and additive type and dosage) to its production in a conventional industrial plant for its use in a trial section. Results demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the manufacturing temperature of asphalt mixtures by using chemical additives, recording similar mechanical behaviour (or even superior) to conventional hot mixtures when specific studies are developed for the optimal design of the WMA. It was also shown that these mixtures could be produced in a conventional asphalt plant without implementing important changes in equipment, which implies a cost-effective solution that can readily be incorporated into traditional plant procedures.
Performance analysis of minimum variance CDMA receivers

Constrained optimization of the receiver's output variance has been proposed as a relatively simple method for designing blind multiuser detectors for DS-CDMA systems. A single constraint is sufficient to avoid signal cancellation in the AWGN case, while multiple constraints should be used in a multipath environment. A max/min approach for optimizing the constraint is proposed, resulting in blind solutions with improved performance. It is shown that the performance of the proposed method approaches that of the MMSE receiver at high SNR, while the constraint parameters converge to the multipath channel parameters. The proposed method does not require knowledge of the interfering users' codes and timing. Simulation results support those performance claims.
Complications of Fusion to the Upper Cervical Spine

Forty-seven operations for posterior fusion of the upper cervical spine were reviewed for complications. Alarmingly, only 11 patients had an entirely uncomplicated course. Most complications were minor, but there were four nonunions, one requiring reoperation. Although seven patients had increased neurologic deficits after surgery, only one was permanent. There was one death due to technical error. Patients with significant instability, myelopathy, prior failed fusions, or unreducible dislocations are at high risk for perioperative neurologic complications.