Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Variations Among Strategic Group Members: An Examination of Individual Firm Capability

Because of inconsistent empirical evidence, the membership-performance model pervasive in strategic group analysis is re-examined. We propose that individualfirm capabilities, which reflect capacity to implement or change strategy, moderate the effect of members' shared strategy characteristics on performance. Controlling for market structure, we defined two strategic groups based on common strategy characteristics among 55 manufacturing firms. We found significant differences in performance and capabilities within each group. There was also evidence of a significant correlation between capabilities and performance within each group. We conclude that effects offirms' capabilities should be accountedfor to increase the explanatory power of strategic groups in competitive performance.
GPU-based high-performance computing for radiation therapy

Recent developments in radiotherapy therapy demand high computation powers to solve challenging problems in a timely fashion in a clinical environment. The graphics processing unit (GPU), as an emerging high-performance computing platform, has been introduced to radiotherapy. It is particularly attractive due to its high computational power, small size, and low cost for facility deployment and maintenance. Over the past few years, GPU-based high-performance computing in radiotherapy has experienced rapid developments. A tremendous amount of study has been conducted, in which large acceleration factors compared with the conventional CPU platform have been observed. In this paper, we will first give a brief introduction to the GPU hardware structure and programming model. We will then review the current applications of GPU in major imaging-related and therapy-related problems encountered in radiotherapy. A comparison of GPU with other platforms will also be presented.
Visual servoing applied to real-time stabilization of a multi-rotor UAV

SUMMARY In this paper we address the problem of stabilization and local positioning of a four-rotor rotorcraft using computer vision. Our approaches to estimate the orientation and position of the rotorcraft combine the measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a vision system composed of a single camera. In the first stage, the vision system is used to estimate the position and yaw angle of the rotorcraft, while in the second stage the vision system is used to estimate the translational velocity of the flying robot. In both cases the IMU gives the pitch and roll angles at a higher rate. The technique used to estimate the position of the rotorcraft in the first stage combines the homogeneous transformation approach for the camera calibration process with the plane-based pose method for estimating the position. In the second stage, a navigation system using the optical flow is also developed to estimate the translational velocity of the aircraft. We present real-time experiments of stabilization and location of a four-rotor rotorcraft.
The structural genes of the nitric oxide reductase complex from Pseudomonas stutzeri are part of a 30-kilobase gene cluster for denitrification

A gene cluster of 30 kilobases required for denitrification in Pseudomonas stutzeri ZoBell was identified and mapped. It harbors genes necessary for the respiratory reduction of nitrite (nir genes), nitric oxide (nor genes), and nitrous oxide (nos genes). Fifteen genes, 13 of which are transcribed in the same direction, have been located on a 56-kb BamHI fragment. They are arranged in three subclusters in the order nos-nir-nor.
A hybrid statistical/linguistic model for generating news story gists

In this paper, we describe a News Story Gisting system that generates a 10-word short summary of a news story. This system uses a machine learning technique to combine linguistic, statistical and positional information in order to generate an appropriate summary. We also present the results of an automatic evaluation of this system with respect to the performance of other baseline summarisers using the new ROUGE evaluation metric.
Differential item functioning on the Schedule of Racist Events: exploring a modified scale for samples with black and white participants.

OBJECTIVE Although both Black and White individuals report racial discrimination, self-report measures of exposure to racial discrimination that can be used across races/ethnicities are rare. The primary aim of our study was to determine if the Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), which was designed for use in Black samples, should also be used in White samples, and if so, what modifications to the scale are necessary. METHODS In a sample of 302 adults, approximately equally divided by race, we investigated whether item endorsement differed between Black and White respondents. RESULTS Results of confirmatory factor analysis and differential item functioning (DIF) analysis suggest that changing the item stem (from 'because you are Black' to 'because of your race/ethnicity') and removing four items that show differential item functioning and/or do not load on the first factor, results in a psychometrically sound scale with no evidence of measurement bias. CONCLUSION Researchers interested in measuring racial discrimination in samples that include both Black and White respondents may consider using this version of the SRE. Future studies should investigate other forms of validity in Black and White samples.
Undergraduate Psychology Courses Preferred by Graduate Programs

Information about the undergraduate psychology courses preferred by graduate programs is useful for a number of purposes, including (a) advising psychology majors who are interested in graduate school, (b) undergraduate curriculum planning, and (c) examining whether graduate programs’ preferences reflect national guidelines for the undergraduate psychology curriculum. The authors examined the undergraduate course preferences of U.S. psychology graduate programs (N = 548). Among Clinical/Counseling (C/C) programs, PsyD programs’ course preferences were more likely than those of master’s and PhD programs to reflect national undergraduate curriculum guidelines. Differences also emerged among various types of training (e.g., C/C vs. Educational/School), and these are important for advisors and students to understand.
Glomerular territories in the olfactory bulb from the larval stage of the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus

The goal of this study was to investigate the spatial organization of olfactory glomeruli and of substances relevant to olfactory sensory neuron activity in the developing agnathan, the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus. A 45‐kD protein immunoreactive to Golf, a cAMP‐dependent olfactory G protein, was present in the ciliary fraction of sea lamprey olfactory epithelium and in olfactory sensory neurons of larval and adult sea lampreys. This result implies that Golf expression was present during early vertebrate evolution or evolved in parallel in gnathostome and agnathostome vertebrates. Serial sectioning of the olfactory bulb revealed a consistent pattern of olfactory glomeruli stained by GS1B4 lectin and by anterograde labeling with fluorescent dextran. These glomerular territories included the dorsal cluster, dorsal ring, anterior plexus, lateral chain, medial glomeruli, ventral ring, and ventral cluster. The dorsal, anterior, lateral, and ventral glomeruli contained olfactory sensory axon terminals that were Golf‐immunoreactive. However, a specific subset, the medial glomeruli, did not display this immunoreactivity. Olfactory glomeruli in the dorsal hemisphere of the olfactory bulb, the dorsal cluster, dorsal ring, anterior plexus, lateral chain, and medial glomeruli, were seen adjacent to 5HT‐immunoreactive fibers. However, glomeruli in the ventral hemisphere, the ventral ring, and ventral cluster did not display this association. The presence of specific glomerular territories and discrete glomerular subsets with substances relevant to olfactory sensory neuron activity suggest a spatial organization of information flow in the lamprey olfactory pathway. J. Comp. Neurol. 465:27–37, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Women's Comedy Preferences During the Menstrual Cycle

Females in different phases of their menstrual cycle were given the opportunity to select comedy, drama, and game-show programs for an evening's worth of watching television. Additionally, they rated their enjoyment of a battery of cartoons and watched excerpts from several television programs. It was found that premenstrual and menstrual women preferred comedy over alternative choices more strongly than did women midway through the cycle. It is suggested that this preference reflects a desire to overcome the hormonally mediated noxious mood states that are characteristically associated with the premenstrual and menstrual phases of the cycle. Appreciation of humor and comedy was not found to vary with cycle phases, however.
Physical and functional interactions between SH2 and SH3 domains of the Src family protein tyrosine kinase p59fyn

The Src family protein tyrosine kinases participate in signalling through cell surface receptors that lack intrinsic tyrosine kinase domains. All nine members of this family possess adjacent Src homology (SH2 and SH3) domains, both of which are essential for repression of the enzymatic activity. The repression is mediated by binding between the SH2 domain and a C-terminal phosphotyrosine, and the SH3 domain is required for this interaction. However, the biochemical basis of functional SH2-SH3 interaction is unclear. Here, we demonstrate that when the SH2 and SH3 domains of p59fyn (Fyn) were present as adjacent domains in a single protein, binding of phosphotyrosyl peptides and proteins to the SH2 domain was enhanced, whereas binding of a subset of cellular polypeptide ligands to the SH3 domain was decreased. An interdomain communication was further revealed by occupancy with domain-specific peptide ligands: occupancy of the SH3 domain with a proline-rich peptide enhanced phosphotyrosine binding to the linked SH2 domain, and occupancy of the SH2 domain with phosphotyrosyl peptides enhanced binding of certain SH3-specific cellular polypeptides. Second, we demonstrate a direct binding between purified SH2 and SH3 domains of Fyn and Lck Src family kinases. Heterologous binding between SH2 and SH3 domains of closely related members of the Src family, namely, Fyn, Lck, and Src, was also observed. In contrast, Grb2, Crk, Abl, p85 phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, and GTPase-activating protein SH2 domains showed lower or no binding to Fyn or Lck SH3 domains. SH2-SH3 binding did not require an intact phosphotyrosine binding pocket on the SH2 domain; however, perturbations of the SH2 domain induced by specific high-affinity phosphotyrosyl peptide binding abrogated binding of the SH3 domain. SH3-SH2 binding was observed in the presence of proline-rich peptides or when a point mutation (W119K) was introduced in the putative ligand-binding pouch of the Fyn SH3 domain, although these treatments completely abolished the binding to p85 phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase and other SH3-specific polypeptides. These biochemical SH2-SH3 interactions suggest novel mechanisms of regulating the enzymatic activity of Src kinases and their interactions with other proteins.
Posterior Features Applied to Speech Recognition Tasks with Limited Training Data

This paper describes an approach where posterior-based features are applied in those recognition tasks where the amount of training data is insufficient to obtain a reliable estimate of the speech variability. A template matching approach is considered in this paper where posterior features are obtained from a MLP trained on an auxiliary database. Thus, the speech variability present in the features is reduced by applying the speech knowledge captured on the auxiliary database. When compared to state-of-the-art systems, this approach outperforms acoustic-based techniques and obtains comparable results to grapheme-based approaches. Moreover, the proposed method can be directly combined with other posterior-based HMM systems. This combination successfully exploits the complementarity between templates and parametric models.
Pharmacological Inhibition of ULK1 Kinase Blocks Mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR)-dependent Autophagy*

Background: Autophagy is an intracellular lysosomal degradation pathway implicated in many diseases, but there are currently no specific autophagy inhibitors. Results: Small molecule inhibition of ULK1, the upstream autophagy initiating kinase, blocks autophagosome initiation and maturation. Conclusion: ULK1 plays a role in autophagosome maturation as well as initiation. Significance: ULK1 can be targeted to block autophagy for disease therapy. Autophagy is a cell-protective and degradative process that recycles damaged and long-lived cellular components. Cancer cells are thought to take advantage of autophagy to help them to cope with the stress of tumorigenesis; thus targeting autophagy is an attractive therapeutic approach. However, there are currently no specific inhibitors of autophagy. ULK1, a serine/threonine protein kinase, is essential for the initial stages of autophagy, and here we report that two compounds, MRT67307 and MRT68921, potently inhibit ULK1 and ULK2 in vitro and block autophagy in cells. Using a drug-resistant ULK1 mutant, we show that the autophagy-inhibiting capacity of the compounds is specifically through ULK1. ULK1 inhibition results in accumulation of stalled early autophagosomal structures, indicating a role for ULK1 in the maturation of autophagosomes as well as initiation.
SNAPping up functionally related genes based on context information: a colinearity-free approach.

We describe a computational approach for finding genes that are functionally related but do not possess any noticeable sequence similarity. Our method, which we call SNAP (similarity-neighborhood approach), reveals the conservation of gene order on bacterial chromosomes based on both cross-genome comparison and context information. The novel feature of this method is that it does not rely on detection of conserved colinear gene strings. Instead, we introduce the notion of a similarity-neighborhood graph (SN-graph), which is constructed from the chains of similarity and neighborhood relationships between orthologous genes in different genomes and adjacent genes in the same genome, respectively. An SN-cycle is defined as a closed path on the SN-graph and is postulated to preferentially join functionally related gene products that participate in the same biochemical or regulatory process. We demonstrate the substantial non-randomness and functional significance of SN-cycles derived from real genome data and estimate the prediction accuracy of SNAP in assigning broad function to uncharacterized proteins. Examples of practical application of SNAP for improving the quality of genome annotation are described.
A winding road – professional trajectories from higher education to working life: a case study of political science and psychology graduates

This qualitative and longitudinal study focuses on graduate employment and the development of graduate employment paths. The aim of this article is to explore the present professional trajectory from higher education to working life, with particular reference to graduates from two different study programmes at Linköping University in Sweden: Political Science and Psychology. More specifically, the article focuses on how graduates construe their professional trajectories in terms of their envisaged future work as senior students, and later as novice and early-career professionals with 18 and 34 months of work life experience. The results indicate that graduates’ professional identities and vision of their future work change over time. The set of categories, depicting the graduates’ vision and experiences of their professional trajectories, do not seem to follow a specific temporal and logical progression in their career. Rather, they appear in different order and at different points in time after graduation. The results, instead, endorse the discourse of lifelong learning and the need for flexibility and employability on the labour market.
DEMAND AND REVENUE IMPACTS OF THE OPAQUE CHANNEL : EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Opaque selling is a mechanism whereby a seller conceals product or price information from buyers prior to purchase. Over time opaque intermediaries, such as Hotwire and Priceline.com, have emerged as an established distribution channel for the travel industry. The opaque channel has two countervailing effects: it can increase sales by attracting price-sensitive travelers who may otherwise not purchase, but it may also cannibalize sales from the transparent online channel (e.g., Orbitz, Expedia) or the offline channel (e.g., traditional travel agencies). While the extant analytical literature has examined these two effects, there is a paucity of empirical research that investigates the net impact of these effects and the overall viability of the opaque channel. We use a market response model and a massive dataset of economy class reservations from a major U.S. airline to empirically examine the demand generation and cannibalization effects of the opaque channel. We find that: 1) The opaque channel cannibalizes the online transparent channel but not the offline channel. This cannibalization occurs mainly in the discounted segment, but not in the full-fare and superdiscounted segments. We find significant cannibalization in low-, but not high-competition markets. 2) The opaque channel is viable in high-competition markets, where it increases total sales volume and does not cannibalize the transparent channel. Furthermore, we develop an empirical model to estimate the impact of prices across different channels on revenue, and we apply it to the opaque channel. The results suggest that the airline can substantially increase its revenues by reducing opaque fares in high-competition markets and by raising them in low-competition markets and during the low season.
Father's involvement in the lives of children in foster care

ABSTRACT Limited understandings exist about non‐resident fathers' views of their involvement with their children in foster care placements. Guided by the ecological systems framework, the purpose of this exploratory study was to gain insights into fathers' perceptions of their involvement with a child in foster care. Data were collected from demographic questionnaires and two focus groups with 17 men. Fathers expressed how kinship compared with non‐kinship placements affected their involvement. Fathers were also in agreement that their financial hardships were a significant factor affecting their involvement. Several fathers also reported how they experienced discrimination in the child welfare system as men. Surprisingly, uncommon to findings from other studies, few men viewed the child's mother as being a barrier to their involvement. The findings provide insights into factors requiring attention to help non‐residential fathers become involved with their children.
Abstraction, discretization, and robustness in temporal logic control of dynamical systems

Abstraction-based, hierarchical approaches to control synthesis from temporal logic specifications for dynamical systems have gained increased popularity over the last decade. Yet various issues commonly encountered and extensively dealt with in control systems have not been adequately discussed in the context of temporal logic control of dynamical systems, such as inter-sample behaviors of a sampled-data system, effects of imperfect state measurements and un-modeled dynamics, and the use of time-discretized models to design controllers for continuous-time dynamical systems. We discuss these issues in this paper. The main motivation is to demonstrate the possibility of accounting for the mismatches between a continuous-time control system and its various types of abstract models used for control synthesis. We do this by incorporating additional robustness measures in the abstract models. Such robustness measures are gained at the price of either increased non-determinism in the abstracted models or relaxed versions of the specification being realized. Under a unified notion of abstraction, we provide concrete means of incorporating these robustness measures and establish results that demonstrate their effectiveness in dealing with the above mentioned issues.
Power-aware Remote Replication for Enterprise-level Disaster Recovery Systems

Electric energy consumed in data centers is rapidly growing. Power-aware IT, recently called 'green IT', is widely recognized as a significant challenge. Disk storage is a non-negligible energy consumer. Rather, in light of recent data-intensive systems where a number of disk drives are incorporated, the disk storage may be what we must consider primarily. Yet, all of the disk drives are not used for primary datasets, but rather larger portion of them are utilized for storing a variety of copies such as backups and snapshots. Saving the energy of such storage resources that manage copies is a promising approach. The paper presents a power-aware disaster recovery system, in which the reflection of transferred updated information can be deferred through eager compaction technique. Great energy saving of storage systems is expected in the remote secondary site. Our experiments using a commercial database system show that 80-85% energy of the secondary-site disk storage can be saved with small penalties of possible service breakdown time.
Curvature variation of projected cross-sections from straight uniform generalized cylinders

In this paper, we present a new approach for reconstructing Straight Uniform Generalized Cylinder (SUGC) with a scene mapped on its surface. In monocular vision, by using a priori knowledge about the support surface of pictures and projected cross-sections we reconstruct the surface in order to backproject the image on the surface. To reconstruct the surface we have to analyze the curvature of several projected cross-sections. An overview on this domain is found in the papers [Eggert 93, Huang 95, Chen 96]. The curvature variation analyses of surfaces [Kàsa 96] and projected curves [Faugeras 95, Bruce 96] show the complexity of this problem.
Algorithms for current monitor based diagnosis of bridging and leakage faults

Current monitor based diagnosis algorithms for bridging and leakage faults for combinational and sequential circuits are described. Experimental evaluation results of these algorithms are represented. The algorithms do not use fault dictionaries. A set of ordered-pairs of sets (SOPS) is used to represent all two line bridging faults. If m is the size of the circuit then SOPS uses O(m) space to represent these faults. The resulting algorithm takes time O(mN), where N is the size of the test set. <<ETX>>
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN AUTOIMMUNITY HLA-B27 and HLA-B51 Determination in Tunisian Healthy Subjects and Patients with Suspected Ankylosing Spondylitis and Behçet’s Disease

The aim of this retrospective study is to assess the frequency of HLA-B27 and HLAB51 in healthy subjects from the center of Tunisia and to investigate their usefulness in the diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and Behçet’s disease (BD), respectively. Microlymphocytotoxicity test was used to perform serologic HLA typing in a group of 124 healthy volunteers and a group of 365 patients suffering from clinical manifestations of AS and/or BD. HLA-B27 was found in 3.2% of healthy subjects and in 42.9% of patients with AS (P < 0.00006). HLA-B51 is, however, found in 16.1% of healthy subjects and in 30.0% of patients with BD (P > 0.05). Unlike HLA-B51, which seems to be as frequent in Tunisian patients with BD as in healthy subjects, HLA-B27 is more frequent in patients with AS than in controls. This highlights the usefulness of HLA-B27, rather than that of HLA-B51, in the diagnosis of the respective diseases.