Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study between staff and student perceptions on service quality

Each year within South Africa the university environment becomes increasingly more competitive, as every university in the country aggressively competes for the same pool of students. To succeed a South African university has to meet this challenge and become more customer orientated. Thus, service quality can be a determining factor when students choose a university. It is important therefore that university management identify the service quality variables within a university and understand how it affects the students and staff within the university. In this paper the study undertaken aims to look at staff and student perceptions on service quality. In this study the researcher developed the questionnaire by adapting the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985) to the quality dimensions peculiar to tertiary education environment. The findings of the study recorded that staff and students were dissatisfied with the service offerings made to them at the university's five campuses. Further, the relevant quality gaps for tangibles, responsiveness, reliability empathy and assurance were identified for staff and students and reported on. Recommendations that could help close the quality gaps found between the staff and students have also been identified.
Alanine metabolism and gluconeogenesis in the rat.

The metabolism of alanine and several other gluconegoneic substrates was studied in anesthtized fed and fasted rats, i.e., rats with low and high rates of gluconeogenesis. Glutamine was released by the hindquarter (muscle) in both groups, whereas lactate, pyruvate, and alanine were taken up in fed rats and were released during starvation. Despite this, blood levels of alanine, lactate, and pyruvate were diminished in fasting rats, suggesting increased extraction by liver. Treatment of fasted rats for 24 h with phloridzin caused glycosuria and secondarily led to hypoglycemia and an intensification of the chargesobserved with fasting, i.e., hyperketonemia, hyperglucagonemia, and increased gluconeogenesis (assessed by urea N excretion). Blood alanine was decreased, even though the release of alanine from muscle was increased. Pretreatment with triamcinolone and administration of exogenous alanine both attenuated the hypoglycemia and ketosis, It is concluded that 1) in states of heightened gluconeogenesis, alanine release from muscle may not keep pace with extraction by liver and blood alanine decreases; 2) the release of alanine, lactate, and pyruvate from muscle parallel each other suggesting common control factors; and 3) in the red state muscle is an important site of lactate disposition.
In the Beginning There Were the Weird: A Phonotactic Novelty Preference in Adult Word Learning

It has been argued that words that contain difficultto-pronounce sound sequences may be avoided in production, causing words with difficult phonotactics to drop out of the language at a disproportionate rate. We argue that there is also an opposing pressure favoring phonetically unusual words. We show that, at least for adults, word learning is more successful for words with unfamiliar phonetic properties to the listener. After a ten minute ambiguous training session where two novel objects were presented with an audio recording of nonce words, subjects were tested on their memory of the creatures’ “names”. The results show a preference for words that contain illegal word-initial consonant clusters over words that obey the subjects’ native language phonotactics.
Subgroup identification based on differential effect search—A recursive partitioning method for establishing response to treatment in patient subpopulations

We propose a novel recursive partitioning method for identifying subgroups of subjects with enhanced treatment effects based on a differential effect search algorithm. The idea is to build a collection of subgroups by recursively partitioning a database into two subgroups at each parent group, such that the treatment effect within one of the two subgroups is maximized compared with the other subgroup. The process of data splitting continues until a predefined stopping condition has been satisfied. The method is similar to ‘interaction tree’ approaches that allow incorporation of a treatment‐by‐split interaction in the splitting criterion. However, unlike other tree‐based methods, this method searches only within specific regions of the covariate space and generates multiple subgroups of potential interest. We develop this method and provide guidance on key topics of interest that include generating multiple promising subgroups using different splitting criteria, choosing optimal values of complexity parameters via cross‐validation, and addressing Type I error rate inflation inherent in data mining applications using a resampling‐based method. We evaluate the operating characteristics of the procedure using a simulation study and illustrate the method with a clinical trial example. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Knowledge Processes and Learning Options in Networks: Evidence from Telecommunications

This paper articulates a network approach to knowledge processes and information systems in organizations. It proposes that cross-business-unit knowledge processes and the learning role of information systems are embedded within a network of relationships that link business units. Exploratory evidence from a large telecommunications firm shows that relationships have strategic learning option value. Learning processes are often informal and emergent thus information systems should provide a flexible infrastructure enabling the evolution of learning processes. The paper identifies important feedback loops that can be leveraged by knowledge managers, who should be seen as cultivators of knowledge processes, rather than omnipotent planners and designers.This is an exploratory empirical study exploring the dynamic interplay of network structure, knowledge processes and Information Technology in a global telecommunications firm. It provides evidence that the network of relationships ('social network') affects both knowledge processes and the value of IT in the firm in a complex dynamic interaction characterized by path-dependency and process co-evolution. The social network has strategic learning option value moderated by trust, as investment in a network link provides the right to future learning benefits. Many knowledge processes are informal and emergent, thus firms need IT that provides a flexible informal learning infrastructure. Examples include wikis and open source collaboration platforms.
Effective Islet Isolation Method with Extremely High Islet Yields from Adult Pigs

Achieving good islet isolation is one of the most important factors for successful islet transplantation. Porcine pancreas is suitable for islet isolation research due to its anatomical and physiological similarities to human pancreas. In this study, we evaluated a new porcine islet isolation method designed to maximize islet yield and compared it with our previous open pan method and the standard method using a Ricordi chamber (Ricordi method). We performed 15 porcine islet isolations, five each with the new method, the open pan method, and the Ricordi method. The new method features several important improvements. Pancreata remain uncut and are kept intact during collagenase intraductal injection, a large filtration chamber to handle whole pancreata, low concentration of collagenase (Liberase™ HI) for digestion, and large plastic containers for large-scale islet purification. All isolated islets were assessed for yield, purity, viability and in vitro function. Islets isolated with this new method were transplanted under the kidney capsules of SCID mice with chemically induced diabetes for in vivo functional assessment (n = 8). With the new method, we obtained on average more than 1,000,000 islet equivalents (IE) (1,236,266 ± 213,486 IE) (mean ± SE) before purification and 800,000 IE (879,815 ± 222,729 IE) after purification from one adult pig. Islet yield per pancreas was significantly higher compared with our previous open pan method (30,666 ± 11,532 IE, p < 0.01) and the Ricordi method (317,073 ± 86,093 IE, p < 0.05). All mice, transplanted with 1000 islets from the new method, returned to normoglycemia within 4 days after transplantation. Our new method makes it possible to obtain extremely high porcine islet yield with good function. It should produce useful information for human islet isolation and transplantation, and might be applied to single donor clinical xenogeneic transplantation.
Spent culture medium analysis from individually cultured bovine embryos demonstrates metabolomic differences

Summary Spent culture medium can provide valuable information regarding the physiological state of a bovine preimplantation embryos through non-invasive analysis of the sum/depleted metabolite constituents. Metabolomics has become of great interest as an adjunct technique to morphological and cleavage-rate assessment, but more importantly, in improving our understanding of metabolism. In this study, in vitro produced bovine embryos developing at different rates were evaluated using proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR). Spent culture medium from individually cultured embryos (2-cell to blastocyst stage) were divided into two groups based on their cleavage rate fast growing (FG) and slow growing (SG; developmentally delayed by 12–24 h), then analyzed by a 600 MHz NMR spectrometer. Sixteen metabolites were detected and investigated for sum/depletion throughout development. Data indicate distinct differences between the 4-cell SG and FG embryos for pyruvate (P < 0.05, n = 9) and at the 16-cell stage for acetate, tryptophan, leucine/isoleucine, valine and histidine. Overall sum/depletion levels of metabolites demonstrated that embryos produced glutamate, but consumed histidine, tyrosine, glycine, methionine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, lysine, arginine, acetate, threonine, alanine, pyruvate, valine, isoleucine/leucine, and lactate with an overall trend of higher consumption of these metabolites by FG groups. Principal component analysis revealed distinct clustering of the plain medium, SG, and FG group, signifying the uniqueness of the metabolomic signatures of each of these groups. This study is the first of its kind to characterize the metabolomic profiles of SG and FG bovine embryos produced in vitro using 1H NMR. Elucidating differences between embryos of varying developmental rates could contribute to a better understanding of embryonic health and physiology.
Managerial Ownership Changes and Mutual Fund Performance

We study the dynamics of fund manager ownership for a sample of U.S. equity mutual funds from 2005 to 2011. We find that ownership changes positively predict changes in future risk-adjusted fund performance. A one-standard-deviation increase in ownership predicts a 1.6 percent increase in alpha in the following year. Fund managers who are required to increase their ownership by fund family policy show the strongest increase in alpha. They do so by increasing their trading activity in line with the view that higher ownership aligns interests of managers with those of shareholders and induces higher effort.
Comparing Online and In-Person Delivery Formats of the OSHA 10-Hour General Industry Health and Safety Training for Young Workers

Seven school districts or comprehensive high schools were enrolled in online OSHA 10-hour General Industry or Construction health and safety training via CareerSafe to determine the feasibility of online training for students, given limited resources for in-person trainings. A two-campus school district was analyzed comparing OSHA 10 for General Industry across in-person, supervisor-level teachers as authorized trainers, and online course formats. The online training courses were completed by 86 of 91 students, while another 53 of 57 students completed in-person training. Both groups completed identical OSHA-approved quizzes for “Introduction to OSHA,” the initial 2-h module consistently provided in OSHA 10 courses across topics and formats. Results indicated teacher supervision was critical, and girls had higher online course completion rates, overall quiz scores, and never failed. Though both cohorts passed, in-person had significantly higher scores than online; both struggled with two questions. Online OSHA 10 for General Industry can be an efficient learning tool for students when limited resources prevent widespread availability of in-person courses.
Coarse grained model for semiquantitative lipid simulations

This paper describes the parametrization of a new coarse grained (CG) model for lipid and surfactant systems. Reduction of the number of degrees of freedom together with the use of short range potentials makes it computationally very efficient. Compared to atomistic models a gain of 3-4 orders of magnitude can be achieved. Micrometer length scales or millisecond time scales are therefore within reach. To encourage applications, the model is kept very simple. Only a small number of coarse grained atom types are defined, which interact using a few discrete levels of interaction. Despite the computational speed and the simplistic nature of the model, it proves to be both versatile in its applications and accurate in its predictions. We show that densities of liquid alkanes from decane up to eicosane can be reproduced to within 5%, and the mutual solubilities of alkanes in water and water in alkanes can be reproduced within 0.5 kT of the experimental values. The CG model for dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) is shown to aggregate spontaneously into a bilayer. Structural properties such as the area per headgroup and the phosphate-phosphate distance match the experimentally measured quantities closely. The same is true for elastic properties such as the bending modulus and the area compressibility, and dynamic properties such as the lipid lateral diffusion coefficient and the water permeation rate. The distribution of the individual lipid components along the bilayer normal is very similar to distributions obtained from atomistic simulations. Phospholipids with different headgroup (ethanolamine) or different tail lengths (lauroyl, stearoyl) or unsaturated tails (oleoyl) can also be modeled with the CG force field. The experimental area per headgroup can be reproduced for most lipids within 0.02 nm(2). Finally, the CG model is applied to nonbilayer phases. Dodecylphosphocholine (DPC) aggregates into small micelles that are structurally very similar to ones modeled atomistically, and DOPE forms an inverted hexagonal phase with structural parameters in agreement with experimental data.
Operations research in consumer finance: challenges for operational research

Consumer finance has become one of the most important areas of banking both because of the amount of money being lent and the impact of such credit on the global economy and the realisation that the credit crunch of 2008 was partly due to incorrect modelling of the risks in such lending. This paper reviews the development of credit scoring,-the way of assessing risk in consumer finance- and what is meant by a credit score. It then outlines ten challenges for Operational Research to support modelling in consumer finance. Some of these are to developing more robust risk assessment systems while others are to expand the use of such modelling to deal with the current objectives of lenders and the new decisions they have to make in consumer finance
NADH oxidoreductase is a major source of superoxide anion in bovine coronary artery endothelium.

In this study we examined the intracellular sources of superoxide anion (O2-.) in cultured bovine coronary endothelium, employing lucigenin (250 microM)-elicited chemiluminescence (CL). In the homogenate from these cells, 100 microM NADPH increased O2-. by 81% from 8.9 +/- 1.5 to 16.0 +/- 1.5 x 10(5) cpm/mg protein (P < 0.01, n = 8). In the presence of 100 microM NADH, however, CL increased by 458% from 8.9 +/- 1.6 to 49.6 +/- 12.0 x 10(5) cpm/mg protein (P < 0.01, n = 8). Scavengers of O2-. , superoxide dismutase (100 micrograms/ml), or 4,5-dihydroxy-1,3-benzenedisulfonic acid disodium salt (Tiron, 10 mM) inhibited NADH-mediated CL by 70 and 83%, respectively. Neither hypoxanthine (100 microM) nor antimycin (10 microM)+succinate (5 mM) had any significant effect on basal CL levels, thereby excluding xanthine oxidase and mitochondria, respectively, as a detectable sources of O2-. generation. The presence of NAD+ (100 microM) and lactate (1 mM) increased CL by 88% (n = 8, P < 0.01). In the intact cells, basal production of CL was increased by 205% (P < 0.01) by 5 mM lactate, but not by 5 mM pyruvate, and CL was inhibited by 10 mM Tiron, suggesting the reduction of cytosolic NAD by lactate dehydrogenase stimulates O2-. production. Diphenyliodonium at 1 and 10 microM inhibited both NADH-mediated CL in homogenate and lactate-mediated CL in intact endothelium by 50 and 33%, respectively. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Characterization of hydrothermal systems using simulated HyspIRI data

The Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) is a proposed NASA satellite remote sensing system combining a visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectrometer with over 200 spectral bands between 0.38 – 2.5 micrometers and an 8-band thermal infrared (TIR) multispectral imager. ©± We have begun data and analysis simulations using airborne data in preparation for the future launch. Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data with 224 spectral bands and multispectral TIR data from the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) and the MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) sensors are being used to simulate the spectral and spatial HyspIRI response. The combined datasets, applied to measurement of geothermal and hydrothermal systems, successfully identify and map minerals such as goethite, hematite, jarosite, kaolinite, dickite, alunite, buddingtonite, montmorillonite, muscovite-illite, calcite, and hydrothermal silica. The TIR data were also used to extract elevated surface temperatures at active hot springs areas. The simulations demonstrate that HyspIRI data, while limited by their relatively coarse (60m) spatial resolution should still be useful for many geologic applications.
What should students learn about complementary and alternative medicine?

With thousands of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments currently being used in the United States today, it is challenging to design a concise body of CAM content which will fit into already overly full curricula for health care students. The purpose of this article is to outline key principles which 15 National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine-funded education programs found useful when developing CAM course-work and selecting CAM content. Three key guiding principles are discussed: teach foundational CAM competencies to give students a framework for learning about CAM; choose specific content on the basis of evidence, demographics and condition (what conditions are most appropriate for CAM therapies? ); and finally, provide students with skills for future learning, including where to find reliable information about CAM and how to search the scientific literature and assess the results of CAM research. Most of the programs developed evidence-based guides to help students find reliable CAM resources. The cumulative experiences of the 15 programs have been compiled, and an annotated table outlining the most highly recommended resources about CAM is presented.
A comparison of three methods for automatic text categorization for geriatrics.

Introduction Relevant to clinical education and practice, text categorization is a common information retrieval task. Previously, we developed KnowledgeMap (KM), which enables concept-based classification of medical school curricular document contents using relationships defined in the UMLS Metathesaurus and the UMLS Semantic Network. Users can retrieve curricular content using KM via both specific-phrase queries and broad–term queries (e.g., “where is genetics taught? ”). Using as the “gold standard” test documents categorized by clinical experts, KM achieves sensitivities of 0.78 – 1.00 and specificities of 0.85 – 0.96 for broad queries; area under receiver operator characteristic curves varies from 0.89-0.98. Broad queries require pre-existing, well-defined expansion hierarchies for the broad search terms (e.g., genetics above), in order to identify documents relevant to various specific terms derived from the broad query term. With the goals of delivering of just-in-time educational content during geriatric patient encounters and tracking curriculum development over time, we attempted to classify documents for the broad concept of “geriatrics” by comparing three approaches. The problem is made difficult by the lack of a well-defined expansion hierarchy for terms related to the concept “geriatrics” in the UMLS. Methods Our approaches to retrieving curricular documents relevant to “geriatrics” included: first, existing KM, which expands the UMLS concepts of “aging”, “elderly”, and “geriatrics” as parent concepts at two levels of expansion, yielding 251 and 4,509 related concepts, respectively; second, defining “geriatrics” through use of concepts extracted (via KM) from an external, geriatrics-rich resource, the American Geriatric Society’s Geriatric Review Syllabus (GRS); and third, a support vector machine (SVM) based approach. Our gold standard document set came from the 2006 Vanderbilt medical curriculum, with balanced representation of preclinical and clinical documents. Two authors (JP and RM) each scored about 200 documents from the set of 337, with fifty documents overlapping between them. The SVM model operated on normalized words and UMLS concepts within the expert-ranked gold standard documents weighted by frequency. We used a polynomial SVM with a 5-fold
Doping of multilayer graphene for silicon based solar cells

In the present work we have tested the effects of graphene doping by nitrate ions and chlorine anions on graphene/n-silicon Schottky barrier solar cells, by the exposure to nitric acid and thionyl chloride vapors. In both cases the graphene doping process had beneficial effects on the power conversion efficiency (PCE) and thionyl chloride doping showed a better improvement than the one obtained with nitric acid. A solar cell with an initial PCE of 1.99% could be increased to 4.02% by nitric acid doping treatment while a solar cell with an initial PCE of 1.49% could be increased to 4.32% by thionyl chloride doping treatment.
Collecting close-contact social mixing data with contact diaries: reporting errors and biases

SUMMARY The analysis of contact networks plays a major role to understanding the dynamics of disease spread. Empirical contact data is often collected using contact diaries. Such studies rely on self-reported perceptions of contacts, and arrangements for validation are usually not made. Our study was based on a complete network study design that allowed for the analysis of reporting accuracy in contact diary studies. We collected contact data of the employees of three research groups over a period of 1 work week. We found that more than one third of all reported contacts were only reported by one out of the two involved contact partners. Non-reporting is most frequent in cases of short, non-intense contact. We estimated that the probability of forgetting a contact of ⩽5 min duration is greater than 50%. Furthermore, the number of forgotten contacts appears to be proportional to the total number of contacts.
Developing new academics: So what difference does it make?

Copyright: 2015.World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. Due to copyright restrictions, only the abstract is available. For access to the full text item, please consult the publisher's website. The definitive version of the work is published in International Journal of Social, Education, Economics and Management Engineering, 2015, Vol 9 (2) : 386-392.