Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How trust develops in the market

Consumer trust is essential for a business to successfully promote new products and services. This paper develops a trust model from a social commerce perspective by investigating the influence of social commerce constructs on consumer trust in new products and services. By using an empirical study, the results of this research indicate that social commerce constructs could be measured using three dimensions; these are recommendations and referrals, ratings and reviews, and forums and communities. Furthermore, social commerce constructs have a significant positive influence on consumer trust in new products and service. Alternatively, social commerce constructs could generate social word of mouth among potential customers regarding new products and services; this in turn can shape consumer trust. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.
Lending a Hand: Enhancing the Performance of Wireless Communication Networks Through Cooperation

Cooperative networking is considered one of the main enablers for achieving enhanced data rates in wireless communications. This is due to the fact that through cooperation the adverse effects of fading can be alleviated significantly. Thus, more reliable communication systems deployments can be devised, and performance enhancements can be achieved. In this chapter, the authors discuss the main aspects of cooperative networking starting from the main historical milestones that shaped the idea. Then they focus on the main mechanisms and techniques that foster cooperation and continue by studying performance metrics for various possible deployments, such as capacity bounds and outage probabilities. Finally, the authors take a more practical viewpoint and discuss aspects related to medium access control design and implementation that can serve as a stepping stone for the widespread deployment of cooperative networking.
SPlinted Ligation Adapter Tagging (SPLAT), a novel library preparation method for whole genome bisulphite sequencing

Abstract Sodium bisulphite treatment of DNA combined with next generation sequencing (NGS) is a powerful combination for the interrogation of genome-wide DNA methylation profiles. Library preparation for whole genome bisulphite sequencing (WGBS) is challenging due to side effects of the bisulphite treatment, which leads to extensive DNA damage. Recently, a new generation of methods for bisulphite sequencing library preparation have been devised. They are based on initial bisulphite treatment of the DNA, followed by adaptor tagging of single stranded DNA fragments, and enable WGBS using low quantities of input DNA. In this study, we present a novel approach for quick and cost effective WGBS library preparation that is based on splinted adaptor tagging (SPLAT) of bisulphite-converted single-stranded DNA. Moreover, we validate SPLAT against three commercially available WGBS library preparation techniques, two of which are based on bisulphite treatment prior to adaptor tagging and one is a conventional WGBS method.
Analyzing the Relationship Between Job Demands, Job Resources, and Personal Resources on Employee Engagement and Exhaustion of Juvenile Probation/Parole Officers

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v DEDICATION vi LIST OF TABLES xiii LIST OF FIGURES xv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the Problem 3 Purpose of the Study 5 Research Questions 5 Theoretical Framework 6 Significance of the Study 8 Definition of Terms 9 Organization of the Study 12 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 14 Job Burnout 14 Employee Engagement 17 Job Demands-Resources Theory 24 Job Resources 31 Norms, Values, and Culture 34 Leadership 35 Direction 38 Social Support / Co-worker Influence 38
On Symbolic Model Order Reduction 1

Symbolic model order reduction (SMOR) is a macromodeling technique that can be used to create reduced order models while retaining the parameters in the original models. Such symbolic reduced order models can be repeated evaluated (simulated) with greater efficiency for varying model parameters. Although the model order reduction concept has been extensively developed in the literature and widely applied in a variety of problems, model order reduction from a symbolic perspective has not been well studied. Several methods developed in this paper include symbol isolation, nominal projection, and first order approximation. These methods can be applied to models from having only a few parametric elements to many symbolic elements. Of special practical interest are models that have slightly varying parameters such as process related variations, for which efficient reduction procedure can be developed. Each technique proposed in this paper has been tested by circuit examples. Experiments show that the proposed methods are potentially effective for many circuit problems. This work was sponsored in part by the DARPA NeoCAD Program under Grant No. N66001-01-8920 from Navy Sapce and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), in part by SRC under Contract No. 2001-TJ-921, and in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award under Grant No. 9985507.
Implementing a simple microcontroller-based interval type-2 fuzzy processor

This paper presents some methodological aspects for implementing an interval type-2 fuzzy logic processor over a microcontroller. Besides, it describes a simple implementation over a low cost commercial platform. Although implementation results show that the developed processor demands reasonable hardware resources of the microcontroller, its field of application would be limited to low frequency applications.
The behavioural pattern of social and religious water-contact activities in the Egypt-49 bilharziasis project area.

Social and religious water-contact activities have been recorded over a period of one year in four villages situated on different types of watercourse in the Egypt-49 project area. Females have more frequent water contacts than males; females under 25 years old have more frequent contacts than older ones. Males are more active contaminators than females, among whom girls under 5 years old are the chief polluters. Summer is the period of most frequent, prolonged and extensive body-surface contact. One-quarter of all exposures take place between noon and 3 p.m. , the period of maximum cercarial load. The most frequent activities during this critical period are washing of utensils, bathing and playing, and wadu (ritual washing). Peak exposures therefore coincide with the peak seasonal and diurnal cycle of infectivity of watercourses in the area.It is suggested that an index might be established that would take into account the frequency and duration of exposure and the amount of body-surface exposed and that could be related to the periodic variations of cercarial densities in the watercourses.
Understanding Online Reverse Auction Determinants of Use: A Multi-Stakeholder Case Study

En depit de l’interet croissant des chercheurs SI aux systemes inter-organisationnels tels que l’echange de donnees electronique (EDI) et les systemes de gestion de la chaine logistique (SGCL), peu de recherches se sont interessees aux encheres electroniques inversees (EEI), un systeme d’information inter-organisationnel largement utilise dans les transactions electroniques inter-firmes.Cette etude a pour objectif de mettre en evidence les determinants d’usage des EEI suivant la perspective des acheteurs et celle des fournisseurs ainsi que le role potentiel du contexte institutionnel a travers une etude de cas realisee aupres d’un distributeur francais. Nous avons mene 122 entretiens semi-directifs en deux phases aupres des differents membres de la communaute inter-organisationnelle (acheteurs, fournisseurs et les initiateurs de la technologie) concernes par l’utilisation des EEI. Nos resultats mettent en evidence des differences entre les acheteurs et les fournisseurs quant a leurs determinants d’usage. Nous montrons ensuite comment un changement du contexte institutionnel peut impacter l’usage des EEI. En effet, alors que la loi n’a pas permis de remedier au climat de mefiance qui prevaut entre acheteurs et fournisseurs, elle a cree de nouvelles barrieres a l’usage pour les acheteurs. Plus particulierement, les risques de controle et de sanction introduits par la loi sont a l’origine de nouvelles barrieres a l’utilisation des EEI pour les acheteurs. Nous contribuons a la litterature SI en montrant le role des capacites organisationnelles a influencer l’usage. Alors que le role determinant du contexte institutionnel pour expliquer l’usage a ete largement reconnu dans la litterature SI, notre comprehension de l’impact du changement du contexte institutionnel sur les determinants de l’usage est encore limitee. Nous mettons en evidence l’etendue a laquelle la loi peut etre a l’origine de la discontinuite d’usage a cause du risque percu qu’elle introduit.
Internet Marketing: Marketing, Internet, Customer Engagement, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Banner, E-mail Marketing, Web 2.0, ... ComScore, Hit (Internet), Article Marketing

Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers to the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media, but it includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems. Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times, working with comScore, published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies.
Coxiella burnetii Inhibits Apoptosis in Human THP-1 Cells and Monkey Primary Alveolar Macrophages

ABSTRACT Coxiella burnetii, the cause of human Q fever, is an aerosol-borne, obligate intracellular bacterium that targets host alveolar mononuclear phagocytic cells during infection. In all cell types examined, C. burnetii establishes a replicative niche in a lysosome-like parasitophorous vacuole where it carries out a lengthy infectious cycle with minimal cytopathic effects. The persistent and mild nature of C. burnetii infection in vitro suggests that the pathogen modulates apoptosis to sustain the host cell. In the current study, we examined the ability of C. burnetii to inhibit apoptotic cell death during infection of human THP-1 monocyte-derived macrophages and primary monkey alveolar macrophages. C. burnetii-infected cells demonstrated significant protection from death relative to uninfected cells following treatment with staurosporine, a potent inducer of intrinsic apoptosis. This protection correlated with reduced cleavage of caspase-9, caspase-3, and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), all proteolytic events that occur during apoptosis. Reduced PARP cleavage was also observed in cells treated with tumor necrosis factor alpha to induce extrinsic apoptosis. Apoptosis inhibition was a C. burnetii-driven process as infected cells treated with rifampin or chloramphenicol, inhibitors of bacterial RNA and protein synthesis, respectively, showed significantly reduced protection against staurosporine-induced apoptosis. C. burnetii infection affected the expression of multiple apoptosis-related genes and resulted in increased synthesis of the antiapoptotic proteins A1/Bfl-1 and c-IAP2. Collectively, these data suggest that C. burnetii modulates apoptotic pathways to inhibit host cell death, thus providing a stable, intracellular niche for the course of the pathogen's infectious cycle.
Effect of Attention on the Initiation of Binocular Rivalry

Recent studies suggest that attention is necessary for perceptual alternations in binocular rivalry. It has been shown that attention plays a role in not only accelerating but also even enabling perceptual fluctuation in ongoing phase of binocular rivalry. In this study, we tested whether attention also plays a role in suppressing a rival stimulus in its initial phases by measuring proportions of mixed dominance. We hypothesized that when attention is directed toward the location of rival stimuli prior to their presentation, the proportion of mixed dominance is lower than when attention is directed away from that location because of attentional facilitation. However, we found that the proportion of mixed dominance did not differ depending on the locus of attention, although we adopted well-established experimental paradigms for manipulating spatial attention. This result suggests that attention is not a determining factor in establishing initial perceptual dominance in binocular rivalry.
Drosophila CAF-1 regulates HP1-mediated epigenetic silencing and pericentric heterochromatin stability

Chromatin assembly factor 1 (CAF-1) was initially characterized as a histone deliverer in the process of DNA-replication-coupled chromatin assembly in eukaryotic cells. Here, we report that CAF-1 p180, the largest subunit of Drosophila CAF-1, participates in the process of heterochromatin formation and functions to maintain pericentric heterochromatin stability. We provide evidence that Drosophila CAF-1 p180 plays a role in both classes of position effect variegation (PEV) and in the expression of heterochromatic genes. A decrease in the expression of Drosophila CAF-1 p180 leads to a decrease in both H3K9 methylation at pericentric heterochromatin regions and the recruitment of heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) to the chromocenter of the polytene chromosomes. The artificial targeting of HP1 to a euchromatin location leads to the enrichment of Drosophila CAF-1 p180 at this ectopic heterochromatin, suggesting the mutual recruitment of HP1 and CAF-1 p180. We also show that the spreading of heterochromatin is compromised in flies that have reduced CAF-1 p180. Furthermore, reduced CAF-1 p180 causes a defect in the dynamics of heterochromatic markers in early Drosophila embryos. Together, these findings suggest that Drosophila CAF-1 p180 is an essential factor in the epigenetic control of heterochromatin formation and/or maintenance.
Assessment of distribution system margins to accommodate the penetration of plug-in electric vehicles

Environmental concerns and depletion of fossil fuel resources have led to increased penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in recent times. However, such electrification of the transportation sector is expected to impact the distribution grid adversely. These effects will require local distribution companies (LDCs) to accurately assess the impact of PEV penetration and develop plans, policies and solutions for alleviating the consequent network constraints. This paper presents a novel framework to assess the appropriate level of PEV penetration that distribution systems can accommodate under normal and contingency conditions of operation. The model incorporates the impact of different factors such as charging level, vehicle types, vehicle users habits, feeder thermal limits, and bus voltage limits. The distribution system margins from PEV penetration are examined and compared across a wide range of scenarios.
Results of radical prostatectomy in newly diagnosed prostate cancer: long-term survival rates in locally advanced and high-risk cancers.

BACKGROUND Until just a few years ago, locally advanced or high-risk prostate cancer was generally considered incurable. Recently, however, evidence has accumulated that, even for these patients, the oncologic outcome after radical prostatectomy is not uniformly poor. METHODS 13 262 evaluable patients with prostate cancer were treated with radical prostatectomy from 1992 to 2012. 4391 had a locally advanced stage, lymphogenous metastases, and/or unfavorable histopathological tumor characteristics. The endpoints of this retrospective, monocentric study were biochemical recurrence-free survival (postoperative PSA value less than 0.2 ng/mL), carcinoma-specific survival, and overall survival. RESULTS The rates of biochemical recurrence-free survival, carcinoma-specific survival, and overall survival at 10 years were 53%, 98%, and 89% for patients with extraprostatic tumor growth (tumor stage pT3a, 2675 patients); 19%, 87%, and 79% for patients with demonstrated invasion of the seminal vesicle (pT3b, 1373 patients); and 3%, 77%, and 69% for patients with tumor invasion of neighboring organs (pT4, 53 patients). The corresponding figures were 14%, 81%, and 71% for patients with lymph node metastases (682 patients); 32%, 93%, and 85% for those with a preoperative PSA value above 20 ng/mL (728 patients); and 25%, 70%, and 58% for those with a prostatectomy Gleason score of 8 or more points (559 patients). CONCLUSION Even patients with locally advanced, nodally metastasized, or localized high-risk prostate cancer do not necessarily have a poor outcome. Although most such patients have a biochemical recurrence after radical prostatectomy, their carcinoma-specific mortality within ten years of radical prostatectomy ranges from 2% to 30% depending on the risk constellation, while their overall survival rate over the same period ranges from 58% to 89%.
Timing of surgery after multisystem injury with traumatic brain injury: effect on neuropsychological and functional outcome.

OBJECTIVE The optimal timing for noncranial surgery after multisystem injury is not known. Early surgery may lead to decreased pulmonary complications and length of stay, but also predispose to secondary brain injury if decreased cerebral perfusion occurs intraoperatively. Previous work has not consistently evaluated neuropsychological or functional outcome. We sought to determine whether 6-month neuropsychological and functional outcome was associated with timing of noncranial surgery after traumatic brain injury. MATERIALS We performed a cohort study to evaluate the effect of timing of non-neurosurgical operative interventions on neuropsychological and functional outcome, morbidity, and mortality. Early surgery was defined as <or=24 hours after injury, and late surgery, >24 hours after injury but during the same admission. Patients with a nonoperative brain injury and an operative facial or orthopedic fracture were selected from two randomized trials previously performed at our Level I trauma center. Data were abstracted from medical records and outcome had been prospectively gathered as part of the two clinical trials. RESULTS Patients undergoing early or late surgery had similar demographics, overall injury severity, traumatic brain injury severity, and admission characteristics. The early group had more open orthopedic fractures, but also underwent multiple operations more often than did the late group. At 6 months postinjury, patients in the early group had a better composite neuropsychological score than did those in the late group on unadjusted analysis and after including a propensity score. After adjusting for potential confounders, this difference was significant. No significant differences in return to work or Glasgow Outcome Score were noted. The late group had a higher incidence of pneumonia and a longer hospital stay (p<0.10). CONCLUSIONS In traumatic brain injury patients with multisystem trauma, early timing of orthopedic and facial fracture fixation under general anesthesia was not associated with worse neuropsychological or functional outcome when compared with the outcomes associated with late surgery. Clinical conclusions may be limited by inherent selection bias and unmeasured confounding. However, these results contribute to equipoise regarding timing of surgery after multiple injuries, and emphasize the need for a randomized trial.
Data Placement and Task Scheduling Optimization for Data Intensive Scientific Workflow in Multiple Data Centers Environment

Running data-intensive scientific workflow across multiple data centers faces massive data transfer problem which leads to low efficiency in actual workflow application for scientists. By considering data size and data dependency, we propose a k-means algorithm based initial data placement strategy that places the most related initial data sets into the same data center at workflow preparation stage. During the execution of scientific workflow, by analyzing interdependent relationship between data sets and tasks, we adopt multilevel task replication strategy to reduce volume of intermediate data transfer. The simulation results show that the proposed strategies can effectively reduce data transfer among data centers and improve performance of running data intensive scientific workflows.
In-School Sustainability Action: Climate Clever Energy Savers

Abstract The mandate for living sustainably is becoming increasingly urgent. This article reports on the Climate Clever Energy Savers (CCES) Program, a student-centred, problem- and project-based program in New South Wales, Australia, aimed at enabling school students to identify ways of reducing their schools’ electricity consumption and costs. As part of the program, students apply for Department of Education and Communities funds to address issues of electricity usage, such as building or appliance modifications, or education campaigns. In particular, this article focuses on the systemic approach used to assist teachers and students in meeting the aims of the CCES program, the Sustainability Action Process (SAP). To ascertain the contribution and value of such a framework in achieving project outcomes and associated learning and attitudinal change, we investigated teachers’ and some students’ uses and opinions of the SAP via surveys (n = 434), 16 interviews, and analysis of documents such as student work samples and lesson outlines. Our research indicates that the SAP has been a highly effective, enabling and engaging tool in helping students to identify ways and means of reducing electricity consumption and evaluating their effectiveness, as well as identifying allies and other sources of assistance in carrying out their projects.
Reducing ambiguity and uncertainty during new product development: a system dynamics based approach

This paper presents an approach useful to analyse the performance of the product development model adopted by a company. It was implemented to analyse a specific sub-system - "the climatic system" - of a new car model developed by a large Italian car manufacturer. The activity chain was modelled by using the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) tool, while the nature of the information and knowledge flows coordinating tasks were the primary focus of our study. DSM offers several advantages for process mapping compared to other tools available in the literature and widely used in the new product development environment (i.e. PERT, IDEF suites, etc.). System dynamics was implemented to analyse the dynamic behavior of the product development process relatively to the subsystem considered. In particular, the effect of both ambiguity and uncertainty of the information and knowledge flows on the process performance was taken into account. The analysis was supported by the continuous feedback from the technical managers and engineers involved in the subsystem development. A questionnaire was developed and administered to technical managers and engineers to collect data. Most of the data were collected using measuring scales designed for the purpose.