Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Framework for Managing Information during the Design and Development of Complex Systems

Many products developed today are becoming increasingly reliant on embedded software to facilitate customisation. Such products are becoming extraordinarily complex systems to design, update and maintain throughout the entire product life cycle. To support the design of complex systems there is a need for a complete re-conceptualisation of the traditional approaches to the management of information throughout the design and development process. This research is being undertaken within an action research framework and involves professionals from across the automotive sector, including participants from major OEMs; suppliers and support organisations and small start-ups. This paper sets out a new conceptual view for managing the information needed to support the design and development processes for complex systems. The framework has been evaluated through a number of workshops and is now informing work on a business transformation project in a large OEM for luxury cars.
A COMPLETE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE NEURAL RETINA OF CHICK EMBRYO GRAFTED ONTO THE CHORIO‐ALLANTOIC MEMBRANE

When dissociated neural retinal cells of 6‐to 10‐day‐old chick embryos were grafted as a pellet onto the chorio‐allantoic membrane and allowed to develop, complete retinal structures were reconstructed. Especially when the retinal cells of 6‐day‐old embryos were used, well orientated retinal structures, which possesed three nuclear layers and two plexiform layers, were formed. The fundamental steps in this complete reconstruction were as follows; rosette formation, formation of a fibrillar lumen, differentiation of receptor and ganglion cells, fusion of the fibrillar lumen, fusion of the receptor lumen and finally the formation of a three‐layered neural retina. Reconstruction by the retinal cells of older embryos was less complete. This stagedependent difference in the capacity for reconstruction was due to a difference in the ability to form well developed rosettes at an early phase of the process of reconstruction.
Phospholipase C-mediated hydrolysis of phosphatidylcholine is a target of transforming growth factor beta 1 inhibitory signals

Cell growth and tumor transformation can be restrained in certain cell systems by the action of transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta). It has been established that the mechanism whereby TGF-beta 1 inhibits cell growth does not interfere with the triggering of early mitogenic signal transduction mechanisms. Phospholipase C-catalyzed hydrolysis of phosphatidylcholine (PC) is a relatively late step in the cascade activated by growth factors. Therefore, conceivably activation of phospholipase C-catalyzed hydrolysis of PC could be the target of TGF-beta 1 action. In the study reported here, we demonstrate that TGF-beta 1 inhibits the coupling of ras p21 to the activation of PC hydrolysis, which appears to be critical for the antiproliferative effects of TGF-beta 1.
Clinical Outcomes of Hepatic Resection and Radiofrequency Ablation in Patients With Solitary Colorectal Liver Metastasis

Background The role of the radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in treatment of solitary liver metastasis has not been established yet. Both hepatic resection (HR) and RFA have been used increasingly in the treatment of colorectal liver metastases. Study A systemic review was performed to determine the impact of treatment modality of solitary liver metastasis on recurrence patterns, disease-free survival, and overall survival (OS) rates. Results Solitary liver metastases were treated by HR in 116 patients (75.8%) and 37 patients (24.2%) were treated with RFA. Prognostic factors, recurrence rate, recurrence patterns, and survival rates were analyzed. The cumulative 3-year and 5-year local recurrence free survival rates were markedly higher in the HR group (88.0% and 84.6%) as compared with those in the RFA group [53.3% and 42.6%, respectively (P≤0.001)]. The 5-year OS rate was lower in the RFA group as compared with the HR group without statistical significance (5-year OS, 65.7% in the HR, 48.5% in the RFA group, P=0.227). Conclusions Despite of higher local recurrence rate, RFA may be considered as a therapeutic option for patients who are considered unsuitable for conventional surgical treatment. Randomized prospective controlled trials comparing the therapeutic outcome of RFA and HR are definitely warranted.
Elevated platelet MAO is related to impulsivity in disruptive behavior disorders.

Platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO) activity was measured in 32 drug-free prepubertal boys with externalizing symptoms of disruptive behavior disorders and 47 boys with no DSM-III-R diagnoses, and correlated to questionnaire and laboratory performance measures of impulsivity. A subgroup of boys with high MAO activity exhibited significantly poorer performance (i.e., more impulsivity) than a subgroup of low MAO activity on laboratory tasks requiring response inhibition. High MAO patients were more impulsive than high MAO controls on some performance tasks and elevated platelet MAO was unrelated to personality questionnaire measures of impulsivity or to patient status. These data suggest that biological markers such as MAO activity may correlate better with performance than clinical questionnaire measures. Abnormally high platelet MAO activity may not be sufficient to produce externalizing symptoms in children, perhaps interacting with an underlying behavioral dimension of impulsivity.
A Definition of Entry-Level Knowledge for Therapeutic Recreation Practice

While the therapeutic recreation profession has significantly advanced in recent years, professional activities, such as credentialing and accreditation have been based on an assumed rather than a systematically researched knowledge base. The present research was undertaken to define the knowledge base according to acceptable test and measurement procedures. A content validation methodology was employed to describe the domain of practice and to identify specific information needed to practice. Approximately 1400 practitioners, on a national basis, participated in this research. The results indicate a broader conceptualization, and major advancement and sophistification in the delivery of therapeutic recreation services. Implications and applications for further use in professional activities are discussed.
The Ownership Concentration of Firms: Three Essays on the Determinants and Effects

The question for the determinants and effects of the ownership concentration of firms is of central concern in the corporate governance literature. It has attracted significant attention in the last decades and has been frequently addressed by renown scholars in the corporate governance area. Most of the existing studies analyzing the determinants of ownership concentration focused on firm-level determinants. Compared to their importance, however, relatively few authors included the industry- or country-level in their analyses, and even fewer accounted for all three levels simultaneously. Furthermore, the relative importance of the three levels has not been quantified so far. This study addresses both issues. First, the relative importance of the firm-, industry-, and country-level, is determined. Second, the by other studies tested and in this study newly identified determinants of ownership concentration are combined in one framework, evaluating their individual and aggregated explanatory power. When it comes to the performance effects of ownership concentration, the existing literature is characterized by a remarkable incongruity in terms of results. The present study accounts concurrently for the so far identified factors potentially influencing the concentration performance relationship, such as endogeneity, curvilinearity, and institutional differences. This study is one of the first in its area to apply multilevel models in order to account for the nested structure of the data. Furthermore, the collected sample is one of the most comprehensive ones in the ownership research. The results yield new insights into the determination of the ownership structure of firms and the ownership concentration performance relationship. The findings help to advance the underlying theoretical frameworks of the determinants and effects of ownership concentration and thus contribute to a deeper understanding of this field.
Euroisation in Serbia

Summary Euroisation in Serbia is rooted in a long history of macroeconomic instability. Extreme inflation volatility has undermined trust in the dinar and discouraged dinar savings. At the same time, an abundant supply of foreign capital inflows has provided easy access to foreign currency lending at low interest rates in an environment of perceived exchange rate stability – a perception reinforced by the choice of exchange rate regime. As a result, both the asset and the liability side of banks’ balance sheets, and even those of the non-bank sector, is heavily foreign currency-denominated. This paper documents the forces that promote euroisation in Serbia. The paper argues that, in the wake of the global crisis, a window of opportunity has emerged that could foster a process of deeuroisation. The lack of foreign funding and recent exchange rate volatility has tilted borrower incentives towards local currency borrowing. If disinflationary macroeconomic policies gain credibility, with the possible support of regulatory options, euroisation could drop sharply.
Efficient electromagnetic simulation of angled interconnection pattern by conformal- and HIE-FDTD methods

Due to orthogonal grids in conventional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods, difficulty in modeling a complicated structure results in incomplete discretization of space. Therefore, it is inherently difficult to analyze thin structures such as a printed circuit board (PCB) and curved or angled patterns such as interconnection patterns on the PCB. In this paper, we propose an effective electromagnetic simulation technique which is constructed by combining the conformal FDTD (CFDTD) method and the hybrid implicit-explicit (HIE)-FDTD method. The proposed technique can circumvent the above problems by exploiting advantages of the HIE-FDTD method and the CFDTD method. An example model of the interconnection pattern is analyzed by the proposed and conventional methods, and we estimate the accuracy and CPU time of the proposed one.
Comparison of Different Classification Techniques for Educational Data

Data mining has been used extensively in various domains of application for prediction or classification. Data mining improves the productivity of its analysts tremendously by transforming their voluminous, unmanageable and prone to ignorable information into usable pieces of knowledge and has witnessed a great acceptance in scientific, bioinformatics and business domains. However, for education field there is still a lot to be done, especially there is plentiful research to be done as far as Indian Universities are concerned. Educational Data Mining is a promising discipline, concerned with developing techniques for exploring the unique types of educational data and using those techniques to better understand students' strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, the educational database of students undergoing higher education has been mined and various classification techniques have been compared so as to investigate the students' placement in software organizations, using real data from the students of a Delhi state university's affiliates.
Coefficient of Friction Measurement in the Presence of High Current Density

On the microscale, armature-rail interface contact is accomplished through surface asperity interaction. In this imperfect contact model (a version of the Bowden-Tabor model), we postulate the coexistence of one or more contact regimes, such as solid-solid contact, liquid-metal lubricated contact, and arcing contact. We are developing microscopic models and experimental apparatus to study this postulate. This work, in particular, describes the experimental apparatus developed to assist in the investigation of possible contact regimes and presents preliminary data that indicate a possible decrease in coefficient of friction in the presence of high current density when compared to a no-current condition
Population structure and genetic differentiation among the substructured Vysya caste population in comparison to the other populations of Andhra Pradesh, India

Objectives : The present paper focuses on the study of the patterns of genetic microdifferentiation among one of the substructured caste populations of Andhra Pradesh, namely Vysya, with reference to 17 other Telugu speaking populations from the same region of India. Subjects and methods : A total of 302 individuals from the three Vysya subgroups (101 of Arya Vysya, 100 from Kalinga Vysya and 101 from Thrivarnika) were typed in 17 blood groups and protein polymorphisms. Nei's gene diversity analysis, as well as neighbour-joining tree and UPGMA cluster diagrams, derived from standard genetic distances, R-matrix analysis and a regression model for investigating the patterns of external gene flow and genetic drift due to isolation under the island model, were done at two levels: (1) considering only the three Vysya populations and (2) considering common loci among 20 populations of Andhra Pradesh. Results : Seven of the 17 systems investigated were found to be monomorphic among all the three Vysya groups. The UPGMA tree and bidimensional scaling of the D 2 distances derived from R-matrix analysis show a very distinct cluster of Vysya populations. Application of the model of regression of average heterozygosity versus the distance of populations from the centroid shows the three Vysya populations placed as clear outliers above the theoretical regression line. Conclusions : Different approaches employed in this study give support to the hypothesis of different origin and/or demographic story for the three Vysya groups compared with other populations of Andhra Pradesh.
Factors determining customers’ repurchase intention of healthcare insurance products in Malaysia

This inquiry studies the empirical testing the determinant of customers’ behaviour towards the healthcare insurance products in Malaysia. The research was established on an empirical investigation of the existing healthcare insurance customers from Klang valley, Malaysia. The main data for the study were generated from self-administered survey of 160 respondents. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics (Exploratory Factor Analysis). From the application of exploratory factor analysis, it was concluded that the correlation matrix was all positive and above 0.6. Three factors were extracted which explain 47% of the variation. Lastly, the studied variables were loaded in one domain or another confirming suitability for further analysis. As the survey is based on healthcare insurance in particular from Malaysian customers’ perspective, the findings would be of interest to the managers of health insurance providers as well as policy makers to draw future strategies for development.
Quantum circuits for qubit fusion

We consider four-dimensional qudits as qubit pairs and their qudit Pauli operators as qubit Clifford operators. This introduces a nesting, $C_1^2 \subset C_2^4 \subset C_3^2$, where $C_n^m$ is the $n$th level of the $m$-dimensional qudit Clifford hierarchy. If we can convert between logical qubits and qudits, then qudit Clifford operators are qubit non-Clifford operators. Conversion is achieved by qubit fusion and qudit fission using stabilizer circuits that consume a resource state. This resource is a fused qubit stabilizer state with a fault-tolerant state preparation using stabilizer circuits.
Considerations on pre-stress in a 3D-printed capacitive force/pressure sensor

In this work, we infer the influence of pre-stress in the design of a capacitive force/pressure sensor. For this purpose, experimental plans, so-called Designs of Experiments (DoEs), are employed. Based on these designs, not only the influence of design parameters can be inferred, but also a prediction model, which uses the design parameters as predictors, can be determined. Rapid prototyping technologies, such as the considered 3D- and inkjet-printing processes, provide major advantages such as flexibility in design. At the same time, such processes lead to inhomogeneous material properties. The presented methodology, consequently, aims at determining the variations in sensor read-out due to pre-stress influence. A combination of Response-Surface-Method DoEs for design variables and randomized DoE of noise variables (i.e. the varying material properties) is employed. We demonstrate the influence of pre-stress on the considered geometry as well as the setup of a suitable prediction model for the read-out.
Barriers to Competition in Croatia: The Role of Government Regulation

This paper examines product market policies in Croatia by benchmarking them to OECD countries and highlighting how policies that are more conducive to competition would stimulate a more efficient allocation of resources and, in consequence, facilitate convergence to higher income levels. OECD indicators of overall regulation in product markets indicate that Croatias policies in 2007 were generally more restrictive of competition than were the policies in OECD countries. This is especially true for policies concerned with the degree of state control of the economy and with barriers to entrepreneurship. Regulatory obstacles to trade and foreign direct investment, by contrast, are in line with those of pre-accession European Union countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic, and Poland in 2003, as well as Bulgaria and Romania in 2006), albeit well above the OECD average. Regulation of post, electricity, gas, telecoms, air, rail, and road transport, as estimated by the OECD energy transport and communication sectors indicator, is also less liberal than in the OECD, highlighting the positive knock-on effects for the rest of the economy that could derive from further liberalization of network industries.
Experiences from a Tender Process

Large IT systems are often acquired in a tender process where the customer states the system requirements, a number of suppliers submit their proposals, and the customer selects one of them. Usually the supplier uses an existing system as basis for his proposal. He adapts it more or less to the customer's requirements. This paper is a study of a specific tender process. The customer was a Danish municipality that supplied electrical power, water, gas, garbage collection, etc. for around 100,000 households. The customer wanted a new system for meter inspection, invoicing, planning the meter inspector's routes, etc. We have studied the requirements, how they were perceived by the suppliers, and how they were intended by the customer. The main findings are that the parties didn't understand each other, but often pretended so. One consequence was that the business goals pursued by the customer were not properly achieved. Among the causes of this were an excessive democratic elicitation process and an inadequate use of requirements techniques, particularly use
Capital Structure Inertia and CEO Compensation

There is strong empirical evidence that firms do not always adjust their capital structure according to established capital structure theories. Rather, they follow a passive strategy such that capital structure changes are mainly driven by their stock returns. This paper investigates to what extent this behavioral inertia can be explained by the structure of executive compensation. Our data comprise US firms in the manufacturing industries over the years 1992 to 2000. We estimate a dynamic panel data model and find evidence for the hypothesis that stronger incentives schemes for CEOs lead to less capital structure inertia.
Mindfulness and Weight Loss: A Systematic Review

Objective Mindfulness training has been incorporated increasingly into weight loss programs to facilitate dietary and physical activity changes. This systematic review of studies using mindfulness-based programs for weight loss evaluated study methodologies with the goal of determining the current evidence in support of mindfulness interventions for weight loss. Methods Published studies of mindfulness-based interventions for weight loss were identified through systematic review including a comprehensive search of online databases. Studies were reviewed and graded according to methodological strengths and weaknesses. Results A total of 19 studies, including 13 randomized controlled trials and 6 observational studies, evaluated the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on weight among individuals attempting weight loss. Twelve of the studies were published in peer-reviewed journals and seven were unpublished dissertations. Among the eight randomized controlled trials published in peer-reviewed journals, six documented significant weight loss among participants in the mindfulness condition, one reported no significant change, and one failed to report body mass index at program completion. None of the studies documented a relationship between changes in mindfulness and weight loss. Conclusion Significant weight loss was documented among participants in mindfulness interventions for 13 of the 19 studies identified for review. However, studies do not clarify the degree to which changes in mindfulness are a mechanism responsible for weight loss in mindfulness interventions. Methodological weaknesses and variability across studies limit the strength of the evidence. Further research is needed to document and evaluate the psychological, behavioral, and biological mechanisms involved in the relationship between mindfulness and weight loss.
Semantically readable distributed representation learning for social media mining

The problem with distributed representations generated by neural networks is that the meaning of the features is difficult to understand. We propose a new method that gives a specific meaning to each node of a hidden layer by introducing a manually created word semantic vector dictionary into the initial weights and by using paragraph vector models. Our experimental results demonstrated that weights obtained based on learning and weights based on the dictionary are more strongly correlated in a closed test and more weakly correlated in an open test, compared with the results of a control test. Additionally, we found that the learned vector are better than the performance of the existing paragraph vector in the evaluation of the sentiment analysis task. Finally, we determined the readability of document embedding in a user test. The definition of readability in this paper is that people can understand the meaning of large weighted features of distributed representations. A total of 52.4% of the top five weighted hidden nodes were related to tweets where one of the paragraph vector models learned the document embedding. Because each hidden node maintains a specific meaning, the proposed method succeeds in improving readability.
Mergers and Acquisitions: The Human Factor

Part 1 Overview: the merger phenomenon the impact of mergers and acquisitions on organizational performance the merger process - what happens to people. Part 2 The effect of organization culture: organizational culture and its assessment the implications of cultural type for inter organizational combinations. Part 3 Stages of merger and acquisition: the pre-combination of courtship stage the legal anouncement of marriage the honeymoon period - making the marriage work establishing marital allegiance - monitoring the success of the marriage. Appendices: The fast car acquisitions the acquisition of fill-it packaging the age-nouvelle merger the gable-apex merger.