Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Small Firms and the Growth Stage: Can Entrepreneurship Education Programmes Be Supportive?

Whilst entrepreneurship education is booming, it focuses largely on nascent entrepreneurs and company creation. In contrast, a major challenge in small business entrepreneurship is growth. The authors first position growth and its barriers in small firms in the context of current theory and practice in entrepreneurship education: from this analysis, they identify prerequisites and drivers for growth-related entrepreneurship training for small businesses. A pedagogical experiment focused on growth, targeted at a mixed audience of small firm entrepreneurs and graduate students enrolled in an entrepreneurship major in a business school, is then described. The experiment is presented as an integrated process model. The authors suggest that such programmes could be developed in three main directions: (a) changing the culture of business schools so that they become less individual-centred and more open and value-creating for their students and the external community; (b) strongly and regularly involving entrepreneurship students in the realities of business beyond start-up; and (c) making systematic and sophisticated use of the Internet for enhancing growth through e-learning and community-building.
Design and innovation strategies within “successful” high‐tech firms

Reports on an ongoing empirical study into the characteristics and strategies of “successful” technologically oriented UK firms. Using survey data from samples of winners of the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement and a comparative group of high‐technology firms, the study establishes that few statistical differences exist between the two groups and between specific sizes of firms in each sample in relation to aspects of their design and innovation strategies. The issues raised in this paper include: the way in which technological success is conceptualised; the usefulness of awards such as the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement as a benchmark for innovative firms; and, the attitudes and activities of sample firms in relation to design and new product development strategies.
Commutability of proficiency testing material containing tobramycin: a study within the framework of the Dutch Calibration 2.000 project

Abstract Background: Results from external quality assessment schemes (EQASs) can provide information about accuracy and comparability of different measurement methods, provided that the material used in these schemes behave identical to patient samples among the different methods, a characteristic also known as commutability. The aim of this study was to assess the commutability of different matrices for the material used in an EQAS for tobramycin. Methods: Proficiency testing material (PTM) and patient samples containing tobramycin were prepared, collected, pooled, and distributed to participating laboratories for analysis. Low, medium, and high tobramycin concentrations in liquid human, liquid bovine and lyophilized bovine serum were tested in this study. The patient serum results of every laboratory were plotted against each of the other laboratories, and the distances of the PTM results to the patient serum regression line were calculated. For comparison, these distances were divided by the average within-laboratory standard deviation (SDwl) of the results reported in the official EQAS for tobramycin, resulting in a relative residual. The commutability decision limit was set at 3 SDwl. Results: With 10 laboratories participating in this study, 45 laboratory couples were formed. For human serum, only one relative residual for high concentrations of tobramycin was found outside the commutability decision limit. For liquid and lyophilized bovine sera, the number of relative residuals outside the decision limit was between 15 and 18 for low, medium, and high tobramycin concentrations. Conclusions: The PTM used for tobramycin is preferably prepared with human serum.
Treat your customers as equals! Fostering customer collaboration through social media

The purpose of this paper is to explore, firstly, how companies and customers interact using social media, and secondly, how social-media-mediated interactions support customer collaboration. We identify two modes of interaction: the relationship-oriented mode and the instrumental mode. The former reflects relationship marketing in that it emphasises reciprocal and bilateral communication, while the latter reflects transaction marketing with its one-way and company-controlled communication. On the basis of the analysis of four cases, it is suggested that relationship-oriented social-media interactions support customer collaboration. In particular, it seems that ongoing customer-to-customer interactions supported by relationship-oriented company participation provide a fertile ground for diverse forms of virtual customer collaboration. We also found that the social-media applications used did not define the interaction mode. The responsibility for defining the objectives, choosing the applications and setting the mode lies within the hosting company.
Integrative Analysis of miRNA and mRNA Expression Profiles in Calcium Oxalate Nephrolithiasis Rat Model

The microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles and their biological functions in calcium oxalate nephrolithiasis remain unclear. In this study, we investigate the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles of kidney tissues in calcium oxalate stone rats. 16 Sprague Dawley rats were divided into control group and stone-forming group. 24-hour urine samples and kidney tissues were collected for biochemical and histological determination after 4 weeks. MiRNA and mRNA microarray were applied to evaluate the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles. To validate the microarray results, the quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed. A total of 38 miRNAs and 2728 mRNAs were significantly and differentially expressed in kidney tissues of stone-forming group versus control group. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis revealed that most of the target genes were enriched in terms of oxidation reduction, ion transport, inflammatory response, and response to wounding. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis of these targets highlights their critical role in cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, gap junction, and chemokine signaling pathway. Furthermore, the reliability of the microarray-based results was confirmed by using qRT-PCR determination. The miRNA and mRNA expressions in calcium oxalate stone rat kidneys might provide a basis for further research on urolithiasis mechanism.
TRIB 3 R 84 Variant Is Associated With Impaired Insulin-Mediated Nitric Oxide Production in Human Endothelial Cells

Background—In the endothelium, insulin promotes nitric oxide (NO) production, through the insulin receptor/IRS-1/PI3Kinase/Akt/eNOS signaling pathway. An inhibitor of insulin action, TRIB3, has recently been identified which affects insulin action by binding to and inhibiting Akt phosphorylation. We have recently described a Q84R gain-of-function polymorphism of TRIB3 with the R84 variant being associated with insulin resistance and an earlier age at myocardial infarction. Methods and Results—To investigate the TRIB3 R84 variant impact on endothelial insulin action, we cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) naturally carrying different TRIB3 genotypes (QQ-, QR-, or RR-HUVECs). TRIB3 inhibitory activity on insulin-stimulated Akt phosphorylation and the amount of protein which was coimmunoprecipitable with Akt were significantly greater in QRand RRas compared to QQHUVECs. After insulin stimulation, Akt and eNOS activation as well as NO production were markedly decreased in QRand RRas compared to QQ-HUVECs. TRIB3 molecular modeling analysis provided insights into the structural changes related to the polymorphisms potentially determining differences in protein-protein interaction with Akt. Conclusions—Our data demonstrate that the TRIB3 R84 variant impairs insulin signaling and NO production in human endothelial cells. This finding provides a plausible biological background for the deleterious role of TRIB3 R84 on genetic susceptibility to coronary artery disease. (Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2008;28:1355-1360)
Equatorial upwelling enhances nitrogen fixation in the Atlantic Ocean

Surface waters in upwelling regions are thought to be nutrient rich and hence inhibit nitrogen fixation (diazotrophy) because diazotrophs can preferentially assimilate nitrate and ammonia instead of expending energy to fix dinitrogen. We found average nitrogen fixation rates to be two to seven times higher in the surface waters of the upwelling region of the eastern equatorial Atlantic than typically measured here during non‐upwelling periods. We posit that in this region, low nitrate‐phosphate ratio waters are upwelled, and an initial bloom of non‐diazotrophic phytoplankton removes recently upwelled nitrate. Thereby, diazotrophy is fuelled by residual phosphate and by a combination of aeolian and upwelled sources of iron. Annually, we estimate that approximately 47 Gmol of new nitrogen is introduced by diazotrophy in upwelled waters alone and 195 Gmol N is fixed in the equatorial Atlantic region. Our findings challenge the paradigm that the highest nitrogen fixation rates occur in oligotrophic gyres and instead provide evidence of its importance in upwelling regimes where phosphate‐ and iron‐rich waters rich are upwelled.
Potential DNA transfer from the chloroplast to the nucleus in Eryngium alpinum

Very divergent psbA‐trnH chloroplast sequences were, for some Eryngiun alpinum individuals, repeatedly obtained and could not be attributed to contaminations nor to casual intraspecific variation. The design of external primers allowed the amplification of two different sequences for the same individuals. The divergent sequences were found to be more variable than their counterparts, to have a low GC content and to display a nonsynonymous substitution in psbA C‐terminal region, all reasons that led us to hypothesize that they are paraloguous fragments transferred into the nucleus (NuPt). Quantitative polymerase chain reactions confirmed this hypothesis. Such NuPt might have severe implications in plant phylogeography and barcoding.
Number : WUCSE-2007-13 2007 Mercury BLAST dictionaries : analysis and performance measurement

This report describes a hashing scheme for a dictionary of short bit strings. The scheme, which we call near-perfect hashing, was designed as part of the construction of Mercury BLAST, an FPGA-based accelerator for the BLAST family of biosequence comparison algorithms. Near-perfect hashing is a heuristic variant of the well-known displacement hashing approach to building perfect hash functions. It uses a family of hash functions composed from linear transformations on bit vectors and lookups in small precomputed tables, both of which are especially appropriate for implementation in ardware logic. We show empirically that for inputs derived from genomic DNA sequences, our scheme obtains a good tradeoff between the size of the hash table and the time required to ompute it from a set of input strings, while generating few or no collisions between keys in the table. One of the building blocks of our scheme is the H_3 family of hash functions, which are linear transformations on bit vectors. We show that the uniformity of hashing performed with randomly chosen linear transformations depends critically on their rank, and that randomly chosen transformations have a high probability of having the Type of Report: Other Department of Computer Science & Engineering Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1045 St. Louis, MO 63130 ph: (314) 935-6160 Mercury BLAST Dictionaries: Analysis and Performance Measurement Jeremy Buhler jbuhler@cse.wustl. edu
The Plasmacytoma Growth Inhibitor Restrictin-P Is an Antagonist of Interleukin 6 and Interleukin 11

A stromal protein, designated restrictin-P, that specifically kills plasma-like cells was purified to homogeneity and shown to be identical with activin A. The specificity to plasma-like cells stemmed from the ability of restrictin-P/activin A to competitively antagonize the proliferation-inducing effects of interleukin (IL) 6 and IL-11. Restrictin-P further interfered with the IL-6-induced secretion of acute phase proteins by HepG2 human hepatoma cells and with the IL-6-mediated differentiation of M1 myeloblasts. A competition binding assay indicated that restrictin-P did not interfere with the binding of IL-6 to its receptor on plasma-like cells, suggesting that it may act by intervening in the signal transduction pathway of the growth factor. Indeed, concomitant addition of restrictin-P and IL-6 to cytokine-deprived B9 hybridoma cells was followed by sustained overexpression of junB gene until cell death occurred, while IL-6 alone caused a transient increase only. This altered response to IL-6 stimulation was accompanied by a moderate increase in STAT protein activation. Thus, in this study, we identified the plasmacytoma growth inhibitor, restrictin-P, as being activin A of stromal origin. It is shown that activin A is an antagonist of IL-6-induced functions and that it modifies the IL-6 signaling pattern.
Labeling and tracking of mesenchymal stromal cells with EdU.

BACKGROUND AIMS The thymidine analog bromodeoxyuridine (5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine; BrdU) has been used widely to label cells in culture and in tissue. The labeled cells can also be tracked when transplanted into a suitable host. In the present study we tested a new thymidine analog, 5-ethynyl-2-deoxyuridine (EdU), for labeling and tracking of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC), specifically adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSC). METHODS Labeling of ADSC was examined for the dosage effect of EdU and stability of label by Alexa-594 staining followed by fluorescence microscopy. Labeling of various organs/tissues was done by intraperitoneal injection of EdU and examined by histology and fluorescence microscopy. Tracking of ADSC was done by intratissue or intravenous transplantation of EdU-labeled ADSC into various tissues and examined by histology and fluorescence microscopy. RESULTS EdU was incorporated specifically into the nucleus in approximately 50% of ADSC and the percentage of cells that remained fully labeled declined with time. Peritoneal injection of EdU resulted in the appearance of EdU-positive cells in most organs and tissues. In the intestine, EdU-positive cells were found in both the epithelium and connective tissues 7 h after injection. Long-term (2-6 week) follow-ups found EdU-positive cells only in the connective tissue. Tracking of ADSC was successful in tissues 10 weeks after intratissue or intravenous transplantation. CONCLUSIONS Cell labeling with EdU in culture or living animals can be performed easily. The detection of EdU label requires no harsh treatment or immunologic reaction, as detection of BrdU label does. EdU can be used for long-term tracking of ADSC.
Document level assessment of document retrieval systems in a pairwise system evaluation

Introduction. The use of averaged topic-level scores can result in the loss of valuable data and can cause misinterpretation of the effectiveness of system performance. This study aims to use the scores of each document to evaluate document retrieval systems in a pairwise system evaluation. Method. The chosen evaluation metrics are document-level precision scores against topic-level average precision (AP) scores, and document-level rank-biased precision scores against topic-level rank-biased precision at cut-off k (k=100) scores. Analysis. An analysis of the results of paired significance tests with the use of document-level and topic-level scores are compared to determine the agreement in the obtained numbers of statistically significant information retrieval system pairs. Results. The experiment results at document-level are an effective evaluation unit in the pairwise evaluation of information retrieval systems, with higher numbers of statistically significant (p=0.01) system pairs, compared with the topic-level results and a high percentage of statistically significant agreement with topic-level. Conclusion. This study presents an original viewpoint on measuring the effectiveness of document retrieval systems through pairwise evaluation by using document-level scores as a unit of evaluation in the significance testing instead of the traditional topic-level scores (which involve averaging document scores).
VALUE CREATION IN BANKING

Please enter abstraThis paper investigates the determinants of shareholder value creation focussing on both listed and non-listed European banks over 1997-2002. We find that cost and profit efficiency have a positive influence on shareholder value creation. Leverage is also found to be inversely related to shareholder value creation. Other factors that are found to impact positively on value creation include deposit and loan growth rates, market concentration and employee costs. Finally, substantial variations exist in shareholder value creation across European countries, bank ownership types and also over time.
Spin Transport in Bilayer Graphene Armchair Nanoribbon: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

In this paper, we study the spin relaxation in bilayer armchair graphene nanoribbons (acGNRs) by employing the semiclassical Monte Carlo approach. D'yakonov-Perel relaxation due to structural inversion asymmetry (Rashba spin-orbit coupling) and Elliott-Yafet relaxation cause spin dephasing in bilayer GNRs. We investigate the spin relaxation in bilayer α-, β-, and γ-acGNRs with varying their width and the temperature. We consider injection polarization along the z-direction, which is perpendicular to the plane of grapheme, and study the magnitude of ensemble-averaged spin variation along the x-direction which is the transport direction. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no Monte Carlo simulation performed on spin transport in acGNRs. We investigate the role of various scattering events in spin relaxation in bilayer acGNRs. We find that the spin relaxation length in the α-acGNR is 6.5% higher than in β-acGNR and 10.8% higher than in γ-acGNR at 300 K. We also report the results of the variation of spin relaxation length with varying temperatures. We find that the spin relaxation length decreases by 9% in α-acGNR, by 10.5% in β-acGNR, and 11% in γ-ac GNR at 300 K compared to 4 K. The decrease in spin relaxation length at the higher temperature is due to the increase in phonon and spin-flip scattering rates at the higher temperature. This theoretical investigation is particularly important to identify the factors responsible for the experimentally observed spin relaxation length in GNRs.
Success of social networking sites: Evidence from the University of Novi Sad

In the higher education industry, web-based marketing has already been widely applied to service current students, as well as to attract new ones. All major universities in the world have incorporated their websites with social networking sites (SNSs), but it is likely that a significantly larger proportion has no clear knowledge of how successful their SNSs are. Accordingly, this study proposes an integrated model for evaluating the effectiveness of SNSs from a student point of view. This model is based on the use construct and seven socio-demographic conditions.
Sit-to-Stand and Stand-to-Sit Transfer Support for Complete Paraplegic Patients with Robot Suit HAL

Physical support of lower limbs during sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transfers is important for an independent life of paraplegic patients. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to realize the control method of complete paraplegic patients during sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transfers by using a 'robot suit HAL'. It is the most challenging issue because the HAL should start supporting the wearer's motions synchronizing his/her intention. Our proposed algorithm infers the intention based on a preliminary motion that is observed just before a desired motion so the patient could start the sit-to-stand or stand-to-sit transfers without any operation. When the HAL detects the intention to stand up and sit down, the HAL starts to support the wearer's weight and to control their body posture for stability during their transfer. The proposed algorithms embedded in the HAL were applied to a complete spinal cord injury patient in a clinical trial to confirm the effectiveness. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithms could support his sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transfers safely and conveniently by keeping his stability and by reflecting his intentions. Consequently, we confirmed that the proposed method successfully supported the sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transfers of the complete paraplegic patient with the HAL.
Relational contexts in adjustment to pregnancy of HIV-positive women: relationships, social support and personal adjustment

Abstract Relational contexts are a central issue in most people's lives, and people usually rely on the support of others in everyday circumstances. Social support, as a relational context, could have a positive influence on personal adjustment, and is particularly relevant in the psychological well-being of HIV patients. Guided by the Convoy Model of social networks, in a sample of 31 HIV-positive pregnant women we try to assess the role of social support and social network in the adjustment to pregnancy. Profile analysis suggests a greater importance of social support provided by the partner and both parents, especially the support provided by the mother. At the same time, it seems to highlight the buffering hypothesis of social support, which could be understood as a protection factor in the adjustment of HIV-infected women’ to pregnancy.
Global brand equity model: combining customer‐based with product‐market outcome approaches

Purpose – There is a growing interest in brand formation and brand valuation among global firms today, but global marketers typically ignore one of the key factors of brand building – corporation ability association (CAA). This paper aims to explore the structural relationship between CAA and consumer‐based brand equity variables and its product‐market outcomes.Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing Aaker and Keller's theoretical framework of brand equity, this paper develops a brand equity model combining customer‐based brand equity with product‐market outcome approaches. A set of scales are developed and tested on a national sample of Chinese consumers.Findings – The data provide support for ten of the 12 hypotheses. The results indicate that CAA is an important factor in building and preserving brand equity. CAA and brand awareness have impact on quality perception, which has positive impact on brand resonance, brand extensibility, and price flexibility. Brand resonance has positive influence on brand.
Approximate solutions and performance bounds for the sensor placement problem

This paper considers the placement of m sensors at n > m possible locations. Given noisy observations, knowledge of the state correlation matrix, and a mean square error criterion, the problem can be formulated as an integer programming problem. The solution for large m and n is infeasible, requiring us to look at approximate algorithms. Using properties of matrices, we come up with lower and upper bounds for the optimal solution performance. We also formulate a greedy algorithm and a dynamic programming algorithm that runs in polynomial time of m and n. Finally, we show through simulations that the greedy and dynamic programming algorithms very closely approximate the optimal solution. The sensor placement problem has many energy applications where we are often confronted with limited resources. Some examples include where to place environmental sensors for an area where there are large amounts of distributed solar PV and where to place grid monitors on an electrical distribution microgrid.