Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Cardiac and Renal Functions in Wistar Albino Rats Administered Carmoisine and Tartrazine

Carmoisine and tartrazine are azo dyes widely used as food colourants. This study examine the effects of oral administration of carmoisine and tartrazine on some biochemical parameters in the heart and kidney of albino rats. Twenty four (24) female albino rats (average weight 140g) were sorted into four groups. Group A received water and served as the control, Group B-250mg/kg bw carmoisine, Group C-250mg/kg bw tartrazine, Group D-co-administered 250mg/kg bw each of carmoisine and tartrazine. The food dyes were administered daily for a period of 21 days. Results obtained showed a significant increase (p<0.05) in the levels of urea, creatinine and electrolytes (Na+, K+ and CO32-) in the serum of rats administered the food dyes compared to control. The colourants also caused significant alterations (p<0.05) in the levels of enzymes (creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase) in the serum and heart homogenate of the experimental rats. Histological examination of the renal and cardiac tissues correlate with the biochemical results indicating marked distortions in the kidney and heart of rats administered carmoisine and tartrazine. These results suggest that carmoisine and tartrazine have the tendency of inducing nephrotoxicity and cardiac dysfunction in rats.
Measuring the Quality of University Computer Labs Using Servqual: A Longitudinal Study

The appropriateness of using SERVQUAL for measuring service quality for a wide range of services has been debated since the model was first presented by Parasuraman. Zeithaml. and Berry in 1985. While the protagonists of SERVQUAL have argued in favor of the original model and have modified it to make it more consistent, other researchers have questioned its usefulness and validity, particularly across a wide and diverse range of services. Notwithstanding the debate, however, over the years SERVQUAL has been used to measure service quality in many different services. This article presents an application of SERVQUAL to measure levels or dimensions of service provided by computer labs at a southwest state university. Consistent with the literature, factor analysis identified three dimensions: staff, services, and professionalism. More important, a longitudinal application of the SERVQUAL survey in 1999 and 2001 showed remarkable consistency.
Recovery of descriptive information in images from digital libraries by means of EXIF metadata

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a study case of the digitization of documents kept by the Reino de Valencia Archive and its description and recovery through EXIF metadata from the digital images obtained. The control of digital images, in terms of identification of their number and the batches they belong to, can be achieved by naming the digital file with digits that the user can identify.Design/methodology/approach – The paper's objective is to provide image descriptions far better than by naming the file. For that reason the paper analyses the tools and results obtained with each one of them.Findings – Results about using commercial software for metadata image description.Originality/value – The paper describes a novel use of metadata for historical archives documents.
The Nature of the Life Concept across the Life-Span

In this study of people ranging from six to over sixty-five years of age, a high frequency of animistic responses was found in all ages examined. While a significant age effect was noted in the ability to categorize animate objects accurately, animisitc responding was generally unrelated to logical classification ability or to analytic cognitive style. For eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, however, a significant relationship between animism and both cognitive style and classification ability existed. An interpretation of the results which found high levels of animistic thinking beyond adolescence does not support Piagetian theory. Rather, adults may respond animistically because of emotional attachments which they have formed to certain meaningful physical objects.
The cost-effectiveness issue of adjuvant trastuzumab in early breast cancer

Trastuzumab has shown activity in patients with early breast cancer that overexpresses HER-2, and this drug has been employed in the adjuvant setting. Significant resources have been allocated to finance this new therapy. To support decision makers in their allocation of resources, cost-effectiveness models are constructed to compare the costs and outcomes of anticancer therapy. This survey focuses on studies exploring adjuvant trastuzumab therapy in early-stage breast cancer that have been published since 2003, which report on efficacy, benefit and/or cost data in this setting. The paper summarises the results, focuses on the level of evidence of these studies, compares the calculated cost-effectiveness ratios and makes recommendations for future cost-effectiveness analyses.
Structure-Function Analysis of Fission Yeast Hus 1-Rad 1-Rad 9 Checkpoint Complex

Hus1, Rad1, and Rad9 are three evolutionarily conserved proteins required for checkpoint control in fission yeast. These proteins are known to form a stable complex in vivo. Recently, computational studies have predicted structural similarity between the individual proteins of Hus1-Rad1Rad9 complex and the replication processivity factor proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). This has led to the proposal that the Hus1-Rad1-Rad9 complex may form a PCNA-like ring structure, and could function as a sliding clamp during checkpoint control. In the present study, we have attempted to test the predictions of this model by asking whether the PCNA alignment identifies functionally important residues or explains mutant phenotypes of hus1, rad1, or rad9 alleles. Although some of our results are consistent with the PCNA alignment, others indicate that the Hus1-Rad1-Rad9 complex possesses unique structural and functional features.
Unmixing-Based Soft Color Segmentation for Image Manipulation

We present a new method for decomposing an image into a set of soft color segments that are analogous to color layers with alpha channels that have been commonly utilized in modern image manipulation software. We show that the resulting decomposition serves as an effective intermediate image representation, which can be utilized for performing various, seemingly unrelated, image manipulation tasks. We identify a set of requirements that soft color segmentation methods have to fulfill, and present an in-depth theoretical analysis of prior work. We propose an energy formulation for producing compact layers of homogeneous colors and a color refinement procedure, as well as a method for automatically estimating a statistical color model from an image. This results in a novel framework for automatic and high-quality soft color segmentation that is efficient, parallelizable, and scalable. We show that our technique is superior in quality compared to previous methods through quantitative analysis as well as visually through an extensive set of examples. We demonstrate that our soft color segments can easily be exported to familiar image manipulation software packages and used to produce compelling results for numerous image manipulation applications without forcing the user to learn new tools and workflows.
Regulation of the myeloid-cell-expressed human gp91-phox gene as studied by transfer of yeast artificial chromosome clones into embryonic stem cells: suppression of a variegated cellular pattern of expression requires a full complement of distant cis elements

Identifying the full repertoire of cis elements required for gene expression in mammalian cells (or animals) is challenging, given the moderate sizes of many loci. To study how the human gp91-phox gene is expressed specifically in myeloid hematopoietic cells, we introduced yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) clones and derivatives generated in yeast into mouse embryonic stem cells competent to differentiate to myeloid cells in vitro or into mouse chimeras. Fully appropriate regulation was recapitulated with a 130-kb YAC containing 60 and 30 kb of 5' and 3' flanking sequences, respectively. Immunodetection of human gp91-phox protein revealed uniform expression in individual myeloid cells. The removal of upstream sequences led to decreased overall expression which reflected largely a variegated pattern of expression, such that cells were either "on" or "off," rather than pancellular loss of expression. The proportion of clones displaying marked variegation increased with progressive deletion. DNase I mapping of chromatin identified two hypersensitive clusters, consistent with the presence of multiple regulatory elements. Our findings point to cooperative interactions of complex regulatory elements and suggest that the presence of an incomplete set of elements reduces the probability that an open chromatin domain (or active transcriptional complex) may form or be maintained in the face of repressive influences of neighboring chromatin.
Analysis of the Emergence in Swarm Model Based on Largest Lyapunov Exponent

Emergent behaviors of collective intelligence systems, exemplified by swarm model, have attracted broad interests in recent years. However, current research mostly stops at observational interpretations and qualitative descriptions of emergent phenomena and is essentially short of quantitative analysis and evaluation. In this paper, we conduct a quantitative study on the emergence of swarm model by using chaos analysis of complex dynamic systems. This helps to achieve a more exact understanding of emergent phenomena. In particular, we evaluate the emergent behaviors of swarm model quantitatively by using the chaos and stability analysis of swarm model based on largest Lyapunov exponent. It is concluded that swarm model is at the edge of chaos when emergence occurs, and whether chaotic or stable at the beginning, swarm model will converge to stability with the elapse of time along with interactions among agents.
Diagnosis and management of primary hyperparathyroidism--a scientific statement from the Department of Bone Metabolism, the Brazilian Society for Endocrinology and Metabolism.

OBJECTIVE To conduct a literature review on the diagnosis and management of primary hyperparathyroidism including the classical hipercalcemic form as well as the normocalcemic variant. MATERIALS AND METHODS This scientific statement was generated by a request from the Brazilian Medical Association (AMB) to the Brazilian Society for Endocrinology as part of its Clinical Practice Guidelines program. Articles were identified by searching in PubMed and Cochrane databases as well as abstracts presented at the Endocrine Society, Brazilian Society for Endocrinology Annual Meetings and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Annual Meeting during the last 5 years. Grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendation were adapted from the first report of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine. All grades of recommendation, including "D", are based on scientific evidence. The differences between A, B, C and D, are due exclusively to the methods employed in generating evidence. CONCLUSION We present a scientific statement on primary hyperparathyroidism providing the level of evidence and the degree of recommendation regarding causes, clinical presentation as well as surgical and medical treatment.
Tighter Estimates for epsilon-nets for Disks

The geometric hitting set problem is one of the basic geometric combinatorial optimization problems: given a set $P$ of points, and a set $\mathcal{D}$ of geometric objects in the plane, the goal is to compute a small-sized subset of $P$ that hits all objects in $\mathcal{D}$. In 1994, Bronniman and Goodrich made an important connection of this problem to the size of fundamental combinatorial structures called $\epsilon$-nets, showing that small-sized $\epsilon$-nets imply approximation algorithms with correspondingly small approximation ratios. Very recently, Agarwal and Pan showed that their scheme can be implemented in near-linear time for disks in the plane. Altogether this gives $O(1)$-factor approximation algorithms in $\tilde{O}(n)$ time for hitting sets for disks in the plane. This constant factor depends on the sizes of $\epsilon$-nets for disks; unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art bounds are large -- at least $24/\epsilon$ and most likely larger than $40/\epsilon$. Thus the approximation factor of the Agarwal and Pan algorithm ends up being more than $40$. The best lower-bound is $2/\epsilon$, which follows from the Pach-Woeginger construction for halfspaces in two dimensions. Thus there is a large gap between the best-known upper and lower bounds. Besides being of independent interest, finding precise bounds is important since this immediately implies an improved linear-time algorithm for the hitting-set problem. The main goal of this paper is to improve the upper-bound to $13.4/\epsilon$ for disks in the plane. The proof is constructive, giving a simple algorithm that uses only Delaunay triangulations. We have implemented the algorithm, which is available as a public open-source module. Experimental results show that the sizes of $\epsilon$-nets for a variety of data-sets is lower, around $9/\epsilon$.
Methodology for quantification of equipment trips due to voltage sags

This paper discusses universal methodology for quantification of equipment trips due to voltage sags. Every sensitive equipment is described by the voltage-tolerance curve with specific limit values. Generally, one type of the sensitive equipment can be described by different characteristics that create an area of uncertainty, which influences the behavior of these devices. For calculation of expected number of equipment trips due to voltage sags are using various types of sensitivity equipment (e.g. personal computer, adjustable speed drive and programmable logic controller). The first general probability approach used probability density functions for bivariate random variable (magnitude and duration of the voltage sag) and the second cumulative probability approach used probability distribution functions for bivariate random variable. Moreover, the estimation of equipment trips is complemented with determining various levels of sensitivity, which is dependent on operating conditions.
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND ASSESSMENT An Asynchronous Learning Approach for the Instructional Component of a Dual-Campus Pharmacy Resident Teaching Program

Objective. To describe the shift to an asynchronous online approach for pedagogy instruction within a pharmacy resident teaching program offered by a dual-campus college. Design. The pedagogy instruction component of the teaching program (Part I) was redesigned with a focus on the content, delivery, and coordination of the learning environment. Asynchronous online learning replaced distance technology or lecture capture. Using a pedagogical content knowledge framework, residents participated in self-paced online learning using faculty recordings, readings, and discussion board activities. A learning management system was used to assess achievement of learning objectives and participation prior to progressing to the teaching experiences component of the teaching program (Part II). Assessment. Evaluation of resident pedagogical knowledge development and participation in Part I of the teaching program was achieved through the learning management system. Participant surveys and written reﬂections showed general satisfaction with the online learning environment. Future considerations include addition of a live orientation session and increased faculty presence in the online learning environment. Conclusion. An online approach framed by educational theory can be an effective way to provide pedagogy instruction within a teaching program.
Firms’ Propensity to Report Cash Flow and Earnings Surprises of Divergent Signs

Nonnegative (negative) cash flow surprises help generate nonnegative (negative) earnings surprises; hence, the two surprises are generally expected to have the same sign. We document firms’ propensity to report surprises of opposing signs and investigate conditions under which firms beat cash flow forecasts but miss earnings forecasts. Firms are more likely to do so when: adverse valuation consequences are less severe; analyst following of cash flows vis-a-vis earnings is large; analysts forecast extreme accruals; analysts downwardly revise cash flow but not earnings forecasts; firms are in financial distress; firms have inflated balance sheets; and earnings but not cash flows decrease.
Sparse Flight Array SAR Downward-Looking 3-D Imaging Based on Compressed Sensing

In this letter, we combine the airborne cross-track array synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique and the sparse flight sampling method with a criterion of Barker code to generate a high-resolution downward-looking 3-D image. Furthermore, we propose an effective image reconstruction algorithm that is able to obtain image quality even with sparse sampling. Exploiting interferometry makes the SAR image sparsely represented in frequency domain, which can be naturally reconstructed with compressed sensing (CS) theory with sufficient precision and quality. The results of the simulation and experimental data of the anechoic chamber are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the algorithm.
Evaluating Real Estate Development Using Real Options Analysis

This paper uses an example involving a commercial real estate project to demonstrate the practical application of real options analysis. The approach described can be used to value the project at any stage of construction, which is especially useful when market conditions are poor and suspension of many partly-completed projects is being considered. It builds on static DCF analysis and offers instructors the opportunity to give students with basic knowledge of the binomial option pricing model exposure to a practical real-options toolkit. All the calculations can be performed in a spreadsheet and only one parameter - the volatility of the price of the completed project - needs to be estimated in addition to those required for static DCF analysis.
Ridit Analysis for Cooper-Harper and Other Ordinal Ratings for Sparse Data - A Distance-based Approach

Ordinal categorical data (OCD), such as opinion rankings, are common in many areas of application. In the Air Force, Cooper-Harper ratings are used extensively for the assessment of Flying Qualities. OCD is not, however, a ratio-scale measurement and cannot be treated as ordinary numbers. Notwithstanding this, the ordinal scores are often regarded as ratio-scale and analyzed incorrectly using means and variances. A method of correct analysis of OCD leading to statistically valid hypothesis tests and based on a method of probability scoring or ‘Ridits,’ has found wide applicability for other large-data-set applications such as Epidemiology. This paper explains the use of Ridits and examines how we might effect a Ridit analysis on the often sparse data sets in many Flying Qualities applications. The method of this paper is to fit empirical Beta distributions to observed data, and then to use a randomization approach to make inferences on the difference between distributions based on a distance metric.
Exploring antecedents of extended supply chain performance measures: An insight from Indian green manufacturing practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of Indian firms practicing green manufacturing practices and their impact on extended supply chain performance. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper the authors have adopted systematic literature review (SLR) to derive research objectives and questions. In order to answer research questions the authors have proposed a theoretical framework and derived research hypotheses. The authors identified constructs and items through extant literatures and developed a structured questionnaire which was pretested before using for final survey. The data were collected in two phases and also performed wave analysis to check non-response bias to avoid any significant impact of non-response bias on statistical analysis. The data has been used to conduct exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation which reduces variables into five parsimonious and orthogonal factors. The factor analysis output was further used as an input of regression analysi.
Ethical concerns regarding guidelines for the conduct of clinical research on children

In this article we examine ethical aspects of the involvement of children in clinical research, specifically those who are incapable of giving informed consent to participate. The topic is, of course, not a new one in medical ethics but there are some tensions in current guidelines that, in our view, need to be made explicit and which need to be responded to by the relevant official bodies. In particular, we focus on tensions between the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, and the guidance offered by the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (formerly the British Paediatric Association), and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences. We conclude with a call for these organisations to make their guidance explicit in relation to the World Medical Association Declaration.
Development of Derivative Spectrophotometric Estimation of Atazanavir sulfate in Bulk Drug and Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms

A simple, precise and economical spectrophotometric method has been developed for the estimation of Atazanavir sulfate in bulk and pharmaceutical formulations. The quantitative determination of the drug was carried out using the first order derivative method. Atazanavir sulfate shows a sharp peak at 254.0 nm in first order derivative spectrum with n =1. The drugs follows Beer-Lambert’s law in the concentration range of 10-50μg mL with correlation coefficient of 0.9986. Results of the analysis were validated statistically and found to be satisfactory. The method was validated as per ICH guideline.
Mandatory adoption of IFRS by EU listed firms and Comparability: Determinants and Analysts' Forecasts

In 2005, the EU adopted IFRS for all listed companies publishing consolidated financial statements in Europe. The transition from national accounting standards to IFRS was complex and costly but the main arguments for it included the improvement in comparability across companies and improvement in capital markets' efficiency. This study focuses on the comparability of the financial statements of EU listed firms, before (2003) and after (2005 & 2010) IFRS mandatory implementation, and on its determinants and consequences. We find significant convergence in firm's accounting practices (input comparability) after IFRS. Output comparability also significantly improves between the pre and post IFRS periods. However, neither of the two measures improves with IFRS familiarity (no significant difference between 2005 and 2010). Furthermore, we find that output comparability is not driven by the convergence in accounting choices. Our tests strongly suggest that output comparability is improved because of IFRS adoption and more comparable accruals in relation to industry peers. This suggests that more comparable accruals facilitate investors to value firms more accurately. In fact, we find that more comparable accruals facilitate lower analysts' forecast dispersion. Finally, we find that analysts' forecasts errors declining as output comparability increases, suggesting that output comparability increases the usefulness of accounting information.