Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Screening mutations in phenylketonuria by means of nonradioactive reverse dot blot hybridization].

OBJECTIVE To establish a simple, accurate and rapid method for screening of the mutant genes in phenylketonuria (PKU). METHODS Four exons harboring the mutations, Y204C (exon6, E6), R243Q(E7), Y356X(E11) and R413P(E12), were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with incorporation of biotinylated deoxynucleotide(biotinylated-11-dUTP or biotinylated-14-dCTP). Hybridization between immobilized allele-specific oligonucleotide probes and biotin-labelled amplified DNA was performed and nonradioactively detected by a colorimetric reaction using streptavidin-alkaline phosphatase. RESULTS The methods of non-radioactive reverse dot blot hybridization were established to screen the mutations. We detected the genotypes of five PKU patients and found that three of them carried R243Q mutation and one of the three also carried Y356X mutation. These results were confirmed by PCR-single strand conformation polymorphism. CONCLUSION This method is suitable for rapid screening for common mutations in Chinese PKU patients.
A Typology of Charity Support Behaviors: Toward a Holistic View of Helping

SUMMARY Charities and researchers have begun to adopt a much broader view of support; one that transcends traditional forms of consumer charitable support behavior (CSB) such as donations and volunteerism to include cause-related marketing (CRM), charity events and charity gaming. The current article builds upon this expanding view of charity support by introducing a typology of CSB that encompasses the breadth of consumer CSB. In doing so, the article provides direction for charities seeking to garner additional support from current supporters, as well as a means of attracting new supporters by using non-traditional forms of charitable support.
Can a Specially Designed Information Intervention Around the Wash-Agriculture Linkages Make Any Difference? Experimental Evidence of Behavioral Changes and Health Impacts

This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially designed packages of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions with ‘student brigades’ (student teams tasked with maintaining hygiene in school) on household WASH behavior and practices in both a household and farm setting. In addition, household members’ health and developmental productivity outcomes were also examined. A randomized control trial (RCT) involving student brigades (SBs) was carried out in six sub-districts (hotspots) characterized by comparatively poor WASH indicators. The specially designed WASH-agriculture treatment consisted of three interventions: (1) informing the households about the prior water testing results; (2) delivering hygiene messages with the help of posters; (3) equipping SB members with water quality test kits and asking them to test the water quality at different places and report their findings to their household. Employing the difference-in-difference (DID) multivariate regression technique, the analysis revealed that the BRAC WASH treatment performed well in terms of effecting behavioral changes and improving hygiene practices. In addition, the results suggested that informing households of their drinking water quality and conveying WASH-agriculture hygiene messages to them could have a significant incremental impact over the existing BRAC WASH treatment in changing household hygiene behavior and practices at home and on farms. This research provides evidence that students can act as agents of change in improving water quality, sanitation and health in a rural setting.
Rewards and Challenges of Community Health Center Practice

Background: More than 1100 community health centers (CHCs) in the United States provide primary care to 20 million underserved patients annually. CHCs have struggled to recruit and retain qualified physicians. Objective: To understand physicians’ work experiences in CHCs and identify major sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Methods: Using purposeful sampling, we conducted semistructured interviews with 12 family physicians practicing in CHCs. Interview questions assessed physicians’ experiences in CHCs and sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Interview notes were coded and analyzed by 2 investigators using a grounded theory approach to identify key themes. Results: Though family physicians feel tremendous satisfaction from care of underserved patients, they are frustrated with the overwhelming workload they experience. Family physicians also report poor administrative management while working in CHCs. Conclusions: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which relies on expansion of CHC services, may be adversely affected by family physicians’ frustrations with CHC practice. Further research to explore and potentially improve the CHC work environment may be needed.
Recognition of Facial Expressions Based on Tracking and Selection of Discriminative Geometric Features

In this paper, we present a method for fully automatic facial expression recognition in facial image sequences using feature extracted from tracking of facial landmarks. The facial landmarks at the first frame of the image sequence under examination are initialized using elastic bunch graph matching (EBGM) algorithm and tracked in the consecutive video frame over time. At first, the most discriminative geometric features in terms of triangle are selected using multi-class AdaBoost with extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier. The features for facial expression recognition (FER) are extracted from AdaBoost selected most discriminative set of triangles composed of facial landmarks. Finally, the facial expressions are recognized using support vector machines (SVM) classification. The results on the extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) and Multimedia Understanding Group (MUG) facial expression database shows a recognition accuracy of 97.80% and 95.50% respectively using proposed facial expression recognition system.
To Extend or Not to Extend: Success Determinants of Line Extensions

The authors study the determinants of line extension success using data on 75 line extensions of 34 cigarette brands over a 20-year period to investigate the relative effects of brand, extension, and firm characteristics on the incremental market share of brand line extensions. The econometric model also captures the extent of cannibalization of parent brand sales that may have occurred due to the line extension's introduction. The authors also explore the role of a brand's symbolic value as a factor in line extension success. Results indicate that parent brand strength and its symbolic value, early entry timing, a firm's size, and distinctive marketing competencies, as well as the advertising support allocated to line extensions, contribute positively to the success of line extensions. Their findings suggest that, in this industry, cannibalization effects of line extension activity may have been limited and line extensions into earlier subcategories actually may have helped the parent brand. Even with cannibalization, the incremental sales generated by the extension seem to be reason enough to make a line extension strategy viable.
Implications of Personal Technologies in the Workplace: Distinctions between Employer and Employee Perceptions

Personal workplace technologies, with the capability to both enhance productivity and monitor staff performance, have become prevalent in many organisations. With the increased need for the use of personal computers, the Internet and safety and security technologies, employers are offered a plethora of tools that can be used to track the activities of staff during their working day. This thesis offers a case study on an organisation, studying the personal workplace technologies it adopted and how they are applied in the organisation by management. The main reasons for implementation into the core organisational structure are compared between the unique perceptions; those of staff and management. The impact of these technologies, their benefits and problems are discussed and evaluated from the perspectives of both staff and management, which provides a number of points of difference and agreement. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y is explored, and compared against the characteristics of the case study organisation. Findings from primary research are then analysed in order to deduce concluding recommendations, particularly the need to increase staff training after implementing personal workplace technologies. Including all affected employees in meetings to discuss personal workplace technology, and its impact on the job role, is vital in increasing transparency and trust. Furthermore, decreasing levels of employee monitoring where possible, and ensuring it is done for reasons other than the need to know the whereabouts and activities of staff would ensure a more positive working environment. These recommendations and conclusions open up an area for further research in order to seek more knowledge into the vital issue of personal workplace technologies and their impact upon an organisation and its actors. Implications of Personal Technologies in the Workplace: Distinctions Between Employer and Employee Perceptions 2009
Dima: A Distributed In-Memory Similarity-Based Query Processing System

Data analysts in industries spend more than 80% of time on data cleaning and integration in the whole process of data analytics due to data errors and inconsistencies. It calls for effective query processing techniques to tolerate the errors and inconsistencies. In this paper, we develop a distributed in-memory similarity-based query processing system called Dima. Dima supports two core similarity-based query operations, i.e., similarity search and similarity join. Dima extends the SQL programming interface for users to easily invoke these two operations in their data analysis jobs. To avoid expensive data transformation in a distributed environment, we design selectable signatures where two records approximately match if they share common signatures. More importantly, we can adaptively select the signatures to balance the workload. Dima builds signature-based global indexes and local indexes to support efficient similarity search and join. Since Spark is one of the widely adopted distributed in-memory computing systems, we have seamlessly integrated Dima into Spark and developed effective query optimization techniques in Spark. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first full-fledged distributed in-memory system that can support similarity-based query processing. We demonstrate our system in several scenarios, including entity matching, web table integration and query recommendation.
Early detection of thick melanomas in the United States: beware of the nodular subtype.

BACKGROUND Incidence and mortality of melanoma in the United States have risen steeply. Part of this mortality increase may be related to late detection of biologically aggressive nodular melanomas. We determined trends in distribution of thin and thick melanoma, with emphasis on the histopathologic subtype nodular melanoma. METHODS Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results melanoma incidence data for whites were obtained for 1988 through 1999 and stratified according to histologic subtype: lentigo maligna melanoma, superficial spreading melanoma, nodular melanoma, other, and not otherwise specified (NOS); thickness: 0-0.99 mm, 1.00 mm-1.99 mm, and > or =2.0 mm; patient age (0-49, 50+); gender; and year (1988-1991, 1992-1995, 1996-1999). Comparison of tumor thickness between strata was defined by year of diagnosis, sex, age, and histologic subtype. RESULTS The number of new melanoma cases in a 3-year period increased 60% from 1988-1991 (n = 9132) to 1996-1999 (n = 14 575). The proportion of thick melanomas (> or =2 mm) remained relatively stable during the 12 study years. Nodular melanoma comprised 9% of all recorded cases but 34% of melanomas 2 mm or larger, including melanoma not otherwise specified (NOS), and nearly 50% of all melanomas 2 mm or larger when NOS cases were excluded. In contrast, superficial spreading melanoma was almost uniformly diagnosed as an early tumor, mostly (77%) presenting as thin melanoma (<1 mm) and with only 7% presenting as thick melanoma (> or =2 mm). CONCLUSIONS A substantial number of thick melanomas in the United States are of the nodular subtype, and median thickness of nodular melanoma has not changed during the 12 years of study. New strategies are needed to decrease the incidence of thick melanoma in the United States.
Haptic Needle Unit for MR-Guided Biopsy and Its Control

MRI provides high-resolution anatomical images and is ideal for certain image-guided interventions. Due to the physical separation between the patient region of interest and the workspace accessible by the clinician, direct force feedback from the target anatomy is missing during the interventions. This paper demonstrates the use of a master-slave haptic device for magnetic resonance-guided biopsy, using a novel haptic control scheme based upon a neural network speed model. Results have shown the feasibility of the proposed hardware design and control scheme.
A new approach for modeling researcher community based on scientific article metadata using natural language processing

The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia has requirements to answer five main questions, i.e. what are the most popular research topics; which research topics tend to diminish; what are the trending research topics; who are the most influential researchers in a specific research topic, and; who are leading researchers in a specific topic. This study is a part of our ongoing main project to develop a scientific community model based on scientific article publication. This paper introduces a new approach to model a virtual researcher network using metadata of articles. We modified PageRank to develop a term graph and author-term graph for this purpose. Based on the preliminary results, the model could answer the five aforementioned questions.
Exploring consumer experiences with a service brand

The commercial importance of services has been realised in recent times and the importance of research to understand service brands and their meaning for consumers is a growing priority. This study focuses on consumer based perceptions of brand associations of a service brand, attitudes toward and intention to use the branded service via qualitative and quantitative methods. The results indicate a number of key dimensions that are important for consumers of services such as core service, experience with brand, self‐image congruency, feelings, servicescape and interpersonal service, publicity, advertising, price and brand. However, in this study country of origin and word of mouth were not significant. Largely, the findings indicated that service brand associations influence brand attitude and attitude and associations influence intention to use a service brand.
Compartmentalization of coatal sea surface wind by statistical approach using high-resolution SAR-derived winds

We present a compartmentalization of ocean surface wind in coastal seas by analyzing statistical features of highresolution wind measurements derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) onboard European Remote sensing Satellite (ERS) 1/2. Probability distributions of wind speeds over land and sea, to which two-parameter Weibull distribution gives a good fit, are classified in a feature space of two Weibull parameters. As a result, we identify three distinguished clusters, which feature variability of wind over land, open ocean, and coastal sea. The typical wind speed distribution assigned to coastal sea has both characteristics of those assigned to land and open ocean, i.e., peak frequency in the lower wind and higher frequencies in higher wind speeds. Moreover, it can be reproduced by mixing the typical wind-speed distributions of land and open ocean at a given rate. Keywords-coastal winds; SAR; Weibull distribution
A spatiotemporal scenario to mitigate pilot contamination in 5G massive MIMO systems

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) or large-scale MIMO is the magical technology that can provide the required large system capacity in the future fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. Massive MIMO is characterized by a large number of base station (BS) antennas, which makes it less susceptible to noise and fast fading. Unfortunately, this large antennas number does not enable the massive MIMO to get rid of the inter-cell interference originated from the problem of pilot contamination. In this article, we propose a spatiotemporal scenario that can mitigate the pilot contamination effects by avoiding synchronous pilot transmission in the time domain and following a pilot allocation algorithm in the spatial domain. We show that our proposed scenario provides a reduced level of inter-cell interference, which eventually gives it the ability to enhance the minimum and the mean achievable capacities per terminal.
Investigating service quality dimensions in South African motor vehicle servicing

The motor industry plays a critical role in the economy of South Africa, with respect to both GDP and employment. Service quality is a fundamental aspect of service provision, and this is especially the case with motor vehicles, where substantial profits are generated in the servicing of vehicles. The study was conducted using a convenience sample of 761 respondents who were owners of various brands of motor vehicles. The questionnaire was a self-completion questionnaire which consisted of three sections. Factor analysis of the research indicated that five service quality factors could be identified. Apart from the tangible factor, the factors identified differ from the dimensions of service quality proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988). The dimensions identified also were differed from other studies conducted into service quality dimensions in this context, highlighting the variable nature of service quality in this context. The implications of this study are that the customer perceives the way in which the service is delivered as critical in evaluating service quality.
Export Market Pricing Decisions and Market Power in World Grain Markets: A Duopoly Model for Soybeans

This study investigates export pricing decisions and market power for soybeans using a duopoly model. The results from the pricing-to-market approach and residual demand elasticity approach show the soybean export markets are competitive. The continuous increase in world demand results in a positive relationship between export prices and volumes. Replaced with new version of paper 2/13/07.
Do women self-select as good borrowers?

A key question in credit markets is how to disclose borrowers’ private information. Typically, banks offer incentive compatible contracts (with collateral) to induce borrowers to disclose their private information. However, if men and women systematically differ in their risk taking behavior, contract choices in the self selection mechanism with collateral may differ. If women are particularly averse to financial risk, they may be classified as high risk borrowers thus not receiving the loan designed for the good borrowers, or even suffering credit rationing. In this paper, we conduct a laboratory experiment on financial decision making in three different European countries designed to study systematic gender differences in self selection. Our results show that incentive compatible contracts with collateral fail to disclose women private information, while they disclose men private information. Thus, low risk women borrowers do not self select as “theoretical” good borrowers. Beside this contribution, our results show that gender differences arise when subjects face low failure probabilities. We provide some suggestive evidence on differences in probability weighting between men and women.
Determinants of customer‐perceived service quality: a confirmatory factor analysis approach

The research literature on service quality has indeed swelled enormously over the past few years with numerous researchers administering various models across the world. Nevertheless, the SERVQUAL instrument forms the basis on which all other works have been actualized. Interestingly, the conceptualization, measurement and applications of SERVQUAL across different industrial and commercial settings are not bereft of controversies either. A careful examination of the instrument divulges that the factors and the corresponding items are not comprehensive as it appears that the instrument has left out certain important constituents of service quality. In this background, the current research work strives to bring to light some of the critical determinants of service quality that have been overlooked in the literature and proposes a comprehensive model and an instrument framework for measuring customer perceived service quality. The instrument has been designed with specific reference to the banking sector. Data have been collected from customers of banks in a huge developing economy. The proposed instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and construct validity using a confirmatory factor analysis approach. The present study offers a systematic procedure that could form the cornerstone for providing further insights on the conceptual and empirical comprehension of customer perceived service quality and its constituents.
Impact of Open Interest and Trading Volume in Option Market on Underlying Cash Market: Empirical Evidence from Indian Equity Option Market

This study empirically investigates the impact of some non-price variables viz., open interest and trading volume from option market in predicting the price index viz. Nifty Index in underlying cash market in India. This study applies open interest and volume based predictors for both call and put option, as suggested by Bhuyan and Yan (2002) to empirically investigate the hypothesis that the above non-price variables in option market can not be used to predict the future price index in underlying cash market. Daily data for both price as well as non-price variables, for two different sub periods, have been employed in order to explore whether there is any significant change in the above relationship in two different periods. The empirical findings confirm that the open interest based predictors are significant in predicting the spot price index in underlying cash market in both the periods, just after the initiation of the index option in the market and in the later sub period. But, as far as the volume based predictors are concerned, it shows some changing evidence. Though being insignificant just after the initiation, the volume based predictors have shown significant explanatory power in the later sub period. Again, though both the predictors in the option market in recent sub period are significant at 1% level of significance, the trading volume shows more impact as compared to open interest in the matter of price prediction in cash market. Lastly, the value of adjusted R-square and F-statistics in two sub periods also confirm how the option market tends to improve its power in discovering the price index in underlying cash market.
(Heptanedioato-κ2 O,O′)bis(1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)zinc(II) hexahydrate

In the crystal structure of the title compound, [Zn(C7H10O4)(C12H8N2)2]·6H2O, the ZnII atom is coordinated by two carboxylate O atoms of a mono-bidentate chelating pimelate anion (pimelic acid is heptanedioic acid) and four N atoms of two phenanthroline ligands, forming a considerably distorted octahedral ZnN4O2 coordination geometry. The complexes are assembled into a three-dimensional network via C—H⋯O, C—H⋯π and π–π interactions. The mean interplanar distance between adjacent phenanthroline ligands is 3.399 (2) Å.