Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Great Vessels Take a Long Time to Mature: Early Success Traps and Competences in Exploitation and Exploration

This study warns organizations against falling into an “early success trap. ” The timing of initial success may lead organizations to divergent evolutionary paths as their experience at early ages has a greater consequence for their evolution than does their experience at later ages. In particular, we propose that early initial success can be more detrimental to an organization’s performance and survivability than later initial success because exploratory competence takes a long time to develop. To investigate the consequences of the timing of success, we developed a model of organizational learning and adaptation that examines what happens after success, when a success trap occurs, and whether and how the timing of initial success matters. The results from the simulation of our model indicate that the phenomenon of (early) success traps is a complex product of interactions among organizational learning of competences in exploitation and exploration and adaptations of historical and social aspiration levels. We discuss how organizations can avoid success traps and sustain their survival and prosperity over the long term.
A Clinical Update and Radiologic Review of Pediatric Orbital and Ocular Tumors

While pediatric orbital tumors are most often managed in tertiary care centers, clinicians should be aware of the signs of intraocular and orbital neoplasms. In the pediatric population, a delay in diagnosis of orbital and intraocular lesions, even if benign, can lead to vision loss and deformity. Intraocular lesions reviewed are retinoblastoma, medulloepithelioma, and retinal astrocytic hamartoma. Orbital neoplasms reviewed are rhabdomyosarcoma, neuroblastoma metastases, optic pathway glioma, plexiform neurofibroma, leukemia, lymphoprolipherative disease, orbital inflammatory syndrome, dermoid and epidermoid inclusion cysts, and Langerhans' cell histiocytosis. Vascular lesions reviewed are infantile hemangioma and venous lymphatic malformation. In conjunction with clinical examination, high-resolution ophthalmic imaging and radiologic imaging play an important role in making a diagnosis and differentiating between benign and likely malignant processes. The radiologic imaging characteristics of these lesions will be discussed to facilitate prompt diagnosis and treatment. The current treatment modalities and management of tumors will also be reviewed.
Interpretation of QSAR Models Based on Random Forest Methods

A new algorithm for the interpretation of Random Forest models has been developed. It allows to calculate the contribution of each descriptor to the calculated property value. In case of the simplex representation of a molecular structure, contributions of individual atoms can be calculated, and thus it becomes possible to estimate the influence of separate molecular fragments on the investigated property. Such information can be used for the design of new compounds with a predefined property value. The proposed measure of descriptor contributions is not an alternative to the importance of Breiman’s variable, but it characterizes the contribution of a particular explanatory variable to the calculated response value.
The effect of geometrical confinement and chirality on domain wall pinning behavior in planar nanowires

We investigate the domain wall pinning behavior in Permalloynanowires using experimental measurements and micromagnetic simulations. Planar nanowirestructures were fabricated by electron beam lithography followed by thin-filmdeposition via thermal evaporation. The magnetization switching behavior of individual nanowires was measured using the magneto-optical Kerr effect. For symmetrical pinning structures such as the junction between a wider domain wall injection pad and a narrower nanowire, the domain wall depinning field increases as the wire width decreases, with the depinning field increasing rapidly for wires widths below 400 nm. For domain wall pinning at asymmetrical structures such as a notch, the magnitude of the depinning field appears relatively insensitive to notch geometry for triangular and rectangular notch structures, compared to the influence of the wire width. The domain wall depinning field from triangular notches increases as notch depth increases although this increase levels off at notch depths greater than approximately 60% wire width. The nature of domain wall pinning at asymmetrical notch structures is also sensitive to domain wallchirality.
It's Been a Long Time: A Comparative Analysis of Job Duration in Banking

Using personnel records from two firms in the banking industry, duration models are estimated to examine separations in the context of Great Britain and Greece. We find that it is sustained, rather than instantaneous, performance that is linked to separations. In common with some earlier studies, we find qualified support for a u-shaped relationship between performance and separations, but only in the case of the British data. Both of the banks under investigation experienced substantial reorganisation activity over the time period considered, and we find that the year following this was characterised by increased separation propensities. While most of our findings are consistent across the firms in the two countries studied, we find that single men are more likely than their female counterparts to quit in Britain, but less likely to quit in Greece. We offer some suggestions about why this should be the case.
Convergent point positioning methods for dual-view stereo camera

The spatial position of convergent point of dual-view stereo camera is a key parameter. To solve the problem that lack of simple and effective convergent point positioning method at present, we present two methods of convergent point positioning. The first method for convergent point positioning is by observing the difference between the corresponding points of principal points in left and right images. The second method is by computing the relative extrinsic parameters between right and left cameras. The experimental results show that the first method is convenient for the stereo camera which consists of adjustable left and right cameras; the second method is convenient for the stereo camera which consists of stable left and right cameras. Both of the methods are available for convergent point positioning.
Switching to the anti-interleukin-6 receptor antibody tocilizumab in rheumatoid arthritis patients refractory to antitumor necrosis factor biologics

We evaluated the short-term effects of the anti-interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor antibody tocilizumab (TCZ) in six patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who had been refractory to tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonist therapy. All subjects were considered to be secondary nonresponders to TNF antagonists as decided by each physician. The Disease Activity Score of 28 Joints (DAS28) appeared to improve slowly by TCZ compared with TNF antagonist therapy, but significantly decreased at 24 weeks. One patient achieved DAS28 remission [DAS28–erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) <2.60, and 5 of 6 patients showed good or moderate clinical response. The change in the clinical Disease Activity Index was similar to that of the DAS28–ESR. The serum level of matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3), a marker for synovial overgrowth, also significantly decreased after the treatment (518 ± 567 at baseline, 141 ± 90 ng/ml at 24 weeks, p < 0.05). One patient discontinued TCZ because of tuberculous peritonitis. Although physicians need to watch for infectious adverse events, these data indicate that TCZ is effective for treating RA patients refractory to TNF antagonists.
Biological determinants of bleeding in patients with heterozygous factor XI deficiency

Bleeding risk is not predictable in patients with factor XI (FXI; F11) deficiency. In this prospective study, our objectives were to determine the biological determinants for bleeding risk in patients with heterozygous FXI deficiency. Patients were classified as either bleeding patients or non‐bleeding patients by calculating the bleeding score (BS) described for von Willebrand disease. Primary haemostasis, thrombin generation, thromboelastometry, procoagulant proteins, inhibitors, fibrinolysis, and F11 gene mutations were compared between bleeding and non‐bleeding patients. Thirty‐nine patients were included. BS significantly correlated with clinical assessment (P = 0·001), and a score over 3 discriminated between bleeding (n = 15) and non‐bleeding (n = 24) patients (P = 0·034). Despite normal values, von Willebrand factor (VWF) and thrombomodulin (TM) plasma levels were significantly lower in bleeding patients than non‐bleeding patients [ristocetin cofactor activity (VWF:RCo) = 80·6 ± 29·7 iu/dl and 101·8 ± 29·5 iu/dl respectively, P = 0·043; and VWF antigen (VWF:Ag) = 84·0 ± 28·0 iu/dl and 106·3 ± 36·1 iu/dl respectively, P = 0·035; and TM = 17·7 ± 11·7 ng/ml and 23·6 ± 9·7 ng/ml respectively, P = 0·043]. When considering BS as a continuous variable, only VWF:RCo remained significant (P = 0·042), which accounted for 11% of the variability in BS.
Relative Humidity for Load Forecasting Models

Weather is a key driving factor of electricity demand. During the past five decades, temperature is the most commonly used weather variable in load forecasting models. Although humidity has been discussed in the load forecasting literature, it has not been studied as formally as temperature. Humidity is usually embedded in the form of heat index (HI) or temperature-humidity index. In this paper, we investigate how relative humidity (RH) affects electricity demand. From a real-world case study at a utility in North Carolina, we find that RH plays a vital role in driving electricity demand during the warm months (June to September). We then propose a systematic approach to including RH variables in a regression analysis framework, resulting in the recommendation of a group of RH variables. The proposed models with the recommended addition of RH variables improve the forecast accuracy of Tao’s Vanilla benchmark model and its three derivatives in one-day (24 h) ahead, one-week ahead, one-month ahead, and one-year ahead ex post forecasting settings with the relative reduction in mean absolute percentage error ranging from 4% to 9% in this case study. It also outperforms two HI-based models under the same settings. Moreover, an extended test case also demonstrates the effectiveness of these RH variables on improving the artificial neural network models.
Combline filter with tunable bandwidth and centre frequency

A new method for the design of tunable bandpass filters is presented. It is based on a dual-band combline structure. One of the passband responses centre frequency and bandwidth can be tuned without the need for coupling adjustment, while the other passband can be shifted up in frequency or filtered out. A prototype design has been constructed, and measured results shows wide tuning range and over 300% bandwidth adjustment range, clearly demonstrate the principle.
ANALYSIS OF THE ROLES OF THE cwlD OPERON PRODUCTS DURING SPORULATION IN BACILLUS SUBTILIS

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv LIST OF FIGURES v LIST OF TABLES vii CHAPTER I. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Stages of sporulation 1 Resistance properties of bacterial endospores 3 Spore peptidoglycan 3 The CwlD protein 5 Phenotypic characteristics of the cwlD mutant 5 Synthesis of muramic-δ-lactam 6 The cwlD operon 7 CHAPTER II. THE BIOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF CWLD Materials and Methods 11 Construction of strains and plasmids 11 E.coli strain construction and growth media 12 Induction of CwlD 14 Separation of protein fractions 14 Purification of CwlD with metal affinity chromatography 14 Purification of CwlD with anion exchange chromatography 15 Purification of Bacillus subtilis vegetative peptidoglycan 15 Purification of E.coli peptidoglycan 16 Testing activity of purified CwlD in vitro 17 Detecting CwlD activity in vivo 17 Production and purification of polyclonal anti-CwlD 18 antibodies Results from the Biochemical Analysis of CwlD 19 Strains analyzed 19 Induction of CwlD 19
Radiocarbon Assessment of Early Bronze Arad: The 20 Year Lifespan of Stratum II

The rich remains from the Early Bronze II at Tel Arad have been interpreted as representing several centuries of activity. According to conventional wisdom, after the destruction of Stratum III by fire, Stratum II endured for about 150 years. However, high precision dates obtained for Stratum II as well as a subsequent destruction event suggest that rapid reconstruction took place in the span of one or two decades. The results point to a short duration of the EB II occupation in Arad and these are in agreement with the south Levantine radiocarbon chronology for the Early Bronze Age. They suggest that the end of the EB II occupation was synchronous with the 1st Egyptian Dynasty ruler Qaʿa.
High Efficiency Planar Ge-on-Si Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Detectors

Planar Ge-on-Si single-photon avalanche diode detectors fabricated using CMOS-compatible processing demonstrate a 38% single photon detection efficiency at 125 K with 1310 nm wavelength illumination, exhibiting 310 ps jitter and 2×10−16 WHz-½ noise equivalent power. © 2019 The Author(s)
Comparative Analysis of the Schleicher and Schuell IsoCode Stix DNA Isolation Device and the Qiagen QIAamp DNA Mini Kit

ABSTRACT Efficient, rapid, and reproducible procedures for isolating high-quality DNA before PCR gene amplification are essential for the diagnostic and molecular identification of pathogenic bacteria. This study evaluated the Qiagen QIAamp DNA Mini Kit and the Schleicher and Schuell IsoCode Stix DNA isolation device for isolating nucleic acid. Buffer, serum, and whole-blood samples were spiked with Bacillus anthracis Sterne vegetative cells and Yersinia pestis, while water was spiked with B. anthracis Sterne spores. Although minimal variations in limit of detection occurred among matrices, both the IsoCode Stix extraction method and the Qiagen procedure have comparable detection limits.
A systematic study of offline recognition of Thai printed and handwritten characters

Thai characters pose some unique problems, which differ from English and other oriental scripts. The structure of Thai characters consists of small loops combined with curves and there is an absence of spaces between each word and sentence. In each line, moreover, Thai characters can be composed on four levels, depending on the type of character being written. This research focuses on OCR for the Thai language: printed and offline handwritten character recognition. An attempt to overcome the problems by simple but effective methods is the main consideration. A printed OCR developed by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) uses Kohonen self- organising maps (SOMs) for rough classification and back-propagation neural networks for fine classification. An evaluation of the NECTEC OCR is performed on a printed dataset that contains over 0.6 million tokens. Comparisons of the classifier, with and without the aspect ratio, and with and without SOMs, yield small, but statistically significant differences in recognition rate. A very straightforward classifier, the nearest neighbour, was examined to evaluate overall recognition performance and to compare with the classifier. It shows a significant improvement in recognition rate (about 98%) over the NECTEC classifier (about 96%) on both the original and distorted data (rotated and noisy), but at the expense of longer recognition times. For offline handwritten character recognition, three different classifiers are evaluated on three different datasets that contain, on average, approximately 10,000 tokens each. The neural network and HMMs are more effective and give higher recognition rates than the nearest neighbour classifier on three datasets. The best result obtained from the HMMs is 91.1% on ThaiCAM dataset. However, when evaluated on a different dataset, the recognition rates drastically reduce, due to differences in many aspects of online and offline handwritten data. An improvement in classification rates was obtained by adjusting the stroke width of a character in the online handwritten dataset (12 percentage points) and combining the training sets from the three datasets (7.6 percentage points). A boosting algorithm called AdaBoost yields a slight improvement in recognition rate (1.2 percentage points) over the original classifiers (without applying the AdaBoost algorithm).
Whey protein does not enhance the adaptations to elbow flexor resistance training.

PURPOSE It is unclear whether protein supplementation augments the gains in muscle strength and size observed after resistance training (RT) because limitations to previous studies include small cohorts, imprecise measures of muscle size and strength, and no control of prior exercise or habitual protein intake. We aimed to determine whether whey protein supplementation affected RT-induced changes in elbow flexor muscle strength and size. METHODS We pair-matched 33 previously untrained, healthy young men for their habitual protein intake and strength response to 3-wk RT without nutritional supplementation (followed by 6 wk of no training) and then randomly assigned them to protein (PRO, n = 17) or placebo (PLA, n = 16) groups. Participants subsequently performed elbow flexor RT 3 d · wk(-1) for 12 wk and consumed PRO or PLA immediately before and after each training session. We assessed elbow flexor muscle strength (unilateral 1-repetition maximum and isometric maximum voluntary force) and size (total volume and maximum anatomical cross-sectional area determined with magnetic resonance imaging) before and after the 12-wk RT. RESULTS PRO and PLA demonstrated similar increases in muscle volume (PRO 17.0% ± 7.1% vs PLA 14.9% ± 4.6%, P = 0.32), anatomical cross-sectional area (PRO 16.2% ± 7.1% vs PLA 15.6% ± 4.4%, P = 0.80), 1-repetition maximum (PRO 41.8% ± 21.2% vs PLA 41.4% ± 19.9%, P = 0.97), and maximum voluntary force (PRO 12.0% ± 9.9% vs PLA 14.5% ± 8.3%, P = 0.43). CONCLUSIONS In the context of this study, protein supplementation did not augment elbow flexor muscle strength and size changes that occurred after 12 wk of RT.
Clathrin anchors deubiquitinating enzymes, AMSH and AMSH‐like protein, on early endosomes

Endosomal sorting of ubiquitinated membrane proteins for trafficking to lysosomes is executed by a complex of two ubiquitin‐binding proteins, Hrs and STAM, that localizes on a microdomain of early endosomes with a flat clathrin coat. AMSH is a deubiquitinating enzyme that interacts with STAM and is implicated in the down‐regulation of epidermal growth factor receptor. AMSH has a close homolog, AMSH‐like protein (AMSH‐LP). Here we show that AMSH‐LP is also a deubiquitinating enzyme that acts on early endosomes. We further show that AMSH and AMSH‐LP bind to the terminal domain of clathrin heavy chain via a novel clathrin‐binding site conserved between these proteins. Exogenously expressed AMSH and AMSH‐LP co‐localized with clathrin on early endosomes. However, deletion of the clathrin‐binding site from the proteins, as well as RNA interference‐mediated depletion of clathrin heavy chain, resulted in a failure of AMSH and AMSH‐LP to localize on endosomes. In contrast, a mutant of AMSH that lacks the ability to bind STAM localized normally on endosomes. We suggest that AMSH and AMSH‐LP are anchored on the early endosomal membrane via interaction with the clathrin coat.
Kalman filter–based method for image superresolution using a sequence of low-resolution images

Abstract. The Kalman filter is widely acknowledged as a linear optimal estimator. However, it is usually considered to have taxing computational and storage requirements in the field of image superresolution. This work presents an innovative Kalman filter–based method to solve the inherent problems of the Kalman filter and make it feasible for superresolution applications. Unlike other Kalman filter–based methods, we did not assume the pixels of high-resolution (HR) image are uncorrelated and the covariance matrix is diagonal for the calculation simplification. Instead, we take the spatial correlation of the pixels within a local block of HR image into consideration and propose a block diagonal assumption for the prediction covariance after a new construction way of the column vector which represents the HR image is presented. This significantly reduces the computational complexity during the Kalman filtering. Then, we develop a point-wise Kalman filter method to reduce the computational complexity and decrease the storage requirement. Furthermore, an iterative scheme is proposed to overcome the inaccurate initial estimation problem of superresolution reconstruction. The experiments with synthetic and real data show that the proposed method is effective and outperforms other superresolution methods.
The Relative Influence of Research on Class Size Policy

Social science research suggests that reducing class size has its largest effects on the achievement of minority and inner-city children during the first year of formal schooling. ' Despite scholarly disagreements about the implications of specific studies on class size, economists generally agree that targeted class-size policies rest on stronger evidence than untargeted policies. For example, economist Eric Hanushek contends that "surely class-size reductions are beneficial in specific circumstances—for specific groups of students, subject matters, and teachers. "^ Similarly, economist Alan Krueger notes that the "effect sizes found in the STAR experiment and much of the literature are greater for minority and disadvantaged students than for other students [and] economic considerations suggest that resources would be optimally allocated if they were targeted toward those who benefit the most from smaller classes. "^ However, a number of state legislatures have enacted untargeted and expensive policies to reduce class sizes in all schools, among all subgroups of students, and beyond the early elementary grades. Therefore, the central tension between research and policy in the class-size debate is this: research seems to support targeted class-size policies most strongly, but targeted policies are the exception rather than the norm in the policy arena. As a result, some social scientists have criticized across-the-board class-size reductions as prohibitively expensive and scientifically indefensible. '*
Automatic Composition of Electroacoustic Art Music Utilizing Machine Listening

This article presents Autocousmatic, an algorithmic system that creates electroacoustic art music using machine-listening processes within the design cycle. After surveying previous projects in automated mixing and algorithmic composition, the design and implementation of the current system is outlined. An iterative, automatic effects processing system is coupled to machine-listening components, including the assessment of the “worthiness” of intermediate files to continue to a final mixing stage. Generation of the formal structure of output pieces utilizes models derived from a small corpus of exemplar electroacoustic music, and a dynamic time-warping similarity-measure technique drawn from music information retrieval is employed to decide between candidate final mixes. Evaluation of Autocousmatic has involved three main components: the entry of its output works into composition competitions, the public release of the software with an associated questionnaire and sound examples on SoundCloud, and direct feedback from three highly experienced electroacoustic composers. The article concludes with a discussion of the current status of the system, with regards to ideas from the computational creativity literature, among other sources, and suggestions for future work that may advance the compositional ability of the system beyond its current level and towards human-like expertise.