Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk Management - Differences in Use Between Public and Private Organizations. Benchmarking Municipalities from an Enterprise Perspective

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute to the knowledge on the use of risk management and especially ERM in different context. More specifically the aim is to find what similarities and differences there are in the use of ERM between public and private sector, as well as to find what variations there are within each sector. Methodology: The method used during this multiple case study, is an inductive approach with a qualitative strategy. Documents from two private organizations and two public organizations have been reviewed, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with employees in each organization. Theoretical perspectives: For the theoretical perspective framework, the legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, levers of control and management control systems package has been used. The practical framework mainly consists of internal control and its framework as well as enterprise risk management and its framework. Empirical foundation: The empirical foundation consists of documents and interviews. The results have then been presented in accordance to sector and has further been divided into themes for an accessible overview. Conclusions: An indication was found that despite different conditions and stakeholders, all respondents work with risk management. Further indication show that the definition of ERM is most likely not crucial. Even though the municipalities have several documents clarifying the responsibility of internal control but the responsibility might not be as clear in reality.
Atrial Fibrillation, Neurocognitive Decline and Gene Expression After Cardiopulmonary Bypass

OBJECTIVE Atrial fibrillation and neurocognitive decline are common complications after cardiopulmonary bypass. By utilizing genomic microarrays we investigate whether gene expression is associated with postoperative atrial fibrillation and neurocognitive decline. METHODS Twenty one cardiac surgery patients were prospectively matched and underwent neurocognitive assessments pre-operatively and four days postoperatively. The whole blood collected in the pre-cardiopulmonary bypass, 6 hours after-cardiopulmonary bypass, and on the 4th postoperative day was hybridized to Affymetrix Gene Chip U133 Plus 2.0 Microarrays. Gene expression in patients who developed postoperative atrial fibrillation and neurocognitive decline (n=6; POAF+NCD) was compared with gene expression in patients with postoperative atrial fibrillation and normal cognitive function (n=5; POAF+NORM) and patients with sinus rhythm and normal cognitive function (n=10; SR+NORM). Regulated genes were identified using JMP Genomics 4.0 with a false discovery rate of 0.05 and fold change of >1.5 or <-1.5. RESULTS Eleven patients developed postoperative atrial fibrillation. Six of these also developed neurocognitive decline. Of the 12 patients with sinus rhythm, only 2 developed neurocognitive decline. POAF+NCD patients had unique regulation of 17 named genes preoperatively, 60 named genes six hours after cardiopulmonary bypass, and 34 named genes four days postoperatively (P<0.05) compared with normal patients. Pathway analysis demonstrated that these genes are involved in cell death, inflammation, cardiac remodeling and nervous system function. CONCLUSION Patients who developed postoperative atrial fibrillation and neurocognitive decline after cardiopulmonary bypass may have differential genomic responses compared to normal patients and patients with only postoperative atrial fibrillation, suggesting common pathophysiology for these conditions. Further exploration of these genes may provide insight into the etiology and improvements of these morbid outcomes.
Encephalomyocarditis Virus Leader Is Phosphorylated by CK2 and Syk as a Requirement for Subsequent Phosphorylation of Cellular Nucleoporins

ABSTRACT Encephalomyocarditis virus and Theilovirus are species in the Cardiovirus genus of the Picornaviridae family. For all cardioviruses, the viral polyprotein is initiated with a short Leader (L) protein unique to this genus. The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) structure of LE from encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) has been determined. The protein has an NH2-proximal CHCC zinc finger, a central linker, and a contiguous, highly acidic motif. The theiloviruses encode the same domains, with one or two additional, COOH-proximal domains, characteristic of the human Saffold viruses (SafV) and Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis viruses (TMEV), respectively. The expression of a cardiovirus L, in recombinant form, or during infection/transfection, triggers an extensive, cell-dependent, antihost phosphorylation cascade, targeting nucleoporins (Nups) that form the hydrophobic core of nuclear pore complexes (NPC). The consequent inhibition of active nucleocytoplasmic trafficking is potent and prevents the host from mounting an effective antiviral response. For this inhibition, the L proteins themselves must be phosphorylated. In cells (extracts or recombinant form), LE was shown to be phosphorylated at Thr47 and Tyr41. The first reaction (Thr47), catalyzed by casein kinase 2 (CK2), is an obligatory precedent to the second event (Tyr41), catalyzed by spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk). Site mutations in LE, or kinase-specific inhibitors, prevented LE phosphorylation and subsequent Nup phosphorylation. Parallel experiments with LS (SafV-2) and LT (TMEV BeAn) proteins confirmed the general cardiovirus requirement for L phosphorylation, but CK2 was not the culpable kinase. It is likely that LS and LT are both activated by alternative kinases in different cell types, probably reactive within the Theilo-specific domains. IMPORTANCE An understanding of the diverse methods used by viruses to interfere with cellular processes is important because they can teach us how to control virus infections. This report shows how viruses in the same genus use different cellular enzymes to phosphorylate their proteins. If these processes are interfered with, the viruses are severely disabled.
Insurance Acquisition Costs: Capitalizing Versus Expensing

This article examines whether the capitalization–amortization or the direct-expensing method for insurance acquisition costs and commissions better reflects the economic substance. We find that both the currently capitalized–amortized acquisition costs and the as-if asset balance of expensed commissions are positively associated with the market value of equity, and are closely related to the level and volatility of subsequent insurance premiums. Results also show that when explaining the market value of equity, the insurance commission is significantly negative if capitalized and amortized, but is insignificant if directly expensed. The authors are the first to examine how the insurance acquisition costs and commissions are related to subsequent economic benefits, and our results are consistent with IFRS 17 under which the acquisition costs shall not be immediately expensed.
Escalated MVAC with or without recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor for the initial treatment of advanced malignant urothelial tumors: results of a randomized trial.

PURPOSE Hematopoietic growth factors have been shown to ameliorate the side effects of chemotherapy. Here we assess the ability of recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) to increase the dose-intensity and reduce the side effects of escalated methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin (MVAC) chemotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS A prospective randomized trial to compare escalated MVAC versus escalated MVAC with rhGM-CSF was conducted. All patients were treated at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (UTMDACC) and had a metastatic or unresectable urothelial tumor. Forty-eight patients were randomized (25 to MVAC with rhGM-CSF and 23 to escalated MVAC alone). The clinical characteristics of the study populations were similar (ie, degree of tumor dissemination and performance status). RESULTS The dose-intensity in the two arms of the study did not differ significantly. No difference in the frequency of bacteriologically documented infections occurred between the two study arms. CONCLUSION The use of the hematopoietic growth factor rhGM-CSF did not result in an increased dose-intensity of escalated MVAC. The inability to increase the dose-intensity of MVAC further was a result of nonhematologic side effects of the chemotherapy. Escalation of treatment delivered at its median-tolerated dose is unlikely to result in additional therapeutic benefit for patients with common solid tumors. Future development of therapy may require the development of new agents or concepts, rather than modification of existing therapies.
Active damping control of modular multilevel converter with output filter for high-speed PM motor drive

High-speed permanent magnet motors (HSPMMs) have gained ever-increasing interests in high speed direct-drive applications due to their advantages of high-power density, small size and high efficiency. However, the low stator inductance of the HSPMM causes large current ripple in the stator current, therefore brings additional iron loss. The Modular multilevel converter (MMC) increases both voltage level and equivalent switching frequency, which help reducing current ripple. However, the high equivalent switching frequency of the MMC produces high order harmonics. These harmonics will also cause significant iron loss in both the motor stator and the rotor. In this paper, a MMC with output filter for HSPMM drive is proposed. The design method of output filter, as well as the stator current control method are presented. The proposed circuit, and its performance on high order harmonics elimination is verified by simulation results.
Intron gain by tandem genomic duplication: a novel case in a potato gene encoding RNA-dependent RNA polymerase

The origin and subsequent accumulation of spliceosomal introns are prominent events in the evolution of eukaryotic gene structure. However, the mechanisms underlying intron gain remain unclear because there are few proven cases of recently gained introns. In an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene, we found that a tandem duplication occurred after the divergence of potato and its wild relatives among other Solanum plants. The duplicated sequence crosses the intron-exon boundary of the first intron and the second exon. A new intron was detected at this duplicated region, and it includes a small previously exonic segment of the upstream copy of the duplicated sequence and the intronic segment of the downstream copy of the duplicated sequence. The donor site of this new intron was directly obtained from the small previously exonic segment. Most of the splicing signals were inherited directly from the parental intron/exon structure, including a putative branch site, the polypyrimidine tract, the 3′ splicing site, two putative exonic splicing enhancers, and the GC contents differed between the intron and exon. In the widely cited model of intron gain by tandem genomic duplication, the duplication of an AGGT-containing exonic segment provides the GT and AG splicing sites for the new intron. Our results illustrate that the tandem duplication model of intron gain should be diverse in terms of obtaining the proper splicing signals.
Facilitating wireless coexistence research

The past decade has seen a rapid growth in the number of wireless technologies and devices. The unlicensed bands host a range of heterogeneous RF radios which compete with each other for the shared channel access and give rise to non trivial communication challenges such as Cross-Technology-Interference (CTI), co-existence and achieving fairness. Thus, there is a growing need in the research community today, to understand and debug the network performance in the presence of CTI. In this thesis, we address wireless coexistence by focusing on designing tools to facilitate repeatable and controllable interference generation and investigating algorithms to localize high power interference sources in indoor wireless networks. We design a platform to generate controllable interference patterns depicted by prevalent interference sources active in 2.4 GHz ISM band. This tool provides three interfaces consisting of a record and playback module to generate interference patterns of sources which are not typically RF radios, a software radio implementation module consisting of implementations of consumer wireless devices and a commercial radio chipset module to generate interference depicted by prevalent communication protocols. The unified nature of this tool makes it easy to integrate in testbeds and operate remotely. We validate the accuracy of the generated interference patterns in the temporal and spectral domains and quantify the impact on communication links. We achieve high accuracy and realism for interferer types occupying narrow bandwidth such as analog phone and interferers depicting frequency sweeping behavior such as microwave oven. In order to troubleshoot the network performance, it is as well beneficial to localize the interference source degrading the network throughput. To this end, we design and implement an algorithm to localize rouge interfering radios using a low power wireless network. Prior work on localizing uncooperative radios is restricted to WiFi networks, where, off the shelf WiFi cards having reasonable computational capability and multiple antennas have been used. Our design addresses the challenges offered by low-power senor nodes, such as low computational capability, lower sampling rates and a single omnidirectional antenna. It exploits the collaborative and distributed nature of a dense network to model the propagation loss characteristics of the medium in order to mask the ill effects of multipath and shadowing in an indoor environment. We observe that, the localization accuracy is dependent upon the interferer type and achieve an average point level accuracy of 2.1 meters.
Investigation of the Effect of Online Bidding, E-store, and Price on Shopping in Thailand

The objectives of the paper are twofold, 1) to model the e-store shopping in Thailand , and 2) to examine the effect of online bidding, e-store attribute, and price on shopping in Thailand. The research mainly involves a survey design. It includes a pilot test using undergraduate business students at UdonThani Rajabhat University for pretesting questionnaire items. In addition, this investigate into online bidding, e-store, web attraction, web security , price, shopping attributes necessitates uncovering variables of interest and this involves a large-scale field study. The data are collected via personal questionnaires from 399 samples. They include the customers. Respondents are asked to rate, on a five-point Likert scale, their agreement or disagreement on the e-store attributes. Quantitative data are analyzed by the statistical techniques including exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. It is found from the study that the effect of online bidding, ,e-store attribute, and price on shopping. Additionally, e-store attribute and web security mediate the effect of online bidding, e-store attribute, and price on shopping. The managerial implications are discussed.
Association Between Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in Pooled Occupational Cohorts

Objective: The aim of the study was to ascertain if cardiovascular (CVD) risk factors are carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) risk factors. Methods: Analysis of pooled baseline data from two large prospective cohort studies (n = 1824) assessed the relationships between a modified Framingham Heart Study CVD risk score both CTS and abnormal nerve conduction study prevalence. Quantified job exposures, personal and psychosocial confounders were statistically controlled. Odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for individual risk scores. Results: There was a strong relationship between CVD risk score and both CTS and abnormal nerve conduction study after adjustment for confounders, with odds ratios as high as 4.16 and 7.35, respectively. Dose responses were also observed. Conclusions: In this workplace population, there is a strong association between CVD risk scores and both CTS and abnormal nerve conduction study that persisted after controlling for confounders. These data suggest a potentially modifiable disease mechanism.
An Empirical Assessment of Environmental Factors that Influence the Usability of a Mobile Website

The quality of interaction with a mobile website is arguably influenced by the prevailing conditions of use. The characteristics of the latter have not been sufficiently addressed in HCI literature yet, partly because they cannot be easily controlled in a usability study. Drawing on multidisciplinary theories, we propose a model hypothesizing on the effects of environmental context on the usability of mobile websites. We consider environmental cues as distractions and suggest both direct and moderated effects on efficiency, effectiveness, and perceived satisfaction. A laboratory experiment that was based on the results of a preliminary study was conducted to investigate our research hypotheses. The results confirmed that environmental distractions have a significant effect on mobile website usability and hence they need to be taken into account when evaluating usability.
ISOLATION OF PASTEURELLA HAEMOLYTICA FROM TONSILLAR BIOPSIES OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIGHORN SHEEP

Isolations of Pasteurella haemolytica were compared from tonsillar biopsies versus nasal passages for 29 free-ranging Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis) from central Idaho. Overall, P. haemolytica was isolated from 11 (38%) of 29 sheep. Two (18%) of the 11 positive samples were from only nasal passages compared to eight (73%) from tonsillar biopsies. Pasteurella haemolytica biotype T was isolated from tonsils of nine sheep and from nasal biopsies. Pasteurella haemlytica biotype T was isolated from tonsils of nine sheep and from nasal passages of only one sheep. Two sheep were positive for P. haemolytica biotype A from nasal passages. Culturing tonsillar biopsies as compared to nasal swab samples was a more reliable technique in detecting P. haemolytica, especially biotype T, in bighorn sheep.
Cooperative Q-learning for Rejection of Persistent Adversarial Inputs in Unknown Networked Systems

Abstract—In this paper a cooperative Q-learning approach is proposed to enable the agents in large networks to synchronize to the behavior of an unknown leader by each optimizing distributed performance criterion that depends only on a subset of the agents in the network. The distributed Q-functions are parametrized as functions of the tracking error, control and adversarial inputs in the neighborhood. In the proposed approach the agents coordinate with the neighbors in order to pick their minimizing model-free policies in such a way to guarantee convergence to a graphical Nash equilibrium and also attenuation of maximizing model-free worst-case adversarial inputs. A structure of 2-actors and a single critic approximators are used for each agent in the network. This eventually solves the complexity issues that arise in Q-learning. The 2-actors are used to approximate the optimal control input and the worst-case disturbance while the critic approximator is used to approximate the optimal cost of each of the coupled optimizations. Effective tuning laws are proposed to solve the model-free cooperative game problem while also guaranteeing closed-loop stability with the use of rigorous Lyapunov-based stability proofs. Finally, a numerical example is used to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Improving features used for hyper-temporal land cover change detection by reducing the uncertainty in the feature extraction method

The well-being of the environment is one of the major factors that contributes to sustainability. Sustainable human settlements require local governance to plan, implement, develop, and manage human settlements expansions. This is important as the number anthropogenic activities is directly correlated to the increase in human population within a geographical region. Regional mapping of land cover conversion of natural vegetation to new human settlements is essential. In this paper we explore the effect which the length of a temporal sliding window has on the success of detecting land cover change. It is shown using a short Fourier transform as a feature extraction method provides meaningful robust input to a machine learning method. In theory, the performance is increased by improving the estimates on the features by increasing the length of the sliding window. Experiments were conducted in the Limpopo province of South Africa and were found that increasing the length of the sliding window beyond 12 months yield minor improves due to other seasonal and external factors.
Traceability System as Perceived-Uncertainty Mitigator for Sustainable Global Food Trade

Purpose: The paper validates a model which approximates a relationship between perceived uncertainty of consumers and two antecedents & three mitigators which explain the value of Food Traceability System (FTS). Methodology/Approach: The proposed model was drawn from Pavlou et al. (2007) study which applied the principal-agent perspectives, and this study contributes to the current literature by improving understanding of the structure of perceived uncertainty of a food product with credence good with this model. Findings: The study assesses the value and effects of FTS in reducing perceived uncertainty of beef from various origins and suggests important implications for stakeholders in beef sector regarding feasibility and marketability of FTS. Research Limitation/Implication: Findings evidently reflect the current market circumstance regarding consumers’ concerns and Perceived Uncertainty towards import food products for their credence nature. Different aspects of FTS were found to have the mediating role in reducing Perceived Uncertainty in China and South Korea. Originality/Value of paper: The study assesses the value and effects of FTS in reducing perceived uncertainty of beef from various origins and suggests important implications for stakeholders in beef sector regarding feasibility and marketability of FTS.
Channel model for wideband time-varying underwater acoustic systems

In this paper a wideband underwater acoustic (UWA) channel simulator is developed based on the geometry of the system deployment and by considering the statistics of the random amplitude variation of the channel. This channel simulator is capable of modeling any relative motion between the transmitter and receiver. The delays of multipath arrivals are calculated based on the geometrical and physical parameters of the deployment. The time-varying fractional delay line (TVFDL) is utilized as a flexible and low-complexity software tool to model time-scaling observed on individual paths. The fading characteristics of the channel which is extracted from the measurements is utilized to model the time-varying amplitudes of paths. Also, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is tested throughout a sea trial. The geometrical and statistical parameters of the sea trial are utilized to test the OFDM system using the proposed channel simulator. The bit error rate (BER) of the system is calculated in both measurements and simulations and it will be shown that the assessment of the communication performance realized using simulations is very close to that of the measured performance.