Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cloud GNSS receivers: New advanced applications made possible

The widespread deployment of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) is pushing the current receiver technology to its limits due to the stringent demands for providing seamless, ubiquitous and secure/reliable positioning. This fact is further aggravated by the advent of new applications where the miniaturized size, low power consumption and limited computational capabilities of user terminals pose serious concerns to the implementation of even the most basic GNSS signal processing tasks (e.g. as in Smart-City or IoT applications). This work presents a paradigm shift for the implementation of next-generation GNSS receivers by taking advantage of Cloud computing platforms, thus leading to the concept of Cloud GNSS receiver.
The CN isotopic ratios in comets

Our aim is to determine the isotopic ratios 12 C/ 13 C and 14 N/ 15 N in a variety of comets and link these measurements to the formation and evolution of the solar system. The 12 C/ 13 C and 14 N/ 15 N isotopic ratios are measured for the CN radical by means of high-resolution optical spectra of the R branch of the B-X (0, 0) violet band. 23 comets from different dynamical classes have been observed, sometimes at various heliocentric and nucleocentric distances, in order to estimate possible variations of the isotopic ratios in parent molecules. The 12 C/ 13 C and 14 N/ 15 N isotopic ratios in CN are remarkably constant (average values of, respectively, 91.0 ± 3.6 and 147.8 ± 5.7) within our measurement errors, for all comets whatever their origin or heliocentric distance. While the carbon isotopic ratio does agree with the terrestrial value (89), the nitrogen ratio is a factor of two lower than the terrestrial value (272), indicating a fractionation in the early solar system, or in the protosolar nebula, common to all the comets of our sample. This points towards a common origin of the comets independently of their birthplaces, and a relationship between HCN and CN.
The Relative Degree of Trade Fragmentation in an Automated, Transparent Stock Exchange

The authors consider the strategic trade fragmentation by informed traders in an automated and transparent equity trading environment. Employing unique transactional data for a sample of stocks traded on the Australian Stock Exchange, they find significant evidence of trade fragmentation involving medium- and small-size trades. They also show that informed investors trade differently depending on the availability of liquidity. When liquidity is available, informed investors tend to trade in larger trade sizes. On the other hand, when there is little available liquidity, informed investors fragment their trades into smaller size units in order to camouflage their transactions.
Creating Alternate In-Basket Forms Through Cloning: Some Preliminary Results

Research on constructing alternate forms of assessment center exercises is very scarce. This study examines the effectiveness of a cloning procedure (incident isomorphic approach) for developing alternate forms of a computerized in-basket. In this approach, original and alternate items are essentially similar (they are based on the same critical incident), while being superficially different (they are situated in a different context). Results showed there was no significant difference between the overall in-basket score across the alternate forms. In addition, these overall scores correlated . 66, with projected estimates for the full in-basket approaching . 80. Implications and limitations of the use of cloning in designing alternate assessment center exercises are discussed.
Adherence to the 2012 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Guidelines for Management of Gout: A Survey of Brazilian Rheumatologists

Objective To describe the current pharmacological approach to gout treatment reported by rheumatologists in Brazil. Methods We performed a cross-sectional survey study using an online questionnaire e-mailed to 395 rheumatologists, randomly selected, from among the members of the Brazilian Society of Rheumatology. Results Three hundred and nine rheumatologists (78.2%) responded to the survey. For acute gout attacks, combination therapy (NSAIDs or steroid + colchicine) was often used, even in monoarticular involvement, and colchicine was commonly started as monotherapy after 36 hours or more from onset of attack. During an acute attack, urate-lowering therapy (ULT) was withdrawn by approximately a third of rheumatologists. Anti-inflammatory prophylaxis (98% colchicine) was initiated when ULT was started in most cases (92.4%), but its duration was varied. Most (70%) respondents considered the target serum uric acid level to be less than 6 mg/dl. Approximately 50% of rheumatologists reported starting allopurinol at doses of 100 mg daily or less and 42% reported the initial dose to be 300 mg daily in patients with normal renal function. ULT was maintained indefinitely in 76% of gout patients with tophi whereas in gout patients without tophi its use was kept indefinitely in 39.6%. Conclusion This is the first study evaluating gout treatment in a representative, random sample of Brazilian rheumatologists describing common treatment practices among these specialists. We identified several gaps in reported gout management, mainly concerning the use of colchicine and ULT and the duration of anti-inflammatory prophylaxis and ULT. Since rheumatologists are considered as opinion leaders in this disease, a program for improving quality of care for gout patients should focus on increasing their knowledge in this common disease.
Survey of Energy Efficient Data Centers in Cloud Computing

The rapid growing demand for computational power by modern applications in Cloud Computing has led to the creation of large-scale data centers. Such data centers consume huge amount of electrical energy, emitting a great deal of CO2 in our environment. One effective way so as to reduce energy consumption is consolidating the vms using dynamic migration on minimum number of nodes and switching idle nodes to the sleep or hibernate modes which can cause better resource usage. But, due to the varying workloads in applications, consolidating the vms can cause SLA violation specially in cases that resource usage exceeds upper threshold defined for such nodes including consolidated vms. On the one hand, due to the necessity of providing the high QoS for customers which is negotiated in terms of SLA in cloud computing and on the other hand, importance of energy consumption as a critical problem, there is the necessity in addressing performance-energy trade off - the minimization of energy consumption, at the same time to take into account QoS. In this paper, related works regarding energy efficient datacentres have been conducted and in the end they have been compared with each other.
Are Dividends Informative About Future Earnings?

This paper investigates whether dividends are informative about a firm's future earnings. We examine this issue by investigating the association between current year stock returns and current and future earnings for firms that pay dividends in the current year as compared to firms that do not pay dividends. The data reveal that relative to non-dividend paying firms, dividend paying firms have current returns that are more associated with future earnings. In addition, we report results consistent with the market having a better understanding of a firm's future earnings after a dividend initiation relative to before. Overall, our results are consistent with dividends providing relevant information about future earnings to the market that is not in current earnings and that this information is incorporated into stock price.
Overuse of computed tomography pulmonary angiography in the evaluation of patients with suspected pulmonary embolism in the emergency department.

BACKGROUND Clinical decision rules have been developed and validated for the evaluation of patients presenting with suspected pulmonary embolism (PE) to the emergency department (ED). OBJECTIVES The objective was to assess the percentage of computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CT-PA) procedures that could have been avoided by use of the Wells score coupled with D-dimer testing (Wells/D-dimer) or pulmonary embolism rule-out criteria (PERC) in ED patients with suspected PE. METHODS The authors conducted a prospective cohort study of adult ED patients undergoing CT-PA for suspected PE. Wells score and PERC were calculated. A research blood sample was obtained for D-dimer testing for subjects who did not undergo testing as part of their ED evaluation. The primary outcome was PE by CT-PA or 90-day follow-up. Secondary outcomes were ED length of stay (LOS) and CT-PA time as defined by time from order to initial radiologist interpretation. RESULTS Of 152 suspected PE subjects available for analysis (mean ± SD age = 46.3 ± 15.6 years, 74% female, 59% black or African American, 11.8% diagnosed with PE), 14 (9.2%) met PERC, none of whom were diagnosed with PE. A low-risk Wells score (≤4) was assigned to 110 (72%) subjects, of whom only 38 (35%) underwent clinical D-dimer testing (elevated in 33/38). Of the 72 subjects with low-risk Wells scores who did not have D-dimers performed in the ED, archived research samples were negative in 16 (22%). All 21 subjects with low-risk Wells scores and negative D-dimers were PE-negative. CT-PA time (median = 160 minutes) accounted for more than half of total ED LOS (median = 295 minutes). CONCLUSIONS In total, 9.2 and 13.8% of CT-PA procedures could have been avoided by use of PERC and Wells/D-dimer, respectively.
Making Customer Satisfaction Pay: Connecting Survey Data to Financial Outcomes in the Hotel Industry

Despite the conventional wisdom that measuring customer satisfaction makes good business sense, there is a small but growing point of view that such measurements provide little or no actionable information to drive business outcomes.1 In contrast to that view, as we explain here, it is our position that companies should never stop measuring customer satisfaction, and instead they should take the necessary steps to ensure that measures of customer satisfaction are designed to provide the full benefit possible from such research.
A Plasma MicroRNA Panel for Detection of Colorectal Adenomas: A Step Toward More Precise Screening for Colorectal Cancer

Objective:The main objective of this study was to investigate the potential use of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) as biomarkers of colorectal (CR) adenomas. Background:Detection of precancerous lesions such as CR adenoma is a key to reduce CR cancer (CRC) mortality. There is a great need for accurate, noninvasive biomarkers for detection of CR adenoma and CRC. MiRNAs are non-protein-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression. Our prior work investigated the dysregulation of 5 plasma miRNAs in CRC patients. As intended, we undertook a more comprehensive plasma-miRNA screening study in patients with CR adenoma and CRC. Methods:We screened for 380 plasma-miRNAs using microfluidic array technology (Applied BioSystems) in a screening cohort of 12 healthy controls, 9 patients with CR adenomas, and 20 patients with CRC. A panel of the most dysregulated miRNAs (P < 0.05, False Discovery Rate: 5%) was then validated in a blinded cohort of 26 healthy controls, 16 patients with large adenomas, and 45 patients with CRC. Results:A panel of 8 plasma miRNAs (miR-532-3p, miR-331, miR-195, miR-17, miR-142-3p, miR-15b, miR-532, and miR-652) distinguished polyps from controls with high accuracy [area under curve (AUC) = 0.868 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.76–0.98)]. In addition, a panel of 3 plasma miRNAs (miR-431, miR-15b, and miR-139-3p) distinguished Stage IV CRC from controls with an [AUC = 0.896 (95% CI: 0.78–1.0)]. Receiver-operating-characteristic curves of miRNA panels for all CRC versus controls and polyps versus all CRC showed AUC values of 0.829 (95% CI: 0.73–0.93) and 0.856 (95% CI: 0.75–0.97), respectively. Conclusions:Plasma miRNAs are reliable, noninvasive, and inexpensive markers for CR adenomas. This miRNA panel warrants study in larger cohorts. Plasma-based assays could provide better screening compliance compared to fecal occult blood or endoscopic screening.
Texturing implicit surfaces with particle systems

We describe an intuitive yet effective method to apply bidimensional textures onto implicit surfaces. The main idea is to simulate the motion of particles starting on the surface and moving along the gradient vector field, until the particles reach a support surface, where a texture is defined. This approach is a good alternative to the use of solid texture, allowing effective application of arbitrary 2D image textures onto implicit surfaces. Moreover, our method is enhanced by a set of tools for controlling how the texture is mapped.
Ultrahigh-resolution magnetic resonance in inhomogeneous magnetic fields: two-dimensional long-lived-coherence correlation spectroscopy.

A half-century quest for improving resolution in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has enabled the study of molecular structures, biological interactions, and fine details of anatomy. This progress largely relied on the advent of sophisticated superconducting magnets that can provide stable and homogeneous fields with temporal and spatial variations below ΔB(0)/B(0)<0.01 ppm. In many cases however, inherent properties of the objects under investigation, pulsating arteries, breathing lungs, tissue-air interfaces, surgical implants, etc., lead to fluctuations and losses of local homogeneity. A new method dubbed "long-lived-coherence correlation spectroscopy" (LLC-COSY) opens the way to overcome both inhomogeneous and homogeneous broadening, which arise from local variations in static fields and fluctuating dipole-dipole interactions, respectively. LLC-COSY makes it possible to obtain ultrahigh resolution two-dimensional spectra, with linewidths on the order of Δν=0.1 to 1 Hz, even in very inhomogeneous fields (ΔB(0)/B(0)>10 ppm or 5000 Hz at 9.7 T), and can improve resolution by a factor up to 9 when the homogeneous linewidths are determined by dipole-dipole interactions. The resulting LLC-COSY spectra display chemical shift differences and scalar couplings in two orthogonal dimensions, like in "J spectroscopy. " LLC-COSY does not require any sophisticated gradient switching or frequency-modulated pulses. Applications to in-cell NMR and to magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of selected volume elements in MRI appear promising, particularly when susceptibility variations tend to preclude high resolution.
The Guttural Pouch is not Present in the White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum); Morphology of the Eustachian Tube and Nasopharynx

The nasopharynx and eustachian tube (auditory tube) were morphologically examined in the white rhinoceros. The narrow nasopharynx cavity was enlarged dorsoventrally. The most lateral part of both sides sharply rises in a dorsal direction and the volume is estimated at 173 cc. The eustachian tube is 145 mm in length from the auditory bulla to the nasopharynx. The hyaline cartilage is well‐developed in the middle region of the eustachian tube wall. The results demonstrated that the white rhinoceros does not have a guttural pouch. We suggest that the occurrence of the guttural pouch may not be dependent on the phylogenetic status of perissodactyls such as horse, donkey and tapir.
Understanding the undesirable effects of using Interorganizational Systems and Integrated Information Systems: Case studies among supply Chain Partners

Researchers and practitioners present entreprise integration to a Supply Chain as a lever for organizational performance. Yet if integration is generating performance, this cannot be done without the acceptance of new constraints due to integrated information systems implementation. We discuss the evaluation of the information systems that support the integration in order to uncover some negative consequences associated with their use. We mobilize the concept of undesirable effects and thus pose our research question: How can we identify and assess undesirable effects for users of integrated information systems or interorganizational systems? We analyze the perceptions of users on the effects of regular use of technology for their logistics activity. We adopt a qualitative methodology and select two case studies of just-in-time supply chain in the food and automotive industry. Data collection is carried out through interviews and analyzed by thematic coding. The results lead to identify twelve undesirable effects, four of which are specific to the use of interorganizational information systems. These results may extend the typology of misfits of Strong and Volkoff (2010) by entering the notion of undesirable effects to assess the negative consequences for users of the use of integrated information system.
Parathyroid hormone‐related protein (PTHrP) inhibits mitochondrial‐dependent apoptosis through CK2

Over the past decade, parathyroid hormone‐related protein (PTHrP) has been identified as a key survival factor for cells subjected to apoptotic stimuli. Its anti‐apoptotic activity has been attributed to nuclear accumulation of the intact protein, or a synthetic peptide corresponding to its nuclear targeting sequence (NTS), which promotes rapid exit of nutrient deprived cells from the cell cycle. Intracellular PTHrP also inhibited apoptosis by blocking tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα)‐induced apoptosis by blocking signaling from the “death receptor” and preventing damage to the mitochondrial membrane. In both cases, the anti‐apoptotic activity was significantly reduced in the presence of a nuclear deficient form of PTHrP with a 88K/E K/E·K/I91 mutation in the NTS. The current work was undertaken to determine the mechanism by which nuclear PTHrP blocked mitochondrial‐mediated apoptosis. Using sub‐cellular fractionation and functional assays we showed that pre‐treatment of HEK293 cells with exogenous NTS peptide before inducing apoptosis with TNFα was as effective as expression of the full‐length protein in inhibiting apoptosis. Inhibition of apoptosis was associated with increased expression of protein kinase casein kinase 2 (CK2) and in sustained CK2 accumulation and activity in the nuclear fraction. In primary chondrogenic cells harvested from the limb buds of PTHrP+/− and PTHrP−/− embryonic mice, there was a dose‐dependent decrease in CK2 expression and activity that correlated with increased susceptibility to apoptosis. Taken together the results indicate that nuclear accumulation of PTHrP effectively inhibits mitochondrial‐mediated apoptosis through regulation of the expression, activity, and sub‐cellular trafficking of CK2. J. Cell. Physiol. 212:591–599, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
APPLICABILITY OF DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY IN ORGANIC AGRICULTURE

The authors discuss the possibility of applying the theory of diffusion of innovations in the concept of organic farming. Agricultural and food sector has been exposed to significant changes over the past two centuries. That was very significant for the theory of diffusion of innovations that sought to better understand the process of knowledge transfer and adoption of innovations. Organic farming has developed as a response to the environmental and other problems of conventional agriculture. Also, it is a reaction to some issues regarding rural development. By introducing the theory of diffusion of innovation, the aim of the paper is to take into the consideration the possibility of its application to the organic system analysis. By that, we wish to take into account all the specifics which enable to observe the system of organic farming as an innovation itself. The authors conclude that the theory of diffusion of innovations can be used in the research of organic farming systems, with the respect of all characteristics and particularities of organic farming.
The Welfare Quality® vision

Scientific developments include the appearance of new disciplines as well as an increasing complexity and specialisation in the various existing disciplines and their interrelations. Not only do scientific fields now comprise more and more specialisations but there are also increasing cross-disciplinary links. While this can be considered a logical and valuable progression, as science evolves these sorts of developments may carry a risk of fragmentation and the loss of sufficient critical mass in specialised areas within institutions. Therefore, collaborative efforts and the establishment of international networks are required (Blokhuis, 2009a). Furthermore, the internationalisation (or even globalisation) of agri-business (e.g. cross border sourcing of animals and their products) as well as the complexity of related problems and issues (including animal welfare) undoubtedly require such multi-disciplinary and international collaboration.
A Proactive and Distributed QoS Negotiation Approach for Heterogeneous Environments: An Evaluation of QoS Signalling Overhead

The recent boom in radio access technologies and their diversification have opened the way to new studies on quality of services (QoS) management in such heterogeneous environments. Indeed, the need for efficient QoS mechanisms is increasing since these new technologies provide scarce resources (e.g. unpredictable bandwidth and variable error rates). In this environment, nomadic hosts have a greater choice of access technologies. Thus, keeping the same QoS level for one user's application, anywhere user is connecting, may require some mechanisms to control QoS in each target network. In this framework, we propose to adopt a proactive and dynamic negotiation approach coupled with the hand over decision algorithm implemented in (L. Suciu et al., 2007). In this approach, decision parameters (e.g. throughput, transmission delay, etc.) can be distributed between several hierarchical entities in the network. If one decision parameter's value should be negotiated, negotiation process will be immediately started before taking the hand over decision. A comparison of several QoS parameter distributions (e.g. QoS parameters are stored either in mobile terminal or in control entity located more or less deeply in the core network) has been carried out thanks to a mathematical model, which takes into account the size of all messages necessary to achieve QoS parameter negotiation during a mobility scenario.