Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Palm Oil Production in Malaysia: An Analytical Systems Model for Balancing Economic Prosperity, Forest Conservation and Social Welfare

Since the late 1950’s, the Malaysian human population has nearly quadrupled, increasing pressure on natural resource exploitation to meet domestic needs and to earn foreign exchange from exports. Global demand for Malaysian palm oil in particular had steeply increased since the mid-1970s and by 2013, the commodity was the leading foreign exchange earner. To fulfill and sustain this demand, the country’s economy has steadily shifted bias towards production and associated value addition of palm oil products for export. However, as a consequence, many of Malaysia’s natural tropical forests have been converted to palm oil farming resulting in loss of approximately 10,000 km2 of forest cover over the past twenty-five years, and biodiversity has been displaced or lost. To provide a deeper insight into the interplay amongst key interrelated environmental and socio-economic variables, and a forecast of possible future balance, we used a systems dynamism modeling tool, STELLAR (structural thinking, experiential learning laboratory with animation), to simulate and project how Malaysia could achieve a medium-term sustainable balance or optimization between palm oil production and forest conservation without compromising on human social welfare. The model consisted of four main modules (environmental, economic, social development and human welfare) each with component parameters, and interconnected by input and output loops. Model calibrations, testing and preruns involved existing official 30-year time-series datasets. Subsequently, four scenarios: Environmental conservation; Economic growth under increased global palm oil demand; Economy decline under decreased palm oil demand; and Control condition with little or no change, were selected for simulated projections of future possibilities. Simulation results showed that scenarios and variable interactions that reduce environmental damage would offer the best chance for optimizing the palm oil economy while also minimizing forest loss and promoting citizen social welfare.
Profile of hospitalisation and death in the first year after diagnosis of end-stage renal disease in a multi-ethnic Asian population.

INTRODUCTION The increasing prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is an important public health issue due to the high costs of kidney replacement therapies. We examined the impact of ethnicity and other factors in ESRD management and hospitalisation in a multiracial Asian population in the fi rst year after diagnosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS We analysed a prospectively collected database of 168 new ESRD patients from the National University Hospital, Singapore (NUH) in 2005. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess factors for mortality and hospitalisation. RESULTS Sixteen patients eventually chose conservative treatment, 102 haemodialysis, 41 peritoneal dialysis and 9 patients underwent kidney transplantation for their long-term treatment. Although more Chinese patients had dialysis plans (56.7% vs 36.8%, P = 0.022), many still required urgent dialysis initiation via catheters (61.3%). These dialysed patients who required urgent treatment had more admissions (3.6 vs 2.6, P = 0.023) and longer length of stay (9.3 days, P = 0.014). Approximately 40 (7.4%) admissions were related to vascular access complications (thromboses, dislodgements and infections), and 15 (2.8%) were for new tunnelled catheter insertions. Deaths were 23.8% in the fi rst year after diagnosis and median survival was 125 days. Age, fi nal treatment modality, type of therapy centre, history of coronary artery disease, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) <50%, and having no plans for dialysis were associated with mortality. CONCLUSIONS The care of ESRD patients requires substantial commitment of healthcare resources particularly in the fi rst year after diagnosis. Steps to reduce urgent initiation of dialysis will help reduce resource utilisation and improve patient outcomes.
A Parsimonious Model of Stockkeeping-Unit Choice

The authors develop a model to describe and predict consumer stock-keeping-unit choice in frequently bought product categories. The model posits that a product category consists of several salient attributes with many attribute levels and represents a stockkeeping unit as an attribute-level combination. The number of parameters of the model does not increase with the number of stockkeeping units and the number of attribute levels. The authors demonstrate the descriptive and predictive power of their model using 133,492 purchase incidences in 16 product categories. Their model fits 7% better in sample and predicts 8% better out of sample in hit probability than two leading models and requires only half the number of parametes.
AIS Electronic

Previous research on the macroeconomic consequences of the development of information and communication technology (ICT) has produced mixed results. Despite the intense debate on the link between ICT and economic performance, there is no research that systematically takes the quality of domestic institutions into consideration. To address this issue, this study seeks to examine the effect of ICT penetration on economic performance by distinguishing countries with strong institutional qualities from those with weak institutional qualities. Using a pooled-OLS regression model and yearly data for the ASEAN-5 from 1991-2013, this study finds that there is a positive relationship between the penetration of ICT and economic performance. More importantly, this study also shows that while penetration of ICT is one of the key determinants of economic performance, better institutional quality does foster economic performance in ASEAN-5 economies
Evaluation of third‐party logistics (3PL) providers by using a two‐phase AHP and TOPSIS methodology

Purpose – Third‐party logistics (3PL) provider selection has gained great attention in logistics management literature. The purpose of this paper is to provide a good insight into the use of a‐two‐phase analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach that is a multi‐criteria decision‐making methodology in the evaluation of 3PL providers.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, after the selection criteria of 3PL providers are determined by modified Delphi method, the weights of criteria have been calculated by applying the AHP method. The TOPSIS method is then employed to achieve the final ranking results. And an actual case example is presented to clarify the methodology. Sensitivity analysis is also given to demonstrate how sensitive the proposed model is to changes in the weights of different main criteria.Findings – This model provides decision makers with a simple, flexible, and easy‐to‐use approach to evaluate potential 3PL .
A Microfabricated Propofol Trap for Breath-Based Anesthesia Depth Monitoring

This paper reports a golden microtrap chip for anesthetic depth monitoring. The chip selectively captures the propofol (2,6-diisopropylphenol) compound, which is a widely used substance for anesthesia, by filtering out the other species found in human breath. The fabricated silicon-glass chip is 12 mm on each side and consists of an array of high aspect ratio parabolic reflectors inside its 7 mm × 7 mm × 0.24 mm cavity. The interior surfaces of the chip are coated with an electroplated gold layer having a surface roughness of around 6.82 nm, which is an order of magnitude higher than a gold layer deposited by electron (e)-beam evaporation. Uncoated and e-beam gold-coated chips are unable to trap propofol and other compounds found in human breath. In contrast, silicon-glass chips coated with Tenax TA (2,6 diphenylene oxide), a gas adsorbing polymer, captures propofol among other volatiles present in human breath. Only devices coated with an electroplated gold layer demonstrate selective affinity for the target compound propofol. For the same propofol concentration, these golden microtraps show consistent capture efficiency with less than 8% variation in the trapped propofol amount while tested with different human breath samples. These microfabricated chips have the potential to accurately quantify the amount of propofol present in human breath samples without incorporating the gas chromatography column into the testing setup, resulting in faster analysis and reduced cost and complexity.
Uniform Fractional Band CAC Scheme for QoS Provisioning in Wireless Networks

Generally, the wireless network provides priority to handover calls instead of new calls to maintain its quality of service (QoS). Because of this QoS provisioning, a call admission control (CAC) scheme is essential for the suitable management of limited radio resources of wireless networks to uphold different factors, such as new call blocking probability, handover call dropping probability, channel utilization, etc. Designing an optimal CAC scheme is still a challenging task due to having a number of considerable factors, such as new call blocking probability, handover call dropping probability, channel utilization, traffic rate, etc. Among existing CAC schemes such as, fixed guard band (FGB), fractional guard channel (FGC), limited fractional channel (LFC), and Uniform Fractional Channel (UFC), the LFC scheme is optimal considering the new call blocking and handover call dropping probability. However, this scheme does not consider channel utilization. In this paper, a CAC scheme, which is termed by a uniform fractional band (UFB) to overcome the limitations of existing schemes, is proposed. This scheme is oriented by priority and non-priority guard channels with a set of fractional channels instead of fractionizing the total channels like FGC and UFC schemes. These fractional channels in the UFB scheme accept new calls with a predefined uniform acceptance factor and assist the network in utilizing more channels. The mathematical models, operational benefits, and the limitations of existing CAC schemes are also discussed. Subsequently, we prepared a comparative study between the existing and proposed scheme in terms of the aforementioned QoS related factors. The numerical results we have obtained so far show that the proposed UFB scheme is an optimal CAC scheme in terms of QoS and resource utilization as compared to the existing schemes.
Intrusion scenarios detection based on data mining

Traditional intrusion detection systems focus on low-level attacks, and only generate isolated alerts. They canpsilat find logical relations among alerts. In addition, IDSpsilas accuracy is low, a lot of alerts are false alerts. So it is difficult for human users or intrusion response systems to understand the alerts and take appropriate actions. To solve this problem different intrusion scenario detection methods are proposed. In this paper a data mining method is used to find the attack scenarios. Firstly redundancy alerts are checked and deleted, then attack scenario patterns are mined by using the associate-rule algorithms which is an improved Apriori algorithm. These mined scenario patterns are used to find attack scenarios. In this paper 1999 DARPA intrusion detection scenario specific datasets are used as the experimental data and the corresponding results are shown. Compared with current scenario detection methods which depend on human knowledge to define attack scenarios, our methods use data mining method to find the scenarios automatically. Our experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method.
İlişkisel pazarlama çerçevesinde marka sadakatinin oluşumu ve bir model önerisi

Bu calismada iliskisel pazarlama cercevesinde marka sadakatinin belirleyicilerinin incelenmesi amaclanmistir. Bu amac dogrultusunda gelistirilen model ile marka tatmini, marka guveni, marka duygusu ve marka sadakati arasindaki iliskiler arastirilmistir. Calismada ortaya konan modelin kuramsal temeli iliskisel pazarlamanin baglilik-guven kuramina (Morgan ve Hunt, 1994) dayanmaktadir. Bu calismada marka sadakati, bagliligi temsil edecek sekilde hem davranissal hem de tutumsal boyutlariyla ele alinmaktadir. Calismada gelistirilen modeli test etmek uzere 450 ogrenciye anket uygulanmis; model dogrulayici faktor analizi ve yapisal esitlik modellemesi araciligiyla test edilmistir. Analiz neticesinde marka guveni ve marka duygusunun hem davranissal hem de tutumsal marka sadakati uzerinde olumlu ve dogrudan etkisi tespit edilmistir. Ayni zamanda marka tatmininin, davranissal ve tutumsal marka sadakati uzerinde marka guveni ve marka duygusu araciligiyla dolayli etkisi gozlemlenmistir.
Identification and analysis of the osmotolerance associated genes in Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes, the causative agent of listeriosis, has strong osmotolerance and is able to grow in severe circumstances. Many studies of the mechanisms of listerial osmotolerance have been performed. However, there is much which remains unknown. In previous studies we constructed two kinds of mutant in L. monocytogenes EGD strain to analyse the mechanisms of osmotolerance in L. monocytogenes by molecular genetic methods. In this paper, we summarized the genetical studies of osmotolerance in this bacterium by many researchers and ourselves. First, a transposon-insertional mutant strain was constructed that showed reduced growth in high osmotic agar compared with the parental strain. The results of cloning and sequencing analysis showed that the rel gene, which encodes guanosine tetra- and pentaphosphate synthesis and hydrolysis protein, is involved in osmotolerance in L. monocytogenes. Next, the expression levels of five sigma factor coding genes in L. monocytogenes were examined using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and it was found that the rpoN gene (the alternative sigma factor RpoN (sigma54)-encoding gene) was activated under high osmotic conditions. A deletion mutant of rpoN was constructed and its response to osmotic stress was analysed. In minimal medium with NaCl and carnitine, an osmoprotectant, the mutant showed deficient growth to that of the parental strain when the starting optical density was high, though the expression level of carnitine transporter operon, opuC, and the rate of carnitine uptake in the mutant was similar to that of EGD. These results suggest that the rpoN mutant may need larger amounts of carnitine which might be needed for its growth under high osmolarity. Through the analysis of these mutants, new insights have been obtained into osmotolerance in L. monocytogenes.
Loss of pleasure, ideological food choice reasons and eating pathology

The study compared four types of dieters who stressed ideological food-choice reasons and pleasure in their food choice in different ways. A total of 66 female dieters were included in the study. As hypothesized, the dieters in the high ideology-low pleasure cluster showed more signs of eating disorders, lower psychological well-being and more body-dissatisfaction than other dieters. The differences in internalization of societal thinness ideals and magical beliefs about food and health were not significant. The discussion considers the reasons for the dysfunctionality of the high ideology-low pleasure motive combination in food choice.
EARLY- VERSUS LATE-ONSET SHOCK IN EUROPEAN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS

We investigated the possible differences in epidemiology, clinical course, management, and outcome between early and late occurrence of shock using data from the Sepsis Occurrence in Acutely Ill Patients Study, a large European multicenter study, which prospectively collected data from all adult intensive care unit (ICU) patients admitted to a participating center within a 2-week period in 2002. Shock was defined as hemodynamic compromise necessitating the administration of vasopressor agents. Early and late shock were defined as onset of shock within the first 2 days in the ICU or later, respectively. Of 3,147 patients, 1,058 (33.6%) had shock at any time, of whom 462 (43.7%) had septic shock. Patients with late shock had a higher incidence of respiratory (87.4 vs. 69.7%, P < 0.001) and hepatic (15.5 vs. 8.7%, P < 0.05) failure, and more often received dopamine (44.7% vs. 34.5%, P < 0.05) and albumin (31.1% vs. 20.3%, P < 0.001) than patients who developed shock early. Intensive care unit and hospital mortality rates were greater in patients who developed shock late, rather than early (52.4% vs. 36.8% and 55.3% vs. 43%, respectively, P < 0.02). In a multivariable analysis, late shock was associated with an independent risk of higher ICU mortality in shock patients (odds ratio, 2.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.6-4.3, P < 0.001). These observations have important implications in establishing individual prognosis as well as in the design and interpretation of clinical trials.
Quality of financial services conceptual issues and a case study in the Australian credit union industry

The intention of the study was to add a further contribution to the field of retail banking sennces quality by (1) outlining a selected conceptual framework for continuous improving the overall banking services performance (2) applying a replication of the SERVQUAL instrument, proposed by Berry et al. (1988), in tracking the level of quality of the Illawarra Credit Union (1993). The first pari of the study presented an extensive literature review on the development of the Post WWII Australian banking and finance industry, the Australian Credit Unions Movement, bank management and marketing, and Total Quality Management. This review led to the conclusion that the size of a market participant was no longer a determining factor for the choice of a bank by customers. Rather, it was quality of service that attracted and retained customers. The chance of growth was greatly dependent on how well market participants could satisfy the unique needs of their customers within their institutional constraints. The second part of the study presented and analysed the resuhs of the first application of a replication of SERVQUAL as a measure of the level of quality of the Illawarra Credit Union, NSW. These results were measured against that of the original American results in iwo American retail banks that conducted by Berry (& colleagues) research team (1988). The comparison showed that despite the differences in time lapse between the two studies, and the cultural, economic, geographic and social differences, the pallerns of the services quality construct were identical. This finding provided circumstantial evidence of the efficacy of SERVQUAL in tracking the level of retail banking services quality on an industry wide basis in different geographic locations. The managerial implications of the results were also analysed and presented.
HIGH-DOSE HIGH-FREQUENCY AFLIBERCEPT FOR RECALCITRANT NEOVASCULAR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION

Purpose: To determine the efficacy of monthly (0.1 mL/4 mg) aflibercept for refractory neovascular age-related macular degeneration (wet age-related macular degeneration). Methods: This was a retrospective interventional case series in which patients with wet age-related macular degeneration were treated with stepwise dose escalation. Nonvitrectomized patients resistant to monthly (Q4W) ranibizumab/bevacizumab were switched to 2 mg aflibercept every 8 weeks. With resistance, they were escalated to Q4W 2 mg aflibercept, then Q4W 4 mg (high dose high frequency, 4Q4W) aflibercept. Resistance was defined as ≥2 recurrences after being dry following ≥3 injections or persistent exudation on treatment of ≥5 injections. Results: Thirty-three eyes of 28 patients were treated with 4Q4W aflibercept and followed for a mean of 16 months. A dry retina (no intraretinal or subretinal fluid) was achieved after initiating 4Q4W aflibercept treatment at a mean of 3.8 months. Central foveal thickness, maximum foveal thickness, intraretinal fluid, subretinal fluid, and retinal pigment detachment height decreased significantly at 1 month after initiating the 4Q4W aflibercept, and the morphologic therapeutic effect was sustained until the last visit. Forty-five percent of eyes had one or more lines of vision improvement. New geographic atrophy developed in 9% of eyes during follow-up. No ocular or systemic adverse events occurred after initiating 4Q4W aflibercept. Conclusion: Intravitreal high-dose high-frequency aflibercept is an effective treatment for patients with refractory wet age-related macular degeneration.
Localized Piezoelectric Alveolar Decortication for Orthodontic Treatment in Adults

This randomized controlled trial aimed to evaluate the benefits and clinical outcomes of piezocision, which is a minimally invasive approach to corticotomy that is used in orthodontic treatments. Twenty-four adult patients presenting with mild overcrowdings were randomly allocated to either a control group that was treated with conventional orthodontics or a test group that received piezo-assisted orthodontics. The piezocisions were performed 1 wk week after the placement of the orthodontic appliances. Neither grafting material nor sutures were used. All patients were followed every 2 wk, and archwires were changed only when they were no longer active. The periods required for the completion of the overall orthodontic treatments were calculated, and the periodontal parameters were evaluated at baseline and at the end of the orthodontic treatment. Patient-centered outcomes were assessed with a visual analog scale; analgesic use following the procedures was also recorded. The patient characteristics were similar between the 2 groups. The overall treatment time was significantly reduced by 43% in the piezocision group as compared with the control group. In both groups, periodontal parameters (i.e., recession depth, pocket depth, plaque index, and papilla bleeding index) remained unchanged between the baseline and treatment completion time points. No increase in root resorption was observed in either group. Scars were observed in 50% of the patients in the piezocision group. Analgesic consumption was similar following orthodontic appliance placement and piezocision surgery. Patient satisfaction was significantly better in the piezocision group than in the control group. In these conditions, the piezocision technique seemed to be effective in accelerating orthodontic tooth movement. No gingival recessions were observed. The risk of residual scars might limit the indications for piezocision in patients with a high smile line (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02590835).
Preexisting Immunity to Adenovirus in Rhesus Monkeys Fails To Prevent Vector-Induced Toxicity

ABSTRACT In an earlier study we evaluated innate immune responses to a first-generation adenoviral vector infused into the portal vein of rhesus monkeys who had never been exposed to adenovirus previously. In these animals, the systemic administration of E1/E3-deleted adenoviral vectors resulted in immediate activation of innate immunity and serious toxicity caused by targeting of vector to antigen-presenting cells and systemic inflammation. We analyze here how these responses are affected by vector-specific preexisting immunity that was induced by intramuscular immunization 6 months prior to evaluation. Our results show that preexposure to the vector substantially diminishes the transgene expression in most tissues but has little effect on gene transfer. Significantly, preimmunization does not eliminate systemic vector-induced toxicity. These conclusions are based on the presence of clinical features of coagulopathy and elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 in the serum of animals treated with vector after intramuscular immunization. Furthermore, preexisting immunity appears to induce a vector-specific inhibitory effect on erythroid progenitor development in the bone marrow that is not found when naive animals are challenged with vector.