Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Promoting protean career through employability culture and mentoring: career strategies as moderator

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of organizational-related variables and the moderating role of career strategies on protean career among employees. Design/methodology/approach Research data are gathered from a sample of 306 employees in 18 electrical and electronics multinational corporations (MNCs) in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is used to examine the influences of organizational-related factors and the moderating role of career strategies on protean career. Findings The results demonstrate that organizational-related variables, namely, employability culture and mentoring are viewed as potential predictors of protean career. There are significant moderating effects of career strategies on the relationship between both employability culture and mentoring toward protean career among employees. Research limitations/implications This paper provides an empirical framework to explain protean career based on the review of career-related literatures. Practical implications The findings provide implications to both organizations and human resource development practitioners on new career trends of protean career. Practical interventions are suggested to assist individuals and organizations toward protean career development. Originality/value This paper offers new insight into the predicting factors of protean career and its moderating role on career strategies.
On the performance of space-time cooperative relay in fading channel

Cooperative relay has been an interesting research area for the past years as it promotes higher data rates and robust to wireless environment. IEEE Work Group initiated the use of relay stations in the IEEE 802.16e standard and it is called IEEE 802.16j. This paper proposed a multi-hop cooperative relay system with space-time codes (STC), with the integration of relay selection. In changing environment, data transmission signals through wireless channels can be degraded by factors like shadowing, fading etc. Cooperative relay system is believed to offer robustness by multipath routes to destination. The cooperative relay system in this work adopted the virtual MIMO (multiple input multiple output) concept. Analysis of performances are made between topologies of space-time cooperative relay systems and compared with cooperative relay transmission.
Evaluation of the Effects of Soil Layer Classification in the Common Land Model on Modeled Surface Variables and the Associated Land Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval Model

Abstract: Land surface soil moisture (SSM) is crucial in research and applications in hydrology, ecology, and meteorology. A novel SSM retrieval model, based on the diurnal cycles of land surface temperature (LST) and net surface shortwave radiation (NSSR), has recently been reported. It suggests a promising avenue for the retrieval of regional SSM using LST and NSSR derived from geostationary satellites in a future development. As part of a further improvement of previous work, effects of soil layer classification in the Common Land Model (CoLM) on modeled LST, NSSR and the associated SSM retrieval model in particular, have been evaluated. To address this issue, the soil profile has been divided in to three layers, named upper layer (0–0.05 m), root layer (0.05–1.30 m) and bottom layer (1.30–2.50 m). By varying the number of soil layers with the three layer zones, nine different soil layer classifications have been performed in the CoLM to produce simulated data. Results indicate that (1) modeled SSM is less sensitive to soil layer classification while modeled LST and NSSR are sensitive, especially under wet conditions and (2) the simulated data based SSM retrieval model is stable for a fixed upper layer with varying classifications of root and bottom layers. It also concludes an optimal soil layer classification for the CoLM while producing simulated data to develop the SSM retrieval model.
Working Paper Series CAPITAL TAXATION Quantitative Exploration of the Inverse Euler Equation

This paper studies the efficiency gains from distorting savings in dynamic Mirrleesian private-information economies. We develop a method that pertubs the consumption process optimally while preserving incentive compatibility. The Inverse Euler equation holds at the new optimized allocation. Starting from an equilibrium where agents can save freely allows us to compute the efficiency gains from savings disortions. We investigate how these gains depend on a limited set of features of the economy. We find an important role for general equilibrium effects. In particular, efficiency gains are greatly reduced when, rather than assuming a fixed interest rate, decreasing returns to capital are incorporated with a neoclassical technology. We compute the efficiency gains for the incomplete market model in Aiyagari [1994] and find them to be relatively modest for the baseline calibration. For higher levels of uncertainty, the efficiency gains can be sizable, but we find that most of the improvements can then attributed to the relaxation of borrowing constraints, rather than the introduction of savings distortions. * Farhi is grateful for the hospitality of the University of Chicago. Werning is grateful for the hospitality of Harvard University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis during the time this draft was completed. We thank Florian Scheuer for outstanding research assistance. We thank comments and suggestions from Daron Acemoglu, Manuel Amador, Marios Angeletos, Patrick Kehoe, Narayana Kocherlakota, Mike Golosov, Ellen McGrattan, Robert Shimer, Aleh Tsyvinski and seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnepolis, Chicago, MIT, Harvard, Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie-Mellon, Wharton and the Conference on the Macroeconomics of Imperfect Risk Sharing at the UC-Santa Barbara, Society for Economic Dynamics in Vancouver and the NBER Summer institute. Special thanks to Mark Aguiar, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Fatih Guvenen, Dirk Krueger, Fabrizo Perri, Luigi Pistaferri and Gianluca Violante for enlightening exchanges on the available empirical evidence for consumption and income. All remaining errors are our own. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive. org/details/capitaltaxationqOOfarh
One kind of control platform development for wheeled mobile robots

This paper presents the control platform design for a self-developing mobile robot. In addition to the introduction of the robot's whole framework, its control architecture, motion controller design and velocity loop servo controller are also described. Modular, open, distributed control architecture is utilized in the robot as well as advanced intelligent control strategies such as cross-coupling control and fuzzy logic control. Therefore, the robot has quick reactivity, precise motion control and excellent robustness under various dynamic environments.
Interactive Poster : A Point-Based Layout for Large Hierarchies

Space-filling layout techniques for tree representations are frequently used when the available screen space is small or the data set is large. In this paper, we propose a new approach to space-filling tree representations, which uses mechanisms from the point-based rendering paradigm. We also numerically evaluate our new technique together with two established space-filling techniques using the measures of the Ink-Paper-Ratio [2] and overplotted% [1].
A clustering and cooperative infrastructure for next generation cellular networks

Transmit diversity generally requires more than one antenna at the transmitter. However, many wireless devices are limited by size or hardware complexity to one antenna. Recently, a new class of methods called cooperative communication has been proposed that enables single antenna mobiles in a multiuser environment to share their antennas and generate a virtual multiple-antenna transmitter that allows them to achieve transmit diversity. We propose a novel clustering structure for cooperative communication systems, whose objective is to increase the cellular network throughput and further improve the system performance. In this cellular system, we consider all the available users are divided into two groups. The super group is served by Base Station (BS), and the Mobile Stations (MSs) locate in the cell boundary are served by the clusterhead (CH) which is elect from the regular group. Simulation results show that this scheme can bring higher system throughput, and it also can increase the data rate at the cell edge.
A Hybrid Adaptive Localization Strategy for Peer-to-Peer Video on Demand

Video-on-demand (VoD) is today's standard for viewing and sharing video content over the Internet. However, the conventional client-server approach to video on demand consumes a significant amount bandwidth, pushing content publishers and content delivery networks to examine other approaches such as the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies to assist in video distribution. We studied the performance impact of peer localization strategies aimed at limiting traffic exchanges between autonomous systems (ASes), and our findings suggest that peer localization can improve streaming performance while reducing inter-AS traffic, to the potential benefit of users and providers, respectively. Using a hybrid adaptive localization strategy (HALS), we allow external peers into a local mix when a swarm is outside its peak, in order to ensure a steady supply of pieces and to maintain structural robustness. Though HALS introduces additional inter-domain traffic compared to a purely localized approach, its download performance is at par or slightly better, while further reducing the content publisher's total upload volume.
Metaphors in Invasion Biology: Implications for Risk Assessment and Management of Non-Native Species

Abstract Metaphors for describing the introduction, impacts, and management of non-native species are numerous and often quite outspoken (e.g. invasional meltdown and explosive growth). Policy-makers have adopted increasingly disputed metaphorical terms from scientific discourse. We performed a critical analysis of the use of strong metaphors in reporting scientific findings to policy-makers. Our analysis shows that perceptions of harm, invasiveness or nativeness are dynamic and inevitably display multiple narratives in science, policy or management. Improving our awareness of multiple expert and stakeholder narratives that exist in the context of non-native species management, as well as metaphorical alternatives, is critical.
Random patch based video tracking via boosting the relative spaces

In this paper, we propose a new visual tracking method based on the recently popular tracking-as-classification idea. We concentrate on exploring the intra-class variance of the foreground target to construct and update a classification based tracker. In our approach, foreground target is represented by a set of model patches. Different types of features are jointly used to represent those patches. Individual weak learners are trained based on each model patch's relative space. AdaBoost framework is applied to choose those weak classifiers to combine a strong classifier as the tracker for next frame. Moreover, with the new tracking result, the tracker is adjusted adaptively according to the change of scene to keep itself discriminative during the entire sequence. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with comparison results on common video sequences.
Email Communities of Interest

Email has become an integral and sometimes overwhelming part of users’ personal and professional lives. In this paper, we measure the flow and frequency of user email toward the identification of communities of interest (COI)–groups of users that have a common bond. If detectable, such associations will be useful in automating email management, e.g., topical classification, flagging important missives, and SPAM mitigation. An analysis of a large corpus of university email is used to drive the generation and validation of algorithms for automatically determining COIs. We examine the effect of the structure and transience of COIs with the algorithms and validate algorithms using user-labeled data. Our analysis shows that the proposed algorithms correctly identify email as being sent from the human-identified COI with high accuracy. The structure and characteristics of COIs are explored analytically and broader conclusions about email use are posited.
Aeroengine Component Deviation Parameters Nonlinear Estimation Using Particle Swarm Optimization

Estimation of aeroengine component deviation parameters (CDP) is an important step of aeronautical propulsion system performance-seeking control (PSC), which traditionally employs linear Kalman filter based on piecewise state variable model (SVM). It's not easy to get SVM, so an idea of nonlinear parameter estimation was introduced using the nonlinear aeroengine model directly. The nonlinear estimation model is established according to aeroengine operation balance and the measurable parameters matching. The nonlinear estimation was changed to a problem of solving high-dimension nonlinear equations set. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) with adaptive inertia weight was employed to solve the problem in order to satisfy the requirement of PSC calculation rapidly. The simulation results of a given turbofan engine show that utilizing the PSO algorithm can estimate the CPD precisely.
TEXT EXTRACTION FROM IMAGES: A SURVEY

Text extraction is one of the key tasks in document image analysis. Automatic text extraction without characters recognition capabilities is to extract regions just contains text. The text extraction process includes detection, localization, segmentation and enhancement of the text from the given input image. In this paper we present a comparative study and performance evaluation of various text extraction techniques.
Growing Menace of Antibacterial Resistance in Clinical Isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Nepal: An Insight of Beta-Lactamase Production

Introduction. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most frequently isolated organism as it acts as the opportunistic pathogen and can cause infections in immunosuppressed patients. The production of different types of beta-lactamases renders this organism resistant to many commonly used antimicrobials. Therefore, the aim of this study was to document the antibiotic resistance rate in Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from different clinical specimens. Methods. Pseudomonas aeruginosa recovered was identified by standard microbiological methods. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed by modified Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method following Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) guidelines and all the suspected isolates were tested for the production of ESBLs, MBLs, and AmpC. Results. Out of total (178) isolates, 83.1% were recovered from the inpatient department (IPD). Majority of the isolates mediated resistance towards the beta-lactam antibiotics, while nearly half of the isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Most of the aminoglycosides used showed resistance rate up to 75% but amikacin proved to be better option. No resistance to polymyxin was observed. ESBLs, MBLs, and AmpC mediated resistance was seen in 33.1%, 30.9%, and 15.7% isolates, respectively. Conclusions. Antibiotic resistance rate and beta-lactamase mediated resistance were high. Thus, regular surveillance of drug resistance is of utmost importance.
Mixed Theileria infections in free-ranging buffalo herds: implications for diagnosing Theileria parva infections in Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer)

SUMMARY Buffalo-adapted Theileria parva causes Corridor disease in cattle. Strict control measures therefore apply to the movement of buffalo in South Africa and include mandatory testing of buffalo for the presence of T. parva. The official test is a real-time hybridization PCR assay that amplifies the V4 hypervariable region of the 18S rRNA gene of T. parva, T. sp. (buffalo) and T. sp. (bougasvlei). The effect that mixed T. parva and T. sp. (buffalo)-like infections have on accurate T. parva diagnosis was investigated in this study. In vitro mixed infection simulations indicated PCR signal suppression at 100 to 1000-fold T. sp. (buffalo) excess at low T. parva parasitaemia. Suppression of PCR signal was found in field buffalo with mixed infections. The T. parva-positive status of these cases was confirmed by selective suppression of T. sp. (buffalo) amplification using a locked nucleic acid clamp and independent assays based on the p67, p104 and Tpr genes. The incidence of mixed infections in the Corridor disease endemic region of South Africa is significant, while the prevalence in buffalo outside the endemic area is currently low. A predicted increase of T. sp. (buffalo)-like infections can affect future diagnoses where mixed infections occur, prompting the need for improvements in current diagnostics.
Guitar note onset detection based on a spectral sparsity measure

The detection of note onsets is gaining a growing interest in audio signal processing research due to its wide range of applications in music information retrieval. We propose a new note onset detection algorithm NINOS2 exploiting the spectral sparsity difference between different parts of a musical note. When compared to the popular state-of-the-art LogFiltSpecFlux algorithm, the proposed algorithm shows up to 61% better performance for automatically annotated guitar melodies as well as chord progressions. We also propose an additional performance measure to assess the relative position of detected onsets w.r. t. each other.
Improving the Efficiency of Matrix Operations in the Numerical Solution of Stiff Ordinary Differential Equations

In the numerical solution of large stiff systems of ordinary differential equations, matrix operations associated with the solution of linear equations often dominate the solution time. A matrix factorization is suggested that will allow efficient updating after a change in stepsize or order. This updating technique is shown to be applicable to a wide variety of methods for stiff systems including multistep methods, Runge-Kutta methods, and methods using a rational function of a matrix The technique is particularly useful if the system is large and the Jacobian is dense Numerical results are included to illustrate the use of the technique.
Telomerase Inhibitor Imetelstat (GRN163L) Limits the Lifespan of Human Pancreatic Cancer Cells

Telomerase is required for the unlimited lifespan of cancer cells. The vast majority of pancreatic adenocarcinomas overexpress telomerase activity and blocking telomerase could limit their lifespan. GRN163L (Imetelstat) is a lipid-conjugated N3′→P5′ thio-phosphoramidate oligonucleotide that blocks the template region of telomerase. The aim of this study was to define the effects of long-term GRN163L exposure on the maintenance of telomeres and lifespan of pancreatic cancer cells. Telomere size, telomerase activity, and telomerase inhibition response to GRN163L were measured in a panel of 10 pancreatic cancer cell lines. The cell lines exhibited large differences in levels of telomerase activity (46-fold variation), but most lines had very short telomeres (2–3 kb in size). GRN163L inhibited telomerase in all 10 pancreatic cancer cell lines, with IC50 ranging from 50 nM to 200 nM. Continuous GRN163L exposure of CAPAN1 (IC50 = 75 nM) and CD18 cells (IC50 = 204 nM) resulted in an initial rapid shortening of the telomeres followed by the maintenance of extremely short but stable telomeres. Continuous exposure to the drug eventually led to crisis and to a complete loss of viability after 47 (CAPAN1) and 69 (CD18) doublings. Crisis In these cells was accompanied by activation of a DNA damage response (γ-H2AX) and evidence of both senescence (SA-β-galactosidase activity) and apoptosis (sub-G1 DNA content, PARP cleavage). Removal of the drug after long-term GRN163L exposure led to a reactivation of telomerase and re-elongation of telomeres in the third week of cultivation without GRN163L. These findings show that the lifespan of pancreatic cancer cells can be limited by continuous telomerase inhibition. These results should facilitate the design of future clinical trials of GRN163L in patients with pancreatic cancer.
Real-time phase-isolation algorithm for speech separation

Beamforming techniques are applied to microphone arrays with the aim of separating sources and improving intelligibility, by means of spatial filtering. The non-stationary nature of speech implies the use of adaptive beamformers and several solutions have been implemented. Furthermore, interfering signals coming from the same direction as the target signal, cannot be filtered by the beamformer. The method presented in this paper is an alternative to adaptive beamforming, combining a simple delay-and-sum beamformer with a time-frequency masking method based on phase information. The beamformer is steered to the desired source and a function related to the phase differences between the steered signals at the microphones is evaluated to reject any interference that passed through the beamformer. Thus, the algorithm does not need to constantly adapt the filter coefficients and takes advantage of both beamforming properties and time-frequency separation techniques. The separation performance of the method has been evaluated in a noisy and reverberant environment using different arrays, talkers and scenarios. Real data are used to show the performance of the real-time algorithm when isolating one of the sources in the mixture.
Gain of affinity point mutation in the serotonin receptor gene 5‐HT2Dro accelerates germband extension movements during Drosophila gastrulation

Serotonin (5‐HT) not only works as a neurotransmitter in the nervous system, but also as a morphogenetic factor during early embryogenesis. In Drosophila, a previous report showed that embryos that lack the 5‐HT2Dro receptor locus, display abnormal gastrulation movements. In this work, we screened for point mutations in the 5‐HT2Dro receptor gene. We identified one point mutation that generates a gain of serotonin affinity for the receptor and affects germband extension: 5‐HT2DroC1644. Embryos homozygous for this point mutation display a fourfold increase in the maximal speed of ectodermal cell movements during the rapid phase of germband extension. Homozygous 5‐HT2DroC1644 embryos present a cuticular phenotype, including a total lack of denticle belt. Identification of this gain of function mutation shows the participation of serotonin in the regulation of the cell speed movements during the germband extension and suggests a role of serotonin in the regulation of cuticular formation during early embryogenesis. Developmental Dynamics 236:991–999, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.