Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement of the Angle and Displacement for the Optical Pickup Head of a Pigtailed Laser Diode

This study presents an analytical method for measuring the tilt angle and displacement obtained using the pickup head of a pigtailed laser diode. The feasibility of the optical pickup head can be shown by the angle and displacement measurements investigated. We used a quadrant photo detector to detect the relative relationship of the signals which can be used to measure the tilt angle and displacement of the testing plane. The results show that the tilt angle is independent of the displacement.
Testing the Law of Proportionate Effect

IT IS well known that the distribution of companies by size is approximately log-normal. This form arises under certain conditions as the limiting distribution of the product of positive random variates as the number of terms in the product tends to infinity. The current size of a company may be decomposed into the product of past proportionate growth rates and an initial size and sufficiently strong conditionsl on these growth rates ensure that the distribution of the variate 'company size' becomes lognormal as the time elapsed from the start of the growth process tends to infinity.
Critical Issues Related to Metro Rail Projects in India

Rail-based ‘Mass Rapid Transit System’ has been widely accepted as a solution for most of the traffic and environmental pollution related problems which major cities throughout the world are facing now. Metro rail construction activities are being undertaken in a big way in India, existing metro rail network of the city of Kolkata and Delhi are being expanded, while it is under various stages of construction in cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad. In the present article, important environmental and other critical issues have been discussed in the Indian context which are equally relevant in other developing counties.
Quantitative CBA: Small and Comprehensible Association Rule Classification Models

Quantitative CBA is a postprocessing algorithm for association rule classification algorithm CBA (Liu et al, 1998). QCBA uses original, undiscretized numerical attributes to optimize the discovered association rules, refining the boundaries of literals in the antecedent of the rules produced by CBA. Some rules as well as literals from the rules can consequently be removed, which makes the resulting classifier smaller. One-rule classification and crisp rules make CBA classification models possibly most comprehensible among all association rule classification algorithms. These viable properties are retained by QCBA. The postprocessing is conceptually fast, because it is performed on a relatively small number of rules that passed data coverage pruning in CBA. Benchmark of our QCBA approach on 22 UCI datasets shows average 53% decrease in the total size of the model as measured by the total number of conditions in all rules. Model accuracy remains on the same level as for CBA.
Strength training

Abstract Literature concerning the theoretical role of spinal reflex circuits and their sensorimotor signals in proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) muscle stretching techniques was examined. Reviewed data do not support the assertion commonly made in PNF literature that contraction of a stretched muscle prior to further stretch, or contraction of opposing muscles during muscle stretch, produces relaxation of the stretched muscle. Further, following contraction of a stretched muscle, inhibition of the stretch reflex response lasts only 1 s. Studies examined suggested that decreases in the response amplitude of the Hoffmann and muscle stretch reflexes following a contraction of a stretched muscle are not due to the activation of Golgi tendon organs, as commonly purported, but instead may be due to presynaptic inhibition of the muscle spindle sensory signal. The current view on the complex manner by which the spinal cord processes proprioceptive signals was discussed. The ability of acute PNF stretching procedures to often produce a joint range of motion greater than that observed with static stretching must be explained by mechanisms other than the spinal processing of proprioceptive information. Studies reviewed indicate that changes in the ability to tolerate stretch and/or the vis‐coelastic properties of the stretched muscle, induced by PNF procedures, are possible mechanisms.
Barrier and Queue Effects: A Study of Leading U.S. Supermarket Chain Entry Patterns

De novo entry into local markets by the top twenty U.S. supermarket chains is examined using logit analysis. The authors find that entry is related to potential entrants' proximity to the local market, market growth, concentration, the number of large chains that are incumbents in the local market, and the competency of potential entrants as measured by their recent return on equity. With regard to competing theories that relate strategic entry barriers to entry patterns, different components of the analysis provide support for different hypotheses. However, the most general model provides little support for the contestability or Chicago efficiency rent hypotheses. Copyright 1992 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Has Europe got anything to do with the European elections? A study on split-ticket voting in the Belgian regional and European elections of 2009

This study explains why people voted differently in the 2009 regional and European elections in Belgium. By comparing loyal voters and voters who split their ticket, the article shows that a part of the electorate is driven by Euro-specific motivations. The proportion of people who truly vote ‘European’ depends on the political context, and more precisely on what parties offer the voters in terms of candidates and issues. However, the European dimension is not the only mechanism that underlies voters’ electoral choices at the European level. In particular, uncertain voters, who lack a clear preference for one party at the national level, are likely to split their ticket between the regional and European elections.
Turning On/Off Tumor-Specific CTL Response during Progressive Tumor Growth1

Therapeutic vaccinations used to induce CTLs and treat firmly established tumors are generally ineffective. To understand the mechanisms underlying the failure of therapeutic vaccinations, we investigated the fate of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells in tumor-bearing mice with or without vaccinations. Our data demonstrate that tumor-specific CD8+ T cells are activated at the early stage of tumor growth, tumor-specific CTL response reaches a maximal level during progressive tumor growth, and tumor-specific CD8+ T cells lose cytolytic function at the late stage of tumor growth. The early stage therapeutic vaccination induces efficient antitumor activity by amplifying the CTL response, whereas the late-stage therapeutic vaccination is invalid due to tumor-induced dysfunction of CD8+ T cells. However, at the late stage, tumor-specific CD8+ T cells are still present in the periphery. These tumor-specific CD8+ T cells lose cytolytic activity, but retain IFN-γ secretion function. In contrast to in vitro cultured tumor cells, in vivo growing tumor cells are more resistant to tumor-specific CTL killing, despite an increase of tumor Ag gene expression. Both tumor-induced CD8+ T cell dysfunction at the late stage and immune evasion developed by in vivo growing tumor cells contribute to an eventual inefficacy of therapeutic vaccinations. Our study suggests that it is important to design a vaccination regimen according to the stages of tumor growth and the functional states of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells.
Critical Contribution of the MDM2 Acidic Domain to p53 Ubiquitination

ABSTRACT MDM2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets p53 for proteasomal degradation. Recent studies have shown, however, that the ring-finger domain (RFD) of MDM2, where the ubiquitin E3 ligase activity resides, is necessary but not sufficient for p53 ubiquitination, suggesting that an additional activity of MDM2 might be required. To test this possibility, we generated a series of MDM2/MDMX chimeric proteins to assess the contribution of each domain of MDM2 to the ubiquitination process. MDMX is a close structural homolog of MDM2 that nevertheless lacks the E3 ligase activity in vivo. We demonstrate here that MDMX gains self-ubiquitination activity and becomes extremely unstable upon introduction of the MDM2 RFD, indicating that the RFD is essential for self-ubiquitination. This MDMX chimeric protein, however, is unable to ubiquitinate p53 in vivo despite its E3 ligase activity and binding to p53, separating the self-ubiquitination activity of MDM2 from its ability to ubiquitinate p53. Significantly, fusion of the central acidic domain (AD) of MDM2 to the MDMX chimeric protein renders the protein fully capable of ubiquitinating p53, and p53 ubiquitination is associated with p53 degradation and nuclear export. Moreover, the AD mini protein expressed in trans can functionally rescue the AD-lacking MDM2 mutant, further supporting a critical role for the AD in MDM2-mediated p53 ubiquitination.
The Definition and Identification of Housing Submarkets

Although it is widely accepted that urban housing markets are too complex to be described by unitary market, equilibrium models, the role of submarkets has not been embraced in applied research. In this paper it is argued that this is unsurprising and can be traced to the failure to establish a theoretical or empirical basis for submarket modeling. I note that, throughout the housing economics literature, the term ‘submarket’ is subject to a range of definitions; the means of identifying submarkets has varied; empirical analyses have employed differing tests; and case studies have focused on a range of different cities and different time periods. This inconsistency has prevented the development of a coherent analytical approach. By using data from the Glasgow housing market a range of alternative definition and identification schemes are compared. The evidence suggests that submarkets are important and that, rather than being based exclusively on the similarity of property characteristics or geographical contiguity, the dimensions of housing submarkets are determined by both spatial and structural factors simultaneously.
Effect of platelet-rich plasma on tendon-to-bone healing after rotator cuff repair in rats: an in vivo experimental study.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this experimental study was to analyze the effects of local autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection on tendon-to-bone healing in a rotator cuff repair model in rats. METHODS Rotator cuff injury was created in 68 left shoulders of rats. PRP was obtained from the blood of an additional 15 rats. The 68 rats were divided into 4 groups with 17 rats in each group; PRP group (Week 2), control group (Week 2), PRP group (Week 4), and control group (Week 4). Platelet-rich plasma or saline was injected to the repair area intraoperatively. Rats were sacrificed 2 and 4 weeks after the surgery. Histological analysis using a semiquantitative scoring was performed on 7 rats per group. Tendon integrity and increases in vascularity and inflammatory cells and the degree of new bone formation were evaluated and compared between the groups. The remaining tendons (n=10) were mechanically tested. RESULTS Degree of inflammation and vascularity were less in the study group at both time intervals (p<0.05). Tendon continuity was better in the study group at 2 weeks (p<0.05). Obvious new bone formation was detected in the control group at 4 weeks (p<0.05). Biomechanically, platelet-rich plasma-treated specimens were stronger at 2 weeks (p<0.05). CONCLUSION Local autologous PRP injection may have beneficial effects on initial rotator cuff tendon-to-bone healing and enhance initial tendon-to-bone healing remodeling. This may represent a clinically important improvement in rotator cuff repair.
TEACHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT THE ADOPTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN THE MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM

The purpose of the present study was to examine elementary mathematics teachers’ concerns in relation to the expected implementation of the new technology based mathematics curriculum in Cyprus. A questionnaire examining teachers’ concerns towards this innovation was administered to seventy four elementary school teachers. Results provide evidence that the majority of teachers were positive towards the innovation. Results revealed the existence of four factors related to teachers’ concerns and beliefs towards the innovation, namely the concerns about the nature of the curriculum, teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, concerns about the consequences on the organization of teaching, and concerns about the effectiveness of the curriculum.
The Hurricane Sandy Twitter Corpus

The growing use of social media has made it a critical component of disaster response and recovery efforts. Both in terms of preparedness and response, public health officials and first responders have turned to automated tools to assist with organizing and visualizing large streams of social media. In turn, this has spurred new research into algorithms for information extraction, event detection and organization, and information visualization. One challenge of these efforts has been the lack of a common corpus for disaster response on which researchers can compare and contrast their work. This paper describes the Hurricane Sandy Twitter Corpus: 6.5 million geotagged Twitter posts from the geographic area and time period of the 2012 Hurricane Sandy.
Socio-economic determinants of consumer fish purchase in Windhoek, Namibia

Based on data collected from 120 shoppers, in the City of Windhoek, capital of Namibia, this study used the logit model to analyze the influence household characteristics have on consumers’ decision to purchase horse mackerel, hake, and snoek. Specific factors considered in the model were gender, age, education, household size and income. The results revealed, firstly that education, income and household size have negative significant effect on consumers’ decision to purchase mackerel. Secondly, it was found that age and income have positive significant effect on the probability to purchase hake. Thirdly, household size and income have positive significant effect on the probability to purchase snoek but marital status had a significant negative effect on the decision to purchase snoek. In brief, the results confirmed strong income, age and household size effects on the purchase of fish species. The implication of the findings is that fish marketers and processors should consider these factors in the formulation of marketing strategies aimed at promoting fish consumption in the study area.
Managing Public Expenditure: Some Emerging Policy Issues and a Framework for Analysis

This paper highlights some key policy issues regarding the performance of public expenditure and proposes an analytical framework for its assessment. The framework distinguishes three economic objectives of policies in the pursuit of better performance of public expenditure: macroeconomic sustainability, allocative efficiency (better outcomes per unit of public expenditure) and technical efficiency (less resource inputs per unit of public output). Against this backdrop, the paper discusses experiences of governments of OECD countries with various policy instruments, including fiscal rules, medium-term fiscal frames, market-based allocation mechanisms and flexible management and control. These experiences could serve as a starting point for peer reviews and international benchmarking . Cet article met en lumiere certaines des questions essentielles que pose aux autorites l’evolution des depenses publiques et propose un cadre d’analyse pour l’evaluer. Ce cadre distingue trois objectifs economiques pour les politiques qui visent a ameliorer les « performances » des depenses publiques : la viabilite macroeconomique, l’efficacite de la repartition des ressources (de meilleurs resultats par unite depensee) et l’efficience technique (moins de ressources consommees par unite produite). S’appuyant sur cette toile de fond, l’article analyse l’experience des gouvernements des pays de l’OCDE dans l’utilisation des differentes instruments de la politique economique, notamment les regles budgetaires, le cadrage budgetaire a moyen terme, les mecanismes d’affectation fondes sur le jeu du marche et l’assouplissement de la gestion et des controles. Ces experiences pourraient servir de point de depart a des examens similaires et a des comparaisons internationales .
An Anti-apoptotic Viral Protein That Recruits Bax to Mitochondria*

The viral mitochondria-localized inhibitor of apoptosis (vMIA), encoded by the UL37 gene of human cytomegalovirus, inhibits apoptosis-associated mitochondrial membrane permeabilization by a mechanism different from that of Bcl-2. Here we show that vMIA induces several changes in Bax that resemble those found in apoptotic cells yet take place in unstimulated, non-apoptotic vMIA-expressing cells. These changes include the constitutive localization of Bax at mitochondria, where it associates tightly with the mitochondrial membrane, forming high molecular weight aggregates that contain vMIA. vMIA recruits Bax to mitochondria but delays relocation of caspase-8-activated truncated Bid-green fluorescent protein (GFP) (t-Bid-GFP) to mitochondria. The ability of vMIA and its deletion mutants to associate with Bax and to induce relocation of Bax to mitochondria correlates with their anti-apoptotic activity and with their ability to suppress mitochondrial membrane permeabilization. Taken together, our data indicate that vMIA blocks apoptosis via its interaction with Bax. vMIA neutralizes Bax by recruiting it to mitochondria and “freezing” its pro-apoptotic activity. These data unravel a novel strategy of subverting an intrinsic pathway of apoptotic signaling.
Updates in the treatment of basal/triple-negative breast cancer

Purpose of review Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is clinically characterized by the lack of expression of the estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor and the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. It is highly heterogeneous and exhibits considerable overlap with basal-like and BRCA-related breast cancers. Constituting 15–20% of breast cancers, TNBC exhibits an aggressive phenotype with a poor prognosis. This review summarizes recent progress and studies in TNBC and discusses some of the ongoing clinical trials and emerging therapies for the treatment of TNBC. Recent findings Conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy and DNA damaging agents continue to be the mainstay for treatment of this disease. The use of targeted agents such as bevacizumab, epidermal growth factor receptor and polyadenosine diphosphate-ribose polymerase inhibitors have led to conflicting results. However, recent research has prompted evaluation of additional drugs targeting multiple signaling pathways and epigenetic modifications for the treatment of this disease. Summary TNBC remains a challenging disease to treat with recent trials having demonstrated only modest improvements in outcomes. Increased understanding of the heterogeneity of this complex subtype may help tailor therapies to specific patient subgroups.
Shop-floor workers’ responses to quality management initiatives

Quality management (QM) is now a mainstream management initiative, but few researchers have explored worker experiences of it. An exception is found in the work of Edwards et al. (1998) who make an important contribution by offering the ‘disciplined worker thesis’ (meaning that workers prefer an ordered and disciplined work environment over disorganization or chaos) as a basis for explaining why workers may respond positively to QM initiatives, despite finding that these often require extra effort. We explore the utility of this concept by reference to empirical data from two detailed case studies. We found the disciplined worker thesis to be substantive but not comprehensive, in that it leaves some inexplicable results. In particular it does not capture the non-work factors that shaped workers responses to QM initiatives. As a result, we suggest that the conceptual remit of the disciplined worker thesis could usefully be enlarged to incorporate ‘orientations to work’.
Real Estate Portfolio Construction And Estimation Risk

The use of MPT in the construction real estate portfolios has two serious limitations when used in an ex-ante framework: (1) the intertemporal instability of the portfolio weights and (2) the sharp deterioration in performance of the optimal portfolios outside the sample period used to estimate asset mean returns. Both problems can be traced to wide fluctuations in sample means Jorion (1985). Thus the use of a procedure that ignores the estimation risk due to the uncertain in mean returns is likely to produce sub-optimal results in subsequent periods. This suggests that the consideration of the issue of estimation risk is crucial in the use of MPT in developing a successful real estate portfolio strategy. Therefore, following Eun & Resnick (1988), this study extends previous ex-ante based studies by evaluating optimal portfolio allocations in subsequent test periods by using methods that have been proposed to reduce the effect of measurement error on optimal portfolio allocations.
Twitter Sentiment Analysis: A Review

The basic knowledge required to do sentiment analysis of Twitter is discussed in this review paper. Sentiment Analysis can be viewed as field of text mining, natural language processing. Thus we can study sentiment analysis in various aspects. This paper presents levels of sentiment analysis, approaches to do sentiment analysis, methodologies for doing it, and features to be extracted from text and the applications. Twitter is a microblogging service to which if sentiment analysis done one has to follow explicit path. Thus this paper puts overview about tweets extraction, their preprocessing and their sentiment analysis. N text mining, Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining consists study of sentiments, attitudes, reactions, evaluation of the content of the text. Many times while analyzing peoples' opinions, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes, reactions towards entities, such as services, products, organizations, individuals , events, topics, issues and their attributes Sentiment Analysis is also called as Opinion Mining (1).
Stability of Financial Ratios: A Study of Listed Companies in Singapore

This study seeks to evaluate the stability of financial ratios across industry and over time. The sample comprises companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Singapore from 1980 to 1991 over six industry groupings. A set of 29 most commonly used ratios was selected for the study. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and analysis of variance were performed. From the factor analysis results, eight representative ratios were identified. Analysis of variance and multiple comparisons were subsequently performed for each representative ratio to test if it is significantly different across industry and over time. The results indicate that financial ratio averages of the various industries are significantly different. This implies that the appropriate benchmark for evaluating company performance and position should be industry‐specific instead of economy based. Also, five of the representative ratios are significantly different over time and not all the industrial averages move consistently over time (i.e., interaction effects of industry and time exist). Thus, industry averages are not necessarily appropriate benchmarks for setting and evaluating performance through time.