Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing new knowledge in collaborative relationships in megaproject alliances: organising reflection in the Dutch construction sector

This paper describes the development of new forms of public- private collaboration by members of a project-based organisation as a Community of Practice (CoP) in the Dutch construction sector. Cost overruns, time delays and corruption have put pressure on the relationship between the government and the construction sector. Political and public actors are forcing the construction industry to develop new cultural practices of collaboration in public-private partnerships. The paper incorporates power relations and shows how public and private partners, together with the researchers, develop an innovative tendering process. Based upon the literature on project-based organisations functioning as CoPs, we show how temporal organisational settings can enable new forms of learning. The specific development of a CoP in the Dutch construction sector has resulted in a 3-D virtual simulation programme which can be used to experience new behaviour and to train people in new approaches.
Eliminating Nox2 reactive oxygen species production protects dystrophic skeletal muscle from pathological calcium influx assessed in vivo by manganese‐enhanced magnetic resonance imaging

Inhibiting Nox2 reactive oxygen species (ROS) production reduced in vivo calcium influx in dystrophic muscle. The lack of Nox2 ROS production protected against decreased in vivo muscle function in dystrophic mice. Manganese‐enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) was able to detect alterations in basal calcium levels in skeletal muscle and differentiate disease status. Administration of Mn2+ did not affect muscle function or the health of the animal, and Mn2+ was cleared from skeletal muscle rapidly. We conclude that MEMRI may be a viable, non‐invasive technique to monitor molecular alterations in disease progression and evaluate the effectiveness of potential therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
The Co-Movement Connection Between The Gdp And The Main Stock Market Index. The Cases Of Usa And Romania

A recurring problem among economists is that of the connection supposed to exist between the Gross Domestic Product and the main stock market index. Several studies have been conducted, trying to analyze the existence and the extent of this connection, most of them concluding the fact that this relation, if existing, is not a statistically significant one. The analyzed relations between a certain country’s Gross Domestic Product and its main stock market index are mainly concentrated with studying correlations, regressive dependencies or cointegration connections calculated by taking into consideration the level of both time series. The best measure of an economy’s performance and evolution is the Gross Domestic Product, an indicator that suggests every step taken by that economy, including its cyclical oscillations. Among specialists, the stock market is seen as a barometer of the global economy, as investors try to exit the stock market before recessions and conversely they return to the stock market just as economy starts to recover. Thus, we find appropriate to analyze the connection between the stock market and the global economy from a cyclical evolution point of view. Therefore, we will take into consideration both GDP’s and stock market index’ cyclical components, as extracted using the Hodrick Prescott filter. The cyclical components’ comovement will then by studied using a procedure proposed in 2009 by Pirtea, Pătru, Dima and Cristea.
Heart Failure Leads to Prolongation of the PR Interval and Atrioventricular Junction Enlargement and Ion Channel Remodelling in the

Heart failure is a major killer worldwide. Atrioventricular conduction block is common in heart failure; it is associated with worse outcomes and can lead to syncope and bradycardic death. We examine the effect of heart failure on anatomical and ion channel remodelling in the rabbit atrioventricular junction (AVJ). Heart failure was induced in New Zealand rabbits by disruption of the aortic valve and banding of the abdominal aorta resulting in volume and pressure overload. Laser micro-dissection and real-time polymerase chain reaction (RTPCR) were employed to investigate the effects of heart failure on ion channel remodelling in four regions of the rabbit AVJ and in septal tissues. Investigation of the AVJ anatomy was performed using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). Heart failure animals developed first degree heart block. Heart failure caused ventricular myocardial volume increase with a 35% elongation of the AVJ. There was downregulation of HCN1 and Cx43 mRNA transcripts across all regions and downregulation of Cav1.3 in the transitional tissue. Cx40 mRNA was significantly downregulated in the atrial septum and AVJ tissues but not in the ventricular septum. mRNA abundance for ANP, CLCN2 and Navβ1 was increased with heart failure; Nav1.1 was increased in the inferior nodal extension/compact node area. Heart failure in the rabbit leads to prolongation of the PR interval and this is accompanied by downregulation of HCN1, Cav1.3, Cx40 and Cx43 mRNAs and anatomical enlargement of the entire heart and AVJ. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone. 0141452 October 28, 2015 1 / 18 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Nikolaidou T, Cai XJ, Stephenson RS, Yanni J, Lowe T, Atkinson AJ, et al. (2015) Congestive Heart Failure Leads to Prolongation of the PR Interval and Atrioventricular Junction Enlargement and Ion Channel Remodelling in the Rabbit. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141452. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone. 0141452 Editor: Alexander V Panfilov, Gent University, BELGIUM Received: April 9, 2015 Accepted: October 8, 2015 Published: October 28, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Nikolaidou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: This work was funded by a programme grant from the British Heart Foundation RG/06/005. The Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility was funded in part by the EPSRC (grants EP/F007906/1, EP/ F001452/1 and EP/I02249X/1). The Bioimaging Facility microscopes used in this study were purchased with grants from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Wellcome Trust and the University of Manchester Strategic
Selective Posting: Willingness to post a message online

The communication environment in CMC is particularly relevant to the discourses of the traditional communication theory, spiral of silence. This paper embarked on the task of developing an experimental research method to test willingness to speak out in the spiral of silence theory on an online forum and to test subsequent attitudinal and behavioral changes as measured in issue position, climate of opinion perception, and message posting. A 2x2 factorial design (congruent messages vs. incongruent messages and anonymity vs. nonanonymity) tested the willingness to speak out on an online discussion forum. The result of the paper suggested a new theoretical framework, selective posting, and called for the modification of the psychological explanation of spiral of silence.
Performance of double binary turbo coded UWB systems with antenna diversity

In this paper, the performance of double binary turbo coded ultra wide band (UWB) system with antenna diversity is analyzed and simulated in an indoor wireless channel. We consider pulse position modulation-time hopping (PPM-TH) UWB system. In double binary turbo code, there are two inputs, A and B. The encoder is fed by blocks of k bits or N couples (N = k bits / 2). The most significant bit (MSB) of the first byte after the burst preamble is assigned to A, the next bit to B and so on for the remainder of the burst content. A modified Saleh and Valenzuela (SV) model is adopted as a UWB indoor channel model. Perfect synchronization between a transmitter and a receiver is assumed. Therefore, coherent equal gain combining (EGC) scheme to collect the energy available in the multipath components is investigated. It is shown that the performance is improved by increasing the number of antennas at the receiver. The results of this paper can be applied to the applications of UWB.
BASED SMALL OBJECT SEGMENTATION IN NATUAL IMAGES *

Wen Guo, Changshen Xu, Songde Ma, Min Xu 1 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 2 Department of Electric Engineering , Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, Yantai, China 3 China-Singapore Institute of Digital Media, 119615,Singapore Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia {wguo, csxu, sdma }@nlpr.ia. ac.cn, min.xu@uts.edu. au
Seasonal Forecasting of North China Summer Rainfall Using a Statistical Downscaling Model

A statistical downscaling model was developed with reanalysis data and applied to forecast northern China summer rainfall (NCSR) using the outputs of the real-time seasonal Climate Forecast System, version 2 (CFSv2). Large-scale climate signals in sea level pressure, 850-hPameridional wind, and 500-hPa geopotential height as well as several well-known climate indices were considered as potential predictors. Through correlation analysis and stepwise screening, two ‘‘optimal’’ predictors (i.e., sea level pressure over the southwestern Indian Ocean and 850-hPa meridional wind over eastern China) were selected to fit the regression equation.Model reliability was validatedwith independent data during a test period (1991–2012), in which the simulated NCSR well represented the observed variability with a correlation coefficient of 0.59 and a rootmean-square error of 18.6%. The statistical downscaling model was applied to forecast NCSR for a 22-yr period (1991–2012) using forecast predictors from the CFSv2 with lead times from 1 to 6 months. The results showedmuch better forecast skills than that directly from the CFSv2 for all lead months, except the 3-monthlead example. The biggest improvement occurred in the 1-month-lead forecast, in which the hit rate increased to 77.3% from 45.5% in the CFSv2 forecast. In the forecast of rainfall at 15 stations, the statistical downscaling model also showed superior capability when compared with the CFSv2, with forecast skill being improved at 73% of stations. In particular, 13 of 15 stations obtained a hit rate exceeding 55%.
RDeepSense

Recent advances in deep learning have led various applications to unprecedented achievements, which could potentially bring higher intelligence to a broad spectrum of mobile and ubiquitous applications. Although existing studies have demonstrated the effectiveness and feasibility of running deep neural network inference operations on mobile and embedded devices, they overlooked the reliability of mobile computing models. Reliability measurements such as predictive uncertainty estimations are key factors for improving the decision accuracy and user experience. In this work, we propose RDeepSense, the first deep learning model that provides well-calibrated uncertainty estimations for resource-constrained mobile and embedded devices. RDeepSense enables the predictive uncertainty by adopting a tunable proper scoring rule as the training criterion and dropout as the implicit Bayesian approximation, which theoretically proves its correctness. To reduce the computational complexity, RDeepSense employs efficient dropout and predictive distribution estimation instead of the model ensemble or sampling-based method for inference operations. We evaluate RDeepSense with four mobile sensing applications using Intel Edison devices. Results show that RDeepSense can reduce around 90% of the energy consumption while producing superior uncertainty estimations and preserving at least the same model accuracy compared with other state-of-the-art methods.
The Fiscal Effects of Foreign Aid in Lesotho

Lesotho has historically depended on foreign aid. This paper seeks to understand the fiscal effects of such aid inflows on Lesotho’s economy over the period 1982-2010. The cointegration test results indicate a strong negative long-run association between recurrent expenditure and foreign aid, and a positive but marginally significant relationship between aid and capital expenditure. These findings provide lack of evidence for the presence of aid fungibility since foreign aid is not diverted to non-development expenditure. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project also seems to have been effective in terms of changing government budgetary allocations and has had a positive impact on development spending. This supports the notion that provision of loans instead of grants results in an effective use of government funds. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016. v7n1p116
MDSD light for ERP

Fully-fledged model-driven software development is often too expensive for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore we propose MDSD light which reduces the available adjustment possibilities, but offers an easy way of workflow and process management. We introduce a tool-suite which realizes the aspects of MDSD light and show the advantages of this approach in a short example.
Decidable Reasoning in a Modified Situation Calculus

We consider a modified version of the situation calculus built using a two-variable fragment of the first-order logic extended with counting quantifiers. We mention several additional groups of axioms that can be introduced to capture taxonomic reasoning. We show that the regression operator in this framework can be defined similarly to regression in the Reiter's version of the situation calculus. Using this new regression operator, we show that the projection and executability problems are decidable in the modified version even if an initial knowledge base is incomplete and open. For an incomplete knowledge base and for context-dependent actions, we consider a type of progression that is sound with respect to the classical progression. We show that the new knowledge base resulting after our progression is definable in our modified situation calculus if one allows actions with local effects only. We mention possible applications to formalization of Semantic Web services.
Mapping and Localization using Multispectral Imaging of the Soil

Multispectral analysis of the soil can provide rich information about its physical and chemical properties. In this study, we show how to leverage this information for localization purposes. We describe a map representation suitable for soil properties derived from multispectral images and demonstrate how to integrate such maps in a localization approach. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, reaching a localization accuracy comparable to a GPSbased solution. Apart from agricultural robots, the proposed method may also be suitable for mining and extra-terrestrial applications.
The products of the durable Tm-2 ( 2 ) and the broken Tm-2 resistance genes from tomato differ in four amino acids

To gain an insight into the processes underlying disease resistance and its durability, the durable Tm2 resistance gene was compared with the broken Tm2 resistance gene. The Tm-2 gene of tomato could be isolated via PCR with primers based on the Tm-2 sequence. The Tm-2 gene, like the Tm-2 gene, encodes an 861 amino acid polypeptide, which belongs to the coiled coil/nucleotide binding site/leucine-rich repeat class of resistance proteins. The functionality and the nature of the isolated Tm-2 gene were confirmed by introducing the gene under the control of the 35S promoter into tomato mosaic virus-susceptible tobacco. This transgenic tobacco was crossed with transgenic tobacco plants producing the movement protein (MP)-authenticated MP as the Avr protein of the Tm-2 resistance. The Tm-2 and Tm-2 open reading frames only differ in seven nucleotides, which on a protein level results in four amino acid differences, of which two are located in the nucleotide binding site and two are located in the leucine-rich repeat domain. The small difference between the two proteins suggests a highly similar interaction of these proteins with the MP, which has major implications for the concept of durability. Comparison of the two resistance-conferring alleles (Tm-2 and Tm-2) with two susceptible alleles (tm-2 and lptm-2) allowed discussion of the structure–function relationship in the Tm-2 proteins. It is proposed that the Tm-2 proteins display a partitioning of the leucine-rich repeat domain, in which the N-terminal and C-terminal parts function in signal transduction and MP recognition, respectively.
Opposing effects of TIGAR- and RAC1-derived ROS on Wnt-driven proliferation in the mouse intestine

Cheung et al. examined the opposing effects of TIGAR- and RAC1-derived ROS in a model of Apc deletion. Their results indicate that the pro- and anti-proliferative effects of ROS can be independently modulated in the same cell, with two key targets in the Wnt pathway functioning to integrate the different ROS signals for optimal cell proliferation.
Using the Evolutionary Learning Laboratory Approach to Establish a World First Model for Integrated Governance of Haiphong, Vietnam†

We manage the systems we are part of in a highly compartmentalised structure. Government departments are a typical example of how society operates in silos. However, complex political, environmental, socio-economic, and business-financial issues tend to transcend the jurisdictions and capacities of any single government department, which adds significantly to the difficulties in finding systemic management solutions and effective governance plans. This lack of cross-sectoral communication and collaboration in complex national and global environments compromises the leaders and policy makers in government, leading to centralised protocols and siloed departments that undercut local responsiveness. The Government of Haiphong City (HPC) decided to establish an Evolutionary Learning Laboratory (ELLab) to enhance communication and collaboration between the different departments in order to develop an integrated and systemic Governance Plan for HPC. Workshops and specialist forums were held to gather the mental models of representatives of different Government departments. The "learning" process started with integrating the various mental models into a systems structure using Causal Loop Modelling and continued during the steps of interpreting and exploring the model. A deeper understanding of the potential implications of actions, strategies and policies lead to the identification of leverages and systemic interventions that will contribute to the development of a sustainable HPC. A series of Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) management models is developed for each of the identified systemic interventions, determining the requirements for their implementation, the factors that could affect the expected outcomes; and the order in which activities should be carried out to ensure cost-effectiveness and maximum impact. The models are combined and used to develop a refined systems model, which forms at the same time a systemic strategic and operational plan for integrated governance of HPC.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Peroxisomal alterations in Alzheimer ' s disease

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), lipid alterations are present early during disease progression. As some of these alterations point towards a peroxisomal dysfunction, we investigated peroxisomes in human postmortem brains obtained from the cohort-based, longitudinal ViennaTransdanube Aging (VITA) study. Based on the neuropathological Braak staging for AD on one hemisphere, the patients were grouped into three cohorts of increasing severity (stages I–II, III–IV, and V–VI, respectively). Lipid analyses of cortical regions from the other hemisphere revealed accumulation of C22:0 and very long-chain fatty acids (VLCFA, C24:0 and C26:0), all substrates for peroxisomal b-oxidation, in cases with stages V–VI pathology compared with those modestly affected (stages I–II). Conversely, the level of plasmalogens, which need intact peroxisomes for their biosynthesis, was decreased in severely affected tissues, in agreement with a peroxisomal dysfunction. In addition, the peroxisomal volume density was increased in the soma of neurons in gyrus frontalis at advanced AD stages. Confocal laser microscopy demonstrated a loss of peroxisomes in neuronal processes with abnormally phosphorylated tau protein, implicating impaired trafficking as the cause of altered peroxisomal distribution. Besides the original Braak staging, the study design allowed a direct correlation between the biochemical findings and the amount of neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and neuritic plaques, quantified in adjacent tissue sections. Interestingly, the decrease in plasmalogens and the increase in VLCFA and peroxisomal volume density in neuronal somata all showed a stronger association with NFT than with neuritic plaques. These results indicate substantial peroxisome-related alterations in AD, which may contribute to the progression of AD pathology.
CALCULATION OF RADIATION FROM MMIC ELEMENTS USING RADIATION MODE EXPANSION FORMULATION COMBINED WITH FDTD ANALYSIS

The authors have presented a new method based on radiation mode expansion theory combined with FD-TD technique for calculating transmitted, reflected and radiated fields from MMIC elements. Theoretical background and calculation procedures of this method have been explained thus far. However the numerical verification has not been made sufficiently. This paper verifies first the feasibility of this method and checks its accuracy by comparing numerical results with those of the past literature for MMIC open ends and right-angled bends. Radiation characteristics of these elements are next investigated from the viewpoint of radiation pattern as well as total radiated power.
Should the ECB Adopt an Explicit Exchange Rate Target

This paper investigates with a structural, quantitative macro model, whether the ECB should include the real exchange rate into its reaction function. The problem is considered from viewpoints of both the whole monetary union and a single member country with a national economy more open than the union economy on average. According to the results, the member country would benefit from the exchange rate stabilizing more than the rest of the union. It appears however, that the asymmetries of the external shocks facing the economies may be a more important factor behind the larger volatility of the inflation and output of the member country than the structural differences.
Effect of inositol hexaphosphate–loaded red blood cells (RBCs) on the rheology of sickle RBCs

BACKGROUND: The recent in vitro demonstration that inositol hexaphosphate–loaded red blood cells (IHP‐RBCs) may reduce the risks of sickling of sickle RBCs (SS RBCs) exposed to hypoxia make these modified RBCs potentially useful in transfused sickle cell anemia (SCA) patients.
Multi-layer Gelfand-Pinsker strategies for the generalized multiple-access channel

We study a two-user state-dependent generalized multiple-access channel (GMAC) with correlated states. It is assumed that each encoder noncausally knows partial channel state information. We develop an achievable rate region by employing rate-splitting, block Markov encoding, Gelfand-Pinsker multicoding, superposition coding and jointly typical decoding. In the proposed scheme, the encoders use a partial decoding strategy to collaborate in the next block, and the receiver uses a backward decoding strategy with a joint unique decoding at each stage. Our achievable rate region includes several previously known rate regions proposed in the literature for different scenarios of multiple-access and relay channels. We finally consider a Gaussian GMAC with an additive interference which is known noncausally at both of the encoders and construct a multi-layer Costa precoding scheme that removes completely the effect of the interference.