Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the relationship between scenario planning and strategic flexibility and complexity

An organisation's ability to deal with uncertainty and to adapt to changes is a key strategic capability in dynamic environments. Thus, firms need a flexible planning in order to adapt and survive. Scenario planning is one of the tools that stimulates strategic thinking and offers strategic choices by creating multiple futures. However, little evidence is available about its effects on organisational competencies. This paper explores the direct contributions of scenario planning to strategic flexibility and complexity. A structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to evaluate the causal links between concepts. Data analysis derived from a sample of 108 European manufacturing firms.
Major depressive disorder in hemodialysis patients in China

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been regarded as the most common psychiatric disorder among hemodialysis (HD) patients. However, few studies have investigated MDD in HD patients in Mainland China. This study sought to investigate the prevalence and treatment of MDD, as well as the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics in this population.
Optimal and near-optimal test sequencing algorithms with realistic test models

In this paper, we first present the formulation and solution of the basic test sequencing problem. We then consider generalized test sequencing problems that incorporate various practical features such as precedence constraints and setup operations for tests, multi-outcome tests, modular diagnosis, and rectification. We develop various AO/sup */ and information heuristic-based algorithms to solve these practical test sequencing problems. We also discuss the issues involved in implementation of the test sequencing algorithms for solving large problems efficiently, and show that our preprocessing techniques result in considerable speed-ups.
Dynamic PET reconstruction using temporal patch-based low rank penalty for ROI-based brain kinetic analysis

Dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used to measure changes in the bio-distribution of radiopharmaceuticals within particular organs of interest over time. However, to retain sufficient temporal resolution, the number of photon counts in each time frame must be limited. Therefore, conventional reconstruction algorithms such as the ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) produce noisy reconstruction images, thus degrading the quality of the extracted time activity curves (TACs). To address this issue, many advanced reconstruction algorithms have been developed using various spatio-temporal regularizations. In this paper, we extend earlier results and develop a novel temporal regularization, which exploits the self-similarity of patches that are collected in dynamic images. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that the correlation of patches can be exploited using a low-rank constraint that is insensitive to global intensity variations. The resulting optimization framework is, however, non-Lipschitz and non-convex due to the Poisson log-likelihood and low-rank penalty terms. Direct application of the conventional Poisson image deconvolution by an augmented Lagrangian (PIDAL) algorithm is, however, problematic due to its large memory requirements, which prevents its parallelization. Thus, we propose a novel optimization framework using the concave-convex procedure (CCCP) by exploiting the Legendre–Fenchel transform, which is computationally efficient and parallelizable. In computer simulation and a real in vivo experiment using a high-resolution research tomograph (HRRT) scanner, we confirm that the proposed algorithm can improve image quality while also extracting more accurate region of interests (ROI) based kinetic parameters. Furthermore, we show that the total reconstruction time for HRRT PET is significantly accelerated using our GPU implementation, which makes the algorithm very practical in clinical environments.
Fiscal Adjustment in the Gulf Countries: Less Costly than Previously Thought

This paper estimates fiscal multipliers for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Using OLS panel fixed effects on a sample of six countries from 1990-2016, results indicate that GCC fiscal multipliers have declined in recent years which would make the on-going fiscal consolidation less costly than previously thought. Though both capital and current multipliers have declined in recent years, capital multipliers are larger than current multipliers, which implies that reducing (less productive) current spending will help limit the adverse impact of such measures on growth.
Understanding Taiwanese Children's Perceptions of Peace and Strategies to Make Peace: A Social and Cultural Perspective

This exploratory study described Taiwanese children's perceptions of peace and what they think children can do to make peace. In-depth interviews were conducted with 60 Taiwanese children ages 4 to 18 years. The most predominant themes for the perceptions of peace were what peace is not, prosocial behaviors, positive emotions, and positive evaluations of peace. Approximately half of the children (48%) provided specific strategies for making peace. The suggested strategies generally were based on the child's immediate environment, such as “don't fight,” “don't argue,” and specific prosocial behaviors. 52% of children either said, “I don't know” when asked what children can do to make peace, or did not feel empowered to make peace. The initial findings were interpreted in terms of sociocultural issues, such as cultural heritage and upbringing, as well as within a political context.
Incidence of self-reported reduced productivity owing to musculoskeletal symptoms: association with workplace and individual factors among computer users

The aim of the present study was to assess the incidence and identify possible risk factors for self-reported reduced productivity owing to musculoskeletal symptoms among computer users. Design: a cohort study with a baseline questionnaire and monthly follow ups during 10 months. Methods: the study base consisted of 1283 computer users, 636 men and 896 women. Ergonomists observed workstation characteristics before entering the cohort. Cases were defined as subjects reporting reduced productivity or reporting being on sick leave owing to musculoskeletal symptoms. Results: women had approximately two times the incidence of self-reported reduced productivity owing to symptoms in the neck, shoulder and in the forearm/hand than men. There was no difference in gender for the incidence of self-reported reduced productivity owing to back symptoms. Working overtime and job demands were risk factors for self-reported reduced productivity owing to neck and back symptoms. Physical exercise fewer than 8 times the last month was a risk factor for self-reported reduced productivity owing to neck, shoulder and forearm/hand symptoms. Computer mouse use for more than 0.5 h/day was a risk factor for self-reported reduced productivity owing to shoulder and forearm/hand symptoms. Conclusions: risk factors for self-reported reduced productivity owing to musculoskeletal symptoms included life style factors, such as overweight and low physical exercise, occupational factors, such as overtime, job demands and computer mouse operating time.
Biological correlates of Reiki Touch(sm) healing.

BACKGROUND Despite the popularity of touch therapies, theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of effect is not well developed and there is limited research measuring biological outcomes. AIMS The aim of this study was to test a framework of relaxation or stress reduction as a mechanism of touch therapy. METHODS The study was conducted in 1996 and involved the examination of select physiological and biochemical effects and the experience of 30 minutes of Reiki, a form of touch therapy. A single group repeated measure design was used to study Reiki Touch'ssm effects with a convenience sample of 23 essentially healthy subjects. Biological markers related to stress-reduction response included state anxiety, salivary IgA and cortisol, blood pressure, galvanic skin response (GSR), muscle tension and skin temperature. Data were collected before, during and immediately after the session. RESULTS Comparing before and after measures, anxiety was significantly reduced, t(22)=2.45, P=0.02. Salivary IgA levels rose significantly, t(19)=2.33, P=0.03, however, salivary cortisol was not statistically significant. There was a significant drop in systolic blood pressure (SBP), F(2, 44)=6.60, P < 0.01. Skin temperature increased and electromyograph (EMG) decreased during the treatment, but before and after differences were not significant. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest both biochemical and physiological changes in the direction of relaxation. The salivary IgA findings warrant further study to explore the effects of human TT and humeral immune function.
A Phenomenographic Analysis of Urban Secondary Science Teachers’ Understanding of Nature of Science and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

The underperformance of minoritized students in public school science as measured by standardized exams and the underrepresentation of minoritized students in science-related careers is well documented. Currently, most of the nation’s children under 5 are members of minoritized groups and for the first time in U.S. public school history, the majority of students in public schools is largely composed of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students. In an effort to improve the performance of minoritized students, teachers need to understand their students’ cultures and how these cultures play a role in teaching and learning. Science teachers are responsible for helping their students understand scientific ways of thinking, which can be accomplished by reconsidering science as a culture and making this culture an explicit part of science teaching including nature of science. This qualitative research study used a phenomenographic approach to identify the understandings of nature of science and culturally relevant pedagogy held by 10 urban, secondary science teachers in a large metropolitan city in the U.S. Southeast. The data were drawn from analysis of transcripts of semi-structured interviews as well as responses to the Views of Nature of Science questionnaire. Participants communicated understandings of culturally relevant pedagogy that ranged from assimilationist understandings to informed understandings in various aspects. Additionally, participants communicated understandings of the NOS aspects that ranged from naïve to informed. Based on the responses of the participants, there were some relationships between their understanding of CRP and NOS. The nature of the relationships between science teachers’ beliefs about the classroom social environment and their beliefs about the subjective NOS as well as the role of social and cultural influences on science and the development of scientific knowledge should be explored further. New relationships could be helpful in developing a framework for culturally relevant science teaching. This study provided evidence that this group of urban, secondary science teachers lack knowledge of relevant NOS aspects for K‒12 learners as well as CRP as a pedagogical framework. Knowledge of both, with professional development focused on pedagogy, may translate into classroom practice and ultimately improve science education for minoritized students. INDEX WORDS: Nature of science, Culturally relevant pedagogy, Understanding, Secondary, Science teacher, Phenomenography, Urban contexts A PHENOMENOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF URBAN SECONDARY SCIENCE TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF NATURE OF SCIENCE AND CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY
Alkyl Protocatechuate-Loaded Nanostructured Lipid Systems as a Treatment Strategy for Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and Paracoccidioides lutzii In Vitro

Dodecyl protocatechuate (dodecyl) is a derivative of protocatechuic acid (3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid) that possesses anti-oxidant and antifungal properties. Nanostructured lipid systems (NLS) can potentiate the action of many antifungal agents, reducing the required dose and side effects by improving their activity. This work aimed to evaluate dodecyl protocatechuate loaded into a NLS (NLS+dodecyl) as a strategy for the treatment of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and P. lutzii in vitro. Antifungal activity against P. brasiliensis and P. lutzii was evaluated using the microdilution technique. NLS+dodecyl showed high antifungal activity with a minimum inhibitory concentration ranging from 0.06 to 0.03 μg/mL; 4- to 16-fold higher than that of free dodecyl. NLS+dodecyl was able to inhibit fungal adhesion of the extracellular artificial matrix proteins (laminin and fibronectin), resulting in 82.4 and 81% inhibition, respectively, an increase of 8–17% compared with free dodecyl. These findings corroborate previous results demonstrating 65 and 74% inhibition of fungal adhesion in pulmonary fibroblast cells by dodecyl and NLS+dodecyl, respectively, representing a 9% increase in inhibition for NLS+dodecyl. Subsequently, cytotoxicity was evaluated using the 0.4% sulforhodamine B assay. NLS+dodecyl did not exhibit cytotoxicity in MRC5 (human pneumocyte) and HepG2 (human hepatic carcinoma) cells, thus increasing the selectivity index for NLS+dodecyl. In addition, cytotoxicity was evaluated in vivo using the Caenorhabditis elegans model; neither dodecyl nor NLS+dodecyl exhibited any toxic effects. Taken together, these results suggest that NLS can be used as a strategy to improve the activity of dodecyl against P. brasiliensis and P. lutzii because it improves antifungal activity, increases the inhibition of fungal adhesion in lung cells and the extracellular matrix in vitro, and does not exhibit any toxicity both in vitro and in vivo.
A 256/spl times/256 CMOS differential passive pixel imager with FPN reduction techniques

A 256/spl times/256 passive pixel imager has been implemented in a CMOS 0.6-/spl mu/m technology. A column-parallel differential architecture with a correlated double-sampling output circuit removes the smear-like effects of a parasitic current that plagues passive pixels, 0.1% pixel-to-pixel and 0.4% column-to-column fixed-pattern noise are achieved.
Stabilising a cart inverted pendulum system using pole placement control method

A cart inverted pendulum system is one of the most common case to be considered for testing many control algorithms, since it has some challenging problems associated with non linearity, complexity and underactuated system model. In fact, non-linearity behaviour of the inverted pendulum can be observed easily. Different pendulum angle response can be obtained by giving the same velocity in the cart. The cart inverted pendulum can be understood as an under actuated system since the system has a lower number of actuator than the degrees of freedom. One of the most convenient method to model the inverted pendulum system is to use Lagrange's equation. However, at present, many presented inverted pendulum models have been derived using simplified physical model. This simplified model may lead to problems for the implementation of the control algorithm in a real physical inverted pendulum system. In this paper, an inverted pendulum system model is presented, where a mechanical transmission system and a motor models have been included in the derivation of the inverted pendulum model. Hence, the problems for the control implementation in a real system can be minimized. The mathematical model of the inverted pendulum was derived using Lagrange's equation. The determination of the pole zero of the system is discussed. A simple method of pole placement is proposed to stabilise the pendulum at the desired position of the cart. Matlab simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. And yet, this intuitive approach can lead to better understanding of the control behaviours.
Mixing of Supersaturated Assemblages and the Precipitous Loss of Species

Mechanisms influencing species richness are many. Recent theoretical research revealed additional mechanisms that involved neutral and lumpy coexistence and alternating assemblage states. These mechanisms can lead to conditions where the number of coexisting species is greater than the number of limiting resources, that is, species supersaturation. Our research focused on the role of disturbances (migration and pulsed through‐flows) in supersaturated plankton systems. Our simulations employed 30 different supersaturated assemblages generated by using various ecological principals. Our findings indicated that immigration rates as low as 0.1% of total biomass per day generally led to regional homogenization of species and dramatic extinction events, with assemblages characteristic of lumpy coexistence being more resilient than those characteristic of neutral coexistence or alternating states. Generally, pulsed through‐flows tended to offset, to some extent, the negative effects of migration. The precipitous loss of species with the onset of migration is observed in other systems as well, for example, cichlid fish communities of East Africa rift lakes and songbird assemblages from Indian Ocean islands. While many explanations have been offered to explain postimmigration extinctions in species‐rich systems, another explanation might be that the assemblages in these systems are in a fragile state of supersaturated coexistence.
Priori-aided channel tracking for millimeter-Wave beamspace massive MIMO systems

Beamspace MIMO can utilize beam selection to reduce the number of required RF chains in mmWave massive MIMO systems. However, beam selection requires the information of beamspace channel of large size. This is a challenging task, since the user mobility usually leads to the fast variation of mmWave beamspace channels, and the real-time channel estimation involves unaffordable pilot overhead. To solve this problem, in this paper we propose a priori-aided (PA) channel tracking scheme. Specifically, by considering a practical user motion model, we first excavate a temporal variation law of the physical direction between the base station and each mobile user. Then, based on the special sparse structure of mmWave beamspace channels, we propose to utilize the obtained beamspace channels in the previous time slots to predict the prior information of the beamspace channel in the following time slot. Finally, aided by the obtained prior information, the time-varying beamspace channels can be tracked with low pilot overhead. Simulation results verify that the proposed PA channel tracking scheme can achieve much better performance than conventional schemes.
Plasminogen Is a Critical Host Pathogenicity Factor for Group A Streptococcal Infection

Group A streptococci, a common human pathogen, secrete streptokinase, which activates the host's blood clot–dissolving protein, plasminogen. Streptokinase is highly specific for human plasminogen, exhibiting little or no activity against other mammalian species, including mouse. Here, a transgene expressing human plasminogen markedly increased mortality in mice infected with streptococci, and this susceptibility was dependent on bacterial streptokinase expression. Thus, streptokinase is a key pathogenicity factor and the primary determinant of host species specificity for group A streptococcal infection. In addition, local fibrin clot formation may be implicated in host defense against microbial pathogens.
Distinct plasma-membrane PtdIns(4)P and PtdIns(4,5)P2 dynamics in secretagogue-stimulated β-cells

Phosphoinositides regulate numerous processes in various subcellular compartments. Whereas many stimuli trigger changes in the plasma-membrane PtdIns(4,5)P2 concentration, little is known about its precursor, PtdIns(4)P, in particular whether there are stimulus-induced alterations independent of those of PtdIns(4,5)P2. We investigated plasma-membrane PtdIns(4)P and PtdIns(4,5)P2 dynamics in insulin-secreting MIN6 cells using fluorescent translocation biosensors and total internal reflection microscopy. Loss of PtdIns(4,5)P2 induced by phospholipase C (PLC)-activating receptor agonists or stimulatory glucose concentrations was paralleled by increased PtdIns(4)P levels. In addition, glucose-stimulated cells regularly showed anti-synchronous oscillations of the two lipids. Whereas glucose-induced PtdIns(4)P elevation required voltage-gated Ca2+ entry and was mimicked by membrane-depolarizing stimuli, the receptor-induced response was Ca2+ independent, but sensitive to protein kinase C (PKC) inhibition and mimicked by phorbol ester stimulation. We conclude that glucose and PLC-activating receptor stimuli trigger Ca2+- and PKC-dependent changes in the plasma-membrane PtdIns(4)P concentration that are independent of the effects on PtdIns(4,5)P2. These findings indicate that enhanced formation of PtdIns(4)P, apart from ensuring efficient replenishment of the PtdIns(4,5)P2 pool, might serve an independent signalling function by regulating the association of PtdIns(4)P-binding proteins with the plasma membrane.
Ontology-based routing of web services in distributed service discovery system containing domain specific nodes

By the increase in number of available Web services over the internet, accessing a required web service becomes a challenging task. One solution to the problem is using distributed web service discovery system that is composed of domain specific sub service discoverers. Using ontology is the most common practice to specify domain knowledge. Domain specific subsystems form an unstructured P2P network that connects nodes to each other in order to facilitate cross domain web service query routings. In this paper, we present a networking infrastructure of a distributed web service search system and its ontology-based routing method, We evaluate the performance of ontology-based routing method by using both complete and brief version of ontology of the domain specific discoverer under basic and normalized semantic similarity measures in terms of traffic improvement, and accuracy of the forwarded web services. Experimental evaluation shows that the traffic is reduced by 50% with the web service forwarding precision of 90%.
Assessing paedophilia based on the haemodynamic brain response to face images

Abstract Objectives: Objective assessment of sexual preferences may be of relevance in the treatment and prognosis of child sexual offenders. Previous research has indicated that this can be achieved by pattern classification of brain responses to sexual child and adult images. Our recent research showed that human face processing is tuned to sexual age preferences. This observation prompted us to test whether paedophilia can be inferred based on the haemodynamic brain responses to adult and child faces. Methods: Twenty-four men sexually attracted to prepubescent boys or girls (paedophiles) and 32 men sexually attracted to men or women (teleiophiles) were exposed to images of child and adult, male and female faces during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session. Results: A cross-validated, automatic pattern classification algorithm of brain responses to facial stimuli yielded four misclassified participants (three false positives), corresponding to a specificity of 91% and a sensitivity of 95%. Conclusions: These results indicate that the functional response to facial stimuli can be reliably used for fMRI-based classification of paedophilia, bypassing the problem of showing child sexual stimuli to paedophiles.