Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative and dispositional optimism as separate and interactive predictors

Comparative optimism and dispositional optimism are typically studied separately and little is known regarding their unique and combined predictive abilities. We examined how these two types of optimism predict cognitive and affective reactions following unpleasant dental health feedback (Studies 1 and 2) and neutral feedback (Study 2). In Study 1, dispositional optimism and a measure of dental health comparative optimism interacted to predict appraisals of dental health feedback. In Study 2, dispositional optimism and dental health comparative optimism interacted to predict appraisals of new dental health information following negative dental health feedback – but not following neutral feedback. Individuals scoring high in dispositional optimism and low in dental health comparative optimism were more interested in and receptive to the dental health feedback than those scoring high in both types of optimism. Finally, greater dental health comparative optimism was associated with less negative affect following the dental health feedback, whereas dispositional optimism was associated with greater positive affect under all conditions. The results indicate that comparative and dispositional optimism are unique as well as interactive predictors.
FPGA-based design of an Automatic Tracking Observer for grid synchronization

The Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) components offer effective solutions and provide real-time computation performances for control algorithms of electrical systems. The aim of this paper is to present the FPGA implementation of an Automatic Tracking Observer (ATO) for the synchronization of the grid voltage vector. This application is particularly useful for the control of a three-phase Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) boost rectifier. The used FPGA for the digital implementation of the ATO is the Fusion AFS600 from Actel, which integrates analog functions such as ADC for a fully System on programmable Chip (SopC) solution. So, the implemented ATO allowed computing the phase of the grid voltage vector in a reliable environment, while ensuring very fast computation time of only few microseconds. Experimental results are presented in order to illustrate the efficiency and benefits of the proposed Fusion FPGA-based solution.
Incorporating smoothness into weight optimization for ℋ∞ loop-shaping design

Smoothness constraints are formulated for weights in ℋ∞ loop-shaping design in order to ensure smooth variations in their magnitude response. Smoothness in the magnitude response of weights prevents the cancelation of lightly damped poles/zeros of the plant when the shaped plant is formed by cascading the nominal plant with the weights. It also allows fitting by low-order transfer functions when the smooth variations are computed point-wise in frequency. Gradients of weights, expressed in dB/decade, are used to formulate the smoothness constraints in LMI form as additional constraints to those on the singular values and condition numbers of weights in [Lanzon, 2005, Weight optimization in ℋ∞ loop-shaping, Automatica, 41(1): 1018–1029]. The resulting solution algorithm maximizes the robust stability margin while simultaneously synthesizing smooth weights and a stabilizing controller subject to the shaped plant lying within a specified region that depicts the closed-loop design requirements. Keywords: ℋ∞ loop-shaping; Smoothness constraint; Weight optimization; Robust control.
Residential Water Demand under Alternative Rate Structures: Simulation Approach

Econometricians have long studied the effect of price on residential water demand and the impact on water use of the rate (tariff) structure in which price signals are embedded. This paper applies an existing deductive model of residential water use for the intermittent supply system in Amman, Jordan and simulates demand responses across a cross section of households over many uniform, increasing block, and linear price (quadratic charge) rate structures at historically low and significantly higher prices. Results show inelastic piped water demand responses for all rate structures at historically low prices similar to findings from a prior econometric study for Amman. However, piped water demand turns more elastic when prices rise above $0.50/ m3 with uniform rates showing the most elastic response. But results also highlight several complications to determine and interpret price elasticity of demand under different rate structures. They also illustrate trade-offs among rate structures and rate structure .
The internal organization of government

The paper discusses some specificities of the design of incentives in the public sector and their implications: multiplicity of goals, unclear weighing of these goals, and nonmeasurability of some of them; lack of comparison; heterogeneity of tastes and dispersion of principals. The paper then analyzes career concerns, associated with the prospect of reselection, promotion, or employment in the private sector, and articulated around some mission. There is a potential multiplicity of missions that can be followed by rational officials. The last part studies the division of labor within government, in particular division of labor among ministries and the use of multiple principals to control economic agents, and division of labor aimed at creating information for public decision making and the use of enfranchised advocates of specific interests. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.
Institutional environment, inside ownership and effective tax rate

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of institutional environment and inside ownership on the tax reporting practices of Chinese listed firms. Design/methodology/approach - It is an empirical study using a sample of Chinese listed firms for eight years of time periods between 1998 and 2005. Findings - This study finds that in Chinese provinces with more developed institutions, firms have higher effective tax rates; however, firms with inside ownership in these regions have lower effective tax rates. Further analysis shows that the above results hold only for non-state-owned firms. Originality/value - The paper presents the first study of the impact of inside ownership and institutional environment on corporate effective tax rate in China.
Onset of paternal gene activation in early mouse embryos fertilized with transgenic mouse sperm

We investigated the onset of paternal gene expression in the early mouse embryo. We obtained transgenic mouse embryos by fertilizing BD (C57BL/6N x DBA) F1 hybrid female oocytes in vitro, with sperm from homozygous transgenic males carrying integrated chicken β‐actin promoter‐driven firefly luciferase cDNA. We then examined the RNA and protein synthesis of the luciferase gene in embryos from the 1‐ to 2‐cell stage. RNA transcripts of the luciferase gene were first detected in the 1‐cell stage embryos as early as 13 hr postinsemination, just prior to elongation. By photon‐count imaging, functional luciferase was identified at the 2‐cell stage 23 hr postinsemination. These findings indicate that the paternal endogenous gene is already transcribed in the late 1‐cell embryos, although paternally derived protein is not synthesized until the 2‐cell stage. Therefore, these results suggest that the embryonic gene is activated as early as the late 1‐cell stage. ©1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Functional Regionalisation of Spatial Interaction Data. An Evaluation of Some Suggested Strategies

Three alternative approaches (the functional distance approach, the iterative proportional fitting based procedure and the intramax procedure) to the functional regionalisation of spatial interaction data are compared and evaluated in this paper. After a general discussion of the basic properties of each approach, the detailed processes that are involved in each case are illustrated by reference to a worked example. The last section of the paper presents the findings obtained by each of these approaches as a result of empirical studies of Greater London, Merseyside, and the Netherlands. The study as a whole identifies a number of ambiguities in the existing literature which point to the need for a more rigorous examination of current methodology. They also suggest that more attention needs to be given to the role that is played by aggregation procedures as against data transformation procedures in the evaluation process. Although each user must decide which of the three methods best suits his particular purposes, the results obtained by means of the intramax procedure seem generally more readily interpretable than those obtained by either of the other two methods.
The Impact of Corporate Reputation on Firm Risk: A Panel Data Analysis of Spanish Quoted Firms

Researchers have traditionally addressed the influence of corporate reputation on firm performance, but have not considered the influence of corporate reputation on firm risk. This research develops hypotheses regarding the opposing influence of corporate reputation on a firm's systematic risk, unsystematic risk and total risk, as well as the moderation effect of firm size and industry concentration. Using a panel data method, these relationships are analysed, controlling for the effects of endogeneity, for a sample of Spanish quoted firms in the period 2001–2007. Specifically, two complementary analyses are performed. The first distinguishes firms included and not included in the MERCO index of the most reputable firms. The second analyses the impact of corporate reputation for the sub‐sample of most reputable firms. Being reputable reduces a firm's unsystematic risk and total risk, but increases systematic risk. In addition, firm size weakens these influences of corporate reputation on firm risk. However, among the most reputable firms, differences in reputation score have a lower effect on risk. Specifically, the corporate reputation level only influences firm unsystematic risk. It seems that what matters is not the degree of corporate reputation, but whether being or not being reputable is the question in terms of risk.
Glutamate Racemase Mutants of Bacillus anthracis

ABSTRACT d-Glutamate is an essential component of bacterial peptidoglycan and a building block of the poly-γ-d-glutamic acid (PDGA) capsule of Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax. Earlier work suggested that two glutamate racemases, encoded by racE1 and racE2, are each essential for growth of B. anthracis, supplying d-glutamic acid for the synthesis of peptidoglycan and PDGA capsule. Earlier work could not explain, however, why two enzymes that catalyze the same reaction may be needed for bacterial growth. Here, we report that deletion of racE1 or racE2 did not prevent growth of B. anthracis Sterne (pXO1+ pXO2−), the noncapsulating vaccine strain, or of B. anthracis Ames (pXO1+ pXO2+), a fully virulent, capsulating isolate. While mutants with deletions in racE1 and racE2 were not viable, racE2 deletion delayed vegetative growth of B. anthracis following spore germination and caused aberrant cell shapes, phenotypes that were partially restored by exogenous d-glutamate. Deletion of racE1 or racE2 from B. anthracis Ames did not affect the production or stereochemical composition of the PDGA capsule. A model is presented whereby B. anthracis, similar to Bacillus subtilis, utilizes two functionally redundant racemase enzymes to synthesize d-glutamic acid for peptidoglycan synthesis. IMPORTANCE Glutamate racemases, enzymes that convert l-glutamate to d-glutamate, are targeted for antibiotic development. Glutamate racemase inhibitors may be useful for the treatment of bacterial infections such as anthrax, where the causative agent, B. anthracis, requires d-glutamate for the synthesis of peptidoglycan and poly-γ-d-glutamic acid (PDGA) capsule. Here we show that B. anthracis possesses two glutamate racemase genes that can be deleted without abolishing either bacterial growth or PDGA synthesis. These data indicate that drug candidates must inhibit both glutamate racemases, RacE1 and RacE2, in order to block B. anthracis growth and achieve therapeutic efficacy.
Social Welfare in Sports Leagues with Profit-Maximizing and/or Win-Maximizing Clubs

This paper develops a contest model to compare social welfare in homogeneous leagues in which all clubs maximize identical objective functions with mixed leagues in which clubs maximize different objective functions. We show that homogeneous leagues in which all clubs are profit-maximizers dominate all other leagues whereas mixed leagues in which small-market clubs are profit- and large-market clubs are win-maximizers (type-I mixed leagues) are dominated by all other leagues. In addition, we show that, from a welfare perspective, large-market clubs win too often in (purely) win-maximizing and type-I mixed leagues whereas small-market clubs win too many games in (purely) profit-maximizing leagues and in mixed leagues in which large-market clubs are profit- and small-market clubs are win-maximizers (type-II mixed leagues). These results have important policy implications: Social welfare will increase if clubs are reorganized from non-profit members associations to profit-maximizing corporations. Moreover, it is socially desirable to reorganize large-market clubs first because, in mixed leagues, it is better if large-market clubs maximize profits instead of small-market clubs. Finally, we show that the invariance proposition does not hold in any league. In mixed (homogeneous) leagues, revenue sharing decreases (increases) social welfare. Given these results, homogeneous leagues should introduce revenue sharing; mixed leagues should not.
Scheduling for Multiuser MIMO Downlink with Linear Processing

Block diagonalization (BD) combined with coordinated transmitter-receiver processing and scheduling between users is a simple and straightforward linear method to utilize the available spatial degrees of freedom in downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel for increasing the system throughput. In this paper, an efficient scheduling algorithm is proposed to maximize the downlink spectral efficiency of the BD method for any number of users and antennas at both the transmitter and the receivers. The performance is compared to the spectral efficiency available with several other scheduling algorithms and to the sum-rate capacity. It is shown that the performance of the BD method with the proposed scheduling approaches the sum rate capacity at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the number of users increases. It is also noticed that due to the inherent noise amplification problem with linear BD method, the maximum spectral efficiency is often achieved by transmitting to less users/beams than the spatial dimensions available, especially, at low SNR region with a high number of transmit antennas and with a low number of users
Non-invasive ventilation in acute cardiogenic pulmonary oedema

Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is the delivery of assisted mechanical ventilation to the lungs, without the use of an invasive endotracheal airway. NIV has revolutionised the management of patients with various forms of respiratory failure. It has decreased the need for invasive mechanical ventilation and its attendant complications. Cardiogenic pulmonary oedema (CPO) is a common medical emergency, and NIV has been shown to improve both physiological and clinical outcomes. From the data presented herein, it is clear that there is sufficiently high level evidence to favour the use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), and that the use of CPAP in patients with CPO decreases intubation rate and improves survival (number needed to treat seven and eight respectively). However, there is insufficient evidence to recommend the use of bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP), probably the exception being patients with hypercapnic CPO. More trials are required to conclusively define the role of BiPAP in CPO.
Coverage for Character Based Neural Machine Translation

In recent years, Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has achieved state-of-the-art performance in translating from a language; source language, to another; target language. However, many of the proposed methods use word embedding techniques to represent a sentence in the source or target language. Character embedding techniques for this task has been suggested to represent the words in a sentence better. Moreover, recent NMT models use attention mechanism where the most relevant words in a source sentence are used to generate a target word. The problem with this approach is that while some words are translated multiple times, some other words are not translated. To address this problem, coverage model has been integrated into NMT to keep track of already-translated words and focus on the untranslated ones. In this research, we present a new architecture in which we use character embedding for representing the source and target languages, and also use coverage model to make certain that all words are translated. Experiments were performed to compare our model with coverage and character model and the results show that our model performs better than the other two models.
Comparison of different drying procedures for scanning electron microscopy using human leukocytes

Using human leukocytes as test specimens, three different drying procedures for scanning electron microscopy: critical‐point drying (CPD), Peldri II, and tetramethylsilane (TMS), were compared. All three procedures produced identical surface morphology preservation. An equal amount of volume shrinkage was observed regardless of the dehydrants and drying techniques employed. Considering the simplicity, convenience, and time saved, air‐drying with TMS is by far the best choice for preparing animal cells for scanning electron microscopy. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Are Currency Revaluations Contractionary in China

Chinese economy has been in a state of external imbalance and internal imbalance for some years, which certainly has something to do with the undervaluation of renminbi (RMB). But Chinese Government hesitates to revalue RMB because of the worry that RMB revaluations are contractionary thus have negative impact on China's economic growth and employment. The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the effects of RMB real exchange rate on China's output. The econometric work of the paper shows that even after sources of spurious correlation and reverse causation are controlled for, RMB revaluation has led to a decline in Chinas output, suggesting that RMB revaluations do be contractionary. The paper gives some possible explanations to this finding, and points out that the finding does not consequentially imply that China should continue maintaining the undervaluation of RMB.
Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance in non-profit service organizations: contingent effect of market orientation

Prior research indicates that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance. This study argues that the inverted U-shaped relationship may depend on the level of market orientation (MO). A moderated hierarchical regression based on a sample of 307 non-profit service organizations reveals that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between each sub-dimension of EO and performance. However, these relationships do not exist for each sub-dimension of MO. When both market intelligence generation and responsiveness are high, the relationship between innovativeness and performance will be in a linear form. Under the condition of high-market intelligence responsiveness, the higher proactiveness will lead to a higher performance level. These findings will better our understanding of the relationship between EO and firm performance.
Cities and Growth: Human Capital Location Choice: Accounting for Amenities and Thick Labour Markets

A growing literature has found a positive association between human capital and long-run employment growth across cities. These studies have increased interest in understanding the location choices of university degree-holders, a group often used as a proxy measure of human capital. Based on data from the 2001 Canadian Census of Population, this paper investigates determinants of the location choices of degree- and non-degree-holders. With a multinomial logit model, it tests a series of hypotheses about the differential effects of thick labor markets and amenities on the location choice of these groups across metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas in Canada.
Text conditioning and statistical language modeling for Romanian language

In this paper we present a synthesis of the theoretical fundamentals and some practical aspects of statistical (n-gram) language modeling which is a main part of a large vocabulary statistical speech recognition system. There are presented the unigram, bigram and trigram language models as well as the Good-Turing estimator based Katz back-off smoothing algorithm. There is also described the perplexity measure of a language model used for evaluation. The practical experiments were made on Romanian Constitution corpus. There are also presented the text normalization steps before the language model generation. The results are ARPA-MIT format language models for Romanian language. The models were tested and compared using perplexity measure. Finally some comparisons were made between Romanian and English language modeling and conclusions are drawn.
Making Sense of Data: How Public Health Graduate Students Build Theory Through Qualitative Research Techniques

Data interpretation and theory building are two key skills often taught in health sciences qualitative methods courses. However, little is known about how novice researchers make sense of data, as well as how their thought processes differ from those of expert researchers. In this classroom research project, the author explores how qualitative methods students in a public health graduate program describe their processes of making sense of data and building theory. She then compares these processes with “expert” guidelines to draw implications for how to enhance teaching in a qualitative research class.
Tumor Necrosis Factor-α-Induced Apoptosis in Olfactory Epithelium in Vitro: Possible Roles of Caspase 1 (ICE), Caspase 2 (ICH-1), and Caspase 3 (CPP32)

Abstract We investigated the potential roles of three members of the interleukin-1β-converting enzyme (ICE) protease family (caspases) in apoptosis in olfactory epithelium. By RT-PCR analysis, the mRNAs of caspase 1 (ICE), caspase 2 (ICH-1), and caspase 3 (CPP32) were detected in olfactory mucosa obtained from normal adults, E19 fetuses, and unilaterally bulbectomized rats. The transcript of caspase 2 disappeared in bulbectomized animals 3 and 5 days postoperatively, but reappeared 21 days postoperatively. This suggests that most of the caspase 2 transcript was in olfactory sensory neurons. We used TNF-α to induce cell death in organotypic cultures of E19 olfactory epithelium and assayed the ability of three caspase inhibitors to reverse the TNF-α effect. After 6 h of treatment with medium containing TNF-α, a 2.5-fold increase in apoptotic body number was observed throughout the olfactory epithelium. Pretreatment of the cultures with either of two irreversible caspase inhibitors (Z-VAD-fmk, Ac-YVAD-cmk) for 4 h, followed by a 6-h treatment with TNF-α plus an inhibitor, blocked TNF-α-induced cell death completely. Pretreatment with a third caspase inhibitor (Z-DEVD-fmk) in the same treatment schedule reduced the numbers of apoptotic cells significantly but not to the same extent as Z-VAD-fmk or Ac-YVAD-cmk. Increasing the dose of any of the inhibitors reduced the numbers of apoptotic figures below those of control cultures, indicating that the inhibitory response is dose dependent. Taken together, the results suggest that caspases 1, 2, and 3, and perhaps others that are blocked by the inhibitors we used, participate in TNF-α-induced cell death in vitro.