Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An empirical analysis on consumer perception towards eco-labelled products in Austria

Oko-Labels als Zeichen um nachhaltigen Konsum zu forcieren, haben im Laufe der Zeit immer mehr an Bedeutung gewonnen. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich darauf, Konsumenteneinstellungen bezuglich Oko-label zertifizierter Produkte in Osterreich zu erfassen und geht darauf ein, ob Oko-labels von den Konsumenten dazu verwendet werden, sich uber die Umweltauswirkungen von Produkten zu informieren. Der theoretische Teil der Arbeit gibt einen historischen Uberblick und befasst sich mit der Klassifizierung und der allgemeinen Bedeutung von Umweltzeichen im Zusammenhang mit der nachhaltigen Nutzung von Ressourcen. Es wird darauf eingegangen, welche wirtschaftlichen Anreize eine Umweltzertifizierung fur Unternehmen birgt. Ein weiteres Kapitel umfasst die theoretische Erfolgsmessung von Oko-labels. Dabei wird aufgezeigt, welche Auswirkungen Oko-labels auf das Konsumentenverhalten, auf die Umwelt und auf die Unternehmen haben konnen. Die Arbeit gibt auch einen Einblick in ausgewahlte Oko-Labels, welche in der empirischen Studie eine Rolle spielen. Diese Oko-Labels werden anhand verschiedener Aspekte, wie etwa den relevanten Zertifizierungskriterien und den unterschiedlichen Produktgruppen dargestellt. Besonderes Augenmerk wird auf die Vergaberichtlinien und die Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt gelegt. Die empirische Studie, welche sich auf Daten von 107 Probanden stutzt, welche anhand eines standardisierten Fragebogens gewonnen wurden, dient der Erfassung und Auswertung von Konsumenteneinstellungen bezuglich Oko-label zertifizierter Produkte. Einflussfaktoren, wie etwas das Einkommen oder Umweltbewusstsein, auf die Kenntnis des EU Energie Labels wurden analysiert. Das EU Energie Label bildet hierbei einen Schwerpunkt. Es wurde kein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen Einkommen und Informiertheitsgrad der Konsumenten bezuglich Umweltaspekte von Produkten festgestellt. Jedoch konnte gezeigt werden, dass das Umweltbewusstsein, bei der Entscheidung energieeffiziente Produkte zu kaufen, eine Rolle spielt. Die Auswertung ermoglichte es, auf weitere Aspekte, wie etwa die Kenntnis ausgewahlter Oko-labels einzugehen.
Consumer evaluation of brand extension: Pakistani Context

Brand extension strategy, based on the idea that the built-in value of the familiar brand name is transferable to new products. The major aim of this research paper was to find out that how consumer evaluate brand Extension. Authors have used four variables to establish the relationship with the dependent variable “consumer evaluation” of brand extension. The variables used in the study were listed as (1) Innovativeness (2) Multiple Brand extensions (3) Brand concept and consistency (4) Brand extension fit. In addition, four real life brands have been used as stimulus in this study. Questionnaire was developed and through Convenience sampling; it was administrated among sample population of 110. Regression analysis was used as statistical tool to analyze the relationship among dependent and independent variables. The findings showed that Consumer evaluation would be positive for those brand extensions that have a strong reputation for introducing multiple brands. Likewise, there was a positive relationship between consumer level of innovativeness and how consumer evaluates brand extension. Innovative consumers were more positive and favorably inclined towards brand extensions.
A group decision making approach in interval-valued intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy environment with confidence levels

The main purpose of this paper is to research the multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems with interval-valued hesitant fuzzy numbers based on the confidence level. In this paper, we provide the confidence level of decision-making information which is applicable to put forward an optimized weight solution. Then we define the interval- valued intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy operator to aggregate decision information combing the ϕs transformation and Choquet integral. Taking the disadvantage of ranking by distance into account, we propose a ranking approach using the interval-valued intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy entropy. Finally, an illustrative example has been made to demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed method.
Automated Content Analysis of Online Political Communication

Content analysis has a long tradition in the social sciences: it is central to the study of policy preferences, propaganda and mass media, and the framing of social movements. New computational tools and the increasing availability of digitized documents promise to push forward this line of inquiry by reducing the costs of manual annotation and enabling the analysis of large-scale corpora. In particular, the automated analysis of online political communication may yield insights into political sentiment which offline analysis instruments (such as opinion polls) fail to capture; for instance, we are now in a better position to analyze the temporal dimension of opinion formation because of higher resolution data. Several linguistic peculiarities, however, distinguish online political communication from traditional political texts; for starters, it is less formal and structured. Automated content analysis techniques are also not always as reliable or as valid as manual annotation, which makes measurements potentially noisy or misleading. We provide an overview of techniques suited to two common content analysis tasks: classifying documents into specified categories, and discovering unknown categories from documents. This second task is more exploratory in nature: it helps identify topic domains when there are no clear preconceptions of the topics that are discussed in a certain communication environment; the first task, on the other hand, can help label a large volume of text in a more efficient manner than manual annotation. This chapter focuses on the application of these automated techniques to online political communication, and suggests directions for future research in this domain.
Antepartum fetal and maternal carboxyhemoglobin and cotinine levels among cigarette smokers

The objective of this study was to examine the association of carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) and plasma cotinine levels among pregnant women who smoke cigarettes and their fetuses. Fifteen pregnant women who smoked and their fetuses undergoing cordocentesis had blood samples analysed simultaneously for COHb and cotinine. Linear regression was used to test for associations among study variables. Significant maternal‐fetal associations were observed both with COHb (r= 0.72, p= 0.003) and with cotinine (r= 0.96, p= 0.003). Maternal cotinine levels were correlated with maternal and fetal COHb levels (r= 0.96, p= 0.003; r= 0.99, p= 0.0003, respectively). Fetal cotinine levels were correlated with COHb in maternal and in fetal blood (r= 0.81, p= 0.0003; r= 0.88, p < 0.0001, respectively). The strong direct associations of maternal and fetal levels of COHb and cotinine indicate that maternal COHb and cotinine measurements may be interpreted as surrogates of fetal COHb levels. However, the specificity, ex vivo stability and ease of measurement of cotinine offer advantages over using COHb in quantifying fetal CO exposure following maternal cigarette smoking.
Combiner of classifiers using Genetic Algorithm for classification of remote sensed hyperspectral images

In the past few years, hyperspectral images have been considered as one of the most important tool in land cover classification due to its capability to obtain rich information of materials on earth surface. In this work we aim to produce an accurate thematic map for the remote sensed hyperspectral image classification problem, which is obtained using a combination of several classification methods. Three types of feature representation and two learning algorithms (Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Backpropagation Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP)) were used yielding six classification methods to perform the combination. Our combination proposal is based on Weighted Linear Combination (WLC), in which weights are found using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) - WLC-GA. Experiments were carried out with two well-known datasets: Indian Pines and Pavia University, and we observed that our proposed WLC-GA method achieves the highest accuracy among traditional Conscious Combiners, the widely used Majority Vote (MV) and Weighted Majority Vote (WMV), for both datasets.
Sensitivity of nisin‐resistant Listeria monocytogenes to heat and the synergistic action of heat and nisin

Nisin, a bacteriocin produced by some strains of Lactococcus lactis, acts against foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. A single exposure of cells to nisin can generate nisin‐resistant (Nisr) mutants, which may compromise the use of nisin in the food industry. The objective of this research was to compare the heat resistance of Nisr and wild type (WT) Listeria monocytogenes. The synergistic effect of heat‐treatment (55 °C) and nisin (500 IU ml−1) on the Nisr cells and the WT L. monocytogenes Scott A was also studied. When the cells were grown in the absence of nisin, there was no significant (α = 0·05) difference in heat resistance between WT and Nisr cells of L. monocytogenes at 55, 60 and 65 °C. However, when the Nisr cells were grown in the presence of nisin, they were more sensitive to heat at 55 °C than the WT cells. The D‐values at 55 °C were 2·88 and 2·77 min for Nisr ATCC 700301 and ATCC 700302, respectively, which was significantly (α = 0·05) lower than the D‐value for WT, 3·72 min. When Nisr cells were subjected to a combined treatment of heat and nisin, there was approximately a four log reduction during the first 7 min of treatment.
Stereotypes Bias Visual Prototypes for Sex and Emotion Categories

Recent models suggest that social categories are not perceived independently, but that they can facilitate or bias each other’s perception due to incidentally shared stereotypes. To address the role of visual prediction in driving these intersectional effects in the domains of sex and emotion perception, three studies were conducted. Participants categorized visually obscured faces by sex and emotion, from which we produced reversecorrelated prototype faces for each social category. These prototype faces were found to exhibit systematic biases in their visual appearance (MaleAngry, Female-Happy), as judged by independent raters. Moreover, this biased appearance in sex and emotion prototypes was related to the extent of a participant’s stereotypical associations linking men to anger and women to happiness. Together, the findings suggest that stereotypes can bind social categories together at the level of visual prediction and offer new insights into current theoretical models of social perception.
Data management in a distributed file system for storage area networks

Many improvements in computer systems are initiated by new developments in the hardware on which these systems run. Currently, hardware for data storage are experiencing changes in connectivity, access semantics, and data rates because of storage area networks (SANs), which allow many computers to have shared access to storage devices over a high-speed network. The advent of SANs makes it possible to implement a high performance distributed file system by allowing client computers to obtain data directly from storage devices, rather than accessing data through a server that performs read and writes on their behalf. However, a file system design that allows direct client access to data significantly changes both the performance and correctness of traditional protocols for data management. In this dissertation we define new protocols for concurrency control and synchronized access to files and data that exploit the SAN environment to improve performance. We also identify that the architecture of our direct access file system invalidates traditional protocols for providing operational guarantees when networks fail and authenticating the identity and actions of computers and their applications. We develop decentralized and distributed protocols for safe operation and authentication that are correct for the SAN environment. Our protocols make possible the implementation of a distributed file system that employs direct access to storage from clients to achieve high performance.
Cortical Afferents to the Extended Amygdala

ABSTRACT: The projections of the cerebral cortex to the extended amygdala were studied in the rat using anterograde and retrograde tract‐tracing techniques. Most cortical areas with strong projections to the extended amygdala preferentially targeted either the medial extended amygdala (including the medial amygdalar nucleus, ventromedial substantia innominata, and the medial part of the bed nucleus the stria terminalis) or the central extended amygdala (including the central amygdalar nucleus, dorsolateral substantia innominata, and the lateral part of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis). Some cortical areas, however, had equal projections to both medial and central portions. The main areas projecting preferentially to the medial extended amygdala were the ventral subiculum, infralimbic cortex, ventral agranular insular area, and the rostral part of the ventrolateral entorhinal area. The main areas projecting preferentially to the central extended amygdala were the prefrontal cortex, viscerosensory and somatosensory portions of the insular cortex, and the amygdalopiriform transitional area. It is suggested that these cortical inputs may be important for cognitive, mnemonic, and affective aspects of emotional and motivated behavior.
Generation of insect-resistant and glyphosate-tolerant rice by introduction of a T-DNA containing two Bt insecticidal genes and an EPSPS gene

Insect resistance and glyphosate tolerance have been two of the most important traits in the genetic improvement of various crops. In this study, two Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal genes, Cry1Ac and Cry1Ig, and a modified glyphosate-tolerant 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) gene (G10) were combined into a single transferred DNA (T-DNA) fragment and introduced into rice by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. A transgenic line with single-copy T-DNA insertion named GAI-14 was found to be highly resistant to striped stem borer and rice leaf roller, and tolerant to glyphosate. Analysis of T-DNA border sequence suggested that the transgenes were inserted at the chromosome 3 and appeared to have not interrupted any known or putative genes. A field trial observed no significant difference in the basic agronomic traits between GAI-14 and the recipient rice. 中文概要目 的获得具有高水平表达Cry1Ac、Cry1Ig和EPSPS基因并且具有抗虫、抗草甘膦活性的转基因水稻株。 创新点Cry1Ig为新发现的苏云金杆菌(Bt)杀虫基因; Cry1Ig与Cry1Ac共同使用有利于延缓害虫产生对Bt杀虫蛋白抗性。 方 法将Cry1Ac、Cry1Ig和EPSPS(G10)基因的表达框依次插入到同一转移DNA(T-DNA)中, 再将此T-DNA 利用农杆菌介导法转化到水稻中。 从转基因后代中, 利用蛋白质印迹法(Western blot)、DNA 印迹法(Southern blot)和热不对称交错聚合酶链式反应(TAIL-PCR)技术, 筛选出能够高水平表达上述三个基因以及T-DNA 单拷贝插入并且未发生明显插入突变的转化株。 对于筛选到的转化株, 利用Western blot 进一步分析Cry1Ac、Cry1Ig和G10基因的表达水平; 使用酶联免疫吸附测定(ELISA)检测Cry1Ac 的表达量; 使用棉铃虫、二化螟和稻纵卷叶螟为对象, 测定转基因水稻的抗虫活性; 使用草甘膦喷施法, 测定转基因水稻的抗草甘膦活性。 最后, 在大田试验中, 考察转基因水稻与非转基因水稻的基本农艺性状, 观察T-DNA 的插入是否对转基因水稻的生长产生明显的影响。 结 论本实验最终获得具有高水平表达Cry1Ac、Cry1Ig和G10 基因以及T-DNA 单拷贝插入并且未引起明显变化的转化株GAI-14。 GAI-14 对棉铃虫、二化螟、稻纵卷叶螟以及草甘膦均具有明显的抗性。 田间试验表明GAI-14 在基本农艺性状上与非转基因水稻无明显差异。
Co-evolving industry and enterprise architecture: Exploring the platform architectural advantage of BT in the UK

Incumbent telecommunication service providers have a long history and strong capabilities in network services. With increasing competition with firms from various technological trajectories (Internet, Cable TV and Satellite) boosted by technological and service convergence, leading incumbent telecommunication service providers have strategically repositioned themselves to include IT-driven services, offering integrated solutions to large customers. The ICT industry architecture has evolved in such a way that it favours those firms with enterprise architecture which cultivate (i) a platform-based approach for their organisational processes, products and services; and (ii) openness. This paper uses the case study methodology to explore the lessons from the case of BT in the UK that can be used to increase the architectural (and competitive) advantage of incumbent telecommunications service providers, aligning industry and enterprise architecture. We argue that more than on the technology itself, incumbent telecommunication service providers may focus more on their enterprise architecture by deploying technology aimed at conferring architectural advantage dynamically engaged with the ICT industry architecture. A framework is offered to help incumbent telecommunication service providers to better understand and position themselves in the `battle of architectures' by aligning enterprise and industry architecture and by establishing platform `architectural advantage'.
Acute stress induces down‐regulation of large‐conductance Ca2+‐activated potassium channels in the lateral amygdala

Key points • Stress can lead to the development of behavioural disorders associated with cognitive impairments, depression and anxiety. • Large‐conductance Ca2+‐activated potassium channels (BKCa) are highly expressed in the brain. Here we found that acute stress induced a significant reduction in BKCa channel expression in the amygdala of mice, which accompanied anxiety‐like behaviours. • Activation of BKCa channels in the amygdala could reverse the stress‐induced anxiety‐like behaviours. This research may help us understand the underlying mechanisms of anxiety‐like behaviour induced by acute stress.
Mucosal Transmission and Induction of Simian AIDS by CCR5-Specific Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus SHIVSF162P3

ABSTRACT Nonhuman primate models are increasingly used in the screening of candidate AIDS vaccine and immunization strategies for advancement to large-scale human trials. The predictive value of such macaque studies is largely dependent upon the fidelity of the model system in mimicking human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 infection in terms of viral transmission, replication, and pathogenesis. Herein, we describe the efficient mucosal transmission of a CCR5-specific chimeric simian/human immunodeficiency virus, SHIVSF162P3. Female rhesus macaques were infected with SHIVSF162P3 after a single atraumatic application to the cervicovaginal mucosa. The disease course of SHIVSF162P3-infected monkeys is similar and as varied as natural HIV infection in terms of viral replication, gradual loss of CD4+ peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and the development of simian AIDS-defining opportunistic infections. The SHIVSF162P3/macaque model should facilitate direct preclinical assessment of HIV vaccine strategies in addition to antiviral compounds directed towards envelope target cell interactions. Furthermore, this controlled model provides the setting to investigate immunologic responses and putative host-specific susceptibility factors that alter viral transmission and subsequent disease progression.
A wireless power outlet system for smart homes

This paper presents the design and implementation of a wireless-controllable power outlet system for home automation networks. The proposed power outlet module integrates a ZigBee radio into its architecture. It acts as an actuator node in the home automation networks for remote control operations. A prototype of the power outlet module following the proposed architecture has been implemented. A testbed of a simple home automation network for validating the basic functions of the power outlet module has also been created. Results of the demonstration experiment show that the proposed power outlet module enables easy and flexible control of various home appliances with little infrastructure. It helps us add more intelligence into the home environments rapidly.
A study of Impact of Integration Structural Context in Multimedia Retrieval: Application on Image Media

The expansion in volume of information organized according to a structure in multiple applications introduces a new equivocal in multimedia retrieval in semi-structured documents. We study in this paper the impact of introduce a structural context on multimedia retrieval in XML document thus we present a indexing model which combines textual and structural information. We propose a geometric method who use implicitly of textual and structural context of XML elements and we are particularly interested by improve the eﬀectiveness of various structural factors for multimedia retrieval. Using a geometric metric, we can represent structural information in XML document with a vector for each element. Experimental evaluation is carried out using the INEX Ad Hoc Task 2007, ImageCLEF Wikipedia Retrieval Task 2010 and ImageCLEF Plant Task 2014 in the framework of our participation in CLEF 2014 campaign. The results show that integration of structural context significantly improves compared results of using a single textual context. Our proposed method perform as compared to other systems evaluated on two coolection INEX 2007 and ImageCLEF 2010.
Transcriptome Analysis of Early Surface-Associated Growth of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1

Bacterial biofilm formation starts with single cells attaching to a surface, however, little is known about the initial attachment steps and the adaptation to the surface-associated life style. Here, we describe a hydrodynamic system that allows easy harvest of cells at very early biofilm stages. Using the metal ion-reducing gammaproteobacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 as a model organism, we analyzed the transcriptional changes occurring during surface-associated growth between 15 and 60 minutes after attachment. 230 genes were significantly upregulated and 333 were downregulated by a factor of ≥2. Main functional categories of the corresponding gene products comprise metabolism, uptake and transport, regulation, and hypothetical proteins. Among the genes highly upregulated those implicated in iron uptake are highly overrepresented, strongly indicating that S. oneidensis MR-1 has a high demand for iron during surface attachment and initial biofilm stages. Subsequent microscopic analysis of biofilm formation under hydrodynamic conditions revealed that addition of Fe(II) significantly stimulated biofilm formation of S. oneidensis MR-1 while planktonic growth was not affected. Our approach to harvest cells for transcriptional analysis of early biofilm stages is expected to be easily adapted to other bacterial species.
Neurocognitive and behavioral correlates of non-right-handedness in internationally adopted children

The incidence of non-right-handedness was assessed among a sample of international adoptees. Neurocognitive and behavioral correlates to handedness were also examined among participants. A sample of 139 international adoptees (54 males; mean age at testing = 111.4 months ± 32.9 months) underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation, assessing verbal and visual reasoning, language, memory, attention, impulse control, processing speed, academic functioning, manual dexterity, and behavioral functioning. Over 26% of participants reported non-right-handedness. Non-right- and right-handers did not differ on demographic or orphanage specific variables. The groups were found to significantly differ on behavioral indices of attention and several neurocognitive variables, including visual memory, verbal memory, and manual dexterity of the dominant hand, with non-right-handers having worse performance. Possible mechanisms for these findings are discussed.