Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of Home Blood Glucose Meters With Respect to Clinical and Analytical Approaches

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical and analytical accuracy of home blood glucose meters. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Six blood glucose meters—Reflolux S (Boehringer Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany), One Touch II (LifeScan, Milpitas, CA), Glucocard Memory (Menarini, Florence, Italy), Precision QID (Medisense, Cambridge, U.K.), HaemoCue (HaemoCue, Ängelholm, Sweden), and Accutrend a (Boehringer Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany)—were compared with a reference method (Beckman Glucose Analyzer II) under controlled conditions (glucose clamp technique). Validation of the blood glucose meters was accomplished by clinically oriented approaches (error grid analysis), statistical approaches (variance components analysis), and by the criteria of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), which recommend a target variability of <5%. RESULTS A total of 1,794 blood glucose monitor readings and 299 reference values ranging from 2.2 to 18.2 mmol/1 were analyzed (705 readings <3.89 mmol/1, 839 readings between 3.89 and 9.99 mmol/1, and 250 readings >9.99 mmol/1). According to error grid analysis, only Reflolux S and Glucocard M had 100% of estimations within the clinically acceptable zones A and B. Assessment of analytical accuracy revealed substantial differences between the glucose meters after separation of the data into defined glycemic ranges. None of the devices met the ADA criteria. CONCLUSIONS To evaluate accuracy of blood glucose meters, error grid analysis, as well as statistical models, are helpful means and should be performed together. Analytical performance of currently available home blood glucose meters differs substantially within defined glycemic ranges.
Efficiency Evaluation of Eco-tourism in China's Coastal Cities Based on DEA Method

This paper studies the efficiency of eco-tourism in China's coastal cities by using the method of Data Envelope Analysis (DEA). Five inputs including the length of coastline, number of employees in the tertiary industry, urban fixed asset investment, tourism resources attractiveness, eco-environmental attractiveness and two out puts including the total tourism revenue and total tourist amount were adopted to analyze the eco-tourism efficiency of 12 China's coastal cities. The result shows that 25% of the evaluated cities were ineffective by using DEA model. To promote sustainable eco-tourism development in China’s coastal cities, some suggestions are proposed for the cities either effective or ineffective for DEA model. Introduction Eco-tourism efficiency evaluation and analysis play an important role in tourism planning and management. Various econometric evaluation and analysis techniques have been developed and applied to the tourism research, amongst which Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been paid more and more attention [1]. As an excellent tool for assessing the efficiencies of economic communities characterized by multi-input, multi-output operation model, ever since its inception by [2], DEA has won increasing popularity in the research area [3]. The DEA has been involved in a number of efficiency concepts, including cost efficiency or revenue efficiency and assessing the relative efficiencies of decision-making units (DMUs) [4]. However, there is seldom research about the coastal zone eco-tourism efficiency evaluation by using DEA method [5]. The objectives of the present work are 1) to evaluate the eco-tourism efficiency of the typical Chinese coastal cities and 2) to give reasonable guidance for allocating coastal eco-tourism resources through the application of DEA. To ensure authenticity and validity, the selection of evaluating indexes and grade appraisal on China's coastal city ecological environment for DEA evaluation was tried in the light of the approach introduced by Tan etc. [6].
An improved GPSR protocol based on stratification of traffic density

An improved GPSR protocol based on stratification of traffic density is designed to get lower possibility to encounter local optimum in VANET. In the sparse region, every node maintains a list that recorded its multi-hop neighbor nodes, but in the dense region, every node just maintains its one-hop-neighbor nodes. Every node will change their strategy according to the change of the periphery traffic density. Simulation experiment compares with traditional GPSR protocol, 2-hop GPSR and the improved protocol. The simulation result shows that the improved protocol has a higher transmission rate compared to the GPSR protocol, and the transmission overhead was smaller than the 2-hop GPSR protocol.
Improving tourism recommender system through quantifying reviewer credibility

With the growing interconnectedness of the world and advances in transportation and communication, an increasing number of people are travelling as independent tourists, putting together their own itineraries and activities from information researched from social media. Moreover, a growing number of travellers post reviews and give ratings online to share experiences and opinions, which have become one important source of information. However, the explosive growth of travel information and the proliferation of uninformative, biased or false information make it very timeconsuming and challenging for travellers to find helpful and credible information. Recommender systems can assist travellers in managing the information available and facilitate their travel decisions. There have been some recommender systems developed in the tourism domain. However, these systems usually apply collaborative filtering-based, content-based or knowledge-based approaches, which require historical ratings, description of items, or extra knowledge about users’ needs. It is difficult for them to generate reliable recommendation when the ratings, description as well as the knowledge are insufficient, and they cannot make recommendations when there is no such information. In the tourism domain, ratings, description and knowledge available are much fewer than the equivalent for books or movies. Therefore, they usually suffer from the sparseness and cold-start issues. Addressing the sparseness issue, we apply rating inference method to augment ratings for rating-based recommender systems. We investigate several clustering
Different perspectives on emotional and behavioural problems in unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents

Objective. This study aims, firstly, to investigate the prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems in unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents living in Belgium. Secondly, this study compares the perspectives of the adolescents with those of social workers on the adolescents’ emotional well-being. Design. A total of 166 unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents, living in different large- and small-scale centres, in foster care or alone, participated in the study. Of them, 142 completed self-report questionnaires on emotional and behavioural problems (HSCL-37A, SDQ-self and RATS) and traumatic experiences (SLE), and for 124 refugee youths, social workers filled in two questionnaires on emotional and behavioural problems (CBCL/6-18 and SDQ-parent). Results. Between 37 and 47% of the unaccompanied refugee youths have severe or very severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. Girls and those having experienced many traumatic events are at even higher risk for the development of these emotional problems. Social workers also report a high prevalence of internalising problems in this population and they also report important externalising problems in unaccompanied refugee youths. Conclusion. Being unaccompanied is an important risk factor for the emotional well-being of refugee children and adolescents. Therefore, appropriate measures on reception and care should be taken in order to support these youths.
Performance comparison of rigid and affine models for motion estimation using ultrasound RF signals: Simulations and phantom experiments

Rigid model-based and non-rigid model-based methods are two main groups of space-domain methods of tissue motion estimation. Affine model is one of the commonly used non-rigid models. The performances of the rigid model and affine model have not been compared on ultrasound radio-frequency (RF) signals. In this study, three methods, i.e., the normalized cross-correlation method with rigid model (NCC), the optical flow method with rigid model (OFRM) and optical flow method with affine model (OFAM), are compared using ultrasound RF signals, rather than B-mode images used in previous studies. Simulations and phantom experiments are conducted to make the comparison. The results show that the affine model-based method (i.e., OFAM) obtains the lowest root-mean-square error (RAISE) or registration error among all the methods. The affine model is demonstrated to be superior to the rigid model in motion estimation based on RF signals.
The Disclosure of Organizational Secrets by Employees

Organizational secrets enable firms to protect their unique stocks of knowledge, reduce the imitability of their capabilities and achieve sustained competitive advantages (Hannah, 2005). In today’s business environments, the loss of valuable proprietary organizational knowledge due to intentional employee disclosure represents a substantial threat to firm competitiveness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that firms in the United States lose more than $250 billion of intellectual property every year, with intentional employee disclosure accounting for a significant portion of these losses (Dandliker, 2012; Heffernan & Swartwood, 1993). Thus, understanding factors that influence such intentional secret disclosure is a key concern, especially in knowledge-intensive industries. While prior research has primarily focused on the disclosure of personal secrets, family secrets or ‘dark’ organizational secrets, very few studies have examined the disclosure of value-creating organizational secrets – i.e., strategic secrets that encapsulate knowledge about a firm’s plans from competitors and social secrets that create valued identity categorizations within organizations (Goffman, 1959). This dissertation begins to address this gap in the literature by putting forth a personsituation interaction model of secret disclosure. Specifically, drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and social identity theory, it explores how certain characteristics of value-creating organizational secrets (e.g., market value of knowledge and social value of concealment) may interact with certain individual-level variables (e.g., moral identity and need for status) to influence employees’ secret disclosure intent. Using scenario-based surveys of undergraduate and EMBA students and a cross-sectional sample of working adults in the United States, this dissertation finds evidence for the key proposition that employees’ perceptions of market value of knowledge and social value of concealment shape their secret disclosure intentions. Individual-level factors like moral identity and organizational disidentification were also found to play important roles in the disclosure of organizational secrets. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of organizational secrecy by integrating key informational and social perspectives to address concerns regarding secret protection in organizations.
UNIBA: Super-sense Tagging at EVALITA 2011

This paper describes our participation in EVALITA 2011 Super Sense Tagging (SST) task. The goal of the task is to annotate each word in a text within a general semantic taxonomy defined by the WordNet lexicographer classes called super-senses. In this task, we ex- ploit structured learning based on Support Vector Machine. Moreover, we propose to solve the data sparseness problem by incorporating features provided by a semantic WordSpace built exploiting the distributional nature of words.
Control design of paralleled sources in electrical power systems of More-Electric Aircraft

This paper investigates the control of a paralleled sources in electrical power systems (EPS) of More-Electric Aircraft (MEA). A control strategy of three levels is developed for the EPS architecture under study. The conventional PI control is adopted in the second level of `dc current control' and the tertiary level of `dq current control'. The primary level of power sharing control is accomplished by droop control. The power sharing ratio between for paralleled sources is derived, and the relationship of the global and individual droop coefficients is addressed. Deriving the small signal model around the operating point based on the reduced order equivalent circuit, Nyquist diagram is used to study the system stability under some key parameters variations including load power, dc bus capacitor, and droop coefficient. The theoretical analysis for the voltage drop tolerance, the power sharing performance and the system stability are verified by the time domain simulation results based on Matlab/SimPower model.
Effect of the nano-structure Cu-carbon composite absorber layer on the response of superconductive YBCO TEBs

We have used a nanostructure copper composite layer as the absorber for infrared radiation on superconductive YBCO bolometers. The Cu composite has the advantage of having little destructive effects on superconductive YBCO material and its deposition process is done at low temperature. The bolometer is made of 200nm thick YBCO film on 1mm thick LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 crystalline substrates, deposited using pulsed laser deposition technique. The Cu composite layers were made by decomposition of C2H2 and co sputtering of Cu target in an RF system. The layer was deposited on an insulating buffer layer of diamond like carbon (DLC). The spectral absorption of the Cu composite layer was also measured through measurements of the spectral transmission and reflection of the layer on various substrates. The control of the absorption of the composite layer versus Cu composition has been achieved and presented here. In addition, optimization of the Cu component of the absorber layer for maximum increase of the response of the detectors as well as its effects on the response characteristics of the devices are presented in this paper.
Recent Advances in Data Mining of Enterprise Data: Algorithms and Applications

The main goal of the new field of data mining is the analysis of large and complex datasets. Some very important datasets may be derived from business and industrial activities. This kind of data is known as enterprise data . The common characteristic of such datasets is that the analyst wishes to analyze them for the purpose of designing a more cost-effective strategy for optimizing some type of performance measure, such as reducing production time, improving quality, eliminating wastes, or maximizing profit. Data in this category may describe different scheduling scenarios in a manufacturing environment, quality control of some process, fault diagnosis in the operation of a machine or process, risk analysis when issuing credit to applicants, management of supply chains in a manufacturing system, or data for business related decision-making. Contents: Enterprise Data Mining: A Review and Research Directions (T W Liao); Application and Comparison of Classification Techniques in Controlling Credit Risk (L Yu et al.); Predictive Classification with Imbalanced Enterprise Data (S Daskalaki et al.); Data Mining Applications of Process Platform Formation for High Variety Production (J Jiao & L Zhang); Multivariate Control Charts from a Data Mining Perspective (G C Porzio & G Ragozini); Maintenance Planning Using Enterprise Data Mining (L P Khoo et al.); Mining Images of Cell-Based Assays (P Perner); Support Vector Machines and Applications (T B Trafalis & O O Oladunni); A Survey of Manifold-Based Learning Methods (X Huo et al.); and other papers.
Vowel decoding from single‐trial speech‐evoked electrophysiological responses: A feature‐based machine learning approach

Scalp‐recorded electrophysiological responses to complex, periodic auditory signals reflect phase‐locked activity from neural ensembles within the auditory system. These responses, referred to as frequency‐following responses (FFRs), have been widely utilized to index typical and atypical representation of speech signals in the auditory system. One of the major limitations in FFR is the low signal‐to‐noise ratio at the level of single trials. For this reason, the analysis relies on averaging across thousands of trials. The ability to examine the quality of single‐trial FFRs will allow investigation of trial‐by‐trial dynamics of the FFR, which has been impossible due to the averaging approach.
Asymptotically optimal bound on the adjacent vertex distinguishing edge choice number

An adjacent vertex distinguishing edge coloring of a graph G without isolated edges is its proper edge coloring such that no pair of adjacent vertices meets the same set of colors in G. We show that such coloring can be chosen from any set of lists associated to the edges of G as long as the size of every list is at least Δ+CΔ12(logΔ)4 , where Δ is the maximum degree of G and C is a constant. The proof is probabilistic. The same is true in the environment of total colorings.
Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Performance: Is Product Quality a Missing Link?

Abstract Prior literatures have argued that the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance may be not as straightforward as expected. With EO–performance contingency framework, this study investigates how product quality mediates the relationship between EO and firm performance. Using survey data from 153 new ventures, we find that EO dimensions have non-uniform and non-linear, rather than merely linear, relationships with product quality. Specifically, the results reveal that innovativeness and autonomy may lead to superior product quality, however, risk-taking would decrease, not increase, product quality. Proactiveness has U-shaped, not inverse U-shaped, effect on product quality and competitive aggressiveness has U-shaped, not positive linear, effect on product quality. Our results enrich the EO-performance contingency framework and highlight the significance of concerning independent and unique effects of individual EO dimension.
Diversity of heterotrophic nitrogen fixation genes in a marine cyanobacterial mat

The diversity of nitrogenase genes in a marine cyanobacterial mat was investigated through amplification of a fragment of nifH, which encodes the Fe protein of the nitrogenase complex. The amplified nifH products were characterized by DNA sequencing and were compared with the sequences of nitrogenase genes from cultivated organisms. Phylogenetic analysis showed that similar organisms clustered together, with the exception that anaerobic bacteria clustered together, even though they represented firmicutes, (delta)-proteobacteria, and (gamma)-proteobacteria. Mat nifH sequences were most closely related to those of the anaerobes, with a few being most closely related to the cluster of (gamma)-proteobacteria containing Klebsiella and Azotobacter species. No cyanobacterial nifH sequences were found from the mat collected in November when Microcoleus chthonoplastes was the dominant cyanobacterium, but sequences closely related to the cyanobacterium Lyngbya lagerheimeii were found during summer, when a Lyngbya strain was dominant. The results indicate that there is a high diversity of heterotrophic nitrogen-fixing organisms in marine cyanobacterial mats.
Identification of human cytochrome P450 isoforms and esterases involved in the metabolism of mirabegron, a potent and selective β3-adrenoceptor agonist

Human cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes and esterases involved in the metabolism of mirabegron, a potent and selective human β3-adrenoceptor agonist intended for the treatment of overactive bladder, were identified in in vitro studies. Incubations of mirabegron with recombinant human CYP enzymes showed significant metabolism of mirabegron by CYP2D6 and CYP3A4 only. Correlation analyses showed a significant correlation between mirabegron metabolism and testosterone 6β-hydroxylation (CYP3A4/5 marker activity). In inhibition studies using antiserum against CYP3A4, a strong inhibition (at maximum 80% inhibition) of the metabolism of mirabegron was observed, whereas the inhibitory effects of monoclonal antibodies against CYP2D6 were small (at maximum 10% inhibition). These findings suggest that CYP3A4 is the primary CYP enzyme responsible for in vitro oxidative metabolism of mirabegron, with a minor role of CYP2D6. Mirabegron hydrolysis was catalyzed in human blood, plasma and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) solution, but not in human liver microsomes, intestinal microsomes, liver S9, intestinal S9 and recombinant acetylcholinesterase solution. Km values of mirabegron hydrolysis in human blood, plasma and BChE solution were all similar (13.4–15.2 μM). The inhibition profiles in human blood and plasma were also similar to those in BChE solution, suggesting that mirabegron hydrolysis is catalyzed by BChE.
Analysis of graphene multi-strip planar guiding structures with the use of spectral domain approach

Spectral domain approach is modified and used to analyze some simple structures containing graphene strips. The modification is simple and concerns the Green's function only. Moreover, the method is combined with the recently published root finding algorithms, which significantly improve the efficiency of the analysis. The results obtained for a simple guiding structure is verified and the field displacement effect is confirmed.
Tidal flat reflectance model accommodating tidal conditions using Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI): Preliminary results

The objective of this study is to develop a tidal flat reflectance model according to tidal conditions. Tidal flat reflectance greatly varies with tidal conditions twice a day that causes changes in water contents along with exposure time, remnant water, etc. It is difficult to retrieve sediment grain size from optical reflectance alone without correcting the tidal condition effects. The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) is the first ocean color sensor mounted on the geostationary satellite, and provides images 8 times a day. A preliminary tidal flat reflectance model was obtained from 72 cloud free GOCI images in March, 2011. Two reflectance models were found to be minimally required for mud and mixed flats, while the differences between mixed and sand flats were insignificant. The models accommodate tidal conditions of flood or ebb tide. The results lead to a conclusion that the remnant surface water on the recently exposed tidal flats plays a significant role in influencing the optical reflectance. The surface reflectance increases gradually during the ebb tide, while the slope of decrease is steep during the flood tide.