Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO ? THE EFFECTS OF CONTROL MECHANISMS ON APP DEVELOPERS ’ INTENTION TO STICK WITH A PLATFORM Complete Research

Although control mechanisms have been widely studied in IS research within and between organizations, there is still a lack of research on control mechanisms applied in software-based platforms, on which the complex interactions between a platform owner and a myriad of third-party developers have to be coordinated. Drawing on IS control literature and self-determination theory, our study presents the findings of a laboratory experiment with 138 participants in which we examined how formal (i.e., output and process) and informal (i.e., self) control mechanisms affect third-party developers’ intentions to stick with a mobile app development platform. We demonstrate that selfcontrol plays a significantly more important role than formal control modes in increasing platform stickiness. We also find that the relationship between control modes and platform stickiness is fully mediated by developers’ perceived autonomy. Taken together, our study highlights the theoretically important finding that self-determination and self-regulation among third-party developers are stronger driving forces for staying with a platform than typical hierarchical control mechanisms. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Altered Expression of Porcine Piwi Genes and piRNA during Development

Three Sus scrofa Piwi genes (Piwil1, Piwil2 and Piwil4) encoding proteins of 861, 985 and 853 aminoacids, respectively, were cloned and sequenced. Alignment of the Piwi proteins showed the high identity between Sus scrofa and Homo sapiens. Relative transcript abundance of porcine Piwil1, Piwil2 and Piwil4 genes in testes, ovaries and oocytes derived from sexually immature and mature animals was examined using Real-Time PCR. Expression of the three Piwi mRNAs was proved to be tissue specific and restricted exclusively to the gonads. In testes of adult pigs the highest relative transcript abundance was observed for the Sus scrofa Piwil1 gene. On the other hand, in testes of neonatal pigs the Piwil1 transcript level was over 2–fold reduced while the level of Piwil2 transcript was higher. As regards the expression of the Piwil4 transcript, its level was 34-fold elevated in testes of neonatal piglet when compared to adult male. In ovaries of prepubertal and pubertal female pigs transcript abundance of the three Piwi genes was significantly reduced in comparison with testes. However, similarly to testes, in ovaries of neonatal pigs the Piwil2 gene was characterized by the highest relative transcript abundance among the three Piwi genes analysed. In prepubertal and pubertal oocytes Piwil1 transcript was the most abundant whereas the expression of Piwil4 was undetectable. We also demonstrated that expression of piRNA occurs preferentially in the gonads of adult male and female pigs. Moreover, a piRNA subset isolated from ovaries was 2–3 nucleotides longer than the piRNA from testes.
EXPRESSING SECOND ORDER SEMANTICS AND THE EMERGENCE OF RECURSION

Although most previous model-based research has not moved beyond first-order semantics, human languages are clearly capable of expressing second-order semantics: the meanings expressed in a sentence do not only consist of conjunctions of first-order predicates but also predicates that take other predicates as an argument. In this paper we report on multi-agent language game experiments in which agents handle second-order semantics. We focus our discussion on how this type of research is able to provide fundamental insights in how properties of humanlanguage-like properties could once have emerged. For recursion, this might have happened as a side-effect of agents trying to reuse previously learned language structure as much as possible.
Patients' preferences in treatment for neovascular age-related macular degeneration in clinical routine

Purpose To assess the effect of ranibizumab treatment for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nvAMD) on patients' preferences and vision-related quality of life (VRQoL) in a routine clinical setting. Methods 55 treatment naïve patients were examined before and after the initial upload of three monthly injections of 0.5 mg ranibizumab. VRQoL was assessed using a Rasch-adjusted NEI-VFQ-25. Time trade-off (TTO), standard gamble, a visual analogue scale and the European Quality of Life Questionnaire (EQ-5D) were used to calculate utilities, and multiple logistic regression models were conducted to determine independent factors associated with utilities. Results Mean±SD age was 75±7 years, and 40 patients (73%) were female. Mean±SD best-corrected visual acuity of the treated eye increased from 20/80 at baseline (logMAR 0.60±0.35) to 20/63 (logMAR 0.52±0.36; p=0.020) at follow-up after three injections. Utility score increases ranged from 2 utils (standard gamble anchored for death) up to 6.6 utils (EQ-5D German TTO, p=0.023) and visual functioning improved (Rasch adjusted composite NEI-VFQ score 50±21 to 54±21, p=0.042). Whether the worse or better eye was treated was not significantly associated with improvements in utility or VRQoL, whereas VA improvement in the treated eye was associated with an increase in utility (TTO, p=0.020). Conclusions TTO performed best in this sample of elderly nvAMD patients undergoing anti-VEGF therapy. Better or worse eye treatment was not associated with a change in reported utilities or visual functioning in patients with newly diagnosed nvAMD. Directly elicited, vision-specific utilities gained with TTO seem to be sensitive to a change in vision status.
iQvoc - Open Source SKOS(XL) Maintenance and Publishing Tool

iQvoc is a new open source SKOS-XL vocabulary management tool developed by the Federal Environment Agency, Germany, and innoQ Deutschland GmbH. Its immediate purpose is maintaining and publishing reference vocabularies in the upcoming Linked Data cloud of environmental information, but it may be easily adapted to host any SKOS-XL compliant vocabulary. iQvoc is implemented as a Ruby on Rails application running on top of JRuby – the Java implementation of the Ruby Programming Language. To increase the user experience when editing content, iQvoc uses heavily the JavaScript library jQuery.
VJM: A Novel Grid Resource Co-Allocation Model for Parallel Jobs

The resources in a grid are distributed in multiple autonomic domains. Hence, itpsilas always a time consuming process to perform the resource co-allocation in grids especially for parallel jobs due to the diversity of local domain policies and the dynamic resource workloads. Even worse, the resource competing among multiple parallel jobs may result in resource allocation deadlock. In this paper, a novel synchronized resource co-allocation model for cross-domain parallel jobs, called virtual job model (VJM), is proposed. VJM uses virtual jobs to co-reserve the earliest available resources for real parallel jobs with considering the local resource policies and the current resource availability in multiple domains. The co-reservation algorithm implemented in VJM is not only able to detect potential deadlocks, but able to relieve the resource competing via the resource reorganization mechanism. At last, we demonstrate that VJM is able to reduce the time cost of resource co-allocation significantly via experiments.
XML Schema-based Minification for Communication of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems in Cloud Environments

XML-based communication governs most of today’s systems communication, due to its capability of representing complex structural and hierarchical data. However, XML document structure is considered a huge and bulky data that can be reduced to minimize bandwidth usage, transmission time, and maximize performance. This contributes to a more efficient and utilized resource usage. In cloud environments, this affects the amount of money the consumer pays. Several techniques are used to achieve this goal. This paper discusses these techniques and proposes a new XML Schema-based Minification technique. The proposed technique works on XML Structure reduction using minification. The proposed technique provides a separation between the meaningful names and the underlying minified names, which enhances software/code readability. This technique is applied to Intrusion Detection Message Exchange Format (IDMEF) messages, as part of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system communication hosted on Microsoft Azure Cloud. Test results show message size reduction ranging from 8.15% to 50.34% in the raw message, without using time-consuming compression techniques. Adding GZip compression to the proposed technique produces 66.1% shorter message size compared to original XML messages.
The role of fear in home-biased decision making: first insights from neuroeconomics

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (“fMRI”) to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying home–biased, financial decision-making. Twenty-eight subjects were instructed to make binary investment decisions between a foreign and a domestic mutual fund. Differential brain activity was detected between decisions involving funds of different national origins. In situations where participants had to decide between mutual funds from different countries, we found increased activity in the precentral gyrus, the fusiform gyrus and the inferior occipital gyrus. Moreover, during home-biased decisions we found a correlation between activity within the amygdala- hippocampal regions of the brain and the investor’s general risk aversion. This region has been found to be involved in negative emotional processing such as fear, so one interpretation is that home-biased financial decision making is modulated by negative emotions associated with risk aversion.
Nasal cycle analysis with the use of acoustic rhinometry

The work presents the results of a new way of nasal cycle assessment using acoustic rhinometry as a data source and cross-spectrum to process measurement results. The results of the research conducted on the group of 12 young volunteers were shown. Nasal cycles were present in 75% cases and lasted 110 minutes on average. The described methodology shall be of clinical importance in the course of allergy assessment as well as widely understood rhinology diagnostics.
Semiparametric Bayesian Analysis of Matched Case-Control Studies With Missing Exposure

This article considers Bayesian analysis of matched case-control problems when one of the covariates is partially missing. Within the likelihood context, the standard approach to this problem is to posit a fully parametric model among the controls for the partially missing covariate as a function of the covariates in the model and the variables making up the strata. Sometimes the strata effects are ignored at this stage. Our approach differs not only in that it is Bayesian, but, far more importantly, in the manner in which it treats the strata effects. We assume a Dirichlet process prior with a normal base measure for the stratum effects and estimate all of the parameters in a Bayesian framework. Three matched case-control examples and a simulation study are considered to illustrate our methods and the computing scheme.
Black Muslim Girls Navigating Multiple Oppositional Binaries Through Literacy and Letter Writing

Writing alongside 12 African American Muslim girls, we led a summer literacy program in an effort to understand how Black Muslim adolescent girls write about their identities and ideas. The 4-week literacy program was designed to engage and support Black Muslim girls, aged 12–17 years old, in reading, writing, and understanding the multiple contexts that inform their worlds. The girls received writing instruction connected to their experiences and identities in an environment that afforded them time to represent their situated worlds of being Black, Muslim, and girls in the United States. In this qualitative inquiry, we investigated the following research question: How would Black Muslim girls write to encourage a future generation to navigate multiple identities? The participants penned letters to a future generation of African American Muslim girls. Drawing upon methods of thematic analysis, we found that themes of sisterhood and unity, shattering misrepresentations, empowerment, strength through faith, knowledge (education), and speaking up and fighting for rights emerged. These themes indicate the messages Muslim girls write are indicative of the multiple identities they navigate and speaks to how they would encourage youth who share their complex racialized-gender religious identities, as well as the need to open the conversation on Black education to center both Black girls and Black Muslim girls.
Attenuation Lengths of Photoelectrons in Hydrocarbon Films

Abstract : Quantitative analysis of data obtained by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) requires a knowledge of the escape depths of electrons from the surface of a sample. In order to derive the composition of a homogeneous material from the intensities of the photoelectrons originating from different elements, one needs to know not only the relative atomic cross-sections, but also the variation of the attenuation length, gamma, with the energy of the photoelectrons. The ability to derive an elemental depth profile of a layered material from the variation in the photoelectron intensity with the angle of emission requires a knowledge of the absolute value of gamma. The recent growth of interest in thin organic films has generated an immediate need for accurate, reliable values of gamma in organic materials in general, and in thin, densely packed hydrocarbon films in particular. In this paper we have determined the attenuation length of electrons with energies in the range 940-1400 eV in self- assembled monolayers of n-alkanethiols adsorbed on gold. (JS)
On the Importance of Pivot Language Selection for Statistical Machine Translation

Recent research on multilingual statistical machine translation focuses on the usage of pivot languages in order to overcome resource limitations for certain language pairs. Due to the richness of available language resources, English is in general the pivot language of choice. In this paper, we investigate the appropriateness of languages other than English as pivot languages. Experimental results using state-of-the-art statistical machine translation techniques to translate between twelve languages revealed that the translation quality of 61 out of 110 language pairs improved when a non-English pivot language was chosen.
Crisis Politics: Uncertainty, Relative Prices and Political Change

∗ Lake and Frieden presented an earlier version of this paper at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in March 1989, London, England. They thank Barbara Geddes, Judy Goldstein, Peter Gourevitch, Joanne Gowa, Stephan Haggard, Peter Katzenstein, Peter Lange, Ron Rogowski, Jack Snyder, Art Stein, and Michael Wallerstein for comments and suggestions on that version of the paper, and apologize for the over 22 year gap in revisions. Nicholson and Ranganath contributed the empirical sections of this paper, and thank James Hamilton for helpful advice. The authors are listed alphabetically.
Low power and error resilient PN code acquisition filter via statistical error compensation

We present a 256-tap PN code acquisition filter in an 180nm CMOS process employing statistical system-level error compensation. Under voltage overscaling (VOS), near constant detection probability (Pdet) above 90% with 5.8× reduction in energy is achieved at a supply voltage 27% below the point of first failure (PoFF) with an error rate (pe) of 0.868. This is an improvement of 5.8× in energy-efficiency over conventional error free designs and 3.79× in energy-efficiency and 2170× in error tolerance over existing error tolerant designs.
Software Aging and Rejuvenation in a SOAP-based Server

Web-services and service-oriented architectures are gaining momentum in the area of distributed systems and Internet applications. However, as we increase the abstraction level of the applications we are also increasing the complexity of the underlying middleware. In this paper, we present a dependability benchmarking study to evaluate and compare the robustness of some of the most popular SOAP-RPC implementations that are intensively used in the industry. The study was focused on Apache Axis where we have observed a high susceptibility of software aging. Building on these results we propose a new SLA-oriented software rejuvenation technique that proved to be a simple way to increase the dependability of the SOAP-server, the degree of self-healing and to maintain a sustained level of performance in the applications
Into the Woods: Stories and Nature in Playwork Training

Abstract:This field report outlines a story-based method called Narrative Journey developed by the author as a means of engaging young people's interest in nature. Here, an alternative use is presented to show how a small group of young American adults, aged 18–23, were trained in nature-based playwork skills using the Narrative Journey approach. The paper is presented using a blend of fictional, reflective, and critical narratives and draws on much of the content used during the delivery of the training program. References are made to a variety of theoretical discourses around children's play in order to compliment the discourses about praxis.
Impact of inadequate adherence on response to subcutaneously administered anti-tumour necrosis factor drugs: results from the Biologics in Rheumatoid Arthritis Genetics and Genomics Study Syndicate cohort

Objective. Non-adherence to DMARDs is common, but little is known about adherence to biologic therapies and its relationship to treatment response. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between self-reported non-adherence to s.c. anti-TNF therapy and response in individuals with RA. Methods. Participants about to start s.c. anti-TNF therapy were recruited to a large UK multicentre prospective observational cohort study. Demographic information and disease characteristics were assessed at baseline. Self-reported non-adherence, defined as whether the previous due dose of biologic therapy was reported as not taken on the day agreed with the health care professional, was recorded at 3 and 6 months following the start of therapy. The 28-joint DAS (DAS28) was recorded at baseline and following 3 and 6 months of therapy. Multivariate linear regression was used to examine these relationships. Results. Three hundred and ninety-two patients with a median disease duration of 7 years [interquartile range (IQR) 3–15] were recruited. Adherence data were available in 286 patients. Of these, 27% reported non-adherence to biologic therapy according to the defined criteria at least once within the first 6-month period. In multivariate linear regression analysis, older age, lower baseline DAS28 and ever non-adherence at either 3 or 6 months from baseline were significantly associated with a poorer DAS28 response at 6 months to anti-TNF therapy. Conclusion. Patients with RA who reported not taking their biologic on the day agreed with their health care professional showed poorer clinical outcomes than their counterparts, emphasizing the need to investigate causes of non-adherence to biologics.
Temporal and Individual Variation in Offspring Provisioning by Tree Swallows: A New Method of Automated Nest Attendance Monitoring

Studies of the ecology and evolution of avian nesting behavior have been limited by the difficulty and expense of sampling nest attendance behavior across entire days or throughout a substantial portion of the nestling period. Direct observation of nesting birds using human observers and most automated devices requires sub-sampling of the nestling period, which does not allow for the quantification of the duration of chick-feeding by parents within a day, and may also inadequately capture temporal variation in the rate at which chicks are fed. Here I describe an inexpensive device, the Automated Perch Recorder (APR) system, which collects accurate, long-term data on hourly rates of nest visitation, the duration of a pair's workday, and the total number of visits the pair makes to their nest across the entire period for which it is deployed. I also describe methods for verifying the accuracy of the system in the field, and several examples of how these data can be used to explore the causes of variation in and tradeoffs between the rate at which birds feed their chicks and the total length of time birds spend feeding chicks in a day.
Removal Capacities of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) by a Newly Isolated Strain from Oilfield Produced Water

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-degrading strain Q8 was isolated from oilfield produced water. According to the analysis of a biochemical test, 16S rRNA gene, house-keeping genes and DNA–DNA hybridization, strain Q8 was assigned to a novel species of the genus Gordonia. The strain could not only grow in mineral salt medium (MM) and utilize naphthalene and pyrene as its sole carbon source, but also degraded mixed naphthalene, phenanthrene, anthracene and pyrene. The degradation ratio of these four PAHs reached 100%, 95.4%, 73.8% and 53.4% respectively after being degraded by Q8 for seven days. A comparative experiment found that the PAHs degradation efficiency of Q8 is higher than that of Gordonia alkaliphila and Gordonia paraffinivorans, which have the capacities to remove PAHs. Fourier transform infrared spectra, saturate, aromatic, resin and asphaltene (SARA) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis of crude oil degraded by Q8 were also studied. The results showed that Q8 could utilize n-alkanes and PAHs in crude oil. The relative proportions of the naphthalene series, phenanthrene series, thiophene series, fluorene series, chrysene series, C21-triaromatic steroid, pyrene, and benz(a)pyrene were reduced after being degraded by Q8. Gordonia sp. nov. Q8 had the capacity to remediate water and soil environments contaminated by PAHs or crude oil, and provided a feasible way for the bioremediation of PAHs and oil pollution.
Kinematic and Jacobian analysis of a parallel-structured haptic interface for laparoscopy simulation

This paper reports a kinematic and Jacobian analysis of a haptic interface to simulate laparoscopic surgery. The haptic interface consists of a cylindrically-shaped moving platform and a dummy tool link. The moving platform, which determines the direction of the dummy tool, is fixed at the center and has 2 degree-of-freedom of pitch and yaw. The dummy tool has 3 degree-of-freedom which are translational and rotational movements and end effect operation. Direct kinematics of the haptic interface cannot be computed by using Denavit-Hartenberg model because two parallel links are connected with the moving platform. The developed method to solve the kinematics is deciding the direction vector of the dummy tool link. Six vectors are given to links and the relationship of the vectors is used to decide the direction of the dummy tool link. Finally a closed-form kinematics of the haptic interface is obtained by using the information of the vectors. Derivative of the closed-form kinematics can be utilized as Jacobian. Every components of Jacobian matrix also can be obtained as a closed-form expression. A virtual model of the haptic interface is used to verify the analytic result.