Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does gender play a role in the acceptance of e-textbooks by students ?

Research into the adoption and satisfaction level of academic electronic textbooks (etextbooks) by students continues to proliferate as e-textbooks become more commonplace. To date this research has indicated that either students prefer print textbooks to e-textbooks or the results are inconclusive. Prior research on the overall acceptance of technology suggested that females are significantly less interested and less accepting of technology as compared to males. Would this continue to be true regarding e-textbooks? In this study a survey of the use and satisfaction with e-textbooks was administered to a group of 250 male and female undergraduate students who had used e-textbooks in one or more of their courses at a regionally accredited Mid-South university. The results of this study indicate there is a significant difference between genders in the likelihood of a student to select an e-textbook over a printed textbook in a future class: males are more likely to choose e-textbooks than females. Yet there were no significant differences between females and males regarding satisfaction, usefulness, and ease of use. However, female students made more extensive use of the interactive features of an e-textbook than did male students. This suggests that both publishers and faculty should clearly demonstrate how to use the different features of an e-textbook in order to increase student acceptance.
Stable transgene expression in human embryonic stem cells after simple chemical transfection

In this study we used plasmid‐based vectors to investigate the transcriptional activities of three commonly used promoters in transient and stable transfection of MEL‐1, a human embryonic stem (ES) cell line, using ExGen500, Fugene HD, and Lipofectamine. We demonstrated that cytomegalovirus (CMV), phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) and human elongation factor‐1α (EF1α) promoters all resulted in robust activity of a reporter gene in MEL‐1 ES cell transient transfections regardless of the transfection reagent. Stable transfection outcomes varied, depending on the promoter and the transfection reagent used in the study. The phenomenon of transgene silencing was observed, most notably with the CMV vector, with which no positive stably transfected clones were obtained. Of the methods used in the study, Fugene HD resulted in the highest stable transfection rate, estimated by antibiotic selection, with plasmids containing genes under the control of the EF1α or PGK promoters. Stably transfected cells maintained typical hES cell morphology, with immunostaining exhibiting expression of the hES cell markers: Oct4, SSEA4, Tra‐1‐60, and Tra‐1‐81. Further, embryoid bodies formed by suspension culture retained reporter gene expression. Following injection into immunodeficient mice, the transfected cell lines showed robust formation of teratomas with cell types representative of the three germ layers. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 76: 580–586, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Molecular Dissection of Caveolin-1 Membrane Attachment and Oligomerization

Caveolins form interlocking networks on the cytoplasmic face of caveolae. The cytoplasmically directed N and C termini of caveolins are separated by a central hydrophobic segment, which is believed to form a hairpin within the membrane. Here, we report that the caveolin scaffolding domain (CSD, residues 82–101), and the C terminus (residues 135–178) of caveolin-1 are each sufficient to anchor green fluorescent protein (GFP) to membranesin vivo. We also show that the first 16 residues of the C terminus (i.e. residues 135–150) are necessary and sufficient to attach GFP to membranes. When fused to the caveolin-1 C terminus, GFP co-localizes with two trans-Golgi markers and is excluded from caveolae. In contrast, the CSD targets GFP to caveolae, albeit less efficiently than full-length caveolin-1. Thus, caveolin-1 contains at least two membrane attachment signals: the CSD, dictating caveolar localization, and the C terminus, driving trans-Golgi localization. Additionally, we find that caveolin-1 oligomer/oligomer interactions require the distal third of the caveolin-1 C terminus. Thus, the caveolin-1 C-terminal domain has two separate functions: (i) membrane attachment (proximal third) and (ii) protein/protein interactions (distal third).
Exploring potential associations of suicidal ideation and ideas of self‐harm in patients with congestive heart failure

Objective: To determine the factors, which are associated with suicidal ideation and ideas of self‐harm in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods: We examined 294 patients with documented CHF, New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class II‐IV, in a cross sectional study at three cardiac outpatient departments. Measures included self‐reports of suicidal ideation and self‐harm (PHQ‐9), depression (SCID), health‐related quality of life (SF‐36), multimorbidity (CIRS‐G), consumption of alcoholic beverages, as well as comprehensive clinical status. Data were analyzed using logistic regression analyses. Results: 50 patients (17.1%) reported experiencing suicidal ideation and/or ideas of self‐harm on at least several days over the past two weeks. The final regression model revealed significant associations with health‐related quality of life, physical component (odds ratio [OR] 0.56; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.35–0.91), and mental component (OR 0.50; 95% CI: 0.31–0.82), consumption of alcoholic beverages (OR 1.27; 95% CI: 1.05–1.54), first‐episode depression (OR 3.92; 95% CI: 1.16–13.22), and lifetime depression (OR 10.89; 95% CI: 2.49–47.72). Age was only significant in the univariable (P=.03) regression analysis. NYHA functional class, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), etiology of CHF, medication, cardiovascular interventions, multimorbidity, gender, and living situation were not significantly associated with suicidal ideation or ideas of self‐harm. Conclusions: Lifetime depression, in particular, increases the risk of suicidal ideation and ideas of self‐harm in CHF patients. Furthermore, the findings of our study underline the necessity of differentiating between first‐episode and lifetime depression in CHF‐patients in future research and clinical practice. Depression and Anxiety, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
nanos is required for formation of the spectrosome, a germ cell‐specific organelle

Germ cell identity and development are controlled by autonomous cues in the germ plasm as well as by interactions between germ cells and somatic cells. Here, we investigate the formation of a germ cell‐specific organelle, the spectrosome. We find that spectrosome formation is independent of germ cell–soma interactions and is autonomous to the germ cells. Furthermore, the germ plasm component nanos (nos) is essential for spectrosome formation. The role of nos in spectrosome formation is independent of its role in germ cell survival; nos mutant germ cells that are prevented from undergoing programmed cell death still fail to form spectrosomes. Thus, nos is required to regulate the formation of this germ cell‐specific organelle, further supporting a role for nos in promoting germ cell identity. Developmental Dynamics 234:22–27, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Moderating Effect of Nurses’ Customer-Oriented Perception Between Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Satisfaction

This study investigates whether organizational citizenship behaviors enhance job satisfaction among nursing personnel, while exploring whether customer-oriented perception has a moderating effect between nursing personnel’s organizational citizenship behaviors and job satisfaction.The authors used a cross-sectional survey sent to 500 nurses with 232 valid responses. According to the research findings, nurses’ organizational citizenship behaviors have a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction. Results also indicated that the moderating effect of nurses’ customer-oriented perception on the relationship between their organizational citizenship behaviors and job satisfaction was stronger for high customer-oriented perception than it was low customer-oriented perception.
Impact of Human Granulocyte and Monocyte Isolation Procedures on Functional Studies

ABSTRACT One of the first lines of defense against infection is the activation of the innate immune system. It is becoming clear that autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, may be caused by disturbed innate immunity, and relating granulocyte and monocyte functions to the patient genotype has become an important part of contemporary research. Although it is essential to move this field forward, a systematic study comparing the efficacy and suitability for functional studies of the various available protocols for the isolation of these immune cells has not been performed. Here, we compare human granulocyte functionality under three enrichment protocols: (i) Ficoll density gradient centrifugation, (ii) anti-CD15 antibody-conjugated microbeads (positive selection), and (iii) Polymorphoprep. Primary monocytes were isolated in parallel using (i) anti-CD14 magnetic microbeads, (ii) non-monocyte depletion by antibody-conjugated magnetic microbeads (negative selection), (iii) RosetteSep antibody cocktail, and (iv) the classical adherence protocol. The best results in terms of purity and cell functionality were obtained with positive selection by magnetic microbeads for both human granulocytes and monocytes. Whereas phagocytosis of Escherichia coli bacteria was identical in all isolation procedures tested, the granulocyte respiratory burst was higher in positively selected cells. In addition, different granulocyte enrichment procedures affect cell surface receptor expression to different extents. In toto, we propose that positive selection of granulocytes and monocytes be adopted as the procedure of choice for studies of human granulocyte and monocyte functions but caution investigators to be aware of possible alterations in cell phenotypes with different isolation procedures.
Bayesian Inference for Latent Hawkes Processes

Hawkes processes are multivariate point processes that model excitatory interactions among vertices in a network. Each vertex emits a sequence of discrete events: points in time with associated content, or marks . Unlike Poisson processes, Hawkes processes allow events on one vertex to inﬂuence the subsequent rate of events on downstream vertices. With this property, they are ideally suited to model a variety of phenomena, like social network interactions, the spread of earthquake aftershocks, and spiking activity in neural circuits. This paper addresses a natural question: what if some vertices, marks, or time intervals are hidden from view? Such scenarios often arise in practice, as when neuroscientists work with recordings of subsets of neurons, or when social exchanges are not fully observed. These latent Hawkes processes pose a serious inferential challenge: we must perform inference in a model whose latent variables are marked point processes. We derive Bayesian inference and learning algorithms for latent Hawkes processes and demonstrate their efﬁcacy on a variety of synthetic data and neural data.
Antecedents and consequences of relationship quality. A case study of banking sector in Romania

This study investigates the impact of service quality and communication quality on relationship quality, as well as its influence on customer loyalty. Also, this study seeks to identify those intrinsic factors that best explains the structure of relationship quality construct. The conceptual model, which includes the hypothesized relationships, is validated in the banking sector in Romania through findings from an email survey of 78 business customers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used in order to test the model fit and estimate the hypothesized relationships. The findings indicate that service quality and communication quality are significantly related to relationship quality, and relationship quality and customer loyalty are positively and strongly associated. Concerning the dimensionality of relationship quality, it was shown that satisfaction, trust, and commitment are the intrinsic factors that best explain its structure. In addition, it was proved that communication quality is a better predictor of relationship quality then service quality. This paper reinforces the importance of relationship quality as a source of sustainable competitive advantage due to its intangible aspects which cannot be easily duplicated by competitors. For managers, this study demonstrates the importance that the relationship quality plays in fostering customer loyalty. Also, the limitations of this research are presented, as well as directions for future research.
Soft-Switched Dual-Input DC–DC Converter Combining a Boost-Half-Bridge Cell and a Voltage-Fed Full-Bridge Cell

This letter presents a new zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) isolated dc–dc converter which combines a boost half-bridge (BHB) cell and a full-bridge (FB) cell, so that two different type of power sources, i.e., both current fed and voltage fed, can be coupled effectively by the proposed converter for various applications, such as fuel cell and supercapacitor hybrid energy system. By fully using two high- frequency transformers and a shared leg of switches, number of the power devices and associated gate driver circuits can be reduced. With phase-shift control, the converter can achieve ZVS turn-on of active switches and zero-current switching (ZCS) turn-off of diodes. In this letter, derivation, analysis, and design of the proposed converter are presented. Finally, a 25–50 V input, 300–400 V output prototype with a 600 W nominal power rating is built up and tested to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed converter topology.
Storytelling research on international visitors: Interpreting own experiences in Tokyo

Purpose – Using brand netnography (analyzing consumers' first‐person on‐line stories that include discussions of their product and brand use), this article aims to probe how visitors interpret the places, people, and situations that they experience while traveling in Japan.Design/methodology/approach – Through analysis of online consumer stories about their trip experiences, Heider's balance theory is applied to visitors' trip experiences. Follow‐up contact with the consumers allows application of autodriving methodology to gather additional post‐trip insights.Findings – The results show immediate and downstream positive and negative associations of concepts, events, and outcomes in visitors' stories. Maps of consumer stories identify kernel concepts and include descriptions of how visitors live a specific destination's unique promises (e.g. distinct cultural history). Using the kernel concepts as a basis, Holt's five‐step strategy for building icons is applied to the travel destination to show how a dest.
Women’s Depressive Symptoms during the Transition to Motherhood

This study investigates the longitudinal pattern of reciprocal relations between mothers’ perceived satisfaction of their needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy and depressive symptoms during the transition to motherhood. Participants were 331 women assessed during their pregnancy and two and five months after delivery. Results based on structural equation modeling provide some support for the effect of perceived needs satisfaction on subsequent depressive symptoms during the postpartum period. In addition, it appears that prior postpartum depressive symptoms account for subsequent psychological needs satisfaction. Discussion centers on the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the results.
A Simple Two-stage Equalizer With Simplified Orthogonal Time Frequency Space Modulation Over Rapidly Time-varying Channels

In this work, we derive a equivalent delay-Doppler channel matrix of the Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) modulation that has not been studied in previous literature. It has the similar structure as the banded channel matrix of OFDM systems over rapidly time-varying channels. However, the band in the equivalent channel matrix will no longer spread with the increase of the Doppler spread once the length of maximum channel delay spread and the OTFS frame duration are deter- mined. Furthermore, the equivalent channel matrix can simplify the OTFS modulation in the transmitter side. Incorporating the equivalent channel matrix, we propose a simple two-stage equal- izer in 1 dimensional operations for OTFS modulation. First, the receive signal is equalized using the conventional OFDM single- tap equalizer in the frequency domain. The multipath effects can be removed. In the second stage, another low complexity delay- Doppler domain equalizer is employed to eliminate the effects of the residual interference caused by the Doppler spread with the equivalent channel matrix. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to the conventional single- tap equalizer and full minimum mean squared error (MMSE) equalizer of OFDM systems in terms of BER in high Doppler spread scenarios.
Integration of Distinct Intracellular Signaling Pathways at Distal Regulatory Elements Directs T-bet Expression in Human CD4+ T Cells1

T-bet is a key regulator controlling Th1 cell development. This factor is not expressed in naive CD4+ T cells, and the mechanisms controlling expression of T-bet are incompletely understood. In this study, we defined regulatory elements at the human T-bet locus and determined how signals originating at the TCR and at cytokine receptors are integrated to induce chromatin modifications and expression of this gene during human Th1 cell differentiation. We found that T cell activation induced two strong DNase I-hypersensitive sites (HS) and rapid histone acetylation at these elements in CD4+ T cells. Histone acetylation and T-bet expression were strongly inhibited by cyclosporine A, and we detected binding of NF-AT to a HS in vivo. IL-12 and IFN-γ signaling alone were not sufficient to induce T-bet expression in naive CD4+ T cells, but enhanced T-bet expression in TCR/CD28-stimulated cells. We detected a third HS 12 kb upstream of the mRNA start site only in developing Th1 cells, which was bound by IL-12-induced STAT4. Our data suggest that T-bet locus remodeling and gene expression are initiated by TCR-induced NF-AT recruitment and amplified by IL-12-mediated STAT4 binding to distinct distal regulatory elements during human Th1 cell differentiation.
Emotion recognition by ANS responses evoked by negative emotion

Emotion recognition is one of the core processes to implement emotional intelligence in human-computer interaction (HCI) research. The purpose of present study was to investigate emotion-specific ANS responses and used classification algorithm to test recognizing rate when negative emotion such as fear, surprise, and stress was evoked. The results of one-way ANOVA toward each parameter, there were significant differences in SCR, SKT, and HR HF related to HF. LDA was tested to confirm classification rate on three emotions. In consequence, 57.3% of originally grouped cases were correctly classified. The result of this study is the basis for the emotion recognition technique in HCI as well as contributes to the standardization in emotion-specific ANS responses.
Theory-Specific Reasoning about Loops with Arrays using Vampire

We describe new extensions of the first-order theorem prover Vampire for supporting program analysis and proving properties of loops with arrays. The common theme of our work is the symbol elimination method for generating loop invariants. In our work, we improve symbol elimination for program analysis in two ways. First, we enhance the program analysis framework of Vampire by simplifying skolemization during consequence finding. Second, we extend symbol elimination with theory-specific reasoning, in particular in the theory of polymorphic arrays, and generate and prove program properties over arrays. We illustrate our approach on a number of challenging examples coming from program analysis and verification. Our experiments show that, thanks to our improvements, programs that could not be analyzed before can now be verified with our method.
The determinants of foreign direct investments: Regional vs. National characteristics

This study aims at identifying the main determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the European regions. The theory of the determinants of FDI deals with the question on why firms become multinationals. Partial equilibrium studies suggest that in so doing firms try to internalize trade costs and externalities from firms specific assets as well as to take advantages from location characteristics. General equilibrium models turn the attention to motivations for investing abroad, distinguishing between market seeking and efficiency seeking FDI. While the former are more interested in local markets, the latter are looking for lower-cost inputs and strategic assets that help them to become not only more efficient but also more competitive. According to this theoretical background, the most important determinants of FDI are market size and potential, factor costs, agglomeration externalities, labour skills, trade barriers and incentives. However, the empirical literature is mainly based on evidence drawn from data at industry or country level. Therefore, we need to investigate whether and to what extent those variables maintain their capacity of attraction at regional level, too. At this purpose, we argue that, at regional level, the capacity to attract FDI is the result, on the one hand, of the relative performance of a region within the country it belongs to, and, on the other hand, of the relative performance of the country it belongs to in Europe. In order to achieve our research objectives, we use original data on the number of foreign investments over the 2005-07 period disaggregated by regions of the EU27 and by sectors. Our empirical analysis is divided into two interrelated parts. We first perform a detailed analysis of the location determinants of foreign investments at both regional and country level. Then, we try to understand whether and what extent each region's capacity to attract FDI is enhanced or hampered by the performance of the country it belongs to by interacted regional and country variables. Once identified the "national" and the "regional" components of factors able to attract FDI, more effective FDI promotion policies can be implemented at national, regional and sectoral levels.
Arterialized venous blood. A comparison of pH, PCO2, PO2 and oxygen saturation with that of arterial blood.

Venous blood from the dorsal surface of the hot hand of 23 conscious patients was analyzed by micromethods. The pH, Pco2, Po2 and derived oxygen saturation were compared with those of blood taken from the radial artery; significant differences were found. Arterialized venous blood may be regarded as arterial blood with a venous admixture which in this series averaged about 11 per cent of the total flow through the hand. For clinical measurements of Pco2 and pH, arterialized venous blood may provide an adequate estimate. It appears to be of little use as a measure of arterial Po2 or oxygen saturation.
Variation in Accounting Information Load: The Impact of Disclosure Requirements of FASB Statement No. 33 on Cash Flow Predictions of Financial Analysts

In Statement No. 33, "Financial Reporting and Changing Prices," the FASB requires that some large companies disclose their historical cost/constant dollar and current cost information in the published financial statements. One of the purposes of these disclosures is to help users of the financial statements in assessing future cash flows. This study was directed toward the examination of the effects of the different levels of disclosures on cash flow projections.