Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relationship between various modes of single leg postural control assessment.

PURPOSE/BACKGROUND While various techniques have been developed to assess the postural control system, little is known about the relationship between single leg static and functional balance. The purpose of the current study was to determine the relationship between the performance measures of several single leg postural stability tests. METHODS Forty six recreationally active college students (17 males, 29 females, 21±3 yrs, 173±10 cm) performed six single leg tests in a counterbalanced order: 1) Firm Surface-Eyes Open, 2) Firm Surface-Eyes Closed, 3) Multiaxial Surface-Eyes Open, 4) Multiaxial Surface-Eyes Closed, 5) Star Excursion Balance Test (posterior medial reach), 6) Single leg Hop-Stabilization Test. Bivariate correlations were conducted between the six outcome variables. RESULTS Mild to moderate correlations existed between the static tests. No significant correlations existed involving either of the functional tests. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate that while performance of static balance tasks are mildly to moderately related, they appear to be unrelated to functional reaching or hopping movements, supporting the utilization of a battery of tests to determine overall postural control performance. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE 3b.
Country-of-origin versus brand: consumers’ dilemma when choosing between generic and branded drugs in emerging countries

Purpose Taking an emerging country perspective, this paper aims to investigate consumers’ preferences for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, regarding three attributes: country-of-origin (COO), brand status (branded versus generic) and price. The second purpose is to test the effect of COO and brand status on consumers’ perceptions of quality, trust and purchasing intentions. Design/methodology/approach After a preliminary qualitative study, consumers answered a follow-up questionnaire to evaluate eight product combinations (COO/brand status/price) for three categories of OTC drugs. Conjoint analysis allowed assessing the importance of COO compared to brand status and price, while ANOVA was used to test the effect of COO and branding status on consumers’ responses. Findings Findings show that, in an emerging countries context, COO is less important than brand status in consumers’ preferences. COO and brand status have a greater effect on consumers’ perceptions of drug quality and trust than on purchasing intentions. Research limitations/implications The limited number of factors (brand status/COO/price) could have amplified their relative importance. Practical implications Pharmaceutical companies from industrialized countries, exporting generic drugs to emerging markets, can benefit from the favorably perceived COO of their drugs and thus help the acceptance of generic drugs in these markets. Originality/value The study has two major contributions. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of consumer behavior in the pharmaceutical field. It also transposes the framework on COO to the context of an emerging country: Tunisia.
Shared feature representations of LiDAR and optical images: Trading sparsity for semantic discrimination

This paper studies the level of complementary information conveyed by extremely high resolution LiDAR and optical images. We pursue this goal following an indirect approach via unsupervised spatial-spectral feature extraction. We used a recently presented unsupervised convolutional neural network trained to enforce both population and lifetime spar-sity in the feature representation. We derived independent and joint feature representations, and analyzed the sparsity scores and the discriminative power. Interestingly, the obtained results revealed that the RGB+LiDAR representation is no longer sparse, and the derived basis functions merge color and elevation yielding a set of more expressive colored edge filters. The joint feature representation is also more discriminative when used for clustering and topological data visualization.
The Profitability of Technical Analysis: A Review

The purpose of this report is to review the evidence on the profitability of technical analysis. To achieve this purpose, the report comprehensively reviews survey, theoretical and empirical studies regarding technical trading strategies. We begin by overviewing survey studies that have directly investigated market participants’ experience and views on technical analysis. The survey literature indicates that technical analysis has been widely used by market participants in futures markets and foreign exchange markets, and that about 30% to 40% of practitioners appear to believe that technical analysis is an important factor in determining price movement at shorter time horizons up to 6 months. Then we provide an overview of theoretical models that include implications about the profitability of technical analysis. Conventional efficient market theories, such as the martingale model and random walk models, rule out the possibility of technical trading profits in speculative markets, while relatively recent models such as noisy rational expectation models or behavioral models suggest that technical trading strategies may be profitable due to noise in the market or investors’ irrational behavior. Finally, empirical studies are surveyed. In this report, the empirical literature is categorized into two groups, “early” and “modern” studies, according to the characteristics of testing procedures. Early studies indicated that technical trading strategies were profitable in foreign exchange markets and futures markets, but not in stock markets before the 1980s. Modern studies indicated that technical trading strategies consistently generated economic profits in a variety of speculative markets at least until the early 1990s. Among a total of 92 modern studies, 58 studies found positive results regarding technical trading strategies, while 24 studies obtained negative results. Ten studies indicated mixed results. Despite the positive evidence on the profitability of technical trading strategies, it appears that most empirical studies are subject to various problems in their testing procedures, e.g., data snooping, ex post selection of trading rules or search technologies, and difficulties in estimation of risk and transaction costs. Future research must address these deficiencies in testing in order to provide conclusive evidence on the profitability of technical trading strategies.
Intelligence control for friction compensation in precision pointing and tracking system

In order to compensate for the influence of friction in the coarse pointing subsystem of the precision pointing and tracking system, an adaptive RBF terminal sliding mode control was proposed, and GA (genetic algorithm) was applied off line to parameter identification of the friction model. A terminal sliding mode controller was used to obtain a stable and fast trajectory first, then the upper bound of friction was estimated through an adaptive RBF neural network. The system was proved to be stable and the parameters are proved to be bounded under the control scheme of this paper, using Lyapunov methodology. At last, simulation results show the highly robust and efficient controller design.
Consumer attitudes toward Canadian-made versus imported products

A survey of 635 Canadian men and women revealed that overall attitudes toward Canadian-made products were positive, especially among women. Cynicism existed among men and among persons who were older, had higher educations, higher incomes and higher status occupations. For clothing and footwear products Canadian-made rated high, but Japanese-made rated higher for automobiles and home entertainment equipment, while European wines were rated ahead of Canadian wines. The last purchase in each product category studied was frequently Canadian-made. Consumers favored purchasing Canadian-made products in the future except for home entertainment equipment. Implications for Canadian industry, marketing and government policy are drawn.
A clinical laboratory approach to the evaluation of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) by flow cytometry (FCM)

The TdT assay has long been recognized as being clinically useful in the diagnosis of acute leukemias (1). Initially, measurements of this DNA polymerase were based on quantitating its enzyme activity by tritiated thymidine incorporation onto single stranded DNA templates. Although useful, such assays were encumbered by variables such as enzyme instability in specimens and reagent unavailability. The use of monoclonal antibodies directed against TdT as an antigen has simplified this measurement. Quantitative and semi-quantitative TdT assays using enzyme immunoassay (ElA), immunofluorescence, and immunoperoxidase techniques (2,3) have proved to be clinically useful and practical. The recent use of flow cytometry (FCM) to detect cells containing TdT offers another approach which has additional advantages (3). Cellular permeation techniques have made it possible to detect intracellular antigens by flow cytometry. In the case of TdT, which resides in the nucleus, its detection can be coordinated with simultaneous cell surface phenotyping using two and three color FCM and with cell size and light scatter characteristics. We describe here a modification of other FCM methods which makes the TdT assay rapid and practical for clinical FCM laboratory use and combines it with surface immunophenotyping .
Effect of Auditor Opinion on Discretionary Accruals Behavior of Distressed Firms: Empirical Evidences from Iran

The present study attempts to determine the discretionary accruals behavior (as a proxy for earnings management) of Iranian failing firms (defined here as pre-bankruptcy firms) in years prior to bankruptcy, and factors that lead to this behavior as well. For this purpose, we selected a sample composed of 68 bankrupt firms and 68 non-bankrupt firms (matched in terms of firms’ industry and size) and examined the magnitude of discretionary accruals in a period of 5 years prior to bankruptcy for each firm. The results showed that: first, during the distressed period, failing firms are more engaged in earnings management than non-failing firms are; secondly, failing firms utilize decreasing earnings management - distressed firms use accruals to understate income figures; and most importantly, in failing firms, evidences showed a significant relationship between decreasing earnings management and auditor opinion. These results suggest that under the pressure of audit opinion, distressed firms are compelled to employ conservatism procedures in earnings reporting.
Regulation of Hippocampal Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene Expression by Psychosocial Conflict

The activity of the limbic-hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (LHPA) axis is regulated by adrenal glucocortiwids exerting a negative feedback control via hippocampal neurons. Glucocorticoid receptors (GRs) in the hippocampus are therefore thought to play an important role in this circuit and their number may be an essential component of the stress response. ’ While much is known about the regulation of GR expression induced by various forms of experimentally induced stress, only little is known about whether GR expression is altered during prolonged psychosocial stress. * We therefore addressed the question, whether chronic social conflict in the tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri) may alter GR mIWA expression in the hippocampus. In this stress paradigm, the coexistence of two male tree shrews in one cage led to a stable dominant/subordinate relationship resulting in profoundly disturbed patterns of feeding, circadian rhythm and sleep, and in a clear behavioral depression in the subordinate tree shrew which might be related to alterations in the brain adrenoceptor ~ y s t e m . ~ Analysis of endocrine parameters in subordinates revealed constantly elevated urinary glucocorticoids indicating a sustained activation of the LHPA a~ i s . 4 . ~ The expression of GR mRNA was measured by in situ hybridization in the hippocampal formation of subordinate tree shrews and controls. To generate specific probes for the experiments, a 487 base pairs fragment of the tree shrew GR gene encoding a part of the N-terminal domain was amplified by polymerase chain reaction, cloned in a bacterial vector and sequenced. There was a 92% sequence homology between this cloned tree shrew GR DNA fragment and the corresponding human GR gene sequence. As shown by autoradiographic in situ hybridization, 35S-labeled riboprobes which had been transcribed from the three shrew-specific GR DNA fragment, hybridized to pyramidal cells in all subregions of the tree shrew hippocampal formation and to granule cells in the dentate gyrus. Expression of GR mRNA was semiquantitatively determined by counting silver grains over single cells of the hippocampal formation. After 13 days of social conflict, the number of silver grains in CA1 and CA3 pyramidal neurons was significantly lower in subordinates compared to controls. In pyramidal neurons of the CA4 subfield and the subiculum, and in the granule cells of the dentate gyrus, the number of silver grains did not differ from controls (FIG. 1). Since the reduction in the number of silver grains indicates reduced amounts of GR mRNA, the present results suggest that in subordinate tree shrews sustained psychosocial conflict leads to a downregulation of hippocampal GR via modification of mRNA expression by a naturally occurring form of stress and may reflect distinct
Expanding TAM and IDT to Understand the Adoption of E-Marketing by Small Business Enterprises: An Empirical Investigation

This paper aims to explore, analyze and develop a clear understanding of the different factors affecting the adoption of e-marketing by trading industrial UK small business enterprises which will build on the current body of knowledge in the field of e-marketing. This paper systematically reviews and categorises the literature related to e-marketing adoption, the use of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) to understand the adoption of e-marketing by small business enterprises. Based on this review and depending on the Hanson (2001) Internet marketing framework, a three stage methodology was implemented to determine, analyze and review the different factors affecting the adoption of e-marketing from a small businesses perspective by using focus groups and survey research strategies as well as Structure Equation Modelling to analyse the data collected.
Time-domain finite-difference/finite-element hybrid simulations of radio frequency coils in magnetic resonance imaging

A hybrid method that combines the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and the finite-element time-domain (FETD) method is presented for simulating radio-frequency (RF) coils in magnetic resonance imaging. This method applies a high-fidelity FETD method to RF coils, while the human body is modeled with a low-cost FDTD method. Since the FDTD and the FETD methods are applied simultaneously, the dynamic interaction between RF coils and the human body is fully accounted for. In order to simplify the treatment of the highly irregular FDTD/FETD interface, composite elements are proposed. Two examples are provided to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the hybrid method in high-field receive-and-transmit coil design. This approach is also applicable to general bio-electromagnetic simulations.
M-COMMERCE ADOPTION AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT: PROPOSING A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The emerging growth of mobile commerce is enabled by the convergence of rapid growth in internet and mobile communication which was adopted by both business and individual. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework on mobile commerce adoption by business actors and impact to their competitiveness using the basic theory of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a common model used by many researchers in the evolution of developed theories and models based on different knowledge discipline to predict, explain and understand the adoption of a new/introduced product or technology by individual or organization. The proposed model uses business factors and individual factors as key elements influencing the m-commerce adoption. Business factors are represented by Five Forces Porter, while individual factors are represented by users’ profile; perceive cost; security and convenience; and social influence. Theoretically, the technology adoption should give impact on the improvement of creativity and innovation, and ultimately business performance.
FACTORS AFFECTING SELECTION OF SPECIALIZATION BY BUSINESS GRADUATES

The goal of this study is to provide insight for the phenomena of specialization selection and suggest ways and means for those involved for the improvement of related policies and practices. This cross-sectional study was conducted by collecting data from 300 undergraduate business students from 10 different business schools of Lahore (including private, semi-government and government universities). Exploratory Factor Analysis identified six factors contributing 47% of the decision making by students while selecting their specialization. These factors include academic factors, social capital factors, future prospect factors, human capital factors, market demand factors and finally job prospect factors. The result of the analysis revealed career development and personal abilities of the business graduates as the most influential factors in selection of specialization while competition in the field and parents as the least influential factors. This study also found an association between specialization selected by the students and their demographic characteristics.
Extending landed cost models to improve offshore sourcing decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the components required for more robust landed cost models given the now widespread interest in sourcing finished goods, components for assembly, and basic raw materials from global sources. This study also seeks to establish the need for broad‐based participation in operationalizing such models.Design/methodology/approach – Interviews are conducted with several major firms that import a range of merchandise into the USA to develop in‐depth case studies. A taxonomy of variables found in increasingly comprehensive forms of landed cost models is developed from the case studies. These variables are assembled into modules and analyzed with the use of an expert panel consisting of executives responsible for import activities at major firms.Findings – Most major firms are relatively unsophisticated in their approach to making offshore sourcing decisions. Few employ models that are sufficiently detailed and some do not even embrace the basic logistical elements .
Multiphase Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation

Pole-phase modulation adjusts the pole-phase ratio of an induction machine and requires a multileg, multiphase inverter. This paper analyzes an n-leg n-phase inverter and presents techniques for n-phase space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM). In particular, nine-phase SVPWM is developed and implemented on a nine-winding induction machine. The nine-phase SVPWM is compared to nine-phase sine-triangle PWM in terms of dc bus utilization.
Explicit Associative Learning and Memory in Synesthetes and Nonsynesthetes

Most current theories regarding the development of synesthesia focus on cross-modal neural connections and genetic underpinnings, but recent evidence has revitalized the potential role of associative learning. In the present study, we compared synesthetes’ and controls’ ability to explicitly learn shape-color pairings. Using a continuous measure of accuracy and multiple testing blocks, we found that synesthetes learned these pairings faster than controls. In a delayed retest, synesthetes outperformed controls, demonstrating enhanced long-term memory for shape–color associations. Following this retest, participants learned shuffled associations, and we found little evidence for group differences in subsequent learning ability. Overall, our findings support the hypothesis that synesthetes have exceptional associative learning abilities and further specify that this advantage pertains to the initial learning rate and long-term retention of associations.
The effectiveness of ozone-chlorine treatment for reducing chloramine concentration compared to chlorine treatment in swimming pools and whirlpools

Objectives: Chloramines are by-products of chlorine disinfected swimming pools and are hazardous to people if chloramines evaporate into the air. There is evidence that chloramines cause upper respiratory tract and eye irritation. It was suspected that ozone treatment in addition to chlorine disinfection will reduce chloramine levels in the pool. The following study compared chloramine concentration in a strictly chlorine disinfected swimming pool and whirlpool (C.G. Brown) in Burnaby, BC with an ozonechlorine disinfected swimming pool and whirlpool (Killarney) in Vancouver, BC. The study also compared each pool and whirlpool to the 1.0 mg/L combined chlorine concentration limit in the B.C. Pool Regulation. Methods: Chloramine concentrations were determined by using a Hach Pocket Colorimeter 2 Analysis System which used a DPD method of analysis. Chloramine was determined by subtracting total chlorine by the free chlorine. Thirty pool water samples were analyzed based on two samples per pool per day for fifteen days. A two sample t-test was used to compare the ozone-chlorine treated pools with the chlorine only treated pools using the Mann-Whitney U test. A z-test was used to compare all types of swimming pools and whirlpools to the 1.0 mg/L limit. Results: The chloramine concentration in both the ozone-chlorine disinfected swimming pool and whirlpool was not statistically significantly lower than in the chlorine disinfected swimming pool (p=0.263597) and whirlpool (p=0.523672). Both types of swimming pools were found to be statistically significantly greater than the 1.0 mg/L chloramine limit (p=0.000023 in the chlorine pool and p=0.00001 for the ozone-chlorine pool). Similarly, both types of whirlpools were determined to be statistically significantly greater than the 1.0 mg/L chloramine limit (p=0.000001 for the chlorine pool and p=0.000001 for the ozone-chlorine pool). Conclusion: It was determined that there was no difference between ozone chlorine treated pools and chlorine only treated pools. Environmental Health Officers can suggest other forms of secondary treatment instead of ozone since there is no significant difference compared to chlorine only treated pools in reducing chloramine concentrations. This information is also beneficial for pool operators because they can increase their flow rates for pools that use ozonation or strictly chlorination relative to what they were originally designed for.