Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Path Analysis of the Relationship between Competitive Strategy, Information Technology, and Financial Performance

Abstract:This study evaluates the impact of competitive strategy on information technology (it) and of it on organizational performance. In addition, the research model incorporates indirect performance effects from strategy and it alignment. Data is drawn from the survey responses of 127 banks and interviews with 68 bank CEOs. Path analysis separates direct, indirect, and spurious effects. Interview data support the quantitative analysis. The results lend statistical support to the strategy–it relationship described in case studies, and in addition, provide an explanation for inconsistent findings in previous it performance research.
Does Contracting-Out Primary Care Services Work?: The Case of Rural Guatemala

This paper estimates the impact of a large-scale contracting-out program in Guatemala, using two waves of living standard measurement surveys which collected data before and after the expansion of the program and exploiting variation in the timing of the program to estimate treatment effects. Results indicate large program impacts on immunization rates for children and prenatal care provider choices. The program increases substantially the role of physician and nurses as prenatal care providers at the expense of traditional midwives. There is no evidence of effects in family planning outcomes. Taken together these results suggest a potential effective role of contracting-out in the provision of health care.
Synchronous down-modulation of miR-17 family members is an early causative event in the retinal angiogenic switch

Significance Retinal angiogenesis is a finely tuned biological phenomenon and a major cause of blindness. We studied the regulation of this phenomenon and identified cross-talk involving microRNAs (miRs) that share the same seed sequence, transcription factors, and angiogenesis effectors. In a mouse model of retinopathy of prematurity, we show the down-regulation of all miR-17 family members as an early event in the angiogenic switch, which resulted in increased levels of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α and Vegfa in vitro. Notably, this coordinated regulation did not require the marked quantitative alterations of an individual miR but instead, relied on synchronous changes in members that share the same seed sequence. These results identify potential therapeutic targets in eye diseases with abnormal retinal angiogenesis. Six members of the microRNA-17 (miR-17) family were mapped to three different chromosomes, although they share the same seed sequence and are predicted to target common genes, among which are those encoding hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF1A) and VEGFA. Here, we evaluated the in vivo expression profile of the miR-17 family in the murine retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) model, whereby Vegfa expression is highly enhanced at the early stage of retinal neovascularization, and we found simultaneous reduction of all miR-17 family members at this stage. Using gene reporter assays, we observed binding of these miRs to specific sites in the 3′ UTRs of Hif1a and Vegfa. Furthermore, overexpression of these miRs decreased HIF1A and VEGFA expression in vitro. Our data indicate that this miR-17 family elicits a regulatory synergistic down-regulation of Hif1a and Vegfa expression in this biological model. We propose the existence of a coordinated regulatory network, in which diverse miRs are synchronously regulated to target the Hif1a transcription factor, which in turn, potentiates and reinforces the regulatory effects of the miRs on Vegfa to trigger and sustain a significant physiological response.
Open-Loop Wide-Bandwidth Phase Modulation Techniques

The ever-increasing growth in the bandwidth of wireless communication channels requires the transmitter to be wide-bandwidth and power-efficient. Polar and outphasing transmitter topologies are two promising candidates for such applications, in future. Both these architectures require a wide-bandwidth phase modulator. Open-loop phase modulation presents a viable solution for achieving wide-bandwidth operation. An overview of prior art and recent approaches for phase modulation is presented in this paper. Phase quantization noise cancellation was recently introduced to lower the out-of-band noise in a digital phase modulator. A detailed analysis on the impact of timing and quantization of the cancellation signal is presented. Noise generated by the transmitter in the receive band frequency poses another challenge for wide-bandwidth transmitter design. Addition of a noise transfer function notch, in a digital phase modulator, to reduce the noise in the receive band during phase modulation is described in this paper.
Abstract readability as a factor in information systems

Documents may be accessed by increasingly efficient retrieval of abstracts, but information will not be transferred unless the abstracts are read. It is suggested that the measurement of the readability of abstracts can provide an assessment of one phase of an information system: the system/user interface. Controlled reading levels for abstracts could result in more rapid processing of abstracts and a wider use of the information system. It was hypothesized that the use of readability principles in guidelines for abstracting would result in abstracts of lower reading levels than the source documents upon which they were based. Abstracts and their source documents were selected randomly from the information system supported by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC); readability scores were calculated using the Flesch Reading Ease formula. Comparisons among reading levels were made using analysis of variance for correlated data and Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test for post hoc comparisons. Results indicated that the reading level of abstracts was significantly higher than the reading level of source documents, but not higher than the reading ability of the intended audience. It was concluded that readability measurement provides one useful techinque for hte evaluation of abstracts.
The effect of limit order flows at the best quotes on price changes

We test the effect of order book events at the best quotes on price change with the model proposed by [Cont, Kukanov and Stoikov(2012)]. The OFI (Order Flow Imbalance) measure in the model could reasonably explain the price change of the nearby month KOSPI 200 futures contract, which is one of the most liquid exchange traded securities in the world. The model gets to fit less accurate when the sampling time interval become shorter; the adjusted of the model drops down to 40% for the time interval of 1 second from around 70% for the cases with time interval longer than 1 minute. We postulate that this is related to the lead-lag effects between the OFI measure and price change for shorter time intervals . We use the vector auto-regressive model to verify this conjecture, which is supported by the empirical evidence. The result in the paper suggests that it is necessary to know the dynamic structure of limit order book for better understanding of high frequency price movement in a financial market.
MaRTS: A Model-Based Regression Test Selection Approach

Models can be used to plan the evolution and runtime adaptation of a software system. Regression testing of the evolved and adapted models is important to ensure that the previously tested functionality is not broken. Regression testing is performed with limited time and resource constraints. Thus, regression test selection (RTS) techniques are needed to reduce the cost of regression testing. Existing model-based RTS approaches cannot detect all types of fine-grained changes that can be made at a low level of abstraction, and they do not consider the impact of inheritance hierarchy changes on the selection of test cases. We propose a model-based RTS approach called MaRTS that classifies test cases based on changes performed to UML class and activity diagrams. It supports both fine-grained and inheritance hierarchy changes. We compared MaRTS with two code-based RTS approaches using four applications. MaRTS achieved results comparable to a dynamic code-based RTS approach (DejaVu), and outperformed a static code-based RTS approach (ChEOPSJ). The fault detection ability of the selected test cases was equal to that of the baseline test cases.
PseudoPipe: an automated pseudogene identification pipeline

MOTIVATION Mammalian genomes contain many 'genomic fossils' i.e. pseudogenes. These are disabled copies of functional genes that have been retained in the genome by gene duplication or retrotransposition events. Pseudogenes are important resources in understanding the evolutionary history of genes and genomes. RESULTS We have developed a homology-based computational pipeline ('PseudoPipe') that can search a mammalian genome and identify pseudogene sequences in a comprehensive and consistent manner. The key steps in the pipeline involve using BLAST to rapidly cross-reference potential "parent" proteins against the intergenic regions of the genome and then processing the resulting "raw hits" -- i.e. eliminating redundant ones, clustering together neighbors, and associating and aligning clusters with a unique parent. Finally, pseudogenes are classified based on a combination of criteria including homology, intron-exon structure, and existence of stop codons and frameshifts.
Service Selection Modeling in Networked Environments

Service selection research is an important area in consumer behavior analysis and the latter has been extensively studied in economics and sociology. In this paper, we present an analysis and numerical studies on the aggregate behavior of consumer choices under some realistic information networks, such as small-world and scale-free networks. We demonstrate that sparse and local connectivity in information networks will enable the aggregated customer choices to converge to multiple steady equilibriums. This is contrasted with the classical monopolistic steady equilibrium in full-meshed information network. Therefore, the topology of customer information networks has significant effect on the service selection equilibriums. Therefore, the customer behavior in realistic networked environments requires further study and may provide new insights in service models
Internal Control Disclosure and Corporate Governance: Empirical Research from Chinese Listed Companies *

The aim of this paper is to research the influence of corporate governance structure on internal control disclosure in a sample of 1309 Chinese listed nonfinancial companies in 2010. We discover that internal control disclosure is positively related to directors’ remuneration, two part-time posts of chairman and general manager, directors’ education level and supervisors’ education level, and it negatively related to the proportion of state ownership. Internal control disclosure is not significantly related to the degree of ownership concentration, board size, the proportion of independent directors and the size of board of supervisors.
Lack of agreement for defining ‘clinical suspicion of rejection’ in liver transplantation: a model to select candidates for liver biopsy

The gold standard to diagnose acute cellular rejection (ACR) after liver transplantation (LT) is histological evaluation, but there is no consensus to select patients for liver biopsy. We aimed to evaluate the agreement among clinicians to select candidates for liver biopsy early after LT. From a protocol biopsy population (n = 690), we randomly selected 100 LT patients in whom the biopsy was taken 7–10 days after LT. The clinical information between LT and protocol biopsy was given to nine clinicians from three transplant centres who decided whether a liver biopsy was needed. The agreement among clinicians to select candidates for liver biopsy was poor: κ = 0.06–0.62, being κ < 0.40 in 76% of comparisons. The concordance between indication for liver biopsy and moderate–severe ACR in the protocol biopsy was κ < 0.30 in all cases. A multivariate model based on the product age‐by‐MELD (OR = 0.81; P = 0.013), delta eosinophils (OR = 1.5; P = 0.002) and mean tacrolimus trough concentrations <6 ng/ml within the prior 4 days (OR = 11.4; P = 0.047) had an AUROC = 0.84 to diagnose moderate–severe histological ACR. In conclusion, the agreement among clinicians to select patients for liver biopsy is very poor. If further validated the proposed model would provide an objective method to select candidates for liver biopsy after LT.
The effects and regulatory mechanism of RIP3 on RGC-5 necroptosis following elevated hydrostatic pressure

Necroptosis is a type of regulated cell death that has been implicated in various diseases. Receptor-interacting protein 3 (RIP3), a member of the RIP family, is an important mediator of the necroptotic pathway. Cleavage of RIP3 at Asp328 by caspase-8 abolishes the kinase activity of RIP3, which is critical for necroptosis. Moreover, RIP3 is significantly upregulated during the early stages of acute high intra-ocular pressure and oxygen glucose deprivation. In this study, the effects of RIP3 during elevated hydrostatic pressure (EHP) were investigated and the possible mechanism through which caspase-8 regulated RIP3 cleavage was explored. Flow cytometry analysis revealed that the number of EHP-induced necrotic retinal ganglion cell 5 (RGC-5) cells was reduced after RIP3-knockdown. Furthermore, malondialdehyde (MDA) levels and glycogen phosphorylase (PYGL) activity in normal RGC-5 cells were much higher than those in RIP3-knockdown cells after EHP. EHP-induced RGC-5 necrosis was significantly reduced after treatment with butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger. MDA levels and PYGL activity were lower in normal RGC-5 cells than those in cells with caspase-8 inhibition after EHP. Western blot analysis demonstrated that the RIP3 cleavage product was upregulated in cells with caspase-8 inhibition. Additionally, flow cytometry analysis revealed that the number of EHP-induced necrotic RGC-5 cells was increased after caspase-8 inhibition. Our results suggested that RGC-5 necroptosis following EHP was mediated by RIP3 through induction of PYGL activity and subsequent ROS accumulation. Thus, caspase-8 may participate in the regulation of RGC-5 necroptosis via RIP3 cleavage.
An abstract formulation of data processing problems

SUMMARY A data processing problem can be described in terms of four kinds of components: 1) Information set, P;, This is a llst' of al) is~ossibte ;nformation ;terns belonging to the same class; from the items in these lists are drawn the data which flow through the system. Examples of ;terns which make up information sets are customers' names and addresses, part numbers, unit prices, salesmen names, etc. Documenfs~ D]o Documents are a collection of related information items Dik0 They are generally inputs or outputs, e.g., shipping notice, invoicer et"co Each document consists of K entries, e.g., date, customer's name and addressr etc. 3) Relationships among the Dj, Djk, andPi. These will be discussed below. An abstract statement of a problem is obtained by the preparation of two lists. The first is a llst of the information sets (Pi) along with certain data about the number of items in each set, the number of characters required for each item, and the relationships among sets. The second llst presents for each document (Dj) tile items (Djk) on the document and the information set each item belongs to. It also presents the relationships associated wlth all the items in the system and the operational requirements of the system. A simplified version of a billing operation consisting of a shipping notice, invoice, payment1 monthly statement and daily sales report has been stated in abstract terms. One of the relationshlps that exists between information sets is a one-. to-one
The central domain of transcription factor FOXM1c directly interacts with itself in vivo and switches from an essential to an inhibitory domain depending on the FOXM1c binding site

Abstract We have previously shown that FOXM1c can transactivate its target genes by two different mechanisms, depending on the FOXM1c binding site. In the present study, by introducing a small 46-aa deletion, we confirm that the central domain of FOXM1c is essential for transactivation of the minimal c-myc P1 and P2 promoters via their TATA boxes, but functions as an inhibitory domain on conventional FOXM1c binding sites. Thus, distinct FOXM1c binding sites determine opposite functions of the central domain, suggesting allosteric control of its conformation by the DNA binding site. This is strongly supported by the identification of a direct in vivo interaction of the central domain with itself in the present study. In contrast, the DNA binding domain binds neither to itself nor to any other domain of FOXM1c. Transrepression by the central domain is unlikely to be achieved by recruitment of co-repressors, but instead seems to be mediated by direct interference with the basal transcription complex. Direct binding of the central domain to itself should be involved in transrepression. Finally, FOXM1c transactivates the chicken mim-1 promoter, whose TATA box represents a conventional FOXM1c binding site, so that transactivation follows neither of the above two mechanisms, but shows intermediate behavior.
A node‐based ILP formulation for the node‐weighted dominating Steiner problem

In this article, we consider the Node‐Weighted Dominating Steiner Problem. Given a graph with node weights and a set of terminal nodes, the goal is to find a connected node‐induced subgraph of minimum weight, such that each terminal node is contained in or adjacent to some node in the chosen subgraph. The problem arises in applications in the design of telecommunication networks. Integer programming formulations for Steiner problems usually employ a variable for each edge. We introduce a formulation that only uses node variables and that models connectivity through node‐cut inequalities, which can be separated in polynomial time. We discuss necessary and sufficient conditions for the model inequalities to define facets and we introduce a class of lifted partition‐based inequalities, which can be used to strengthen the linear relaxation. Finally, we show that the polyhedron defined by these inequalities is integral if the underlying graph is a cycle where no two terminals are adjacent. In the general cycle setting, we show that we can get a complete description of the feasible solutions by lifting and projecting into a polytope with no more than twice the dimension. We also show that the well‐known indegree equalities are implied by the lifted partition inequalities. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the presented partition inequalities in computational experiments. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 69(1), 33–51 2017
Effectiveness and Subjectivity of Visual Inspection as a Method to Assess Bending Stiffness and Strength of Chestnut Elements

Besides the difficulty of assessing an existing timber structure on site, the efficiency and accuracy of visual inspection is often compromised by its subjective nature inherited by the level of expertise of the inspector. This often leads to conservative predictions of the mechanical properties, even with the use of specific visual grading norms. The main objectives of this work are to assess the effectiveness of visual inspection as a method to define different classes of strength and stiffness and to provide a statistical analysis on its subjectivity. For that aim, visual inspection using Italian standard UNI 11119:2004 and bending tests of 20 old chestnut beams (Castanea sativa Mill.) at different scale element, were carried out. Comparisons and effectiveness of visual inspection is analyzed within and between different scales of the timber members, and also regarding different level of expertise of inspectors. The results evidence similar percentages of segments classified with higher and lower visual inspections classes and proved to be a good qualitative indicator of bending strength between sawn beams. An overall 42% accuracy of the most experienced inspectors was found with better differentiation between visual classes, whereas lower level inspectors scored approximately less 5%. Lower level inspectors also evidenced higher concentration of values around a higher mean for each class denoting a more conservative approach. Regardless of the inspector level, knot size was considered the main limiting visual parameter with higher influence in small scales of the timber elements. When studying the characterization of a single knot, coefficients of variation of 15.7% and 21.8% were found for measuring the minimum and maximum diameter. Bayesian probability networks were considered as to individually assess the accuracy in stiffness prediction of different level of inspectors, and by combination of their information, evidencing that parallel combination for prior information may allow the increase in visual inspection accuracy.
myCACTI: A new cache design tool for pipelined nanometer caches

bridging the memory wall, or the speed gap between the microprocessor and main memory. This importance is continuously increasing especially as we enter the regime of nanometer process technologies (i.e. 90nm and below), as industry has favored investing a larger and larger fraction of a chip’s transistor budget to improving the on-chip cache. This is the case in practice, as it has proven to be an efficient way to utilize the increasing number of transistors available with each succeeding technology. Consequently, it becomes even more important to have cache design tools that give accurate representations of designs that exist in actual microprocessors. The prevalent cache design tools that are the most widely used in academe are CACTI [Wilton1996] and eCACTI [Mamidipaka2004], and these have proven to be very useful tools not just for cache designers, but also for computer architects. This dissertation will show that both CACTI and eCACTI still contain major limitations and even flaws in their design, making them unsuitable for use in very-deep submicron and nanometer caches, especially pipelined designs. These limitations and flaws will be discussed in detail. This dissertation then introduces a new tool, called myCACTI, that addresses all these limitations and, in addition, introduces major enhancements to the simulation framework. Some of the major enhancements are briefly described as follows:
THE EFFECTS OF HEMORRHAGE ON BODY COMPOSITION.

THE aqueous phase of body composition — the total body water and its solutes — includes as its prime component the great working mass of body cells, participating in energy exchange and substrate oxidation for work performance. The body-cell mass is surrounded, infiltrated and bathed by a second watery component, slightly smaller in volume, and concerned with the bulk movement of oxygen, carbon dioxide, metabolites and regulators, via the circulation: the extracellular fluid. Whatever other differences exist between these two reservoirs of body water, none is more clear cut than the fact that within cell water the predominant cation is .