Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Survey Responses: How and Why Semantics Shape Survey Statistics on Organizational Behaviour

Some disciplines in the social sciences rely heavily on collecting survey responses to detect empirical relationships among variables. We explored whether these relationships were a priori predictable from the semantic properties of the survey items, using language processing algorithms which are now available as new research methods. Language processing algorithms were used to calculate the semantic similarity among all items in state-of-the-art surveys from Organisational Behaviour research. These surveys covered areas such as transformational leadership, work motivation and work outcomes. This information was used to explain and predict the response patterns from real subjects. Semantic algorithms explained 60–86% of the variance in the response patterns and allowed remarkably precise prediction of survey responses from humans, except in a personality test. Even the relationships between independent and their purported dependent variables were accurately predicted. This raises concern about the empirical nature of data collected through some surveys if results are already given a priori through the way subjects are being asked. Survey response patterns seem heavily determined by semantics. Language algorithms may suggest these prior to administering a survey. This study suggests that semantic algorithms are becoming new tools for the social sciences, opening perspectives on survey responses that prevalent psychometric theory cannot explain.
Heart transplants: Identity disruption, bodily integrity and interconnectedness

Of heart transplant recipients, 30 per cent report ongoing or episodic emotional issues post-transplant, which are not attributable to medications or pathophysiological changes. To this end, our team theorized that cardiac transplantation introduces pressing new questions about how patients incorporate a transplanted heart into their sense of self and how this impacts their identity. The work of Merleau-Ponty provided the theoretical underpinning for this project as it rationalizes how corporeal changes affect one’s self and offer an innovative framework to access these complex aspects of living with a transplanted heart. We used visual methodology and recorded 25 semi-structured interviews videographically. Both visual and verbal data were analyzed at the same time in an iterative process. The most common theme was that participants expressed a disruption to their own identity and bodily integrity. Additionally, participants reported interconnectedness with the donor, even when the transplanted heart was perceived as an intruder or stranger. Finally, transplant recipients were very vivid in their descriptions and speculation of how they imagined the donor. Receiving an anonymous donor organ from a stranger often leaves the recipient with questions about who they themselves are now. Our study provides a nuanced understanding of heart transplant recipients’ embodied experiences of self and identity. Insights gained are valuable to educate transplant professionals to develop new supportive interventions both pre- and post-transplant, and to improve the process of informed consent. Ultimately, such insights could be used to enable heart transplant recipients to incorporate the graft optimally over time, easing distress and improving recovery.
Stepping Back to Progress Forwards: Setting Standards for Meta-Evaluation of Computational Creativity

There has been increasing attention paid to the question of how to evaluate the creativity of computational creativity systems. A number of different evaluation methods, strategies and approaches have been proposed recently, causing a shift in focus: which methodology should be used to evaluate creative systems? What are the pros and cons of using each method? In short: how can we evaluate the different creativity evaluation methodologies? To answer this question, five meta-evaluation criteria have been devised from cross-disciplinary research into good evaluative practice. These five criteria are: correctness; usefulness; faithfulness as a model of creativity; usability of the methodology; generality. In this paper, the criteria are used to compare and contrast the performance of five various evaluation methods. Together, these metaevaluation criteria help us explore the advantages and disadvantages of each creativity evaluation methodology, helping us develop the tools we have available to us as computational creativity researchers.
Light irradiation tuning of surface wettability, optical, and electric properties of graphene oxide thin films

In this work the preparation of flexible polymeric films with controlled electrical conductivity, light transmission and surface wettability is reported. A drop casted graphene oxide thin film is photo-reduced at different levels by UV light or laser irradiation. Optical microscopy, IR spectroscopy, electrical characterization, Raman spectroscopy and static water contact angle measurements are used in order to characterize the effects of the various reduction methods. Correlations between the optical, electrical and structural properties are reported and compared to previous literature results. These correlations provide a useful tool for independently tuning the properties of these films for specific applications.
Whole-Genome Sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Korean Strain KIT87190

ABSTRACT Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a contagious agent that causes tuberculosis. A specific type (called the K cluster) of M. tuberculosis with 10 copies of IS6110 in restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) has been found in about 4% of M. tuberculosis isolates in Korea. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of M. tuberculosis Korean strain KIT87190 belonging to the K cluster.
Power matters: the importance of Foucault's power/knowledge as a conceptual lens in KM research and practice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to engage knowledge management (KM) researchers and practitioners with Foucault’s power/knowledge lens as a way of thinking about and recognising the central role of power in organisational knowledge cultures. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical illustrations in this paper are drawn from two qualitative studies in different professional and institutional contexts (insurance and theatre work). Both studies used in-depth interviews and discourse analysis as their principal methods of data collection and analysis. Findings – The empirical examples illustrate how practitioners operate within complex power/knowledge relations that shape their practices of knowledge sharing, generation and use. The findings show how an application of the power/knowledge lens renders visible both the constraining and productive force of power in KM. Research limitations/implications – Researchers may apply the conceptual tools presented here in a wider variety of institutional and p.
Chlamydia pneumoniae elementary body antigenic reactivity with fluorescent antibody is destroyed by methanol

Methanol, used for fixing chlamydia organisms to microscopic slides, was shown to eliminate the antigenic reactivity of Chlamydia pneumoniae elementary bodies with fluorescent antibodies. Acetone fixation had no adverse effect. Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia psittaci were not affected by methanol fixation. The effect of methanol on C. pneumoniae is another characteristic that differentiates this species from the other two chlamydia species.
Identification, separation, and preliminary characterization of invertase and beta-galactosidase in Actinomyces viscosus

The initial step of disaccharide dissimilation by Actinomyces viscosus serotype 2 strain M-100 was studied. Sucrase activity was found in the 3,000 X g particulate fraction and the 37,000 X g soluble fraction of the cells, whereas lactase activity was found almost exclusively in the 37,000 X g soluble fraction. Neither sucrase nor lactase activity was appreciable in the culture liquor. Sucrose phosphorylase, alpha-glucosidase, and polysaccharide synthesis activities were not observed in the soluble cell fraction. The sucrase was identified as invertase (EC 3.2.1.26; beta-D-fructofuranoside fructohydrolase). The lactase was identified as beta-galactosidase (EC 3.2.1.23; beta-D-galactoside galactohydrolase). The enzymes in the 37,000 X g soluble fraction were separable by diethylamino-ethyl-cellulose chromatography, giving one beta-galactosidase peak and one major and one minor invertase peak. Acrylamide gel electrophoresis showed different electrophoretic mobilities of the enzymes. The molecular weight of the beta-galactosidase is about 4.2 X 10(5) and that of invertase is about 8.6 X 10(4). The beta-galactosidase has a Km for lactose of about 6 mM and a pH optimum between pH 6.0 and 6.5. The major invertase component has a Km for sucrose of about 71 mM and a pH optimum between pH 5.8 and 6.3.
Memory-Adjustable Navigation Piles with Applications to Sorting and Convex Hulls

We consider space-bounded computations on a random-access machine, where the input is given on a read-only random-access medium, the output is to be produced to a write-only sequential-access medium, and the available workspace allows random reads and writes but is of limited capacity. The length of the input is N elements, the length of the output is limited by the computation, and the capacity of the workspace is O(S) bits for some predetermined parameter S ≥ lg N. We present a state-of-the-art priority queue—called an adjustable navigation pile—for this restricted model. This priority queue supports Minimum in O(1) time, Construct in O(N) time, and Extract-min in O(N/S + lg S) time for any S ≥ lg N. The priority queue can be further augmented in O(N) time to deal with a batch of at most S elements in a specified range of values at a time, and allow to Insert (activate) or Extract (deactivate) an element among these elements, such that Insert and Extract take O(N/S + lg S) time for any S ≥ lg N. We show how to use our data structure to sort N elements and to compute the convex hull of N points in the Euclidean plane in O(N2/S + N lg S) time for any S ≥ lg N. Following a known lower bound for the space-time product of any branching program for finding unique elements, both our sorting and convex-hull algorithms are optimal. The adjustable navigation pile has turned out to be useful when designing other space-efficient algorithms, and we expect that it will find its way to yet other applications.
Performance implications of single thread migration on a chip multi-core

High performance multi-core processors are becoming an industry reality. Although multi-cores are suited for multithreaded and multi-programmed workloads, many applications are still mono-thread and multi-core performance with a single thread workload is an important issue. Furthermore, recent studies suggest that performance, power and temperature considerations of future multi-cores may necessitate activity-migration between cores.Motivated by the above, this paper investigates the performance implications of single thread migration on a multi-core. Specifically, the study considers the influence on the performance of a single thread of the following migration and multi-core parameters: frequency of migration, core warm-up modes, subset of resources that are warmed-up, number of cores, and cache hierarchy organization. The results of this study can provide insight to architects on how to design performance-efficient power and thermal strategies for a multi-core chip.The experimental results, for the benchmarks and microarchitectures used in this study, show that the performance loss due to activity migration on a multi-core with private L1s and a shared L2 can be minimized if: (a) a migrating thread continues its execution on a core that was previously visited by the thread, and (b) cores remember their predictor state since their previous activation (all other core resources can be cold). The analogous conclusions for a multi-core with private L1s and L2s and a shared L3 are: remembering the predictor state, maintaining the tags of the various L2 caches coherent and allowing L2-L2 data transfers from inactive cores to the active core.The data also show that when migration period is at least every 160K cycles, the transfer of register state between two cores and the flushing of dirty private L1 data have a negligible performance overhead.
Molecular modelling studies of kdr mutations in voltage gated sodium channel revealed significant conformational variations contributing to insecticide resistance

Voltage gated sodium channels (VGSC) of mosquito vectors are the primary targets of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and other synthetic pyrethroids used in public health programmes. The knockdown resistant (kdr) mutations in VGSC are associated with the insecticide resistance especially in Anophelines. The present study is aimed to emphasize and demarcate the impact of three kdr-mutations such as L1014S, L1014F and L1014H on insecticide resistance. The membrane model of sodium transport domain of VGSC (STD-VGSC) was constructed using de novo approach based on domain and trans-membrane predictions. The comparative molecular modelling studies of wild type and mutant models of STD-VGSC revealed that L1014F mutant was observed to be near native to the wild type model in all the respects, but, L1014S and L1014H mutations showed drastic variations in the energy levels, root mean square fluctuations (RMSF) that resulted in conformational variations. The predicted binding sites also showed variable cavity volumes and RMSF in L1014S and L1014H mutants. Further, DDT also found be bound in near native manner to wild type in L1014F mutant and with variable orientation and affinities in L1014S and L1014H mutants. The variations and fluctuations observed in mutant structures explained that each mutation has its specific impact on the conformation of VGSC and its binding with DDT. The study provides new insights into the structure–function-correlations of mutant STD-VGSC structures and demonstrates the role and effects of kdr mutations on insecticide resistance in mosquito vectors.
Novel Microchip-Based Tools Facilitating Live Cell Imaging and Assessment of Functional Heterogeneity within NK Cell Populations

Each individual has a heterogeneous pool of NK cells consisting of cells that may be specialized towards specific functional responses such as secretion of cytokines or killing of tumor cells. Many conventional methods are not fit to characterize heterogeneous populations as they measure the average response of all cells. Thus, there is a need for experimental platforms that provide single cell resolution. In addition, there are transient and stochastic variations in functional responses at the single cell level, calling for methods that allow studies of many events over extended periods of time. This paper presents a versatile microchip platform enabling long-term microscopic studies of individual NK cells interacting with target cells. Each microchip contains an array of microwells, optimized for medium or high-resolution time-lapse imaging of single or multiple NK and target cells, or for screening of thousands of isolated NK-target cell interactions. Individual NK cells confined with target cells in small microwells is a suitable setup for high-content screening and rapid assessment of heterogeneity within populations, while microwells of larger dimensions are appropriate for studies of NK cell migration and sequential interactions with multiple target cells. By combining the chip technology with ultrasonic manipulation, NK and target cells can be forced to interact and positioned with high spatial accuracy within individual microwells. This setup effectively and synchronously creates NK-target conjugates at hundreds of parallel positions in the microchip. Thus, this facilitates assessment of temporal aspects of NK-target cell interactions, e.g., conjugation, immune synapse formation, and cytotoxic events. The microchip platform presented here can be used to effectively address questions related to fundamental functions of NK cells that can lead to better understanding of how the behavior of individual cells add up to give a functional response at the population level.
Presentation of a Modular Framework for Interpretation of Sensor Data With Dynamic Bayesian Networks on Mobile Devices

We show in this work an example of how physiological data of a user acquired by bio sensors and interpreted by dynamic Bayesian networks on a personal mobile device are used to adapt notifications to the user state. The described sample application is an instance of our framework that is currently under development in our research group, aiming towards a modular and cross-platform toolkit for sensor integration. We will give a brief overview of the whole system with its components and conclude with an outlook on future work in this project. At the conference we want to present the example application based on this framework and the single components as described in this work.
A particle filter for robust calibration of RF ranging systems

This paper describes a robust method for calibrating radio-frequency ranging systems in indoor environments. An approach for outlier rejection is proposed, based on modeling the distribution of the distance-measurement results as a Gaussian-uniform mixture. Using this model, a batch maximum-likelihood and a recursive particle filtering estimator are implemented. The accuracy and robustness of the approach are evaluated by numerical simulations and by comparison with the Cramér-Rao Lower Bound. Finally, the approach is validated on experimental data obtained from a in-house developed Ultra-Wideband indoor ranging system.
Sympathetic overactivity occurs before hypertension in the two‐kidney, one‐clip model

What is the central question of this study? The aim was to evaluate whether elevated sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) occurs before the onset of arterial hypertension in a rat renovascular model of hypertension, the two‐kidney, one‐clip (2K1C) Goldblatt model, and to determine possible mechanisms and origins. What is the main finding and its importance? Sympathetic nerve activity can be raised before the onset of hypertension, by the third week after renal artery clipping, and this originates, in part, from enhanced respiratory modulation. Spinal circuits contribute to the elevation of SNA, but only after hypertension has developed.
A 3-10 GHz Low-Noise Amplifier for Ultra-Wideband Applications

This paper presents a new methodology for the design of low noise amplifiers for ultra wideband applications. Using the unwanted effect of the gate-drain capacitor of transistors on the input impedance to our benefit, the operation of the conventional narrowband LNA is extended to provide a very good input matching from 3 GHz to 10 GHz. Using a triple-resonance circuit as the drain impedance, a relatively flat gain is also achieved over the same operation band. A power gain of 8 dB, with good input and output matching (S11< -14 dB and S22 < -14 dB) is achieved over a 3 to 10 GHz band in 0.13 mum CMOS technology
PSM Modeling and Self-Adaptation in Robotics Applications

In this paper, we focus on the use of PSM specifications in the task of system adaptation, when there is a discrepancy between the behavior delivered by the system and the behavior desired of it. This task arises when a system is re-deployed in an environment different than the one in which it was originally designed, or when the requirements on its behavior evolve during a “long lifetime”. Autonomous robots are but one example of such systems. They usually live in highly dynamic environments and need to be able to adapt to the evolving requirements that these environments impose on their behavior. We describe (i) a language for specifying the PSMs employed by a system, and (ii) a process, which uses such a specification, to monitor and flexibly control a system's behavior at run-time, and to adapt it when it fails. A UTOGNOSTIC, a shell that implements this modeling language and process, was integrated with two different robots. From these integrations, we discuss two experiments.
Granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor stimulates the expression of the 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein (FLAP) in human neutrophils

The synthesis of leukotrienes in human blood neutrophils chiefly relies on the activity of two enzymes, phospholipase A2 and 5-lipoxygenase (5- LO). In turn, the activation of the 5-LO requires the participation of a recently characterized membrane-bound protein, the 5-LO-activating protein (FLAP). In this study, we have investigated conditions under which FLAP expression in neutrophils may be modulated. Of several cytokines tested, only granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) (and to a lesser extent tumor necrosis factor alpha) significantly increased expression of FLAP. GM-CSF increased FLAP mRNA steady-state levels in a time- and dose-dependent manner. The stimulatory effect of GM-CSF on FLAP mRNA was inhibited by prior treatment of the cells with the transcription inhibitor, actinomycin D, and pretreatment of the cells with the protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide, failed to prevent the increase in FLAP mRNA induced by GM-CSF. The accumulation of newly synthesized FLAP, as determined by immunoprecipitation after incorporation of 35S-labeled amino acids, was also increased after incubation of neutrophils with GM-CSF. In addition, the total level of FLAP protein was increased in GM-CSF- treated neutrophils, as determined by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, followed by Western blot. GM-CSF did not alter the stability of the FLAP protein, indicating that the effect of GM-CSF on FLAP accumulation was the consequence of increased de novo synthesis as opposed to decreased degradation of FLAP. Finally, incubation of neutrophils with the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone directly stimulated the upregulation of FLAP mRNA and protein, and enhanced the effect of GM-CSF. Taken together, these data demonstrate that FLAP expression may be upmodulated after appropriate stimulation of neutrophils. The increase in FLAP expression induced by GM-CSF in inflammatory conditions could confer upon neutrophils a prolonged capacity to synthesize leukotrienes.
Detecting small mutations in expressed genes by a combination of S1 nuclease and RNase A.

The inability of SI nuclease to detect mismatches of less than 4 contiguous nucleotides limits the usefulness of Berk & Sharp SI mapping for identifying small mutations in mRNA. This prompted Myers et al and Winter et al to develop new techniques utilizing RNase A to cleave at mismatches between a radlolabeled RNA probe and complementary RNA or DNA. These powerful techniques, however, can only be used with < uniformly labeled RNA probes. We have devel•* •* « oped a modified method which allows the use 8 $ J of 3' or 5' end-labeled DNA probes for the Z z a: detection of mutations in mRNA. Such end<* labeled probes may simplify the localization =<=L o of mutations in mRNA. This method is "~ m •extremely simple and involves standard Berk & ,_ + + i Sharp SI hybridization conditions followed by </> w </j w t h e addition of 75 units of SI nuclease + 1 ug of RNase A to a standard SI digestion buffer. The figure shows such a study where RNA from a mutant g-globin gene with a single 9 • base substitution at codon 17 (A to T) is