Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Segmenting Residential Customers: Energy and Conservation Behaviors

Marketing programs and strategies based on conventional demographic and geographic segmentations have limitations in that customers in traditional categories often have very diverse attitudes, values, motivations, beliefs and lifestyles. Psychographic segmentation overcomes these limitations by uncovering groups of people homogeneous in terms of how they think, feel and act – not what they look like, what they possess or where they live. In turn, strategies and campaigns can be developed such that unique segments receive marketing support and messaging that truly resonates and engages them, thus reinforcing the desired objective of, in this case, changing the way they think about and use electricity. In June 2006, BC Hydro completed a territory-wide end-use survey of 4,191 residential customers that was supplemented with a set of 60 attitudinal and behavioral questions in regards to electricity and conservation. A multi-disciplinary project team determined via k-means statistical analysis that the market – both at the bill payer and household level – could be most effectively represented by six psychographic segments based on the criteria of them being measurable, substantial, accessible, differentiable and actionable. Subsequent analysis of the six segments by household electricity consumption patterns lends credibility to respondents’ attitudes and self-reported behaviors in the survey, and validity to the developed segmentation model.
Corporate Social Responsibility Spillover and Competition Effects on the Food Industry

type="main"> This paper examines the spillover and competition effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) with duopoly competition. In employing the assumption that firm CSR increases consumer willingness to pay for the firm's products while consumer willingness to pay decreases for non-CSR firm products, some interesting conclusions are achieved. First, CSR spillover effects increase CSR firm outputs and prices, while CSR spillover has the opposite effect on competitors. Second, CSR spillover decreases total outputs and total social welfare levels. Third, competition effects increase CSR expenditures, and CSR firms' CSR policies are the most robust when non-CSR firms assume a leading position. It is found that total outputs and consumer utilities are highest when CSR firm acts as leader, while the relationships of social welfare among different cases are ambiguous depending on product substitution and spillover effects.
Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Detection in Automotive Vehicles

We propose the development of a device aiming at detecting alcohol intoxication. Because most blood alcohol calculators are fairly invasive and/or expensive, we rely on the detection of nystagmus in intoxicated users. Nystagmus is the involuntary eye movements caused by the ingestion of drugs or alcohol. The test is currently manually implemented by police forces upon arrest, to determine whether a driver is drunk or not. Ideally, we would like to integrate this device to a vehicle to prevent users from taking the wheel drunk.
3D nerve: A three-dimensional reconstruction system for peripheral nerves

Repair and regeneration of injured peripheral nerves have always been a focus in the field of orthopedics. Traditional nerve atlas contains only two-dimensional information and canpsilat display the real cross and recombination process of nerve bundles in its whole length. To solve this problem, a system, 3D nerve, is proposed for the 3D reconstruction of peripheral nerves. Through image registration, image segmentation, contour correspondence and surface reconstruction process, this system successfully represents the topographic anatomy of every nerve fascicle and its relationship with the nicety localization information of sense fibers and motor ones in arbitrary sections. It is a great help for clinical peripheral nerve repair and 3D peripheral nerve teaching.
Spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Among Household Contacts of Individuals With Nosocomially Acquired MRSA

Abstract Objective: To determine the frequency with which methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is spread from colonized or infected patients to their household and community contacts. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: University hospital. Participants: Household and community contacts of MRSA-colonized or -infected patients for whom MRSA screening cultures were performed. Results: MRSA was isolated from 25 (14.5%) of 172 individuals. Among the contacts of index patients who had at least one MRSA-colonized contact, those with close contact to the index patient were 7.5 times more likely to be colonized (53% vs 7%; 95% confidence interval, 1.1 to 50.3; P = .002). An analysis of antimicrobial susceptibility and DNA fingerprint patterns suggested person-to-person spread. Conclusions: MRSA colonization occurs frequently among household and community contacts of patients with nosocomially acquired MRSA, suggesting that transmission of nosocomially acquired MRSA outside of the healthcare setting may be a substantial source of MRSA colonization and infection in the community.
Radio Content on the World Wide Web: Comparing Streaming Radio Stations in the United States

This study explores the Web content of the Internet-based radio stations and the terrestrial radio stations streaming online. It also compares the different strategies adopted by these two groups of Internet radio stations as reflected by their online contents. The websites of 176 stations were analyzed to examine two broad interactive dimensions-audience-oriented and source- oriented-and six strategic patterns (2) virtual information space, (2) virtual promotion space, (3) virtual distribution space, (4) virtual communication space, (5) virtual sponsorship space, and (6) virtual transaction space. The findings indicate that the online presence of information, promotion, and communication was highly visible for both the terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations. However, the terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations had very different means of structuring these functions online. Strategically, the terrestrial radio stations have acted more as information providers, while the Internet-based stations have acted more as the communication facilitators.
MOBILITY AND ACTIVITY SPACE: UNDERSTANDING HUMAN DYNAMICS FROM MOBILE PHONE LOCATION DATA

Advancements of information, communication and location-aware technologies have made collections of various passively generated datasets possible. These datasets provide new opportunities to understand human mobility patterns at a low cost and large scale. This study presents a home-based approach to understanding human mobility patterns based on a large mobile phone location dataset from Shenzhen, China. First, we estimate each individual’s “home” anchor point, and a modified standard distance (SD′) is proposed to measure the spread of each individual’s activity space centered at this “home” anchor point. We then derive aggregate mobility patterns at mobile phone tower level to describe the distance distribution of SD′ for people who share the same “home” anchor point. A hierarchical clustering algorithm is performed and the spatial distributions of the derived clusters are analyzed to highlight areas with similar aggregate human mobility patterns. The results suggest that 43% of the population sample travelled within a short distance (SD′ ≤ 1km) during the 13-day study period while 23.9% of them were associated with a large activity space (SD′ ≥ 5km). The geographical differences of people’s mobility patterns in Shenzhen are evident. Areas with a large proportion of people who have a small activity space mainly locate in the northern part of Shenzhen such as Baoan and Longgang districts. In the southern part where the economy is highly developed, the percentage of people with a larger activity space is higher in general. The findings could offer useful implications on policy and decision making. The proposed approach can also be used in other studies involving similar spatiotemporal datasets for travel behavior and policy analysis.
Trends and characteristics of US emergency department visits, 1997-2007.

CONTEXT The potential effects of increasing numbers of uninsured and underinsured persons on US emergency departments (EDs) is a concern for the health care safety net. OBJECTIVE To describe the changes in ED visits that occurred from 1997 through 2007 in the adult and pediatric US populations by sociodemographic group, designation of safety-net ED, and trends in ambulatory care-sensitive conditions. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Publicly available ED visit data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) from 1997 through 2007 were stratified by age, sex, race, ethnicity, insurance status, safety-net hospital classification, triage category, and disposition. Codes from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9), were used to extract visits related to ambulatory care-sensitive conditions. Visit rates were calculated using annual US Census estimates. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Total annual visits to US EDs and ED visit rates for population subgroups. RESULTS Between 1997 and 2007, ED visit rates increased from 352.8 to 390.5 per 1000 persons (rate difference, 37.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], -51.1 to 126.5; P = .001 for trend); the increase in total annual ED visits was almost double of what would be expected from population growth. Adults with Medicaid accounted for most of the increase in ED visits; the visit rate increased from 693.9 to 947.2 visits per 1000 enrollees between 1999 and 2007 (rate difference, 253.3; 95% CI, 41.1 to 465.5; P = .001 for trend). Although ED visit rates for adults with ambulatory care-sensitive conditions remained stable, ED visit rates among adults with Medicaid increased from 66.4 in 1999 to 83.9 in 2007 (rate difference, 17.5; 95% CI, -5.8 to 40.8; P = .007 for trend). The number of facilities qualifying as safety-net EDs increased from 1770 in 2000 to 2489 in 2007. CONCLUSION These findings indicate that ED visit rates have increased from 1997 to 2007 and that EDs are increasingly serving as the safety net for medically underserved patients, particularly adults with Medicaid.
Cyclic scheduling of multiple tours with multiple frequencies for a single vehicle

This paper discusses a cyclic scheduling problem arising in cyclic inventory routing, in which a single vehicle has to make multiple tours with different frequencies. The objective is to find a minimal makespan schedule in which the vehicle never travels more than 8 hours per day [and] all tours are repeated with constant intervals. A mathematical model and a best-fit insertion heuristic are presented for this problem. Computational experiments show that the heuristic finds the optimal solution for 79 out of 100 randomly generated test instances.
Glomeruli extraction by canny operator with a feedback strategy

This paper proposes an edge detection method by Canny operator with a feedback strategy for glomeruli extraction. As we know, the effect of the Canny operator is determined by three parameters: high threshold, low threshold and standard deviation. To obtain the appropriate parameters for each image, Otsu method is used to set high and low thresholds of Canny operator firstly. And then, to select the optimal standard deviation, a feedback strategy is developed. After parameter selection, Canny operator is applied to our renal biopsy images and experimental results show that some samples can achieve successful extraction and the others result in the discontinuous edges of glomeruli. In the case of the latter, the endpoints in an image should be located and connected to form a whole edge of glomerulus. The experiments have produced the promising results for our samples.
A review and design methodology of preserving piano playing techniques through contactless sensor fusion system

The art of planning the movement of hands in order to produce the desired sound of the piano is one of the important part of piano technique. Different types of sensors have been used in order to capture motion data of piano playing. However, one area in this research had been under-represented, which is finger position and pressure measurement applied by the musician while playing the musical instrument. Research that embark on this area faced a common problem, the sensors used in these research are directly in contact with the pianist, which causes a change of piano playing experience. Because piano playing consists of very delicate interaction between the pianist and the piano, such change of experience may affect the pianistâ€™s performance. These sensors are considered to be intrusive to the piano playing experience. Concluding the challenges faced by current technologies, the proposed solution for this problems should meet few a criteria. The proposed sensor system should be a non-intrusive sensor that remotely monitors the finger and arm position of a pianist. The proposed sensor system should also able to investigate the strategy of finger positioning and arm motion of virtuoso pianists. Since each pianist plays the piano differently, this system could be used for storing and preserving a pianist piano technique. The data of the professional pianist could be shared easily through the internet, users will have access to the information about the technique of a famous pianist, which will provide good references for their piano learning. Furthermore, a piano technique demonstration from teachers could be stored for the use of their students. The stored data could be reproduced by robots performing on an acoustic piano, potentially recreating the same atmosphere of a live piano performance.
Anger and core beliefs in the eating disorders.

OBJECTIVE The link between emotion and eating pathology has long been established, but relatively little is known about the role of anger, partly because the existing literature has tended to concentrate on anger as a unitary construct. Nor is there any understanding of the cognitive factors that drive this affect in the eating disorders. This study had two aims: to determine levels of different facets of anger across eating disorder diagnoses and behaviors; and to investigate whether facets of anger are related to the individual's negative core beliefs. METHOD The sample consisted of 140 women who met DSM-IV criteria for eating disorders, and 50 female control participants (university undergraduates). The women completed self-report questionnaires of anger levels and unhealthy core beliefs, and the presence of bulimic behaviors was recorded at assessment. RESULTS The eating-disordered women had higher levels of state anger and anger suppression, particularly if the diagnosis included bulimic symptoms. Different aspects of anger were associated with specific bulimic behaviors. Unhealthy core beliefs were associated with higher levels of trait anger in both groups but with anger suppression in the clinical women only. DISCUSSION Suggestions are made regarding ways in which state anger and anger suppression might be understood and treated in women with eating disorders.
Sales Promotions System in E-Commerce using Data Mining Techniques

Summary In today's era, there exists a neck-to-neck competition between all the commercial organizations through E-Commerce to increase their sales and earn more profit. In order to gain more and more customer satisfaction each organization offer new schemes and proposals for regular Sales Promotion. For giving proposals and offering new schemes, the executives have to regularly analyze the purchases of the organization in order to find frequently purchased products. An organization can invest only on the group of products which are frequently purchased by its customers. So, it is a crucial Data Mining problem which can be a backbone to solve this problem for executives. This kind of problem lies under Sequential Pattern Mining domain in which we have to find the longest sequence of pattern which occurs frequently in database. In this paper, we suggests using data mining (DM) as a technique to support Sales Promotions System in E-Commerce by using Generalized Sequential Pattern Mining for the scanning and making pair of Item Sets. It is assured that the transactional database by this way can give the largest possible set of items frequently purchased. The Administrator can, thereby, propose a new scheme on this set of items to enable Sales Promotion time to time through E- Commerce.
Implementing Sustainable Public Procurement

For the execution of policies, as well as for its own operations, governments procure goods and services, ranging from paper and pencils to fighter planes, cleaning services and public road works. In the European Union public procurement represents 16% of the gross domestic product. The Dutch national government alone annually spends 10 billion euro on procurement. Governments are increasingly using their authority as a large buyer in the market to compel private organisations to contribute to the achievement of their public objectives (Rolfstam, 2009). Public procurement has thus become a policy instrument to reach societal outcomes. In this research a specific example of how the Dutch national government is trying to achieve an outcome in society via their procurement: sustainable public procurement (SPP) is examined.
Treatment with nerve grafts and aFGF attenuates allodynia caused by cervical root transection injuries.

PURPOSE Nerve root traction injuries induce spinal cord inflammation and lead to neuronal death within days. In the present study, we examined the inflammatory response one week after multiple cervical root transections. METHODS In the transection group, the left cervical roots (C6-8) of rats were cut at the spinal cord junction. In the repair group, transected roots were repaired with nerve grafts and the subsequent application of aFGF and fibrin glue. A sham group had nerve roots exposed without transection. Mechanical allodynia and spinal glial responses were evaluated. RESULTS Allodynia did not differ between the treatment groups on day 2. Rats with transected spinal nerve roots had significantly more allodynia by 7 days, which was associated with IL-1β expression in dorsal and ventral horn astrocytes, and microglia activation. Repair of nerve roots with autologous intercostal nerve grafts and FGF in fibrin glue attenuated the allodynia, reduced IL-1β expression in astroctyes and reduced microglia activation, along with a significant increase in arginase I expression. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated a correlation between an increased number of IL-1β-positive astrocytes and the development of allodynia. Our treatment significantly decreased IL-1β-positive astrocytes, thus preventing the occurrence of neuropathic pain following multiple cervical root injuries.
A profitability analysis of property liability insurers using different distribution systems

The market structure of the property and liability insurance industry has undergone substantial changes in recent years. The American agency system, traditionally the most prevalent method of property and liability insurance distribution, has lost a large portion of its market share to insurers employing other types of marketing systems. The market share of direct writer insurers using salaried employees, exclusive agents, or direct mail systems to distribute their products grew by 17.7 percent between 1975 and 1982, as direct writers increased their share of the property-liability market to 38.6 percent by the end of this period. ' Shifts in market share of this magnitude could affect insurer profitability. To investigate the effects that such market shifts have had upon insurer profitability, this study compares the rates of return earned by property and liability insurers using alternative distribution channels. Previous studies have compared property and liability insurers using alternative distribution systems, but have focused primarily upon insurer cost effectiveness. Studies by Hammond, Melander, and Shilling [9], Joskow [15], Etgar [51, and Johnson, Flanigan, and Weisbart [14] have generally concluded that the operating expenses incurred by American agency insurers were comparatively higher than those incurred by insurers using other distribution methods. These findings could have substantial implications for insurer profitability. If the cost differential between American agency and direct writer insurers is reflected in their relative measures of profitability, one may expect the underwriting returns earned by direct writers to be higher than those earned by American agency insurers.
Research Champions: An Initiative to Improve Use of Research Evidence in Nursing Practice

The implementation of the Research Champions program was an effective strategy to increase the confidence of direct care nurses in research skills, a goal for staff development educators. Postprogram questionnaires conducted at 12 months assessed participants' confidence in specific areas: critique of research manuscripts, comprehension of research statistics, knowledge of the ethics of research, and using research in practice. Data supported that participants' confidence increased in all areas assessed.
Some Principles for Development of New Measures of Human Continuous Performance

Four general criteria to guide the development of new measures of human continuous performance were outlined. These criteria were concerned with the new measure's theoretical implications, statistical adequacy, reliability and validity, and relationship to other measures of performance. The application of these four criteria was discussed in relation to a hypothetical measure of performance. Limitations of this approach for current experimental research were outlined.
Using variety-seeking-based segmentation to study promotional response

The link between variety seeking and promotional response has been of interest to marketing researchers for quite some time. By segmenting consumers according to their variety-seeking needs, researchers have established some interesting results regarding the variation in promotional response across segments. However, the sole basis for segmentation thus far has been unidimensional (e.g., high-and low-variety seekers). This research discusses a unique way to segment consumers based not only on the usual extent (or mean) of variety seeking but also on the intensity (or consistency) of variety-seeking behavior, a new segmentation criterion. The authors conduct an empirical study to test the two-dimensional segmentation scheme and investigate differences in response to a variety of promotions across the segments. The inclusion of the intensity aspect of variety seeking as an additional basis for segmentation has a significant impact on promotional response and offers substantially richer managerial interpretation.
Application of Neural Network on Early Warning System by Rating for the Credit Department of Fishermen Association in Taiwan

This paper applies the Back-Propagation Network (BPN) to build the financial distress prediction models. Empirical results show that the effect of BPN on crisis management mechanisms towards communities' financial institutions in Taiwan is doing quite fine. In addition, the predictability comparison indicates that the highest accuracy is the Primitive BPN (81.1%) in the surveillance system, followed by the Factory BPN (77.85%) and the Ordered Logit (75.9%). Damages and impacts to the fishing community and industry are always far more serious when financial crises occur in the community's financial institutions. Thus, a more accurate financial warning system for governing these financial institutions is needed more than ever. The artificial neural network (ANN) suggested in this study can provide a bankruptcy predictor of financial distress among credit unions.