Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tiller Development in Salt‐Stressed Wheat

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L. emend. Thell.) grain yields are highly dependent upon the number of spike-bearing tillers produced per plant. Salinity, drought, and other environmental stresses can greatly affect the development and viability of tillers. We determined the effects of soil salinity on the occurrence and rate of tiller development and the incidence of tiller abortion in spring wheat cultivars, Anza and Yecora Rojo. Plants were grown in Pachappa fine sandy loam soil (mixed, thermic, Mollic Haploxeralf) in outdoor lysimeters. Three salinity treatments were imposed by irrigating with waters containing equal weights of NaCl and CaCl 2 (electrical conductivities of ≃ 1, 12, or 18 dS m −1 ). Salinity significantly decreased the number of primary and secondary tillers in both cultivars [. ]
Expression pattern of HSP25 in mouse preimplantation embryo: Heat shock responses during oocyte maturation

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are known to play an important role not only in various stress conditions such as exposure to heat shock, but also in normal development and/or differentiation. The role of small heat shock proteins such as HSP25 in early embryo development remains largely unknown. In the present study, we examined temporal and spatial expression patterns of HSP25 during mouse preimplantation embryo development. Reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) showed that hsp25 mRNA was detected in unfertilized eggs. Hsp25 mRNA was induced by zygotic gene activation at 2‐cell stage, decreased slightly at 4‐cell, and re‐increased at morula, with the highest level at blastocyst stage. Interestingly, another form of hsp25 variant of which 156 bp (52 a.a.) was truncated within the exon1 region was observed in all stages of preimplantation embryos. We also investigated the sub‐cellular localization of HSP25 by fluorescence immunocytochemistry. HSP25 was detected in the cytoplasm under normal developmental condition. While acute heat shock (at 43°C for 30 min) caused no significant changes in the sub‐cellular localization of HSP25 in the developing mouse embryos, chronic heat shock (at 43°C for 3 hr) resulted in a denser immunostaining of HSP25 in the nucleus than in the cytoplasm, indicating a nuclear translocation of HSP25 by heat shock. As hsp25 mRNA was detected in the unfertilized egg as a maternal transcript, we examined the expression of hsp25 mRNA with RT‐PCR during oocyte maturation under normal and heat shock conditions. Hsp25 mRNA was detected at GV (germinal vesicle)‐, GVBD (germinal vesicle breakdown)‐, and MII (metaphase II)‐oocytes. The expression of hsp25 mRNA was increased markedly by both acute (for 30 min and 1 hr) and chronic (for 4 hr) heat shock, but returned to the basal level during recovery from heat shock in a time‐dependent manner, suggesting a thermo‐protective role of HSP25. In contrast to preimplantation embryos, HSP25 was detected both in the cytoplasm and the nucleus except for the nucleolus, and the cellular localization was not altered by heat shock. Finally, we investigated the effect of heat shock on oocyte maturation. When GV‐oocytes were exposed to acute heat shock (at 43°C for 15 min to 1 hr), they underwent the GVBD and the PB (polar body) emission successfully. However, under more stringent heat shock conditions (at 43°C for 2–4 hr), most oocytes were arrested at the GV‐stage, and the first PB was not developed, indicating that chronic heat shock might be inhibitory to the mouse oocyte maturation. Taken together, these findings suggest that HSP25 is important for mouse preimplantation embryo development and oocyte maturation. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 61: 3–13, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Consequences of Selection on Muscle Composition. A Comparative Study on Gracilis Muscle in Wild and Domestic Pigs

European domestic pigs are derived from the European wild pig by genetic selection and differ in their muscular‐growth ability. Thus, it was the aim of this study to investigate the consequences of genetic selection on muscle composition and fibre size in the gracilis muscle. Fibre typing based on the ATPase reaction revealed that this muscle in wild pigs is composed mainly of type‐I and ‐IIa fibres, whereas, in domestic pigs, type‐IIb fibres were predominant. For all fibre types, domestic pigs had about threefold larger fibres than wild pigs. Type‐I fibres tended to be the smallest fibres in domestic pigs, but the largest fibres in wild pigs, which may be due to long‐term training effects in the free‐ranging animals. Giant fibres as an indicator of degeneration were obvious only in the domestic‐pig samples. Their occurrence, as well as the larger fibre size and the predominance of type‐IIb fibres in domestic pigs, may be ascribed to high concentrations of growth hormone. It is concluded that selection for muscular growth may favour metabolic dysbalances within the muscle and, therefore, degenerative processes.
Islamic hospitality in the UAE: indigenization of products and human capital

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges faced by the hospitality industries in developing an Islamic hospitality identity and indigenous styles of management, particularly in the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – especially Dubai. It also aims to identify and comprehend the socio‐cultural implications of Islamic hospitality in terms of products and marketing.Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual‐based paper critically reviews and amalgamates a diverse range of literature concerning Islamic hospitality (and tourism), Arab management and leadership qualities, human capital and nationalization of employment, industry skills and educational directives in hospitality and destination and product strategies.Findings – The work critically accounts for the changing nature of skills needed by localised hospitality managers and the industry in general, especially to keep pace with dynamic customer demands and an increasingly sophisticated market and consumer. The outcome of.
Light and carrier collection management (LCCM) cell architechures: Some configuration comparisons

Single junction a-Si:H solar cells with various configurations of sub-wavelength features were explored based on the material composition of the nano-elements, the absorber thickness, and the direction of light application. Cell performance and the interplay among photonic, plasmonic, and the absorber thickness effects are shown to vary dramatically depending on the architecture. An example configuration of LCCM cells showed the Jsc was changed less than 3% as the absorber thickness was reduced in half (from 400nm to 200nm).
Analyzing transit service quality evolution using decision trees and gender segmentation

The analysis of service quality in public transportation has become very popular in the last few years, when transport planners and managers have begun to focus all their efforts on a continuous improvement of the service quality. Knowing the passengers’ perceptions about different characteristics describing the service allows transport managers to decide where they have to apply their actions. However, passengers’ perceptions and requirements about public transport services are very heterogeneous among users, and also over the time. Segmentation is normally carried out in order to reduce this heterogeneity, and with an annually or six-monthly frequency, detailed analysis are performed in order to identify the most significant changes in passengers’ opinions. In this research work, a segmentation based on the gender of passengers is developed, in order to discover and compare the key factors affecting the perceptions of men and women about the quality of service. Data from three consecutive Customer Satisfaction Surveys (2009–2011) developed in the metropolitan transit service of Granada (Spain) are used, and the evolution of the most influence factors for men and women across the years is shown. For this purpose, a novel methodology for the analysis of service quality is presented. Decision Trees, and particularly the CART algorithm, has been applied. This is a non-parametric technique, with no pre-defined underlying relationship between the target (dependent) variable and the predictors (independent variables), which has several advantages over parametric models. The main results shown that for men the most influence variable changes among Safety, Punctuality and Timetable, while for women, the key factor varies among Speed, Frequency, and Timetable.
Determinants of fair value financial instrument and share- based payment disclosure patterns of Australian listed firms

This paper investigates the extent of mandatory Fair Value Financial Instrument Disclosures and Fair Value Share-Based Payment Disclosures in the first full year annual report prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards of the top 100 Australian listed companies. The results demonstrate that internationalisation is a factor which is significantly and positively associated with fair value share-based payment disclosure patterns and the strength of corporate governance structure and leverage are positively and significantly associated with fair value financial instrument disclosure patterns. This paper contributes to an understanding of the extent and rationale behind Australian listed firms' fair value disclosure practices.
Unseasonal Transmission of H3N2 Influenza A Virus During the Swine-Origin H1N1 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The initial wave of swine-origin influenza A virus (pandemic H1N1/09) in the United States during the spring and summer of 2009 also resulted in an increased vigilance and sampling of seasonal influenza viruses (H1N1 and H3N2), even though they are normally characterized by very low incidence outside of the winter months. To explore the nature of virus evolution during this influenza “off-season,” we conducted a phylogenetic analysis of H1N1 and H3N2 sequences sampled during April to June 2009 in New York State. Our analysis revealed that multiple lineages of both viruses were introduced and cocirculated during this time, as is typical of influenza virus during the winter. Strikingly, however, we also found strong evidence for the presence of a large transmission chain of H3N2 viruses centered on the south-east of New York State and which continued until at least 1 June 2009. These results suggest that the unseasonal transmission of influenza A viruses may be more widespread than is usually supposed.
Comparison of electrical velocimetry and transpulmonary thermodilution for measuring cardiac output in piglets

Background: Monitoring of cardiovascular function is essential during major pediatric and pediatric cardiac surgery. Invasive monitoring of cardiac output (CO) and oxygen delivery is expensive and sometimes associated with adverse events. Therefore, we investigated the accuracy of a new noninvasive CO monitoring device using electrical velocimetry (EV) in comparison with the more invasive transpulmonary thermodilution (TPTD) method.
Integrated resonance-enhanced variable optical delay lines

A wide-tuning-range optical delay line is demonstrated in high (2%) index contrast waveguides. This device integrates four-stage ring resonator all-pass filters (APFs) with cascaded fixed spiral-type delay waveguides; each fixed delay path varies in length by a factor of two from the previous stage. A 2/spl times/2 switch separates each fixed delay and the tunable parts of the delay line. The APF allows for continuous delay tuning. This device enables coherent switching and continuous tuning ranges up to 2.56 ns.
Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector: Opportunities for Research

The field of strategic leadership, or the study of how top-level leaders influence organizational performance, has not yet been widely extended to the nonprofit sector. Prior research on nonprofit leadership suggests strategic leadership theory is applicable in nonprofit organizations. However, the exercise of nonprofit strategic leadership may differ from that found in the for-profit sector. Drawing from the literature on both strategic leadership and nonprofit leadership, propositions are offered to explain the ways in which nonprofit strategic leadership contributes to organizational performance. Propositions developed to explain organizational performance concern learning capacity, capacity for change, managerial wisdom, organizational context, organizational innovation, and mission trajectory.
Positioning of Fast-Food Outlets in Two Regions of North America: A Comparative Study Using Correspondence Analysis

ABSTRACT In recent years, a major food consumption trend in North America is that more people are eating more meals outside their homes. It is predicted that this trend will accelerate in the future. As a result, fast-food markets will offer greater growth opportunities for marketers. Along with the socio-economic, demographic and behavioral changes, consumer demand for eating out and purchasing of fast foods has drastically changed. The comparative study presented here investigates consumers' perceptions of and preferences for fast-food restaurants in the U.S. and Canada. The results of this study can have very important implications for developing marketing strategies and targeting promotional efforts. Findings of the study offer need-oriented type of marketing strategies for both franchisors and franchisees in the North American fast-food industry to enable them to be more competitive in this fast-changing business environment.
Impact of the IFRS Adoption in the Value-Relevance of Intangible Intensive Firms' Accounting Reports: Empirical Evidence from Latin America

This paper investigates the effects of the IFRS adoption in the value-relevance of accounting reports, making stress upon the impact on intangible intensive firms. I operationalized value-relevance through a share price regression based on Ohlson’s (1995) model and used a sample of 304 firms from Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru for the period 2006-2013. I report two main findings. First, accounting reports have lost value-relevance after the IFRS adoption in the four countries researched. And second; after the IFRS adoption, the value-relevance for intangible intensive firms’ accounting information decreased in Brazil (which did not fully adopted IAS 38) but increased in Mexico. Although the period researched coincides with the global financial crisis (2009), I included research design features to mitigate this effect.
Dynamic identity-based single password anti-phishing protocol

In the password-based authentication, password reuse rate increases because the users tend to use the same password with more and more accounts. An average user finds it difficult to remember several complex passwords and hence it is difficult to prevent phishing and dictionary attacks. In 2007, Gouda et al. proposed a single password protocol for HTTP authentication that allows the user to choose a single password of his choice for multiple online accounts on different web servers. It provides to the user the flexibility of changing his password for all accounts on different web servers. However, we found that Gouda et al.'s protocol is not secure against offline dictionary attack, denial of service attack and man-in-the-middle attack in the presence of an active attacker. An improvement to Gouda et al.'s protocol is proposed that resists offline dictionary attack and denial of service attack but cannot resists man-in-the-middle attack. Moreover, it is found that Gouda et al.'s protocol is not repairable for man-in-the-middle attack. In this paper, we present a new single password-based anti-phishing protocol that resolves aforementioned problems and is secure against different possible attacks. In this protocol, the client machine's browser generates a dynamic identity and a dynamic password for each login request to the server. The dynamic identity and dynamic password will be different for the same client in different sessions of the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. The client's password verifier information for different online accounts is stored on the server protected with a hash function, nonce value and the private key of the server. The proposed protocol makes financial transactions more secure on the web as it is practical and efficient. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Exploring fine-grained sentiment values in online product reviews

We hypothesise that it is possible to determine a fine-grained set of sentiment values over and above the simple three-way positive/neutral/negative or binary Like/Dislike distinctions by examining textual formatting features. We show that this is possible for online comments about ten different categories of products. In the context of online shopping and reviews, one of the ways to analyse consumers' feedback is by analysing comments. The rating of the “like” button on a product or a comment is not sufficient to understand the level of expression. The expression of opinion is not only identified by the meaning of the words used in the comments, nor by simply counting the number of “thumbs up”, but it also includes the usage of capital letters, the use of repeated words, and the usage of emoticons. In this paper, we investigate whether it is possible to expand up to seven levels of sentiment by extracting such features. Five hundred questionnaires were collected and analysed to verify the level of “like” and “dislike” value. Our results show significant values on each of the hypotheses. For consumers, reading reviews helps them make better purchase decisions but we show there is also value to be gained in a finer-grained sentiment analysis for future commercial website platforms.
Isolation and Culture of Primary Mouse Retinal Pigment Epithelial (RPE) Cells with Rho-Kinase and TGFβR-1/ALK5 Inhibitor

Background Primary RPE cells could be a reliable model for representing in vivo status of RPE compared with cell lines. We present a protocol for in vitro isolation and culture of primary RPE cells from C57BL mice. Material/Methods We used C57BL mice ages 7 days to 4 months. The RPE layer was separated from the neural retina layer by digestion with 2% Dispase for 45 min and scraped off from the choroid after 25-min incubation in 37°C. Collected RPE sheets were gently pipetted up into smaller sheets. RPE sheets were transferred into well plates and cultured in vitro for 2 weeks. To inhibit epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of RPE cells, we used Y27632 and Repsox to treat cultured primary RPE cells. Results RPE cells isolated from C57BL mice maintained pigmented and hexagonal morphology in culture. However, long-term in vitro culture lead to the periphery cells of a RPE sheet becoming mesenchymal-like cells. In contrast to the control group, Y27632 and Repsox, which are inhibitors of Rho-kinase or TGFβR-1/ALK5, promoted primary RPE cells to maintain epithelial-like morphology and eventually become confluent. Conclusions RPE cells isolated from C57BL mice could be a powerful cell model to study the biological function of RPE. Especially, C57BL mice with different defective genetic background resulting in ocular diseases, would expand the genome type of RPE cells. The method presented here could be an efficient and applicable technique to obtain large numbers of primary RPE cells that maintain some characteristics of in vivo RPE.
OGD Heartbeat: Cities’ Commitment to Open Data

This paper develops and tests a theoretical model, which proposes to examine cities’ commitment to the concept of open government data (OGD) according to three typical levels. Level 1, Way of Life, indicates high commitment to OGD; Level 2, On the Fence, represents either a low or erratic commitment; Level 3, Lip Service, refers to either scarce or no commitment. This study shows that these types exhibit distinct behavior in four key indicators: (1) Rhythm, (2) Coverage, (3) Categorization, and (4) Feedback. This theoretical framework is examined using longitudinal mixed-method analysis of the OGD behavior of 16 US cities over a period of four years, using a corpus of municipal quantitative metadata and primary qualitative data. This methodology allows us to represent, for the first time, cities’ evolving OGD commitment, or “OGD heartbeat. ”
Measurement and analysis of isotope shifts in 151,153Eu+ from hyperfine spectra.

Isotope shifts in 151,153 Eu + have been measured for four optical transitions between the metastable levels 4f 7 ( 8 S°)5d 9 D° j and the excited levels 4f 7 ( 8 S° 7/2 )6p 3/2 ; J' in a collinear laser and slow-ion-beam apparatus. A phenomenological interpretation and an ab initio calculation have been made and compared with experiment
Open or Closed Innovation? Problem Solving and Governance Choice

Scholars have recently highlighted the promise of open innovation. In this paper we treat open innovation — in it’s different forms and manifestations — as well as internal or closed innovation, as unique governance forms with different benefits and costs. We discuss how each organizational form, whether open or closed, is essentially an instrument for accessing a) different types of communication channels for knowledge sharing, b) different types of incentives, and c) different types of property rights for appropriating value from innovation. We discuss the “problem” as the central unit of analysis for deciding among different forms of governance, whether open or closed, examining in particular the varying capacities of governance forms for supporting alternative forms of solution search. In all, the goal of this paper is to provide a comparative framework for managing innovation, where we delineate and discuss four categories of open innovation governance forms (markets, partnerships, contests and tournaments and user or community innovation) and compare them with each other and with two internal or closed forms of innovation governance (authority and consensus-based hierarchy).
Comparing the Current Effects and Carryover of National-, Regional-, and Local-Sponsor Advertising

ABSTRACT Coordinating and controlling advertising strategy within contractual and administered vertical marketing systems (VMSs) can be a complex task given the number of channel members involved in the process. Quite often thousands of intermediaries are involved at different levels each with their own objectives and areas of responsibility. Conflict within a VMS can arise when dealers/distributors consider the advertising efforts of the sponsoring organization to be ineffective and vice versa. One of the major issues involves how to allocate the advertising budget throughout the VMS so as to generate the greatest return. To this end we report the results of a study comparing the current and lagged effects of national-sponsor advertising to that of local and regional sponsors within one of the more prominent contractual VMS in the United States—the automobile industry. Using a direct aggregation approach to model advertising carryover at both the industry and individual brand level provides useful information for making decisions regarding the allocation of advertising budgets.