Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increase of Extracellular Glutamate and Expression of Fos‐Like Immunoreactivity in the Ventral Tegmental Area in Response to Electrical Stimulation of the Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract: Electrical stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex caused glutamate release in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of freely moving animals. Cathodal stimulation was given through monopolar electrodes in 0.1‐ms pulses at an intensity of 300 µA and frequencies of 4–120 Hz. Glutamate was measured in 10‐min perfusate samples by HPLC coupled with fluorescence detection following precolumn derivatization with o‐phthaldialdehyde/β‐mercaptoethanol. The stimulation‐induced glutamate release was frequency dependent and was blocked by the infusion of the sodium channel blocker tetrodotoxin (10 µM) through the dialysis probe. The stimulation also induced bilateral Fos‐like immunoreactivity in ventral tegmental neurons, with a significantly greater number of Fos‐positive cells on the stimulated side. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the medial prefrontal cortex regulates dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens via its projection to dopamine cell bodies in the VTA.
Fatigue and weight loss predict survival on circadian chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer

Chemotherapy‐induced neutropenia has been associated with prolonged survival selectively in patients on a conventional schedule (combined 5‐fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin [FOLFOX2]) but not on a chronomodulated schedule of the same drugs administered at specific circadian times (chronoFLO4). The authors hypothesized that the early occurrence of chemotherapy‐induced symptoms correlated with circadian disruption would selectively hinder the efficacy of chronotherapy.
Volume and Tone of Environmental Disclosure: A Comparative Analysis of a Corporation and its Stakeholders

Abstract In this paper, we seek to provide a description of disclosures arising from various stakeholder groups in the social sphere. As such, we extend Rodrigue's article “Contrasting Realities: Corporate Environmental Disclosure and Stakeholder-Released Information” (2014. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 27 [1]: 119–149) by conducting a case study to examine and compare corporate and stakeholder communications made over a three-year period. We specifically focus on the volume and tone of environmental disclosures. We explore the topics emphasised by each party in their respective disclosures and analyse their tone by categorising the information as positive, negative or neutral. Through a detailed quantitative analysis, we highlight the differences in how various actors portray the organisation and its activities. We argue that this is of relevance since neither corporate nor stakeholder disclosures are merely passive reflections of reality, but rather, they play a part in constructing, forming and legitimating particular discourses and constructions of worldviews within society. Our findings demonstrate how these disclosures differ with regard to the topics covered and the tone used; hence, the stakeholder disclosures we analysed present an alternative view of the organisation's activities. By systematically analysing and comparing different parties’ disclosures, we contribute to the literature by extending our understanding of stakeholder information releases in the light of corporate disclosures.
Multi-touch for Software Exploration

The design of software systems is often so intricate that no individual can grasp the whole picture. Multi-Touch screen technology combined with 3D software visualization offers a way for software engineers to interact with a software system in an intuitive way. In this paper we present first results on how such emerging technologies can be used to explore software systems.
Operation Strategies in Distribution Systems with High Level PV Penetration

With the tremendous increase in installed capacity of renewable energy resources in Germany, distribution network operators are facing reverse power flows and voltage violations. Different control approaches for controllable network components and distributed energy units exist to maintain a secure and reliable grid operation. This conference contribution gives an overview of the installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity in Germany, the current challenges regarding grid integration of PV and highlights future operation strategies of distribution sections. Based on the experience gained in current and previous research projects, the additional value of controllable PV systems and controllable network devices is emphasized.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) as an enabler for multigenerational living

How can the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) support multigenerational living? In the recent years it could have been observed that the rapidly ageing society is a strong incentive to find new ways to mitigate the risks given by the demographic transformations. An active approach to face these challenges is the concept of multigenerational living, where the exchange of neighborly help within the community based on solidarity is an integral part for the insurance of a supportive system. The need for ICTbased solutions within a multigenerational community cannot be reduced to the quantitative demographic processes. The on-going social changes, success factors of multigenerational living and intergenerational relationships had to be considered. As a result the relevant application areas for ICT were identified as the enhancement of the independence of elderly people, support of organization structures within the community, and the inclusion of external support. Within these areas there is a wide range of existing ICT solutions that can support multigenerational living. For future ICT solutions multigenerational communities can take advantage of the fact that the given social environment may lead to facilitated implementation, especially in regard to the inclusion of elderly people in the information society. This literature review tries to summarize to current results of this subject
‘Sometimes it's fun to play with them first’: girls and boys talking about sexual harassment in Caribbean schools

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative study conducted in four government secondary schools in the Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda on students' experiences at school in relation to sexuality. Both girls and boys experienced a range of anxieties and confusions in relation to sexuality, whilst also seeing (hetero)sexual attraction as an exciting part of schooling. Sexual harassment of girls emerged as a widespread and serious (as well as ‘normalised’) occurrence in all the schools studied. However, the data also showed that girls were far from passive. Instead, girls demonstrated complex and contradictory responses to boys' behaviour due to their own investments in being desirable within discourses of hetero-femininity, as well as the pleasure they gained from their relationships. Both genders would clearly benefit from opportunities to discuss their needs, beliefs and desires regarding sexuality and relationships.
Re‐evaluation of the whey protein/casein ratio of human milk

Total casein subunits as well as whey proteins were quantitated in human milk samples during lactation. Two independent methods were used: precipitation at pH 4.3 in the presence of Ca2+ followed by Kjeldahl analysis and polyacrylamide gradient gel electrophoresis (PAGGE) followed by densitometric scanning. Both methods yielded similar results: casein synthesis is low or absent in early lactation, then increases rapidly and subsequently decreases. The concentration of whey proteins decreases from early lactation and continues to fall. These changes result in a whey protein/casein ratio of about 90: 10 in early lactation, 60: 40 in mature milk and 50: 50 in late lactation. These observations indicate that the synthesis and/or secretion of caseins and whey proteins is regulated by different mechanisms. In addition, the relative proportion of the different β‐ and k‐casein subunits was found to vary throughout lactation.
Study the mumefural change and antioxidant properties during lemon essence making.

Lemon is an important crop in Pingtung (Southern Taiwan), and its price is always low due to the supply exceeds the demand in productive periods, so it is necessary to develop diversified products of lemon. There have plenty of commercial plum essence products in the current market, but the development of lemon essence is still unexplored in the laboratory and in the industry. In this study, lemon is processed by the procedure such as squeezing, residue discard and highly concentrated, and obtain the sticky dark black product. Interestingly, the mumefural, a compound generally recognized having the function of enhancing immune system, was formed during the lemon essence processing. The mumefural content will be increased gradually by increasing heating time with the highest mumefural was found at 10 hr heating time, but the content was decreased at 12 hr heating. It is speculated that prolonged over-heating time will lead to the degradation of mumefural. However, the longer the concentration time, lemon essence had the stronger antioxidant activity, especially in 10 and 12 hours. This finding can be further collaborated with antioxidant compound determination.
Gemcitabine, Paclitaxel, and Piritrexim: A Phase I Study

Piritrexim is a new antifolate that has shown activity in methotrexate-resistant tumors. Gemcitabine is an antimetabolite similar in structure to cytosine arabinoside with early studies demonstrating activity in a variety of cancers. It also has apparent synergistic activity with antifolates from initial work in tumor models. Paclitaxel is an antimicrotubule agent that has a wide spectrum of activity against a variety of solid tumors. The combination of gemcitabine, paclitaxel, and piritrexim was assessed in this phase I trial. Thirty patients were enrolled. The starting doses were piritrexim 25 mg orally twice daily (days 1–4, 15–18), paclitaxel 75 mg/m2 (days 1, 15), and gemcitabine 750 mg/m2 (days 1, 15), which then was escalated in a stepwise fashion. Four patients achieved stable disease while on study, whereas one patient with a poorly differentiated neuroendocrine tumor achieved a partial response. The main toxicity was myelosuppression. The maximum tolerated dose was thought to be piritrexim 25 mg orally three times daily (days 1–4), paclitaxel 150 to 175 mg/m2 (days 1, 15), and gemcitabine 1,000 mg/m2 (days 1, 15). The combination of these new antifolates with paclitaxel and gemcitabine appears safe and should be considered for phase II trials in known responsive tumors such as transitional cell carcinomas.
Intangible Capital Transfer Within Multinationals

This paper provides empirical evidence of the prevalence and importance of intangible capital transfer within multinational corporations (MNCs). Using a unique data set of Korean multinational foreign aliates, I nd that most of the foreign aliates have managers transferred from their parent, while almost half are isolated from the parent in terms of physical trade. Furthermore, the transferred managers are positively associated with labor productivity, while physical trade from the parent is less so. I consider two possibilities for this productivity eect:
Study on Evaluation of Competitivity of Express Enterprises of China

In this paper,in connection with the characteristics of the express industry,we established the evaluation index system of the competitivity of the express enterprises of China.Then using AHP and in connection with survey data,we analyzed the major factors in the evaluation and proposed several suggestions for the cultivation of the express enterprises and the improvement of their competitivity.
Air the anger: investigating online complaints on luxury hotels

Purpose – Given the importance of negative word of mouth and growing number of hotel customers who leave their complaints on the web, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the complaints posted by guests who have stayed at luxury hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.Design/methodology/approach – The dataset for this paper is a compilation of hotel reviews collected from TripAdvisor between November 2010 and January 2011. A thematic analysis was used in order to identify emergent themes from the dataset, which were explored and discussed in relation to the existing literature on complaining behavior as well as the aims of the study. The six phases of analysis outlined in the relevant literature was used to guide data analysis.Findings – Analysis of the 320 scripts produced a total of 1,453 different incidents. Results of the analysis produced 54 different themes. A frequency analysis conducted to rank these 54 themes in terms of how frequently they are stated. Some of the extracted themes and their frequ.
Organizational Knowledge Creation in the Japanese Multinational Corporation: What U.S. Managers Can Learn from Nonaka

This literature review examines the application of Ikujiro Nonaka’s perspective on organizational knowledge creation in the Japanese Multinational Corporation (MNC). Focus is on the SECI model and the concept of ba. Literature published between 1994 and 2009 is synthesized to develop four guidelines for U.S. managers who work in Japanese MNCs, including the need to understand the Japanese view of tacit knowledge conversion and the important role of middle managers in translating top management vision. Knowledge Creation in the Japanese MNC 4 Knowledge Creation in the Japanese MNC 5
An Automatic Method for Constructing Domain-Specific Ontology Resources

Data flow across multiple independent applications and further natural language analysis both require the establishment of a common foundation of terms and relations. Such a foundation can provide in-depth understanding of term equivalence within a domain sublanguage, and serve as a model of concept relations and dependencies. In this paper we discuss a domain-independent, corpus-based method for dictionary-less automatic extraction of ontological knowledge from domain-specific unannotated documents. We present the architecture, algorithms, and results for ONTOSTRUCT—a system that uses machine learning and statistical techniques to analyze text sources, discover terms, link equivalent terms into concepts, and learn both hierarchical and non-hierarchical conceptual relations. We report on ONTOSTRUCT’s results in constructing domain-specific ontological resources and empirical evaluation of their quality.
Initial mass function variations cannot explain the ionizing spectrum of low metallicity starbursts

Aims. Observations of both galaxies in the distant Universe and local starbursts are showing increasing evidence for very hard ionizing spectra that stellar population synthesis models struggle to reproduce. Here we explore the effects of the assumed stellar initial mass function (IMF) on the ionizing photon output of young populations at wavelengths below key ionization energy thresholds. Methods. We use a custom set of binary population and spectral synthesis (BPASS) models to explore the effects of IMF assumptions as a function of metallicity, IMF slope, upper mass limit, IMF power law break mass and sampling. Results. We find that while the flux capable of ionizing hydrogen is only weakly dependent on IMF parameters, the photon flux responsible for the He II and O VI lines is far more sensitive to assumptions. In our current models this flux arises primarily from helium and Wolf-Rayet stars which have partially or fully lost their hydrogen envelopes. The timescales for formation and evolution of both Wolf Rayet stars and helium dwarfs, and hence inferred population age, are affected by choice of model IMF. Even the most extreme IMFs cannot reproduce the He II ionizing flux observed in some high redshift galaxies, suggesting a source other than stellar photospheres. Conclusions. We caution that detailed interpretation of features in an individual galaxy spectrum is inevitably going to be subject to uncertainties in the IMF of its contributing starbursts. We remind the community that the IMF is fundamentally a statistical construct, and that stellar population synthesis models are most effective when considering entire galaxy populations rather than individual objects.
QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PRICE DISCOVERY IN THE NAFTA STOCK MARKETS

In this study I extend the work of Chukwuogor-Ndu and Kasibhatla (2007) who document that the US, Canada and Mexico markets are cointegrated as a result of the North America Free Trade Agreement. I examine the question: what is the proportional contribution to the price discovery of these indexes based on their cointegration. In the international finance literature it is widely assumed that the US market provides the leadership. I find that the US is not always the dominant market in the price discovery when I examine five iShares Exchange Traded Funds which are simultaneously listed in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The ETFs that I use in this study are the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund, the iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund, the iShares COMEX Gold Trust and the iShares S&P 500 Index Fund. The US market is dominant only in the price formation of the Brazil and Gold ETFs whereas the leader in the price formation of the rest of the ETFs is the Canadian market.
Automatic state space decomposition for approximate FSM traversal based on circuit analysis

Exploiting circuit structure is a key issue in the implementation of algorithms for state space decomposition when the target is approximate FSM traversal. Given the gate-level description of a sequential circuit, the information about its structure can be captured by evaluating the affinity between pairs or groups of latches. Two main factors have to be considered in carrying out the structural analysis of a sequential circuit: latch connectivity and latch correlation. The first one takes into account the mutual dependency of each memory element on the others; the second one tells us how related are the functions realized by the logic feeding each latch. In this paper we estimate the affinity of two latches by combining these two factors, and we use this measure to formulate the state space decomposition problem as a graph partitioning problem. We propose an algorithm to automatically determine "good" partitions of the latch set which induce state space decomposition, and we present approximate FSM traversal and logic optimization results for the largest ISCAS'89 sequential benchmarks.
ADAPTIVE OPTIMUM NOTCH FILTER FOR PERIODIC NOISE REDUCTION IN DIGITAL IMAGES

Periodic noises are unwished and spurious signals that create repetitive pattern on images and decreased the visual quality. Firstly, this paper investigates various methods for reducing the effects of the periodic noise in digital images. Then an adaptive optimum notch filter is proposed. In the proposed method, the regions of noise frequencies are determined by analyzing the spectral of noisy image. Then, the repetitive pattern of the periodic noise is produced by applying the corresponding notch pass filter. Finally, an output image with reduced periodic noise is restored by an optimum notch filter method. The results of the proposed adaptive optimum notch filter are compared by the mean and the median filtering techniques in frequency domain. The results show that the proposed filter has higher performances, visually and statistically, and has lower computational cost. In spite of the other compared methods, the proposed filter does not need to tune any parameters.
Cryptosporidium Genotypes in Wildlife from a New York Watershed

ABSTRACT To identify the animal sources for Cryptosporidium contamination, we genotyped Cryptosporidium spp. in wildlife from the watershed of the New York City drinking water supply, using a small-subunit rRNA gene-based PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and DNA sequencing. A total of 541 specimens from 38 species of wildlife were analyzed. One hundred and eleven (20.5%) of the wildlife specimens were PCR positive. Altogether, 21 Cryptosporidium genotypes were found in wildlife samples, 11 of which were previously found in storm runoff in the watershed, and six of these 11 were from storm water genotypes of unknown animal origin. Four new genotypes were found, and the animal hosts for four storm water genotypes were expanded. With the exception of the cervine genotype, most genotypes were found in a limited number of animal species and have no major public health significance.
Applications of Nanotechnology in Dentistry: A Review

Objective: Maintaining the health of oral tissues is a major goal in dentistry. However, limitations in dental materials, instruments, procedures and medications prevent achievement of this goal. Advances in nanotechnology have paved the way to approach this goal. This study reviews the advances on nanotechnology in dentistry. Review of Literatures: In this review study, Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Medline and Cochrane databases were searched for relevant English and Farsi papers from 1981 to 2013. The searched key words were: “nano-characterization”, “antimicrobial agent”, “nano-dentistry”, “nanotechnology”, “nanoparticles”, and “nano-medicine”. Conclusion: Studies indicated extensive applications of nanotechnology in various fields of dentistry such as prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Use of nanoparticles as antimicrobial agents in conjunction with other oral hygiene tools such as toothpastes may prevent many oral and dental conditions. Also, application of nanostructures enables faster and easier detection of oral cancers and assessment of the saliva for presence of viruses, proteins or specific markers. Last but not least,
Micro- and meso-level governance institutional interface in community development : the case of Sinyala community forest resource management in Malawi.

The introduction of democracy in many sub-Saharan African countries in the early 1990s ushered in a new local governance perspective that is hinged on decentralization, emphasizing people-centred and participatory approaches within the Humanist development paradigm. At community level, the implementation of this development approach posed a challenge of synergizing enduring indigenous local governance institutions and the formal institutions. Using the case of Sinyala community forest management in rural Malawi, the paper argues that the introduction of decentralized community based forest management in Sinyala was undermined seriously because it did not adequately engage with and incorporate indigenous community governance institutions and community members’ expectations. As a result, there have been institutional incompatibilities and discontinuities hence disequilibrium between the formal and indigenous local institutions. The paper also shows that community development activities, including the community based forest management, are not properly synergized in Sinyala community because of disjointed initiatives by formal meso-level actors. Given the exogenous nature of the decentralized community based forest management regime, much as its introduction was participatory, the paper notes the increasing levels of dependency and need for incentives in participation among community members in community forest management and indeed many community development activities. To improve community collective action and development within a decentralized framework therefore, this research paper argues that community development efforts need to engage with and build on existing indigenous institutions, provide relevant and appropriate incentives to boost community participation, build and strengthen crosscommunity governance institutions where a common property resource overlaps two or more communities, and implement a coherent community development policy that will synergize community development efforts from different actors at all levels of governance.