Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Guide to Non-Disclosure Agreements for Researchers Using Public and Private Sector Sources

This chapter provides a set of guidelines to assist information systems researchers in creating, negotiating, and reviewing nondisclosure agreements, in consultation with appropriate legal counsel. It also reviews the use of nondisclosure agreements in academic research environments from multiple points of view, including the perspectives of both public and private sectors. Active academic researchers, industry practitioners, and corporate legal counsel all provided input into the compiled guidelines. An annotated bibliography and links are provided for further review.
Explaining the dynamics of stagnation: An empirical examination of the North, Wallis and Weingast approach

This paper analyzes periods of economic stagnation in a panel of countries. We test if stagnation episodes are predicted by institutional factors and external/internal shocks, as is implied by recent theoretical contributions, and compare the impacts of these variables with those of traditional macroeconomic variables. We examine the determinants of stagnation episodes using multivariate dynamic linear models, fixed-effects logit models, and dynamic random effects probit models. In addition, we analyze whether the included variables have different impacts on the onset of a stagnation episode than on its continuation. We find that inflation, negative regime changes, real exchange rate undervaluation, financial openness, and trade openness explain the incidence of stagnation spells. Only in the case of trade openness, there is robust evidence of a differential impact; it reduces the probability of falling into a stagnation spell, but has a weaker effect within a spell. All models account for unobserved heterogeneity and exhibit a moderate degree of positive state-dependence.
Differences in structure of mesophase spheres prepared through homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation

Mesophase spheres were prepared through homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation from two coal tar pitches with some and nearly without quinoline insolubles. The pitches suffered thermal condensation in a stainless steel reactor at 440 and 410 for 1 or 7h, respectively. SEM was introduced as a useful tool to detect the structures of the two kinds of mesophase spheres. As a result of the paper, it was found that the structure of mesophase spheres prepared through homogeneous nucleation was Brooks-Taylor type, which is consistent with the analysis result of optical microscopy. Whereas, the structures of the heterogeneous nucleation mesophase spheres were complex, which were parallel in parts of the structure.
Fluorescence-based Measurement of Store-operated Calcium Entry in Live Cells: from Cultured Cancer Cell to Skeletal Muscle Fiber

Store operated Ca(2+) entry (SOCE), earlier termed capacitative Ca(2+) entry, is a tightly regulated mechanism for influx of extracellular Ca(2+) into cells to replenish depleted endoplasmic reticulum (ER) or sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca(2+) stores. Since Ca(2+) is a ubiquitous second messenger, it is not surprising to see that SOCE plays important roles in a variety of cellular processes, including proliferation, apoptosis, gene transcription and motility. Due to its wide occurrence in nearly all cell types, including epithelial cells and skeletal muscles, this pathway has received great interest. However, the heterogeneity of SOCE characteristics in different cell types and the physiological function are still not clear. The functional channel properties of SOCE can be revealed by patch-clamp studies, whereas a large body of knowledge about this pathway has been gained by fluorescence-based intracellular Ca(2+) measurements because of its convenience and feasibility for high-throughput screening. The objective of this report is to summarize a few fluorescence-based methods to measure the activation of SOCE in monolayer cells, suspended cells and muscle fibers. The most commonly used of these fluorescence methods is to directly monitor the dynamics of intracellular Ca(2+) using the ratio of F(340nm;) and F(380nm;) (510 nm for emission wavelength) of the ratiometric Ca(2+) indicator Fura-2. To isolate the activity of unidirectional SOCE from intracellular Ca(2+) release and Ca(2+) extrusion, a Mn(2+) quenching assay is frequently used. Mn(2+) is known to be able to permeate into cells via SOCE while it is impervious to the surface membrane extrusion processes or to ER uptake by Ca(2+) pumps due to its very high affinity with Fura-2. As a result, the quenching of Fura-2 fluorescence induced by the entry of extracellular Mn(2+) into the cells represents a measurement of activity of SOCE. Ratiometric measurement and the Mn(+2) quenching assays can be performed on a cuvette-based spectrofluorometer in a cell population mode or in a microscope-based system to visualize single cells. The advantage of single cell measurements is that individual cells subjected to gene manipulations can be selected using GFP or RFP reporters, allowing studies in genetically modified or mutated cells. The spatiotemporal characteristics of SOCE in structurally specialized skeletal muscle can be achieved in skinned muscle fibers by simultaneously monitoring the fluorescence of two low affinity Ca(2+) indicators targeted to specific compartments of the muscle fiber, such as Fluo-5N in the SR and Rhod-5N in the transverse tubules.
Uncertainty in bidding for product-service systems: the influence of competition on decision making

: This research investigates what impact the existence of competition has on the pricing decision for Product-Service Systems (PSS) under uncertainty. PSS provision is an increasingly important area for many businesses and competition increases cognitive pressures on providers even further. We present an empirical study with industrial experts from the defence and aerospace sector, in cost estimation and bidding. The study consisted of an experimental set-up via two questionnaires which differed in the existence of competition in the bidding scenario. The findings showed that bidding decision makers changed their evaluation of the cost estimate due to the introduction of competition but kept their evaluations of the profit margin and price bids constant. Furthermore, the participants listed the relevant sources of uncertainty that influenced their decision-making process. This research contributes to the literature in two ways. First, our findings showed that predictions from current theory regarding decision-making of cost estimation and pricing are not confirmed when competitively bidding for PSS. Second, we show uncertainty sources that influenced the decision makers and identified p the importance of internal processes of the PSS provider and environmental uncertainty.
Lectures on the Onsager conjecture

These lectures give an account of recent results pertaining to the celebrated Onsager conjecture. The conjecture states that the minimal space regularity needed for a weak solution of the Euler equation to conserve energy is $1/3$. Our presentation is based on the Littlewood-Paley method. We start with quasi-local estimates on the energy flux, introduce Onsager criticality, find a positive solution to the conjecture in Besov spaces of smoothness $1/3$. We illuminate important connections with the scaling laws of turbulence. Results for dyadic models and a complete resolution of the Onsager conjecture for those is discussed, as well as recent attempts to construct dissipative solutions for the actual equation. The article is based on a series of four lectures given at the 11th school "Mathematical Theory in Fluid Mechanics" in Kacov, Czech Republic, May 2009.
Conformal imaging with a non-contacting microwave antenna array

A model-based, non-contacting microwave imaging system, which allows for an arbitrarily shaped imaging domain to exist within the antenna array, has been developed using our Gauss-Newton iterative image reconstruction approach based on a hybrid of the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) methods. A new feature has been introduced to conform to the reconstructed field of view exactly to the coupling medium/object interface. This facilitates deployment of the reconstruction parameters solely to the zone occupied by the object, potentially improving resolution. Enhancements using this technique have been demonstrated in both simulations and phantom experiments.
Forecasting Call Arrivals to Call Center of a Telecommunication Call Centre in Sri Lanka

Call centers (which is also known as Customer care units) have become one of the increasingly popular topics in today’s society since it helps to develop a good interaction between customers and the company. One of the most important decisions making the task for the call centers is determining the appropriate number of staff officers to meet the demand for ensuring customer satisfaction while minimizing the service cost. For that, it is important to identify the accurate predictions on call arrivals. This study is focused on developing a model for the call arrival data of a major call center of a telecommunication company in Sri Lanka with the purpose of getting precise predictions of hourly call arrival count. The mixed model approach is used in this study for model the call arrival data by incorporating both the fixed and random effects which affect to the call arrival count. For confirming the accuracy of the mixed model, here it included the comparison of the mixed model with the model with only fixed effects. And the mixed model which contains the day of week and hour of the day as fixed effects and daily volume deviation and hourly random deviation as random effects is identified as the precise model for predicting the call arrival count of the call center. Keywords; Call Center; Call Arrivals; Fixed Effects Model; Mixed Effects Model
Information Diffusion in Analyst Portfolios

I document significant return and forecast revision predictability across firms sharing common analyst coverage, which suggests that information flows slowly within analyst portfolios. Stock prices even exhibit delayed responses to news from smaller firms and firms from other industries. Analyst inattention leads to stronger forecast and return predictability, which highlights the role of analysts as messengers of information across fundamentally connected stocks. Finally, the common analyst return effect is distinct from industry momentum, as well as other known cross-asset momentum anomalies.
Rating neurologic impairment in multiple sclerosis

One method of evaluating the degree of neurologic impairment in MS has been the combination of grades (0 = normal to 5 or 6 = maximal impairment) within 8 Functional Systems (FS) and an overall Disability Status Scale (DSS) that had steps from 0 (normal) to 10 (death due to MS). A new Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) is presented, with each of the former steps (1,2,3 … 9) now divided into two (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 … 9.5). The lower portion is obligatorily defined by Functional System grades. The FS are Pyramidal, Cerebellar, Brain Stem, Sensory, Bowel & Bladder, Visual, Cerebral, and Other; the Sensory and Bowel & Bladder Systems have been revised. Patterns of FS and relations of FS by type and grade to the DSS are demonstrated.
Apodized Waveguide Grating Couplers for Efficient Coupling to Optical Fibers

We describe a shallow-etched diffractive waveguide grating coupler which achieves efficient coupling between single-mode fiber and a silicon-on-insulator optical waveguide. By the appropriate choice of waveguide/grating thicknesses and varying the coupling strength of the grating coupler via tailoring its fill factor to optimize the mode matching, a coupling loss of only 1.2 dB was obtained for each fiber/silicon waveguide interface. The coupling strength and effective refractive index of grating with different fill factors were also characterized to confirm the design simulations. The back reflection was suppressed by varying the coupling strength, leading to further enhancement of the coupling efficiency.
Anatomical entity mention recognition at literature scale

Motivation: Anatomical entities ranging from subcellular structures to organ systems are central to biomedical science, and mentions of these entities are essential to understanding the scientific literature. Despite extensive efforts to automatically analyze various aspects of biomedical text, there have been only few studies focusing on anatomical entities, and no dedicated methods for learning to automatically recognize anatomical entity mentions in free-form text have been introduced. Results: We present AnatomyTagger, a machine learning-based system for anatomical entity mention recognition. The system incorporates a broad array of approaches proposed to benefit tagging, including the use of Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)- and Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO)-based lexical resources, word representations induced from unlabeled text, statistical truecasing and non-local features. We train and evaluate the system on a newly introduced corpus that substantially extends on previously available resources, and apply the resulting tagger to automatically annotate the entire open access scientific domain literature. The resulting analyses have been applied to extend services provided by the Europe PubMed Central literature database. Availability and implementation: All tools and resources introduced in this work are available from http://nactem.ac. uk/anatomytagger. Contact: sophia.ananiadou@manchester.ac. uk Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Lessons From Existing Business Process Hierarchies for Building a New One for Trac

A process hierarchy has the advantage of giving the business a holistic view at all times, promoting a common terminology for inter-organization communication, maintaining customer-centric focus, and enabling benchmarking with industry best-practices. Today, the same kind of eciency is needed in public sector where government oers services like trac, water, energy and public safety to citizens. Here, a government not only needs to communicate with its own agencies but also external stake holders like citizens, businesses and international organizations. However, despite its success in business sphere, business process hierarchies are not available in public areas like trac. In this paper, we rst articulate design principles
Application of the Learning Curve Analysis to the LHC Main Dipole Production: First Assessment

About two third of the LHC main dipoles have been delivered by the three suppliers charged of the production. The training of the staff, mostly hired just for this manufacture, and the natural improvement of the procedures with the acquired experience, decrease naturally the time necessary for the assembly of a unit. The aim of this paper is to apply methodologies like the cost-based learning curves and the time-based learning curves to the LHC Main Dipole comparing the estimated learning percentage to the ones experienced in other industries. This type of analysis, still in a preliminary phase and here applied to about 40% of the total production of the LHC magnets that will end by 2006, shows that our production has a relatively high learning percentage and it is similar to aerospace and complex machine tools for new models. Therefore with the LHC project, accelerator magnets seem to have reached industrial maturity and this production can be used as bench mark for other large scientific projects implying series production
MicroRNA miR‐8 regulates multiple growth factor hormones produced from Drosophila fat cells

Metabolic organs such as the liver and adipose tissue produce several peptide hormones that influence metabolic homeostasis. Fat bodies, the Drosophila counterpart of liver and adipose tissues, have been thought to analogously secrete several hormones that affect organismal physiology, but their identity and regulation remain poorly understood. Previous studies have indicated that microRNA miR‐8, functions in the fat body to non‐autonomously regulate organismal growth, suggesting that fat body‐derived humoral factors are regulated by miR‐8. Here, we found that several putative peptide hormones known to have mitogenic effects are regulated by miR‐8 in the fat body. Most members of the imaginal disc growth factors and two members of the adenosine deaminase‐related growth factors are up‐regulated in the absence of miR‐8. Drosophila insulin‐like peptide 6 (Dilp6) and imaginal morphogenesis protein‐late 2 (Imp‐L2), a binding partner of Dilp, are also up‐regulated in the fat body of miR‐8 null mutant larvae. The fat body‐specific reintroduction of miR‐8 into the miR‐8 null mutants revealed six peptides that showed fat‐body organ‐autonomous regulation by miR‐8. Amongst them, only Imp‐L2 was found to be regulated by U‐shaped, the miR‐8 target for body growth. However, a rescue experiment by knockdown of Imp‐L2 indicated that Imp‐L2 alone does not account for miR‐8's control over the insect's growth. Our findings suggest that multiple peptide hormones regulated by miR‐8 in the fat body may collectively contribute to Drosophila growth.
Improvement of Competitive Advantage through Knowledge Management Capabilities in Iran’s Steel Industry: A Conceptual Model

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of knowledge management capabilities in improvement of competitive advantage. 370 experts and managers of steel companies who were familiar with knowledge management systems were randomly selected. Data were collected using a questionnaire that measured 5 components, i.e. structure, culture, skills, technology, and knowledge management process. Data were analyzed in AMOS using structural equation modeling. The propose model consisted of 10 first-order constructs and 2 second-order structures, and confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine model fit and construct validity. Survey results supported the literature and showed that there are 3 key KM capabilities: technology infrastructure, social infrastructure, and KM process. Technology infrastructure refers to information technology (IT), which is used to support KM activities. Social infrastructure included cultural infrastructure, structural infrastructure, and people infrastructure (t-shaped skills). Finally, KM processes included discovery, acquisition, development, sharing, application, and protection of knowledge.
Protection by cholesterol‐extracting cyclodextrins: a role for N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate receptor redistribution

Cyclodextrins (CDs) are cyclic oligosaccharides composed of a lipophilic central cavity and a hydrophilic outer surface. Some CDs are capable of extracting cholesterol from cell membranes and can affect function of receptors and proteins localized in cholesterol‐rich membrane domains. In this report, we demonstrate the neuroprotective activity of some CD derivatives against oxygen–glucose deprivation (OGD), N‐methyl‐d‐aspartic acid (NMDA) and glutamate in cortical neuronal cultures. Although all CDs complexed with NMDA or glutamate, only β‐, methylated β‐ and sulfated β‐CDs displayed neuroprotective activity and lowered cellular cholesterol. Only CDs that lowered cholesterol levels redistributed the NMDA receptor NR2B subunit, PSD‐95 (postsynaptic density protein 95 kDa) and neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) from Triton X‐100 insoluble membrane domains to soluble fractions. Cholesterol repletion counteracted the ability of methylated β‐CD to protect against NMDA toxicity, and reversed NR2B, PSD‐95 and nNOS localization to Triton X‐100 insoluble membrane fraction. Surprisingly, neuroprotective CDs had minimal effect on NMDA receptor‐mediated increases in intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i), but did suppress OGD‐induced increases in [Ca2+]i. β‐CD, but not Mβ‐CD, also caused a slight block of NMDA‐induced currents, suggesting a minor contribution to neuroprotection by direct action on NMDA receptors. Taken together, data suggest that cholesterol extraction from detergent‐resistant microdomains affects NMDA receptor subunit distribution and signal propagation, resulting in neuroprotection of cortical neuronal cultures against ischemic and excitotoxic insults. Since cholesterol‐rich membrane domains exist in neuronal postsynaptic densities, these results imply that synaptic NMDA receptor subpopulations underlie excitotoxicity, which can be targeted by CDs without affecting overall neuronal Ca2+ levels.
Plant fecundity and seed dispersal in spatially heterogeneous environments: models, mechanisms and estimation

1 Plant fecundity and seed dispersal often depend on environmental variables that vary in space. Hence, plant ecologists need to quantify spatial environmental effects on fecundity and dispersal. 2 We present an approach to estimate and model two types of spatial environmental effects: source effects cause fecundity and dispersal to vary as a function of a source's local environment, whereas path effects depend on all environments a seed encounters during dispersal. Path effects are described by first transforming physical space so that areas of low seed permeability are enlarged relative to others, and then evaluating dispersal kernels in this transformed ‘movement space’. 3 Models for source and path effects are embedded into the established inverse modelling (IM) framework. This enables the statistical estimation of environmental effects from easily available data on the spatial distribution of seeds, seed sources and environmental covariates. 4 The presented method is applied to data from a well‐studied population of the wind‐dispersed Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis). We use local tree density as an environmental covariate, model fecundity as a function of a tree's basal area, and consider four dispersal kernels: WALD (a closed‐form mechanistic model for seed dispersal by wind), log‐normal, exponential power and 2Dt. 5 The inclusion of source and path effects of tree density markedly improves IM performance. IM analyses and independent data agree in the parameter range of the mechanistic WALD kernel and in suggesting weak negative density‐dependence of fecundity. Of 64 IMs considered, the best four involve the WALD kernel and negative source effects on its shape parameter. The best IM predicts that increasing tree density at the source shortens median dispersal distance while enhancing long‐distance dispersal (LDD). Additionally, path effects lead to lower seed permeability of high density areas. These results shed light on the mechanisms by which environmental variation affects fecundity and dispersal of P. halepensis. Moreover, the predicted density‐dependent dispersal causes a pronounced lag‐phase in simulations of population spread. 6 Synthesis. The presented method can quantify environmental effects on fecundity and dispersal in a wide range of study systems. The movement space concept may furthermore promote a unified understanding of how various organisms move through spatially heterogeneous environments.
(Acetylacetonato-κ2 O,O′)chloridotrimethanolatoniobium(V)

In the title compound, [Nb(CH3O)3(C5H7O2)Cl], the NbV atom is coordinated by two O atoms from the chelating acetylacetonate ligand, three O atoms from the methanolate groups and one chloride ligand. The octahedral environment around niobium is slightly distorted with Nb—O distances in the range 1.8603 (15)–2.1083 (15) Å and an Nb—Cl distance of 2.4693 (9) Å. The O—Nb—O angles vary between 80.74 (6) and 100.82 (7)°, while the trans Cl—Nb—O angle is 167.60 (5)°. There are no hydrogen bonds observed, only an intermolecular C—H⋯O interaction.