Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychosocial Working Conditions in Britain in 2007

SUMMARY Introduction This report presents analysis of 2007 data from an annual series of surveys on psychosocial working conditions which began in 2004. These surveys were set up to monitor changes in the psychosocial working conditions of Demand, Control, Managerial Support, Peer Support, Role, Relationships and Change in British workplaces. These are the working conditions which HSE is aiming to improve amongst British workers by means of employers implementing its Management Standards approach to tackling work-related stress, launched in November 2004. Although HSE has been actively promoting the use of the Management Standards since this launch, a sustained period of encouragement towards uptake began in mid 2006 and focused on target industries with the highest rates of work stress-related ill-health and absence. These target groups, defined using the Standard Industrial Results The survey results from 2004 to 2007 indicate no significant changes across the board in psychosocial working conditions. However, there is a suggestion that in the past 12 months, during which HSE has divested substantial resource into promoting the use of the Management Standards, working conditions are beginning to improve. The only statistically significant increase between 2006 and 2007 was in Role, but with the exception of Relationships each scale increased non-significantly. Survey results indicate a significant fall between 2004 and 2007 in the proportion of British employees reporting their jobs as very or extremely stressful, despite a non-significant increase over the last 12 months. Overall results indicated no significant change between 2004 and 2007 in the proportion of employees who reported initiatives on stress at work, or in the proportion who reported discussing stress with their line manager in the previous 12 months. In both cases around a third of employees reported these. i Conclusions Psychosocial working conditions for British employees have not generally significantly changed between 2004 and 2007. However, there is some suggestion of an improvement beginning to happen. In particular there was a significant improvement in Role scores between 2006 and 2007. Further, as stated in the corresponding report last year, the main effects of the Management Standards for work-related stress should not be expected to emerge until 2007-2008. Results from this year's survey are consistent with this view as we are beginning to see improvements but at this stage these remain non-significant. It is predicted that the continuing promotion of the Management Standards should result in significantly improved psychosocial working conditions by 2008. Both …
A mouse model for direct evaluation of cholera vaccines

Cholera continues to be an important cause of morbidity and mortality in large parts of the developing world and is a significant negative factor for economic development. Vibrio cholerae bacteria of the O1 or O139 serogroup can cause disease due to their ability to colonize the intestine and produce an enterotoxin, cholera toxin (CT). An effective oral vaccine against V. cholerae O1 is available, whereas vaccine against O139 is lacking. Development and pre-clinical evaluation of cholera vaccines have been hampered by the fact that man is the only natural host for V. cholerae. Although various animal models have been described, there exists no convenient and inexpensive model that allows evaluation of vaccine-induced protection against a challenge infection. The main objective of this thesis was to develop a model that allows direct evaluation of the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of cholera vaccine candidates in conventional adult mice. Paper I demonstrates that strong serum and mucosal antibody responses to V. cholerae O1 or O139 lipopolysaccharide (LPS) can be induced in adult mice vaccinated intranasally or orally with either live or formalin-killed bacteria. Standardized intestinal IgA antibody responses estimated using extracts prepared from faecal pellets or from intestinal mucosa were found to correlate significantly, hence validating the use of the more convenient fecal pellets extracts for measuring gut mucosal antibody responses in vaccinated hosts. Paper II describes an adult mouse model for studying intestinal colonization by V. cholerae and associated immune responses. It was shown that oral pre-treatment of mice with streptomycin (Sm) allows intestinal colonization by Sm-resistant V. cholerae O1 or O139 bacteria, and that mice immunized with viable or inactivated V. cholerae as described in Paper I were comparatively refractory to colonization following infection/challenge with the immunizing strain, with protection resulting in accelerated clearance of the challenge organisms correlating inversely with the intestinal IgA anti-LPS response. In paper III this model was further used to evaluate immune responses and protection by orally administered live and killed O1 and O139 whole cell vaccines and the impact of co-administration of CT on the immunogenicity and protective effect. CT proved to be an effective adjuvant, markedly potentiating antibody responses and also increasing the protective effect against both serogroup homologous and heterologous challenge. The results presented in this thesis suggest that the new adult mouse model may be used to broaden our understanding of immune protection against V. cholerae infection, and thus be a useful tool in the pre-clinical evaluation of oral cholera vaccines.
NetVis: A network security management visualization tool based on treemap

With the rapid development of Internet and the expanding application fields of network applications, it is not enough to maintain the network security only depend on those professional network technical administrators. In this paper a novel visualization tool based on treemap, which is called NetVis, is introduced to bind the network security technique and general network management together in an integrated visualization. NetVis is designed in 2D view. The experiments show that NetVis can not only detect the abnormal activities in the network, but also make the network management more intuitive and efficient.
Depletion of SMN by RNA interference in HeLa cells induces defects in Cajal body formation

Neuronal degeneration in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by reduced expression of the survival of motor neuron (SMN) protein. The SMN protein is ubiquitously expressed and is present both in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus where it localizes in Cajal bodies. The SMN complex plays an essential role for the biogenesis of spliceosomal U-snRNPs. In this article, we have used an RNA interference approach in order to analyse the effects of SMN depletion on snRNP assembly in HeLa cells. Although snRNP profiles are not perturbed in SMN-depleted cells, we found that SMN depletion gives rise to cytoplasmic accumulation of a GFP-SmB reporter protein. We also demonstrate that the SMN protein depletion induces defects in Cajal body formation with coilin being localized in multiple nuclear foci and in nucleolus instead of canonical Cajal bodies. Interestingly, the coilin containing foci do not contain snRNPs but appear to co-localize with U85 scaRNA. Because Cajal bodies represent the location in which snRNPs undergo 2′-O-methylation and pseudouridylation, our results raise the possibility that SMN depletion might give rise to a defect in the snRNA modification process.
Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: Medical treatment

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is responsible for significant levels of morbidity and mortality. The estimated cumulative incidence of CTEPH is 2–4% among patients presenting with acute pulmonary thromboembolism. Currently, at the time of CTEPH diagnosis, 37.9% of the patients in an international registry were receiving at least one pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)-targeted therapy. Advanced medical therapy is considered in patients with inoperable disease, as a bridge to pulmonary endarterectomy or in those with persistent or recurrent pulmonary hypertension. PAH-specific medical therapies include endothelin receptor antagonists, phosphodiesterase inhibitors, and prostacyclin analogues. The present article will focus on recent developments in the pharmacological treatment of CTEPH.
Power control for interference avoidance in femtocell network

Femtocell network is a new technology that uses the advantage of an Internet backbone to enhance the cellular coverage in residential or small business areas. However, due to the expected random deployment of the femtocell access point (FAPs), there is a strong probability of interference among the femtocell nodes and between the femtocells and the macrocell nodes. In this paper, an interference enhancement is developed and designed for two tiers macro-femtocell networks. An adaptive power control is calculated based on selecting the minimum interference channel with the optimized channel gain. In the simulation a number of the FAPs, the distance between the macrocell and the femtocell and the path loss between the macrocell node and the FAPs are used as design parameters. The results show a performance enhancement in the interference degradation ratio (DR).
Career intentions of international master students in hospitality and tourism management

Li, Wenjun. M.S., Purdue University, May 2014. Career Intentions of International Master Students in Hospitality and Tourism Management. Major Professor: Howard Adler. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate career intentions of international master’s students in hospitality and tourism management (HTM) in the United States. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 19 participants at two different U.S. institutions. Interview questions were designed to better understand students’ career intentions upon graduation and the determinants behind the plans. Results indicated that student’s career intention should include measures of career decision self-efficacy, academic and career outcome expectations, and career exploration intentions. Unique personal background (e.g., gender and marital status, length of time in the U.S.), industrial working experience (e.g., internships), and multiple external factors (e.g., school counselors, the booming tourism industry in developing countries) increase the diversity of career intentions of the target population
FALPEM: Framework for Architectural-Level Power Estimation and Optimization for Large Memory Sub-Systems

Framework is developed for estimation of power at pre register transfer level (RTL) stage for structured memory sub-systems. Power estimation model is proposed specifically targeting power consumed by clock network and interconnect. The model is validated with VCD-based simulation on back-annotated netlist of an 8 MB memory sub-system used as video RAM (VRAM) for high-end graphics applications. This methodology also forms the basis for low-power exploration driving floor plan choice, gating structure of data, and clock network. We demonstrate 57% reduction in dynamic power by using low-power techniques for the 8 MB VRAM used as frame buffer in a graphics processor. FALPEM can be extended to other applications like processor cache and ASIC designs.
Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl: health risk uncertainties and research directions.

With the way cleared for increased use of the fuel additive methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) in the United States, the issue of possible public health impacts associated with this additive has gained greater attention. In assessing potential health risks of particulate Mn emitted from the combustion of MMT in gasoline, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not only considered the qualitative types of toxic effects associated with inhaled Mn, but conducted extensive exposure-response analyses using various statistical approaches and also estimated population exposure distributions of particulate Mn based on data from an exposure study conducted in California when MMT was used in leaded gasoline. Because of limitations in available data and the need to make several assumptions and extrapolations, the resulting risk characterization had inherent uncertainties that made it impossible to estimate health risks in a definitive or quantitative manner. To support an improved health risk characterization, further investigation is needed in the areas of health effects, emission characterization, and exposure analysis.
Evidence of Climatic Effects in the Annual Rings of Trees

The first substantial comparison between rings and rain with which the author is acquainted was made by the astronomer, J. C. Kapteyn of Holland, in i88o and i88i on oaks in the Rhine region. Professor Kapteyn has recently prepared and published a brief pamphlet on the subject.2 A similar comparison between the growth of the great sequoia (Sequoia gigantea), and rainfall is shown in figure I in which the curve for rainfall is from Huntington,3 from data at Fresno, 70 miles away and 5,000 feet lower in elevation. In spite of widely different conditions there is evident resem-
Support Vector Machines for Prediction and Analysis of Beta and Gamma-turns in Proteins

Tight turns have long been recognized as one of the three important features of proteins, together with alpha-helix and beta-sheet. Tight turns play an important role in globular proteins from both the structural and functional points of view. More than 90% tight turns are beta-turns and most of the rest are gamma-turns. Analysis and prediction of beta-turns and gamma-turns is very useful for design of new molecules such as drugs, pesticides, and antigens. In this paper we investigated two aspects of applying support vector machine (SVM), a promising machine learning method for bioinformatics, to prediction and analysis of beta-turns and gamma-turns. First, we developed two SVM-based methods, called BTSVM and GTSVM, which predict beta-turns and gamma-turns in a protein from its sequence. When compared with other methods, BTSVM has a superior performance and GTSVM is competitive. Second, we used SVMs with a linear kernel to estimate the support of amino acids for the formation of beta-turns and gamma-turns depending on their position in a protein. Our analysis results are more comprehensive and easier to use than the previous results in designing turns in proteins.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Finite-size scaling of the error threshold transition in finite populations

The error threshold transition in a stochastic (i.e. finite population) version of the quasispecies model of molecular evolution is studied using finite-size scaling. For the single-sharp-peak replication landscape, the deterministic model exhibits a first-order transition at , where Q is the probability of exact replication of a molecule of length , and a is the selective advantage of the master string. For sufficiently large population size, N, we show that in the critical region the characteristic time for the vanishing of the master strings from the population is described very well by the scaling assumption , where is an a-dependent scaling function.
Resource Discovery Approach to Support a QoS-aware DHT-Based Caching Architecture

Though widely accepted as a key building block for next-generation large scale decentralized systems, the lack of flexibility of DHTs on efficient non identifier-based lookups is a well-known problem. In this paper, a resource discovery service that tackles the issues identified in a decentralized and distributed DHT-based caching architecture for media content distribution is presented. In the proposed approach, complex queries on dynamic peer resources can be performed. This discovery service is layered over an underlying DHT overlay network which connects all the peers, based on the combination of a spanningtree built bottom-up by mapping DHT peers to their parents, and routing indices which allow peers to efficiently lookup other peers, matching some resource constraints. Measures from simulation as well as from a real implementation are analyzed.
Unexpected Utility: Experimental Tests of Five Key Questions about Preferences over Risk

Experimental work on preferences over risk has typically considered choices over a small number of discrete options, some of which involve no risk. Such experiments often demonstrate contradictions of standard expected utility theory. We reconsider this literature with a new preference elicitation device that allows a continuous choice space over only risky options. Our analysis assumes only that preferences depend on the probability p and prize x; U = u(p; x): We then allow subjects to choose p and x continuously on a linear budget constraint, r1p + r2x = m, so that all prospects with a nonzero expected value are risky. We test five of the most importantly debated questions about risk preferences: rationality, prospect theory asymmetry, the independence axiom, probability weighting, and constant relative risk aversion. Overall, we find that the expected utility model does unexpectedly well.
Sparse Certiﬁcates and Scan-First Search

An algorithm for the parallel construction of k-connectivity certificates for graphs, Scan-First Search, was introduced by Joseph Cheriyan, Ming-Yang Kao, and Ramakrishna Thurimella in their paper Scan-First Search and Sparse Certificates: An Improved Parallel Algorithm for KVertex Connectivity. [2] The following is an attempt to clarify and simplify the concepts and proofs presented in that paper.
Evaluation of California's in-school tobacco use prevention education (TUPE) activities using a nested school-longitudinal design, 2003–2004 and 2005–2006

Background Current legislative language requires the California Department of Public Health, California Tobacco Control Program, to evaluate the effectiveness of the school-based Tobacco Use Prevention Education (TUPE) programme in California every 2 years. The objective of the study was to measure change and to identify the impact of school-based tobacco use prevention education activities on youth smoking prevalence and attitudes over time, spanning two school year surveys (2003–2004 and 2005–2006). Methods Evaluation focused on school-based tobacco use prevention activities in 57 schools (student sample size, n=16 833) that participated in the in-school administration of the 2003–2004 and 2005–2006 California Student Tobacco Surveys. Hierarchical linear models were used to predict student tobacco use and precursors to tobacco use. Results Overall, student tobacco use, intention to smoke, number of friends smoking and perceived smoking prevalence by peers increased as students moved through grades 9 and 10 to grades 11 and 12. TUPE-related activities showed a suggestive association (p=0.06) with reduced rate in student tobacco use between the two surveys after adjusting for other contextual factors such as each school's socioeconomic characteristics. Conclusions TUPE activities appears to be beneficial in reducing tobacco use in California high school students over time. Other contextual factors were important moderating influences on student tobacco use.
Tradeoffs among Delay, Energy and Accuracy of Partial Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to the Recent development in wireless technology, wireless sensor networks attract researchers’ attention because of their applicability in many fields for effective collection of sensing data with low cost. Wireless sensor networks have many applications; some of the applications are military application, environmental application and flood detection. For example, in an environmental application for forest fire detection, the sensor nodes sense the fire information, then transmit or relay the information to base station in a multi-hop way. In wireless sensor networks, energy saving is critical issue as sensor nodes are battery-powered. Here we propose, partial data aggregation as one of the energy saving technique. In this paper, we analyze the tradeoffs among communication delay, energy consumption, and data accuracy of the partial data aggregation technique and discuss the results. First, we analyze the partial data aggregation with Markovian chain; analytical result shows that, non-aggregation method suffers large energy consumption while full aggregation suffers long transmission delay. From the analysis results, we find that the proposed partial aggregation method WRP (Waterfalls Random partial aggregation) can trade off energy consumption and transmission delay. Thus, we discuss the tradeoffs among data accuracy, transmission delay and energy consumption with different criteria and parameters. The results show that we could control the significance of transmission delay, energy consumption and data accuracy by tradeoffs index (TOI). We also analyze the several applications of wireless sensor networks with different significance based on the TOI. From the observed results, we found that we could set the significance of transmission delay, energy consumption and data accuracy for different applications based on different criteria TOI. Thus, by evaluating and comparing the criteria with different data generation rate as well as aggregation factor, we get the least TOI value, which denotes the desired tradeoffs among them.
國 立 交 通 大 學 the Development of Wireless Polysomnography System for Sleep Monitoring at Home 無線多重生理狀態監控系統-應用於居家睡眠監控 the Development of Wireless Polysomnography System for Sleep Monitoring at Home 無線多重生理狀態監控系統-應用於居家睡眠監控

The polysomnography (PSG) is considered as the gold standard for the diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). The examination of OSA requires an overnight sleep experiment in a laboratory. However, due to the limitation for number of labs and beds, patients often have to wait for a long time before being diagnosed and eventually treated. In addition, the unfamiliar environment and restricted action when operating PSG may disturb the sleep of patients, and then cause an incomplete or corrupted test. Therefore, a PSG conducted at the patient’s home would be more reliable and more convenient. In this study, we implemented wireless polysomnography system for sleep monitoring at home, which involves with a battery-powered, miniature, wireless, portable, and multipurpose recorder. A java-based PSG recording program in the personal computer was designed to save several bio-signals and transfer them into EDF format. And then, these PSG records can be used to determine patient’s sleep stages and diagnose OSA by specialists. This system is portable, lightweight, and low power-consumption. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed PSG system, the
A High Level Synthesis System for VLSI Image Processing Applications

We present a VLSI synthesis environment dedicated to the design of image processing architectures. The environment includes a “front-end” data-flow emulator for validation of the algorithms and the RTL-synthesis system called ALPHA. The latter implements a stochastic search in the design space and produces efficient solutions considering the “restricted” domain of concerned applications. Two simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms run in sequence for data-path synthesis (scheduling and module selection) and then for control synthesis and data-path completion (binding). An interesting feature of the first optimization is the use of the data-flow graph regularity to predict the control influence in terms of the future design. A few designs have already been compiled under this environment including a default detector presented here.