Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intellectual Capital in Public Universities: The Performance - Oriented Approach

The paper reviews the initiatives concerning the measurement, management and disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in public universities. Those organizations also are facing the challenge of manage intangibles in their value creation process. Several researches have been developed linking some elements of IC (human, structural and relational capital) to performance indicators, and applying them to diverse business sectors. However, IC is still not being sufficiently implemented in universities and similar knowledge - based organizations. Only three main initiatives are remarkable in the existing academic literature: (1) the ICU-Report, (Sanchez et al., 2001); (Observatory of the European University, 2006); (2) the Danish IC Guidelines (DMSTI, 2003); (3) the Austrian Research Centres initiative, reported by Leitner (2004), which is mandatory for Austrian universities since 2006.All of them are connected to IC reporting model, but there is not a clear linkage among the several elements they include and their output, nor the possible interacting links among them. As a novelty, it is proposed the use of a structural model equation system to assess those cause - effect linkages. The proposed framework for discussion is a matrix including the missions, IC elements and performance indicators. Another novelty is that the performance construct shall include performance indicators concerning the main missions in universities: teaching, researching and the so - called third mission, transferring knowledge.
Learning from past mistakes: improving automatic speech recognition output via noisy-clean phrase context modeling

Abstract Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems often make unrecoverable errors due to subsystem pruning (acoustic, language and pronunciation models); for example, pruning words due to acoustics using short-term context, prior to rescoring with long-term context based on linguistics. In this work, we model ASR as a phrase-based noisy transformation channel and propose an error correction system that can learn from the aggregate errors of all the independent modules constituting the ASR and attempt to invert those. The proposed system can exploit long-term context using a neural network language model and can better choose between existing ASR output possibilities as well as re-introduce previously pruned or unseen (Out-Of-Vocabulary) phrases. It provides corrections under poorly performing ASR conditions without degrading any accurate transcriptions; such corrections are greater on top of out-of-domain and mismatched data ASR. Our system consistently provides improvements over the baseline ASR, even when baseline is further optimized through Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) language model rescoring. This demonstrates that any ASR improvements can be exploited independently and that our proposed system can potentially still provide benefits on highly optimized ASR. Finally, we present an extensive analysis of the type of errors corrected by our system.
An Empirical Study on Effect of Experience on Consumer Adoption Intention towards Electronic Banking

Electronic banking has emerged as the most lucrative and cost effective service in electronic commerce. While the movement of the major banks and financial service providers towards the digital channels, the future scope of online presence appears highly optimistic. Besides offering major banking services through this mode, the banks and financial service providers get platform to maintain direct connect with their customers that enable them to offer superior services and strengthen customer relations. The present study investigates the moderation effect of user experience with varied lengths of use on the adoption intention and continued use towards electronic banking. The study extends technology acceptance model to examine the user perceptions towards electronic banking over a period of time. The findings highlight the differences in behavior based on the frequency use. The study provides useful implications for the academicians and the managers.
Temporal Association of Polysomnographic Cardiorespiratory Events With GER Detected by MII-pH Probe in the Premature Infant at Term

Objectives:The aim of the study was to examine temporal association (TA) between polysomnographic cardiorespiratory (CR) events and gastroesophageal reflux (GER) in premature infants with persistent CR events at >39 weeks postmenstrual age and determine whether the use of multichannel intraluminal impedance (MII)-pH probe improves sensitivity of the TA compared with pH probe alone. Patients and Methods:Seven infants born between 24 and 29 weeks' gestational age with persistent CR events at 39 to 48 weeks' postmenstrual age underwent a polysomnography with MII-pH probe. Symptom index (SI) and symptom-associated probability were calculated for diverse types of reflux and CR events. SI and a Fisher exact test with variable association windows were calculated for obstructive apnea (OA). Odds ratios for an OA given a reflux event and for a reflux event given an OA were determined. Results:With a Fisher exact test, a subject-specific association between MII events and OA was found in the 3 patients who required a fundoplication or had the worse clinical GER. Some level of TA was found with SI and symptom-associated probability in 6 of 7 infants. Association was found for pH >4 and pH ≤4 reflux events. pH-only events with no change of MII had only a limited role in generating CR events. Conclusions:TA between CR events and GER was found in a single-subject–level analysis in some infants with persistent CR events at term. This TA suggests a causal relation between CR and reflux events that was further strengthened by the clinical outcomes of each infant.
Radiographic Analysis of Lumbar Lordosis: Centroid, Cobb, TRALL, and Harrison Posterior Tangent Methods

Study Design. Delayed, repeated measures, with three examiners each twice digitizing thirty lateral lumbar radiographs. Objectives. To determine the reliability and clinical utility of the centroid, Cobb, tangential radiologic assessment of lumbar lordosis (TRALL), and Harrison posterior tangent line-drawing methods for analysis of lumbar lordosis. Background Data. Cobb’s method is commonly used for curvature analysis on lateral lumbar radiographs, whereas the centroid, TRALL, and Harrison posterior tangent methods are not widely used. Methods. Thirty lateral lumbar radiographs were digitized twice by each of three examiners. To evaluate reliability of determining global and segmental alignment, all four vertebral body corners of T12–S1 and the superior margin of the femur head were digitized. Angles created were segmental and global centroid, (two-line) Cobb angles, and intersections of posterior tangents. A global TRALL angle was determined. Means, standard deviations, mean absolute differences, interclass and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), and confidence intervals were calculated. Results. The interobserver and intraobserver reliabilities of measuring all segmental and global angles were in the high range (ICCs > 0.83). The mean absolute differences of observers’ measurements were small (0.6°–2.0°). Distal segmental (L4–S1) and global angles of lumbar curvature were dependent on the method of measurement. Conclusions. All four radiographic methods had high reliability and low mean absolute differences of observers’ measurements. Because it lacks a segmental analysis, the TRALL method is not recommended. The centroid, Cobb, and Harrison posterior tangent methods provide global and segmental angles. However, the centroid segmental method requires three segments and is less useful for a stability analysis.
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae RIB4 Gene Codes for 6,7-Dimethyl- 8-ribityllumazine Synthase Involved in Riboflavin Biosynthesis

6,7-Dimethyl-8-ribityllumazine, the immediate biosynthetic precursor of riboflavin, is synthesized by condensation of 5-amino-6-ribitylamino-2,4(1H,3H)-pyrimidinedione with 3,4-dihydroxy-2-butanone 4-phosphate. The gene coding for 6,7-dimethyl-8-ribityllumazine synthase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (RIB4) has been cloned by functional complementation of a mutant accumulating 5-amino-6-ribitylamino-2,4(1H,3H)-pyrimidinedione, which can grow on riboflavin- or diacetyl- but not on 3,4-dihydroxy-2-butanone-supplemented media. Gene disruption of the chromosomal copy of RIB4 led to riboflavin auxotrophy and loss of enzyme activity. Nucleotide sequencing revealed a 169-base pair open reading frame encoding a 18.6-kDa protein. Hybridization analysis indicated that RIB4 is a single copy gene located on the left arm of chromosome XV. Overexpression of the RIB4 coding sequence in yeast cells under the control of the strong TEF1 promoter allowed ready purification of 6,7-dimethyl-8-ribityllumazine synthase to apparent homogeneity by a simple procedure. Initial structural characterization of 6,7-dimethyl-8-ribityllumazine synthase by gel filtration chromatography and both nondenaturing pore limit and SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that the enzyme forms a pentamer of identical 16.8-kDa subunits. The derived amino acid sequence of RIB4 shows extensive homology to the sequences of the β subunits of riboflavin synthase from Bacillus subtilis and other prokaryotes.
A reconfigurable baseband processor for wireless OFDM synchronization sub-system

In this paper, an Application Specific Instruction-set Processor (ASIP) architecture to perform all OFDM synchronization tasks is proposed. While applicable to many OFDM systems, the proposed architecture is tested on Long Term Evolution (LTE Rel. 8) and WiMAX 802.16e systems. The synchronization tasks include, but not limited to symbol timing, fine carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation, coarse CFO estimation, cell search, residual CFO estimation and sampling clock frequency offset estimation. The engine is scalable and runs at 120 MHz with a total gate count of 118k and control overhead less than 10% of total processing cycles. The results of software simulations as well as the results of verilog synthesis are presented.
Road detection in image by fusion laser points based on fuzzy SVM for a small ground mobile robot

Road detection is still full of challenge for a small ground mobile robot with limited load capacity and computing resources which works in complex outdoor environment. This paper proposes a road detection method based on fuzzy support vector machine with on-line updating and retraining strategy. The algorithm extracts multi feature in image and trains a fuzzy support vector machine road classifier off-line by using few training samples. Then it detects road in laser points using a fuzzy clustering method based on maximum entropy principle. After calibrating the camera and laser range finder, and project laser points into the image, the algorithm chooses road samples with high confidence automatically according to range data and designs a rule to retraining the FSVM on-line when needed to improve its environmental adaptability. Experiments in outdoor campus environment indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective.
In vivo human cardiac shortening and lengthening velocity is region dependent and not coupled with heart rate: ‘longitudinal’ strain rate markedly underestimates apical contribution

What is the central question of this study? Regulation of cardiac function is typically achieved by changes in heart rate (HR) and cardiac shortening velocity (strain rate; SR), but their interdependence in vivo remains poorly understood. What is the main finding and its importance? Using resistance exercise to increase heart rate and arterial resistance physiologically in humans and measuring regional cardiac SR (at the base and apex), we found that HR and SR were not strictly coupled because SR at the base and apex responded differently, despite the same HR. Importantly, our data show that the region‐averaged ‘longitudinal’ SR, which is currently popular in the clinical setting, markedly underestimates the contribution of the apex.
Decision level fusion-based team tactics estimation in soccer videos

A decision-level fusion (DLF)-based team tactics estimation method in soccer videos is newly presented. In our method, tactics estimation based on audio-visual and formation features is newly adopted since the tactics of the soccer game are closely related to the audio-visual sequences and player positions. Therefore, by using these features, we classify the tactics via Support Vector Machine (SVM). Furthermore, by applying DLF to the SVM-based classification results, the two modalities are integrated to obtain more accurate tactics estimation results. Some results of experiments verify the superiority of our method.
Receptor-type protein-tyrosine phosphatase mu is expressed in specific vascular endothelial beds in vivo.

We investigated the localization of receptor-type protein-tyrosine phosphatase mu (RPTPmu) in tissues by immunofluorescence. RPTPmu immunoreactivity was found almost exclusively within vascular endothelial cells. RPTPmu was more abundant in the arterial tree than in the venous circulation. This pattern of expression was opposite to that of the von Willebrand factor and demonstrated a lack of difference in expression of VE-cadherin. RPTPmu was undetectable in the endocardium. In agreement with previous work on nonendothelial cell lines, RPTPmu was exclusively at the lateral aspects of endothelial cells in vivo and at cell-cell contacts as well as ex vivo in two- or three-dimensional endothelial cell cultures, and expression levels were upregulated by cell density. RPTPmu was detected in few other cells: bronchial and biliary epithelia and cardiocytes (intercalated discs). Our results identify RPTPmu as a new marker of endothelial cell heterogeneity and suggest a possible role in endothelial-specific functions, involving cell-cell contact.
H.264 Video Decoder Optimization on ARM Cortex-A8 with NEON

Optimization of H.264 base line profile decoder has been proposed for SIMD engine (NEON) of ARM Cortex-A8 processor. We have exploited data level parallelism to effectively use the SIMD capability of NEON. Ideas to make the algorithms SIMD friendly are also highlighted. With effective use of ARM Cortex- A8 architecture and NEON SIMD engine, the MCPS (Mega Cycles per second) requirement for decoding has reduced considerably as compared to our optimized C implementation. Results are provided for the overall performance gain in decoding and individual performance gain in various modules of H.264 base line decoder.
Ecosystems for the development of multi-core and many-core SoC models

Multi-core and many-core Systems-on-Chip (SoC) are growing more complex than ever. Consequently, developing system models for such SoCs to guide and validate architectural and implementation decisions is becoming a daunting task. It consumes a huge amount of time and effort just to get the model up and running. Although these system models can be fairly abstracted, they still require the setup of a complicated platform to model a homogeneous or a heterogeneous mix of processing cores, a network-on-chip, cache memories, input-output interfaces as well as several other functional units. The abstraction levels for the individual constituent models can be represented at different abstraction levels forcing the need for special interfacing and simulation tools. Moreover, unified benchmarks are needed to be able to have a fair comparison between different architectures and different implementation options while at the same time target the specific application domain the SoC is being developed for. This paper explores the availability of such ecosystems and discusses the important features and capabilities that need to be provided in them. The level of abstraction and the software support in this model is also examined.
Do steering committees and boards constitute good project governance

One could argue that good project governance positively influences productivity, and that this shapes the economy in a sustainable way. However, there is a prevailing perception in the corporate and government environment that steering committees and boards in some way constitutes good project governance. This perception appears to be based in part upon the presumption that the corporate sector always performs better than government; the corporate sector assures good corporate governance through boards; Ergo everyone else, including government, would perform better if they did the same. The paper argues that this presumption is indefensible as there is no scientific or rational basis to support it. Moreover, the concept of governance as steering committees and boards can diffuse responsibility and accountability in the hierarchical structures of government departments and large organisations that initiate their own projects and this can lead to project delay, confusion and uncertainty. The paper reviews the literature on governance and project steering committees and concludes that establishing project advisory rather than steering committees removes the potential for organisational power play and provides an effective consultation mechanism that facilitates 'best for project' outcomes.
Predicting Future Interests in a Research Paper Recommender System using a Community Centric Tree of Concepts Model

Our goal in this paper is to predict a user’s future interests in the research paper domain. Content-based recommender systems can recommend a set of papers that relate to a user’s current interests. However, they may not be able to predict a user’s future interests. Collaborative filtering approaches may predict a user’s future interests for movies, music or e-commerce domains. However, existing collaborative filtering approaches are not appropriate for the research paper domain, because they depend on large numbers of user ratings which are not available in the research paper domain. In this paper, we present a novel collaborative filtering method that does not depend on user ratings. Our novel method computes the similarity between users according to user profiles which are represented using the dynamic normalized tree of concepts model using the 2012 ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) ontology. Further, a community-centric tree of concepts is generated and used to make recommendations. Offline evaluations are performed using the BibSonomy dataset. Our model is compared with two baselines. The results show that our model significantly outperforms the two baselines and avoids the problem of sparsity.
Does Voluntary CSR Reporting Affect the Informativeness of Mandatory Financial Disclosures

This study examines whether voluntary CSR reporting affects the informativeness of information contained in mandatory financial disclosures. In particular, I study the impact of CSR reporting on investors’ response to realized earnings released in earnings announcements. I find that voluntary adoption of CSR reporting is associated with higher subsequent earnings response coefficients (ERCs), suggesting that the disclosure of CSR reporting improves the informativeness of earnings announcements. The finding is also consistent with a complementary relation between mandatory and voluntary disclosures, which indicates that mandatory disclosure confirms the credibility of voluntary disclosure. If a similar type of complementary relation between mandatory and voluntary disclosures works in the opposite direction as well (i.e., voluntary disclosure enhances credibility of mandatory disclosure), then higher ERCs could also be observed. Because voluntary CSR reports could complement mandatory quarterly earnings announcements through two non-mutually exclusive channels – improvement in informativeness or credibility, I provide some additional evidence, which suggest that it is the increase in informativeness that leads to the higher response coefficient to quarterly earnings announcements.
Optimal speed for dual-energy subtraction neck imaging with flat-panel detector radiography

Poster: "ECR 2010 / C-2938 / Optimal speed for dual-energy subtraction neck imaging with flat-panel detector radiography" by: "H. Machida1, M. Asanuma1, T. Yuhara1, E. Ueno1, J. M. Sabol2; 1Tokyo/JP, 2Waukesha, WI/US"
Using the Web to Create Dynamic Dictionaries in Handwritten Out-of-Vocabulary Word Recognition

Handwriting recognition systems rely on predefined dictionaries obtained from training data. Small and static dictionaries are usually exploited to obtain high in-vocabulary (IV) accuracy at the expense of coverage. Thus the recognition of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words cannot be handled efficiently. To improve OOV recognition while keeping IV dictionaries small, we introduce a multi-step approach that exploits Web resources. After an initial IV-OOV sequence classification, external resources are used to create OOV sequence-adapted dynamic dictionaries. A final Viterbi-based decoding is performed over the dynamic dictionary to determine the most probable word for the OOV sequence. We validate our approach with experiments conducted on RIMES, a publicly available database. Results show that improvements are obtained compared to standard handwriting recognition, performed with a static dictionary. Both domain adapted and generic dynamic dictionaries are studied and we show that domain adaptation is beneficial.