Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pricing Scheme Choice: How Process Affects Outcome

Standard price discrimination theories are based on the assumption that consumers use their future demand estimates to evaluate net utility of each pricing scheme and choose the scheme with the highest value. However, some evidence suggests that consumers might not always behave this way. The experiment presented in this paper shows that indeed a substantial proportion of subjects choose not to evaluate the net utility of the offered pricing schemes. Instead, they select from pricing schemes based on a comparison of the schemes' parameters. Interestingly, this selection approach leads to the correct pricing-scheme choice when subjects are not well aware of their demand, and to the incorrect choice when they are. The results call for alternative theories of price discrimination and corresponding policy implications.
Quality assurance challenges for private providers in post-school education and training in South Africa

Quality assurance has been a vexed and troubled journey for private providers in South Africa in a complex and burdensome educational environment. It is well recognised that private providers are significant role-players in the provision of education and training in South Africa and the stated intention is to create a more enabling regulatory framework The focus of this thesis is on the private providers at the post-school level. The quality assurance regime was examined and contextualised to analyse what is required, and to determine how the private provider is impacted by the regulatory requirements for the establishment and operation of a private tuition provider in South Africa. The experience of private providers, CEOs of professional bodies, ETQA managers and ETD practitioners was investigated using a mixed methods research approach. The conclusion is a call for a far more streamlined system with a centralised oversight body, greater stakeholder consultation, less political interference and a deeper appreciation for the contribution that private providers make to the education of learners in South Africa.
Product quality in the agri-food chain: do cooperatives offer high-quality wine?

We investigate the impact of decentralised decision-making on product quality. Comparing a cooperative and an investor-owned firm suggests that members of the cooperative have an incentive to produce too much and to free-ride on quality. Whether or not cooperatives deliver higher quality products depends on the way in which the quality of the final product is determined from the quality levels of the inputs delivered (quality aggregation) as well as the number of members of the cooperative. Empirical evidence on the Austrian wine market suggests that wines produced by cooperatives tend to be of significantly lower quality, ceteris paribus. , Oxford University Press.
Mutual Fund Liquidity Costs

One dollar in purchases or redemptions generates an average cost of $0.006 for U.S. equity mutual funds during the period 1997-2009, approximately 70% lower than prior estimates derived from older data. However, large cross-sectional differences exist between funds. Many funds have costs near zero, but funds that hold relatively illiquid equities, have relatively concentrated portfolios, and manage relatively large amounts of assets have average liquidity costs significantly greater than the full sample average. Furthermore, despite a large difference in underlying asset liquidity, U.S. bond funds and U.S. equity funds have similar average liquidity costs.
Physical Authentication of Control Systems: Designing Watermarked Control Inputs to Detect Counterfeit Sensor Outputs

Cyberphysical systems (CPSs) refer to the embedding of widespread sensing, networking, computation, and control into physical spaces with the goal of making them safer, more efficient, and reliable. Driven by the miniaturization and integration of sensing, communication, and computation in cost-efficient devices, CPSs are bound to transform industries such as aerospace, transportation, built environments, energy, health care, and manufacturing, to name a few. This great opportunity, unfortunately, is matched by even greater challenges. Taming the complexity of design and analysis of these systems poses a fundamental problem as a new paradigm is needed to bridge various scientific domains, which, through the years, have developed significantly different formalisms and methodologies. In addition, while the use of dedicated communication networks has so far sheltered systems from the outside world, use of off-the-shelf networking and computing, combined with the unattended operation of a plethora of devices, provides several opportunities for malicious entities to inject attacks on CPSs. A wide variety of motivations exists for launching an attack on CPSs, ranging from economic reasons, such as obtaining a financial gain, all the way to terrorism, for instance, threatening an entire population by manipulating life-critical resources. Any attack on safety-critical CPSs may significantly hamper the economy and lead to the loss of human lives. While the threat of attacks on CPSs tends to be underplayed at times, the Stuxnet worm provided a clear example of the possible future to come. This malware, targeting a uranium enriching facility in Iran, managed to reach the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system controlling the centrifuges used in the enrichment process. Stuxnet modified the control system, increasing pressure in the centrifuges in a first version of the worm and spinning centrifuges in an erratic fashion in a second version. As a result, Stuxnet caused significant damage to the plant [1]. For details, see "The Stuxnet Attack".
Treatment of head and neck cancer in the elderly

ABSTRACT Introduction: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide and the majority of patients present with advanced stage disease. Chemotherapy is an important component of head and neck cancer treatment regimens and has shown beneficial effects in locally advanced and recurrent/metastatic stages of disease. Approximately 25% of HNSCC patients are aged 70 and older, often associated with co-morbid medical conditions. Most clinical trials exclude patients of advanced chronological age such that valid information about the efficacy and safety of drugs and treatment regimens in elderly patients is not available. Areas covered: Surgery, radiotherapy and particularly chemotherapy with the six FDA-approved chemotherapeutic agents for head and neck cancer treatment are discussed with a focus on age, performance status, comorbidities. New targeted therapies and the field of immune checkpoint inhibitors are evaluated in the context of elderly populations. Expert opinion: Surgery, radiotherapy and administration of cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents are largely safe and effective in elderly patients. Targeted therapies are mostly well tolerated. Clinical studies should be designed to include elderly patients (>70 years). Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies may exert age-related effects, since substantial functional changes in T cell responses increase during the aging process.
Gender differences in seven-year alcohol and drug treatment outcomes among older adults.

This study examined participants at seven-year follow-up to assess long-term outcomes of older women (n = 25) and men (n = 59) ages 55 and over in an outpatient addiction program. It measured demographic characteristics, alcohol and drug use, psychiatric symptoms, Addiction Severity Index, treatment length, and outcomes. At seven years, 76.0% of women reported abstinence in the prior 30 days versus 54.2% of men, p = . 05. Logistic regression analysis found that longer treatment stay predicted abstinence. Findings indicate that older women have better long-term addiction outcome than older men, but treatment length is more significant than gender in predicting outcome.
Handling Imprecise Labels in Feature Selection with Graph Laplacian

Feature selection is a preprocessing step of great importance for a lot of pattern recognition and machine learning applications, including classification. Even if feature selection has been extensively studied for classical problems, very little work has been done to take into account a possible imprecision or uncertainty in the assignment of the class labels. However, such a situation can be encountered frequently in practice, especially when the labels are given by a human expert having some doubts on the exact class value. In this paper, the problem where each possible class for a given sample is associated with a probability is considered. A feature selection criterion based on the theory of graph Laplacian is proposed and its interest is experimentally demonstrated when compared with basic approaches to handle such imprecise labels.
Presynaptic NMDA autoreceptors facilitate axon excitability: a new molecular target for the anticonvulsant gabapentin

Gabapentin is a drug with anticonvulsant and analgesic properties causing the reduction of neurotransmitter release. We show that one of the mechanisms implicated in this effect of gabapentin is the reduction of the axon excitability measured as an amplitude change of the presynaptic fibre volley (FV) in the CA1 area of rat hippocampal slices. Interestingly, we found that gabapentin‐induced depression of FV is mimicked and occluded by NMDA receptor (NMDA‐R) antagonists, indicating that these receptors are located presynaptically and are activated by ambient levels of glutamate. Conversely, NMDA application (20 µm, 10 min) elicits a reversible FV potentiation which is reduced by gabapentin. Both NMDA‐ and gabapentin‐induced FV changes are partially explained by modifications in the firing threshold of individual fibres. Increasing [K+]o does not mimic or occlude (at a concentration of 6.5 mm) the effect of NMDA on FV amplitude, which makes it unlikely that a rise in [K+]o induced by NMDA receptor activation could indirectly participate in the potentiation of the FV. The NMDA‐induced FV potentiation is independent of extracellular calcium presence but is completely inhibited in a low‐Na+ solution (50% reduction) or under NMDA channel block (high Mg2+ or MK 801). These findings suggest that sodium entry through presynaptic NMDA‐R channels facilitates axon excitability. The interaction of gabapentin with this newly described mechanism might contribute to its therapeutic benefits.
Design and fabrication of manual liquid-filled color-changing glasses based on soft lithography

This paper presents manual microfluidic liquid color-changing glasses to protect human eyes at the environment with strong lights. A polymer (PDMS) with high transparency is selected to fabricate the color-changing film. Microfluidic channels inside the film for liquid circulating are fabricated by soft lithography technology. A manual actuator is designed and fabricated to drive the color liquid to circulate in channels. Three different visual optical tests are conducted to evaluate the optical performance. The color-changing response times of the glasses at different conditions are measured by experiments. The experiment results show faster response and better controllability of the liquid color-changing glasses compared to traditional solid color-changing pattern.
Computer-mediated assessment of intelligibility in aphasia and apraxia of speech

Background: Previous work indicates that single-word intelligibility tests developed for dysarthria are sensitive to segmental production errors in aphasic individuals with and without apraxia of speech. However, potential listener learning effects and difficulties in adapting elicitation procedures to coexisting language impairments limit their applicability to left hemisphere stroke survivors. Aims: The main purpose of this study was to examine basic psychometric properties for a new monosyllabic intelligibility test developed for individuals with aphasia and/or AOS. A related purpose was to examine clinical feasibility and potential to standardise a computer-mediated administration approach. Methods & Procedures: A 600-item monosyllabic single-word intelligibility test was constructed by assembling sets of phonetically similar words. Custom software was used to select 50 target words from this test in a pseudo-random fashion, and to elicit and record production of these words by 23 speakers with aphasia and 20 neurologically healthy participants. To evaluate test–retest reliability, two identical sets of 50-word lists were elicited by requesting repetition after a live speaker model. To examine the effect of a different word set and auditory model, an additional set of 50 different words was elicited with a pre-recorded model. The recorded words were presented to normal-hearing listeners for identification via orthographic and multiple-choice response formats. To examine construct validity, production accuracy for each speaker was estimated via phonetic transcription and rating of overall articulation. Outcomes & Results: Recording and listening tasks were completed in less than 6 minutes for all speakers and listeners. Aphasic speakers were significantly less intelligible than neurologically healthy speakers and displayed a wide range of intelligibility scores. Test–retest and inter-listener reliability estimates were strong. No significant difference was found in scores based on recordings from a live model versus a pre-recorded model, but some individual speakers favoured the live model. Intelligibility test scores correlated highly with segmental accuracy derived from broad phonetic transcription of the same speech sample and a motor speech evaluation. Scores correlated moderately with rated articulation difficulty. Conclusions: We describe a computerised, single-word intelligibility test that yields clinically feasible, reliable, and valid measures of segmental speech production in adults with aphasia. This tool can be used in clinical research to facilitate appropriate participant selection and to establish matching across comparison groups. For a majority of speakers, elicitation procedures can be standardised by using a pre-recorded auditory model for repetition. This assessment tool has potential utility for both clinical assessment and outcomes research.
Partial role of multiple pathways in infarct size limiting effect of quercetin and rutin against cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats.

BACKGROUND Reperfusion therapy used in the treatment of cerebral ischemia often causes reperfusion neurological injury. Multiple pathological processes are involved in this injury including oxidative stress and components of the inflammatory response appear to play key roles in these deleterious effects. Thus new therapeutic strategies aimed at neutralization of OS-induced neurotoxicity support the application of natural antioxidant bioflavonoids. Both experimental and epidemiological evidence demonstrate that bioflavonoid such as quercetin and rutin are neuroprotective in models of cerebral ischemia reperfusion injury. However, recent studies indicate that the radical scavenger property of quercetin and rutin is unlikely to be the only reason for their cerebroprotective actions and in fact, a wide spectrum of cellular signaling events may well account for their biological actions. AIM In this study we attempted to establish the various mechanisms involved in the cerebroprotective activity of quercetin and rutin. METHODS Adult Sprague Dawely rats were anesthetized with thiopentone and subjected to global cerebral ischemia by occlusion of bicommon carotid arteries. Infarct size (TTC staining), SOD, MDA, CAT and MPO levels was assessed 4 h after the onset of ischemia. RESULTS Quercetin (50 mg/kg) and rutin (10 mg/kg) administered 10 min before reperfusion resulted in significant reduction of infarct size, MDA, and MPO levels and significant increase in SOD and CAT levels. Administration of L-NAME prior to administration of quercetin and rutin, significantly reduced the cerebroprotection offered by quercetin and rutin. CONCLUSIONS Possible partial role of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and involvement of NO in the beneficial effects of bioflavonoids quercetin and rutin against cerebral ischemia reperfusion injury was observed.
AtOSA 1 , a Member of the Abc 1-Like Family , as a New Factor in Cadmium and Oxidative Stress Response 1 [ W ] [ OA ]

University of Zurich, Institute of Plant Biology, 8008 Zurich, Switzerland (M.J., D.S., M.S., E.M.); University of Bern, IPS-Plant Nutrition, 3012 Bern, Switzerland (D.S., S.C., L.B.); University of Geneva, Bioenergetics Laboratory, 1254 Jussy/Lullier, Switzerland (G.S.); University of Fribourg, Department of Biology-Plant Biology, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland (L.B.); and Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 61–704 Poznan, Poland (M.J.)
Identification of select glucocorticoids as Smoothened agonists: Potential utility for regenerative medicine

Regenerative medicine holds the promise of replacing damaged tissues largely by stem cell activation. Hedgehog signaling through the plasma membrane receptor Smoothened (Smo) is an important process for regulating stem cell proliferation. The development of Hedgehog-related therapies has been impeded by a lack of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved Smo agonists. Using a high-content screen with cells expressing Smo receptors and a β-arrestin2-GFP reporter, we identified four FDA-approved drugs, halcinonide, fluticasone, clobetasol, and fluocinonide, as Smo agonists that activate Hedgehog signaling. These drugs demonstrated an ability to bind Smo, promote Smo internalization, activate Gli, and stimulate the proliferation of primary neuronal precursor cells alone and synergistically in the presence of Sonic Hedgehog protein. Halcinonide, fluticasone, clobetasol, and fluocinonide provide an unprecedented opportunity to develop unique clinical strategies to treat Hedgehog-dependent illnesses.
EICHHORNIA MEDIATED COPPER OXIDE NANOPARTICLES: IN VITRO ANALYSIS OF ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY

Objective: The present investigation determines the biological synthesis and characterization of Copper oxide nanoparticles from aqueous extract of Eichhornia crassipes and assessing its effects on antimicrobial activity against the pathogens. Methods: In this method Eichhornia mediated copper oxide nanoparticles were synthesized and characterized by FT-IR, FESEM and EDX and also antimicrobial activity was determined using the well diffusion method. Results: The antimicrobial activity of Eichhornia mediated copper oxide nanoparticles was tested against selective pathogens and maximum zone of inhibition was observed in S. aureus and A. ﬂavus at 100 µg/ml concentration. Conclusion: The green synthesized copper oxide nanoparticles have antimicrobial activity against selective microorganisms and it can be effectively used as a good antimicrobial agent.
A VSC-HVDC fuzzy controller to damp oscillation of AC/DC power system

The fast control capability of the VSC-HVDC and the process of area mode oscillations are analyzed. An auxiliary fuzzy logic controller designed in Matlab for the voltage source converter based HVDC transmission system, VSC-HVDC, to improve the stability of the AC/DC system is designed to enhance stability by increasing the deceleration energy of oscillation. Simulation results on the IEEE 4-generator AC/DC power systems have shown that the controller can enhance the dynamic stability of interconnected power systems effectively and is robust to the variation of system operating conditions and oscillation modes.
MELATONIN AND QUERCETIN IMPROVE DEPRESSIVE-LIKE BEHAVIOR AND DYSLIPIDEMIA IN STREPTOZOTOCIN-INDUCED DIABETES IN RATS

This study was performed to examine and assess the beneficial effects of melatonin and quercetin on depressive disorders and the disturbance of lipid metabolism caused by diabetes mellitus. Diabetes was induced in male rats via intraperitoneal streptozotocin injection (70 mg/kg). Experiments were performed 72 h later. Diabetic rats were treated with melatonin or quercetin during 4 weeks. The anxiolytic and antidepressant-like effects of these two drugs were investigated in the last week of experiment, using the open-field and forced swimming tests. In the last day of the study, plasma insulin and lipid profile were determined in different experimental groups. Treatment with melatonin or quercetin significantly ameliorated anxiety-like and depressive-like behaviors. Furthermore, both melatonin and quercetin reversed the aspects of dyslipidemia observed in rats with diabetes, but the effect of the melatonin was more potent than quercetin, considering the dose used during this study.
Functional consequences of genetic diversity in Strongyloides ratti infections

Parasitic nematodes show levels of genetic diversity comparable to other taxa, but the functional consequences of this are not understood. Thus, a large body of theoretical work highlights the potential consequences of parasite genetic diversity for the epidemiology of parasite infections and its possible implications for the evolution of host and parasite populations. However, few relevant empirical data are available from parasites in general and none from parasitic nematodes in particular. Here, we test two hypotheses. First, that different parasitic nematode genotypes vary in life–history traits, such as survivorship and fecundity, which may cause variation in infection dynamics. Second, that different parasitic nematode genotypes interact within the host (either directly or via the host immune system) to increase the mean reproductive output of mixed–genotype infections compared with single–genotype infections. We test these hypotheses in laboratory infections using genetically homogeneous lines of Strongyloides ratti. We find that nematode genotypes do vary in their survivorship and fecundity and, consequently, in their dynamics of infection. However, we find little evidence of interactions between genotypes within hosts under a variety of trickle– and single–infected infection regimes.
The dynamics of issue competence and vote for parties in and out of power: An analysis of valence in Britain, 1979-1997

This article develops the reward-punishment issue model of voting using a newly collated aggregate measure of issue competence in Britain between 1971 and 1997, revealing systematic differences between governing and opposition parties in the way citizens’ evaluations of party competence are related to vote intention. Using monthly Gallup ‘best party to handle the most important problem’ and vote intention data, time series Grangercausation tests give support to a classic issue reward-punishment model for incumbents. However, for opposition parties this reward-punishment model does not hold: macro-issue competence evaluations are Granger-caused by changes in vote choice or governing party competence. An explanation is offered based upon the differentiating role of policy performance and informational asymmetries, and the implications are considered for comparative studies of voting, public opinion and for political party competition.