Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Species of Green Hydra (Hydrozoa: Hydrida) from China

A new species of green freshwater hydra (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa: Hydrida), Hydra sinensis, is described from Guangdong Province, China. The chief distinction between H. sinensis sp. nov. and three other green hydras (H. hadleyi, H. viridissima, and H. plagiodesmica) is in the holotrichous isorhizae. Hydra sinensis sp. nov. differs from H. plagiodesmica in the shape of the holotrichous isorhizae, and from H. viridissima and H. hadleyi in the tubule of the capsule of the holotrichous isorhizae. The capsule tubule coils two times in 86% and three times in 14% of holotrichous isorhizae (n=50) in H. sinensis sp. nov.; we observed no tubules coiling four times. In contrast, the capsule tubule coils three or four times in H. viridissima and H. hadleyi, and no tubules coiling two times have been reported. In addition, holotrichous isorhizae, which are mainly located around the hypostome, are sparse in the tentacles of H. sinensis sp. nov., whereas the majority of holotrichous isorhizae is located on the tentacles in most other hydras. A molecular phylogenetic analysis using the nuclear small subunit (18S) ribosomal RNA gene indicated a close relationship between H. sinensis and H. viridissima. Hydra viridissima did not group within a clade of four individuals of H. sinensis, indicating a possible sister-species relationship between the two species. Morphological characters in combination with the molecular phylogenetic evidence support Hydra sinensis as a new species.
2 Runs , systems , and knowledge : a review

At the heart of the Bitcoin is a blockchain protocol, a protocol for achieving consensus on a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. To the extent that a blockchain protocol is used for applications such as contract signing and making certain transactions (such as house sales) public, we need to understand what guarantees the protocol gives us in terms of agents’ knowledge. Here, we provide a complete characterization of agent’s knowledge when running a blockchain protocol using a variant of common knowledge that takes into account the fact that agents can enter and leave the system, it is not known which agents are in fact following the protocol (some agents may want to deviate if they can gain by doing so), and the fact that the guarantees provided by blockchain protocols are probabilistic. We then consider some scenarios involving contracts and show that this level of knowledge suffices for some scenarios, but not others.
Towards Practical Privacy-Preserving Data Analytics

Author(s): Johnson, Noah Michael | Advisor(s): Song, Dawn | Abstract: Organizations are increasingly collecting sensitive information about individuals. Extracting value from this data requires providing analysts with flexible access, typically in the form of databases that support SQL queries. Unfortunately, allowing access to data has been a major cause of privacy breaches.Traditional approaches for data security cannot protect privacy of individuals while providing flexible access for analytics. This presents a difficult trade-off. Overly restrictive policies result in underutilization and data siloing, while insufficient restrictions can lead to privacy breaches and data leaks.Differential privacy is widely recognized by experts as the most rigorous theoretical solution to this problem. Differential privacy provides a formal guarantee of privacy for individuals while allowing general statistical analysis of the data. Despite extensive academic research, differential privacy has not been widely adopted in practice. Additional work is needed to address performance and usability issues that arise when applying differential privacy to real-world environments.In this dissertation we develop empirical and theoretical advances towards practical differential privacy. We conduct a study using 8.1 million real-world queries to determine the requirements for practical differential privacy, and identify limitations of previous approaches in light of these requirements. We then propose a novel method for differential privacy that addresses key limitations of previous approaches.We present Chorus, an open-source system that automatically enforces differential privacy for statistical SQL queries. Chorus is the first system for differential privacy that is compatible with real databases, supports queries expressed in standard SQL, and integrates easily into existing data environments.Our evaluation demonstrates that Chorus supports 93.9% of real-world statistical queries, integrates with production databases without modifications to the database, and scales to hundreds of millions of records. Chorus is currently deployed at a large technology company for internal analytics and GDPR compliance. In this capacity, Chorus processes more than 10,000 queries per day.
When and How to Leverage E-commerce Cart Targeting ( ECT ) : The Relative and Moderated Effects of Scarcity and Price Incentives

The rise of online shopping cart tracking technologies enables new opportunities for e-commerce cart targeting (ECT). However, practitioners might target shoppers who have shortlisted products in their digital carts without fully considering how ECT designs interact with consumer mindsets in online shopping stages. This paper develops a conceptual model of ECT that addresses the question of when (with vs. without carts) and how to target (scarcity vs. price promotion). Our ECT model is grounded in the consumer goal stage theory of deliberative or implemental mindsets and supported by a large-scale field experiment involving more than 22,000 mobile users. The results indicated that ECT has a substantial impact on consumer purchases, inducing a 29.9% higher purchase rate than e-commerce targeting without carts. Moreover, this incremental impact is moderated: the ECT design with a price incentive amplifies the impact, but the same price incentive leads to ineffective e-commerce targeting without carts. By contrast, a scarcity message attenuates the impact but significantly boosts purchase responses to targeting without carts. Interestingly, the costless scarcity nudge is approximately 2.3 times more effective than the costly price incentive in the early shopping stage without carts, whereas a price incentive is 11.4 times more effective than the scarcity message in the late stage with carts. We also leverage a causal forest algorithm that can learn purchase response heterogeneity to develop a practical scheme of optimizing ECT. Our model and findings empower managers to prudently target consumer shopping interests embedded in digital carts in order to capitalize new opportunities in e-commerce.
Time Use of the Urban Poor and Rural Poor on Activities and Travel in Gujarat, India: Similarities and Differences

This paper explores the impact of being poor on time use decisions and the similarities and differences between urban and rural areas in Gujarat, India. For this purpose, the authors develop discrete－continuous time use models for (1) mobile/immobile choices and the time allocated to travel, (2) time use for subsistence activities and (3) time use for social and leisure activities. The empirical results show that (1) while a number of similar impacts of being poor are confirmed between urban and rural areas, significant differences are also observed, possibly because of the different labor needs in urban (tertiary sector) areas versus rural (primary sector) areas, infrastructure differences (such as roads and water supply), and so on. The results provide evidence that although the meaning of “poor” from the income/expenditure perspective may not differ between urban and rural areas, it is unignorably different from the perspective of time use.
UTILIZATION OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS AMONG SMALL AND MEDIUM MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES IN NAIROBI. BY MAINA

The utilization of Human Resource Management Information Systems (HRMIS) promises to enable Human Resource (HR) departments deliver more service with fewer resources, save money, be more efficient, and automate to make time for strategic planning. While windows and client server technologies offer flexible, low-cost, generic HRMIS's for the small firms, little is known of the extent of their utilization among the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Kenya’s manufacturing sector. To fill this gap a survey of the utilization of HRIS by 50 SME's operating within Nairobi and its environs was undertaken, from a population of 450 firms registered by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM). Results show that while the SMEs had HRMIS features capable of providing HR information for strategic use, their utilization was for automating personnel administration. The most reasons cited for the unsophisticated usage of HRMIS among manufacturing SMEs included lack of a HR strategy, size of the firms and lack of HRIS consultants. These results were drawn from manufacturing firms in Nairobi and its environs, and being an exploratory study, further work is required on the utilization of HRMIS among small manufacturing firms.
Ambulatory cancer and US general population reference values and cutoff scores for the functional assessment of cancer therapy

Health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) measures are commonly used in oncology research. Interest in their use for monitoring or screening is increasing. The Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT) is one of the most widely used HRQOL instruments. Consequently, oncology researchers and practitioners have an increasing need for reference values for the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–General (FACT‐G) and its 7‐item rapid version, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–General 7 (FACT‐G7), to compare FACT scores across specific subgroups of patients in research trials and practice. The objectives of this study are to provide 1) reference values from a sample of the general US adult population and a sample of adults diagnosed with cancer and 2) cutoff scores for quality of life.
Entrepreneurial passion: an explorative case study of four metal music ventures

Purpose – Entrepreneurial passion has recently begun to fascinate a growing number of researchers. While only a few systematic studies exist, Cardon et al.'s review suggests passion as a prevalent phenomenon among entrepreneurs. They make a call for empirical and systematic studies of entrepreneurial passion to provide insights for practice and research. This paper aims to apply the recent theoretical advances in a particular empirical setting: the heavy metal genre in the popular music industry.Design/methodology/approach – Using a qualitative in‐depth case study approach, four ventures that are considered new ventures in the metal music business are studied.Findings – The findings strongly imply that the grounds for a globally successful creative venture require the passion of at least one inventor entrepreneur. Also, at least one founder is needed to take the venture to the next stage, where business is formalized for ramp up and at least one developer is needed to grow the business after the other two.
Functional TCR Retrieval from Single Antigen-Specific Human T Cells Reveals Multiple Novel Epitopes

Simon, Omokoko, and colleagues developed an integrated approach to retrieve and functionally characterize TCRs from single viral or tumor Ag-reactive T cells and isolated 56 unique Ag-specific TCRs against 39 different epitopes, supporting rational design of T cell-based immunotherapies using this approach. The determination of the epitope specificity of disease-associated T-cell responses is relevant for the development of biomarkers and targeted immunotherapies against cancer, autoimmune, and infectious diseases. The lack of known T-cell epitopes and corresponding T-cell receptors (TCR) for novel antigens hinders the efficient development and monitoring of new therapies. We developed an integrated approach for the systematic retrieval and functional characterization of TCRs from single antigen-reactive T cells that includes the identification of epitope specificity. This is accomplished through the rapid cloning of full-length TCR-α and TCR-β chains directly from single antigen-specific CD8+ or CD4+ T lymphocytes. The functional validation of cloned TCRs is conducted using in vitro–transcribed RNA transfer for expression of TCRs in T cells and HLA molecules in antigen-presenting cells. This method avoids the work and bias associated with repetitive cycles of in vitro T-cell stimulation, and enables fast characterization of antigen-specific T-cell responses. We applied this strategy to viral and tumor-associated antigens (TAA), resulting in the retrieval of 56 unique functional antigen-specific TCRs from human CD8+ and CD4+ T cells (13 specific for CMV-pp65, 16 specific for the well-known TAA NY-ESO-1, and 27 for the novel TAA TPTE), which are directed against 39 different epitopes. The proof-of-concept studies with TAAs NY-ESO-1 and TPTE revealed multiple novel TCR specificities. Our approach enables the rational development of immunotherapy strategies by providing antigen-specific TCRs and immunogenic epitopes. Cancer Immunol Res; 2(12); 1230–44. ©2014 AACR.
NEUROMORPHIC NOISE ATTENUATION BASED ON PITCH IN HEARING AIDS

The Neuromorphic noise attenuation which is based on the pitch for hearing aids with low computational complexity and hardware complexity has been presented in this paper. The proposed noise reduction algorithm consists of noise attenuator to attenuate the background noise and enhance the speech. Then it has pitch scale harmonic filter (PSHF) to detect the speech by calculating the pitch of the signal. The neuromorhic noise attenuator reduces the noise according to the performance of PSHF Simulation results shows that pitch based noise reduction algorithm has very good SNR compared to nonpitch based noise reduction algorithms like mean square error, wiener filter, etc., both in stationary and nonstationary noise environments. Keywords—Neuromorhic noise attenuator; Hearing aid; Pitch Scaled Harmonic Filter; computational complexity; Noise reduction; Stationary and non-stationary noise.
Effect of lymphocyte activation status on binding to endothelium

When endothelial cells (EC) were stimulated with IL‐1 and/or lymphocytes with rIL‐2 or PHA, the binding of lymphocytes to EC was increased. PMA treatment of lymphocytes alone did not increase their binding to EC, but when EC were additionally induced with IL‐1 the binding was increased. The expression of LFA‐1 was constant, whilst the expression of CD49d was increased after rIL‐2 and PHA stimulation. The PMA‐ and rIL‐2‐induced lymphocyte binding to IL‐1‐induced EC was inhibited by anti‐CD11a, CD18 and CD49d mAbs; on the other hand, the enhanced binding of PHA‐stimulated lymphocytes to EC could not be blocked by these mAbs. These results show that activation of lymphocytes by various stimuli leads to different usage of adhesion pathways in their binding to inflammatory EC.
Role of YopP in Suppression of Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha Release by Macrophages during YersiniaInfection

ABSTRACT The Yersinia plasmid-encoded Yop virulon enables extracellular adhering bacteria to deliver toxic effector proteins inside their target cells. It includes a type III secretion system (Ysc), at least two translocator proteins (YopB, YopD), and a set of intracellular Yop effectors (YopE, YopH, YopO, YopM, and YopP). Infection of macrophages with a wild-type strain leads to low levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) release compared to infection with plasmid-cured strains, suggesting that the virulence plasmid encodes a factor impairing the normal TNF-α response of infected macrophages. This effect is correlated with the inhibition of the macrophage mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activities. To identify the Yop protein responsible for the suppression of TNF-α release, we infected J774A.1 and PU5-1.8 macrophages with a battery of knockout Yersinia enterocolitica mutants and we quantified the TNF-α released. Mutants affected in secretion (yscN), in translocation (yopB and yopD), or in synthesis of all the known Yop effectors (yopH,yopO, yopP, yopE, andyopM polymutants) were unable to block the TNF-α response of the macrophages. In contrast, single yopE,yopH, yopO, and yopM mutants behaved like the wild-type strain. A yopP mutant elicited elevated TNF-α release, and complementation of the yopPmutant or the yop effector polymutant strain withyopP alone led to a drop in TNF-α release. In addition, YopP was also responsible for the inhibition of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase2 (ERK2) and p38 MAPK activities. These results show that YopP is the Yop effector responsible for theYersinia-induced suppression of TNF-α release by infected macrophages.
Brain gray matter abnormalities in progressive supranuclear palsy revisited

Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) have demonstrated heterogeneous findings regarding gray matter (GM) abnormalities. Here, we used Seed-based d Mapping, a coordinate-based meta-analytic approach to identify consistent regions of GM anomalies across studies of PSP. Totally, 18 original VBM studies, comprising 284 patients with PSP and 367 healthy controls were included. As compared to healthy controls, patients with PSP demonstrated significant GM reductions in both cortical and subcortical regions, including the frontal motor cortices, medial (including anterior cingulate cortex) and lateral frontal cortices, insula, superior temporal gyrus, striatum (putamen and caudate nucleus), thalamus, midbrain, and anterior cerebellum. Our study further suggests that many confounding factors, such as age, male ratio, motor severity, cognitive impairment severity, and illness duration of PSP patients, and scanner field-strength, could contribute to the heterogeneity of GM alterations in PSP across studies. Our comprehensive meta-analysis demonstrates a specific neuroanatomical pattern of GM atrophy in PSP with the involvement of the cortical-subcortical circuitries that mediate vertical supranuclear gaze palsy, motor disabilities (postural instability with falls and parkinsonism), and cognitive-behavioral disturbances. Confounding factors merit attention in future studies.
Srpska Fear and anger as predictors of motivation for intergroup aggression : Evidence

We investigated the relationship between emotions of fear and anger and people’s motivation for intergroup aggression within the context of Serbian–Albanian relations in Serbia (Study 1) and Serbian–Bosniak intergroup relations in Bosnia (Study 2). Serbian students in Belgrade and Banja Luka completed a survey that assessed their attitudes towards Albanians or Bosniaks. We found that fear of the outgroup was related to increased motivation for aggression in the context of the ongoing conflict in Serbia, whereas fear was negatively related to aggression in Bosnia, where the conflict had been resolved. The relationships between fear and aggression were significant even after controlling for anger. Furthermore, ingroup affiliation mediated the relationship between fear and aggression in Serbia and between anger and aggression in Bosnia. These findings have implications for conflict resolution efforts in ongoing or intractable conflicts.
A pyrimido[1,6-a]benzimidazole that enhances DNA cleavage mediated by eukaryotic topoisomerase II: a novel class of topoisomerase II-targeted drugs with cytotoxic potential

Recently, a number of novel quinolones with potent activity against topoisomerase II and eukaryotic cells have been described. Many of these compounds contain aromatic substituents in their C-7 ring positions. To determine whether pyrimido[1,6-a]benzimidazoles, a class of drugs modeled on quinolones, also display activity toward eukaryotic systems, the effects of Ro 46-7864 and Ro 47-3359 on Drosophila melanogaster topoisomerase II and Kc cells were characterized. While the former drug contains an aliphatic group (4-N-methylpiperazine) at the ring position equivalent to C-7 in quinolones, the latter compound contains an aromatic substituent (2,6-dimethylpyridine). Both pyrimido[1,6-a]benzimidazoles inhibited DNA relaxation catalyzed by the type II enzyme. However, only Ro 47-3359 enhanced topoisomerase II-mediated DNA cleavage and was toxic to Kc cells. At a concentration of 100 microM, this drug approximately doubled the levels of DNA breakage in vitro and killed > 50% of the initial cell population of cultures. These results strongly suggest that selected pyrimido[1,6-a]benzimidazoles may function as topoisomerase II-targeted drugs with cytotoxic potential.
Idiom Polarity Identification using Contextual Information Belém

Identifying the polarity of a given text is a complex task that usually requires an analysis of the contextual information. This task becomes to be much more complex when, in such analysis, we consider smaller textual components than paragraphs, such as sentences, phraseological units or single words. In this paper, we consider the automatic identification of polarity for linguistic units known as idioms based on their contextual information. Idioms are a phraseological unit made up of more than two words in which one of those words plays the role of the predicate. We employ three lexicons for determining the polarity of those words surrounding the idiom, i.e., in its context and using this information we infer the possible polarity of the target idiom. The lexicons we are using are: ElhPolar dictionary, iSOL and ML-SentiCON Sentiment Spanish Lexicon, all of them containg the polarity of different words. One of the aims of this research work is to identify the lexicon that provides the best results for the task proposed, which is to count the number of positive and negative words in the idiom context, so that we can infer the polarity of the idiom itself. The experiments carried out show that the best combination obtain results close to 57.31%, when the texts are lemmatized and 48.87%, when they are not lemmatized.
Are Accounting Graduates Prepared For Their Careers? A Comparison of Employees’ and Employers’ Perceptions

Nowadays, accounting graduates are expected to possess a wide set of technical and generic skills to meet the requirements of the work place. Most employers find that accounting university programs are unable to provide graduates with the skills that are required by the profession. The aim of this research is to examine accounting graduates’ selfassessment and employers’ assessments of skill sets acquired in the accounting university programs. During the period April – May 2014, a quantitative study was done involving data collection from 70 accounting employees at entry level and 70 practitioners. The study also assesses the perception of employees and employers of the importance of technical and non-technical skills at entry level employment in accounting. Moreover, the fresh graduate’s job satisfaction during their first year of work was investigated. Findings suggest that there is an existing perception gap between employers and the newly hired employees about the preparedness of the latters and about the importance of the skills required by the profession. Results revealed that there is a positive significant relationship between the employee’s self-assessment and his/her job satisfaction. This empirical study provides a deeper understanding of the skills expected for accountants to succeed in their professions. It also assesses the accounting education in Lebanon, a representative middle-eastern developing country, and suggests approaches to narrow the education gap.