Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A framework to relate business improvement actions and performance measurement

This thesis reports on the development of a performance improvement framework that formally represents causal relationships between performance measures, factors of performance, improvement actions and the overall strategy of a business. The measurement of business performance has received significant attention from both the academic and business worlds. Literature suggests the benefits of implementing balanced performance measurement. However, practitioners in the field of performance measurement do not seem to deliver the significant results anticipated by the research community. The research reported in this thesis delivers a performance improvement framework that allows practitioners to integrate the operations knowledge in an organisation with a formal performance measurement system, in the form of causal relationships in improvement actions. This gives an improvement focus to measurement and at the same ​ time ensures that improvement actions are aligned to the overall strategy of the organisation. The development of the framework was based on methodological theory development and empirical case studies. The process to apply the framework and a set of web-based tools to support its implementation were also built. These were tested in a process industry environment. The research contributes to knowledge by extending the concept of performance indicators to incorporate factors that affect them, the potential improvement actions, their constraints and their relationships. For organisations that have established performance measurement systems and are working with a performance measurement culture, use of this framework allows them to systematically evaluate actions for ​ continuous improvement. Show full item record
Exchange rate exposure of Hungarian enterprises – results of a survey

In this paper, I examine the exchange rate exposure of Hungarian enterprises from a financial stability perspective. In connection with the recent growth in FX loans to enterprises, the central bank assesses the vulnerability of the banks’ loan portfolio to changes in the exchange rate. To collect company-level data, two surveys were carried out on exchange rate exposure and exchange rate risk management practices. The first survey carried out in 2005 showed that the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises are exposed to exchange rate depreciation, but that exchange rate risk management techniques are almost unknown to them. In the 2007 survey, which is summarized here, large enterprises were also examined, as well as motives for borrowing in foreign currency and the lack of FX risk management tools. Based on the results, the main motive for raising FX debt is lower interest rates, while at large enterprises natural hedging also appears as a factor. The main reason for ignoring FX risks is that FX risk management tools are thought to be expensive, complicated or ineffective. The majority of enterprises think there are no suitable tools to manage FX risks or they expect external solutions, such as the introduction of the euro to decrease their risks. Based on calculations on aggregated balance sheet data, exchange rate depreciations would improve the profitability of the corporate sector as well as its capability to repay the debts. However, micro-level calculations suggest that exchange rate depreciations increase the ratio of loss-making enterprises to a larger degree than exchange rate appreciations. These calcuations do not take competitiveness and other long-term effects of exchange rate changes into consideration, thus, the results have to be treated with caution.
Simple Real-time Attitude Stabilization of a Quad-rotor Aircraft With Bounded Signals

In this paper, a simple control algorithm to stabilize the attitude of a quad-rotor aircraft is presented. The controller is obtained using the backstepping technique and adding saturation functions. The analysis of convergence is carried out by using the Lyapunov analysis. The performance of the controller with respect to a classical PD controller is compared by simulation. The robustness of the control algorithm with respect to aggressive perturbations is illustrated with real-time experiments
Adenovirus‐5 E1A suppresses differentiation of 3T3 L1 preadipocytes at lower levels than required for induction of apoptosis

To investigate the functional relationship between the ability of the adenovirus‐5 E1A oncogene product to transform with its ability to block adipocytic differentiation and induce apoptosis, we expressed E1A in the 3T3 L1 preadipocytic cell line. The results demonstrate a dramatic, quantitative reciprocal regulation of differentiation and several transformation‐associated properties in response to graded levels of E1A expression, with the suppression of differentiative capacity, focus formation, and anchorage‐independent proliferation requiring increasing levels of E1A. Progressively higher E1A levels were accompanied by apoptosis induction. The effect of E1A upon adipocytic differentiation as well as transformation and apoptosis required binding to the retinoblastoma‐susceptibility gene product. These data reveal a dissociation between E1A signals leading to transformation, suppression of differentiation and induction of apoptosis, based on levels of expression. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Consumers’ perception of quality in organic food

With this study we investigate the preferences of an important category of consumers of organic products (regular consumers of organic food or RCOFs) allowing for preference heterogeneity. A survey instrument was developed to elicit preferences for important qualitative and quantitative attributes of extra virgin olive oil. The survey was administered via questionnaire to a random sample of 198 RCOFs in organic food stores of Naples, Italy. The choice task was organised around a fractional factorial main effects orthogonal design. Each respondent made eight choices to rank‐order nine product profiles in terms of their individual preference. Product attributes included price, origin of production, type of certification and visual appearance. Interestingly, the set of observed responses appears to display significant preference heterogeneity for origin of production and price. Once heterogeneity and correlation among repeated choice by the same respondent are accounted for by means of random‐parameter panel logit models, the fit increases dramatically with respect to the more restrictive fixed‐parameter logit models. Results also suggest that price plays an important role as quality proxy, while visual appearance is not significant in preference modelling and the type of certification programme has a fixed effect.
Review On Application Of Haptic In Robotic Rehabilitation Technology

Haptic is a science of touch tactile or kinesthetic. It is an interaction with humans and machines.The review is conducted by looking at, the different catagories of haptic teleoperation systems, the channel control architectures, the different challenges in implementing haptic technology, and the area of interest in the application of haptic and non-haptic robotic rehabilitation technology. The review reveal that, haptic teleoperation constitute of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral teleoperation systems, the control architectures are two channel, three channel and four channel control architectures, Haptic challenges can be categorized in five problems the stability, transparency, determining the force methods, scalingand frequency bandwidth. Finally, the review summarizes haptic and non-haptic rehabilitation systems. As a result, it’s been found that there are many rehabilitation systems but a few apply haptic. Haptic in rehabilitation is used in virtual haptic, but there are many opportunities can be benefit from haptic in real world rehab such as lower limb rehabilitation. In a conclusion, the gap in the area of haptic on robotic rehabilitation technology include, the limited attempt of applying haptic especially bilateral haptic control in robotic rehabilitation and particularly non for lower limb.
Population dynamics of the sickle-cell trait in the Black Caribs of British Honduras, Central America.

THE ORIGINAL purpose of this investigation was to study the ethnic position and the genetic structure of an isolated human population. Such populations provide opportunities for elucidating causal mechanisms concerned in the maintenance of ethnic differences and in the changes in the biological composition of the population known as micro-evolution. The population chosen for study lives along the Atlantic littoral of Central America, from British Honduras south to Nicaragua. These people, known collectively as the Black Caribs, consider themselves as being distinct from any other group found on the American continent. They speak the language of the Island Carib of the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies and have remained socially, culturally, and biologically remote from adj acent non-Carib communities. The chief emphasis of the present paper is on evidence that the sickle-cell gene has been maintained in this population at frequencies far above those to be expected on the usual assumption concerning the effect of natural selection on a lethal gene. A suggestion is offered on the possible effect malaria in British Honduras may have had in maintaining the high value of the sickle-cell trait observed in the Black Caribs. The observations reported were obtained during four visits (1955-1957) to the Black Carib villages of Stann Creek, Hopkins, Seine Bight, Punta Gorda, and Barranco.
The investigation programme of plasma discharge on HL-2A Tokamak

The area of plasma breakdown on HL-2A with pure Ohmic discharge is on the low field side(LFS) where the field null configuration is located, and the emission of Dα which was measured by CCD camera confirms the plasma formation area, the current of Vertical Field(VF) is an important factor to facilitate plasma breakdown. The effect of the prefill pressure on plasma breakdown is studied carefully by scan the prefill pressure, high and low prefill pressure will make the discharge failure, only in a appropriate range of the pressure can have reproducible prompt discharge. A new plasma start-up scenario has been introduced for bad wall condition, the result demonstrates that it can be successful for plasma breakdown even if the vaccum vessel asorbed a lot of impurties.
IDATG: an open tool for automated testing of interactive software

The IDATG (Integrating Design and Automated Test Case Generation) specification technique and tool is introduced. It is designed for the automated generation of test cases during the testing of interactive industrial applications. In addition to checking the application's usability, IDATG supports both the specification of the behavior of a user interface and the generation of two types of test case i.e. for GUI coverage and for checking the usability of the application. The test procedure for both cases is based on a particular test process model and on a formal language for representing the user interface. The tool architecture comprises a set of visual editors, a language interpreter and a test case generator. The interface concept on which the components are based enables the tool to be integrated into industrial platforms for defining and executing test cases. A first cost/benefit analysis indicates a significant reduction of effort for test case specification and test result analysis.
Propinquity in global software engineering: examining perceived distance in globally distributed project teams

In social psychology, propinquity refers to the physical (objective) or psychological (subjective) proximity between people. In this paper, we explore the psychological dimension of propinquity by examining the phenomenon of feeling distant from geographically distributed people, in the context of distributed software teams. The perceived distance is an important challenge faced by distributed teams, and it is frequently based on factors beyond the physical distance, such as communication and cultural differences. The purpose of this paper is to present a model to assess and make more visible the construct of ‘perceived distance’ among members of global software engineering teams. The model was applied in three real‐world cases to assess its effectiveness in uncovering hidden and useful information during the project lifecycle. The practical experience lived with the quantification of perceived distance gave us good indication that this data can benefit the practice of global software engineering. In most of the projects evaluated, project managers were not expecting the results found. We present the model, details of its applications, analysis of the results, lessons learned and practical implications for the management of distributed software projects and teams. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The mechatronic design of a micro-autonomous underwater vehicle (µAUV)

Micro-autonomous underwater vehicles (μAUVs) can form the basis of mobile underwater sensor networks for monitoring sub-surface cluttered environments. There are numerous technical challenges involved in constructing such vehicles using off-the-shelf components. This paper presents progress to date in the design of such a system, the problems encountered and possible solutions.
Robust classification ensemble method for microarray data

The objective of this study is to develop an accurate and robust classification ensemble method suitable for microarray data with noises. We proposed an algorithm, pattern match (PM)-bagging, which performs well in accuracy and is robust to noise variables and noise observations. From the experiments with real data set, the performance of the proposed method is found quite comparable and not much degraded even when the data set has noise variables or noise observations, while some other ensemble methods showed degradations of performance. A bias and variance decomposition showed that the success of the proposed method is due to an effective reduction of both bias and variance.
Broad detection of bacterial type III secretion system and flagellin proteins by the human NAIP/NLRC4 inflammasome

Significance Inflammasomes are cytosolic multiprotein complexes that initiate innate immune responses to microbial infection. Inflammasome specificity is determined by cytosolic innate immune sensors, including nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat-containing family, apoptosis inhibitory proteins (NAIPs). In mice, which encode seven different NAIPs, individual NAIPs recognize specific components of the structurally related bacterial type III secretion system (T3SS) and flagellar apparatus. Humans encode a single functional NAIP, raising the question of whether human NAIP recognizes the same repertoire of bacterial ligands. Here, we find that, in contrast to the ligand specificity exhibited by the murine NAIPs, the single human NAIP broadly detects multiple T3SS and flagellin proteins. These findings provide a basis for understanding the mechanisms underlying human-specific innate immune responses against bacterial infection. Inflammasomes are cytosolic multiprotein complexes that initiate host defense against bacterial pathogens by activating caspase-1–dependent cytokine secretion and cell death. In mice, specific nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat-containing family, apoptosis inhibitory proteins (NAIPs) activate the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat-containing family, CARD domain-containing protein 4 (NLRC4) inflammasome upon sensing components of the type III secretion system (T3SS) and flagellar apparatus. NAIP1 recognizes the T3SS needle protein, NAIP2 recognizes the T3SS inner rod protein, and NAIP5 and NAIP6 recognize flagellin. In contrast, humans encode a single functional NAIP, raising the question of whether human NAIP senses one or multiple bacterial ligands. Previous studies found that human NAIP detects both flagellin and the T3SS needle protein and suggested that the ability to detect both ligands was achieved by multiple isoforms encoded by the single human NAIP gene. Here, we show that human NAIP also senses the Salmonella Typhimurium T3SS inner rod protein PrgJ and that T3SS inner rod proteins from multiple bacterial species are also detected. Furthermore, we show that a single human NAIP isoform is capable of sensing the T3SS inner rod, needle, and flagellin. Our findings indicate that, in contrast to murine NAIPs, promiscuous recognition of multiple bacterial ligands is conferred by a single human NAIP.
Gut Metagenome as a Potential Diagnostic and Predictive Biomarker in Slow Transit Constipation

Slow transit constipation (STC) is one of the most frequent gastrointestinal diagnoses. In this study, we conducted a quantitative metagenomics study in 118 Chinese individuals. These participants were divided into the discovery cohort of 50 patients with STC and 40 healthy controls as well as a validation cohort of 16 patients and 12 healthy controls. We found that the intestinal microbiome of patients with STC was significantly different from that of healthy individuals at the phylum, genus, and species level. Patients with STC had markedly higher levels of Alistipes and Eubacterium and lower abundance of multiple species belonging to the Roseburia genus. Patients with STC gene expression levels and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) orthology pathway (such as fatty acid biosynthesis, butanoate metabolism, and methane metabolism pathways) enrichment were also substantially different from those of healthy controls. These microbiome and metabolite differences may be valuable biomarkers for STC. Our findings suggest that alteration of the microbiome may lead to constipation by changing the levels of microbial-derived metabolites in the gut. Above findings may help us in the development of microbial drugs.
Occupational risk factors

The association between exposure to selected chemical carcinogens, occupations or industries and bladder cancer is well established, and it is estimated that 20–27% of bladder cancers are attributable to occupational exposures. The risk of bladder cancer stemming from an occupational exposure depends not only on compound carcinogenicity, exposure intensity and workplace characteristics, but also on individual susceptibility to these cancers. Regulatory controls in industrialized nations have resulted in a decreased burden of exposure to bladder carcinogens in the workplace. Unfortunately, the same is unlikely in many developing countries, where risky technologies may have been transferred from more developed countries, and where enforcement of regulations and worker protection are likely to be less stringent.
Transaction Costs and Profitability in UK Manufacturing

This paper explores the impact of transaction costs on performance at firm and industry levels using a sample of 7350 UK manufacturing firms. This is achieved by estimating a profit function with estimated transaction costs as a right hand side variable. The discussion has two specific objectives. (1) To show how firm and average industry transaction costs can be estimated using a stochastic frontier method. (2) To examine a central claim of transaction cost theory that links these costs to performance. In addition the different impacts of static and dynamic transaction costs are emphasised, with the different impacts being respectively negative and positive on profitability. Broadly speaking it is shown that such costs do impact on performance in a way consistent with both static and dynamic costs, in different industries, and that the impacts hold after a series of robustness checks. In addition it is shown that the impacts can depend on monopoly power, firm scale, and firm growth.
The Application of SUDOSCAN for Screening Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy in Chinese Population.

PURPOSE Diabetic peripheral neuropathies are the common chronic complications of diabetes, but the diagnosis is insensitive by physical examination in busy outpatients. Here we evaluated the performance of SUDOSCAN in screening diabetic peripheral neuropathies in Chinese type 2 diabetic patients. METHODS The study enrolled 180 patients for annually screening. All patients underwent neurological symptoms assessment, clinical examination, nerve conduction studies and cardiovascular autonomic reflex tests. SUDOSCAN was tested and evaluated with electrochemical skin conductance in hands and feet, asymmetry ratio in hands and feet and predicted cardiac neuropathy. RESULTS Patients enrolled had an average age of 56.1 years, 9.8 years of diabetic duration. Patients with diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy showed significantly lower electrochemical skin conductance in feet and higher asymmetry ratio in feet compared with those without. Sensitivity and specificity of asymmetry ratio in feet for diagnosing diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy were 88.2% and 46.9% and area under ROC curve was 0.713. Patients with cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy showed significantly lower electrochemical skin conductance in hands and feet, and higher asymmetry ratio in feet and predicted cardiac neuropathy compared with those without. Sensitivity and specificity of electrochemical skin conductance in feet in diagnosing cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy were 85.6% and 76.1% with an area under ROC curve of 0.859. CONCLUSIONS SUDOSCAN is a sensitive test to detect diabetic peripheral neuropathy in China and could be an effective screening tool in in busy outpatients and primary health care.
Developing web crawlers for vertical search engines: a survey of the current research

Vertical search engines allow users to query for information within a subset of documents relevant to a pre-determined topic (Chakrabarti, 1999). One challenging aspect to deploying a vertical search engine is building a Web crawler that distinguishes relevant documents from non-relevant documents. In this research, we describe and analyze various methods to crawl relevant documents for vertical search engines, and we examine ways to apply these methods to building a local search engine. In a typical crawl cycle for a vertical search engine, the crawler grabs a URL from the URL frontier, downloads content from the URL, and determines the document’s relevancy to the pre-defined topic. If the document is deemed relevant, it is indexed and its links are added to the URL frontier. Two questions are raised in this process: how do we judge a document’s relevance, and how should we prioritize URLs in the frontier in order to reach the best documents first?
High Performance Logic Form Transformation

This paper presents extensions to a previously developed logic form representation and a method for transforming WordNet glosses into logic forms using a set of high-precision rules combined with a set of high recall heuristics. An almost 3% increase in POS tagging accuracy is achieved over state-of-the art results at the expense of user intervention on only 7.52% of words. We apply a nearest neighbor solution of parser switching that leads to 6.43% increase in exact sentence accuracy for glosses. Logic Forms are derived with an accuracy of 89.46%.