Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear approximation based image recovery using adaptive sparse reconstructions

We study the robust estimation of missing regions in images and video using adaptive, sparse reconstructions. We assume that we are given a linear transform that is expected to provide sparse decompositions over missing regions such that a portion of the transform coefficients over missing regions are zero or close to zero. We adaptively determine these small magnitude coefficients through thresholding, establish sparsity constraints, and estimate missing regions in images using information surrounding these regions. We show that the region types we can effectively estimate in a mean squared error sense are those for which the given transform provides a close approximation using nonlinear approximation. We show the nature of the constructed estimators and how these estimators relate to the utilized transform and its sparsity over regions of interest. For images the developed algorithms are applicable over locally uniform (smooth, high frequency, texture, etc.) regions separated by edges or edge-like singularities. However, the developed estimation framework is general, and can readily be applied to other nonstationary signals with a suitable choice of linear transforms. Equations are derived and extensive simulation examples included.
Post-translational processing of selenoprotein P: implications of glycosylation for its utilisation by target cells

Abstract Selenoprotein P (SeP) is a highly glycosylated plasma protein containing up to 10 selenocysteine residues. It is secreted by hepatocytes and also by the human hepatoma cell line HepG2. Pharmacological inhibitors interfering with N-glycosylation, intracellular trafficking and calcium homeostasis were applied to examine post-translational processing and secretion of SeP by HepG2 cells. In parallel, the prototypic secretory glycoprotein α1-antitrypsin was used as technical control. Secretion of SeP was stimulated by increasing the extracellular calcium concentration and by inhibiting the release of sequestered calcium through dantrolene or U-73122. In contrast, brefeldin A and thapsigargin suppressed SeP secretion. Tunicamycin and monensin induced the synthesis of truncated non-glycosylated and partially glycosylated forms of SeP, which were secreted in spite of their impaired glycosylation. Both non-glycosylated and partially glycosylated SeP is utilised as selenium donor by target cells: impaired glycosylation affected neither the ability of SeP to induce the synthesis of the selenoenzyme cytosolic glutathione peroxidase nor its capacity to protect endothelial cells from oxidative stress.
3D driving simulator with VANET capabilities to assess cooperative systems: 3DSimVanet

Vehicular systems that intend to aid the driver to increase road safety and reduce road accidents might differ in the levels of safety provided if they are based on different functioning and visualization concepts. In this paper we present a flexible and adjustable 3-dimensional driving simulator based on Open-StreetMap (OSM) data that integrates Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) communication capabilities to assess different information paradigms in a lab-controlled environment. Results regarding the proof of concept of the simulator to test new in-vehicle technology validated the proposed approach. The experiments conducted show discrepancies in the driver's environment perception that were determined by the system used and how the information was provided to the driver.
Critical success factors in implementing process-oriented knowledge management systems (PKMS) in the public sector in Korea

Knowledge has been considered as a great asset for organizations, including in the public sector, to enhance competitiveness and to provide better quality public services. As a result, there has been a growing interest in treating knowledge as a significant organizational resource in the public sector. Consistent with the interest in organizational knowledge, many researchers have developed types of knowledge management systems (KMS) to support knowledge management (KM) activities. However, knowledge cannot be into integrated into an organization nor create desired outcomes if the knowledge is not working along with or through established business processes. Therefore, the concept of process-oriented knowledge management (PKM), combining KM and business process management (BPM), has emerged as a new idea and term in academia, industries, and organizations. Information systems (IS) that support PKM have been developed and called process-oriented knowledge management systems (PKMS). While there have been a number of studies that explored critical success factors (CSF) that affect IS, KM, and KMS, there are few studies about PKMS, in the public sector in particular. Therefore, the aim of this study is to empirically and theoretically assess CSFs that support or inhibit the successful implementation of PKMS using an example of a public organization in Korea. This study examined key CSFs affecting PKM system implementation. The study focused on determinants of system usage, perceived usefulness, and user satisfaction with an organization‟s PKM practices, comparing CSFs in a previously implemented KMS. System usage, including perceived usefulness and user satisfaction, was used as a measure of how
Automatic Design Exploration Framework for Multicores with Reconfigurable Accelerators

Despite their promising improvements in performance and power efficiency, the possibilities of reconfigurable computing in multiprocessor environments are still mainly unexplored. This paper presents a new framework for rapid testing of multicores with application-specific reconfigurable accelerators. The design exploration is a multi-step flow that performs automatic generation of fine-grained accelerators, automatic parallelization, and testing. The automatic generation of accelerators is accomplished by an in-house developed software. Automatic parallelization is performed by OSCAR (Optimally SCheduled Advanced multiprocessoR) source-to-source compiler. The testing platform is configured from 1 up to 8 cores, and each core has a private reconfigurable space to implement application-specific accelerators. We test the design process with applications from the media domain (Optical Flow, AAC encoder, MPEG2 encoder and MPEG2 decoder). The results show that the multicore configuration outputs of our design exploration framework for 8 CPUs with reconfigurable accelerators achieve a maximum speedup of 6.57x for the Optical Flow application.
Differential Effects of Endogenous and Exogenous Interferon- γ on Immunoglobulin E, Cellular Infiltration, and Airway Responsiveness in a Murine Model of Allergic Asthma

The inflammatory response as seen in human allergic asthma is thought to be regulated by Th2 cells. It has been shown that interferon-γ (IFN-γ) can downregulate the proliferation of Th2 cells and therefore might be of therapeutic use. In the present study we have investigated the in vivo role of endogenous and exogenous IFN-γ in a murine model with features reminiscent of human allergic asthma. IFN-γ gene knockout (GKO) and wild-type mice were sensitized with ovalbumin and exposed to repeated ovalbumin aerosol challenges. In addition, wild-type mice were treated with intraperitoneal or nebulized recombinant murine IFN-γ during the challenge period. Sensitized wild-type mice exhibited upregulated ovalbumin-specific IgE in serum, and airway hyperresponsiveness and infiltration of eosinophils and mononuclear cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) after ovalbumin challenge. In contrast, in GKO mice only reduced eosinophilic infiltration in the BALF was observed after ovalbumin challenge. In wild-typ.
A Relational Framework for the Integration of Specifications

We describe a framework for viewpoint specification using formal specification languages. In order to establish consistency and to further develop specifications, specifications need to be integrated ("unified"). This integration is not defined in terms of their semantics, but more abstractly in terms of, so-called, development relations, which represent acceptable "developments" (e.g., refinements) of each of the viewpoint specifications. The framework is motivated by its instantiations with a number of specification languages (e.g., LOTOS and Z) and different development relations.
Web Survey Bias: Sample or Mode Effect?

Web surveys are the most successful form of Internet research and, particularly in the US, are becoming a mainstream market research tool. However, there is relatively little research on the effect of the web mode compared with more traditional administration methods. We review the literature on web surveys and sources of error, and investigate the impact of the web administration mode. Web and paper surveys were conducted simultaneously using near-identical self-completion questionnaires. A detailed comparison of responses included analysis of the means, skewness, kurtosis, and variance. After identifying a number of significant diferences, chi-square and regression were used to analyse the administration mode efect. We argue that the differences found are attributable to sample bias rather than mode, and that the ramifications of low response rates in web surveys are more far reaching than than been recognised.
Do Regulatory Changes Affect Market Risk?

Understanding the impact of changes in regulation on market risk is crucial but there is no literature giving clear evidence that market risk responds to expected changes in regulation designed to change risk (mostly because of a dearth of cases where the risk effect is isolated). This paper helps fill this gap by providing a detailed study of one such case. Using a sample of 15 privatized UK companies and a (18 company) comparator sample between 1993 and 2000 we show that the time-varying nature of risk in the market at that time was fully consistent with underlying theory.
Testing for Gene-Gene Interaction with AMMI Models

Studies have shown that many common diseases are influenced by multiple genes and their interactions. There is currently a strong interest in testing for association between combinations of these genes and disease, in particular because genes that affect the risk of disease only in the presence of another genetic variant may not be detected in marginal analysis. In this paper we propose the use of additive main effect and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) models to detect and to quantify gene-gene interaction effects for a quantitative trait. The objective of the present research is to demonstrate the practical advantages of these models to describe complex interaction between two unlinked loci. Although gene-gene interactions have often been defined as a deviance from additive genetic effects, the residual term has generally not been appropriately treated. The AMMI models allow for the analysis of a two way factorial data structure and combine the analysis of variance of the two main genotype effects with a principal component analysis of the residual multiplicative interaction. The AMMI models for gene-gene interaction presented here allow for the testing of non additivity between the two loci, and also describe how their interaction structure fits the existing non-additivity. Moreover, these models can be used to identify the specific two genotypes combinations that contribute to the significant gene-gene interaction. We describe the use of the biplot to display the structure of the interaction and evaluate the performance of the AMMI and the special cases of the AMMI previously described by Tukey and Mandel with simulated data sets. Our simulated study showed that the AMMI model is as powerful as general linear models when the interaction is not modeled in the presence of marginal effects. However, in the presence of pure epitasis, i.e. in the absence of marginal effects, the AMMI method was not found to be superior to other tested regression methods.
The Empirical Study of Validity of Small and Medium-sized Companies Value Based on Economic Valued Added (EVA)

Economic Value Added(EVA) is an indicator that measures the enterprise value from the perspective of shareholders,which is widely adopted through the world.However,due to special China's capital market,whether the EVA plays superior to the traditional accounting indicators to value of China's enterprises? Using the small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises which listed on the ShenZhen Stock Exchange as samples,employ both the correlation analysis and the regression analysis method that investigates the relationship between EVA,traditional accounting indicators and market value added.The evidences indicate that the traditional accounting indicators still have high explanation power to MVA and play an irreplaceable role.However,it is obvious that EVA indicators have the incremental explanation power to MVA than the traditional accounting indicators.
Comparing adaptation techniques for on-line handwriting recognition

This paper describes an online handwriting recognition system with focus on adaptation techniques. Our hidden Markov model (HMM)-based recognition system for cursive German script can be adapted to the writing style of a new writer using either a retraining depending on the EM (expectation maximization)-approach or an adaptation according to the MAP (maximum a posteriori) or MLLR (maximum likelihood linear regression)-criterion. The performance of the resulting writer-dependent system increases significantly even if the amount of adaptation data is very small (about 6 words). So this approach is also applicable for online systems in hand-held computers such as PDAs. Special attention was paid to the performance comparison of the different adaptation techniques with the availability of different amounts of adaptation data ranging from a few words tip to 100 words per writer.
Personal Aspirations and the Consumption of Luxury Goods

The market for luxury goods and services has been enlarging, steadily and strongly, since the early 1990s. Commentators have estimated its total worth at $840 billion in 2004, reaching $1 trillion by 2010 (Fiske & Silverstein 2004; Metha 2006; Luxury Institute 2007). The economic factors driving this trend include increasing disposable income, lower unemployment, reducing production costs and increasing female employment, as well as a growing wealthy class in emerging countries (Silverstein & Fiske 2003, 2005; Fiske & Silverstein 2004; Yeoman & McMahon-Beattie 2006). Parallel social influences on the predisposition to purchase luxuries might be the desire to emulate the lifestyle of the affluent (O’Cass & Frost 2004; Amaldoss & Jain 2005), the superior quality of products and services (Sukhdial et al. 1995; Vigneron & Johnson 2004), or a hedonistic drive to ‘treat’ oneself (Silverstein & Fiske 2005). Consequently, the luxury market may be thought of as a developing mass market, which includes not only members of the richest social class but also those at a more modest socio-economic level (Nueno & Quelch 1998; Yeoman & McMahon-Beattie 2006).
An Evaluation of Adopting Language Model as the Checker of Preposition Usage

Many grammar checkers in rule-based approach do not handle errors that come from various usages, for example, the usages of prepositions. To study the behavior of prepositions, we introduce the language model into a grammarchecking task. A language model is trained from a large training corpus, which contains many short phrases. It can be used for detecting and correcting certain types of grammar errors, where local information is sufficient to make decision. We conduct several experiments on finding the correct English prepositions. The experiment results show that the accuracy of open test is 71% and the accuracy of closed test is 89%. The accuracy is 70% on TOEFL-level tests.
Price Bundling in the Student Banking Market

Banks in New Zealand have been putting substantial efforts into trying to attract and retain tertiary student customers for a number of years. A popular marketing strategy is price bundling, in which two or more products and services are offered at the same time at a discount. This paper reports on a study into the attitudes of New Zealand tertiary students towards the bank price bundling strategy, and to what extent this strategy assists with the retention of student customers. Most respondents had a student bank account and the results showed generally positive attitudes among tertiary students toward the bank packages that were offered by banks in New Zealand. A relatively low defection rate was found in this study. It appeared to be their satisfaction, especially their satisfaction with banks and service channels, which contributed to their loyalty (or non-defection) rather than switching barriers.
Differential privacy preserving clustering based on Haar wavelet transform

So far, several techniques have been proposed for privacy preserving clustering (PPC). Most of the existing techniques have been designed based on heuristic notions without provable privacy guarantees. -differential privacy is a strong notion of privacy, which guarantees provable privacy. However, low degree of utility is the key issue of -differential notion. In this paper, we have proposed an -differential based algorithm to generate a perturbed data for PPC purpose. Hence, we have used Haar wavelet transform (HWT) for two reasons: (1) for achieving the perturbed data with much lower dimension compared to the original data in order to increase the efficiency of clustering algorithms, and (2) for adding much lower noise in order to obtain the perturbed data with both appropriate level of utility and differential privacy guarantee. We have also compared the proposed algorithm with a recent algorithm based on the utility and privacy guarantees. In addition, we have presented the results of the experiments using several datasets, which show that the proposed algorithm has an appropriate level of utility.
Are narrative CSR disclosures relevant for investors? Empirical evidence from Germany

CSR disclosures relate to the provision of information on companies’ environmental and social performance to external stakeholders. Although such disclosures can be directed at several stakeholders other than the (potential) firm shareholders, they may be relevant for valuation purposes. Based on the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines, we use content analysis to assess the value relevance of CSR disclosures of 130 German companies over 4 years. Germany is an interesting setting as CSR disclosures are mostly voluntarily, even though the institutional environment appears sensitive to CSR disclosures. Our results show that CSR information is value-relevant, but the value relevance of CSR information differs amongst CSR categories. Specifically, the disclosure of social (i.e. employee-related) information is positively associated with firm value yet environmental disclosures are not. Our results confirm that management should be aware of the potential capital market effects of voluntary CSR disclosures, even though they are not directed at shareholders as such.
Fuzzy-DEA as a diagnostic tool to measure and compare the performance of public and private banks including foreign banks in India

Bank performance evaluation is an important study for business goal setting and management. In this paper, an attempt has been made to compare the performance of public and private banks including foreign banks in India. This is done by assessing the productive efficiency of the banks arrived through DEA bringing the non-fuzzy and fuzzy dimensions to the bank variable. The benchmarking is identified and the banks are ranked.
Effect of Road Infrastructure on Farm Production in Oyo State, Nigeria

In spite of the fact that majority of Nigerian farmers live in rural areas, the rate of infrastructural development in the rural areas remain a source of serious concern. This study was therefore carried out to assess the state of road infrastructure and it effect on farmers’ productivity in Oyo state, Nigeria. A three stage random sampling technique was employed to select 120 farming households in the study area. Descriptive statistics and the multiple regression models were the major analytical tools employed for the study. The result of the analysis showed that the state of road infrastructure in the study area is less than stellar as only about 12 percent of the roads were tarred. Cost of inputs, farm size, access to fertilizer, labour and access to good roads were identified as the significant factors influencing farmers’ output in the study area. In line with the results of the study, it was recommended that the government should focus on construction of more rural roads is to enhance farmers’ productivity and income through increased access to inputs and product market. Key words: Infrastructure, Market, Road, Rural, Oyo
Exacerbated tissue destruction in DSS‐induced acute colitis of OPN‐null mice is associated with downregulation of TNF‐α expression and non‐programmed cell death

Osteopontin (OPN), a pro‐inflammatory mediator, is constitutively expressed in normal gut and is upregulated in inflammatory colitis. To determine the significance of OPN in inflammatory bowel disease, we studied the development of acute, experimental colitis induced by dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) in OPN‐null and wild‐type (WT) mice. OPN expression was markedly increased in WT diseased colons, while a higher disease activity index, including spleen enlargement, bowel shortening, and mucosal destruction, was observed in OPN‐null mice. Although peripheral blood neutrophil numbers were lower in DSS‐treated OPN‐null mice, tissue myeloperoxidase levels, reflecting enhanced neutrophil activity, were increased in the diseased colons. In comparison, lymphocyte numbers in peripheral blood were increased earlier than in DSS‐treated WT mice. Despite a significantly greater spleen enlargement, flow cytometric analysis of splenocytes from the DSS‐treated OPN‐null mice revealed lower numbers of differentiated macrophages and (CD4+ and CD8α+) lymphocytes. Whereas pro‐inflammatory cytokines, including G‐CSF, RANTES, MIP1α, and TNF‐α, were increased <10‐fold in DSS‐treated WT splenocytes, expression of these cytokines was dramatically suppressed in the DSS‐treated OPN‐null splenocytes as well as gut tissues. The suppressed TNF‐α response in OPN‐null mice was reflected in a marked increase in non‐apoptotic cell death in diseased colons. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that OPN is required for mucosal protection in acute inflammatory colitis. J. Cell. Physiol. 208: 629–639, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Electromagnetic characterization of complex flexible printed interconnects

This paper presents a theoretical model for the characterization of complex flexible printed interconnects. The main aim of this work is to extract, from the multi-layers complex structure subject to harsh environment (high intensity electromagnetic fields), an equivalent circuit model from 500 MHz to 8 GHz. The proposed methodology requires assessing the voltages induced at the end of the signal tracks: interconnects have been considered as multiconductor transmission line (MTL) networks. It is to be noted that the structure is firstly considered as uniform transmission line that is illuminated by external electromagnetic (EM) fields (represented by current and voltage generators localized at the lines' terminals). The deterministic model is validated by comparing MTL results with data simulated with CST Microwave Studio®, based on “Full-wave” description (including geometrical — electrical and mechanical — schemes) of the interconnects.