Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adoption and non-adoption motivational risk beliefs in the use of mobile services for health promotion

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to validate empirically a theoretical model that integrates an innovative construct capturing consumers’ non-adoption risk belief associated with not using a mobile service designed to support them in a non-leisure activity.Design/methodology/approachA theoretical model contrasting perceived non-adoption risk to perceived adoption risk of a mobile service supporting health promotion was developed and tested with a sample of potential consumers in North America.FindingsResults show that non-adoption risk is a moderately strong antecedent of motivational factors in contrast to adoption risk that hinders the acceptance of a mobile service supporting health promotion.Research limitations/implicationsHealthcare is a highly sensitive social sector, so possible negative consequences of not using the support of a mobile service are an additional motivation for adopting this service. Future research should test the role of non-adoption risk in other contexts of technology use, including non-leisure settings.Practical implicationsMaking potential users see the possible negative consequences of not using a mobile service designed to support them in a non-leisure activity increases their motivation and, subsequently, intention to use the service.Social implicationsEducational efforts to making consumers see the risks of not using a supporting technology application appear to be justified.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates the significant role of non-adoption risk belief that captures the negative consequences individuals may perceive if they fail to use as expected a mobile service application designed specifically to help them.
Abrupt behaviours of streamflow and sediment load variations of the Yangtze River basin, China

Monthly sediment load and streamflow series spanning 1963–2004 from four hydrological stations situation in the main stem of the Yangtze River, China, are analysed using scanning t‐test and the simple two‐phase linear regression scheme. Results indicate significant changes in the sediment load and streamflow from the upper reach to the lower reach of the Yangtze River. Relatively consistent positive coherency relations can be detected between streamflow and sediment load in the upper reach and negative coherency in the middle and lower reaches. Interestingly, negative coherency is found mainly for larger time scales. Changes in sediment load are the result mainly of human influence; specifically, the construction of water reservoirs may be the major cause of negative coherency. Accentuating the human influence from the upper to the lower reach results in inconsistent correlations between sediment load and streamflow. Decreasing sediment load being observed in recent years has the potential to alter the topographical properties of the river channel and the consequent development and recession of the Yangtze Delta. Results of this study are of practical significance for river channel management and evaluation of the influence of human activities on the hydrological regimes of large rivers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Enforceable vs. non-enforceable contracts: a theoretical appraisal with fair players.

In this paper we provide a simple model examining the choice between enforceable and non-enforceable contracts when, on the one hand, drafting an enforceable contract is costly and, on the other hand, fulfilling a non-enforceable contract is left to parties’ fairness. According to the previous literature we find that (1) the choice between the two contract settings in equilibrium depends on fairness and enforcement costs, and (2) whenever a non-enforceable contract is chosen in equilibrium it turns out welfare-improving. However, we are able to measure efficiency and make punctual predictions of how distant the decentralized solution is from first-best. Precisely, we find that efficiency is strongly conditioned by the stake of the transaction, so that both contracts allow for very high levels of efficiency in the presence of low-stake transactions, whereas efficiency always collapses to very low levels for high-stake transactions. It implies that a social planner should intervene only in the last case, even in the presence of high levels of fairness. Our results are robust and hold in a repeated game, proving that reputation is not welfare improving unless the number of interactions exceeds a given threshold.
Imaging of angiogenesis : past , present and future

Abnormal vessel growth is associated with many diseases, including retinopathies, arthritis and cancer. Control of angiogenesis, i.e., the formation of new blood vessels from existing vasculature, contributes to the pathology of such conditions providing the impetus for the development of therapies that either promote or repress vessel growth. However, efforts to image mammalian vasculature have presented some unique challenges. Our ability to monitor the efficacy of angiogenic therapies require approaches that are minimally invasive while maximally sensitive to multiple discernable aspects of vessel growth. While current in vivo and in vitro assays have provided important information about factors that contribute to angiogenesis, most lack sufficient sensitivity and do not permit temporal studies within individual animals. In contrast, clinical vessel imaging methodologies currently used in humans can detect gross vessel abnormities, but they lack the sensitivity of the microscopic methods that are being developed in preclinical models. In particular, the need to detect subtle changes in microvasculature in humans poses challenges that require the use of minimally invasive detection in conjunction with algorithms designed to detect differences in neovasculature from established vessels. Multi-photon intra-vital imaging makes it possible to repeatedly image the same area over a period of days or even weeks, minimizing variation. Here, we review a subset of the current state-of-the-art methods in vessel detection in preclinical models to provide a framework for the development of an approach that can ultimately be applied to humans. The ability to accurately quantify the modulation of vessel growth will be paramount to future human angiogenic therapies.
A profile of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal infections and a comparison of resistance detection methods

Scope: Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are being increasingly reported from hospitals across the world. This study provides a profile of enterococcal infections and compares various methods of detecting vancomycin resistance. Materials and Methods: All clinically significant isolates of enterococci over a 2-year period were included. Antibiotic susceptibility was carried out as per CLSI guidelines. Vancomycin resistance was detected by 3 methods: disk diffusion, agar screen, E-test. The 3 methods were compared. Results: 156 clinical samples yielded Enterococcus spp. over the study period. Maximum resistance was noted to penicillin, erythromycin, and ciprofloxacin. E. faecium strains showed a higher percentage of resistance to the antibiotics tested. 15 (9.6%) enterococcal strains were resistant to vancomycin; 10 (6.4%) strains were intermediate. Compared to E-test, disk diffusion and agar screen had sensitivities of 100%. Disk diffusion had 97.2% specificity and agar screen demonstrated 92.9% specificity. Conclusion: Prevalence of VRE in Indian hospitals is increasing. Though disk diffusion had a higher specificity than the agar screen at identifying resistant isolates, intermediate strains were identified as sensitive. BHI agar containing 6 µg/ml of vancomycin can be used to screen for VRE, and E-test can be used to confirm resistance. Keywords: Bacterial infections, Enterococcus, Drug resistance, Vancomycin, Vancomycin resistance.
Improving the design and management of forest strips in human-dominated tropical landscapes: a field test on Amazonian dung beetles

Summary 1. The future of tropical forest species depends in part on their ability to survive in human-modified landscapes. Forest strips present a priority area for biodiversity research because they are a common feature of many managed landscapes, are often afforded a high level of legal protection, and can provide a cost-effective and politically acceptable conservation strategy. 2. Despite the potential conservation benefits that could be provided by forest strips, ecologists currently lack sufficient evidence to inform policy and guide their design and management. 3. We used a quasi-experimental landscape in the Brazilian Amazon to test the importance of four management-relevant variables (forest type, isolation distance, forest structure, and large mammal activity) on the potential biodiversity conservation value of narrow forest strips for dung beetles. 4. Information-theoretic model selection based on AICc revealed strong support for the influence of large mammal activity and forest type on dung beetle abundance; isolation distance on species richness; and forest structure on the relative abundance of matrix-tolerant species. Multi-dimensional scaling showed a strong influence of forest type and isolation on community composition and structure, with riparian and dry-land strips having complementary sets of species. 5. Synthesis and applications. To enhance the conservation value and ecological integrity of forest strips in human-modified landscapes we recommend that strip design considers both isolation distance and whether or not the strips encompass perennial streams. In addition, we identify the maintenance of forest structure and the protection of large mammal populations as being crucially important for conserving forest dung beetle communities.
Cluster theory of Janus particles

We apply a simple statistical mechanics cluster approximation for studying clustering in the Kern and Frenkel model of Janus fluids. The approach is motivated by recent Monte Carlo simulations work on the same model revealing that the vapor coexisting with the liquid phase contains clusters of different sizes and shapes whose equilibrium concentrations in general depend on the interaction range as well as on thermodynamic parameters. The approximation hinges on a separation between the intra- and inter-cluster contribution to thermodynamics, where only the former is explicitly computed by Monte Carlo simulations. Two level of a simple liquid theory approximations are exploited for the description of the latter. In the first we use the ideal-gas expressions and obtain a qualitative agreement with extensive Monte Carlo bulk simulations. This can be improved to a semi-quantitative agreement, by using a hard-sphere description for the cluster-cluster correlations.
Knowledge Spillovers and Their Impact on Innovation Success - A New Approach Using Patent Backward Citations

We propose a new patent-based measure of knowledge spillovers that calculates technological proximity based on firms that were identified via patent backward citations links. We argue that this measure has a couple of advantages as compared to the 'standard' measure proposed by Jaffe: First, it reflects spillovers from both domestic and foreign technologically 'relevant' firms, second, it is more precise because it only takes into account knowledge relations with technologically 'relevant' firms. Our empirical results indeed show that the measure performs better than the standard measure in an innovation model. We find - for a representative sample of Swiss firms - that knowledge spillovers measured in this way have a positive and significant impact on innovation success. However, the knowledge spillovers appear to be localized: Spillovers from geographically distant areas such as the USA and Japan matter less than spillovers from near destinations such as Europe and particularly Switzerland itself. Moreover, the spillover effect on innovation performance decreases with increasing number of competitors on the main product market so that this effect would appear only in niche markets or oligopolistic market structures. However, an additional effect of competition can only be detected for more radical innovation success.
EFFECTS OF HYPERTONIC SALINE, HAES AND DYMETHYLSULPHOXYDE ON FREE OXYGEN RADICALS IN HAEMORRHAGIC SHOCK HEMORAJ‹K fiOKTA OKS‹JEN SERBEST RAD‹KALLER‹ ÜZER‹NE H‹PERTON‹K SAL‹N, HAES VE D‹MET‹LSÜLFOKS‹T'‹N ETK‹LER‹

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of antioxidant and resuscitation fluids which were used during haemorrhagic shock on tissue ischemia. Methods: Forty New Zealand type rabbits were divided into four groups as C (control), I (hypertonic saline), H (HAES) and D (Dymethylsulphdxide-DMSO). Haemorrhagic shock was induced by bleeding from carotid artery. Thirty minutes after shock, Group C was not resuscitated while Group I was resuscitated with Hypertonic saline 7.2, Group H with 10 % HAES and Group D with HAES 10 % and DMSO. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and lactate levels in blood, liver and small bowel samples were measured. Results: There were no significant differences among the groups tissue and plasma TBARS and lactate levels. Conclusion: Resuscitation fluids and addition of antioxidants to the resuscitation fluids do not have any superiorities over each other to prevent tissue ischemic insult in haemorrhagic shock.
THE ROLE OF OXALIC ACID AND BICARBONATE IN CALCIUM CYCLING BY FUNGI AND BACTERIA: SOME POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR SOIL ANIMALS

Fungi can accumulate Ca in excess of their apparent physiological needs by release of oxalic acid to form the sparingly soluble Ca oxalate. Fungal release of oxalic acid may also form stable complexes with other metallic cations, which would influence both soil weathering processes and release of P from Fe and Al hydroxyphosphates. Both saprophytic and mycorrhizal fungi may be utilizing similar functional nutrient cycling mechanisms with respect to Ca accumulation. Bacteria and Streptomyces sp. can decompose Ca oxalate, which recycles the cation and permits formation of calcium bicarbonates or carbonates. Oxalate decomposing bacteria and actinomycetes were isolated from the digestive systems of oribatid mites, earthworms, a springtail and two immature aquatic detritivores, a mayfly and a stonefly. Earthworms and oribatid mites are among soil animals known to utilize or cycle substantial amounts of Ca. A proposed Ca cycle, operative by fungi, bacteria, and soil animals in the context of the soil ecosystem, is presented.
A Novel Mix-Mode Universal Filter Employing a Single Active Element and Minimum Number of Passive Components

A Novel biquadratic mixed mode tunable universal filter is presented. The mix mode filter is based on a new versatile active element dual X current conveyor differential input transconductance amplifier (DXCCDITA). The filter is capable of realizing high pass (HP), low pass (LP), band pass (BP), notch pass (NP) and all pass (AP) responses in voltage mode (VM), current mode (CM) and trans-impedance mode (TIM). In trans-admittance (TAM) mode the filter can realize HP and BP responses. The striking feature of the design is that it is the first reported mix mode Multi Input Single Output (MISO) filter employing a single active element for the design. The requirement of passive elements for the design is also minimum, only two capacitors and two resistors. The second resistor is required only for obtaining TIM filter response. By properly exciting the filter structure with appropriate current or voltage signals the filter response in all four modes can be obtained. Additionally, VM response can be obtained both in inverting and non-inverting form simultaneously. The pole frequency and quality factor of the filter are tunable. The non-ideal and sensitivity analysis of the filter is conducted to further study the effect of process variability on the filter response. The filter is simulated in Spice using 0. 35µm CMOS model parameters obtained from TSMC. Additionally, the DXCCDITA is also constructed using P-spice macro models obtained from the manufactures of ICs AD844 and LM13700. The modelled DXCCDITA is used to simulated the VM filter response to further validate its performance.
Extracellular traps: how to isolate and quantify extracellular DNA (ET-DNA)

When pathogens pass the physical barriers, neutrophils are the first cells that infiltrate the infected tissue. Subsequently they use several well-known strategies to destroy an invading microorganism such as phagocytosis and degranulation. Recently it was shown that neutrophils are capable of releasing their nuclear DNA in the form of an extracellular trap, know as a neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). On the one hand, extracellular traps plays crucial role during antimicrobial defense, on the other they can cause autoimmune disorders. Therefore, rigorous quantification of ETs-DNA seems to be important both for basic research and clinical applications. This paper assesses quantification methods which were used to estimate extracellular traps formation.
Studies on Occurrence of Invasive Salmonella spp. from Unorganised Poultry Farm to Retail Chicken Meat Shops in Mumbai City, India

Salmonella serotypes are significant zoonotic pathogens and cause a wide range of human diseases such as enteric fever, gastroenteritis and bacteremia in human and animals (Winokur et al., 2000 and Bennasar et al., 2000). Human salmonellosis is frequently associated with the consumption of poultry products (CDC, 2008; Hanning et al., 2009; Kang et al., 2009 and Pires et al., 2012). Contaminated poultry products are among the important sources for food-borne outbreaks in humans and Salmonella are isolated more often from poultry and poultry products (Habtamu et al., 2011; Kabir, 2010 and Linam and Gerber, 2007). As Salmonellosis is one of the most important foodborne diseases, few countries have a surveillance system that estimates the burden of salmonellosis in human populations (Flint et al., 2007 and WHO, 2005). Risk factors for colonization by Salmonella include season, hatchery of origin, feed mills, litter, water and International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 5 (2017) pp. 630-641 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Fast Entropic Regularized Optimal Transport Using Semidiscrete Cost Approximation

The optimal transportation theory was successfully applied to different tasks on geometric domains as images and triangle meshes. In these applications the transport problem is defined on a Riemannian manifold with geodesic distance $d(x,y)$. Usually, the cost function used is the geodesic distance $d$ or the squared geodesic distance $d^2$. These choices result in the 1-Wasserstein distance, also known as the earth mover's distance (EMD), or the 2-Wasserstein distance. The entropy regularized optimal transport problem can be solved using the Bregman projection algorithm. This algorithm can be implemented using only matrix multiplications of matrix $\exp(-C/varepsilon)$ (pointwise exponent) and pointwise vector multiplications, where $C$ is a cost matrix, and $\varepsilon$ is the regularization parameter. In this paper, we obtain a low-rank decomposition of this matrix and exploit it to accelerate the Bregman projection algorithm. Our low-rank decomposition is based on the semidiscrete approximation of th.
CONVERGENT ADAPTIVE FINITE ELEMENT METHODS FOR PHOTONIC CRYSTAL APPLICATIONS

We prove the convergence of an adaptive finite element method for computing the band structure of two-dimensional periodic photonic crystals with or without compact defects in both the TM and TE polarization cases. These eigenvalue problems involve non-coercive elliptic operators with discontinuous coefficients. The error analysis extends the theory of convergence of adaptive methods for elliptic eigenvalue problems to photonic crystal problems, and in particular deals with various complications which arise essentially from the lack of coercivity of the elliptic operator with discontinuous coefficients. We prove the convergence of the adaptive method in an oscillation-free way and with no extra assumptions on the initial mesh, beside the conformity and shape regularity. Also we present and prove the convergence of an adaptive method to compute efficiently an entire band in the spectrum. This method is guaranteed to converge to the correct global maximum and minimum of the band, which is a very useful piece of information in practice. Our numerical results cover both the cases of periodic structures with and without compact defects.
Study of transfer free graphene formation

The method of using CVD or Chemical Vapor Deposition [1-2] in the formation of graphene synthesis has recently progress quite a lot. The material shows exceptional electronic properties and also characterizes suspended graphene resonators. But the fabrication of this material involves the transfer of graphene from its copper catalyst to the required substrate using wet chemical etching method. This transfer procedure introduces metal residues, wrinkles and holes in the graphene. These issues are necessary to be dealt with and hence provide the need for a transfer-free fabrication method for suspended graphene, using CVD method. In this paper we fabricate suspended graphene without the use for any transfer technique. It can be grown both using a catalyst like thin copper films, and non-catalyst like directly on a dielectric substrate. Such a fabrication procedure includes the growth of graphene by CVD followed by the deposition of Au/Ti electrodes defined by e-beam lithography (ebl). Later on there will be graphene etching using oxygen plasma. The structures in the end are made suspended by chemically etching the substrate layer at the top and later on dried.
Utilization of Capture-Mark-Recapture for the Study of Recruitment and Population Growth Rate

Captorc-mark-recapture data has been cxtensively used fur the study of survival. However, recruitment and population growth rat,c can be investigated a? well. The study of recruitment is shown to h r equivalent to the study of survival in reverse and can he carried out by inverting capture histories. The natural parameter in this approach h e r e called seniority probabilityis, at each occasion, thr probability of being previously in the population. An ovcrall likelihood is then presented that describes the gains and losties to the population by means of survival and seniority prohabilitics. This likelihood can be easily modified for thr direct stndy of population growt,h rates between occasions.
PLATYPUS: A Multiple–View Learning Predictive Framework for Cancer Drug Sensitivity Prediction

Cancer is a complex collection of diseases that are to some degree unique to each patient. Precision oncology aims to identify the best drug treatment regime using molecular data on tumor samples. While omics-level data is becoming more widely available for tumor specimens, the datasets upon which co learning methods can be trained vary in coverage from sample to sample and from data type to data type. Methods that can ‘connect the dots’ to leverage more of the information provided by these studies could offer major advantages for maximizing predictive potential. We introduce a multi-view machine-learning strategy called PLATYPUS that builds ‘views’ from multiple data sources that are all used as features for predicting patient outcomes. We show that a learning strategy that finds agreement across the views on unlabeled data increases the performance of the learning methods over any single view. We illustrate the power of the approach by deriving signatures for drug sensitivity in a large cancer cell line database. Code and additional information are available from the PLATYPUS website https://sysbiowiki.soe. ucsc.edu/platypus.