Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Long-Term Treatment with a Blend of Highly Purified Olive Secoiridoids on Cognition and Brain ATP Levels in Aged NMRI Mice

Aging represents a major risk factor for developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). As components of the Mediterranean diet, olive polyphenols may play a crucial role in the prevention of AD. Since mitochondrial dysfunction acts as a final pathway in both brain aging and AD, respectively, the effects of a mixture of highly purified olive secoiridoids were tested on cognition and ATP levels in a commonly used mouse model for brain aging. Over 6 months, female NMRI mice (12 months of age) were fed with a blend containing highly purified olive secoiridoids (POS) including oleuropein, hydroxytyrosol and oleurosid standardized for 50 mg oleuropein/kg diet (equivalent to 13.75 mg POS/kg b.w.) or the study diet without POS as control. Mice aged 3 months served as young controls. Behavioral tests showed deficits in cognition in aged mice. Levels of ATP and mRNA levels of NADH-reductase, cytochrome-c-oxidase, and citrate synthase were significantly reduced in the brains of aged mice indicating mitochondrial dysfunction. Moreover, gene expression of Sirt1, CREB, Gap43, and GPx-1 was significantly reduced in the brain tissue of aged mice. POS-fed mice showed improved spatial working memory. Furthermore, POS restored brain ATP levels in aged mice which were significantly increased. Our results show that a diet rich in purified olive polyphenols has positive long-term effects on cognition and energy metabolism in the brain of aged mice.
The labour market and the distribution of income : an empirical analysis for Italy ∗

This paper provides an empirical examination of the distribution of labour earnings in Italy. Using four waves of data from the Participation Labour Unemployment Survey, a database of information on the Italian labour market supply, we find the shape of the observed distributions to be positively skewed with a “fat” and long tail on the right. We also address the question of earnings dispersion by applying a “nested” decomposition procedure of the Theil inequality measure, which combines into a unified framework the standard decompositions by population subgroups and income sources. The empirical evidence obtained points to the key role played by the self-employees in shaping labour income inequality, especially at the upper extreme of the earnings distribution, and the emergence of non-standard forms of employment as an important feature of the contemporary workplace. JEL classification: D33, D63
Length of stay abroad: Effects of time on the speech act of requesting

By means of a discourse completion test (DCT) and a discourse elicitation test (DET) this study investigates the awareness and production of requests and request act modifiers of 104 non native speakers of English from 31 nationalities during different lengths of stay in the UK. The paper first of all provides a brief overview of studies that deal with pragmatic development and periods abroad and then, describes the data collection procedure and methodology employed. Results show that the early stages of a stay abroad are decisive in developing an awareness of pragmatic infelicities. With respect to production of requests, our results do not show statistically significant differences, suggesting that length of stay does not affect request act use. There is also evidence that learners in the study abroad context increase their pragmatic repertoire of internal and external modifiers at later stages of their stay in the UK. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.6018/ijes/14/1/155211
Real-Time Detection and Control of Machine Tool Chatter in High-speed Milling

This paper presents a method for real-time in-process detection and control of machine tool chat- ter in high-speed milling including experimental validati on. The occurrence of chatter limits the efficiency and accuracy of high-speed milling operations. Usually a working point (spindle-speed and depth-of-cut) that is initially stable (chatter-free) is selected. Here a n experimentally validated milling model is presented that can be used for this purpose. Due to changing process conditions (e.g. heating of the spindle or tool wear) the initially chosen stable working point may become unstable. Whereas the chatter control methods proposed in literature are essentially not applicable in re al-time, the presented method allows to detect the onset of chatter and automatically adjust the spindle-spee d and feed in real-time (i.e. the feed remains nonzero during the entire machining operation) to suppress the occurrence of chatter due to changing pro- cess conditions.
Statistical Model of the 2001 Czech Census for Interactive Presentation

This article describes the application of a recently developed method of interactive statistical database presentation to the 2001 Czech Census. The method is based on estimating the multivariate probability distribution of the original microdata, which are supposed to be discrete or discretized continuous. The estimated statistical model in the form of a distribution mixture of product components can be used as a knowledge base of a probabilistic expert system. By means of the probabilistic inference mechanism we can derive conditional distributions of variables for each subpopula-tion interactively without any further access to the source database. The conditional distributions (histograms) describing the properties of subpopulations represent the basic form of user information. The statistical model does not contain the original data and therefore can be distributed without any confidentiality concerns. The accuracy achievable by the statistical model is comparable with that of the anonymized subsets of microdata.
Self-Determination Theory and teacher instruction: A positive partnership for student performance and involvement

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of distinct motivationally-based instructional approaches on student's game performance and involvement. 78 secondary physical education students were taught a unit of volleyball using one in either an autonomy-supportive, controlling or balanced instructional style. Using a pretest and posttest design, students were measured on their game performance and involvement during 20-minute game of volleyball. Data analysis indicated that students engaged in the autonomy-supportive context illustrated significantly higher levels of performance and involvement when compared with the other groups.
Role of HECT ubiquitin protein ligases in Arabidopsis thaliana

Ubiquitination is a kind of posttranslational modifi cation of proteins in eukaryotes, and it plays an important role in the growth and development of organisms. The ubiquitination of proteins is a cascade enzymatic reaction involving three enzymes. The homologous to E6-AP carboxy terminus ubiquitin-protein ligases (HECT E3s) family is an important ubiquitin-protein ligases family. The family all have a HECT domain of approximately 350 amino acids in the C-terminus. However, studies on plant HECT E3s, such as structural features, prediction of HECT domain function, and their regulatory mechanisms, are very limited. In this paper, Arabidopsis thaliana HECT family genes were analyzed, including gene structure and functional domains and its limited known functions in protein degradation, gene transcription regulation, epigenetically regulation or other functions, fi nally speculate their roles in plant morphologies, aging or responsive to environmental stress. Review Article Role of HECT ubiquitin protein ligases in Arabidopsis thaliana Wei Lan#, Weibo Ma# and Ying Miao* Center for Molecular Cell and Systems Biology, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China #Equal contribution authors *Address for Correspondence: Ying Miao, Center for Molecular Cell and Systems Biology, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Email: ymiao@fafu.edu. cn Submitted: 07 March 2018 Approved: 19 March 2018 Published: 20 March 2018 Copyright: 2018 Lan W, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Tourist-based Formation of Destination Loyalty from the Perspective of Qualitative Research Approach

This study aimed to understand how tourists develop their destination loyalty through traveling experiences over time by employing a qualitative research approach. With interpretive as its research paradigm, interviews generated information to fulfill the research aims by explaining the formation of destination loyalty under the exploratory-purposed research design. The data was analyzed by means of the thematic analysis technique. The gradation of destination loyalty served as the findings, which suggested that destination loyalty is a dynamic process. With the integration of self-realization, destination loyalty is more than habitual and occasional revisits and fulfillments of physiological needs. It proposed a tourists’ perspective of explaining the formation of destination loyalty. The results recommended destination management and marketing practitioners that a tourism destination must utilize its characteristics to create more irreplaceable experiences for tourists, which enable them to build up profound emotional associations with the place along their life time.
Land Degradation – Its Extent and Determinants in Mountainous Regions of Himachal Pradesh

The study has been undertaken with the objectives of finding the extent of land degradation and its determinants in the mountainous regions of Himachal Pradesh by dividing the state into four zones. Multistage random sampling technique has been adopted to select the sample farmers from each zone. Logit analysis has been carried out to find the probability of different factors affecting land degradation. The factors whose effect on land degradation has been reported are: total owned land, land fragmentation, family labour, non-farm income, farm income, migration, leasing-out of land and education level of members in a household. The study has suggested some measures to minimize land degradation and consequently increase production and income levels in this difficult terrain of the country.
High-contrast GeTe4 waveguides for mid-infrared biomedical sensing applications

Realization of single-mode waveguides is essential for ultra-sensitive biosensing in the mid-infrared molecular “fingerprint” region for biomedical lab-on-chip applications. High contrast (Δn ≈ 1) germanium telluride (GeTe4) single mode rib waveguides were fabricated on zinc selenide (ZnSe) substrates for evanescent field based sensing to detect analytes at low concentration. Amorphous GeTe4 thin films were deposited by RF-sputtering and were found to transmit over the spectral range from 2μm - 20μm. Photolithography followed by reactive ion etching was carried out to etch the film, forming rib waveguide structures with minimum surface roughness and vertical sidewalls. It was found that films deposited at room temperature have average roughness of about 5nm. Optical constants were determined by IR-VASE ellipsometry.
Pitfalls in Estimating Asymmetric Effects of Energy

A common view in the literature on the transmission of energy price shocks is that the effect of energy price shocks on macroeconomic aggregates such as output or employment is asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases. This perception has been bolstered by regression evidence that energy price increases (obtained by censoring percent changes in the price of energy to exclude energy price decreases) appear to have disproportionately larger effects on macroeconomic aggregates than decreases. We first show that commonly used asymmetric models of the transmission of energy price shocks are misspecified, resulting in inconsistent parameter estimates, and that the implied impulse responses have been routinely computed incorrectly. As a result, the quantitative importance of energy price increases for the U.S. economy has been exaggerated in the literature. Second, we develop alternative regression models, estimation methods and methods of computing responses to energy price shocks that yield consistent estimates regardless of the degree of asymmetry. Third, we develop improved tests of the null hypothesis of symmetry in the responses to energy price increases and decreases. We also develop symmetry tests for models involving net changes in energy prices. Fourth, an empirical study reveals little evidence against the null hypothesis of symmetry. Our analysis has important implications for the theoretical literature on the transmission of energy price shocks and for the debate about policy responses to energy price shocks. The practical importance of our analysis is illustrated by presenting alternative estimates of the effects of falling oil prices on U.S. real GDP since mid‐2008.
IMPACT OF MANAGERIAL FACTORS ON EXPORT PERFORMANCE OF EXPORT FIRMS

In this research has investigated six factors including International experience, foreign language skills, time spent abroad, international business knowledge, perceived export stimuli, perceived export barriers. To collect data related to these factors distributed researcher made questionnaire among the managers of exporter in Rasht and then were analyzed by SPSS software. Result show that there is significant relationship between six factors and export performance of companies.
Enhancing Sentiment Analysis Using Domain-Specific Lexicon: A Case Study on GST

Sentiment analysis has become a vital classification task because of the massive content over the Internet. Sentiment analysis using lexicon based approach have been used to successfully analyse the sentiment of the user. However, some general-purpose lexicons like SentiWordNet contains words that are objective but they exhibit some polarity in a particular domain. Hence analysing sentiment becomes difficult and inaccurate as some words being polar in a speific domain are misunderstood as neutral words. This paper, proposes a strategy to construct a domain-specific lexicon from a news corpora. For the domain-specific words that are objective in SentiWordNet we adopt an information retrieval technique to assign them with polarity. We also introduce an algorithm using bigrams to analyse the sentiment for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed lexicon. The experiment showed that our lexicon is effective than SentiWordNet in the particular domain and it improves the accuracy of the sentiment classification.
The Structure Conduct Performance Model and Competing Hypothesis- A Review of Literature

Industrial Organization (IO) is concerned with the structure of industries in the economy and the behavior of firms and individuals in these industries. This theory has not only grown within its field, but also in others, such as business management especially in the areas of strategic management. The Structure Conduct Performance (SCP) paradigm appears to be the most pertinent and long time used approach to assess industry structure studies. It basically attempts to look at the market structure of industries and determine their conduct and performances. Various theories that challenged the SCP are also witnessed including the efficient hypothesis, contestable market theory and quiet life hypothesis etc. Even in recent period, a reverse approach to look at the structure and performance of a given industry by observing the conduct of firms has emerged. In other words, the new wave of research like New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) set out to understand the institutional details of particular industries and use this knowledge to test specific hypotheses about specific firm behavior. Nevertheless, NEIO appears to be the alternate paradigm for imperfect market analysis than the one totally revoking the methodological approach of the SCP, in fact with friction between the two paradigms. Some authors like Bhuyan (2014) has compared these two methods of analyzing market power and concluded that the debate over the use of the SCP approach versus the use of the NEIO approach to analyze market power will continue. The debate however is not only among the aforesaid paradigms but still there is unresolved inconclusiveness among the structural theorists like SCP and efficient market theorists. Keywords: Structure, conduct, performance, Industrial Organization
Termination Criteria in Computerized Adaptive Tests: Do Variable-Length CATs Provide Efficient and Effective Measurement?

This simulation study examined a number of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) termination rules using the item response theory framework. Results showed that longer CATs yielded more accurate trait estimation, but there were diminishing returns with a very large number of items. Standard error termination performed quite well in terms of both administering a small number of items and having high accuracy of trait estimation if the standard error level used was low enough, but it was sensitive to the item bank information structure. Change in estimated theta performed comparably to standard error termination, but was less sensitive to the bank information structure. Fixed-length CATs performed either slightly worse or comparable to their variable-length termination counterparts; previous findings stating that variable-length CATs are biased were the result of artifacts, which are discussed. Recommendations for CAT termination are provided.
Phylogeographic Analysis of African Swine Fever Virus, Western Europe, 2018

In September 2018, African swine fever in wild boars was detected in Belgium. We used African swine fever–infected spleen samples to perform a phylogenetic analysis of the virus. The causative strain belongs to genotype II, and its closest relatives are viruses previously isolated in Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, and European Russia.
OPERAÇÕES IDEOLÓGICAS E HEGEMONIA: UMA ANÁLISE DO DISCURSO DO PRESIDENTE MICHEL TEMER

Este trabalho tem como objetivo identificar/analisar as operações ideológicas presentes no pronunciamento do Presidente Michel Temer (PMDB), proferido no dia 27 de junho de 2017, após denúncia apresentada contra ele pela Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) ao Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), por crime de corrupção passiva. O corpus desta pesquisa é constituído por 10 (dez) trechos do referido pronunciamento. Para essa análise, nos fundamentamos nos conceitos de hegemonia de Gramsci (2001; 1995), de discurso de Fairclough (2001) e de ideologia de Thompson (2011), como forma de compreender as lutas hegemônicas para implantação e manutenção de relações de poder nas práticas discursivas. Palavras-chave: Hegemonia; Ideologia; Discurso.
Boards of directors’ contribution to strategy and innovation

Boards of directors are expected to contribute to companies’ success and value creation. Both literature in management and governance, and investors and society at large claim that boards should be actively involved in shaping and defining firms’ strategic posture and orientation in addition to the classical monitoring function. Within this broader “strategic role”, fostering innovation, venturing and corporate entrepreneurship are particularly relevant especially in highly competitive contexts. Nevertheless, in spite of a growing awareness and calls for higher involvement of boards into decision-making processes and corporate entrepreneurship, there is still dearth of clarity around the underlying theoretical rationale, determinants and effects of their strategic contribution. This chapter reviews the evolution of governance and management studies over time, highlighting the main contributions and presenting open issues which constitute potential avenues for future research.
Collaborative Innovating – The Potential of Street Art to Shape Spaces

Research on network theory and innovativeness often addresses innovations. However, network theory lacks theory on innovativeness (the ability to participate in innovation processes), whereas the latter lacks descriptions of network theory. This paper seeks to describe these desiderata, to combine these theoretical research approaches, and to enrich Weis et al.’s (2017) Innovativeness model with network theory in order to describe collaborative innovating. To do this, we use the example of street art, which we view as a form of geomedia that can be created collaboratively as innovations. We will use predominantly the example of the street artist Blek le Rat, whose presumptive embeddedness in social networks we see as an important part of his innovativeness. The final enriched Innovativeness model can contribute to explaining other innovation processes in geography and beyond, to promoting people’s abilities to participate in innovation-related communication processes, to changing spatial meanings and to shaping societies.
FLIPPINO: A MOBILE APPLICATION ON READING FOR THE DYSLEXIC STUDENTS OF WORDLAB

Dyslexia is considered a cognitive disability and is the most common language-based learning disability. In the Philippines, the number of dyslexics have increased dramatically over the years. Having such condition affects a person's ability in terms of his learning skills such as reading, writing, processing information, and understanding. These disabilities can further interfere with higher level thinking skills such as abstract reasoning, planning, organizing, memory and attention. This resulted to only few of the students with dyslexia being able to reach secondary education or even graduate in college. This project explored the use of ICT in helping the students cope with the difficulties brought about by dyslexia. Such technology allows for the individualization of teaching and learning materials, making learning more focused rather than grasping from a typical classroom setup of one teacher to many. Wordlab school is an institution which caters to students who have dyslexia while maintaining compliance with the Department of Education’s K-12 curriculum. The thesis project involved the development of a mobile application that addresses the learning problems of the dyslexic students of Wordlab’s Sling Class tutorial program. Aside from the innate problem of dealing with letter reversals, other challenges in learning include difficulty in spelling and placing phonograms in words correctly and the lack of learning tools in teaching the spelling and decoding class in Filipino.
Mating strategies of topi bulls: getting in the centre of attention

Abstract In lek-breeding ungulates, only some males defend clustered lek territories, and others defend dispersed territories or are nonterritorial. In this study of lekking topi antelopes, Damaliscus lunatus , we measured male mating benefits directly by observing matings and investigated why the alternative mating strategies coexist. A multivariate analysis showed that proximity to the lek centre had an overriding, positive, effect on male mating rate. With increasing distance to the lek centre, proximity of a territory to a drainage line became increasingly important in enhancing male mating success. On the other hand, costs of lekking were suggested by higher hyaena density on leks, relatively poor body condition of lek males, and more frequent agonistic encounters, with central lek males more likely to sustain bleeding wounds than others. Probably as a consequence of the intense competition for central lek territories, males defending such territories were larger than others and, judging from horn wear, they were also older than resource defenders. Not only did males defending central lek territories achieve the highest instantaneous mating rate and resource defenders the lowest, but the same order was also likely for overall lifetime reproductive success when we took territorial tenure into account. These results suggest that male mating strategies are phenotype limited, as demands on male quality increase with proximity to the lek centre. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.