Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
N6-methyladenosine RNA methylation regulators participate in malignant progression and have prognostic value in clear cell renal cell carcinoma

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA methylation is the most prevalent type of mRNA modification; however, little is known about its function in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). The present study aimed to establish and validate a m6A-related risk signature as a prognostic factor for patients with ccRCC. Consensus clustering was used to divide patients with ccRCC from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort (n=489) into three clusters (cluster 1/2/3) based on 19 m6A RNA methylation regulators. In addition, a m6A-related risk signature was constructed using TCGA data, and its accuracy was validated using data from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (n=91). The prognostic performance of the risk signature was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier analyses, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression, multivariate Cox regression, receiver operating characteristic curves and nomograms. The results revealed that the majority of the 19 m6A RNA methylation regulators were differentially expressed among ccRCC stratified by different clinicopathological features. The cluster 1 group exhibited a higher frequency of metastasis and poorer overall survival compared with the cluster 2/cluster 3 group. The hallmarks of RNA metabolism, transcription misregulation in cancer and regulation of autophagy, were significantly enriched in the cluster 1 group. A m6A-related risk signature was constructed and validated with high prognostic accuracy for the prediction of 5-year survival and recurrence (area under the curve, 0.736 and 0.728, respectively). The present study also established robust nomograms for evaluating the risk of mortality and recurrence for patients with ccRCC (c-index, 0.783 and 0.819, respectively). The dysregulation of hub m6A RNA methylation regulator expression levels and m6A RNA methylation levels were also validated in multiple RCC cells using in vitro experiments. Taken together, the m6A RNA methylation regulators promoted the malignant progression of ccRCC and exhibited good performance in prognostic predictions. These results provided insight into the development of m6A-targeted treatments for ccRCC.
Estimation and Simulation Analysis of the Sideslip Angle of Intelligent Vehicle under Unstructured Road Environment

Vehicle sideslip angle is one of the important variables to describe the vehicle's lateral motion state, and it is also difficult to estimate accurately. In order to solve the difficult problem of direct measurement of intelligent vehicle sideslip angle in unstructured road environment, a 3-DOF vehicle Dynamics model was established, Carsim and Matlab were also used to construct the parametric model of vehicle. Based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithm, the State observer was used to estimate the sideslip angle of the intelligent vehicle. In the case of emergency shift, the estimation effect of State observer is verified by joint simulation. The simulation results show that the proposed method can accurately estimate the sideslip angle of the intelligent vehicle.
Why Do I Trust Your Model? Building and Explaining Predictive Models for Peritoneal Dialysis Eligibility

Achieving fairness, accountability and transparency is of vital importance when using machine learning (ML) techniques in the health-care realm. Yet, the myths of the "black box" of ML algorithms still exist among healthcare professionals. In this research, we developed a ML model for the eligibility of patients for peritoneal dialysis and employed various interpretability techniques to explain the models to nephrologists to gain their trust in the model. We compared different model-specific and model-agnostic ML interpretability strategies with traditional statistical analysis methods and we analyzed their applicability in healthcare domain.
A qualitative study of general education teachers' perceptions of special education students' attendance at post-secondary education institutions

x Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 Background of the Study . 1 Statement of the Problem . 9 Purpose and Nature of the Study . 10 Importance of the Study . 10 Operational Definitions and Key Terms.12 Theoretical Framework . 16 Research Question . 17 Limitations of the Study . 17 Delimitations of the Study . 18 Assumptions . 18 Organization of the Study . 19 Chapter 2: Literature Review . 20 Theoretical Framework . 21 Empirical Research Summary . 31 Chapter Summary . 45 Chapter 3: Methodology . 49
Antagonistic compounds from controversial bacteria with suppressing effects on the diseases caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi

Abstract This work focuses on the importance of considering the bio-substances evaluation of controversial strains against plant pathogens. The bacterial population of plant rhizosphere covers every type of plant–microbe interaction. Some of them have beneficial effects on plant growth and showed antagonistic activities against plant pathogens. The distribution of the Burkholderia genus is wide in soils, and many bacterial strains were proven to benefit and protect important crops from pathogen threats. In this study, it was possible to obtain a Burkholderia cenocepacia isolate from the rhizosphere soil of a leguminous plant. It was screened in vitro for its abilities to protect Trifolium subterraneum L. from Phytophthora cinnamomi. The current results revealed that plants enhanced the growth in plants inoculated with both, the bacterial strain and the pathogen probably because the bacteria produced antagonistic compounds such as hydrolytic enzymes. This report shows the potential ability of a rhizobacterium naturally existing in the soils to suppress the effects of the diseases caused by P. cinnamomi.
Occupational health and safety management and operations management: shall the twain never meet?

Occupational health and safety (OHS) management has expanded in companies, and research is in-dicating benefits for both workers’ health and safety and for business performance. However, OHS management tend to end in a sidecar to the operations management (OM). Our analysis indicate that the conflict between the two fields may be explained by conflicts between the dominant logics – risk for OHS management and optimisation for OM. New broader understandings of need for worker well-being and commitment for both OHS and OM open for a closer integration of the two fields.
A Note on Forecasting Daily Peruvian Stock Market Volatility Risk Using Intraday Returns

In this paper I present a model to forecast the daily Value at Risk (VaR) of the Peruvian stock market (measured through the general index of the Lima Stock Exchange: the IGBVL) based on intraday (high-frequency) data. Daily volatility is estimated using realised volatility and I adopted a regression quantile approach to calculate one-step predicted VaR values. The results suggest that the realised volatility is a useful measure to explain the Peruvian stock market volatility and I obtained sound results using quantile regression for risk estimation.
Determinants of early attendance of ECEC for families with a Turkish migration background in four European countries

ABSTRACT Research has demonstrated educational inequalities for children with migrant background. This article focuses specifically on children and families with a Turkish immigration background in four European countries. Because of the great potential of high quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for decreasing educational disparities, we examined associations between family characteristics (structural characteristics and acculturation attitudes) and early ECEC attendance (under the age of two) for families with a Turkish immigration background in England, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway (N = 943), using data from a standardized survey. Group-wise logistic regressions revealed differences among the predicting factors across countries. Nevertheless, factors that related to family socio-economic background were found to be associated with early ECEC attendance across all countries: higher levels of maternal education (England, Germany, The Netherlands), maternal employment (Norway), and more material deprivation (England) significantly predicted early ECEC use. In addition to these SES associations, factors related to socio-cultural adoption were associated with early ECEC use in three (out of four) countries. The findings can be partly related to country-specific ECEC characteristics.
Innovation and business performance

Innovation is critical for business performance and is a key driver of productivity growth. Innovation can take many forms, including R&D, product and process development and elements of marketing and organisational change. This paper explores which types and combinations of innovation have the greatest impacts on business performance. Using data from the UK Innovation Survey, the paper explores the prevalence of innovation type before considering the impact on turnover, employment and productivity growth. The analysis considers size of business to assess any differential impacts at specific stages of growth. The analysis shows that product and/or process innovation are particularly effective in increasing business performance. Product and process innovation are the core of business growth and encouraging more businesses to be innovative remains a crucial policy direction, across all sizes of business.
Cognitive function and biomarkers after traumatic brain injury: protocol for a prospective inception cohort study

Background: Traumatic brain injury is a high-incidence condition that can cause severe cognitive impairment. At present, functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to analyze changes in brain function and network connectivity at different stages of injury. In addition, tau protein expression in nerve cells may reflect cognitive function. However, the combined use of functional magnetic resonance imaging and tau measurement to assess cognitive function following traumatic brain injury has not yet been investigated. Methods/Design: A prospective inception cohort study will be performed at the 101 st Hospital of PLA, Wuxi, China. We will conduct a follow-up visit in 100 patients with traumatic brain injury. Cognitive function will be assessed within 24 hours of injury and 0.5, 1, and 2 years after injury. Primary outcomes will be the Montreal Cognitive Assessment score, functional magnetic resonance imaging results, and tau protein level in the cerebrospinal fluid. Secondary outcomes will include Mini-Mental State Examination Scale and Hamilton Depression Scale scores. We will assess cognitive function in patients with traumatic brain injury and analyze its correlation with functional imaging indexes and tau levels in the cerebrospinal fluid. Discussion: This trial has been designed to determine whether functional imaging indexes and tau level in the cerebrospinal fluid can predict recovery of cognitive function in patients with traumatic brain injury. It will provide objective evidence for the clinical prevention and treatment of cognitive dysfunction following traumatic brain injury. Trial registration: This trial was registered at Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration number: ChiCTR-OOC-16008574) on 31 May 2016. Ethics: Approved by the Ethics Committee of the 101 st Hospital of PLA, China (approval number: L2016002), the study protocol will be performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, formulated by the World Medical Association. Informed consent: Written informed consent will be obtained from participants or their guardians.
Kazakhstan Gulag heritage: Dark tourism and selective interpretation

Kazakhstan holds some of the most significant Gulag heritage sites; however, tourism research remains limited. This article introduces analysis of contrasting sites and considers how some have been developed and others ignored. Selectivity in interpretation is linked to societal amnesia and the collective trauma experienced by the population of Kazakhstan. The article reaffirms the politicization of heritage in this emergent nation.
Influence of low power consumption on IEEE 802.15.4 in wireless networks performance

IEEE 802.15. 4 standard defines both media access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layer protocols for low power consumption, low peak data rate, and low cost applications. Nowadays the most important feature of IEEE 802.15. 4 is maximizing battery life. This paper is focusing how to achieve low average power consumption through assuming that the amount of data transmitted is short and that it is transmitted infrequently so as to keep a low duty cycle. The outcomes demonstrate that the phase shift estimation of Offset quadrature phase-shift keying (OQPSK) modulation has no impact on bit error rate (BER) if it is identical in the transmitter as same as in the receiver.
The national university of Malaysia staff's perceptions of ISO9001: 2008: A study on the effectiveness and the impacts on emotion

The National University of Malaysia (UKM) is ISO 9001:2008 certified since 2002, i.e., the Division for Academic Development, the Library (i.e., Tun Seri Lanang), Treasury Department, Registrar Department, Centre for Graduate Management, and Department for Management of Development. Other departments like the Centre for Information Technology, the Centre for Research and Innovation Management, and the Student Affair Department are making the effort to be ISO 9001:2008 certified. ISO 9001:2008 certification has given a big impact on quality management in UKM. After ten years of its implementation in UKM it is important to study UKM support staff’s perceptions on the effectiveness of the implementation of ISO 9001:2008, and subsequently to discuss the impacts of the implementation on their emotion. A survey has been conducted and the findings showed that the implementation of ISO 9001:2008 is largely perceived to have given huge positive impact on work culture and day-to-day task management, and mild negative impact on emotion.
Confirmatory Influence of Trust in E-commerce: A Data Collection Bias and Suggestion

In most trust studies, its dimensions and antecedents have been studied with an overwhelming evidence showing trust as a critical determinant of behavioral intention to purchase. The focus has been on confirming the investigation of trust as a determinant on successful only purchases. This paper explores the importance of investigating the impact of trust on intention to purchase from both successful and unsuccessful purchase cases in order to provide a more balanced view of the critical role of trust in e-commerce transaction decisions. It also aims to contribute to the rigor of information systems (IS) research practices related to data collection methods. Our findings provide important insights into the varying effect of trust on intention, which becomes apparent when data collection methods allow for the testing of cases of successful and non-successful purchases.
Theoretical investigation of electronic bandgaps of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes using semi-empirical self-consistent tight binding and ab-inito density functional methods

We perform a comprehensive theoretical study of electronic band gaps of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with different sets of chiral indices using semi-empirical tight binding and density functional (DFT) based ab-initio methods. In particular, self-consistent extended Huckel (EH-SCF) and self-consistent Slater Koster (SK-SCF) tight binding models are used as semi-empirical methods, whereas the DFT based LDA-1/2 and Tran-Blaha (TB09) meta-GGA schemes are used as ab-initio methods. The calculations are performed for 1) (n, m) chiral SWNTs for which experimental optical gaps have been reported 2) (9, 0), (12, 0) and (15, 0) ‘metallic’ zigzag SWNTs for which small bad gaps have been reported 3) Pairs of SWNTs having same diameters but different chiral angles 4) (n, 0) zigzag SWNTs with 10 ≤ n ≤ 30 . From the comparison of bands gaps of tubes with same diameter, the electronic band gaps are found to vary with chiral angles with opposing trend as compared to that reported for experimental optical band gaps. This result may be expected to have important implications for self-energy corrections and/or exciton binding energies and their dependence on chiral angles. The hopping parameter γ 0 obtained from fitting EH-SCF and SK-SCF bandgap data, is found to be in good agreement with that obtained from fitting experimental data. In general, the band gap values of SWNTs computed using semi-empirical EH-SCF and SK-SCF methods are quite close (within ∼ 5%) to those computed using DFT-based LDA-1/2 and TB09 meta-GGA methods. The results suggest that self-consistent semi-empirical methods can be expected to provide similar accuracy in results as that expected from more computationally challenging ab-intio DFT based LDA-1/2 and TB09 meta-GGA methods.
Representation of semantic information in ventral areas during encoding is associated with improved visual short-term memory

We rely upon visual short-term memory (VSTM) for continued access to perceptual information that is no longer available. Despite the complexity of our visual environments, the majority of research on VSTM has focused on memory for lower-level perceptual features. Using more naturalistic stimuli, it has been found that recognizable objects are remembered better than unrecognizable objects. What remains unclear, however, is how semantic information changes brain representations in order to facilitate this improvement in VSTM for real-world objects. To address this question, we used a continuous report paradigm to assess VSTM (precision and guessing rate) while participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the underlying neural representation of 96 objects from 4 animate and 4 inanimate categories. To isolate semantic content, we used a novel image generation method that parametrically warps images until they are no longer recognizable while preserving basic visual properties. We found that intact objects were remembered with greater precision and a lower guessing rate than unrecognizable objects (this also emerged when objects were grouped by category and animacy). Representational similarity analysis of the ventral visual stream found evidence of category and animacy information in anterior visual areas during encoding only, but not during maintenance. These results suggest that the effect of semantic information during encoding in ventral visual areas boosts visual short-term memory for real-world objects.
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for the Passivity of Impedance Rendering With Velocity-Sourced Series Elastic Actuation

Series elastic actuation (SEA) has become prevalent in applications involving physical human–robot interaction, as it provides considerable advantages over traditional stiff actuators in terms of stability robustness and force control fidelity. Several impedance control architectures have been proposed for SEA. Among these alternatives, the cascaded controller with an innermost velocity loop, an intermediate torque loop, and an outermost impedance loop is particularly favored for its simplicity, robustness, and performance. In this article, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for passively rendering null impedance and virtual springs with this cascade-controller architecture. Based on the newly established conditions, we provide nonconservative passivity design guidelines to haptically display these two impedance models, which serve as the basic building blocks of various virtual environments, while ensuring the safety of interaction. We also demonstrate the importance of including physical damping in the actuator model for deriving the passivity conditions, when integrators are utilized. In particular, we prove the unintuitive adversary effect of physical damping on the passivity of the system by noting that the damping term reduces the system $Z$-width, as well as introducing an extra passivity constraint. Finally, we experimentally validate our theoretical results using an SEA brake pedal.
IMPROVING PROCESSES IN A POSTGRADUATE OFFICE OF A UNIVERSITY THROUGH LEAN OFFICE TOOLS

: This paper reports the administrative processes improvement based on Lean Office tools in an office environment of a University department. Lean tools such as electronic standardization were applied on the six educational projects of the department. Also, some were used to organize the computer desktop and network drives to improve the supporting educational projects information. Additionally, due to the absence of Key Performance Indicators (KPI), some were defined and implemented on the department. The main results were the electronic standardization successful implementation, reorganization of the drives and the desktop. The impacts were a reduction of 84% on the files search time, improvements on the development of forms for student registration and projects managing, a 69% reduction of time searching for student information or data, a reduction of the input times and information handling in an estimated total of 12 hours/year, identification of KPI and development of a dashboard for visual analysis and monitoring of these.
Opportunities and Challenges for Hurricane Resilience on Agricultural and Forest Land in the U.S. Southeast and Caribbean

Three storms in the 2017 hurricane season caused $265 billion in damages in the U.S. Southeast and Caribbean, including billions in losses in the agriculture and forestry sector. Climate change projections indicate that such disastrous hurricane seasons are becoming more normal. Working land management sectors need to prepare for this future. However, few studies evaluate hurricane resilience strategies, or challenges faced by land managers surrounding hurricane events. Boundary organizations are critical to hurricane preparedness and recovery, advising land managers before hurricanes, and often supporting recovery efforts. Here, we rely on public advisors’ experiences to understand how land managers pursue hurricane resilience. Using focus groups and an online survey of three agencies in the Southeast U.S. and U.S. Caribbean (n = 607), we identify challenges faced by land managers before and after hurricanes, and the strategies they implement to minimize damage. We learn that land managers are faced with many diverse and unique challenges related to hurricanes, but that long-term planning for hurricane events is uncommon compared to shorter-term preparedness and recovery activities. Efforts towards hurricane resilience should incorporate local needs, align with other land management goals, and increase overall resilience to climate change and related stressors. The results of this research can guide state/territorial and national-level prioritizations regarding hurricane resilience, as well as identify research needs on hurricane resilience strategies.
The impact of income inequality on household indebtedness in euro area countries

This paper examines the impact of income inequality on consumption-related household indebtedness at the household level. Using the first wave of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey data, the analysis sheds light on heterogeneous effects across euro area countries. The results suggest a positive impact of income inequality on consumption-related household indebtedness in a small sample of countries. We further employ a multilevel regression model to also take country’s macroeconomic characteristics into account, such as credit market and welfare state design. In this setting, we find an overall positive impact of income inequality on consumption-related household indebtedness. Disclaimer Funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection is gratefully acknowledged.