Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Intellectual Capital on Performance of Universities in Thailand: The Mediating Role of Entrepreneur Orientation

The prime objective of the current study is to examine the relationship between intellectual capital and the performance of universities in Thailand, and to understand the mediating role of entrepreneur orientation in this relationship. Several gaps have been identified in the literature which require investigation. The first is related to examining the various components of intellectual capital which have been proposed by several researchers. These include relational capital, human capital, and structural capital. Moreover, there is inconsistency in the findings of previous studies related to the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the performance of firms. To achieve the objective of the current study, SEM-PLS was employed. In previous research studies, the focus has been on manufacturing organizations. The study is among the first to address these issues. In sum, SEM-PLS has been used as a statistical tool to address the research questions raised, and the research objectives envisaged, in the current study. The findings of the current study have supported the hypotheses. This study will be helpful for policymakers and researchers.
A Scalable and Plug-in Based System to Construct A Production-Level Knowledge Base

Knowledge bases play crucial roles in a wide variety of information systems, such as web search engines and intelligent personal assistants. For responding to constantly fluctuating user information demands, we aim to construct a large-scale and well-structured comprehensive knowledge base from the world’s evolving data. To maintain the quality of our large knowledge base at the production-level, we carefully design not only to match entities but to incorporate various automatic and manual validation methods because it is difficult to filter out all incorrect facts automatically in practice. In this paper, we propose a novel plugin-based system architecture satisfying the ability to rapidly identify mistakes and the system extensibility. Our constructed knowledge base is already utilized in Japanese Web services, and the number of entities in it keeps growing steadily.
Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group Working Paper Series

We estimate the costs of occupational mobility using a novel approach that relies on aggregate flows of workers across occupations rather than on wage data. The theoretical underpinnings for this approach are derived from a model of occupation choice that delivers a gravity equation linking worker flows to occupation characteristics and to transition costs, which we proxy using task data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). Occupation flow data are constructed from the matched monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) between 1994 and 2012. We find that transition costs vary widely across occupations, are increasing in task distance (the dissimilarity in the mix of tasks performed in the two occupations) and are higher for transitions across broad task categories. However, most of the transition costs are accounted for by general, task-independent entry costs, specific to each destination occupation. JEL Codes: J62, J24.
IN-PROCESS INTERVENTIONS 1 An Ounce of Prevention or a Pound of Cure? Two Experiments on In-Process Interventions in Decision-Making Groups

This paper details two laboratory experiments about the timing of formal interventions in decision-making groups. Study 1 showed that groups receiving in-process interventions pooled more critical information and made better decisions than groups receiving pre-task interventions because in-process interventions prolonged discussions and reduced discussion of member preferences. Study 2 showed a similar pattern of results over a smaller time frame; groups receiving in-process interventions prolonged their discussions, discussed member preferences less, and pooled more critical information than those receiving pre-task interventions because they perceived those interventions as more valuable, which indirectly improved the quality of their decisions. Surprisingly, the specific timing of in-process interventions had no significant effects on information pooling or group decisions in either study. These studies collectively suggest that decision-making groups respond more strongly to interventions designed to cure process problems, rather than prevent them, which has implications for theory on formal interventions, group decision making, and group development.
The Yi-Qi-Bu-Shen recipe attenuates high glucose-induced podocyte injury via the inhibition of IKK-IκBα-NFκB and ERK/P38 MAPK signaling

The exact mechanisms underlying diabetic nephropathy (DN) remain unknown, but some studies suggest that structural and compositional changes of the slit diaphragms (SD) between podocytes may play an important role in this course. The Yi-Qi-Bu-Shen recipe (YB) is a traditional Chinese herbal formula that is commonly used for the treatment of diabetes mellitus and especially DN. This study investigated the effect of high glucose (HG) on expression of nephrin, podocin, and CD2AP in podocytes and the treatment effect of YB on these molecules. Conditionally immortalized human podocytes were exposed to medium containing normal glucose (NG) or HG for 24 hours. The podocytes cultured in a HG environment had relatively lower expression of nephrin, podocin, and CD2AP both in mRNA and protein synthesis levels compared to NG group. Nephrin, podocin, and CD2AP expression in the HG group was effectively restored by the treatment of YB. In addition, inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and MCP-1 were significantly decreased in HG+YB group compared with the HG group. Moreover, YB suppressed HG-induced activation of IKK-IκBα-NFκB and ERK/P38 MAPK signaling pathways. NFκB, ERK, and P38 inhibitors attenuated HG-induced podocyte injury and increased nephrin, podocin, and CD2AP expression further revealed the healing mechanisms of YB. This study demonstrates that YB treatment attenuated HG-induced podocyte injury through suppressing activation of IKK-IκBα-NFκB and ERK/P38 MAPK signaling pathways and reducing IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and MCP-1 levels, suggesting that YB is a potential therapeutic drug for DN.
Generating Sentences From Abstract Images: ECE 5554 Project Report

Both language and vision are fundamental to perception in human beings. Language has been shown to boost invisible objects into visual awareness. Understanding this connection can help us solve vision problems better. A first approach for this is to generate meaningful and coherent natural language descriptions of images. In this project, various methods for describing images, both using text corpora associated with images and using only native image content are explored and compared on a metric that measures human agreement. Five methods are compared and evaluated on two metrics and the results discussed.
Exploration of potential biomarkers involved in acute myocardial infarction

Objective: The aim of the current study was to screen potential novel biomarkers involved in AMI. Methods: Microarray data of AMI (GSE66360) was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Using the limma package, differentially-expressed genes (DEGs) between samples from AMI and healthy controls were screened. Based on the DAVID tool, functional analysis was carried out. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) and transcription factor (TF)-miRNA-target gene regulatory networks were visualized using Cytoscape software. Finally, drug-gene interactions were predicted using the DGIdb database. Results: A total of 339 DEGs between samples from AMI and healthy controls were identified. Upregulated DEGs were mainly enriched in 32 pathways, including osteoclast differentiation, TNF signaling pathways, and transcriptional mis-regulation in cancer. Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction was the main functional enrichment for downregulated DEGs. IL8, JUN, IL1B, TNF, and FOS were key nodes in the PPI network. In addition, three miRNAs, including has-miR-191, has-miR-101, and has-miR-20, nine TFs, including NFKAPPAB, SRF, IK3, and NFKAPPAB65, and 34 regulatory relationship pairs were integrated. Prediction results revealed that TNF, IL1B, and TLR4 might be potential druggable genes for AMI patients. Conclusion: IL8, JUN, IL1B might be novel markers for atherosclerotic plaque instability. MicroRNAs, including miR-191, miR-101, and miR-20, might provide a window for exploration of potential biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis for AMI patients.
Synthesis and Evaluation of New Environment-Friendly Starch Hydroxypropyl Phosphate as Flocculant

HOSPHATE adduct, namely, 2-hydroxy-3-chloropropylphosphate was reacted with starch in presence of sodium hydroxide catalyst according to the dry process to yield starch hydroxypropyl phosphate. The reaction was conducted under a variety of conditions and the extent of reaction expressed as DS (degree of substitution), was found to rely on catalyst concentration and phosphate adduct concentration as well as duration and temperature of the reaction. In this way starch molecules bearing different amounts of hydroxypropyl phosphate groups could be achieved. Evaluation of these starch hydroxypropyl phosphates as flocculant for ferric laurate and kaolin was performed under different conditions including dose, phosphorus content, pH of the flocculation and molar mass. The results obtained advocate the namely synthesized starch hydroxypropyl phosphates as a good candidate for flocculation vis-à-vis the well known poly(acrylamideco-acrylic acid) which is used as industrial flocculant.
Associations between ethnic background and being sentenced to prison in the Crown Court in England and Wales in 2015

This research demonstrated that for offenders convicted of recordable, indictable offences in the Crown Court in 2015, there was an association between ethnicity and being sentenced to prison. Under similar criminal circumstances the odds of imprisonment for offenders from self-reported Black, Asian, and Chinese or other backgrounds were higher than for offenders from self-reported White backgrounds. Whilst statistically significant, the increases in the odds of imprisonment were all medium sized effects (53%, 55%, and 81% higher, respectively, for offenders self-reporting as Black, Asian, and Chinese or other). No effect was observed for offenders from a self-reported Mixed background.
Theory of Compressible Fluid Flow 2.1 One-Dimensional Theory of Compressible Fluid Flow 2.1.1 Equation of State and the First Principal Law

The thermodynamic properties of a homogeneous and isotropic medium are fully characterized by the three quantities temperature T (K), pressure p (Pa), and density q (kg/mÞ which are called the state variables. About the microscopic structure of the medium the only necessary assumptions are that the particles that constitute the medium are small enough to justify the assumption of homogeneity and that for any given set of T; p; q the composition of the medium is fixed. This includes, for example, mixtures of gases or air that contains a certain amount of water in the form of small droplets. The quantities T ; p; q depend on each other, their relation is given by the equation of state of that medium.
Epidemiology and Treatment for Thyroid Cancer

The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones which are important in the normal regulation of the metabolism of the body. Thyroid cancer is the most common malignancy of the endocrine system consisting of several subtypes like papillary carcinoma, and follicular carcinoma, medullary carcinoma, and anaplastic carcinoma. Treatment depends on a number of factors, including the type of thyroid cancer, the size of the nodule, the patient’s age, and whether the cancer has spread. Most cases of thyroid cancer can be cured with treatment like Radiation therapy chemotherapy and radioactive iodine. Recommended thyroid treatment approaches depend on the type of thyroid disease, and in some cases, the severity of the condition.
Outcomes of high-flow nasal cannula versus non-invasive positive pressure ventilation for patients with acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) is currently the gold standard for respiratory support for patients with acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD). Although oxygen delivery via high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) is increasingly used, comparable evidence of its efficacy and safety with NIPPV is rather scarce. This study aimed to compare the nursing outcome of HFNC with NIPPV in AECOPD patients. 168 patients with AECOPD were randomly divided into HFNC and NIPPV groups each having 84 patients. The two groups were given the same nursing methods. Arterial blood gases, respiratory support time, hospitalization days, complications, comfort and nursing satisfaction were compared. After treatments, the arterial blood gas parameters in the two groups were better than before the treatment (P < 0.05); the complications in the HFNC group were significantly lower than in the NIPPV group, and the comfort and nursing satisfaction were higher in HFNC than in NIPPV group (P < 0.05). The two methods are both effective for AECOPD patients; NIPPV has better outcomes with lower complications and improved comfort and nursing satisfaction.
Discrimination between Genuine and Cloned Gait Silhouette Videos via Autoencoder-Based Training Data Generation

Spoofing attacks are one of the biggest concerns for most biometric recognition systems. This will be also the case with silhouettebased gait recognition in the near future. So far, gait recognition has been fortunately out of the scope of spoofing attacks. However, it is becoming a real threat with the rapid growth and spread of deep neural network-based multimedia generation techniques, which will allow attackers to generate a fake video of gait silhouettes resembling a target person’s walking motion. We refer to such computer-generated fake silhouettes as gait silhouette clones (GSCs). To deal with the future threat caused by GSCs, in this paper, we propose a supervised method for discriminating GSCs from genuine gait silhouettes (GGSs) that are observed from actual walking people. For training a good discriminator, it is important to collect training datasets of both GGSs and GSCs which do not differ from each other in any aspect other than genuineness. To this end, we propose to generate a training set of GSCs from GGSs by transforming them using multiple autoencoders. The generated GSCs are used together with their original GGSs for training the discriminator. In our experiments, the proposed method achieved the recognition accuracy of up to 94% for several test datasets, which demonstrates the effectiveness and the generality of the proposed method. key words: discrimination of cloned data, gait silhouette clone, training data generation, gait recognition, anti-spoofing
Investigation on ferroresonance due to power transformer energization in high voltage 400 kV transmission grid

This paper presents a study on ferroresonance occurring in a high voltage 400 kV transmission grid due to energization of power transformer under no-load conditions. The system scenarios analyzed in the present paper are considered as critical for development and modernization plans as currently announced by the national grid operator in Poland. The PSCAD simulation model was developed and applied for several study cases of a system with double-circuit arrangement of a transmission line. It is shown that the ferroresonant oscillations can be initiated by two-phase switching operation of a line circuit breaker. The impact of the double-circuit length on the ferroresonance mode and severity is demonstrated with the use of the Poincaré map analysis and Short Time Fourier Transform. It is demonstrated that the length of the transmission line that is mutually coupled in the double-circuit arrangement has a significant impact on the ferroresonance occurrence and on its mode. As the ferroresonance can pose severe threat to the power system components due to the severe overvoltage and overcurrent oscillations, the analysis presented in this paper demonstrates the necessity of the ferroresonance analyses for any re-designed transmission system.
DISCOVERING MOTIFS IN SPATIAL-TIME SERIES SEISMIC DATASETS

Discovering Motifs in Spatial-Time Series Seismic Datasets Murillo Guignoni Dutra Advisors: Eduardo Soares Ogasawara Fabio Andre Machado Porto Abstract of dissertation submitted to Programa de Pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção e Sistemas Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca CEFET/RJ as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master. Discovering motifs in time series data has been widely explored by recent researches. It is being motivated by the potential to identify relevant implicit information. Many time series data mining techniques were adapted to solve the problem regarding motif identification in time series. However, when it comes to spatial-time series, it is possible to observe an open gap according to the literature review. This work proposes a new approach to discover motif in spatial-time series. It is based on combining spatial-time series into a single time series. Then, Random Projection algorithm is applied in this transformed time series to identify candidate spatial-time motifs. Finally, candidates are aggregate and validate according to spatial-time constraints. The approach is evaluated in a seismic dataset. Identified motifs were able to identify seismic horizons, which is an important characteristics in seismic analysis. Key-words: Motifs; Spatial-Time Series; Seismic. Rio de Janeiro, Julho, 2016
Broken geodesics and Dark Matter

Is accepted, that the tidal forces rip falling (into Black Hole) astronaut into a subatomic cloud, and the end-state of this cloud is a singular point. However, is obvious then, that this cloud begins to shrink despite the tidal forces. Indeed, a falling drop of fluid will not be stretched by tidal forces but will shrink to a point of zero volume and disappear, violating the law of conservation of energy. However, the place of disappearance will be located not necessarily in the singular center of the Black Hole. As solution to this puzzle the Dark Matter can be useful. Ocean tides on Earth are also described by my formula. Yes, gravity stretches the Earth. But this is all in my formula. But if you fall into a Black Hole, the tidal forces will compress you. At first, the forces will stretch you apart. But then they will compress, even outside the event horizon. Another example: a collapsing pressure-free dust cloud shrinks. Inside this cloud is free-falling astronaut. Obviously, that instead of being stretched, he will be compressed together with the cloud. ∗Electronic address: eestidima@gmail.com
Reliability and validity of chronic pain scales in adults with adverse childhood experiences

Abstract: Background: Chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) affects millions of people and is a leading cause of disability. The progression of chronic pain is closely tied to anxiety and depression but less is known about the relationship between chronic pain and adverse childhood experiences (ACE). Two commonly used pain assessments, the Short Form-McGill Pain Questionnaire-2 (McGill) and the Brief Pain Inventory Short Form (BPI), have been validated in populations witih CNCP patients but have not been validated in populations of CNCP patients with ACE. In addition, we wanted to assess the test-retest reliabilty and internal consistency of the Brief Adverse Childhood Events Survey (BRACES), an original instrument developed by the authors, with CNCP patients,. Methods: This study enrolled 123 patients with CNCP from an academic multidisciplinary pain clinic at the Clinical Trials Unit of our Clinical and Translational Science Center. ACE was not an inclusion criteria. All patients had one of five CNCP pain diagnoses. We adminstered the three instruments twice, separated by two weeks. The anaysis compared psychometric properties of the instruments in patients who had ACE and those who did not. Results: There was significant correlation of the scores between the two participant visits (r=[0.68,0.85]) and internal consistency was high (Cronbach-α=[0.68,0.85]). Seventy percent of the study participants endorsed one or more categories of ACE, and 30% of study participants endorsed four to six ACE categories. Agreement between visits for reported ACE categories was high (κ=[0.72,0.85]). Demographic and pain characteristics were not different between patients reporting ACE and those who did not. Conclusions: The McGill, BPI and BRACES instruments were reliable and internally consistent in both populations. They also appear to be useful in evaluating the relationship between the quality (McGill), severity and interference (BPI) of CNCP in individuals with a history of ACE. Future research studying the relationship between ACE and chronic pain syndromes in adults can confidently utilize these instruments to help understand the role that ACE may play in the course of chronic pain and potential treatments.
CONTROLLING PARENT CONTRIBUTIONS DURING POSITIVE ASSORTATIVE MATING AND SELECTION INCREASES GAIN IN LONG-TERM FOREST TREE BREEDING

Forest tree production populations resulting from breeding strategies that combine positive assortative mating (PAM) with a variety of mating designs and selection methods were investigated over five generations by Monte Carlo simulation. Equal parent contributions were compared with strategies where better parents contributed more progeny to the next generation. Two approaches were used to accomplish this: (1) balanced mating designs producing equal numbers of crosses per parent, combined with unbalanced selection of more progeny from better parents (US); and (2) unbalanced mating to produce more crosses from better parents, followed by balanced selection within families of equal numbers from each cross (UM). In each approach, the intensity of imbalance could be adjusted from very mild, so that parent contributions were very nearly equal, to very aggressive, where parent contributions varied greatly. The resulting range of effective population sizes was measured by status effective number. PAM increased the additive variance more for the UM strategies than for those using US. This higher variance in the breeding population led to greater gain in selected sub-populations used for seed production or clonal deployment. Differences in population structure affected the net gain in the production populations in the presence of inbreeding depression. For the progeny of a seed orchard derived from the UM strategies, net gain increased with higher contribution from better parents and declining effective size of the breeding population. In contrast, for US strategies, the net gain from orchard progeny decreased as the breeding population effective size declined. Thus, when applying PAM to breeding and selection strategies with higher contribution from better parents, the breeding population under UM has a better coancestry structure to support seed orchards with high breeding values and low inbreeding in the progeny. For both strategies, the net gain from a clone mix was generally higher at lower levels of breeding population effective size, although inbreeding increased.