Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Technical note CoreFlow : A computational platform for integration , analysis and modeling of complex biological data ☆

Available online 3 February 2014 A major challenge in mass spectrometry and other large-scale applications is how to handle, integrate, and model the data that is produced. Given the speed at which technology advances and the need to keep pace with biological experiments, we designed a computational platform, CoreFlow, which provides programmers with a framework to manage data in real-time. It allows users to upload data into a relational database (MySQL), and to create custom scripts in high-level languages such as R, Python, or Perl for processing, correcting and modeling this data. CoreFlow organizes these scripts into project-specific pipelines, tracks interdependencies between related tasks, and enables the generation of summary reports as well as publication-quality images. As a result, the gap between experimental and computational components of a typical large-scale biology project is reduced, decreasing the time between data generation, analysis and manuscript writing. CoreFlow is being released to the scientific community as an open-sourced software package complete with proteomics-specific examples, which include corrections for incomplete isotopic labeling of peptides (SILAC) or arginine-to-proline conversion, and modeling of multiple/selected reaction monitoring (MRM/SRM) results. Biological significance CoreFlow was purposely designed as an environment for programmers to rapidly perform
Badacz i jego ciało w procesie zbierania i analizowania danych – na przykładzie badań nad społecznym światem wspinaczki

Artykuł podejmuje problem roli cielesności badacza w procesie gromadzenia i analizowania danych w badaniu etnograficznym. Rozważania odwołują się do konkretnego przypadku badania nad społecznym światem wspinaczki, ale refleksja autorki wykracza poza nie, uznając ich aktualność w odniesieniu do wszelkich etnograficznych badań obejmujących swoim zainteresowaniem ucieleśnione działania podmiotów ludzkich, szczególnie te, w których główny przedmiot badań stanowi aktywność ruchowa, związana z pracą z ciałem i poprzez ciało. Autorka analizuje relacje pomiędzy ucieleśnieniem konkretnych działań i aktywności badanych (wspinaczy) a ucieleśnieniem samego procesu gromadzenia danych. Podejmuje problem przejścia pomiędzy tożsamościami badacza i uczestnika społecznego świata oraz możliwość wykorzystania autoetnografii w procesie gromadzenia i analizowania danych. Na koniec przedstawia trzy aspekty, w których ujawnia się ciało (cielesność) badacza i badanego w trakcie badania etnograficznego: (a) ciało jako podmiot działający, (b) ciało jako źródło odczuć i doznań cielesnych podmiotu, (c) ciało jako temat autorefleksji podmiotu i obiekt teoretyzowania. Autorka podkreśla cielesny charakter procesu badawczego i sugeruje uwzględnianie w badaniach świadomego namysłu nad umiejscowieniem ciała i cielesności samego badacza w procesie wytwarzania wiedzy.
Project Based Learning Approach to Shale Diagenesis: A Better Avenue to the Big Picture

This article describes an experimental six-month study that was created to introduce first semester graduate students to geological research in fine-grained rocks. The study was conducted within a graduate-level Clastic Diagenesis course where students examined the mineralogical and chemical variability in shale samples that crop out in regions of different thermal maturity along the Ouachita Mountain Fold Belt. A project-based instructional (PBL) approach was used with a driving question of “what happens to shales during burial diagenesis? ” This approach was intended to give students an opportunity early in their graduate studies to participate in authentic geologic research. Each sample was analyzed for the clay-mineralogy using XRD, whole-rock chemistry using XRF, mineralogy of heavy separates, character of the silt-sized quartz and feldspar, and grain size of the non-clay fraction. Qualitative data analyses from student interview transcriptions revealed that based on their experience with the Ouachita project students were able to approach their own thesis topics, regardless of the subject area with a more holistic and experienced scientific perspective. The depth and quality of the research questions they asked in their own subsequent research was influenced by their exposure to the clastic diagenesis problem-based project. Developing competency in the analyses techniques was not the goal of this project but rather developing an overarching understanding of the process used when studying the diagenesis of fine-grained rocks. Evidence that this was achieved is demonstrated in the student's final presentation of the Clastic Diagenesis project at a regional geologic meeting.
Seen but not heard: Women's experiences of educational leadership in Solomon Islands secondary schools

This study is concerned with the representation of women in leadership positions in Solomon Islands. In particular, it explores the educational leadership experiences of women working in Solomon Islands’ secondary schools. While much research to date has been carried out in the developed and developing countries, very little has been undertaken in Melanesian countries. As such, we know very little about women’s experiences in educational leadership in Melanesia. Research data was gathered using qualitative methods. Specifically, interviews were conducted with eight women, five were deputy principals and three were Heads of Departments. All the participants were teaching in schools in an urban centre. Data gathered were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach. The data gathering was conducted in the Solomon Islands in October 2007. The key findings revealed a number of issues that impacted on the women’s leadership in their respective schools. Findings include lack of self confidence, difficulties in balancing work and family, discriminatory attitudes and the influence of the cultural patriarchal norms on the attitudes towards women in leadership positions. Other key findings related to the nature of the organization, in this case, the school. This included a lack of initial preparatory and on going professional development programmes and a lack of consultation in the decision making process. This study also found that while the women embraced the collaborative approach to leadership, the structural barriers through the hierarchical organization of the schools meant they could not lead the way they would like to.
The QuEChERS method - a new approach in pesticide analysis of soils.

The QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe) method 1) 2) has been developed by the US Department of Agriculture for extracting pesticides from food. Basic steps of this method 3) are: 1. Sample preparation and extraction – The sample is uniformly homogenized and soaked with acetonitrile for a shake extraction. Salts, acids and/or buffers may be added to enhance extraction efficiency and protect sensitive analytes. 2. Dispersive solid phase extraction cleanup (dSPE) – In this step MgSO4 and SPE adsorbents are used to remove excess water and unwanted contaminants (matrix) from the extracted samples. 3. Sample analysis by GC/MS or LC/MS – A solvent exchange or pH adjustment might be necessary. Because of its simplicity and effectiveness the method became very common in pesticide analysis of food. Our goal was the transfer of this fast and easy method to the analysis of pesticides in soil. The following lines describe the used method and the first experimental results.
Trade, Quality Upgrading and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector: Theory and Evidence from an Exchange Rate Shock

This paper proposes a new model of the link between expanding trade and rising wage inequality in developing countries, and investigates its causal implications in a newly constructed panel of Mexican manufacturing establishments. In a theoretical setting with heterogeneous firms and quality differentiation, only the most productive firms in a developing country like Mexico enter the export market, and they produce a better-quality good for export than for the domestic market in order to appeal to richer developed-country consumers. Producing high-quality goods requires paying high wages both to white-collar and to blue-collar - but especially to white-collar - employees. An increase in the incentive for developing-country producers to export generates differential quality upgrading within industries, as more-productive firms increase exports and produce a greater share of high-quality goods, while less-productive firms remain focused on the domestic market. This process raises wage inequality both between firms and within the firms that upgrade. The empirical part of the paper uses a major exchange rate shock - the Mexican peso crisis of late 1994 - to test this causal mechanism. I find robust evidence that during the years of the crisis initially more-productive plants increased both white-collar and blue-collar wages and increased the relative wage of white-collar workers as compared to initially less-productive plants. This pattern is absent in the periods before or after the crisis years. The results thus provide strong support for the hypothesis that differential quality upgrading induced by the exchange rate shock contributed to wage inequality in Mexico in the mid-1990s.
Alan Astbury. 27 November 1934—21 July 2014

Alan Astbury worked in the area of accelerator based subatomic physics. Increasing beam energies, intensities and types of available accelerated beams opened scientific windows to new phenomena throughout his career. Exploiting these new beams required new techniques and the use of the latest technology. Alan was always at the forefront of putting these components together into the experiments needed to confirm or reject the latest theoretical advances or clarify conflicting experimental observations. Following his PhD using the synchrocyclotron at the University of Liverpool and a postdoctoral position at Berkeley, he became a staff member at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, where he played a central role in the successive experiments with the Nimrod proton synchrotron, the 26 GeV proton synchrotron at CERN and, perhaps most significantly, with the UA1 experiment at CERN that discovered the W and Z particles. Alan moved to Canada in 1983 and made enormous contributions to Canadian science. He was instrumental in building relationships between Canadian scientists and CERN, DESY and SLAC. As director of the Canadian Institute of Particle Physics and then director of the TRIUMF laboratory, he guided subatomic physics policy and planning for two decades. On the international scene, he was president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
Small Ruminant Research

This study tested trehalose and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) as cryoprotectants in extenders for frozen ram semen. In the first experiment, the extenders were Tris, with 20% egg yolk (E1-1); E1-1 with 5% glycerol (E1-2); E1-1 with 100 mM trehalose (E1-3); and E1-1 with 100 mM trehalose and 5% glycerol (E1-4). Sperm motility and membrane integrity of the E1-2, E1-3 and E1-4 extenders were greater than for E1-1 (P < 0.05), but acrosome integrity following cryopreservation did not differ. In the second experiment, the extenders were Tris, with 20% egg yolk and 100 mM trehalose (E2-1); Tris with 8% LDL and 5% glycerol (E2-2); Tris with 8% LDL and 100 mM trehalose (E2-3); and Tris with 8% LDL, 100 mM trehalose and 5% glycerol (E2-4). Sperm membrane integrity was lowest for the E2-1 extender (P < 0.05), but similar for extenders including LDL. Sperm motility post-thawing was highest for E2-2 and E2-3 extenders (P < 0.05), but acrosome integrity did not differ. Thus, extenders including trehalose and LDL as cryoprotectants recorded a post-thawing ram sperm quality similar to that achieved when using conventional cryoprotectants. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Experimental and simulation study of the effects of cosmic particles on CMOS/SOS RAMs

The existence of a charge multiplication effect in CMOS/SOS RAM circuits, as reported by J. Rollins (1987), is confirmed. Shorter channel lengths and higher power supply voltages caused the ratio, M, of upset charge to deposited charge to increase. As a result of this multiplication factor, actual devices are more likely to upset than expected from an analysis of only the collected charge. A mixed-mode simulator was used to model the charge collection process. The results showed that the M factor is a very fluid number which is dependent on minority carrier lifetime, drain voltage, and the switching dynamics of the cell in addition to the dependence on mobility ratio and channel length reported by Rollins. Parasitic bipolar gain at high injection levels appears to be the primary mechanism allowing collected charge to be greater than deposited charge. The simulator and experimental data show that, as floating body static memory transistors are down scaled, the particle energy needed to upset the cell is reduced because of the enhanced parasitic bipolar gain effect as well as a reduction in the node capacitance. >
Sakarya University Journal of Science SAUJS

The functional connectivity of brain connectivity changes its pattern over time i.e. dynamics, even in the resting state with an infinite number of degrees of freedom with local couplings. Recently, quantifying the level of synchrony has received considerable attention. We hypothesized that time-varying instantaneous phase synchronization over local couplings are defined in hyperbolic space and different brain regions can identify failures, flexibility, and stability in network dynamics. Our goal is to understand the phase synchronization changes of the beta-gamma band, and in addition, to investigate Shannon entropy based on phase synchronization stability. Whole EEG dynamics from local phase synchronizations was used to detect treatment resistance from both hemispheres in OCD patients. Temporal filtering and Hilbert transforms were performed to infer beta-gamma band phase difference activity from the EEG brain dynamics. Then, the response beta-gamma band phase stability was quantified using a new phase synchronization index (PSI). Results indicated significantly changed phase synchronization of the response and non-response to treatment, patients in OCD patients in F7 electrode. Greater phase fluctuations of beta-gamma synchronizations in treatment resistance OCD is claiming phase deficiencies within neural populations. This study first provides experimental and theoretical support for characterizing cycle structure depends on the non-Euclidian dynamics of neural phase synchrony caused by disturbances of underlying neurotransmitter systems, as reflected in different normal and disease states .
The influence of individual differences on neural correlates of emotional and cognitive information processes

Inconsistent findings regarding the emotional Stroop effect in healthy subjects may be explained by confounding effects of stimulus valence and arousal, and individual differences in anxiety. Here, we examined reaction time data in a healthy sample using the emotional Stroop task while carefully matching arousal level of emotional words. Independent of valence, emotional words elicited emotional interference, indicating that arousal determines emotional interference. Furthermore, independent of valence, emotional words were better recalled and recognized than neutral words. With regard to individual differences in anxiety we found that state anxiety was associated with emotional interference, that is, subjects with high state anxiety showed greater interference than subjects with low state anxiety. There was no influence of trait anxiety. These findings indicate that the emotional Stroop interference effect is mediated by word arousal and not word valence. Furthermore, subjects’ state anxiety influences emotional interference of highly arousing words by biasing attentional resources.
Modélisation pluie-débit journalière par des modèles conceptuels et boîte noire; test d'un modèle neuroflou

Quatre modeles pluie-debit ont ete testes au pas de temps journalier dans le bassin versant de la Cheffia, situe dans le Nord-Est algerien. Ces modeles appartiennent a deux categories, les modeles conceptuels, que sont le modele GR3j et le modele CREC a huit parametres, et les modeles de type boite noire, representes par le modele ARMAX et par un modele neuroflou, qui combine un modele a structure neuronale et la logique floue. Les modeles ont ete testes sur deux periodes, l'une seche et l'autre humide. Ce comparatif nous a permis de proposer une meilleure modelisation de la relation pluie-debit, au pas de temps journalier, en combinant l'approche conceptuelle et le modele du systeme neuroflou.
The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance SME’s Cost of Debt: A Meta-Analysis of Borrower, Creditor and SME’s Cost of Debt: A Meta-Analysis of Borrower, Creditor and Financial Statement Verification Attributes Financial Statement Verification Attributes

: Private firm financing, given the far-reaching importance of non-publicly traded companies for global output and employment, is still a relatively underexplored area. Since the seminal work of Petersen and Rajan (1994), only a small branch of research into private firms’ cost of debt has been established. We aggregate the full body of this research that has empirically investigated antecedents of private firms’ cost of debt in a meta-analysis. The foremost antecedents can be categorized into either borrower, creditor or financial statement verification attributes. Our results reveal a set of 11 highly significant and robust determinants.
The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

While academic research concerning capital structure of large corporations has been abundant in the finance literature, studies of small firms have been some­ what less common, and investigation of capital structure at origin (start-up) has been virtually nil. In this paper we present empirical evidence concerning the start-up capital structures of small firms. We base this investigation upon char­ acteristics of both owner and firm. We find the percent of the owner's income expected to be derived from the business to be positively associated with debt use and the owner's age to be negatively associated with debt use. We find that more debt is obtained if the business owner is married and less if he or she is black. Similarly, more debt is prevalent among start-up firms in transportation and utilities than those in other industries. When debt obtained from other than financial institutions is considered, factors such as gender, experience, educa­ tion, and expected firm size also play a role in the structure of start-up capital.
Watertable management for reducing nitrate accumulation in a soil profile under corn production

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 960 Carling Avenue. , Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0C6, Canada; Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Department of Engineering, Resource Stewardship Building, 20 Tower Road, P.O. Box 550, Truro, Nova Scotia B2N 5E3, Canada; and Brace Center for Water Resources Management, Macdonald Campus of McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Ste-Annede-Bellevue, Quebec H9X 3V9, Canada. *Email: abdirashid.elmi@elf.mcgill. ca
The impact of microblogging word of mouth on consumers ’ adoption of new movies

This research provides an empirical test of the “Twitter effect,” which postulates that microblogging word of mouth (MWOM) shared through Twitter and similar services affects early product adoption behaviors by immediately disseminating consumers’ post-purchase quality evaluations. This is a potentially crucial factor for the success of experiential media products and other products whose distribution strategy relies on a hyped release. Studying the four million MWOM messages sent via Twitter concerning 105 movies on their respective opening weekends, the authors find support for the Twitter effect and report evidence of a negativity bias. In a follow-up incident study of 600 Twitter users who decided not to see a movie based on negative MWOM, the authors shed additional light on the Twitter effect by investigating how consumers use MWOM information in their decision-making processes and describing MWOM’s defining characteristics. They use these insights to position MWOM in the word-of-mouth landscape, to identify future word-of-mouth research opportunities based on this conceptual positioning, and to develop managerial implications.
Prevention of Liver Fibrosis and Steatosis Progression Among Heavy Drinkers With and Without HIV After 30-Day Drinking-Reduction Program

Background: This is the first attempt to assess changes in liver abnormalities before and after contingency management (CM) to reduce heavy drinking beyond 30-days of follow-up. Objective: The main objective was to determine whether liver fibrosis and steatosis, measured using FibroScan, change significantly between baseline, 30-days, and 90-days among older adults who drink heavily at baseline, enrolled in the CM intervention for alcohol reduction. The secondary aim of the study was to assess whether the changes in liver outcome measures differ across alcohol consumption categories. Methods: A prospective study (ClinicalTrials.gov registry: NCT03353701) of 46 older adults (63% male, 76.1% Black, mean age = 56.4) with heavy drinking at the baseline, living with or without HIV infection was evaluated. A linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze the FibroScan Transient Elastography (TE for fibrosis) and Controlled Attenuation Parameter (CAP for steatosis). Results: There were no significant changes in liver fibrosis and steatosis measures after 90-days of drinking abstinence among heavy drinkers with or without stratified TE or CAP values at baseline. Conclusions: CM for drinking reduction may not be effective at least short-term prospective in preventing liver fibrosis and steatosis progression for subjects without severe liver disease at baseline.
Knowledge Integration in Product and Production Development Through Boundary Objects and Additive Manufacturing

This paper discusses the role of prototypes with special focus on rapid prototyping or also called additive manufacturing. The authors of the paper combine literature on additive manufacturing and boundary crossing to increase the understanding about prototypes and specifically rapid prototyping during new product development. This paper is cross-disciplinary and aims to fulfil three objectives: (1) Synthesis of literature regarding potential role of prototypes to support crossing of the knowledge boundaries during new product development; (2) Outline of prototypes’ properties that enable them to become boundary objects; (3) Outline meeting points between boundary crossing literature and the literature on additive manufacturing which can provide guideline for further investigation. The authors have found that the concept of boundary objects is still underdeveloped in the context of additive manufacturing, as the main benefits are related to quality, time, and cost. Through combination with literature on boundary objects, the role of prototypes to converge different diverging perspectives, translate and transform knowledge are emphasized and underlined.