Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Endogenous Origins of Organizational Experience, Routines and Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus

In this paper we discuss the origins and emergence of organizational routines and capabilities. We first argue that there are theoretical and endogeneity-related concerns associated with the key antecedents and mechanisms specified by the extant routines and capabilities literature. Specifically, we explicate the behaviorist and empiricist foundations of the organizational routines and capabilities literature and the extant emphasis placed on experience, repetition, and observation as the key antecedents and mechanisms of routines and capabilities. Based on this discussion we highlight several, endogeneity-related concerns, namely: (1) the problem of origins and causation, (2) the problem of extremes, (3) the problem of intentionality, (4) the problem of new knowledge, and (5) the problem of the environment. We introduce the ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument and discuss how an internalist or rationalist, choice-based approach can provide a more fruitful (though preliminary) foundation for understanding organizational behavior and capabilities.
How Can International Students Overcome Their Biggest Obstacle in an American University

This paper focuses on an interdisciplinary project using an innovative teaching methodology developed to generate substantive interaction between international students and mainstream students on American campuses. The process was created after asking international students from a variety of countries the question, “What is the biggest obstacle you have in learning English here at our university in America? ” The response of these students was that despite their best efforts, they could not seem to connect with their American peers on campus. The international students found it difficult to interact with American students on anything other than a superficial conversational level; and as a result, they tended to feel invisible on campus. A project was designed to bring about greater interaction and cultural awareness by bringing international students together with native speakers in stimulating and authentic conversations. The project was a success for both mainstream American students and international students by creating a space of equal status between the two student groups; this lowered the social, cultural, and linguistic barriers that were normally present. This paper shows how this was done.
Image-based date fruit classification

Date fruits are small fruits that are abundant and popular in the Middle East, and have growing international presence. There are many different types of dates, each with different features. Sorting of dates is a key process in the date industry, and can be a tedious job. In this paper, we present a method for automatic classification of date fruits based on computer vision and pattern recognition. The method was implemented, and empirically tested on an image data spanning seven different categories of dates. In our method, an appropriately crafted mixture of fifteen different visual features was extracted, and then, multiple methods of classification were tried out, until satisfactory performance was achieved. Top accuracies ranged between 89% and 99%.
Length of Stay Data as a Guide to Hospital Economic Performance for ICU Patients

Context. Length of stay data are increasingly used to monitor ICU economic performance. How such material is presented greatly affects its utility. Objective. To develop a weighted length of stay index and to estimate expected length of stay. To assess alternative ways to summarize weighted length of stay to evaluate ICU economic performance. Design. Retrospective database study. Subjects. Data for 751 ICU patients in 1998 at two hospitals used to develop weighted length of stay index. Data on 42,237 patients from 72 ICUs used as the basis of economic performance evaluation. Main Outcome Measures. Difference between actual and expected weighted length of stay, where expected weighted length of stay is based on patient clinical characteristics. Results. Length of stay statistically explains approximately 85 to 90% of interpatient variation in hospital costs. The first ICU day is approximately four times as expensive, and other ICU days approximately 2.5 times as expensive, as non-ICU hospital days. In a regression model for weighted length of stay, patient clinical characteristics explain 26% of variation. ICU economic performance can be measured by excess weighted length of stay of a “typical” patient or by occurrence of long excess weighted lengths of stay. Although different summary measures of performance are highly correlated, choice of measure affects relative ranking of some ICUs’ performance Conclusion. Providers of statistical data on ICU economic performance should adjust length of stay for patient characteristics and provide multiple summary measures of the statistical distribution, including measures that address both the typical patient and outliers.
Role of Aldose Reductase in the Metabolism and Detoxification of Carnosine-Acrolein Conjugates*

Background: Lipid peroxidation generates unsaturated aldehydes that form conjugates with histidyl dipeptides. Results: Carnosine-aldehyde conjugates form covalent adducts with proteins and are reduced by aldose reductase. Conclusion: Detoxification of carnosine-aldehyde by aldose reductase prevents protein carnosinylation. Significance: Aldose reductase prevents tissue injury due to aldehyde-carnosine conjugates. Oxidation of unsaturated lipids generates reactive aldehydes that accumulate in tissues during inflammation, ischemia, or aging. These aldehydes form covalent adducts with histidine-containing dipeptides such as carnosine and anserine, which are present in high concentration in skeletal muscle, heart, and brain. The metabolic pathways involved in the detoxification and elimination of these conjugates are, however, poorly defined, and their significance in regulating oxidative stress is unclear. Here we report that conjugates of carnosine with aldehydes such as acrolein are produced during normal metabolism and excreted in the urine of mice and adult human non-smokers as carnosine-propanols. Our studies show that the reduction of carnosine-propanals is catalyzed by the enzyme aldose reductase (AR). Carnosine-propanals were converted to carnosine-propanols in the lysates of heart, skeletal muscle, and brain tissue from wild-type (WT) but not AR-null mice. In comparison with WT mice, the urinary excretion of carnosine-propanols was decreased in AR-null mice. Carnosine-propanals formed covalent adducts with nucleophilic amino acids leading to the generation of carnosinylated proteins. Deletion of AR increased the abundance of proteins bound to carnosine in skeletal muscle, brain, and heart of aged mice and promoted the accumulation of carnosinylated proteins in hearts subjected to global ischemia ex vivo. Perfusion with carnosine promoted post-ischemic functional recovery in WT but not in AR-null mouse hearts. Collectively, these findings reveal a previously unknown metabolic pathway for the removal of carnosine-propanal conjugates and suggest a new role of AR as a critical regulator of protein carnosinylation and carnosine-mediated tissue protection.
Symmetry within the sequence-pair representation in the context ofplacement for analog design

This paper addresses the problem of device-level placement for analog layout, focusing mainly on symmetry-related aspects. Different from most of the existent analog placement approaches, employing basically simulated annealing optimization algorithms operating on flat (absolute) spatial representations, our model uses a more recent topological representation called sequence-pair, which has the advantage of not being restricted to slicing floorplan topologies. In this paper, we explain how specific features essential to analog placement, such as the ability to deal with complex symmetry constraints (for instance, an arbitrary number of symmetry groups of cells), can be easily handled by employing the sequence-pair representation. Several analog examples substantiate the effectiveness of our placement tool, which is already in use in an industrial environment.
Collapsed Variational Inference for Sum-Product Networks

Sum-Product Networks (SPNs) are probabilistic inference machines that admit exact inference in linear time in the size of the network. Existing parameter learning approaches for SPNs are largely based on the maximum likelihood principle and are subject to overfitting compared to more Bayesian approaches. Exact Bayesian posterior inference for SPNs is computationally intractable. Even approximation techniques such as standard variational inference and posterior sampling for SPNs are computationally infeasible even for networks of moderate size due to the large number of local latent variables per instance. In this work, we propose a novel deterministic collapsed variational inference algorithm for SPNs that is computationally efficient, easy to implement and at the same time allows us to incorporate prior information into the optimization formulation. Extensive experiments show a significant improvement in accuracy compared with a maximum likelihood based approach.
Large relative margin and applications

Over the last decade or so, machine learning algorithms such as support vector machines, boosting etc. have become extremely popular. The core idea in these and other related algorithms is the notion of large margin. Simply put, the idea is to geometrically separate two classes with a large separation between them; such a separator is then used to predict the class of unseen test examples. These methods have been extremely successful in practice and have formed a significant portion of machine learning literature. There are several theoretical results which motivate such algorithms. A closer look at such theoretical results reveals that the generalization ability of these methods are strongly linked to the margin as well as some measure of the spread of the data. Yet the algorithms themselves only seem to be maximizing the margin—completely ignoring the spread information. This thesis focuses on addressing this problem: novel formulations, that not only take into consideration the margin but also the spread aspect of the data, are proposed. In particular, relative margin machine, which is a strict generalization of the well known support vector machine is proposed. Further, generalization bounds are derived for the relative margin machines using a novel method of landmark examples. The idea of relative margin is fairly general; its potential is demonstrated by proposing formulations for structured prediction problems as well as for a transductive setup using graph Laplacian. Finally, a boosting algorithm incorporating both the margin information and the spread information is derived as well. The boosting algorithm is motivated from the recent empirical Bernstein bounds. All the proposed variants of the relative margin algorithms are easy to implement, efficiently solvable and typically show significant improvements over their large margin counterparts—on real-world datasets.
Calibration of Microsimulation with Heuristic Optimization Methods

Model calibration is a crucial step in building a reliable microscopic traffic simulation application because it serves as the additional check to ensure that the model parameters accurately reflect the local driving environment so that decisions made on the basis of these results will not be misinformed decisions. Because of its stochastic nature and complexity, the calibration problem, usually formulated as an optimization problem, is often solved by using heuristic methods. To date, calibration is still a time-consuming task because many adopted methods require many simulation runs in search of an optimal solution. Moreover, many aspects of the calibration problem are not fully understood and need further investigation. In this study, another heuristics calibration algorithm is developed on the basis of the simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation scheme and applied to calibration of several networks coded in Paramics. The results indicate that the new heuristic algorithm can reach the same level of accuracy with considerably fewer iterations and computer processor time than other heuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithms and the trial-and-error iterative adjustment algorithm. Applications of all three heuristic methods in a northern California network also reveal that some model parameters affect the simulation results more significantly than others. These findings can help modelers better choose calibration methods and fine-tune key parameters.
Low-frequency noise behavior of n-channel UTBB FD-SOI MOSFETs

The low-frequency noise (LFN) behavior of ultra thin body and buried oxide (UTBB) fully-depleted (FD) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) n-channel MOSFETs has been explored, emphasizing on the contribution of the buried-oxide (BOX) and the Si-BOX interface to the total drain current noise level. In order to successfully distinguish the different noise sources, measurements under different front and back gate voltages were performed. The noise spectra for all bias conditions consist of both flicker and Lorentzian-type noise components. A fitting method was used to extract the parameters of the LFN. It is shown that the flicker noise follows the carrier number with correlated mobility fluctuations model at both interfaces and the Si/BOX interface contributes to the total LFN level, even without back gate bias voltage. The front and back gate voltage dependence of the Lorentzian time constants indicates a uniform distribution of generation-recombination (g-r) centers within the silicon film. In addition, when the Si/BOX interface is accumulated, interface traps at the front gate are activated due to higher front gate voltages, giving rise to a different type of g-r noise.
MARITAL AND PARENTAL RELATIONSHIPS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT OF CHILDREN

The purpose of this research was to inquire to what extend the functioning characteristics of couples both in their role as partners and parents contribute to the psychological adjustment of their children. The study aimed to establish if the exercise of certain rearing practices contributes to the development of adjustment behaviors. This research was carried out with a sample of 256 families constituted by both parents and a child between the ages of 12 and 18 years old. Results reveal that certain characteristics of couples’ functioning such as marital satisfaction, parental satisfaction, marital confl ict and parental stress, are important to explain the variability of psychologically adjusted behaviors in their children. Likewise, the type of support given to children, the monitoring of their activities, the psychological control and the harsh parenting, do contribute to the development of either adjustment behaviors or psychological imbalance.
The Role of HCN Channels on Membrane Excitability in the Nervous System

Hyperpolarization-activated and cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels were first reported in heart cells and are recently known to be involved in a variety of neural functions in healthy and diseased brains. HCN channels generate inward currents when the membrane potential is hyperpolarized. Voltage dependence of HCN channels is regulated by intracellular signaling cascades, which contain cyclic AMP, PIP2, and TRIP8b. In addition, voltage-gated potassium channels have a strong influence on HCN channel activity. Because of these funny features, HCN channel currents, previously called funny currents, can have a wide range of functions that are determined by a delicate balance of modulatory factors. These multifaceted features also make it difficult to predict and elucidate the functional role of HCN channels in actual neurons. In this paper, we focus on the impacts of HCN channels on neural activity. The functions of HCN channels reported previously will be summarized, and their mechanisms will be explained by using numerical simulation of simplified model neurons.
Pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and efficacy of novel FabI inhibitor AFN-1252 against MSSA and MRSA in the murine thigh infection model

Abstract AFN-1252, a new antimicrobial agent, specifically and potently inhibits fatty acid synthesis in Staphylococcus aureus. We characterized in vivo pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles of AFN-1252 administered orally to neutropenic mice inoculated in thighs (∼106 CFU) with methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) ATCC 29213. Efficacy was also assessed in mice inoculated with MSSA, hospital-acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (HA-MRSA) or community-acquired (CA)-MRSA, and administered AFN-1252 or linezolid orally. Bacterial density was determined after 24 hours and efficacy defined as the change in CFU/thigh versus untreated controls at time 0. With MSSA, antibacterial reductions of ≧1 log were observed at ≧20 mg/kg doses, with ƒAUC/minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) best describing the pharmacodynamic profile of AFN-1252. The 80, 50 and 5% maximum effects were observed with ƒAUC/MIC values of 22·3, 17·0, and 9·6, respectively. Similar values were obtained for CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA. AFN-1252 was 4–40 fold more effective than linezolid against CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA. These data demonstrate the excellent in vivo potency of AFN-1252 against phenotypically diverse S. aureus.
[URE3] Prion Propagation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Requirement for Chaperone Hsp104 and Curing by Overexpressed Chaperone Ydj1p

ABSTRACT The [URE3] nonchromosomal genetic element is an infectious form (prion) of the Ure2 protein, apparently a self-propagating amyloidosis. We find that an insertion mutation or deletion of HSP104results in inability to propagate the [URE3] prion. Our results indicate that Hsp104 is a common factor in the maintenance of two independent yeast prions. However, overproduction of Hsp104 does not affect the stability of [URE3], in contrast to what is found for the [PSI+] prion, which is known to be cured by either overproduction or deficiency of Hsp104. Like Hsp104, the Hsp40 class chaperone Ydj1p, with the Hsp70 class Ssa1p, can renature proteins. We find that overproduction of Ydj1p results in a gradual complete loss of [URE3]. The involvement of protein chaperones in the propagation of [URE3] indicates a role for protein conformation in inheritance.
P300 amplitudes in the concealed information test are less affected by depth of processing than electrodermal responses

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) has been used in the laboratory as well as in field applications to detect concealed crime related memories. The presentation of crime relevant details to guilty suspects has been shown to elicit enhanced N200 and P300 amplitudes of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as well as greater skin conductance responses (SCRs) as compared to neutral test items. These electrophysiological and electrodermal responses were found to incrementally contribute to the validity of the test, thereby suggesting that these response systems are sensitive to different psychological processes. In the current study, we tested whether depth of processing differentially affects N200, P300, and SCR amplitudes in the CIT. Twenty participants carried out a mock crime and became familiar with central and peripheral crime details. A CIT that was conducted 1 week later revealed that SCR amplitudes were larger for central details although central and peripheral items were remembered equally well in a subsequent explicit memory test. By contrast, P300 amplitudes elicited by crime related details were larger but did not differ significantly between question types. N200 amplitudes did not allow for detecting concealed knowledge in this study. These results indicate that depth of processing might be one factor that differentially affects central and autonomic nervous system responses to concealed information. Such differentiation might be highly relevant for field applications of the CIT.
The Brm-HDAC3-Erm repressor complex suppresses dedifferentiation in Drosophila type II neuroblast lineages

The control of self-renewal and differentiation of neural stem and progenitor cells is a crucial issue in stem cell and cancer biology. Drosophila type II neuroblast lineages are prone to developing impaired neuroblast homeostasis if the limited self-renewing potential of intermediate neural progenitors (INPs) is unrestrained. Here, we demonstrate that Drosophila SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling Brahma (Brm) complex functions cooperatively with another chromatin remodeling factor, Histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) to suppress the formation of ectopic type II neuroblasts. We show that multiple components of the Brm complex and HDAC3 physically associate with Earmuff (Erm), a type II-specific transcription factor that prevents dedifferentiation of INPs into neuroblasts. Consistently, the predicted Erm-binding motif is present in most of known binding loci of Brm. Furthermore, brm and hdac3 genetically interact with erm to prevent type II neuroblast overgrowth. Thus, the Brm-HDAC3-Erm repressor complex suppresses dedifferentiation of INPs back into type II neuroblasts. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.01906. 001
A primer of amyloid nomenclature

The increasing knowledge of the exact biochemical nature of the localized and systemic amyloid disorders has made a logical and easily understood nomenclature absolutely necessary. Such a nomenclature, biochemically based, has been used for several years but the current literature is still mixed up with many clinical and histochemically based designations from the time when amyloid in general was poorly understood. All amyloid types are today preferably named by their major fibril protein. This makes a simple and rational nomenclature for the increasing number of amyloid disorders known in humans and animals.
A graph based simplex method for the integer minimum perturbation problem with sum and difference constraints

The integer minimum perturbation problem with sum and difference constraints is stated as follows: minimize <i>f</i>(<i>x</i>)=<i>a</i><inf>1</inf> <i>x</i><inf>1</inf> <i>b</i> <inf>1</inf> +<i>a</i> <inf>2</inf>-<i>b</i><inf>2</inf> +…+<i>a</i><inf>n</inf> <i>x</i><inf>n</inf>-<i>b</i> <inf>n</inf> under constraints ±<i>x<inf>i1</inf></i>±<i>x<inf>j1</inf></i>≥<i>c</i><inf>1</inf>, ±<i>x<inf>i2</inf></i>±<i>x<inf>j2</inf></i>≥<i>c</i><inf>2</inf>, … … … ±<i>x<inf>im</inf></i>±<i>x<inf>jm</inf></i>≥<i>cm</i>, where the sign in front of each variable is either "+" or "-", <i>a</i><inf>1</inf>; <i>a</i><inf>2</inf>…<i>a</i><inf>n</inf>≥0 and all variables and constants are integers.The minimum perturbation problem [6] arose from layout migration. The sum and difference constraints arose from the hierarchical nature of the layout. We proposed and implemented a graph based algorithm to solve this optimization problem. Our algorithm consists of two steps. First find the optimal solution for the non-integer version of the problem by using a modification of simplex method which takes advantage of the special form of the constraints (a graph based simplex method). Then find an integer solution close to the optimal by solving a 2-SAT problem. The time complexity of the algorithm is <i>O</i>(<i>p</i>(<i>m</i> + <i>n</i>), where <i>p</i> is the number of pivots in the simplex algorithm; note that the regular simplex method, being applied to this problem, would require <i>O</i>(<i>pn</i>(<i>m</i> + <i>n</i>)) time.Our result on production layouts shows that the runtime scale very well with a <i>O</i>(<i>nlog</i>(<i>n</i>)) scanline algorithm used to generate the constraints for the layouts. This makes it a very practical solver for the problem.