Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study on the continuous using intention of traveling website

This study utilized information system (IS) success model and technology acceptance model (TAM) as foundation and adopted theories of service quality and customer satisfaction to discuss the intention of continuous using traveling websites. Owing to the advantages of comparing prices and itineraries through Internet with ease, how to hold potential customers' eyes on their own websites is always the top topic for firms in relevant traveling industries. This study proposed a framework, containing constructs of information quality, system quality, service quality, perceived playfulness, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, customer satisfaction, and continuance intention, and inferred that this framework could effectively elucidate the mechanism of potential customers' continuous intention of usage.
Educating science teachers in the twenty-first century: implications for pre-service teacher education

Abstract This study examines the verbal interactions among a group of pre-service teachers as they engaged in scientific discussions in a medicinal chemistry course. These discussions were part of the course that encompassed an explicit instruction of scientific argumentation structures as well as an applied component, whereby the pre-service teachers learned the content of medicinal chemistry through cases developed using the strategy of competing theories. By adopting a case study approach using sociocultural framework of learning, we examined the interactions between the pre-service teachers using video data. We describe 12 possible forms of interactions during discussions – (1) seeking clarification, (2) figuring out loud, (3) sharing information, (4) agreement, (5) asking questions, (6) providing explanations, (7) raising strategic and procedural issues, (8) stating claims, (9) disagreement, (10) sharing perspectives, (11) offering alternatives, and (12) persuasion. The pre-service teachers engaged in figuring out aloud and seeking clarifications frequently, and used persuasion least in their discussions. To clarify their ideas and thoughts, pre-service teachers commonly rebut their counterparts and used warrants to support their own assertions. A similar pattern was also observed when figuring their thoughts out loud. Our findings suggest that pre-service teachers were able to carry out rebuttals in the argumentation process. However, the quality and function of their rebuttals can be improved by deepening their understanding of the subject matter knowledge and the science argumentation structure. Implications are discussed.
Development of Chitosan Nanoparticles as a Stable Drug Delivery System for Protein/siRNA

Chitosan nanoparticles (CS NPs) exhibit good physicochemical properties as drug delivery systems. The aim of this study is to determine the modulation of preparative parameters on the physical characteristics and colloidal stability of CS NPs. CS NPs were fabricated by ionic interaction with dextran sulphate (DS) prior to determination of their storage stability. The smallest CS NPs of 353 ± 23 nm with a surface charge of +56.2 ± 1.5 mV were produced when CS and DS were mixed at pH 4 and with a DS : CS mass ratio of 0.5 : 1. An entrapment efficiency of 98% was achieved when BSA/siRNA was loaded into the nanoparticles. The results also showed that particle size and surface charge of CS NPs were slightly changed up to 2 weeks when stored at 4°C. Greater particle size and surface charge were obtained with increasing the concentration of DS. In conclusion, NPs were sufficiently stable when kept at 4°C and able to carry and protect protein.
Balancing the power of multimedia information retrieval and usability in designing interactive tv

Steady progress in the field of multimedia information retrieval (MMIR) promises a useful set of tools that could provide new usage scenarios and features to enhance the user experience in today's digital media applications. In the interactive TV domain, the simplicity of interaction is more crucial than in any other digital media domain and ultimately determines the success or otherwise of any new applications. Thus when integrating emerging tools like MMIR into interactive TV, the increase in interface complexity and sophistication resulting from these features can easily reduce its actual usability. In this paper we describe a design strategy we developed as a result of our efforts in balancing the power of emerging multimedia information retrieval techniques and maintaining the simplicity of the interface in interactive TV. By providing multiple levels of interface sophistication in increasing order as a viewer repeatedly presses the same button on their remote control, we provide a layered interface that can accommodate viewers requiring varying degrees of power and simplicity. A series of screen shots from the system we have actually developed and built illustrates how this is achieved.
Pharmacological Effects of the Water Fraction of Key Components in the Traditional Chinese Prescription Mai Tong Fang on 3T3-L1 Adipocytes and ob/ob Diabetic Mice

Mai Tong Fang (MTF), a Chinese herbal combination, has been used for the treatment of diabetic nephropathy in traditional medical clinics in China. However, the anti-adipogenic and anti-hyperglycemic effects of MTF have not been fully elucidated, so this study explored these pharmacological activities in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and ob/ob mice, respectively, of the water fraction of milkvetch root, salviae miltiorrhizae and mulberry as key components of MTF. MTF was found to inhibit adipogenesis and triglyceride accumulation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Oral administration of MTF in ob/ob mice for 8 weeks, exhibited positive controls on blood glucose and body weight, and further improved glucose tolerance according to an oral glucose tolerance test. Importantly, MTF extract alleviated fat deposition and ballooning degeneration in liver tissue and blocked the increase of adipocyte size in adipose tissue from treated ob/ob mice. These results indicated that the extract of key components in the traditional Chinese prescription MTF continue a potent anti-adipogenic and glucose-lowering agent.
Dual-PEEC Modeling of a Two-Port TEM Cell for VHF Applications

Two-port TEM cells with rectangular cross section are commonly used to produce plane electromagnetic waves with high electric field. The non-uniform structure makes the use of numerical methods extremely useful in the design phase in order to achieve a very good behavior of the TEM cell over a wide frequency range of operation. In this paper an extended version of PEEC is used to study a real device and results are compared with experimental ones.
Estimating the Burden of Pneumococcal Pneumonia among Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Techniques

Background Pneumococcal pneumonia causes significant morbidity and mortality among adults. Given limitations of diagnostic tests for non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia, most studies report the incidence of bacteremic or invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), and thus, grossly underestimate the pneumococcal pneumonia burden. We aimed to develop a conceptual and quantitative strategy to estimate the non-bacteremic disease burden among adults with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) using systematic study methods and the availability of a urine antigen assay. Methods and Findings We performed a systematic literature review of studies providing information on the relative yield of various diagnostic assays (BinaxNOW® S. pneumoniae urine antigen test (UAT) with blood and/or sputum culture) in diagnosing pneumococcal pneumonia. We estimated the proportion of pneumococcal pneumonia that is bacteremic, the proportion of CAP attributable to pneumococcus, and the additional contribution of the Binax UAT beyond conventional diagnostic techniques, using random effects meta-analytic methods and bootstrapping. We included 35 studies in the analysis, predominantly from developed countries. The estimated proportion of pneumococcal pneumonia that is bacteremic was 24.8% (95% CI: 21.3%, 28.9%). The estimated proportion of CAP attributable to pneumococcus was 27.3% (95% CI: 23.9%, 31.1%). The Binax UAT diagnosed an additional 11.4% (95% CI: 9.6, 13.6%) of CAP beyond conventional techniques. We were limited by the fact that not all patients underwent all diagnostic tests and by the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic tests themselves. We address these resulting biases and provide a range of plausible values in order to estimate the burden of pneumococcal pneumonia among adults. Conclusions Estimating the adult burden of pneumococcal disease from bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia data alone significantly underestimates the true burden of disease in adults. For every case of bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia, we estimate that there are at least 3 additional cases of non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia.
The Influence of Personality Traits on Households’ Financial Risk Tolerance and Financial Behaviour

Using a large sample that can represent the Dutch population, this article mainly studies the determinants of financial risk tolerance. I propose that the big five personality traits are the potential factors that can explain differences in financial risk tolerance among individuals. Furthermore, this article examines the effect of personality traits on the actual financial behaviour of households through financial risk tolerance. I find that all the big five personality traits including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellect significantly predict financial risk tolerance. Additionally, these personality traits as instrumental variables can also indirectly predict the financial behaviour of households. JEL: D10, D14, D19
Neural basis of the cognitive map: Path integration does not require hippocampus or entorhinal cortex

The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex have been linked to both memory functions and to spatial cognition, but it has been unclear how these ideas relate to each other. An important part of spatial cognition is the ability to keep track of a reference location using self-motion cues (sometimes referred to as path integration), and it has been suggested that the hippocampus or entorhinal cortex is essential for this ability. Patients with hippocampal lesions or larger lesions that also included entorhinal cortex were led on paths while blindfolded (up to 15 m in length) and were asked to actively maintain the path in mind. Patients pointed to and estimated their distance from the start location as accurately as controls. A rotation condition confirmed that performance was based on self-motion cues. When demands on long-term memory were increased, patients were impaired. Thus, in humans, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are not essential for path integration.
Important factors for estimating reliability of SOA

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is basically a collection of individual services and these services interact with hence. Each interaction is loosely coupled and self-contained, so that each interaction is independent of any other interaction. Due to its complex nature, reliability estimation is a very tedious task. In any software system, reliability is one of the most important nonfunctional requirement and there are many factors that affect the systems reliability. In the previous work, there were many factors defined to estimate the reliability of a software system. In this paper, some new factors have been defined that affect SOA reliability.
PENGARUH MORAL EQUITY, RELATIVISM, DAN SIKAP INDIVIDU TERHADAP PERILAKU PEMBAJAKAN PRODUK DIGITAL DI SURABAYA

Pembajakan digital merupakan salah satu isu terbesar saat ini dalam dunia bisnis. Berkaitan dengan CD musik dan software, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendalami dampak dari moral equity, relativism, dan sikap individu pada perilaku pembajakan di negara berkembang, secara khusus di Surabaya, Indonesia. Perbedaan budaya nasional memungkinkan adanya pengaruh terhadap sikap individu untuk membajak produk-produk digital. Hasil dari penelitian konseptual ini adalah untuk menyediakan gambaran dan rekomendasi bagi pihak pemerintah, perusahaan, dan juga konsumen untuk meningkatkan kesadaran tentang perilaku pembajakan produk digital dan pembuatan keputusan. Metode penelitian ini menggunakan survei kepada 251 responden di Surabaya yang pernah membeli dan menggunakan produk digital bajakan (CD musik dan software). Data yang terkumpul dianalisis menggunakan Structural Equation Model (SEM). Hasil penelitian ini menemukan bahwa konsumen Surabaya, Indonesia, paham perbuatan pembajakan adalah hal yang salah secara moral, tetapi tetap melakukan hal tersebut. Didukung budaya kolektivisme yang memperlihatkan bahwa perilaku pembajakan ini lumrah di Indonesia, relativism tidak berdampak pada masyarakat Surabaya, Indonesia, karena para konsumen tidak lagi menilai perilaku pembajakan tersebut dari sisi “benar atau salah”, melainkan “apa yang sesuai atau tidak sesuai” di lingkungannya.
Free-Form Query for Cell Phones

To provide a wide range of queries to database query systems for small mobile devices, such as the PDAs and cell phones, is a challenge. Currently, due to the physical and resource limitations of these devices, most reported database querying systems developed for them are only offering a small set of pre-determined queries for users to possibly pose. We believe that by allowing free-form queries to be entered on the cell phones will be one way of supporting a wider scope of queries on these devices. Hence, this paper presents the free-form query language that can be used to issue free-form queries and the method used in translating these queries to their equivalent SQL statements.
Modeling and simulation of silicon wafer backside grinding process

TSV (through silicon via) is regarded as a key technology for 2.5D and 3D electronic packaging. And the manufacturing of the through silicon interposer is very challenge and costly. In the backside process of interposer, grinding is considered as the most promising technology to control wafer's surface roughness and surface defect. In this paper, according to the grinding process, a mathematical model is established. According to the model, MATLAB is used to simulate and predict the grinding marks and the distance between two adjacent grinding lines during the backside grinding process. The grinding marks of the half contact grinding model and full contact grinding model with different wheel rotation speed and wafer rotation speed are presented. And the relationship between two adjacent grinding lines and the ratio of wafer rotation speed and wheel rotation speed is predicted. The experiments are also carried out to verify the proposed model. The results of the experiments agree well with the simulation results.
Entropy multi-hyperplane credit scoring model

Entropy multi-hyperplane credit scoring model is a decision model that classifies applicants into payers or defaulters by optimizing the classification cost using multiple hyperplanes based on entropy order. In the first stage, the model uses a pair of hyperplanes composed of half of the attributes which are ordered increasingly by the entropy. The hyperplanes divide the applicants into 3 groups, namely payers, defaulters and the unclassified. From the unclassified group, the model uses another pair of hyperplanes which are composed of additional half of the rest of attributes based on the previous entropy order. The additional hyperplanes divide the unclassified group in the first stage into another 3 group namely payers in 2nd stage, defaulters in 2nd stage and the unclassified in 2nd stage. In the final stage, the multidimensional hyperplanes created from all attributes are used to divide the loaners into two groups : payers and defaulters. In this paper, a mixed-integer programming model for entropy multi-hyperplane credit scoring model is developed to minimize the cost of misclassification errors. The experiment shows that our model has more accuracy than a two-stage least cost credit scoring model and uses less computational iterations than a multi-hyperplane credit scoring model. Moreover, the new model exhibits comparable result with classification tree, neural network, support vector machine, linear discriminant analysis and CART.
Enabling direct interest-aware audience selection

Advertisers typically have a fairly accurate idea of the interests of their target audience. However, today's online advertising systems are unable to leverage this information. The reasons are two-fold. First, there is no agreed upon vocabulary of interests for advertisers and advertising systems to communicate. More importantly, advertising systems lack a mechanism for mapping users to the interest vocabulary. In this paper, we tackle both problems. We present a system for direct interest-aware audience selection. This system takes the query histories of search engine users as input, extracts their interests, and describes them with interpretable labels. The labels are not drawn from a predefined taxonomy, but rather dynamically generated from the query histories, and are thus easy for the advertisers to interpret and use for targeting users. In addition, the system enables seamless addition of interest labels that may be provided by the advertiser.
Trajectory planning for monocular SLAM based exploration system

In this paper, we propose a novel planning technique for monocular camera based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping(VSLAM). In VSLAM, the objective is to estimate the trajectory of camera and simultaneously identify 3D feature points and build a map, using camera as a depth sensor. Unlike a laser range finder based SLAM, VSLAM is known to be erroneous when camera motion includes an in-place rotation or feature displacement is large for successive frames. We propose a motion planning framework which combines motion primitives based planning and trajectory optimization approach to generate trajectories which exactly connects an initial and final state and also ensures that the change in camera's field of view between subsequent instances is less than some specified threshold. As a consequence of this motion planning framework we are able to automate SLAM and generate automated monocular SLAM maps of an indoor lab area. We also show when the robot follows the path of a generic planner, PTAM trajectory breaks more often than when it executes the path computed by the proposed planner. This performance improvement is further utilised to develop an autonomous vision based exploration system.
Structure-revealing data fusion model with applications in metabolomics

In many disciplines, data from multiple sources are acquired and jointly analyzed for enhanced knowledge discovery. For instance, in metabolomics, different analytical techniques are used to measure biological fluids in order to identify the chemicals related to certain diseases. It is widely-known that, some of these analytical methods, e.g., LC-MS (Liquid Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry) and NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectroscopy, provide complementary data sets and their joint analysis may enable us to capture a larger proportion of the complete metabolome belonging to a specific biological system. Fusing data from multiple sources has proved useful in many fields including bioinformatics, signal processing and social network analysis. However, identification of common (shared) and individual (unshared) structures across multiple data sets remains a major challenge in data fusion studies. With a goal of addressing this challenge, we propose a novel unsupervised data fusion model. Our contributions are two-fold: (i) We formulate a data fusion model based on joint factorization of matrices and higher-order tensors, which can automatically reveal common and individual components. (ii) We demonstrate that the proposed approach provides promising results in joint analysis of metabolomics data sets consisting of fluorescence and NMR measurements of plasma samples in terms of separation of colorectal cancer patients from controls.
Unravelling urban–rural health disparities in England

Previous research shows significant health and mortality variations by residential context. Numerous studies report better health and lower mortality among rural populations in comparison to urban residents, whereas other research shows the opposite, with poor health and high mortality in rural areas. This study investigates health variations in England by residential contexts and the causes of such differences. Further, it examines the sensitivity of results to different rural–urban classifications. Applying logistic regression models to individual-level data from the 2001 UK census we demonstrate significant health variation by residential context. A clear urban–rural positive health gradient is apparent, with levels of ill health increasing parallel to levels of urbanisation. Briefly, people living in rural areas have better health than those living in cities and other urban contexts. However, the capital city (London) provides an exception to the gradient, with its inhabitants having better health than anticipated. Once we control for individual sociodemographic characteristics, including occupational status and educational level, the urban–rural health variations are reduced, but significant differences still persist. Most notably, Outer London residents have health expectations similar to those residing in the most rural locations. Clearly, our results support the existence of a positive urban–rural health gradient, with the exception of a protective “capital city” effect. These findings persist regardless of the precise urban–rural classification used. Finally we show that, having accounted for composition and the rural–urban context, there still remains a North–South divide in health outcomes.
Violence against wives

Subordination and patriarchy appear to be the root of violence against wives (Dobash and Dobash, 1979), but the judicial services often seem to view these women with suspicion and contempt. As many as one in 50 pregnant women may be battered, therefore midwives need to be able to detect the signs and symptoms in order to offer them support and advice.
Keeping cats, hoarding things: domestic situations in the public spaces of the Singaporean housing block

The architectural discourse of Singaporean public housing is focussed primarily on efficacy. Its performance has been substantiated heavily through statistics. Such a method not only presupposes implicit objectivity but ultimately also limits the kinds of perspectives and conclusions that can be drawn. This procedure has resulted in a more or less self-serving discourse wherein the aim of public housing has been principally framed as teleological, and subsequently traced and retraced through a progressive trajectory. However, in this paper, I argue that these standardised measures and methods fail when they are applied to two public spaces of the housing block—the void deck and the common corridor. These two spaces articulate the overlapping boundaries between two separate but often conflated categories: housing (embedding architectural type and state ideology) versus domesticity (embedding lived practice and spontaneous spatial production). I make the case that the discourse of efficacy ultimately represses the affective nature of these public spaces. The paper reappraises the void deck and the common corridor through the domestic situations of keeping cats and hoarding. I discuss how these situations can be adopted as critical spatial devices to allow a different entry into, and understanding of, the void deck and the common corridor. In conclusion, the paper posits that such spontaneous occupation of public space might offer a different frame for rethinking housing renewal and for understanding the changing role and use of housing's public space by its own multiple publics.