Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceptions of Information Flow and Sharing in Non-profit Organisations: A Relational Capital Perspective

Relational capital represents the informationand knowledge embedded in relationships external to anorganisation. It is about the information flow and sharingbetween the organisation and its external stakeholders.The primary goal of this paper is to report preliminaryfindings collected from 15 Australian non-profit seniorexecutives through qualitative in-depth interviews. Thefindings revealed that the understanding of relationalcapital among the participants, in particular theirperceptions of information flow and sharing, wassubstantially different to that in the literature as put forthby scholars in the field. This paper argues that non-profitorganisations must develop a better understanding of therelational capital concept or may run a risk of underdeveloping their relational capital. Accordingly, the keycontribution of the paper revolves around theparticipants’ relational capital perceptions and theattempts to drive a pivotal attitudinal shift towards a morerealistic balance approach of the development of relationalcapital which, if approached properly, can enable nonprofitorganisations to attain strategic advantage in thelong term.
Analysis of multilevel methods for eddy current problems

In papers by Arnold, Falk, and Winther, and by Hiptmair, novel multigrid methods for discrete H(curl; Ω)-elliptic boundary value problems have been proposed. Such problems frequently occur in computational electromagnetism, particularly in the context of eddy current simulation.This paper focuses on the analysis of those nodal multilevel decompositions of the spaces of edge finite elements that form the foundation of the multigrid methods. It provides a significant extension of the existing theory to the case of locally vanishing coefficients and nonconvex domains. In particular, asymptotically uniform convergence of the multigrid method with respect to the number of refinement levels can be established under assumptions that are satisfied in realistic settings for eddy current problems.The principal idea is to use approximate Helmholtz-decompositions of the function space H(curl; Ω) into an H1 (Ω)-regular subspace and gradients. The main results of standard multilevel theory for H1 (Ω)-elliptic problems can then be applied to both subspaces. This yields preliminary decompositions still outside the edge element spaces. Judicious alterations can cure this.
Spiral resonator mu-near-zero substrates for grounded slot antennas

Artificial magnetic material (AMM) slabs composed of spiral resonators (SRs), operating in the mu-near-zero (MNZ) band, 0 < μr < 1, are investigated as slot antennas substrates for broadside radiation and directivity enhancement. Results for the slot antenna in free-space are compared with the slot antenna in presence of a single-layer and a four-layer SR AMM slabs.
Exploitation of Interleukin-8-Induced Neutrophil Chemotaxis by the Agent of Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis

ABSTRACT The agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) is an obligate intracellular bacterium with a tropism for neutrophils; however, the mechanisms of bacterial dissemination are not yet understood. Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a chemokine that induces neutrophil migration to sites of infection for host defense against pathogens. We now show that HGE bacteria, and the HGE-44 protein, induce IL-8 secretion in a promyelocytic (HL-60) cell line that has been differentiated along the neutrophil lineage with retinoic acid and in neutrophils. Infected HL-60 cells also demonstrate upregulation of CXCR2, an IL-8 receptor, but not CXCR1. Human neutrophils migrate towardsEhrlichia sp. -infected cells in a chemotaxis chamber assay, and this movement can be blocked with antibodies to IL-8. Finally, immunocompetent and severe combined immunodeficient mice administered CXCR2 antisera, and CXCR2−/− mice that lack the human IL-8 receptor homologue, are much less susceptible to granulocytic ehrlichiosis than are control animals. These results demonstrate that HGE bacteria induce IL-8 production by host cells and, paradoxically, appear to exploit this chemokine to enhance infection.
A compensation method for time delay of full digital synchronous frame current regulator of PWM AC drives

In a full digital implementation of a current regulator, the voltage output is inevitably delayed due to arithmetic calculation and PWM. In case of the synchronous frame current regulator, the time delay is accompanied by the rotation of frame. In some applications in which the ratio of sampling frequency to output frequency is not high enough, such as high power drive or super-high speed drive, it is known that the effect of rotation of frame during the delay time causes phase and magnitude error in the voltage output. The error degrades the dynamic performance and can bring about the instability of current regulator at high speed. It is also intuitively known that advancing the phase of voltage output can mitigate the instability. In this paper, the instability problems are studied analytically and a compensation method for the error has been proposed. By means of computer simulation and complex root locus analysis, a comparative study with conventional methods is carried out and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.
Limited external reproducibility restricts the use of medical record review for benchmarking

Background Medical record review (MRR) is used to assess the quality and safety in hospitals. It is increasingly used to compare institutions. Therefore, the external reproducibility should be high. In the current study, we evaluated this external reproducibility for the assessment of an adverse event (AE) in a sample of records from two university medical centres in the Netherlands, using the same review method. Methods From both hospitals, 40 medical records were randomly chosen from patient files of deceased patients that had been evaluated in the preceding years by the internal review committees. After reviewing by the external committees, we assessed the overall and kappa agreement by comparing the results of both review rounds (once by the own internal committee and once by the external committee). This was calculated for the presence of an AE, preventability and contribution to death. Results Kappa for the presence of AEs was moderate (k=0.47). For preventability, the agreement was fair (k=0.39) and poor for contribution to death (k=−0.109). Conclusion We still believe that MRR is suitable for the detection of general issues concerning patient safety. However, based on the outcomes of this study, we would advise to be careful when using MRR for benchmarking.
Face pose estimation and tracking using automatic 3D model construction

This paper presents a method for robustly tracking and estimating the face pose of a person in both indoor and outdoor environments. The method is invariant to identity and that does not require previous training. A face model is automatically initialized and constructed on-line, when the face is frontal to the stereo camera system. To build the model, a fixed point distribution is superposed over the frontal face, and several appropriate points close to those locations are chosen for tracking. Using the stereo correspondence of the two cameras, the 3D coordinates of these points are extracted, and the 3D model is created. RANSAC and POSIT are used for tracking and 3D pose calculation at each frame. The approach runs in real time, and has been tested on sequences recorded in the laboratory and in a moving car.
A set of plastid loci for use in multiplex fragment length genotyping for intraspecific variation in Pinus (Pinaceae)1

Premise of the study: Recently released Pinus plastome sequences support characterization of 15 plastid simple sequence repeat (cpSSR) loci originally published for P. contorta and P. thunbergii. This allows selection of loci for single-tube PCR multiplexed genotyping in any subsection of the genus. Methods: Unique placement of primers and primer conservation across the genus were investigated, and a set of six loci were selected for single-tube multiplexing. We compared interspecific variation between cpSSRs and nucleotide sequences of ycf1 and tested intraspecific variation for cpSSRs using 911 samples in the P. ponderosa species complex. Results: The cpSSR loci contain mononucleotide and complex repeats with additional length variation in flanking regions. They are not located in hypervariable regions, and most primers are conserved across the genus. A single PCR per sample multiplexed for six loci yielded 45 alleles in 911 samples. Discussion: The protocol allows efficient genotyping of many samples. The cpSSR loci are too variable for Pinus phylogenies but are useful for the study of genetic structure within and among populations. The multiplex method could easily be extended to other plant groups by choosing primers for cpSSR loci in a plastome alignment for the target group.
SavingLife: An Educational Technology for Basic and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support

The development of information and communication technologies and the accessibility of mobile devices has increased the possibilities of the teaching and learning process anywhere and anytime. Mobile and web application allows the production of constructive teaching and learning models in various educational settings, showing the potential for active learning in health. The objective of this study was to present the design and development of an educational technology (SavingLife, a web, and mobile-based application) for learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation and advanced cardiovascular life support for adults. SavingLife is a technological production, based on the concept of virtual learning and problem-based learning approaches. SavingLife was developed using five phases (analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate) of the instructional systems development process. The technology presents 10 scenarios and 12 simulations, covering different aspects of basic and advanced cardiac life support skills. The contents can be accessed in a non-linear way leaving the students free to build their knowledge based on their previous experience. Each scenario is presented through interactive tools such as scenario description, assessment, diagnose, intervention and re-evaluation. Animated ECG rhythms, text documents, images, and videos are provided to support procedural and active learning considering the real-life situations. Accessible equally on small to large devices with or without an internet connection, SavingLife offers a dynamic, interactive and flexible tool, placing students at the center of the learning process. SavingLife can contribute to the student’s learning in the assessment and management of basic and advanced cardiac life support for adults, in a safe and ethical way.
TurkBench: Rendering the Market for Turkers

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new model of labor where both the workers and work providers are experiencing its growing pains. A dominant platform that implements this model of labor is Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). While AMT has evolved over the years, the changes have focused mainly on work providers and have not addressed the problems workers face (e.g. dealing with market volatility and unpaid time searching for work). In this paper we present emph{TurkBench}, a tool meant to provide workers with personalized market visualization and session management. We discuss the design philosophy of the tool, briefly discuss four Turkers' reaction to a demo, and outline future work.
Saving Time in a Program Robustness Evaluation

The risk of having a program execution corrupted by transient faults is growing as computer processors are using more transistors, are becoming denser and are operating at lower voltages. This risk is multiplied when we take into account High Performance Computing with its hundreds or thousands of processors working together to solve a single problem. To evaluate how program executions behave in presence of transient faults we have proposed the concept of robustness against transient faults. This concept can be used to determine the more significant parts of a program with respect to the risk of misbehavior by transient faults for further study of improvement. The robustness concept can also be used as a metric to compare different approaches applied to a program to make it less likely of producing corrupted results. In this work we present why and how is possible to simplify a fraction of a program's robustness by taking into account the repetition of sequences of instructions. The simplified analysis obtains the exact same result as a full program robustness evaluation (exhaustively and without estimations). By simplifying the analysis we were able to reduce in up to 192 times our previously published robustness analysis time and also were able to evaluate larger programs in feasible time (unimaginable by using executions in a fault injection capable environment).
Evolution in Simple Systems and the Emergence of Complexity

Evolution, understood as the powerful interplay of reproduction, variation, and selection, represents an excellent tool for optimization in populations of simple and complex entities even under conditions where only limited information is available. The principle underlying this optimization heuristic was discovered and formulated already by Charles Darwin. In the nineteen-sixties evolutionary optimization became an intensively investigated topic. Experimental studies on evolution in the test-tube [1], mathematical analysis based on chemical reaction kinetics [2] as well as development of computer models and extensive simulations [3] provided detailed insight into the process on the molecular level: A repertoire of variants, called the molecular quasi-species, is created through error-prone reproduction and selection chooses among these variants those which have the highest reproductive success. A striking feature of the Darwinian optimization heuristic is its universal applicability. It is operative in ensembles of very simple systems like nucleic acid molecules and it is similarly successful in populations of highly complex entities, for example animal or human societies. The explanation of the success is straightforward: Selection at the population level is based exclusively on the mean numbers of fertile descendants in forthcoming generations, and therefore all mechanistic details of reproduction and variation are irrelevant for the survival of variants.
A signal-separation-based array postfilter for distant speech recognition

In standard microphone array processing for distant speech recognition, the beamformed output is postﬁltered to reduce residual noise. Postﬁltering is usually performed through a Weiner ﬁlter whose parameters are estimated from both the beamformer output and the signals captured at the microphones themselves. Conventional postﬁltering methods assume diffuse or incoherent noise at the various microphones in order to estimate these parameters. When the noise does not conform to this assumption they perform poorly. We propose an alternate postﬁltering mechanism that attenuates noise by estimating and separating out the contributions of speech and noise explicitly. Experiments on a corpus of in-car two-channel recordings show that the proposed postﬁltering algorithm outperforms conventional postﬁlters signiﬁcantly under many noise conditions.
Phytoplankton influences on tropical climate

We study the effect of ocean biology on tropical surface temperatures using a simplified coupled atmosphere‐ocean model. It is shown that moderate phytoplankton blooms, occuring e.g. during La Niña conditions, lead to a vertical redistribution of heat in the surface layers and an associated surface layer warming of about 20 W/m2. The positive air‐sea coupling in the eastern equatorial Pacific plays an important role in amplyfying this signal, thereby damping La Niña conditions. This temperature‐regulating feedback acts as a biological thermostat within the surface ocean and influences also the amplitude and asymmetry of the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation.
Moment based spectrum sensing algorithm for cognitive radio networks with noise variance uncertainty

This paper proposes simple moment based spectrum sensing algorithm for cognitive radio networks in a flat fading channel. It is assumed that the transmitted signal samples are binary (quadrature) phase-shift keying BPSK (QPSK), Mary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) or continuous uniformly distributed random variables and the noise samples are independent and identically distributed circularly symmetric complex Gaussian random variables all with unknown (imperfect) variance. Under these assumptions, we propose a simple test statistics employing a ratio of fourth and second moments. For this statistics, we provide analytical expressions for both probability of false alarm (Pf) and probability of detection (Pd) in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. We confirm the theoretical expressions by computer simulation. Furthermore, under noise variance uncertainty, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed moment based detector gives better detection performance compared to that of energy detector in AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels.
The Dynamics of EBV Shedding Implicate a Central Role for Epithelial Cells in Amplifying Viral Output

To develop more detailed models of EBV persistence we have studied the dynamics of virus shedding in healthy carriers. We demonstrate that EBV shedding into saliva is continuous and rapid such that the virus level is replaced in ≤2 minutes, the average time that a normal individual swallows. Thus, the mouth is not a reservoir of virus but a conduit through which a continuous flow stream of virus passes in saliva. Consequently, virus is being shed at a much higher rate than previously thought, a level too high to be accounted for by replication in B cells in Waldeyer's ring alone. Virus shedding is relatively stable over short periods (hours-days) but varies through 3.5 to 5.5 logs over longer periods, a degree of variation that also cannot be accounted for solely by replication in B cells. This variation means, contrary to what is generally believed, that the definition of high and low shedder is not so much a function of variation between individuals but within individuals over time. The dynamics of shedding describe a process governing virus production that is occurring independently ≤3 times at any moment. This process grows exponentially and is then randomly terminated. We propose that these dynamics are best explained by a model where single B cells sporadically release virus that infects anywhere from 1 to 5 epithelial cells. This infection spreads at a constant exponential rate and is terminated randomly, resulting in infected plaques of epithelial cells ranging in size from 1 to 105 cells. At any one time there are a very small number (≤3) of plaques. We suggest that the final size of these plaques is a function of the rate of infectious spread within the lymphoepithelium which may be governed by the structural complexity of the tissue but is ultimately limited by the immune response.
Traffic vs topology in network clustering: Does it matter?

Network clustering is traditionally accomplished by relying just on the topology information, while a traffic-aware clustering approach has been recently proposed. The latter approach employs traffic matrices to take into account the intensity of the relationship between nodes. The extra effort needed to gather the traffic matrices is warranted if the composition of the clusters obtained in the traffic-based approach is significantly different from that obtained under the topology-based approach. In this paper we compare the outcomes of the two approaches, using the Rand Index as a similarity metric. For a variety of established clustering algorithms, and two large datasets, we show that the two approaches provide significantly different results, since the Rand Index lies far below one.
Hypoglycemic and Hypolipidemic effect of Coccinia indica Wight & Arn in alloxan induced diabetic rats

Diabetes Mellitus is characterized by elevated plasma glucose concentrations resulting from insufficient insulin. The present study was aimed to investigate the hypolipidemic effect of Coccinia indica aqueous leaf extract in alloxan induced diabetic rats. The results of this study revealed that a continuous administration of Coccinia indica extract for 21 days prevents the elevation of the level of serum lipids secondary to the diabetes state
Exercise on prescription for women aged 40-74 recruited through primary care: two year randomised controlled trial

Objective To assess the effectiveness of a primary care based programme of exercise on prescription among relatively inactive women over a two year period. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting 17 primary care practices in Wellington, New Zealand Participants 1089 women aged 40-74 not undertaking 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on at least five days of the week Intervention Brief physical activity intervention led by nurse with six month follow-up visit and monthly telephone support over nine months. Main outcome measure Physical activity assessed at baseline and 12 and 24 months. Secondary outcomes were quality of life (SF-36), weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, concentrations of fasting serum lipids, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), glucose, insulin, and physical fitness. Results Mean age was 58.9 (SD 7) years. Trial retention rates were 93% and 89% at 12 and 24 months, respectively. At baseline, 10% of intervention participants and 11% of control participants were achieving 150 minutes of at least moderate intensity physical activity a week. At 12 months rates increased to 43% and 30% and at 24 months to 39.3% and 32.8% (P<0.001), respectively. SF-36 physical functioning (P=0.03) and mental health (P<0.05) scores improved more in intervention compared with control participants, but role physical scores were significantly lower (P<0.01). There were no significant differences in clinical outcomes. More falls (P<0.001) and injuries (P=0.03) were recorded in the intervention group. Conclusions This programme of exercise on prescription increased physical activity and quality of life over two years, although falls and injuries also increased. This finding supports the use of exercise on prescription programmes as part of population strategies to reduce physical inactivity. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) ANZCTRN012605000490673.
Deconstruyendo el derecho al turismo

Desde la decada de los anos ochenta del siglo pasado, la Organizacion Mundial del Turismo (OMT) ha ido elaborando y difundiendo un discurso que considera el turismo como un derecho. El presente texto analiza criticamente en que se fundamenta esta idea, para despues intentar escudrinar con que objetivo se plantea. El estudio llega a la conclusion de que la consideracion del turismo como derecho ayuda a legitimar la presencia de la OMT en la estructura de Naciones Unidas, asi como a defender los intereses del capital turistico, a los que la organizacion esta estrechamente vinculada.