Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expatriate adjustment: considerations for selection and training

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to first, synthesize employee characteristics that have been shown to help expatriate adjustment into best practices that can aid in expatriate selection. Second, the authors aim to identify training design variables that can be implemented to not only increase learning and expatriate adjustment, but also to maximize the benefits of employee characteristics. Finally, the authors point out environmental factors that are often overlooked, but yet important influencing forces of expatriate adjustment. Design/methodology/approach - – PsychINFO was searched using variations of the following terms: expatriate selection and expatriate training. For the selection criteria, the authors selected articles in which cross-cultural adjustment, expatriate performance, or learning was the dependent variable. Reference sections of these articles were then cross-referenced for additional support. Authors then double-coded every article independently to record variables, study methodology, and research results. Findings - – The authors have identified cultural intelligence, learning orientation, technical KSAO's, and language skills to be the most significant antecedents of expatriate adjustment. Furthermore, the authors have found environmental factors (i.e. organizational, family, and interpersonal support) to play a crucial role in the adjustment process. The authors have also identified training factors (i.e. content, process, and elements) to be crucial, and the authors propose how these design variables further facilitate learning and adjustment. Originality/value - – This manuscript contributes to the extant expatriate adjustment literature by providing a new, integrative framework. While the individual variables explored within the paper have been examined in past research, this manuscript is the first to offer a framework which integrates them to shape future research.
FRED-MD: A Monthly Database for Macroeconomic Research

This article describes a large, monthly frequency, macroeconomic database with the goal of establishing a convenient starting point for empirical analysis that requires “big data. ” The dataset mimics the coverage of those already used in the literature but has three appealing features. First, it is designed to be updated monthly using the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database. Second, it will be publicly accessible, facilitating comparison of related research and replication of empirical work. Third, it will relieve researchers from having to manage data changes and revisions. We show that factors extracted from our dataset share the same predictive content as those based on various vintages of the so-called Stock–Watson dataset. In addition, we suggest that diffusion indexes constructed as the partial sum of the factor estimates can potentially be useful for the study of business cycle chronology. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
A practical approach for network fault detection

Today's fault detection in commercial networks is still done in an inefficient way with alarms and threshold violations that treat measured indexes separately. To provide a practical network fault detection approach for the actual network operation, we investigate many actual network fault occurrences, and discover that many network faults can be characterized by unbalanced variation among measured network indexes that occur prior to or during an network fault occurrence. According to this general model of network fault, we propose a practical method for network fault detection that automatically extracts the unbalanced variation among measured indexes without the necessity of recognizing the physical meaning of them. Our evaluation shows that the proposed approach is applicable for the majority of measured indexes in the commercial networks, is efficient and scalable in performance, and with acceptable detection accuracy.
MODE for Mobile – An Efﬁcient Overlay Multicast Protocol for Heterogeneous Users –

In this paper, we present a protocol called MODE-for-mobile (MODE-m in short). MODE-m constructs a Degree-Bounded Minimum Diameter Tree (DBMDT) as an overlay network in a distributed manner. MODE-m is extended from our previous protocol called MODE, to incorporate instable and less powerful hosts such as mobile nodes. We have shown from the experimental results that this feature is very effective to keep the diameter as small as possible under the existence of mobile nodes, compared with MODE.
Leadership and moral literacy in intercultural schools

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore what developing moral literacy for leaders in intercultural schools will mean.Design/methodology/approach – Relevant literature on moral literacy, leadership, intercultural schools and social learning is brought together and integrated to develop an understanding of the intricacies of leading for moral literacy.Findings – The foundation for developing moral literacy in intercultural schools requires leaders to become knowledgeable, cultivate moral virtues and develop moral imaginations as well as to possess moral reasoning skills. In intercultural settings these components focus on openly addressing, and indeed exposing, issues of class, culture and equity. The elements which form the basis for improved moral literacy are intimately connected with school life and community through learning. Leaders must simultaneously develop their own and their communities' moral literacy through promoting and structuring community‐wide learning through participatory mora.
A Case Based Reasoning Approach for Answer Reranking in Question Answering

In this document I present an approach to answer validation and reranking for question answering (QA) systems. A cased-based reasoning (CBR) system judges answer candidates for questions from annotated answer candidates for earlier questions. The promise of this approach is that user feedback will result in improved answers of the QA system, due to the growing case base. In the paper, I present the adequate structuring of the case base and the appropriate selection of relevant similarity measures, in order to solve the answer validation problem. The structural case base is built from annotated MultiNet graphs, which provide representations for natural language expressions, and corresponding graph similarity measures. I cover a priori relations to experienced answer candidates for former questions. I compare the CBR System results to current approaches in an experiment integrating CBR into an existing framework for answer validation and reranking. This integration is achieved by adding CBR-related features to the input of a learned ranking model that determines the final answer ranking. In the experiments based on QA@CLEF questions, the best learned models make heavy use of CBR features. Observing the results with a continually growing case base, I present a positive effect of the size of the case base on the accuracy of the CBR subsystem.
Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin, a marker for chronic alcohol consumption in different ethnic populations.

Serum levels of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) were determined in a racially mixed population of 107 alcoholics, 18 healthy, nonalcoholic control subjects, 62 abstinent alcoholics, and in 64 Caucasian patients with various nonalcoholic liver diseases. The upper limit of normal CDT levels was 80 mg/liter (2 SD above the mean). CDT values exceeding this level were found in more than 80% of Black, Puerto Rican, and Caucasian alcoholics who had consumed greater than or equal to 50 g of alcohol/day for 1 month or longer prior to testing. Puerto Rican alcoholics had higher CDT values than the Black and Caucasian ethnic groups; however, these differences were significant only when compared to the Black population. Of 64 patients with nonalcoholic liver diseases, one individual with chronic active hepatitis (CAH) with an alcohol consumption of 20 g/day, and 10 of 26 subjects with primary biliary cirrhoses (PBC), who claimed to consume either no or only occasional moderate amounts of alcohol, had CDT levels ranging from 81 to 144 mg/liter. Seven of these individuals were in advanced stages of PBC. Total transferrin levels were variable and not significantly different in all subject groups studied. CDT/total transferrin ratios were increased in most patients with abnormal amounts of CDT, and there was a significant correlation between these ratios and CDT levels in all study groups. Serum enzyme parameters as well as red blood cell mean corpuscular volumes did not correlate with CDT values. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The heparanase/syndecan‐1 axis in cancer: mechanisms and therapies

Heparanase is an endoglucuronidase that cleaves heparan sulfate chains of proteoglycans. In many malignancies, high heparanase expression and activity correlate with an aggressive tumour phenotype. A major consequence of heparanase action in cancer is a robust up‐regulation of growth factor expression and increased shedding of syndecan‐1 (a transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan). Substantial evidence indicates that heparanase and syndecan‐1 work together to drive growth factor signalling and regulate cell behaviours that enhance tumour growth, dissemination, angiogenesis and osteolysis. Preclinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that therapies targeting the heparanase/syndecan‐1 axis hold promise for blocking the aggressive behaviour of cancer.
Actor-Observer Differences in the Perceived Stability of Shyness

Individuals tend to view their own actions as externally caused, whereas observers view them as internally caused. Even when actors and observers agree on an internal attribution, the two can differ in their perceptions of behavioral stability. Normally, actors protect their self-esteem by attributing failure to an unstable internal cause (lack of effort) rather than to a stable internal cause (lack of ability). It is proposed, however, that some individuals, specifically those who are anxious about social “tests,” characteristically attribute their interpersonal failures primarily to lack of ability, when observers of those same failures detect primarily a lack of effort. This proposition was tested by asking shy and nonshy students to describe themselves, and then asking their roommates to describe them. These descriptions were compared to personality templates of “the person who fails interpersonally through lack of ability” and “the person who fails interpersonally through lack of effort. ” Shy student.
Prevalence of shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Listeria monocytogenes at public access watershed sites in a California Central Coast agricultural region

Produce contaminated with enteric pathogens is a major source of foodborne illness in the United States. Lakes, streams, rivers, and ponds were sampled with Moore swabs bi-monthly for over 2 years at 30 locations in the vicinity of a leafy green growing region on the Central California Coast and screened for Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC), Salmonella enterica, and Listeria monocytogenes to evaluate the prevalence and persistence of pathogen subtypes. The prevalence of STEC from 1386 samples was 11%; 110 samples (8%) contained E. coli O157:H7 with the highest prevalence occurring close to cattle operations. Non-O157 STEC isolates represented major clinical O-types and 57% contained both shiga toxin types 1 and 2 and intimin. Multiple Locus Variable Number Tandem Repeat Analysis of STEC isolates indicated prevalent strains during the period of study. Notably, Salmonella was present at high levels throughout the sampling region with 65% prevalence in 1405 samples resulting in 996 isolates with slightly lower prevalence in late autumn. There were 2, 8, and 14 sites that were Salmonella-positive over 90, 80, and 70% of the time, respectively. The serotypes identified most often were 6,8:d:-, Typhimurium, and Give. Interestingly, analysis by Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis indicated persistence and transport of pulsotypes in the region over several years. In this original study of L. monocytogenes in the region prevalence was 43% of 1405 samples resulting in 635 individual isolates. Over 85% of the isolates belonged to serotype 4b with serotypes 1/2a, 1/2b, 3a, 4d with 4e representing the rest, and there were 12 and 2 sites that were positive over 50 and 80% of the time, respectively. Although surface water is not directly used for irrigation in this region, transport to the produce can occur by other means. This environmental survey assesses initial contamination levels toward an understanding of transport leading to produce recalls or outbreaks.
Upregulation and redistribution of cadherins reveal specific glial and muscle cell phenotypes during Wallerian degeneration and muscle denervation in the mouse

In the present work, we investigated the expression of cadherin mRNAs in the adult neuromuscular system either under normal conditions or following experimental neurotomy. Cadherin‐6, a marker of Schwann cell precursors, was not expressed in the adult peripheral nerve, while M‐cadherin, cadherin‐11, and N‐cadherin were expressed both by glial and conjunctive cells. Moreover, the three transcripts were transiently upregulated in the distal stump of neurotomized sciatic nerve during Wallerian degeneration: N‐cadherin was abundant in myelinating Schwann cells during myelin degradation, while M‐cadherin and cadherin‐11 may be upregulated in proliferating Schwann cells. M‐cadherin, cadherin‐11, and N‐cadherin were also detected in myofibres and endomysium of adult gastrocnemius muscle. Following neurotomy, cadherin‐11 was only transiently increased in denervated myofibres, while M‐cadherin was increased and sustained for at least 21 days postoperation. In contrast, N‐cadherin was not upregulated in denervated myofibres. Thus, we defined here a combination of cadherins expressed in the adult nerve and muscle, and modulated during Wallerian degeneration and muscle denervation. The comparison of the expression pattern of this combination of cadherins to the one previously described during embryonic development shows that chronically denervated Schwann and muscle cells do not reverse to embryonic state (recapitulative hypothesis), but present specific phenotypic features. J. Neurosci. Res. 58:270–283, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ontology-Mediated Queries Distributing over Components

Ontology-based data access is concerned with the problem of querying incomplete data sources in the presence of an ontology. A key notion in this setting is that of ontology-mediated query, which is a database query coupled with an ontology. An interesting issue is whether the answer to an ontology-mediated query can be computed by parallelizing it over the connected components of the database, i.e., whether the query distributes over components. This allows us to evaluate the query in a distributed and coordination-free manner. We investigate distribution over components for classes of ontology-mediated queries where the database query is a conjunctive query and the ontology is formulated using existential rules. For each such class, we syntactically characterize its fragment that distributes over components, and we study the problem of deciding whether a query distributes over components.
Chitin-Like Molecules Associate with Cryptococcus neoformans Glucuronoxylomannan To Form a Glycan Complex with Previously Unknown Properties

ABSTRACT In prior studies, we demonstrated that glucuronoxylomannan (GXM), the major capsular polysaccharide of the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, interacts with chitin oligomers at the cell wall-capsule interface. The structural determinants regulating these carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions, as well as the functions of these structures, have remained unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that glycan complexes composed of chitooligomers and GXM are formed during fungal growth and macrophage infection by C. neoformans. To investigate the required determinants for the assembly of chitin-GXM complexes, we developed a quantitative scanning electron microscopy-based method using different polysaccharide samples as inhibitors of the interaction of chitin with GXM. This assay revealed that chitin-GXM association involves noncovalent bonds and large GXM fibers and depends on the N-acetyl amino group of chitin. Carboxyl and O-acetyl groups of GXM are not required for polysaccharide-polysaccharide interactions. Glycan complex structures composed of cryptococcal GXM and chitin-derived oligomers were tested for their ability to induce pulmonary cytokines in mice. They were significantly more efficient than either GXM or chitin oligomers alone in inducing the production of lung interleukin 10 (IL-10), IL-17, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). These results indicate that association of chitin-derived structures with GXM through their N-acetyl amino groups generates glycan complexes with previously unknown properties.
Local path planning based on Ridge Regression Extreme Learning Machines for an outdoor robot

For mobile robot local path planning under outdoor environment, Ridge Regression Extreme Learning Machines (RRELM) is adopted, it is a fast machine learning classification method to apply in path planning. Firstly, the laser rangefinder data are extracted and marked to describe the outdoor environment. Secondly, ridge regression theory is utilized to improve the generalization ability of ELM for local path planning. Meanwhile, the start-goal point constraint is considered for planning. Additionally, abrupt dynamic obstacle is regarded as a kind of disturbance to plan the path by RRELM. Then the optimal path is estimated by the distance evaluation function among feasible paths. Finally, a great deal of outdoor robot simulation experiments are shown that RRELM find out the safety path for outdoor robot, and the generalization ability, smoothness and rapidity of RRELM for path planning are better than SVM and ELM, furthermore, the performance of RRELM for the dynamic environment is also efficient.
Platform for evaluation of embedded computer vision algorithms for automotive applications

Stereo vision algorithms are usually designed to run on standard PCs or PC-based systems. Up to now and due to the limited resources (e.g. internal and external RAM size, CPU power, power consumption, etc.) no general embedded hardware exists, where different algorithms can be implemented and run properly. The presented test platform aims to close this gap and implement a convenient platform for the evaluation of different high level vision algorithms used for embedded systems. Furthermore, it offers an excellent opportunity for testing and evaluating automatic code generation tools (e.g. MathWorks Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder). In this paper the complete system concept, the automotive application, a stereo vision example algorithm and experimental results are presented.
Teaching Ms. Kerbin: A Unique Approach to Student Teacher Reflections and Their Use With Preservice Candidates

Abstract This article examines a unique approach and a new tradition to encouraging student teacher reflection over time. The concept is based on a collection of vignettes titled Teaching Ms. Kerbin, which represent the collective reflections of a group of three student teachers. Seven major points of concern are addressed: (1) the first day, (2) working as a team with the cooperating teacher, (3) classroom behavior management, (4) sensitivity to the needs of children with difficult home circumstances, (5) observations by the university supervisor, (6) inclusion practices, and (7) breaking through with a difficult student. These vignettes were presented to a group of candidates just before their methods practicum and student-teaching experiences, and the candidates' comments regarding the usefulness of the vignettes were collected. The same candidates provided additional comments after completion of their student teaching, indicating that several vignettes helped to instill confidence and better prepare them for some challenges that occurred during the student-teaching experience. Approximately 1 year after the writing and sharing of the Teaching Ms. Kerbin narrative, the authors of the vignettes expressed the vital role of ongoing reflection as a mind-set that enabled them to broaden their lenses for more clearly seeing their students, the context of teaching, and themselves. Although they acknowledged the importance of reflection in and on action, they articulated the importance of creating intentional spaces for continued reflection and dialogue with peers after student teaching to further the process of making sense of their experiences and exploring their teaching identities. Through the process of reflection and making public what they had come to know, these authors gained confidence to live amid the tensions of teaching with a greater sense of resiliency and efficacy as they became more comfortable in their roles as teachers. The article concludes with suggestions for teacher educators.
Deglutathionylation of 2-Cys Peroxiredoxin Is Specifically Catalyzed by Sulfiredoxin*

Reversible protein glutathionylation plays a key role in cellular regulation and cell signaling and protects protein thiols from hyperoxidation. Sulfiredoxin (Srx), an enzyme that catalyzes the reduction of Cys-sulfinic acid derivatives of 2-Cys peroxiredoxins (2-Cys Prxs), has been shown to catalyze the deglutathionylation of actin. We show that deglutathionylation of 2-Cys Prx, a family of peroxidases, is specifically catalyzed by Srx. Using the ubiquitously expressed member of 2-Cys Prx, Prx I, we revealed the following. (i) Among its four Cys residues, Cys52, Cys83, and Cys173 can be glutathionylated in vitro. Deglutathionylation with Cys mutants showed that Cys83 and Cys173 were preferentially catalyzed by Srx, with glutathionylated Srx as the reaction intermediate, whereas glutaredoxin I was more favorable for deglutathionylating Cys52. (ii) Studies using site-directed mutagenesis coupled with binding and deglutathionylation activities revealed that Pro174 and Pro179 of Prx I and Tyr92 of Srx are essential for both activities. Furthermore, relative to glutaredoxin I, Srx exhibited negligible deglutathionylation activity for glutathionylated cysteine and glutathionylated BSA. These results indicate that Srx is specific for deglutathionylating Prx I due to its favorable affinity for Prx I. To assess the biological relevance of these observations, we showed that Prx I is glutathionylated in A549 and HeLa cells under modest levels of H2O2. In addition, the level of glutathionylated Prx I was substantially elevated in small interfering RNA-mediated Srx-knocked down cells, whereas the reverse was observed in Srx-overexpressing cells. However, glutathionylation of Prx V, not known to bind to Srx, was not affected by the change in Srx expression levels.
Systolic Heart Failure: A Prothrombotic State

Systolic heart failure is a common syndrome whose incidence is expected to increase. Several treatment modalities, such as beta-blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, improve survival. Whether antithrombotic treatment is effective remains to be elucidated, although observations suggest a prothrombotic state in heart failure. This article focuses on this prothrombotic state and discusses the risk of thromboembolic events, pathophysiological mechanisms, and the potential role of anticoagulant treatment.