Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Time Resembles Rail Yards ? A Way to Look at Time in Text Books

We present in this paper a proposal for representing temporality phenomena as expressed by specific free writing techniques, such as temporal discontinuities, transitions from one story to another, flashbacks and change of perspective, phenomena naturally understood by a casual human reader of the text. The long time intention is to develop a technique capable to reproduce on a machine the human reader performances with a sufficiently high accuracy. The diagrams we draw, called time yards, and the associated XML notations include: time tracks, themselves being made out of time segments, the atoms of time segments being the events. The paper makes a preliminary evaluation of the objectivity of recognizing these concepts as catched by a group of annotators.
The Pioneer Ecocritics' Critique of The English Profession in The Emergence of Ecocrticism

Ecoriticism is one of the most recent trends in literary criticism. Ecocriti- cism is critical of the ignorance and absence of nature, environment, and the environmen- tal crisis in literary studies. The pioneer ecocritics argue that this indifference of the liter- ary studies is mainly due to the dominant anthropocentric worldview in literary studies.
The Effect of ERP System Workarounds on Organizational Control: An interpretivist case study

Organizations installing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system often seek to gain better control over their data and operations. Nevertheless, studies indicate that this aim often fails to materialize. Although the literature has looked into the factors that may lead to a successful (or conversely unsuccessful) ERP implementation, it has largely overlooked the actual use of the system after its initial implementation. While implemen - tation outcomes and actual patterns of system use are closely interrelated, close exami - nation of system use in-situ can reveal ways in which users can use the system to cause a decrease in organizational control. This is particularly the case when users create worka - rounds or try to bypass controls embedded within the system. This paper examines such workarounds and their impact on organizational control, using an interpretive case study and through the conceptual lenses of human and machine agencies.
Internalized Racial Oppression and Higher Education Values

A plethora of research underscores the deleterious effects that racial discrimination can have on the higher education pursuits and experiences of African Americans. The current study investigated the relationship between internalized racial oppression, higher education values, academic locus of control, and gender among a sample of African Americans. Participants were 156 African Americans currently attending college. All participants completed measures of internalized racial oppression, perceived value of higher education, and academic locus of control. Results indicated that greater internalized racial oppression correlated with a lower valuing of higher education and a more external academic locus of control. Subsequent mediational analyses showed that academic locus of control was an intervening variable in the relationship between internalized racial oppression and the value placed on higher education for men, but not women. For African American men, greater experiences of internalized racial oppression predicted a more external locus of control, which subsequently predicted a lower valuing of higher education. Implications for mental health providers and educators were discussed herein.
Kinetics and stoichiometry of coupled Na efflux and Ca influx (Na/Ca exchange) in barnacle muscle cells

Coupled Na+ exit/Ca2+ entry (Na/Ca exchange operating in the Ca2+ influx mode) was studied in giant barnacle muscle cells by measuring 22Na+ efflux and 45Ca2+ influx in internally perfused, ATP-fueled cells in which the Na+ pump was poisoned by 0.1 mM ouabain. Internal free Ca2+, [Ca2+]i, was controlled with a Ca-EGTA buffering system containing 8 mM EGTA and varying amounts of Ca2+. Ca2+ sequestration in internal stores was inhibited with caffeine and a mitochondrial uncoupler (FCCP). To maximize conditions for Ca2+ influx mode Na/Ca exchange, and to eliminate tracer Na/Na exchange, all of the external Na+ in the standard Na+ sea water (NaSW) was replaced by Tris or Li+ (Tris-SW or LiSW, respectively). In both Na-free solutions an external Ca2+ (Cao)-dependent Na+ efflux was observed when [Ca2+]i was increased above 10(-8) M; this efflux was half-maximally activated by [Ca2+]i = 0.3 microM (LiSW) to 0.7 microM (Tris-SW). The Cao-dependent Na+ efflux was half-maximally activated by [Ca2+]o = 2.0 mM in LiSW and 7.2 mM in Tris-SW; at saturating [Ca2+]o, [Ca2+]i, and [Na+]i the maximal (calculated) Cao-dependent Na+ efflux was approximately 75 pmol#cm2.s. This efflux was inhibited by external Na+ and La3+ with IC50's of approximately 125 and 0.4 mM, respectively. A Nai-dependent Ca2+ influx was also observed in Tris-SW. This Ca2+ influx also required [Ca2+]i greater than 10(-8) M. Internal Ca2+ activated a Nai-independent Ca2+ influx from LiSW (tracer Ca/Ca exchange), but in Tris-SW virtually all of the Cai-activated Ca2+ influx was Nai-dependent (Na/Ca exchange). Half-maximal activation was observed with [Na+]i = 30 mM. The fact that internal Ca2+ activates both a Cao-dependent Na+ efflux and a Nai- dependent Ca2+ influx in Tris-SW implies that these two fluxes are coupled; the activating (intracellular) Ca2+ does not appear to be transported by the exchanger. The maximal (calculated) Nai-dependent Ca2+ influx was -25 pmol/cm2.s. At various [Na+]i between 6 and 106 mM, the ratio of the Cao-dependent Na+ efflux to the Nai-dependent Ca2+ influx was 2.8-3.2:1 (mean = 3.1:1); this directly demonstrates that the stoichiometry (coupling ratio) of the Na/Ca exchange is 3:1. These observations on the coupling ratio and kinetics of the Na/Ca exchanger imply that in resting cells the exchanger turns over at a low rate because of the low [Ca2+]i; much of the Ca2+ extrusion at rest (approximately 1 pmol/cm2.s) is thus mediated by an ATP-driven Ca2+ pump. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Theoretical analysis of the structures of titanium dioxide crystals.

This paper presents results of pseudopotential Hartree-Fock calculations on the titanium dioxide crystals. The optimized structures are in good agreement with experimental data. Both anatase and rutile structures have a large ionic character. The distortions from the undistorted crystals made of regular octahedra are discussed and qualitative trends for the distortions are justified by semiempirical calculations (extended Huckel theory). When correlation is taken into account, a large part of the binding energy is recovered and the rutile structure is found to be more stable than the anatase one.
Molecular cloning of a novel hyaluronan receptor that mediates tumor cell motility [published erratum appears in J Cell Biol 1992 Aug;118(3):753]

A cDNA encoding a unique hyaluronan receptor has been molecularly cloned from a lambda GT11 3T3 cDNA expression library. Immunoblot analyses of cell lysates, using antibodies to peptides encoded in the cDNA, specifically react with a 58-kD protein. This protein is regulated by the mutant H-ras gene in cells containing a metallothionein promoter H-ras hybrid gene. Further, antibodies to peptide sequences encoded in the cDNA block the increase in locomotion resulting from induction of the mutant H-ras gene in this cell line. In a transblot assay, the bacterially expressed protein binds to biotinylated hyaluronan. Antibodies to peptides encoded in the cDNA react in immunoblot assays with the 58- and 52-kD proteins of a novel hyaluronan receptor complex previously implicated in cell locomotion. Furthermore, antibodies specific to the 58- and 52-kD proteins, which block ras-induced locomotion, also cross-react with the expressed, encoded protein. The gene product described here appears to be a new type of hyaluronan receptor that is involved in cell locomotion. It is named RHAMM, an acronym for receptor for hyaluronan-mediated motility.
A Non-Canonical NRPS Is Involved in the Synthesis of Fungisporin and Related Hydrophobic Cyclic Tetrapeptides in Penicillium chrysogenum

The filamentous fungus Penicillium chrysogenum harbors an astonishing variety of nonribosomal peptide synthetase genes, which encode proteins known to produce complex bioactive metabolites from simple building blocks. Here we report a novel non-canonical tetra-modular nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) with microheterogenicity of all involved adenylation domains towards their respective substrates. By deleting the putative gene in combination with comparative metabolite profiling various unique cyclic and derived linear tetrapeptides were identified which were associated with this NRPS, including fungisporin. In combination with substrate predictions for each module, we propose a mechanism for a ‘trans-acting’ adenylation domain.
A model for the evolution of software and systems engineering project cultures throughout their life cycles

Software development projects are renown for exhibiting chaotic outcomes despite the application of recent development process paradigms. This paper argues that the development culture followed by a software project greatly contributes at a deeper level to its ultimate outcome. Five such cultures are discussed: the calendar driven culture, the requirements driven culture, the documentation driven culture, the quality driven culture, and the architecture driven culture. Each culture is characterized by the priority of objectives that it selects and the artifacts that it predominantly generates. Cultural shifts throughout a project life cycle are also often identified as unconscious responses to pressure exercised by the project stakeholders. This article presents a conceptual model that captures the cultural profile of a software project and estimates the cost and/or difficulty of shifting from one culture to another. Changing cultures can have severe consequences on a project success. An improved knowledge of the nature and objectives of each culture combined with a keen awareness of the impact of shifting cultures can mitigate chaotic outcomes by enabling better decision‐making throughout a software project life cycle. The paper also attempts to establish the extent to which the results are also relevant to the Systems Engineering discipline. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 8: 151–163, 2005
Spin-wave calculations for multilayered structures.

Results are presented on the calculations of spin-wave frequencies in ferromagnetic layers, double layers, and multilayered structures for small, nonzero wave vectors such as can be investigated by, e.g., Brillouin light scattering. The underlying continuum-type magnetostatic theory includes both dipolar and exchange contributions and fully takes into account magnetic surface and interface anisotropies as well as interlayer exchange coupling. For single magnetic layers the detailed influence of surface anisotropies on both film surfaces is studied. For magnetic double layers the interlayer exchange coupling mechanism is investigated. In the case of multilayers consisting of alternating magnetic and nonmagnetic layers, the crossing regime between dipolar and exchange modes shows a strong dependence of the gap width on the amount of interface anisotropy. For small layer thicknesses the interlayer exchange coupling shifts the spin-wave frequencies of all but the highest-frequency dipolar modes into the exchange-mode regime. In the case of all-magnetic multilayered structures, a new type of collective spin-wave excitations arising from coupled exchange modes is predicted.
Multi-modal locomotion: from animal to application

The majority of robotic vehicles that can be found today are bound to operations within a single media (i.e. land, air or water). This is very rarely the case when considering locomotive capabilities in natural systems. Utility for small robots often reflects the exact same problem domain as small animals, hence providing numerous avenues for biological inspiration. This paper begins to investigate the various modes of locomotion adopted by different genus groups in multiple media as an initial attempt to determine the compromise in ability adopted by the animals when achieving multi-modal locomotion. A review of current biologically inspired multi-modal robots is also presented. The primary aim of this research is to lay the foundation for a generation of vehicles capable of multi-modal locomotion, allowing ambulatory abilities in more than one media, surpassing current capabilities. By identifying and understanding when natural systems use specific locomotion mechanisms, when they opt for disparate mechanisms for each mode of locomotion rather than using a synergized singular mechanism, and how this affects their capability in each medium, similar combinations can be used as inspiration for future multi-modal biologically inspired robotic platforms.
Selective Association among Ethnic Groups in a High School Population

T HIS paper reports (a) the extent to which students in a large American high school choose associates for four different types of social relationships (1) from their own ethnic group and (2) from other ethnic groups; (b) the relative popularity of the different ethnic groups as reflected in the choices of members of each group; and (c) the association of certain factors (sex, school class, age, membership in organizations, and socio-economic status) with the number and kind of choices made.
Bulk-Synchronous On-Line Crawling on Clusters of Computers

This paper describes the design of a crawler devised to perform the periodic retrieval of Web documents for a search engine able to accept on-line updates in a concurrent manner. On-line updates comes in the form of insertions of new documents or update of existing ones, all of them mixed with the usual user queries. The search engine is bulk-synchronous which allows it to deal efficiently with the concurrency control problem. The crawler is also bulk- synchronous so that it can be integrated into the same P- processors cluster executing the search engine. This paper describes and evaluates the practical feasibility of such a crawler.
Frequency of Central Bank Evaluation in an Inflation Targeting Regime: the Brazilian Experience

This paper analyses the optimal frequency for Central Bank evaluation in an inflation-targeting regime, applied to the Brazilian economy. Setting a frequency of accountability is an important issue in the design of an inflation-targeting regime, since it allows the matching of conflicting targets between the monetary authority and the government: while the government cares about inflation and employment, the Central Bank should be concerned only about inflation. Through stochastic simulations, it was possible to conclude that the Central Bank should be evaluated every two or three years. However, there are little losses involved in the current Brazilian regime, where the Central Bank is evaluated in the end of every calendar year. Only in case of very frequent evaluations, like at every two quarters, the social welfare loss would be significant, with high output gap and inflation variances.
Order-aware exemplars for structuring video sets: Clustering, aligned matching and retrieval by similarity

Video data captured and uploaded under volatile conditions is accumulating into a flood of unstructured content that is hard to manage. In this paper, we present a set of algorithms that generate numeric or soft labels to structure automatically and produce video similarity rankings. Exemplar frames are extracted from each video during the labeling process. We propose five types of learning algorithms based on the following three classes: affinity propagation, k-means or harmonic competition, and pairwise nearest-neighbor. For redundancy reduction, we also provide an algorithm that prunes excessive exemplars. The five learning algorithms produced creditable order-aware exemplar sets for the target videos. Because the content and lengths of the videos differ in terms of temporal order, we provide new methods to analyze the similarities between exemplar sets. The m-distance similarity measure is the core concept used for the global and local alignments performed on the obtained exemplar sets. Based on this comparison mechanism, we identified high-precision recall curves for all five methods. In terms of learning speed, the k-means and pairwise nearest-neighbor classes are recommendable. To facilitate similar-video retrieval, we developed a graphical user interface that accepts videos downloaded from the Web. By replacing a procedure in the software, the proposed similar-video retrieval system can accommodate more elaborate frame comparison features.
Why Do People Transmit Word-of-Mouth? The Effects of Recipient and Relationship Characteristics on Transmission Behaviors

Despite the large amount of research on WOM and social contagion in marketing, sociology, and other disciplines, surprisingly little is known about the drivers of individuals’ WOM transmission behaviors. This paper seeks to better understand why and to whom consumers transmit WOM about products. Across three studies we find that (1) the main reasons for transmitting WOM are predominantly transmitter-focused and associated with transmitters using social capital embedded in their social relationships, (2) the importance placed on these reasons by transmitters is related to the types of recipients that they actually choose to talk to, (3) characteristics of recipients and the relationships they have with transmitters are strong drivers of transmitters’ decisions of who to (and who not to) transmit information to, and (4) the underlying reasons for transmitting WOM, and hence the types of recipients that comprise one’s preferred “audience,” lie in transmitters wanting to use (but not build) social capital, but the type of use depends on whether people are sharing their own opinions (“initial transmission”) or passing on others’ opinions (“retransmission”). Specifically, initial transmitters use their social capital to give themselves a receptive audience for them to air their opinions with a high chance of being listened to. Retransmitters instead use social capital to obtain (but not contribute) new information from recipients and recipients’ social networks. Thus, initial transmitters appear to talk for the sake of talking (and try to avoid being ignored), and retransmitters talk in order to get fresh information in return.
Existence of two geographically-linked clonal lineages in the bacterial fish pathogen Photobacterium damselae subsp. piscicida evidenced by random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis

In this work, we applied the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique to evaluate the genetic diversity in Photobacterium damselae subsp. piscicida (formerly Pasteurella piscicida), an important pathogen for different marine fish. Regardless of the oligonucleotide primer employed, the 29 isolates of Ph. damselae subsp. piscicida tested were separated into two groups, the RAPD-PCR analysis differentiated the European strains from the Japanese strains. The similarity between both groups estimated on the basis of the Dice coefficient was 75–80%. These results show that European and Japanese isolates of Ph. damselae subsp. piscicida, regardless of their host fish species, belong to two different clonal lineages. Our findings also indicate that RAPD profiling constitutes a useful tool for epidemiological studies of this fish pathogen.
Left ventricular hypertrophy in hypertension: its arrhythmogenic potential

Left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy may reflect physiological adaptation to an increased work load of the heart following intense physical training. However, LV hypertrophy often represents a pathophysiologic condition, and can develop due to intrinsic stimuli (cardiomyopathy), or secondary to extrinsic stimuli, such as pressure or volume overload accompanying hypertension and valvar disease (fig 1). Myocardial hypertrophy is also part of the remodelling process following an acute myocardial infarction, and is a common finding in patients with congestive heart failure caused by systolic and/or diastolic LV dysfunction. Figure 1 Left ventricular hypertrophy, a condition with variable background. AMI, acute myocardial infarction; CMP, cardiomyopathy. The presence of LV hypertrophy is a strong independent risk factor for future cardiac events and all cause mortality.1 The risk for sudden cardiac death is increased in subjects with LV hypertrophy, independent of the aetiology, and this event occurs also in individuals with no or only mild prior symptoms related to cardiovascular disease. Intense animal and human research has identified some common features and provided a framework within which some crucial components can be explained. Thus, whether the focus is haemodynamic or electrophysiologic, there seems to be consensus as to the initiation of a fetal-like gene programme in myocardial hypertrophy.2,3 The insights into its consequences can be applied in the clinical management of individual patients. During recent years, experts with different backgrounds within cardiovascular medicine have aimed to create a united picture of cardiac hypertrophy and sudden cardiac death, and to present it in such a way that in can be integrated and applied into clinical cardiovascular practice. This article is an attempt to pursue this ambition. We focus on LV hypertrophy in human hypertension as a model of cardiac hypertrophy, and myocardial hypertrophy as a condition with “reduced repolarisation reserve”,w1 and thus a latent …
Contribution of activated macrophages to the process of delayed xenograft rejection.

BACKGROUND When hyperacute rejection, involving natural xenoreactive antibodies (XAb) and/or complement (C), can be prevented, xenografts (Xgs) undergo delayed xenograft rejection associated with a progressive mononuclear cell infiltration. We have previously shown that XAb formation can be totally suppressed in leflunomide (LF)-treated, T-deficient nude rats receiving hamster hearts. Hence, this model was well-suited to study a role played by other factors, e.g., natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages (Mphi). The relative contribution of Mphi to delayed xenograft rejection was investigated. METHODS In addition to LF (20 mg/kg/24 hr p.o.), anti-asialoGM-1 serum (1 mg/48 hr i.v.) and N omega-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME; 100 mg/kg/24 hr i.v.) were given. Graft-infiltrating cells, deposition of cytokines (interferon-gamma [IFN-gamma] and tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-alpha]), IgM and C, and expression of endothelial cell (EC) P- and E-selectins were investigated by immunohistochemistry. In some cases, rat rTNF-alpha or anti-TNF-alpha antibodies were injected intravenously. RESULTS Xgs rejected after 3 days by LF-treated rats showed an absence of IgM, C, and T cells, but the infiltration of NK cells and Mphi, together with the presence of IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha. Addition of NK cell depletion resulted in a significantly prolonged survival of Xgs (6 days; P<0.001) in which NK cells and IFN-gamma had disappeared, but Mphi were still prominent. Additional blockade of Mphi nitric oxide (NO) with L-NAME further prolonged Xg survival (11 days; P<0.001). In these rejected Xgs, Mphi, TNF-alpha, and EC expression of P- and E-selectins was still found, together with platelet thrombi, neutrophil-EC adhesion, and vessel intima lesions. The role of TNF-alpha in initiating this Xg rejection was further demonstrated by the acceleration of Xg rejection after injection of rTNF-alpha and by a synergism between L-NAME and anti-TNF-alpha antibodies in hampering the acceleration of Xg rejection seen after transfer of sensitized Mphi. CONCLUSION In the absence of XAb, T cells, and NK cells, Mphi can still reject Xgs. Both NO-dependent and NO-independent mechanisms are involved. In the latter case, Mphi-derived, TNF-alpha-associated EC activation may play a role.