Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do not feed the wildlife: associations between garbage use, aggression, and disease in banded mongooses (Mungos mungo)

Summary Urbanization and other human modifications of the landscape may indirectly affect disease dynamics by altering host behavior in ways that influence pathogen transmission. Few opportunities arise to investigate behaviorally mediated effects of human habitat modification in natural host–pathogen systems, but we provide a potential example of this phenomenon in banded mongooses (Mungos mungo), a social mammal. Our banded mongoose study population in Botswana is endemically infected with a novel Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex pathogen, M. mungi, that primarily invades the mongoose host through the nasal planum and breaks in the skin. In this system, several study troops have access to human garbage sites and other modified landscapes for foraging. Banded mongooses in our study site (N = 4 troops, ~130 individuals) had significantly higher within‐troop aggression levels when foraging in garbage compared to other foraging habitats. Second, monthly rates of aggression were a significant predictor of monthly number of injuries in troops. Finally, injured individuals had a 75% incidence of clinical tuberculosis (TB) compared to a 0% incidence in visibly uninjured mongooses during the study period. Our data suggest that mongoose troops that forage in garbage may be at greater risk of acquiring TB by incurring injuries that may allow for pathogen invasion. Our study suggests the need to consider the indirect effects of garbage on behavior and wildlife health when developing waste management approaches in human‐modified areas.
Entrepreneurial orientation‐as‐experimentation and firm performance: The enabling role of absorptive capacity

According to the perspective of entrepreneurial orientation-as-experimentation, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) increases variability in innovation outcomes. Although increased variability in the innovation portfolio could increase performance, it could also lead to a decline in performance. We propose that absorptive capacity plays a role in both increasing and managing variations in innovation outcomes. Potential absorptive capacity enhances the effects of EO on variability in innovation outcomes, whereas realized absorptive capacity helps transform and exploit variability in innovation outcomes to enhance firm performance
The impact of company size on the value relevance of social ratings : A quantitative study

AbstractProblem background and problem discussion: The increased demands on companiesand their ability to operate sustainably has made corporate social responsibility (CSR) avery hot topic in modern society. The academic debate has yet to put a definite answeron whether the engagement in CSR activities has a positive effect on a companyfinancially. Previous research on stock listed in Sweden indicate that there is a positiverelationship between environmental performance and that there is an asymmetry in howit is valued across company sizes. However, there has not yet been any research madeinto what impact size has on the value relevance of social CSR ratings. This will betested by drawing from resource-based theory and legitimacy theory.Research question: How is the value relevance of social ratings affected by accountingfor company size? Purpose: The purpose is to examine what effect the inclusion of corporation size has onthe value relevance of social CSR ratings.Theory: The study primarily utilizes Stakeholder theory, the resource-based theory andlegitimacy theory.Method: This is a quantitative study in a panel data setting with a deductive researchapproach. The practical method is a regression analysis that assesses the value relevanceof CSR measures at the OMX Stockholm for the years of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011and 2013. The study encompasses 349 Small-, medium- and large-sized companies andhas a total of 1429 observations, which have been subject to statistical significancetests.Results and analysis: The results show that social, environmental and overall CSRratings are value relevant and associated with lower market values. There also seems tobe little impact on results by including company size as a variable. Furthermore theresults of this study differ from previous research, implying that results are verysensitive to changes in the regression model.Conclusion: The results of the study lead us to believe that size has little impact on howvalue relevant social ratings are. This implies that regardless theory such as theresource-based and legitimacy theory these cannot be supported in practice amongSwedish firms listed at OMX Stockholm. Furthermore, our method gives differentresults with regard to previous research done on the Swedish market and indicates thatthere is a negative relationship between CSR ratings and market value.
Temporal and spatial aspects of root and stem sucrose metabolism in loblolly pine trees.

We studied root and stem sucrose metabolism in trees excavated from a 9-year-old artificially regenerated loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation. Sucrose synthase (SS) activities in stem and taproot vascular cambial tissues followed similar seasonal patterns until they peaked during September. After September, stem SS activity disappeared quickly, whereas taproots exhibited SS activity even in January. Pyrophosphate-dependent phosphofructokinase (PPi-PFK) activity tracked SS activity. The activities of ATP-dependent PFK and several other glycolytic enzymes (e.g., phosphoglucomutase and phosphoglucoisomerase) remained relatively constant in cambial tissues of stem, taproot, and all first-order lateral roots (FOLRs) throughout the year. However, during the growing season, individual FOLRs exhibited variable sucrose metabolic activities that were independent of root diameter or position on the taproot. The FOLRs with low or no SS activity also had low PPi-PFK activity. We propose that when intense competition for sucrose occurs among different organs of a tree, the variable activities of the sucrose metabolic enzymes in FOLRs ensure that enough sucrose is allocated to the stem and taproot for growth. For a tree's long-term survival and growth, second or higher-order roots can be sacrificed, whereas FOLRs, stem and taproot are essential.
Comparing LTL Semantics for Runtime Verification

When monitoring a system w.r. t. a property defined in a temporal logic such as LTL, a major concern is to settle with an adequate interpretation of observable system events; that is, models of temporal logic formulae are usually infinite words of events, whereas at runtime only finite but incrementally expanding prefixes are available. In this work, we review LTL-derived logics for finite traces from a runtime-verification perspective. In doing so, we establish four maxims to be satisfied by any LTL-derived logic aimed at runtime verification. As no pre-existing logic readily satisfies all of them, we introduce a new four-valued logic Runtime Verification Linear Temporal Logic RV-LTL in accordance to these maxims. The semantics of Runtime Verification Linear Temporal Logic (RV-LTL) indicates whether a finite word describes a system behaviour which either (i) satisfies the monitored property, (ii) violates the property, (iii) will presumably violate the property, or (iv) will presumably conform to the property in the future, once the system has stabilized. Notably, (i) and (ii) correspond to the classical semantics of LTL, whereas (iii) and (iv) are chosen whenever an observed system behaviour has not yet lead to a violation or acceptance of the monitored property. Moreover, we present a monitor construction for RV-LTL properties in terms of Moore machines signalizing the semantics of the so far obtained execution trace w.r. t. the monitored property.
Surfactant apoprotein-A concentration in airway secretions for the detection of pulmonary oedema.

Patients with cardiogenic pulmonary oedema expectorate foamy sputum containing surfactant, which might be expected to include surfactant apoprotein A (SP-A). SP-A is specific for lung surfactant. We have measured the SP-A concentration in airway secretions to determine whether it is useful in distinguishing pulmonary oedema from other disorders. Samples of sputum and of aspirated airway secretion were obtained from 11 patients with cardiogenic pulmonary oedema, seven patients with clinically stable congestive heart failure, five patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and 20 control patients (10 intubated) with other respiratory diseases. The samples were used for the measurement of SP-A concentration by a two-site simultaneous immunoassay with monoclonal antibodies against SP-A. SP-A concentrations, measured in samples of sputum and aspirated secretions, depended on the diagnosis of the patients from which they had come. In descending order these samples came from patients with: cardiogenic pulmonary oedema (1324 +/- 197 micrograms.mL-1; n = 33); ARDS (311 +/- 47 micrograms.mL-1; n = 23); clinically stable congestive heart failure (78 +/- 10 micrograms.mL-1; n = 21); and control conditions (3.0 +/- 0.6 micrograms.mL-1; n = 30). Concentrations from disease samples did not overlap with controls. In samples from patients with cardiogenic pulmonary oedema, the SP-A concentration correlated with mean pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) (p < 0.001; n = 39). These findings indicate that the measurement of the surfactant apoprotein A concentration in airway secretions may be useful for the detection of pulmonary oedema.
Deployment optimization for AUTOSAR system configuration

In AUTOSAR system configuration phase, integrators face many challenges in determining the tradeoffs when mapping hundreds of software components to electronic control units (ECU), so finding a common method for this artificial process is very significant. In this paper, we provide an approach to help system integrators building a correct and efficient system configuration. In our method, nested software components are decomposed iteratively to atomic ones. Then all atomic components are divided into two groups: ECU-dependent components and ECU-independent components. The former is deployed onto ECUs first according to its hardware requirements. The latter is deployed to a suitable ECU using evolutionary algorithm. In particular, we focus on the resource requirements, real-time scheduling, and minimization of inter-ECU communication consumption that has an important impact on the non-functional aspects of real-time control system. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Socially Responsible Trade Integration: A Political Economy Perspective

Economists tend to agree that international trade liberalization brings significant gains from trade to countries engaging in such a process. At the same time however, public opinion is much less optimistic and there is a widespread concern that the current sharing of the gains from trade is ‘unfair’ and unevenly distributed across and within countries. This Paper emphasizes that in order to understand the position of globalization skeptics and respond adequately to their complaints, one should move beyond the existence of the gains from trade (static and/or dynamic) and one should pay more attention to the ‘pains from trade’ and, more generally, the distributive dimensions of trade integration. In particular, a critical dimension that needs to be addressed is the issue of the redistribution (or non-redistribution) of the gains from trade and the interactions between trade openness and domestic redistributive policy. After reviewing briefly what we know about the distributive impacts of trade openness, the paper considers the political economy feedbacks of trade integration on domestic redistribution and identifies the economic and political feasibility constraints of a ‘trade regime with redistribution’. Taking then a normative perspective, it explores the conditions for the existence of a ‘socially responsible’ open trade regime and discusses some of the policy tradeoffs associated with its implementation.
A Simple Activation/Deactivation Prefetching Scheme for Chip Multiprocessors

Prefetching significantly reduces the memory latencies of a wide range of applications and thus increases the system performance. However, as a speculative technique, prefetching may also noticeably increase the number of memory accesses, which in turns may negatively impact on the main memory bandwidth consumption, performance, and power. Main memory bandwidth consumption is a critical resource especially in the context of current multicore processors since memory requests from all the cores, both prefetch and demand requests, compete among them in the access to the DRAM banks. Consequently, demand requests may be delayed hurting the system performance. This work proposes the Activation/Deactivation Policies (ADP) scheme for hardware prefetchers in multicore processors. This scheme relies on activation policies that turn on the prefetcher on a given core when it is expected that prefetches will improve the performance, and turn off the prefetcher of that core when it is foreseen that performance will be scarcely improved or not improved at all. The proposed mechanism effectively reduces the memory bandwidth requirements of some cores with respect to a typical always prefetching mechanism, so making available extra bandwidth to the co-runners. Results in a four-core processor show that ADP prefetching achieves similar performance ±2.5% as always prefetching, while significantly reducing the memory bandwidth consumed by use-less prefetches. Moreover, in some applications this reduction is as much as 50%. ADP prefetching is applicable to stream-based prefetchers, global-history-buffer delta correlation prefetchers, and PC-based stride prefetchers.
KOLMOGOROV-BARZDIN AND SPACIAL REALIZATIONS OF EXPANDER GRAPHS

One application of graph theory is to analyze connectivity of neurons and axons in the brain. We begin with basic definitions from graph theory including the Cheeger constant, a measure of connectivity of a graph. In Section 2, we will examine expander graphs, which are very sparse yet highly connected. Surprisingly, not only do expander graphs exist, but most random graphs have the expander property. Section 3 discusses the KolmogorovBarzdin realization of graphs in a sphere in R3. This can be used to model neurons and axons in the brain and yields the smallest possible radius for the sphere for any graph with the expander property.
Social media mining for identification and exploration of health-related information from pregnant women

Widespread use of social media has led to the generation of substantial amounts of information about individuals, including health-related information. Social media provides the opportunity to study health-related information about selected population groups who may be of interest for a particular study. In this paper, we explore the possibility of utilizing social media to perform targeted data collection and analysis from a particular population group -- pregnant women. We hypothesize that we can use social media to identify cohorts of pregnant women and follow them over time to analyze crucial health-related information. To identify potentially pregnant women, we employ simple rule-based searches that attempt to detect pregnancy announcements with moderate precision. To further filter out false positives and noise, we employ a supervised classifier using a small number of hand-annotated data. We then collect their posts over time to create longitudinal health timelines and attempt to divide the timelines into different pregnancy trimesters. Finally, we assess the usefulness of the timelines by performing a preliminary analysis to estimate drug intake patterns of our cohort at different trimesters. Our rule-based cohort identification technique collected 53,820 users over thirty months from Twitter. Our pregnancy announcement classification technique achieved an F-measure of 0.81 for the pregnancy class, resulting in 34,895 user timelines. Analysis of the timelines revealed that pertinent health-related information, such as drug-intake and adverse reactions can be mined from the data. Our approach to using user timelines in this fashion has produced very encouraging results and can be employed for other important tasks where cohorts, for which health-related information may not be available from other sources, are required to be followed over time to derive population-based estimates.
2016 Ieee International Conference on Big Data (big Data) Table Classification Using Both Structure and Content Information: a Case Study of Financial Documents

— Tables are significant document components. Table extraction and classification are critical for us to explore, retrieve and mine knowledge encoded in tables. This paper presents a learning based approach for classifying tables based on their content and structural information, with focus on financial document tables. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on classifying tables in financial domain, and also the first study of table classification based on its semantics, a more fine-grained level than previous studies. The experimental results show that it can effectively classify financial tables. We also analyzed what features are important and how to generate them. The feature identification and generation approach can potentially apply to other domains.
How Environmental Pollution from Fossil Fuels can be included in measures of National Accounts and Estimates of Genuine Savings

In this paper, we examine means to incorporate the environmental effects of fossil fuel use into national accounts and genuine savings estimates. The main focus is on the rationales for the inclusion of carbon dioxide, and its appropriate price tag. We do this in the context of the pricing of historic carbon emissions in United Kingdom over the long run (from the onset of the industrial revolution to the present). Furthermore, we examine the reasonableness of taking into account other greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. The global effects of carbon dioxide are compared to the local detrimental effects of the production and consumption of coal in the UK.
New Dimensions

new dimensions What to say and what to do when mostly your friends love reading? Are you the one that don't have such hobby? So, it's important for you to start having that hobby. You know, reading is not the force. We're sure that reading will lead you to join in better concept of life. Reading will be a positive activity to do every time. And do you know our friends become fans of new dimensions as the best book to read? Yeah, it's neither an obligation nor order. It is the referred book that will not make you feel disappointed.
The Influences Affecting French Assets Abroad Prior to 1914

In this study we show that French foreign investment from the end of the nineteenth century until the eve of the First World War was driven by economic and financial considerations. This refutes the hitherto accepted thesis that French capital exports were motivated by diplomatic and political factors. By using economic modeling that combines microeconomic and econometric approaches, we show that the geographic distribution of French financial flows was consistent with rational economic behavior.
Functional magnetic stimulation in constipation associated with Parkinson's disease.

OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were: (i) to investigate the effect of functional magnetic stimulation on total colonic transit time in patients with Parkinson's disease; (ii) to compare the changes in dynamic recto-anal behaviour during filling and defaecation in response to this regimen; and (iii) to study the carry-over effects with a 3-month follow-up. DESIGN A longitudinal, prospective before-after trial. SUBJECTS Sixteen patients with Parkinson's disease enrolled in this study. No subject withdrew from the study as a result of serious adverse events. METHODS A 3-week magnetic conditioning protocol, consisting of a 20-min stimulation session twice daily. Colonic transit time, Knowles-Eccersley-Scott Symptom Questionnaire and the dynamics of defecography were carried out before the intervention and on the final day of the protocol. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION There was a statistically significant reduction in colonic transit time and in the questionnaire score following the intervention. The difference in the anorectal angles between resting and evacuating process and the changes in pelvic floor descent all reached significance after the intervention. The therapeutic effects that achieved significance remained constant in the 3-month follow-up result. Functional magnetic stimulation may facilitate colonic motility in Parkinson's disease and straighten the anorectal angle, allowing smooth access of rectal contents to the anal canal.
'Best practice' human resource management: perfect opportunity or dangerous illusion?

In recent years there has been a considerable degree of interest in the notion of 'best practice' HRM, inspired at least in part by the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer. Along with other contributions from the UK and the USA, this has resulted in assertions that a particular bundle of HR practices can increase profits irrespective of organizational, industrial, or national context. In this paper, we focus on the way in which HRM is characterized in these writings, querying whether the practices which are typically assumed and put forward as 'good' may not appear quite so beneficial to workers when analysed more systematically. It is suggested that there are a number of problems with the notion of 'best practice', both in relation to the meaning of specific practices, and their consistency with each other, and the claims that this version of HRM is universally applicable. The unitarist underpinnings of this literature are also exposed. This is not to argue that HR policies and practices do not influence organizational performance but, rather, that we cannot determine this from the current literature. The 'best practice' conclusions may be attractive but the jury is still out.
The New World in Globalizing Wine Markets: Lessons from Australia

Twenty five years ago, the Southern Hemisphere contributed 12 percent of the worldÂ’s wine production and North America added another 5 percent. Together those countries accounted for less than 2 percent of global exports. By 2009, however, the New World accounted for 26 percent of global output and almost one-third of global wine exports. AustraliaÂ’s export-led growth is particularly striking, its shares rising from barely 1 percent to more than 4 percent of global production and from a mere 0.2 percent to 9 percent of global exports. Australia now exports two-thirds of its output (up from 2 percent in 1980-84) and is currently the worldÂ’s fourth largest wine exporter after France, Italy and Spain. The huge vineyard expansion that delivered that dramatic transformation led to output expanding faster than sales in recent years, causing stocks to accumulate. In the light of the current over-supply situation, and drawing also on lessons from past booms, this paper focuses on how the Australian wine industryÂ’s international competitiveness and market shares might evolve over the next two decades and its implications for other wine-exporting countries. Climate change is certainly one of the challenges facing local producers, but that is affecting overseas competitors as well. Other prospective challenges include changes to tax and water policies, the recent fashion swing against Australian wine, and the strong Australian dollar associated with the countryÂ’s mining boom that is linked to ChinaÂ’s industrialization. Nonetheless, appropriate adjustments are beginning to be made, including to plantings and to marketing efforts. The longer term should see Australia trading its way out of the current surplus and back to expanding its global market share, especially in value terms as producers seek to differentiate their product more and focus on raising quality.