Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aristotle, Ethics and Business Organizations

I have developed a theoretical framework which I call ‘an Aristotelian approach to business’ to talk about corporations and organizations in general. Although Aristotle is famous largely as an enemy of business, he was the first economist and he might well be called the first business ethicist as well. We can no longer accept the amoral idea that ‘business is business’ (not really a tautology but an excuse for being socially irresponsible and personally insensitive). According to Aristotle, one has to think of oneself as a member of the larger community—the Polis for him, the corporation, the neighborhood, the city or the country (and the world) for us—and strive to excel, to bring out what is best in ourselves and our shared enterprise. What is best in us—our virtues—are in turn defined by that larger community, and there is therefore no ultimate split or antagonism between individual self-interest and the greater public good. The Aristotelian approach to business ethics, rather, begins with the two-pronged idea that it is individual virtue and integrity that count, and that good corporate and social policy encourage and nourish individual virtue and integrity.
Adoption of an Integrated Cloud-Based Electronic Medical Record System at Public Healthcare Facilities in Free-State, South Africa

Access to a patient's medical history at the right time can significantly improve the ability of health practitioners to render effective healthcare services. Health facilities in developing countries often lack this capability due to reliance on manual records. The emerging cloud computing model offers an opportunity to cost-effectively share and exchange selected patient records among healthcare facilities. However, the extent to which Free State public healthcare facilities are willing to embrace a shared cloud platform is unclear. This study investigated this issue using a cross-sectional survey involving thirty-one public healthcare facilities spread across five administrative districts of the Free State Province, South Africa. Results showed that most public healthcare facilities still utilize paper-based systems with some form of IT to record basic patient details. Results also revealed that relative advantage, security concern, top management support and organization readiness are the most significant factors that could influence the decision to adopt.
Developmental Expectations of Dutch, Turkish-Dutch, and Zambian Mothers: Towards an Explanation of Cross-cultural Differences

In this study, three models of cross-cultural differences of developmental expectations by parents were examined. The domain dependence model holds that differences vary across psychological domains such as perception and cognition. The cumulative differences model states that cross-cultural differences increase with age. The context variables model holds that cross-cultural differences in developmental expectations are mainly a function of background variables such as differences in parental education. The expectations of mothers in three different cultures were examined. Sixty eight Dutch, 50 Turkish-Dutch (Turkish women living in The Netherlands), and 69 Zambian mothers were asked to indicate the expected age of mastery for each of 77 skills, covering a broad range of behaviours. Zambian mothers expected most skills to develop at a later age than did Dutch and Turkish-Dutch mothers. Partial support was obtained for each model. Tentative evidence was obtained that the domain dependence model could explain most and the cumulative differences model the least cross-cultural differences.
Effects of superstitious beliefs on consumer novelty seeking and independent judgment making: Evidence from China

Cultural content has been examined in consumer adoption of new products, whereas the relationship between enduring cultural beliefs and adoption remains unexplored. In this study, proactive superstitious behaviors (e.g., carrying a lucky charm) and passive superstitious beliefs (e.g., belief in fate) were empirically tested as antecedents of consumer novelty seeking (CNS) and consumer independent judgment making (CIJM). The results suggest that proactive superstitious beliefs positively influence CNS, whereas passive beliefs negatively influence CNS. Only passive superstitious beliefs positively influence CIJM. Results also suggest that previous superstition scales are incomplete and fail to reflect contemporary thinking about superstitious beliefs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Gender‐based analysis of leisure constraints

Abstract Using data derived from two provincewide surveys of the general public of Alberta, Canada, two empirical questions were addressed: (a) What constraints to leisure do women and men experience, and (b) how does the context of personal and situational circumstances (e.g., age, income, and family structure) filter the effects of constraints among women and men ? Several differences emerged between women and men in terms of the intensity and nature of the constraints, leading to the conclusion that women are overall more constrained in their leisure than men. The data also demonstrate that the experience of leisure constraints is characterized by as many within‐gender differences as between‐gender differences. Selected context variables related to age, income, and family structure are mediating factors that alter, reinforce, or alleviate constraints for women, depending on the nature of the context and on the type of constraint. The study points to the need to think in terms of diversities and plurali.
The multi‐integer set cover and the facility terminal cover problem

The facility terminal cover problem is a generalization of the vertex cover problem. The problem is to “cover” the edges of an undirected graph G = (V,E) where each edge e is associated with a non‐negative demand de. An edge e = u,v is covered if at least one of its endpoint vertices is allocated capacity of at least de. Each vertex v is associated with a non‐negative weight wv. The goal is to allocate capacity cv ≥ 0 to each vertex v so that all edges are covered and the total allocation cost, $\sum\limits_{v\in V}w_{v}c_{v}$, is minimized. A recent paper by Xu et al. [Networks 50 (2007), 118‐126], studied this problem, and presented a 2e‐ approximation algorithm for this problem for e the base of the natural logarithm. We generalize here the facility terminal cover problem to the multi‐integer set cover, and relate that problem to the set cover problem, which it generalizes, and the multi‐cover problem. We present a Δ‐approximation algorithm for the multi‐integer set cover problem, for Δ the maximum coverage. This demonstrates that even though the multi‐integer set cover problem generalizes the set cover problem, the same approximation ratio holds. In the special case of the facility terminal cover problem this yields a 2‐approximation algorithm, and with run time dominated by the sorting of the edge demands. This approximation algorithm improves considerably on the result of Xu et al. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2009
Methylation-state-specific recognition of histones by the MBT repeat protein L3MBTL2

The MBT repeat has been recently identified as a key domain capable of methyl–lysine histone recognition. Functional work has pointed to a role for MBT domain-containing proteins in transcriptional repression of developmental control genes such as Hox genes. In this study, L3MBTL2, a human homolog of Drosophila Sfmbt critical for Hox gene silencing, is demonstrated to preferentially recognize lower methylation states of several histone-derived peptides through its fourth MBT repeat. High-resolution crystallographic analysis of the four MBT repeats of this protein reveals its unique asymmetric rhomboid architecture, as well as binding mechanism, which preclude the interaction of the first three MBT repeats with methylated peptides. Structural elucidation of an L3MBTL2–H4K20me1 complex and comparison with other MBT-histone peptide complexes also suggests that an absence of distinct surface contours surrounding the methyl–lysine-binding pocket may underlie the lack of sequence specificity observed for members of this protein family.
In Words and Deeds: Parental Involvement and Mediation of Children's Television Viewing

This study examines the influence of global parental involvement in parental mediation of television viewing. Involvement consists of two dimensions: (a) accessibility to children, and (b) engagement in childrearing and shared activities. This survey of 327 parents of school-aged children demonstrates that parents' attitudes toward television, accessibility, parent-child discussions of personal topics, and physical displays of affection each have significant relations to television mediation. In addition, parents' efforts to control or discipline children show marginally significant influences on mediation.
Significance of Colors in Texture Datasets

This paper studies the significance of color in eight publicly available datasets commonly used for texture recognition through the classification results of ”pure-color” and ”pure-texture” (colorless) descriptors. The datasets are described using the state-of-the-art color descriptors, Discriminative Color Descriptors (DD) [15] and Color Names (CN) [28]. The descriptors are based on partitioning of the color space into clusters and assigning the image probabilities of belonging to individual clusters. We propose a simple extension of the DD and the CN descriptors, adding the standard deviations of color cluster probabilities into the descriptor. The extension leads to a significant improvement in recognition rates on all datasets. On all datasets the 22-dimensional improved CNσ descriptor outperforms all original 11-, 25and 50-dimensional descriptors. Linear combination of the state-of-the-art ”pure-texture” classifier with the CNσ classifier improves the results on all datasets.
Supergravity, D-brane probes and thermal super Yang-Mills: a comparison

A D3-brane probe in the context of AdS/CFT correspondence at finite temperature is considered. The supergravity predictions for the physical effective couplings of the world-volume gauge theory of the probe brane are compared to those calculated in one-loop perturbation theory in the thermal gauge theory. It is argued that when the Higgs expectation value is much larger than the temperature, the supergravity result must agree with perturbative thermal Yang-Mills. This provides a perturbative test of the Maldacena conjecture. Predictions for the running electric and magnetic effective couplings, beyond perturbation theory are also obtained. Phenomenological applications for universe-branes are discussed. In particular mechanisms are suggested for reducing the induced cosmological constant and naturally obtaining a varying speed of light and a consequent inflation on the universe brane.
Development of Nine Markers and Characterization of the Microsatellite Loci in the Endangered Gymnogobius isaza (Gobiidae)

Gymnogobius isaza is a freshwater goby endemic to Lake Biwa, Japan. They experienced a drastic demographic bottleneck in the 1950s and 1980s and slightly recovered thereafter, but the population size is still very small. To reveal dynamics of genetic diversity of G. isaza, we developed nine microsatellite markers based on the sequence data of a related goby Chaenogobius annularis. Nine SSR (Simple Sequence Repeats) markers were successfully amplified for raw and formalin-fixed fish samples. The number of alleles and expected heterozygosities ranged from one to 10 and from 0.06 to 0.84, respectively, for the current samples, while one to 12 and 0.09 to 0.83 for historical samples. The markers described here will be useful for investigating the genetic diversity and gene flow and for conservation of G. isaza.
Evaluation of the Performance of the Markov Blanket Bayesian Classifier Algorithm

The Markov Blanket Bayesian Classifier is a recently-proposed algorithm for construction of probabilistic classifiers. This paper presents an empirical comparison of the MBBC algorithm with three other Bayesian classifiers: Naive Bayes, Tree-Augmented Naive Bayes and a general Bayesian network. All of these are implemented using the K2 framework of Cooper and Herskovits. The classifiers are compared in terms of their performance (using simple accuracy measures and ROC curves) and speed, on a range of standard benchmark data sets. It is concluded that MBBC is competitive in terms of speed and accuracy with the other algorithms considered.
Auditory verbal hallucinations are related to cortical thinning in the left middle temporal gyrus of patients with schizophrenia

Background Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are one of the most common and severe symptoms of schizophrenia, but the neuroanatomical abnormalities underlying AVHs are not well understood. The present study aims to investigate whether AVHs are associated with cortical thinning. Methods Participants were schizophrenia patients from four centers across China, 115 with AVHs and 93 without AVHs, as well as 261 healthy controls. All received 3 T T1-weighted brain scans, and whole brain vertex-wise cortical thickness was compared across groups. Correlations between AVH severity and cortical thickness were also determined. Results The left middle part of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) was significantly thinner in schizophrenia patients with AVHs than in patients without AVHs and healthy controls. Inferences were made using a false discovery rate approach with a threshold at p < 0.05. Left MTG thickness did not differ between patients without AVHs and controls. These results were replicated by a meta-analysis showing them to be consistent across the four centers. Cortical thickness of the left MTG was also found to be inversely correlated with hallucination severity across all schizophrenia patients. Conclusion The results of this multi-center study suggest that an abnormally thin left MTG could be involved in the pathogenesis of AVHs in schizophrenia.
Study of Zero Velocity Update for Both Low- and High-Speed Human Activities

Previous studies show that inertial sensor-based personal positioning benefited from Zero Velocity Update ZUPT method by resetting the foot speed at every foot step. However, only the solution for normal pedestrian movement with small velocity like walking was given. This paper presents a novel ZUPT system which can be used in a wide range of human activities, including walking, running, and stair climbing by using two inertial measurement unit IMU modules. One is attached on the centre of the human body for human activities' classification and recognition. The other one is mounted on the foot for ZUPT algorithm implementation based on the result of activities' recognition. Test cases include stair climbing by walking and running, walking, fast walking, and running. In all cases, most of the steps are able to be detected and the new ZUPT system can be successfully implemented.
Self-Learning Hard Disk Power Management for Mobile Devices

A multitude of different hard disk power management algorithms exists—applied to real systems or proposed in the literature. Energy savings can only be achieved if the hard disk is idle for a minimum period of time. These algorithms try to predict the length of each idle interval at runtime and decide whether the disk should be switched to a lowpower mode or not. In this paper, we claim that there is no general-purpose policy that maximizes energy savings for every workload and present system services that dynamically switch between different, specialized power management algorithms. The operating system automatically learns which policy performs best for a specific workload. Therefore, hard disk accesses are monitored and fed into a simulator that estimates the drive’s energy consumption under different lowpower algorithms. In order to recognize workloads at runtime, the system additionally monitors a set of I/O-related parameters. Using techniques from machine learning, a set of rules can be derived automatically which enable a power management daemon to identify the current workload and its optimum low-power algorithm on-line. Furthermore, the user can train the system to consider application-specific performance requirements. A prototype implementation for Linux is presented and evaluated through experiments with two different hard disks.
Offline Writer Identification Based on the Path Signature Feature

In this paper, we propose a novel set of features for offline writer identification based on the path signature approach, which provides a principled way to express information contained in a path. By extracting local pathlets from handwriting contours, the path signature can also characterize the offline handwriting style. A codebook method based on the log path signature—a more compact way to express the path signature—is used in this work and shows competitive results on several benchmark offline writer identification datasets, namely the IAM, Firemaker, CVL and ICDAR2013 writer identification contest dataset.
A modified space frequency decomposition algorithm for visual motion

In this paper, we present a method to decompose visual motion represented by computed optical flow using an over-complete dictionary of space frequency atoms. This is accomplished by a modified matching pursuit procedure which successively selects space and frequency localized atoms from this dictionary. In effect, this decomposition reveals the structure of optical flow field such that areas with motion at different spatial location and scale are identified. In addition, our method maintains the original resolution of the image when performing the decomposition at each scale. This minimizes the amount of the information lost in the decomposition process. We perform experiments using both synthetic and real image data sets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
DNA methylation is widespread and associated with differential gene expression in castes of the honeybee, Apis mellifera

The recent, unexpected discovery of a functional DNA methylation system in the genome of the social bee Apis mellifera underscores the potential importance of DNA methylation in invertebrates. The extent of genomic DNA methylation and its role in A. mellifera remain unknown, however. Here we show that genes in A. mellifera can be divided into 2 distinct classes, one with low-CpG dinucleotide content and the other with high-CpG dinucleotide content. This dichotomy is explained by the gradual depletion of CpG dinucleotides, a well-known consequence of DNA methylation. The loss of CpG dinucleotides associated with DNA methylation also may explain the unusual mutational patterns seen in A. mellifera that lead to AT-rich regions of the genome. A detailed investigation of this dichotomy implicates DNA methylation in A. mellifera development. High-CpG genes, which are predicted to be hypomethylated in germlines, are enriched with functions associated with developmental processes, whereas low-CpG genes, predicted to be hypermethylated in germlines, are enriched with functions associated with basic biological processes. Furthermore, genes more highly expressed in one caste than another are overrepresented among high-CpG genes. Our results highlight the potential significance of epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, in developmental processes in social insects. In particular, the pervasiveness of DNA methylation in the genome of A. mellifera provides fertile ground for future studies of phenotypic plasticity and genomic imprinting.
Blake's Jerusalem as Perennial Utopia

William Blake's poem Jerusalem (1804-20), like all Perennial utopias, achieves a dialectical synthesis of the ideal and the actual through the narrative focalization of a religious experience at the level of character, one that is at once transhistorical and universal. By reading the poem through the lens of the Perennial paradigm, we discover that the temporal aspects of Jerusalem are intimately tied to the religious dimensions of Blake's utopian vision. In addition to giving us a new way to understand the well-documented distinctiveness of Blake's religious message, the Perennial paradigm shows Blake's soteriology in Jerusalem to be utopian rather than salvationist (that is to say, individual-religious as opposed to collective-political). Because of the ultimately subjective nature of apprehension of the Divine Vision, Blake's utopian thought is not "clearly a forward-directed anticipatory and visionary concept," as Magnus Ankarsjö has recently argued (15). Blake does not rally the reader towards some "ensuing peaceful millennium" (15) but rather to find enlightenment in the eternal moment. In light of Blake's suspicion of ratiocination, combined with his deliberate use of narrative focalization of Albion's religious vision, reading Jerusalem as a Rational utopia grounded in Judeo-Christian of notions of Apocalypse is to miss Blake's core religious message.
Autonomous Wearable System for Vital Signs Measurement With Energy-Harvesting Module

The growing demand for wearable devices is imposed by the ability to monitor in real-time critical situations in the different areas of daily life. In many cases, power is the limiting factor for such devices. One aspect is the power supply with batteries that introduces issues due to the weight, the overall dimensions, and the disposal of the batteries. A viable solution to overcome the limitations of batteries as power source is to harvest ambient energy to power the devices directly. In this paper, a proposed wearable device with an energy-harvesting module has been designed, manufactured, and tested for the measurement of vital signs. The energy-harvesting module is implemented to directly power the electronic circuit board by a flexible solar panel. This paper describes the proposed instrumented autonomous T-shirt powered by the flexible solar panel applied directly on the T-shirt. The instrumented T-shirt is capable of measuring respiration rate, heart rate, and movement of the body. The methodology adopted, the design choices, and the experimental results are clearly reported and discussed. The experimental results show the functioning even with poor outdoor lighting conditions and under specific indoor constraints. Tests have been conducted aiming to compare the instrumented T-shirt's output data with the data obtained via instruments as gold standards and to show that the overall system described in this paper is capable of producing reliable data compared with the data obtained with these instruments.
Errorless Learning and Spaced Retrieval Training for Clients with Alzheimer's Dementia

ABSTRACT Clients with Alzheimer's dementia (AD) may experience limitations in completing activities of daily living (ADL) due to impairments in cognition, memory, and problem-solving. These clients are often referred to occupational therapy (OT) services in order to maximize independence in ADL and decrease caregiver burden. Occupational therapists may be challenged when developing treatment interventions for clients with AD due to client deficits in memory and learning. This article explores evidence-based learning strategies—errorless learning (EL) and spaced retrieval (SR)—to improve learning and memory and OT outcomes for clients with AD. The roles of memory and learning are discussed, and EL and SR strategies are explored for clients with AD. OT intervention ideas are identified, and strategies for integrating EL and SR techniques into the OT plan of care (POC) are also discussed. Future research implications are explored for expanding evidence for EL and SR as part of the OT POC.