Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants and Dynamics of Technology-Related Acquisitions: The Intriguing Case of Software-Based High Technology Industries

Innovation activities in high technology industries provide considerable challenges for technology and innovation management. In particular, the option to use acquisitions as a means for technology sourcing matters. The paper investigates the determinants and dynamics of this for software-based high technology industries. It analyses the association of acquirer characteristics with different measures of acquisition behaviour. The paper confirms a substitutive relationship between acquisitions and own research activities as well as between acquirer and target patenting. For a subset of acquisitions of the three largest acquirers in the industry it relates these findings in more detail to target characteristics. In particular, this reveals an important qualification of the usual effects of disruptive innovation.
A Post-processing Method to Lessen k-Anonymity Dissimilarities

Protecting personal data is essential to guarantee the rule of law1. Due to the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) unprecedented amounts of personal data can be stored and analysed. Thus, if the proper measures are not taken, individual privacy could be in jeopardy. Being the aim to protect individual privacy, a great variety of statistical disclosure control (SDC) techniques has been proposed. Amongst many others, k-anonymity is a promising property that, if properly achieved, can help protect individual privacy. In this paper, we propose a new post-processing method that can be applied after a k-anonymity algorithm, being the aim to lessen the errors resulting from the aggregation of data. We show that our method can be extended to work with many other SDC techniques and we provide some experimental results which emphasise the usefulness of our proposal.
The Impacts of LBOs on the Performance of Acquired Firms: The French Case

This paper investigates the financial characteristics and changes in performance of French companies involved in a leveraged buy–out. The empirical study covers a sample of 161 MBOs in France from 1988 to 1994. The acquired firms outperform their counterparts in the same sector of activity before and after the buy–out. However, unlike findings concerning LBOs in the USA and the UK, the performance of French firms falls after the operation is completed. This downturn in performance seems to be less detrimental to former subsidiaries of groups than to former family businesses.
Traditional Risk Factors as the Underlying Cause of Racial Disparities in Stroke: Lessons From the Half-Full (Empty?) Glass

Background and Purpose— Black/white disparities in stroke incidence are well documented, but few studies have assessed the contributions to the disparity. Here we assess the contribution of “traditional” risk factors. Methods— A total of 25 714 black and white men and women, aged ≥45 years and stroke-free at baseline, were followed for an average of 4.4 years to detect stroke. Mediation analysis using proportional hazards analysis assessed the contribution of traditional risk factors to racial disparities. Results— At age 45 years, incident stroke risk was 2.90 (95% CI: 1.72–4.89) times more likely in blacks than in whites and 1.66 (95% CI: 1.34–2.07) times at age 65 years. Adjustment for risk factors attenuated these excesses by 40% and 45%, respectively, resulting in relative risks of 2.14 (95% CI: 1.25–3.67) and 1.35 (95% CI: 1.08–1.71). Approximately one half of this mediation is attributable to systolic blood pressure. Further adjustment for socioeconomic factors resulted in total mediation of 47% and 53% to relative risks of 2.01 (95% CI: 1.16–3.47) and 1.30 (1.03–1.65), respectively. Conclusions— Between ages 45 to 65 years, approximately half of the racial disparity in stroke risk is attributable to traditional risk factors (primarily systolic blood pressure) and socioeconomic factors, suggesting a critical need to understand the disparity in the development of these traditional risk factors. Because half of the excess stroke risk in blacks is not attributable to traditional risk factors and socioeconomic factors, differential impact of risk factors, residual confounding, or nontraditional risk factors may also play a role.
Dengue, Urbanization and Globalization: The Unholy Trinity of the 21st Century

Dengue is the most important arboviral disease of humans with over half of the world’s population living in areas of risk. The frequency and magnitude of epidemic dengue have increased dramatically in the past 40 years as the viruses and the mosquito vectors have both expanded geographically in the tropical regions of the world. There are many factors that have contributed to this emergence of epidemic dengue, but only three have been the principal drivers: 1) urbanization, 2) globalization and 3) lack of effective mosquito control. The dengue viruses have fully adapted to a human-Aedes aegypti-human transmission cycle, in the large urban centers of the tropics, where crowded human populations live in intimate association with equally large mosquito populations. This setting provides the ideal home for maintenance of the viruses and the periodic generation of epidemic strains. These cities all have modern airports through which 10s of millions of passengers pass each year, providing the ideal mechanism for transportation of viruses to new cities, regions and continents where there is little or no effective mosquito control. The result is epidemic dengue. This paper discusses this unholy trinity of drivers, along with disease burden, prevention and control and prospects for the future.
Neonatal and adult myosin heavy chain isoforms in a nerve-muscle culture system

When adult mouse muscle fibers are co-cultured with embryonic mouse spinal cord, the muscle regenerates to form myotubes that develop cross- striations and contractions. We have investigated the myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoforms present in these cultures using polyclonal antibodies to the neonatal, adult fast, and slow MHC isoforms of rat (all of which were shown to react specifically with the analogous mouse isoforms) in an immunocytochemical assay. The adult fast MHC was absent in newly formed myotubes but was found at later times, although it was absent when the myotubes myotubes were cultured without spinal cord tissue. When nerve-induced muscle contractions were blocked by the continuous presence of alpha-bungarotoxin, there was no decrease in the proportion of fibers that contained adult fast MHC. Neonatal and slow MHC were found at all times in culture, even in the absence of the spinal cord, and so their expression was not thought to be nerve- dependent. Thus, in this culture system, the expression of adult fast MHC required the presence of the spinal cord, but was probably not dependent upon nerve-induced contractile activity in the muscle fibers.
Coupling Analysis on Current Control at Low Switching Frequency for the Three-Phase PWM Converter Based on RGA and a Novel Output Feedback Decoupling Method

With the increase of the rated power, the sampling and switching frequencies of the high-power pulse-width-modulated (PWM) converter tend to be lower so that a challenging scenario is arising in current control system design. This strongly affects the stability and control performance of the current control system due to the undesirable dynamic coupling of the dq current components. From this perspective, this paper presents a systematic procedure for accurately evaluating the coupling of current control systems, which is based on static and dynamic relative gain array (static relative gain array and dynamic relative gain array). Unfortunately, the dynamic coupling of these systems is so serious at low-frequency band, and the parameter variation makes it easier for these systems to lose stability, when a classical proportional integral regulator with feed-forward decoupling or nondecoupling is employed. Hence, a novel output feedback decoupling control method is proposed, which is based on linear control for multiple-input-multiple-output system. Considering the amplification of the first-order differential, the decoupling unit is further improved by replacing the differential with high-pass filter. Experimental results in a small-power converter are presented to support the theoretical analysis and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.
Providing earplugs to young adults at risk encourages protective behaviour in music venues

For some young people, nightclubs and other music venues are a major source of noise exposure, arising from a combination of very high noise levels; relatively long attendance duration; and frequent, sustained participation over several years. Responsibility for hearing protection is largely left to individuals, many of whom choose not to wear earplugs. In order to encourage earplug use in these settings, a new approach is needed. The aim of the study was to examine whether presentation of hearing health information would result in increased use of earplugs, or whether provision of earplugs alone would be sufficient to change behaviour. A total of 51 regular patrons of music venues were allocated to either a low-information (lo-info) or high-information (hi-info) group. Both groups completed a survey about their current noise exposure, earplug usage and perceived risk of hearing damage. Both groups were also provided with one-size-fits-all filtered music earplugs. The hi-info group was also provided with audio-visual and written information about the risks of excessive noise exposure. After 4 weeks, and again after an additional 12 weeks, participants were asked about their recent earplug usage, intention to use earplugs in the future, and perceived risk of hearing damage. The results showed that after 4 weeks, the hi-info group’s perceived personal risk of hearing damage was significantly higher than that of the lo-info group. After 16 weeks, these differences were no longer evident; however, at both 4 and 16 weeks, both the lo- and hi-info groups were using the earplugs equally often; and both groups intended to use earplugs significantly more often in the future. This suggests that the information was unnecessary to motivate behavioural change. Rather, the simple act of providing access to earplugs appears to have effectively encouraged young at-risk adults to increase their earplug use.
Keeping Incarcerated Mothers and their Daughters Together: Girl Scouts beyond Bars.

Children of prison inmates are the hidden victims of their parents' crimes. Like children of divorced or deceased parents, they often show signs of distress caused by the lack of a stable home life and parental separation. Many times they follow their parents' criminal behavior patterns. To keep mothers and daughters connected and to enhance parenting skills, Girl Scouts Beyond Bars involves mothers in their daughters' lives through a unique partnership between a youth services organization and State and local corrections departments. The program has been implemented in Maryland, Florida, Ohio, and Arizona. Although the partnership has demonstrated its ability to increase mother-daughter visitation time, the long-term effects of breaking the cycle of criminal behavior will require a more comprehensive approach on the part of the correctional institution, the Girl Scout Council, and the mothers involved. This program focus first discusses the social and judicial context for this program, then describes the first four programs in operation, and concl,ide.3 with an examination of the broader issues that these programs should confront to effectively change the lives of youths at
Saliency Guided Dictionary Learning for Weakly-Supervised Image Parsing

In this paper, we propose a novel method to perform weakly-supervised image parsing based on the dictionary learning framework. To deal with the challenges caused by the label ambiguities, we design a saliency guided weight assignment scheme to boost the discriminative dictionary learning. More specifically, with a collection of tagged images, the proposed method first conducts saliency detection and automatically infers the confidence for each semantic class to be foreground or background. These clues are then incorporated to learn the dictionaries, the weights, as well as the sparse representation coefficients in the meanwhile. Once obtained the coefficients of a superpixel, we use a sparse representation classifier to determine its semantic label. The approach is validated on the MSRC21, PASCAL VOC07, and VOC12 datasets. Experimental results demonstrate the encouraging performance of our approach in comparison with some state-of-the-arts.
An evaluation of an intelligent home monitoring system

A trial was performed of an intelligent monitoring system which used sensors in the home to identify emergencies by detecting deviations from normal activity patterns. The field trial lasted three months. Twentytwo elderly people agreed to participate. Their ages ranged from early 60s to over 85, with two-thirds in the age range 75-84 years. They lived in four different localities within the UK-Ipswich, Northumberland, Merseyside and Nottingham. A total of 61 alerts was recorded, at a mean frequency about one alert per month per client. Of the 61 alerts generated, 46 were classified as false alerts and the other 15 as genuine, although no real emergencies occurred during the study. Many people in the field trial reported enhanced feelings of safety and security, which could help to stimulate independence and help them to remain living in their own homes. The monitoring system increased the care choices available to elderly people and supported and enhanced the carer's role.
Prevalence of Antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii in South Korean Wild Boar (Sus scrofa coreanus)

Abstract Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite and a commonly encountered pathogen in humans and animals. The wild boar (Sus scrofa coreanus) is considered a good indicator when monitoring environmental contamination by T. gondii. We surveyed the prevalence of antibodies against T. gondii in wild boars from South Korea. Blood samples were collected from 426 wild boars captured in eight provinces of South Korea during the hunting seasons in 2008–12. Antibodies against T. gondii were detected using an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in samples from 152 of boars, indicating an overall antibody prevalence of 36% (95% confidence interval = 31–40%).
Length of intervals between epidemics: evaluating the influence of maternal transfer of immunity

The length of intervals between epidemic outbreaks of infectious diseases is critical in epidemiology. In several species of marine mammals and birds, it is pivotal to also consider the life history of the species of concern, as the contact rate between individuals can have a seasonal flux, for example, due to aggregations during the breeding season. Recently, particular interest has been given to the role of the dynamics of immunity in determining the intervals between epidemics in wild animal populations. One potentially powerful, but often neglected, process in this context is the maternal transfer of immunity. Here, we explore theoretically how the transfer of maternal antibodies can delay the recurrence of epidemics using Phocine Distemper in harbor seals as an example of a system in which epidemic outbreaks are followed by pathogen extinction. We show that the presence of temporarily protected newborns can significantly increase the predicted interval between epidemics, and this effect is strongly dependent on the degree of synchrony in the breeding season. Furthermore, we found that stochasticity in the onset of epidemics in combination with maternally acquired immunity increases the predicted intervals between epidemics even more. These effects arise because newborns with maternal antibodies temporarily boost population level immunity above the threshold of herd immunity, particularly when breeding is synchronous. Overall, our results show that maternal antibodies can have a profound influence on the dynamics of wildlife epidemics, notably in gregarious species such as many marine mammals and seabirds.
Transient Raise of Endothelin-1 Plasma Level and Reduction of Ocular Blood Flow in a Patient with Optic Neuritis

Purpose: To analyze how far an ischemic component might have been involved in optic neuritis. Methods: Case report: a 32-year-old man with symptoms characteristic for optic neuritis underwent extensive clinical, laboratory/serological and vascular examination for systemic associations and vascular involvement. Results: The patient was found to have a temporary ocular blood flow dysregulation and increased plasma endothelin-1 levels which decreased after the acute phase of the optic nerve. Conclusions: We conclude that there might be an ischemic component in this patient with optic neuritis and hypothesize that this ischemic component is at least in part due to a temporarily increased endothelin-1 level.
ASIC Design of Reversible Full Adder / Subtractor Circuits

Reversible logic has become one of the most promising research areas in the past few decades and has found its applications in several technologies; such as low power CMOS, nano-computing and optical computing. Reversible logic gates are widely known to be compatible with future computing technologies which virtually dissipate zero heat. Adders are fundamental building blocks in many computational units. For this reason, simulation of several adder circuits using the reversible gates. This paper implements a design of Adder/ Subtractor using reversible logic gates. The first design is the implementation of two’s complement Adder /Subtractor suitable for signed/unsigned numbers. The Full Adder / Subtractor is then applied to design a reversible 4-bit ripple Adder/Subtractor. /t has been shown in Cadence’s tools that the reversible circuits outperform the irreversible circuits in terms of delay and power dissipation.
Markers to measure immunomodulation in human nutrition intervention studies

Normal functioning of the immune system is crucial to the health of man, and diet is one of the major exogenous factors modulating individual immunocompetence. Recently, nutrition research has focused on the role of foods or specific food components in enhancing immune system responsiveness to challenges and thereby improving health and reducing disease risks. Assessing diet-induced changes of immune function, however, requires a thorough methodological approach targeting a large spectrum of immune system parameters. Currently, no single marker is available to predict the outcome of a dietary intervention on the resistance to infection or to other immune system-related diseases. The present review summarises the immune function assays commonly used as markers in human intervention studies and evaluates their biological relevance (e.g. known correlation with clinically relevant endpoints), sensitivity (e.g. within- and between-subject variation), and practical feasibility. Based on these criteria markers were classified into three categories with high, medium or low suitability. Vaccine-specific serum antibody production, delayed-type hypersensitivity response, vaccine-specific or total secretory IgA in saliva and the response to attenuated pathogens, were classified as markers with high suitability. Markers with medium suitability include natural killer cell cytotoxicity, oxidative burst of phagocytes, lymphocyte proliferation and the cytokine pattern produced by activated immune cells. Since no single marker allows conclusions to be drawn about the modulation of the whole immune system, except for the clinical outcome of infection itself, combining markers with high and medium suitability is currently the best approach to measure immunomodulation in human nutrition intervention studies. It would be valuable to include several immune markers in addition to clinical outcome in future clinical trials in this area, as there is too little evidence that correlates markers with global health improvement.
Real-time per-pixel rendering with stroke textures

For stroke-based renderings, stroke textures are composed of individual strokes in order to cover surface regions. In this paper, we present a real-time rendering technique based on stroke textures which allows interactive variation of the stroke style. This is done by encoding texture look-ups into stroke textures and defining the stroke style in single-stroke textures. At runtime the choice of strokes and stroke style is made using the per-pixel programmability of today's graphics hardware.
Challenges of Teaching Physiology in an Integrated System-Based Curriculum

The transformation of a traditional discipline-based medical curriculum into a system-based integrated curriculum often poses dilemmas to faculty involved in teaching basic medical sciences. This paper examines the challenges of teaching physiology to medical students in a system-based curriculum. Some of these challenges include: defining the core curriculum, curriculum links, sequencing curriculum content, interdisciplinary integration, and student assessment. A number of relevant issues including defining the core physiology content, faculty expertise, and coping and adapting to curriculum transitions are discussed from a personal perspective. For successful implementation of a system-based curriculum and to overcome the challenges, educational issues should be debated in regional and international forums.
The Primary Binding Subunit of the Human Interleukin-4 Receptor Is Also a Component of the Interleukin-13 Receptor (*)

Interleukin (IL)-13 elicits a subset of the biological activities of the related IL-4. The basis of this functional similarity is that their specific cell-surface receptors (called IL-13R and IL-4R) are distinct, yet are complex and share a common subunit(s). The IL-4R primary binding subunit (called IL-4Rα) does not by itself bind IL-13. We show that the ability of IL-13 to partially compete for IL-4 binding to some human cell types depended on co-expression of IL-4R and IL-13R. However, IL-13 binding was always associated with IL-4 binding. Hyperexpression of IL-4Rα on cells expressing both IL-4R and IL-13R decreased their binding affinity for IL-4, abrogated the ability of IL-13 to compete for IL-4 binding, and yet had no effect on IL-13R properties. Anti-human IL-4Rα monoclonal antibodies which blocked the biological function and binding of IL-4 also blocked the function and binding of IL-13. These data show that IL-4Rα is a secondary component of IL-13R.
Factors Regulating Arteriogenesis

Abstract—Growth of collateral vessels is potentially able to preserve structure and a variable degree of function in subtended tissues in the presence of arterial occlusions. The process of transformation of a small arteriole into much larger conductance artery is called arteriogenesis. Small arterioles that interconnect side branches proximal from the arterial occlusion with distal ones experience increased fluid shear stress because of the increased blood flow velocity attributable to the pressure gradient along the bridging collaterals. This activates the endothelium and leads to monocyte adhesion and infiltration with the subsequent production of growth factors and proteases. Preexistent arterioles are essential. Their presence is genetically determined. Arteriogenesis is not organ- or species-specific; coronary or peripheral collateral vessels develop following the same design principles in mice, rats, rabbits, or dogs. In contrast to angiogenesis, arteriogenesis is not dependent on the presence of hypoxia/ischemia.