Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stress and feather pecking in laying hens in relation to housing conditions

1. Possible association between high rates of feather pecking and increased stress were investigated in laying hens. 2. From week 19 to week 30 after hatching, 16 groups of 11 hens (white Lohman Selected Leghorn hybrids) were kept in pens with or without long-cut straw as foraging material and provided with food in the form of pellets or mash. 3. Stress was assessed by egg production, weight gain, tonic immobility (TI), heterophil/lymphocyte (H/L) ratio and antibody titres to sheep red blood cells (SRBC), tetanus toxoid (TT) and human serum albumin (HSA). 4. Provision of foraging material and food form influenced feather pecking. Rates of feather pecking were highest in groups housed without straw and fed on pellets. 5. Egg production was reduced in pens without straw but not affected by food form. Both the duration of TI and H/L ratios were influenced by provision of foraging material and food form. TI was longer and H/L ratios were increased in hens housed without straw and in those fed on pellets. Antibody titers to SRBC and TT were lower in pens without straw than with straw but not influenced by food form. 6. In conclusion, foraging material and food form affected both feather pecking and indicators of stress, suggesting that feather pecking in laying hens is associated with stress.
Explaining Donor Coordination: Determinants of Competition, Collusion and Coordination in the Provision of Foreign Aid

Donor proliferation and the fragmentation of aid delivery is an important problem besetting foreign aid policy. Drawing on our previous work, we study lead donorship as a specific form of coordination in which donors collude in the provision of aid for private gains. We explore the determinants of lead donorship drawing on the logic of coordination in private versus public goods scenarios of foreign aid. We expect that collusion is more likely in the presence of strong economic interests of donor countries, and after a recipient country underwent regime transition, and less likely in the presence of disasters and civil war. We test our hypotheses on bilateral aid data covering the years 1970-2010. We find a strong relationship between oil exports to donor countries, total imports from donor countries, and colonial history.
The Influence of Innovativeness on On-Site Smartphone Use Among American Travelers: Implications for Context-Based Push Marketing

ABSTRACT This study investigates the relationships between traveler innovativeness traits and the patterns of smartphone use during the experiential stage of travel. Using data collected from 1126 travelers residing in the United States (US), it was identified that tourism and technology innovativeness have significant positive effects on on-site use of smartphones for trip management, social networking, and searching deals, online reviews, and push recommendations. Technology innovativeness also influences smartphone use for navigation within destinations. The results suggest that highly innovative travelers are open to recommendations and influences when making on-site decisions, making them an effective target for context-based marketing.
ModelLight: Model-Based Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Traffic Signal Control

Traffic signal control is of critical importance for the effective use of transportation infrastructures. The rapid increase of vehicle traffic and changes in traffic patterns make traffic signal control more and more challenging. Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based algorithms have demonstrated their potential in dealing with traffic signal control. However, most existing solutions require a large amount of training data, which is unacceptable for many real-world scenarios. This paper proposes a novel model-based meta-reinforcement learning framework (ModelLight) for traffic signal control. Within ModelLight, an ensemble of models for road intersections and the optimization-based meta-learning method are used to improve the data efficiency of an RL-based traffic light control method. Experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that ModelLight can outperform state-of-the-art traffic light control algorithms while substantially reducing the number of required interactions with the real-world environment.
Integral Framework of Software Testing Platform for General Support Equipment

Support equipment software is integrated all kinds of instruments, equipments and modules. It has the characteristic of high reliability, strong real-time and interactivity. So it is the most difficult software to test. In this paper, after fully understanding these characteristic, we put forward a software testing model-GSESTM (general support equipment software testing model) and the integral framework of software testing platform for general support equipment. It is proved by the experiment that the functions provided by the testing platform can basically satisfy the requirement of software testing; it is provided a good platform for embedded software testing.
Price Discovery Function of Index Futures in China: Evidence from Daily Closing Prices

Abstract Price discovery is one of the main functions of stock index futures. Using the daily closing prices of the CSI 300 index and its index futures from April 2010 to April 2012, this paper applies a vector error correction model (VECM) and an impulse response function to conduct an empirical analysis on the price discovery function of index futures in China. This paper has the following four findings: (1) a solid cointegration relationship between the CSI 300 index and its index futures exists in the long run; (2) when prices deviate from the long-term equilibrium, the stock index reverses weakly, while the reversal of index futures is much stronger; (3) the daily lead-lag relationship between the prices of the CSI 300 index and its index futures contracts is not significant in the short run; (4) shocks from the spot market have a lasting impact upon the futures market, but not vice versa, due to the limited short-term adjustment ability of the spot market.
Effects of Vitamin A Supplementation on Immune Responses and Correlation with Clinical Outcomes

SUMMARY Vitamin A supplementation to preschool children is known to decrease the risks of mortality and morbidity from some forms of diarrhea, measles, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, and malaria. These effects are likely to be the result of the actions of vitamin A on immunity. Some of the immunomodulatory mechanisms of vitamin A have been described in clinical trials and can be correlated with clinical outcomes of supplementation. The effects on morbidity from measles are related to enhanced antibody production and lymphocyte proliferation. Benefits for severe diarrhea could be attributable to the functions of vitamin A in sustaining the integrity of mucosal epithelia in the gut, whereas positive effects among HIV-infected children could also be related to increased T-cell lymphopoiesis. There is no conclusive evidence for a direct effect of vitamin A supplementation on cytokine production or lymphocyte activation. Under certain circumstances, vitamin A supplementation to infants has the potential to improve the antibody response to some vaccines, including tetanus and diphtheria toxoids and measles. There is limited research on the effects of vitamin A supplementation to adults and the elderly on their immune function; currently available data provide no consistent evidence for beneficial effects. Additional studies with these age groups are needed.
Role of Kupffer cells in arresting circulating tumor cells and controlling metastatic growth in the liver

Metastasis to the liver is a common event in clinical oncology. Blood‐borne tumor cells (TCs) arriving to the liver sinusoids run into a special vascular bed. The lining of liver sinusoids is shared by Kupffer cells (KCs) and endothelial cells. KCs, liver‐fixed macrophages, are responsible for detection and removal of “non‐self” particles. To investigate their role in arresting blood‐borne TCs and controlling tumor growth, we injected a syngeneic colon carcinoma cell line into a mesenteric vein of two groups of rats; one group was without Kupffer cells and the other normal controls. We removed the liver of these animals at different time intervals and performed immunohistochemical analysis with monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) against our tumor cell line, three macrophage subpopulations, natural killer cells, and B and T lymphocytes. Additionally, we showed in vitro spontaneous cytotoxicity of KCs against our tumor cell line. Results suggest that KCs play a relevant role in arresting circulating TCs at the liver sinusoid, although it is limited to a small number of malignant cells. They also seem to play a major role in clearing neoplastic cells from the liver parenchyma, in controlling tumor growth in the very early stages of metastatic development, and in modulating the host immune response to cancer cells.
An online calibration method for astigmatism-based 3D particle tracking in complex living tissue

In this paper we present an online calibration method that adjusts astigmatism-based 3D particle tracking techniques to the aberrations induced by the refractive index mismatch, so that they are applicable to complex tissue. As opposed to existing techniques, our method determines the aberration directly from the acquired 2D image stream and requires no prior calibration. We analyze the influence of the refractive index mismatch on fluorescent beads immobilized in Mowiol and establish an axial model that describes the induced aberrations. By exploiting particle movement and the redundancy introduced by the astigmatism we show that it is possible to estimate the current axial model independently of the imaging depth. We evaluate our algorithm on semi-synthetic image streams and demonstrate that the bias, due to the refractive index mismatch, can be decreased. We obtain our results using a spinning disk confocal setup. However, our method also applies to wide-field imaging without limitations.
Waveband-switchable SOA ring laser constructed with a phase modulator loop mirror filter

An electrically tunable multiwavelength source has been developed using a birefringence-based optical comb filter in a semiconductor optical amplifier ring laser. The filter is constructed with an electrooptic phase modulator placed inside a fiber loop mirror. By controlling the birefringence of the modulator through the applied bias, the radio-frequency power, or the modulation frequency, we achieve a continuous shift of the spectral comb to access different interleaved wavebands. Electrical waveband switching has been successfully demonstrated for 21 wavelengths at 100-GHz grid spacing with an optical signal-to-noise ratio over 40 dB.
Why do middle managers in hotels burn out

This paper details the results of research undertaken on middle management burn‐out in hotels within a 50‐mile radius of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. The research explores the effect of variables such as gender, marital status, organizational and familial support on the degree of perceived burn‐out experienced by middle‐level managers associated with front‐line departments (reception, food and beverage service, housekeeping, etc.) in hotels. The study found that women experience a higher degree of burn‐out than men, as do single (unmarried) managers. Managers who perceive less family support also experience higher levels of burn‐out. A comparison of this study with similar studies undertaken in 1989, 1990 and 1993 shows that burn‐out has become more of a management problem. The 1999 figures show an average increase of 32 per cent from 1989 across the three dimensions of the burn‐out inventory used in this study.
Real-time Java from an automated code generation perspective

In this paper we investigate the fitness criteria of programming languages used as the target platform in a model-driven engineering process that includes automated code generation. We are in particular interested in the fitness of the Real-Time Specification for Java, which combines the Java object-oriented semantics with a fairly rich concurrency model. We contend that the impact of the target programming language for the development of highly-critical real-time systems is becoming smaller and smaller as new model-driven engineering frameworks emerge.
Lessons from Latin America's neo‐liberal experiment: An overview of labour and social policies since the 1980s

Introducing the six country studies that follow, this analytical overview shows that the social and labour policies inspired by the Washington Consensus – implemented across much of Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s – consistently failed to deliver the expected improvements. Labour flexibilization, decentralization of collective bargaining, pension privatization and other measures to increase market provision of welfare typically resulted in growing informality, widening inequalities and shrinking social protection coverage, while also failing to stimulate employment growth. But the lessons have been learned: many such policies have recently been reconsidered and there are signs that a more balanced policy approach may be emerging in Latin America.
Return performance, Cointegration and short run dynamics of Islamic and non-Islamic indices: evidence from the US and Malaysia during the subprime crisis

This paper studies the returns difference, the long run relationship, and the short run dynamics of Islamic indices compared to non-Islamic indices in three sub periods as well as the overall period. The sub periods studied are the pre-, post and during the recent subprime crisis. The results indicate that there is no significant difference in mean returns between the Islamic indices as well as their counterparts. In terms of long run relationship or cointegration it is found that the Islamic indices were cointegrated in the pre-crisis as well as post crisis period. On the other hand the conventional indices were not cointegrated in any of the sub periods. The short run causality between the Islamic indices is a unidirectional from DJIMI towards HJ in all the sub-periods. Similarly, the conventional indices have a unidirectional causality running from DJINA towards KLCI except during the financial crisis where a bidirectional relationship exists. The result here suggests that the screening criteria of Islamic indices eliminate doubtful stocks before they fail is not accurate. In other words, if the Islamic indices screening criteria have any benefit in identifying the failing stocks they would have at least minimized the effect of the financial crisis. Therefore, investing in Islamic indices has no superiority over the conventional index in terms of performance. However, Islamic investment might have the peace of mind some investors are looking for.
Acute inactivity impairs glycemic control but not blood flow to glucose ingestion.

PURPOSE Insulin-stimulated increases in skeletal muscle blood flow play a role in glucose disposal. Indeed, 7 d of aerobic exercise in patients with Type 2 diabetes increased blood flow responses to an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and improved insulin sensitivity. More recent work suggests that reduced daily physical activity impairs glycemic control (GC) in healthy individuals. Herein, we sought to determine whether an acute reduction in daily activity (from >10,000 to <5000 steps per day) for 5 d (RA5) in healthy individuals reduced insulin-stimulated blood flow and GC in parallel and if a 1-d return to activity (RTA1) improved these outcomes. METHODS OGTT were performed as a stimulus to increase insulin in 14 healthy, recreationally active men (24 ± 1.1 yr) at baseline, RA5, and RTA1. Measures of insulin sensitivity (Matsuda index) and femoral and brachial artery blood flow were made during the OGTT. Free-living measures of GC including peak postprandial glucose (peak PPG) were also made via continuous glucose monitoring. RESULTS Femoral and brachial artery blood flow increased during the OGTT but neither was significantly impacted by changes in physical activity (P > 0.05). However, insulin sensitivity was decreased by RA5 (11.3 ± 1.5 to 8.0 ± 1.0, P < 0.05). Likewise, free-living GC measures of peak PPG (113 ± 3 to 123 ± 5 mg·dL(-1), P < 0.05) was significantly increased at RA5. Interestingly, insulin sensitivity and GC as assessed by peak PPG were not restored after RTA1 (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Thus, acute reductions in physical activity impaired GC and insulin sensitivity; however, blood flow responses to an OGTT were not affected. Further, a 1-d return to activity was not sufficient to normalize GC after 5 d of reduced daily physical activity.
Sleep apnea pre-screening on neonates and children with shoe integrated sensors

The aim of this paper is to provide a high level architectural description of portable sleep apnea screening system. Proposed patient mobile monitoring solution increases their mobility, flexibility and measures vital data with minimal patient disturbance with increased reliability. Data is acquired with synchronous dual multi-wavelength optical sensors, placed on the foot. Movement artefacts are reduced with the correlation of accelerometer readings. Results are sent over the wireless link to the smartphone for further diagnosis which gives also feedback to the end user. Because of the limitation of the measuring device dimensions and computational power some of the signal processing is done on the smartphone. Combining different latest technology achievements makes our proposed solution suitable for neonates and children for sleep apnea pre-screening.
Catering to Investors through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

This study investigates how banks design financial products to cater to yield-seeking investors. We focus on a large market of investment products targeted exclusively at households: retail structured products. These products typically offer a high return under their best-case scenario—the headline rate—that is nested in a complex payoff formula. Using a text analysis of the payoff formulas of the 55,000 products issued in Europe from 2002 to 2010, we measure product headline rates, complexity, and risk. Over this period, product headline rates depart from the prevailing interest rates as the latter decrease, complexity increases, and risky products become more common. In the cross section, the headline rate of a product is positively correlated with its level of complexity and risk. Higher headline rate, more complex, and riskier products appear more profitable to the banks distributing them. Our results suggest that financial complexity is a by-product of banks catering to yield-seeking investors.
Are Territorial Rating Models Outdated in Residential Property Insurance Markets? Evidence from the Florida Property Insurance Market

The fundamental shift in rating methodology from historical loss costs to catastrophe modeling for windstorm coverage calls into question the accuracy of rates developed using rating territories. Using premiums and modeled average annual loss (AAL) estimates from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens) in Florida, this article analyzes the use of distance to coast (DtC) as a rating variable in providing coverage for the windstorm peril in homeowners insurance. Catastrophe models used to generate AAL costs do not rely on the same application of the law of large numbers as using historical loss costs and thus allows for more granular pricing of the windstorm peril. The results show that DtC, a rating variable that is property specific, more closely aligns premiums and AALs than territorial rating, and allows more granular pricing of the windstorm peril. More granular risk based pricing provides better incentives for homeowners regarding location and mitigation choices and may help reduce aggregate exposure to windstorm damages in the long run.
PROBLEMS OF EARLY INFANCY

Subject matter includes the multiple discipline approach to most of the medical and health problems of this period. Reporting and publication of transactions of such conferences is an important contribution to our knowledge and should be one of the purposes of the conference in order to reach a larger audience than can attend. The editor has done a good job of keeping the text short and clear, especially the discussion.
Calculating Rural‐Urban Food Price Differentials from Unit Values in Household Expenditure Surveys: A Comparison with Existing Methods and a New Procedure

While purchasing power parity (PPP) between countries has received a great deal of attention, PPP calculations within countries have received less attention. The idea that one unit of currency has the same purchasing power in all regions in large countries is false. This paper addresses this limitation by proposing a methodology for calculating rural-urban PPP in India. The paper introduces a concept of item-specific PPP that exploits the analogy with an item-specific equivalence scale. The methodology relies on demographically-varying preferences to estimate PPP. The results underline the need to incorporate spatial differences in PPP calculations in countries with heterogeneous preferences. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.
Recruiting high‐tech managerial talents in China: an institutional perspective

Purpose – The paper is part of the growing research on human resource management (HRM) in foreign multinational companies (MNCs) operating in the PRC. The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical role played by the host contextual factors on recruitment policies adoption for foreign high‐tech corporations operating in the PRC. In particular, the paper analyses the influence of institutional factors on “talent recruitment” and related policies and practices. In this perspective, the institutionalization theory was instrumental in explaining the degree to which recruitment policies and practices have been adapted, or not, to the host country environment or are more similar to those of multinational's headquarters and related standardised practices. The paper reviews the diverse studies related to people management in China and it stresses the lack of research for talents recruitment and selection in the PRC despite the critical situation in the local labour market.Design/methodology/approach – This .
Housing Equity as a Buffer: Evidence from UK Households

The decision to extract home equity is examined using household-level data for the United Kingdom, 1993 to 2003. At its peak during the period, around one in ten homeowners withdrew equity per year. The paper finds that the equity withdrawal decision conforms to predictions from the standard life-cycle framework and models that predict its use as a financial buffer. The paper also estimates responses to the large house price appreciation and significant reductions in mortgage rates seen during the period. This has implications for the size of the ‘collateral channel’ and credit channel models of monetary policy.