Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Cross-Cultural Adjustment of Hotel Expatriates in Malaysia the Mediating Effects of Comunication and Interaction

Despite the abundance of research in the area of expatriation, the growth of hotel industry and the increase in the number of people serving abroad in the industry, there remains a relative lack of empirical research investigating the mediating effects of variables such as communication and interaction on expatriate adjustment. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effects of communication and interaction in the adjustment of hotel expatriates in Malaysia. The study also investigates differences in the patterns of adjustment between organizational expatriates (OEs) and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). Besides, relationships between individual, organizational and nonwork factors and expatriate adjustment are determined and the most influential predictors of expatriate adjustment are also identified. The U-Curve Theory and Social Learning Theory guided this thesis, which used a survey to measure the attitudes and opinions of the 203 respondents comprised of expatriates working in the Malaysian hotel industry. Multiple statistical tests were used to analyze data and ensure the reliability and validity of the instruments. Results revealed that communication and interaction partially mediated the relationships between individual, organizational and nonwork variables and expatriate adjustment. The results also showed that OEs and SIEs in the hotel industry did not differ significantly in their adjustment but there were significant differences in the pattern of adjustment of expatriates from different regions. Previous international experience, social support and family adjustment showed significant positive relationships with expatriate adjustment. Meanwhile, social support and family adjustment were the most influential predictors of expatriate adjustment. The findings are significant for the industry and also contributed to new empirical findings to the literature on expatriation and cross-cultural adjustment.
FeedbackBypass: A New Approach to Interactive Similarity Query Processing

In recent years, several methods have been proposed for implementing interactive similarity queries on multimedia databases. Common to all these methods is the idea to exploit user feedback in order to progressively adjust the query parameters and to eventually converge to an “optimal” parameter setting. However, all these methods also share the drawback to “forget” user preferences across multiple query sessions, thus requiring the feedback loop to be restarted for every new query, i.e. using default parameter values. Not only is this proceeding frustrating from the user’s point of view but it also constitutes a significant waste of system resources. In this paper we present FeedbackBypass, a new approach to interactive similarity query processing. It complements the role of relevance feedback engines by storing and maintaining the query parameters determined with feedback loops over time, using a wavelet-based data structure (the Simplex Tree). For each query, a favorable set of query parameters can be determined and used to either “bypass” the feedback loop completely for already-seen queries, or to start the search process from a near-optimal configuration. FeedbackBypass can be combined well with all state-of-the-art relevance feedback techniques working in high-dimensional vector spaces. Its storage requirements scale linearly with the dimensionality of the query space, thus making even sophisticated query spaces amenable. Experimen
Regressions of Breast Carcinoma Syngraft Following Treatment with Piperine in Combination with Thymoquinone

Thymoquinone (TQ) and piperine, the active ingredients in cumin (Nigella sativa) and black pepper (Piper longum), respectively, exhibit various bioactivities including anticancer effects. The aim of the present study is to investigate the antineoplastic activity of a combination of TQ and piperine against breast cancer implanted in mice. The antiproliferative effects of TQ, piperine, and a combination of both agents were tested against mouse epithelial breast cancer cell line (EMT6/P) using MTT assay. The isobolographic method was used to calculate the combination index (CI). Degree of angiogenesis inhibition was detected by measuring vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels in tissue culture for all treatments. EMT6/P cells were inoculated in Balb/C mice and the antitumor effect of TQ, piperine, and their combination was assessed. Changes in tumor size were calculated for all treatments. Tumor histology was examined using the hematoxylin/eosin staining protocol. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) dUTP Nick-End Labeling (TUNEL) colorimetric assay and caspase-3 activity assays were used to detect apoptosis. Serum levels of interferon (INF)-γ, interleukin (IL)-4, IL-2, and IL-10 were measured using ELISA and treatment toxicity was evaluated by measuring serum levels of aspartate transaminase (AST), alanine transaminase (ALT), and creatinine. A clear synergistic antiproliferative interaction between TQ and piperine was observed with CI value of 0.788. The combination therapy resulted in significant reduction in tumor size with percentage cure of 60% and percentage death of 0%. High degrees of apoptosis and geographical necrosis were induced in tumors treated with the combination therapy. Combination therapy caused significant decrease in VEGF expression and increased serum INF-γ levels. Normal serum levels of AST, ALT, and creatinine were observed in tumor-bearing mice treated with the combination therapy. The combination of TQ and piperine acts synergistically to target breast cancer in vitro and in vivo. This novel combination exerts its effect by angiogenesis inhibition, apoptosis induction, and shifting the immune response toward T helper1 response. This combination therapy deserves further investigation (including measurement of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)1α to be used in clinical studies.
Null Results in Brief Null Association between Insulin-like Growth Factors , Insulin-like Growth Factor-binding Proteins , and Prostate Cancer in a Prospective Study

Introduction IGF-1 regulates normal and neoplastic growth in the prostate (1), and higher serum IGF-1 levels (2) appear to increase prostate cancer risk in epidemiological studies. Other aspects of the IGF axis, such as IGFBP-3 (3), inconsistently affect risk. Retrospective studies dominate the literature on this topic, and we, therefore, investigated IGF-I and IGFBP-3 in a pilot study from the Clue I population, a prospective cohort study based on the Washington County Serum Bank in Maryland. We hypothesized that higher serum IGF-1 and lower serum IGFBP-3 are associated with an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.
ChIP—Does It Work Correctly? The Optimization Steps of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation

The proteins interaction with DNA is one of the key regulatory elements of many biological processes; including gene transcription, epigenetic modification or cell differentiation. Immunoprecipitation of chromatin; ChIP; is a method used to assess the interaction of the protein with a DNA sequence, and determines the localization of specific locus in the genome. The main steps of this method are fixation, sonication, immunoprecipitation and analysis of DNA. Although the immunoprecipitation assay is a multipurpose tool applied in biochemistry and biotechnology, it requires optimization. This paper describes several critical parameters that should be taken into account when immunoprecipitation assay is applied.
Learning to Extract API Mentions from Informal Natural Language Discussions

When discussing programming issues on social platforms (e.g, Stack Overflow, Twitter), developers often mention APIs in natural language texts. Extracting API mentions in natural language texts is a prerequisite for effective indexing and searching for API-related information in software engineering social content. However, the informal nature of social discussions creates two fundamental challenges for API extraction: common-word polysemy and sentence-format variations. Common-word polysemy refers to the ambiguity between the API sense of a common word and the normal sense of the word (e.g., append, apply and merge). Sentence-format variations refer to the lack of consistent sentence writing format for inferring API mentions. Existing API extraction techniques fall short to address these two challenges, because they assume distinct API naming conventions (e.g., camel case, underscore) or structured sentence format (e.g., code-like phrase, API annotation, or full API name). In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised machine-learning approach that exploits name synonyms and rich semantic context of API mentions to extract API mentions in informal social text. The key innovation of our approach is to exploit two complementary unsupervised language models learned from the abundant unlabeled text to model sentence-format variations and to train a robust model with a small set of labeled data and an iterative self-training process. The evaluation of 1,205 API mentions of the three libraries (Pandas, Numpy, and Matplotlib) in Stack Overflow texts shows that our approach significantly outperforms existing API extraction techniques based on language-convention and sentence-format heuristics and our earlier machine-learning based method for named-entity recognition.
Changes in myosin isoenzymes, ATPase activity, and contraction duration in rat cardiac muscle with aging can be modulated by thyroxine.

To determine whether the relative decline in cardiac myosin isoenzyme V1 with maturation continues progressively into senescence and whether thyroxine could reverse age-associated changes in the myosin isoenzyme profile and contraction, rats 2, 8, and 24 months old were treated with thyroxine, 6.4 mg/kg, for 7 days. Myosin isoenzymes, Ca2+-myosin ATPase activities, and isometric contractile function were measured in cardiac preparations from thyroxine-treated animals and age-matched controls. Right ventricular hypertrophy did not occur with aging in controls. Thyroxine increased right ventricular weight in each age group compared to the control group. Body weight decreased by 10% in all thyroxine-treated rats. The relative right ventricular V1 isoenzyme content progressively decreased from 75 +/- 1% to 54 +/- 1% and 14 +/- 1% in controls at 2, 8, and 24 months, respectively, and was associated with a reciprocal increase in V3 myosin isoenzyme. Ca2+-myosin ATPase activity also progressively declined monotonically with age in the control rats from 854 +/- 28 nmol Pi/mg prot/min at 2 months to 529 +/- 28 nmol Pi/mg prot/min at 24 months. Thyroxine administration increased right ventricular V1 at each age to 97 +/- 2%, 73 +/- 2%, and 59 +/- 2% at 2, 8, and 24 months, respectively. A thyroxine induced increase in the Ca2+-myosin ATPase activity could be detected only in the 24-month-old animals. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Manifold Representations for Value-Function Approximation

Introduction Reinforcement learning (RL) has been shown to be an effective paradigm for learning control policies for problems with discrete state spaces. For problems with continuous multi-dimensional state spaces, the results are less compelling. When these state spaces can be effectively discretized, traditional techniques can be applied. However, many interesting problems must be discretized into an infeasibly large number of states. In these cases, other techniques must be used. Value-function approximation (VFA) addresses some of the problems of traditional RL algorithms, including that of dealing with continuous state spaces. Although it has been successful in a number of specific applications, it has been shown to fail in the general case, and has been known to fail even on simple problems (Boyan & Moore 1995). We propose a novel approach to value-function approximation based on ideas from topology. We identify a key failing of current techniques, and show how our approach avoids this problem by constructing an explicit model of the state space topology. We begin with a brief description of the problems of current valuefunction approximation techniques. We then motivate our proposed approach, outline its mathematical foundations, and provide results from initial experiments.
Ischemia/reperfusion injury: A review in relation to free tissue transfers

Events during ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury include: neutrophil‐mediated endothelial cytotoxicity and activation, generation of free radicals, triggering of cytokines and chemokines, and activation of adhesion molecules and complement system. This article briefly reviews events occurring during tissue ischemia and reperfusion in relation to free tissue transfers. The consequences of tissue damage at the microcirculatory level are presented. Preventive measures of I/R injury are outlined. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. Microsurgery 24:468–475, 2004.
Cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccine acceptability among rural and urban women in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania

Objective To determine cervical cancer screening coverage and the knowledge, attitudes and barriers toward screening tests among women in rural and urban areas of Tanzania, as well as explore how they view the acceptability of the HPV vaccine and potential barriers to vaccination. Setting A cross-sectional study using interview-administered questionnaires was conducted using multistage random sampling within urban and rural areas in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Participants Women aged 18–55 were asked to participate in the survey. The overall response rate was 97.5%, with a final sample of 303 rural and 272 urban dwelling women. Primary and secondary outcome measures Descriptive and simple test statistics were used to compare across rural and urban strata. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to estimate ORs and 95% CIs. Results Most women (82%) reported they had heard of cervical cancer, while self-reported cervical cancer screening among women was very low (6%). In urban areas, factors associated with screening were: older age (OR=4.14, 95% CI 1.86 to 9.24 for ages 40–49, and OR=8.38, 95% CI 2.10 to 33.4 for >50 years), having health insurance (OR=4.15, 95% CI 1.52 to 11.4), and having knowledge about cervical cancer (OR=5.81, 95% CI 1.58 to 21.4). In contrast, among women residing in rural areas, only condom use (OR=6.44, 95% CI 1.12 to 37.1) was associated with screening. Women from both rural and urban areas had low vaccine-related knowledge; however, most indicated they would be highly accepting if it were readily available (93%). Conclusions The current proportion of women screened for cervical cancer is very low in Kilimanjaro Region, and our study has identified several modifiable factors that could be addressed to increase screening rates. Although best implemented concurrently, the availability of prophylactic vaccination for girls may provide an effective means of prevention if they are unable to access screening in the future.
Conditional Knock-Out of β-Catenin in Postnatal-Born Dentate Gyrus Granule Neurons Results in Dendritic Malformation

Neurons are continuously added to the brain throughout life, and these neurons must develop dendritic arbors and functional connections with existing neurons to be integrated into neuronal circuitry. The molecular mechanisms that regulate dendritic development of newborn neurons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus are still unclear. Here, we show that β-catenin is expressed in newborn granule neurons and in neural progenitor cells in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Specific knock-out of β-catenin in newborn neurons, without affecting β-catenin expression in neural progenitor cells, led to defects in dendritic morphology of these newborn neurons in vivo. Majority of newborn neurons that cannot extend dendrites survive <1 month after they were born. Our results indicate that β-catenin plays an important role in dendritic development of postnatal-born neurons in vivo, and is therefore essential for the neurogenesis in the postnatal brain.
Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment

Although the rational choice approach toward political behavior has been severely criticized, its adherents claim that competing models have failed to offer a more scientific model of political decisionmaking. This measured but provocative book offers precisely that: an alternative way of understanding political behavior based on cognitive research. The authors draw on research in neuroscience, physiology, and experimental psychology to conceptualize habit and reason as two mental states that interact in a delicate, highly functional balance controlled by emotion. Applying this approach to more than fifteen years of election results, they shed light on a wide range of political behavior, including party identification, symbolic politics, and negative campaigning. Remarkably accessible, "Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment" urges social scientists to move beyond the idealistic notion of the purely rational citizen to form a more complete, realistic model that includes the emotional side of human judgment.
CUDA cuts: Fast graph cuts on the GPU

Graph cuts has become a powerful and popular optimization tool for energies defined over an MRF and have found applications in image segmentation, stereo vision, image restoration, etc. The maxflow/mincut algorithm to compute graph-cuts is computationally heavy. The best-reported implementation of graph cuts takes over 100 milliseconds even on images of size 640times480 and cannot be used for real-time applications or when iterated applications are needed. The commodity Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) has emerged as an economical and fast computation co-processor recently. In this paper, we present an implementation of the push-relabel algorithm for graph cuts on the GPU. We can perform over 60 graph cuts per second on 1024times1024 images and over 150 graph cuts per second on 640times480 images on an Nvidia 8800 GTX. The time for each complete graph-cut is about 1 millisecond when only a few weights change from the previous graph, as on dynamic graphs resulting from videos. The CUDA code with a well-defined interface can be downloaded for anyonepsilas use.
Future trends in cystic fibrosis demography in 34 European countries

Median survival has increased in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) during the past six decades, which has led to an increased number of adults with CF. The future impact of changes in CF demographics has not been evaluated. The aim of this study was to estimate the number of children and adults with CF in 34 European countries by 2025. Data were obtained from the European Cystic Fibrosis Society Patient Registry. Population forecasts were performed for countries that have extensive CF population coverage and at least 4 years of longitudinal data by modelling future entering and exiting flows in registry cohorts. For the other countries, population projections were performed based on assumptions from knowledge of current CF epidemiology. Western European countries’ forecasts indicate that an increase in the overall number of CF patients by 2025, by approximately 50%, corresponds to an increase by 20% and by 75% in children and adults, respectively. In Eastern European countries the projections suggest a predominant increase in the CF child population, although the CF adult population would also increase. It was concluded that a large increase in the adult CF population is expected in the next decade. A significant increase in adult CF services throughout Europe is urgently required. A large increase in the number of CF adults is expected by 2025 that will require increase in adult CF care services http://ow.ly/INkvb
Gouvernement des entreprises en Afrique : importation ou hybridation des modèles occidentaux ? : analyse des pratiques au Sénégal

Partant d’une part, du constat selon lequel tous les travaux sur le gouvernement des entreprises considerent que la propriete de l’entreprise (actionnariale ou symbolique) est le fondement de la souverainete et donc de la legitimite du dirigeant et d’autre part, du fait que trois definitions de la propriete coexistent au Senegal, ce travail cherche a etablir comment un dirigeant legitime-t-il ses pratiques en matiere de gouvernement des entreprises dans le contexte senegalais de multi-references a la notion de propriete. En effet, sa position de carrefour des civilisations du monde donne au Senegal une plethore de mecanismes de regulation des affaires et un large eventail de sources de droits de propriete. Compte tenu de ces multiples references a la propriete comment peut-on definir le gouvernement des entreprises au Senegal? L’objectif est d’observer la rationalite qui est en œuvre dans les pratiques de gouvernement des entreprises senegalaises en particulier et africaines en general. Pour ce faire, l’evolution des pratiques de gouvernement des hommes dans les entreprises africaines est questionnee et suivie pas a pas pour identifier, decrypter, decrire et analyser les referentiels sur lesquels les dirigeants des entreprises africaines s’appuient pour justifier leurs pratiques des entreprises. Nous avons privilegie l’analyse des representations des dirigeants des entreprises senegalaises. Les donnees du terrain ont montre que les pratiques au Senegal sont le resultat de bricolages que les dirigeants des entreprises effectuent en puisant dans les differents modeles de gouvernance se referant a des formes de propriete differentes, les elements qui les arrangent. Cet « arrangement » institutionnel definit des hybridations par emprunts sans aboutir a un modele hybride unique. C’est un bricolage qui concilie l’efficacite economique et la solidarite communautaire ou clanique en formalisant les pratiques fondees sur la confiance et le controle (la premiere n’excluant pas le dernier). On est non pas en presence d’un nouveau modele de gouvernement d’entreprises mais d’une matrice de pratiques de gouvernement d’entreprises qui se voit assigner un role paradoxal. D’une part, il en emerge un champ de pratiques inedites, d’autre part, cette matrice fait entrevoir le maintien de pratiques s’appliquant souvent de maniere isolee selon les situations de gestion.