Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of online consumer reviews: The influence of valence, reviewer ethnicity, social distance and source trustworthiness

Purpose Extant research addressing how consumers respond to electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) remains limited. Even less attention has been devoted to examining the trustworthiness of consumer reviewers with different ethnic backgrounds. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of reviewer ethnicity, review valence and social distance (to three different ethnic groups) on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention toward a product evaluated by reviewers of three ethnic backgrounds. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a 2 (review valence)×3 (reviewer ethnicity) design; 398 participants were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions. A mock product-review web page for each study condition was created to manipulate review valence and reviewer ethnicity. Findings Results show that while review valence, reviewer ethnicity and social distance each had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, only review valence had an influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. The interaction between reviewer ethnicity and review valence also had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention. Originality/value The current study is the first to apply social distance theory to explain cross-cultural perception of trust, as it extends and updates the original social distance scale to broaden its empirical relevance to contemporary society via an eWOM marketing context. As social distance is a fluid and timely concept to study the diverse ethnic cultural environment, the current findings carry strong implications to future research in a wide variety of digital communication and marketing contexts, among others.
Long-term changes in soil phosphorus status related to P budgets under maize monoculture and mineral P fertilization

Monitoring soil phosphorus (P) changes under continuous cropping over decades is an important agronomic and environmental issue. The aim was to determine soil P dynamics in the plough layer as a function of cumulative P budgets (Bcum) across extended cropping periods (7, 12, and 17 yr) for four rates of mineral P fertilization. This field experiment was established in 1975 on a slightly alkaline, sandy loamy soil (luvic Arenosol). Soil P was assessed by three P tests: the concentration of P ions in solution (Cp), Olsen (POl), and Mehlich-3 P (PM3). Annual P budget was calculated as P applied minus P exported by the grain. The Bcum values were the sum of annual P budgets. Bcum, Cp, POl, and PM3 values were significantly influenced by cropping periods and P rates. The nine combinations (3 periods · 3 soil P tests) of P dynamics versus Bcum were described by linear regressions. For each soil P test, all means fell on the same regression line for the three cropping periods indicating that the P transformation rates were similar for positive and negative P budgets. Relationships depended on soil test P but did not vary for cropping periods. For this specific soil, we calculated that a change in P budget of 100 kg ⁄ha would change Cp, POl, and PM3 by 0.11 mg ⁄L, 3.3 mg ⁄kg, and 14 mg ⁄kg, respectively. Although this result needs to be confirmed and extended to other soil types, we conclude that a single year of soil sampling after a decade of experimentation would be sufficient to establish the relationship between soil P status and P budgets.
Effect of Noise on BER of BPSK , QPSK , DPSK , and QAM Modulation Techniques

—This paper presents the theoretical background of digital modulation and evaluates the performance of BPSK, QPSK, and QAM modulation techniques with respect to Bit Error Rate in presence of Gaussian, Rayleigh, and Rician noise. The primary objective of any communication system is to receive the data with minimum errors as the errors degrades the system performance. Bit Error Rate (BER) is an important factor that decides the performance of different modulation techniques. This paper focusses on the effect of different types of noise for the above mentioned modulation schemes under AWGN channel. The complete system is implemented in MATLAB Simulink Environment.
Categorization Method Research for Medical Image Using Gaussian Mixture Model

The paper presents an approach for medical image categorization based-on Gaussian mixture model in CBMIR system. The medical image categorization is a very complicated problem because the characteristics on texture, shape and intensity among the images of different parts of body are distinct differences. First, we extract the characteristic vectors of the training image set. Then, we choose the optimum features which can distinguish different classes and the same class better. After getting GMM parameters by EM algorithm, we categorize the test images. The experimental results indicate that the method performs well on CT image categorization.
Dementia Reconsidered: the Person Comes First

Tom Kitwood Open University Press, £14.95, pp 176 ISBN 0335198554 ! [][1] Rating: ! [Graphic][2] The burden of dementia is borne not only by people with dementia, but by their carers, both informal and professional. The major direct financial costs are managed by the welfare sector, through the provision of community services and residential care, whereas indirect costs are largely attributed to informal carers. Advances in care practices would be of considerable benefit. The health sector has had its main impact in the area of dementia by providing skills and expertise necessary for comprehensive, holistic assessments. Kitwood challenges this medical model, which he labels as … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif [2]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif
Schedules for dynamic bidirectional simulations on parallel computers

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Andreas Griewank for his guidance and supervision while working on this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Wolfgang E. Nagel for giving me the opportunity to work on this subject and for all the support he has given me over the last five years. Special thanks are due to Dr. Andrea Walther for all of the helpful discussions we had and hints and support she gave me. Moreover, I am indebted to Rachel Lichten, John Shaw and Ellen Smith who helped me to bring this thesis into shape. Also, I thank all of my colleagues at the Centre for High Performance Computing for the nice and pleasant working atmosphere. On the nonmathematical side, I want to thank my parents very much for all of the lifelong support and help they have given me. Last but not least, my special thanks go to Catrin Lorenz for her patience, understanding and continuous support, without which I would not have been able to write this thesis.
Efficient motion vector outlier removal for global motion estimation

Because motion vector based global motion estimation methods have much lower complexity than pixel based ones, they are widely used in the compressed domain to estimate the camera motion in video sequences. However, the accuracy of these motion vector based methods largely depends on the quality of the input motion vector field. In real applications, many outlier motion vectors are present because of noise or foreground objects. In this paper, a novel tensor voting based motion vector outlier removal method is proposed to improve the quality of the input motion vector field. First, motion vectors are encoded by second order tensors. A 2-D voting process is then used to smooth the motion vector field. Finally, the smoothed motion vector field is compared to the input one to detect outliers. The experimental results on synthetic and real data show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Incorporating Intermediate-Severity Disturbances in Oak Stand Development

We propose a conceptual framework for the development of closed canopy oak (Quercus) stands that incorporates the influence of intermediate-severity canopy disturbance events, provides for the possibility of multiple developmental pathways, and does not narrowly define an endpoint given the stochastic nature of natural disturbances. The proposed model differs from the current oak stand development model in three primary ways. First, our proposed model acknowledges more than one mixed stage of development after an intermediate-severity disturbance based on the pre-disturbance condition and disturbance agent. Second, we suggest that these discrete mixed stages may progress in their development along different pathways and stands may be structurally dissimilar when they reach the complex stage. Third, we contend that the complex stage of development in oak stands is not usually achieved in the absence of the mixed stage because the return interval of these events is shorter than the period required for oak stands to reach the complex developmental stage via gap-phase processes alone. Our proposed framework for oak stand development should aid decision making in oak-dominated systems.
Antitubercular Agent Delamanid and Metabolites as Substrates and Inhibitors of ABC and Solute Carrier Transporters

ABSTRACT Delamanid (Deltyba, OPC-67683) is the first approved drug in a novel class of nitro-dihydro-imidazooxazoles developed for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Patients with tuberculosis require treatment with multiple drugs, several of which have known drug-drug interactions. Transporters regulate drug absorption, distribution, and excretion; therefore, the inhibition of transport by one agent may alter the pharmacokinetics of another, leading to unexpected adverse events. Therefore, it is important to understand how delamanid affects transport activity. In the present study, the potencies of delamanid and its main metabolites as the substrates and inhibitors of various transporters were evaluated in vitro. Delamanid was not transported by the efflux ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters P-glycoprotein (P-gp; MDR1/ABCB1) and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP/ABCG2), solute carrier (SLC) transporters, organic anion-transporting polypeptides, or organic cation transporter 1. Similarly, metabolite 1 (M1) was not a substrate for any of these transporters except P-gp. Delamanid showed no inhibitory effect on ABC transporters MDR1, BCRP, and bile salt export pump (BSEP; ABCB11), SLC transporters, or organic anion transporters. M1 and M2 inhibited P-gp- and BCRP-mediated transport but did so only at the 50% inhibitory concentrations (M1, 4.65 and 5.71 μmol/liter, respectively; M2, 7.80 and 6.02 μmol/liter, respectively), well above the corresponding maximum concentration in plasma values observed following the administration of multiple doses in clinical trials. M3 and M4 did not affect the activities of any of the transporters tested. These in vitro data suggest that delamanid is unlikely to have clinically relevant interactions with drugs for which absorption and disposition are mediated by this group of transporters.
Simulation algorithms for inductive effects

Advancement in VLSI and MEMS technologies necessitates accurate prediction of inductive e ects. In the VLSI world, ever increasing VLSI circuit speeds pose challenges for accurate modeling of on-chip inductive e ects and their e ects on circuit performance. In this scenario, minimizing inductive e ects is a challenging issue. Additionally, in the MEMS eld, several new MEMS designs generate large forces using magnetic elds combined with highly permeable materials. Accurate and e cient inductance solvers are essential for the analysis and developments of such devices. This thesis describes several algorithms for accurate simulation of inductive e ects. Part I deals with the analysis of on-chip interconnect inductive e ects. It rst investigates the interconnect coupling inductance and its e ect on circuit crosstalk. The e ect of the nite conductivity semiconductor substrates on inductive coupling and signal integrity is simulated. Limitations of standard approaches for estimating coupling inductance are examined. A method for the reduction of the coupling inductance is also proposed. Part I then analyzes the minimization of the interconnect self inductance, and therefore, reducing its e ect on signal delay and delay skew. Di erent techniques for reducing interconnect self inductance are compared. The proposed less area-consuming technique with very little area penalty are more e ective at minimizing self-inductance than the commonly used dedicated ground planes technique. In the second part of the thesis, a fast algorithm to e ciently extract the frequency dependent inductance for 3-D structures that contain permeable materials is developed. The method uses a magnetic surface charge formulation, with very e cient techniques for evaluating the required integrals. This approach avoids numerical cancellation errors by calculating elds outside of the permeable material. The resulting system is solved iteratively using a preconditioned GMRES method to allow the analysis of complicated structures. Thesis Supervisor: Jacob K. White Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Polyol pathway‐related skeletal muscle contractile and morphological abnormalities in diabetic rats

This study examined the effect of inhibition of aldose reductase, the first enzyme in the polyol pathway, on fast and slow twitch skeletal muscle morphology and function in streptozotocin‐induced diabetes in rats. There was a preventative investigation with diabetes duration of 4 months, and a reversal investigation where treatment was given for 2 months following an untreated period of 2 months. For slow twitch soleus muscle, contractions were prolonged by diabetes, and this was partially prevented but not reversed by treatment. Relaxation was profoundly slowed, and both prevention and reversal ameliorated the changes. Diabetes had minimal effects on tension production for soleus. However, for fast twitch extensor digitorum longus, although there was little effect on speed‐related contractile parameters, tetanic tension production was progressively reduced with diabetes duration. This effect was antagonized by treatment. Soleus fatigue resistance was markedly reduced by diabetes, but restored to normal by treatment. There was a reduction in oxidative enzyme staining (succinic dehydrogenase), and capillary‐fibre ratio, both of which were ameliorated by aldose reductase inhibition. Mean soleus fibre area was reduced after 4 months of diabetes, and this was prevented but not reversed by treatment. Fibre area was also reduced in extensor digitorum longus, particularly for fast glycolytic fibres. There was a small amelioration with treatment. It is concluded that enhanced polyol pathway activity makes a contribution to diabetic myopathy, and that aldose reductase inhibitors can prevent this by actions on muscle fibres and their vascular supply.
Increased Plasma Renin During Renin Inhibition: Studies with a Novel Immunoassay

The response of renin release to the administration of renin inhibitors cannot be studied with conventional enzymatic methods used to measure plasma renin. In the present experiments, a novel multirange enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for human and primate renin was used to investigate the changes in plasma immunoreactive renin after renin inhibition. A potent and long-acting statine-containing renin inhibitor, CGP 29 287, was injected in conscious marmosets after mild or severe sodium depletion. In mildly sodium-depleted marmosets, CGP 29 287 (0.1 mg/kg i.v.) reduced mean arterial blood pressure and completely inhibited plasma renin activity for up to 30 minutes. This response was associated with a transient increase in plasma immunoreactive renin concentration. After a dose of 1.0 mg/kg i.v. , the reduction of mean arterial pressure and the complete inhibition of plasma renin activity persisted for up to 120 minutes. These effects were accompanied by a sustained increase in plasma immunoreactive renin concentration. In severely sodium-depleted marmosets, CGP 29 287 (1.0 mg/kg i.v.) induced a marked fall in systolic blood pressure and complete inhibition of plasma renin activity within 30 minutes of injection. Plasma immunoreactive renin levels increased to 257% of pretreatment values. The converting-enzyme inhibitor enalaprilat (2 mg/kg i.v.) induced a fall in systolic blood pressure of similar magnitude, which was accompanied by an increase in plasma renin activity. Levels of plasma immunoreactive renin increased to 210% of pretreatment values. Hydralazine (0.2 mg/kg i.v.) did not increase plasma renin activity or plasma immunoreactive renin levels despite a comparable hypotensive effect. These results indicate that inhibition of renin or converting enzyme induces a similar increase in renin release that probably is mediated by a common mechanism — the withdrawal of the negative feedback suppression by circulating angiotensin II.
Cardiac Overexpression of Myotrophin Triggers Myocardial Hypertrophy and Heart Failure in Transgenic Mice*[boxs]

Cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure remain leading causes of death in the United States. Many studies have suggested that, under stress, myocardium releases factors triggering protein synthesis and stimulating myocyte growth. We identified and cloned myotrophin, a 12-kDa protein from hypertrophied human and rat hearts. Myotrophin (whose gene is localized on human chromosome 7q33) stimulates myocyte growth and participates in cellular interaction that initiates cardiac hypertrophy in vitro. In this report, we present data on the pathophysiological significance of myotrophin in vivo, showing the effects of overexpression of cardio-specific myotrophin in transgenic mice in which cardiac hypertrophy occurred by 4 weeks of age and progressed to heart failure by 9-12 months. This hypertrophy was associated with increased expression of proto-oncogenes, hypertrophy marker genes, growth factors, and cytokines, with symptoms that mimicked those of human cardiomyopathy, functionally and morphologically. This model provided a unique opportunity to analyze gene clusters that are differentially up-regulated during initiation of hypertrophy versus transition of hypertrophy to heart failure. Importantly, changes in gene expression observed during initiation of hypertrophy were significantly different from those seen during its transition to heart failure. Our data show that overexpression of myotrophin results in initiation of cardiac hypertrophy that progresses to heart failure, similar to changes in human heart failure. Knowledge of the changes that take place as a result of overexpression of myotrophin at both the cellular and molecular levels will suggest novel strategies for treatment to prevent hypertrophy and its progression to heart failure.
Phosphorylation-Independent Desensitization of G Protein-Coupled Receptors?

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are involved in a multitude of signaling processes and respond to a wide range of ligands. The activity of GPCRs is subject to three principal modes of regulation: desensitization, trafficking, and down-regulation. Desensitization is defined as a loss in the responsiveness of a signaling system. The generally established paradigm for GPCR desensitization involves receptor phosphorylation by GPCR kinases (GRKs), initiated by agonist-induced conformational changes in the receptor or by kinases activated by specific signaling pathways. GRKs have several interaction domains and may be able to contribute to receptor desensitization through mechanisms that do not involve the kinase activity of GRK. Pao and Benovic discuss some of these interactions and their relevance for the regulation of GPCR signaling.
920 kHz, low-repetition rate, mode-locked Er-doped fiber ring laser at 1534 nm

We describe a 920 kHz, low-repetition rate, mode-locked Er-doped fiber ring laser. Transform-limited pulse duration of 813 fs, assuming a Gaussian pulse shape is obtained with output pulse energy of 4.3 nJ at 1534 nm. This is the lowest repetition rate in the fundamental mode ever reported to our knowledge.
Organic acids in liquid feed for pigs - palatability and feed intake

Fermented liquid feed is well known for its health promoting effects on piglets. High levels of lactic acid are desired in the feed together with low levels of acetic acid and certain biogenic amines. Limits for acetic acid have been suggested to be 30-40 mmol/kg to avoid a decreased palatability of the feed; however, few studies have been performed. The purpose of this trial was therefore to examine which levels of lactic acid and acetic acid that can be accepted in a fermented feed without affecting the feed intake and thus the weight gain of the pig. A total of 60 pigs (Yorkshire/ Hampshire) were used in a trial during two weeks, between 9-11 weeks of age. The trial was divided into two parts with 30 pigs in each. In the first trial, lactic acid was supplemented to the pig´s diet at levels of 0, 75, 100, 150 and 200 mmol/kg. In the second trial, acetic acid was added to the feed at levels of 0, 10, 50, 100 and 150 mmol/kg. The growth performance of the pigs was measured and a behavioral study was performed. No significant differences in feed consumption or daily weight gain could be seen between any of the levels of acetic or lactic acid. The only significant difference with lactic acid was found for feed conversion rate (FCR) between treatment L2 (100 mmol/kg) and L4 (200 mmol/kg) which had a significantly more efficient FCR on 1.77 and 1.80 respectively compared to the control group (0 mmol/kg) which had a FCR on 2.07 kg (p=0.016). There was also a significant difference in FCR between the pigs fed acetic acid (p= 0.027). The control group (0 mmol/kg) and the A2 group (50 mmol/kg) had a FCR of 2.0 kg compared to A4 (150 mmol/kg) which had an FCR of 1.77. In the behavioral study, an continues recording and one instantaneous scan sampling was performed. No differences in feeding or social behavior could be seen in the instantaneous scan sampling in either acetic or lactic acid. In the continues recording, there were some significant differences in feeding behavior in both trials but between the times of feeding and not between the inclusion levels of acids. That indicates differences in eating behavior during the day more than between the inclusion levels. Our results suggest that a fermented feed can contain lactic acid up to 200 mmol/ kg and acetic acid up to 150 mmol/ kg without affecting the feed intake or growth performance of the piglets negatively.
Google Calendar: A new memory aid to compensate for prospective memory deficits following acquired brain injury

Prospective memory impairment is common following acquired brain injury (ABI) and intervention has proved challenging. The current treatment of choice involves using external memory aids as a method of compensation, with those incorporating active reminders proving most successful. In this paper we report findings of an investigation into the effectiveness of a novel external memory aid, Google Calendar. This aid incorporates active reminders and overcomes some of the limitations associated with existing aids. Twelve participants with ABI took part in the study incorporating a randomised control crossover within-subjects design, consisting of a 5-week baseline phase, followed by two 5-week intervention phases where either Google Calendar or a standard diary were used. Participants identified activities to target during the study and a family member monitored their success. Google Calendar was more effective than the diary in enhancing prospective memory performance. It also proved more popular, on account of its active reminders which helped trigger the retrieval of intentions, whilst reducing the need for monitoring. While further research is required to substantiate these initial findings, it is recommended that clinicians familiarise themselves with using Google Calendar, as it appears to offer additional potential in the management of prospective memory deficits following ABI.