Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Business Model Innovation Based on the Reconfiguration of Value Network

Organizing value network is beginning to be the main content of business model innovation.But value network in a narrow sense accords with the traditional value creation logic of value chain,"transforming input into product". This paper,on the perspective of value ecology system,analyzes participants' value exchange logic and how the focal firm achieves profit,and explores different ways to business model innovation.Value creation process in network organization has been reversed by the force of dynamic competition and changing technology.It is a pronounced tendency that the process of firm value achievement is separated from the process of customer value creation,which means that the firm can not get revenue although it has brought customer maximum value.Especially facing with the free preference of internet economy,a firm must reconfigure its value network to find new revenue sources.
The importance of ATP as a regulator of glycolytic flux in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The control of glycolytic flux in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was studied by using permeabilized cells. Cells were harvested from chemostat cultures and, after removal of the cell wall, nystatin was used to permeabilize the spheroplasts. By this method it is possible to study the performance and regulation of a complete and functional metabolic pathway and not only a single enzymatic step. The results showed that ATP has a strong negative effect on glycolytic activity affecting several of the glycolytic enzymes. However, the main targets for ATP inhibition was phosphofructokinase and pyruvate kinase. Phospofructokinase was inhibited by ATP concentrations starting at about 1–2 mM, while pyruvate kinase required ATP levels above 2.5 mM before any inhibition was visible. These ATP concentrations were in the same range as measured for nitrogen‐ and glucose‐limited cells cultivated in chemostat cultures. Other potential candidates as enzymes susceptible to ATP inhibition included hexokinase and enolase. The ATP:ADP ratio, as well as trehalose‐6‐phosphate levels, did not seem to influence the glycolytic activity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Implications of an adjustable bed height during standard nursing tasks on spinal motion, perceived exertion and muscular activity

Manual handling is a source of occupational stress, particularly for nursing personnel. High levels of biomechanical strain are associated with lifting and transferring patients, especially when the tasks are performed in flexed and twisted positions that induce an increased risk of functional and musculoskeletal problems. The use of adjustable beds in nursing practice has been suggested as a means of influencing working postures and reducing the muscular demands on nurses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects on spinal motion, muscular activity and perceived exertion when nurses had the opportunity to adjust bed height. The measures recorded during the conduct of standardized patient handling tasks were the changes in posture (inclination) and in shape (sagittal bending, side bending, axial rotation). Muscular activity was measured using surface electromyography. Perceived exertion was rated using the 15-graded Borg scale. The range of motion was not influenced by the adjustment of bed height, but rather a shift of the time duration histogram was noticed in the direction of the erect, safer position. The time spent in the safe zone of spinal motion near the erect position was significantly increased and was significantly decreased in the potential health-hazardous zones of spinal motion in the extreme positions. No differences in muscular activity or in perceived exertion were found between the two bed height conditions for any of the muscle groups. It was concluded that the quality of spinal motion is enhanced when the opportunity of adjusting the bed height is offered.
The integration of routing and flow-control for voice and data in a computer communication network

Abstract : A store and forward computer communication network may concurrently support more than one type of user. Because of different user characteristics, the control of each type of user may be done by different mechanisms. Moreover, for each type of user there may be more than one control mechanism operating concurrently. Algorithms previously proposed for user-mechanism pairs were analysed independently ignoring the significant interactions among them. In this thesis, we consider the voice user and the data user, and the routing mechanism and the flow control mechanism. We propose four algorithms, one for each user- mechanism pair. We show that these algorithms are compatible in the sense that they can be coordinated to achieve some reasonable objective when operating concurrently. Moreover, some of the algorithms are superior in some aspects to existing ones.
Improving Cold Music Recommendation through Hierarchical Audio Alignment

Collaborative filtering (CF) is the state-of-the-art approach to item recommendation. However, it can neither recommend new items with no user feedbacks, nor could it recommend "long-tail" items easily. Content-based filtering can solve both problems through content analysis. However, content-based filtering alone has a much worse performance than CF. In this paper, we fuse user feedbacks and content analysis into the probabilistic matrix factorization framework. In particular, we propose a recursive dynamic programming approach to computing item similarity matrix from item content. Item latent factors are predicted from the item similarity matrix when no usage data is available. We investigate how performances of recommendation algorithms vary on items with different popularities. Results show that our approach has better performance than the same hybrid model with naive item similarity measures and Matrix Factorization.
A reusable software architecture for manual controller integration

This paper examines the commonalities of manual controllers used in robotics for teleoperation. These include devices ranging from simple joysticks to force-reflecting controllers. The similarities in functionality and behaviour of these controllers is further exploited to develop a reusable software architecture for manual controller interfacing. The development of this architecture is based on object-oriented design. The application of this design philosophy led to the development of a hierarchy of software components that are manual controller independent and also have a standardized interface. Reusability of these components is supported through generality and extensibility. The key design requirements for this architecture were: open-system, reusable, application independent, extensive error-handling and safety checking, applicability to real-time control and simulation, and reduction in program development time. This paper discusses the software analysis and design issues that were faced to meet the architecture requirements. Further, this architecture is demonstrated using four different manual controllers and a teleoperated dual-arm robotic manipulator.
Bayesian Acoustic Source Track Prediction in an Uncertain Ocean Environment

This paper develops an approach for probabilistic prediction of the future locations of a moving ocean acoustic source based on probability distributions for past source locations as determined by Bayesian acoustic tracking inversion. The Bayesian track estimation for past times considers both source and environmental parameters as unknown random variables constrained by noisy acoustic data and prior information, and numerically samples the posterior probability density (PPD) using Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Applying a probabilistic prediction model for constant-velocity source motion to each of the PPD samples produces source location probability distributions for future times. These prediction distributions account for both the uncertainty of the source-motion model and the uncertainty in the state of knowledge of past source locations including the effects of environmental uncertainty. Results of Bayesian track estimation and prediction are represented as a sequence of joint marginal probability distributions over source range and depth, and as the most probable track with uncertainties. Probability distribution for the time and range of the closest point of approach (CPA) are also computed for inbound tracks. The approach is illustrated with synthetic acoustic data at two noise levels and with measured data from a shallow-water site in the Mediterranean Sea.
Troponin testing: an audit in three metropolitan hospitals

OBJECTIVE To audit the appropriateness of use of a troponin I assay in three hospitals. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey of use of a troponin assay. SETTING Three hospitals in Melbourne, Victoria, each with an emergency department and a coronary care unit. PARTICIPANTS Patients for whom a troponin I assay was requested between 1 and 7 May 2002, 27-42 months after introduction of the assay. INTERVENTIONS User-focused dissemination of relevant information, including protocols for use, from opinion leaders when the assay was introduced; continuous reinforcement of information in pathology reports. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Adherence to protocol for assay use. RESULTS Troponin assays were requested for 333 patients during 351 symptom episodes. A single assay was used in 194 symptom episodes (55%), and serial assays in 157 (45%); proportions were statistically indistinguishable across all three hospitals (chi(2); P = 0.71). Of the 194 single assays, 13 (7%) diagnosed a myocardial infarction. Serial troponin testing in all three hospitals followed the suggested protocol, with mean time between serial assays being more than 6 hours at all hospitals. CONCLUSIONS Adherence to the protocol for serial troponin assay intervals was adequate, but single troponin assays were used extensively and probably inappropriately.
The nonlinear variation of annual average temperature in the Yangtze Delta and its correlation with global oscillations

Climate change has been a major issue for scholars under the background of global warming. Yangtze Delta is one of major economic regions in China. How the temperature of the Yangtze Delta changes in the past decades and if this change has some relation to global climate change? To answer these questions, this paper tries to find the relationship between the temperature's change in the Yangtze Delta and five global oscillations from the point of multiple time scales, by using wavelet regression analysis method. The main findings are as follows: (1) at the larger time scale, like 32-year and 16-year scale, the annual average temperature in the Yangtze Delta presents an increasing trend. But at 8-year and 4-year scale, the temperature fluctuates obviously, and the 4-year scale is much more obviously. (2) The annual average temperature change in the Yangtze Delta associates closely with 5 global oscillations and the correlation becomes better while the time scale enlarged. Moreover, we could find that four oscillation indices (NAOI, PDOI, AOI and AAOI) have an active correlation with the annual average temperature in the Yangtze Delta. But for SOI, the correlation is negative. The reason for these is because of their different formations. Because latitude circulation is the main reason, the oscillations (NAO, AO and AAO) have closer association with the temperature in the Yangtze Delta.
A pot‐pourri of plasmid paradoxes: effects of a second copy

Bacterial plasmids are exemplary subjects for study, being conveniently isolated, dissected, reassembled, and introduced into various hosts. Their versatility and power make them eminently worthy of our attention. In what follows I consider some consequences of simply doubling the dosage of particular plasmid genes or of forming a plasmid dimer. These consequences can be perverse, paradoxical, or informative. They bear on questions of cell viability, copy number limitation, clonal homogeneity, check‐point control, and the recovery of mutants. They have relevance to biotechnology, evolution and medicine. In reviewing these effects, my motivation is largely to share my enthusiasm for certain kinds of biological narratives, the nature of which is best left for the reader to discern.
Acquisition and clustering for affective semantic lexicon from web

A simple semantic lexicon extraction method is proposed based on one hypothesis and three filtering rules from Baidu Chinese Network Encyclopedia. The acquired affective lexicon includes emotional words and their lexical semantic relations including synonyms and antonyms. The acquiring method is recursive algorithm using the seed words. The extracted affective lexicon is labeled with affective tendency automatically based on the semantic relations and existing affective dictionaries. We proposed method effectively constructs and clusters the affective lexical semantics for Chinese. The method improves the word number for affective lexicon, and gets automatically and effectively tendency tagging. The experimental results show that the acquired affective semantic lexicon is extended by 166.6% emotional annotation compared to the existing dictionaries, and took 78.1% accurately tendency tagging based on the existing dictionaries.
Crowd Behavior Analysis Using Local Mid-Level Visual Descriptors

Crowd behavior analysis has recently emerged as an increasingly important and dedicated problem for crowd monitoring and management in the visual surveillance community. In particular, it is receiving a lot of attention to detect potentially dangerous situations and to prevent overcrowdedness. In this paper, we propose to quantify crowd properties by a rich set of visual descriptors. The calculation of these descriptors is realized through a novel spatio-temporal model of the crowd. It consists of modeling time-varying dynamics of the crowd using local feature tracks. It also involves a Delaunay triangulation to approximate neighborhood interactions. In total, the crowd is represented as an evolving graph, where the nodes correspond to the tracklets. From this graph, various mid-level representations are extracted to determine the ongoing crowd behaviors. In particular, the effectiveness of the proposed visual descriptors is demonstrated within three applications: crowd video classification, anomaly detection, and violence detection in crowds. The obtained results on videos from different data sets prove the relevance of these visual descriptors to crowd behavior analysis. In addition, by means of comparisons to other existing methods, we demonstrate that the proposed descriptors outperform the state-of-the-art methods with a significant margin using the most challenging data sets.
Evaluation of four chromogenic media for the isolation of Group B Streptococcus from vaginal specimens in pregnant women

Summary Direct culture onto four commercial chromogenic media, selective for the isolation of Group B Streptococcus (GBS), were compared with the conventional pre-enrichment Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) method for the ability to isolate GBS from 242 pregnant women's self-collected vaginal/perineal swabs. The sensitivities and specificities for direct culture on to chromogenic agar were 92% and 100% for StrepBSelect (Bio-Rad Laboratories), 96% and 100% for Brilliance GBS (Thermo-Fisher Scientific), 94% and 100% for CHROMagar StrepB (CHROMagar, Dutec Diagnostics), 86% and 100% for ChromID Strepto B (bioMerieux). CDC recommended broth pre-enrichment then culture on blood containing selective agar had a sensitivity and specificity of 90.0% and 100% respectively. The chromogenic agar tested produced comparable results to the pre-enrichment CDC method.
Economics of Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections

Hospital-acquired infections add considerable morbidity and mortality to patient care. However, a detailed economic analysis of these infections on an individual case basis has been lacking. The authors examined both the hospital revenues and expenses in 54 cases of patients with central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABs) over 3 years in 2 intensive care units and compared these financial data with patients who were matched for age, severity of illness on admission, and principal diagnosis. The average payment for a case complicated by CLAB was $64 894, and the average expense was $91733 with gross margin of -$26 839 per case and a total loss from operations of $1 449 306 in the 54 cases. The costs of CLABs and the associated complications averaged 43% of the total cost of care. The elimination of these preventable infections constitutes not only an opportunity to improve patient outcomes but also a significant financial opportunity.
[Assessment of exposure to toxic metals released during soldering and grazing processes].

The aim of the study was to assess toxic metal exposure in workers performing soldering and brazing operations. The study group included workers of three plants manufacturing electronic systems, household equipment and electric motors. Membrane filters were used to collect 50 air samples, including personal 8-h samples to assess average weighed concentration of soldering and brazing fumes and their elements, and to assay respirable dust and "background" or "area" samples. After testing by gravimetry, the filter with collected sample was mineralized with concentrated HCL/HNO3 and 10 ml sample solution in 32% HCL/4% HNO3 was prepared according to OSHA ID-206. Atomic absorption spectrometry was used to assess the contents of lead (Pb), tin (Sn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), antimony (Sb), silver (Ag) and manganese (Mn) in the sample solution. The quantitative analysis revealed that time-weighed average (TWA) of fume concentrations were: soldering fume < 0.5-1.1 mg/m3, Cu < 0.003-0.034 mg/m3, Pb < 0.014-0.037 mg/m3, Sn < 0.15 mg/m3, Sb < 0.035 mg/m3; brazing fume < 0.5-0.8 mg/m3, Cu < 0.003-0.038 mg/m3, Zn < 0.003-0.025 mg/m3, Pb < 0.014-0.023 mg/m3, Ag < 0.014 mg/m3, Sn < 0.15 mg/m3, Mn < 0.07-0.12 mg/m3. The results show that on the day of measurements, working conditions at solderer/brazer workplaces were safe, i.e. relevant MAC values were not exceeded.
Downstream Exposure to Growth Factors Causes Elevated Velocity and Dilation in Arteriolar Networks

Our goal was to characterize changes in flow and diameter with vascular endothelial cell growth factor A (VEGF-A) and fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2). Observations were made in arteriolar networks of the cheek pouch tissue in anesthetized hamsters (pentobarbital 70 mg/kg, i.p., n = 45). Local and remote dilation responses to micropipette-applied VEGF or FGF2 yielded similar EC50 values. The role of gap junctions in the remote response was tested by applying sucrose, halothane or 18αGA to the feed arteriole midway between the remote stimulation and upstream observation sites; all remote dilation to FGF2 was prevented, while only the early dilation to VEGF was blocked. The remote dilation to VEGF displayed a second rheologic mechanism. The second mechanism involved an abrupt increase in upstream velocity and shear rate, followed by nitro-arginine sensitive dilation. To test whether the abrupt increase in shear could be caused by other agents known to cause edema, remote responses to histamine and thrombin were tested. Each caused an abrupt increase in velocity followed by nitro-arginine-sensitive dilation. This study shows that VEGF or agents that increase permeability can initiate an upstream velocity increase with dilation that recruits flow to the network; this is in addition to simultaneous gap junction-mediated dilation.
The carboxyl-terminal part of the putative Berne virus polymerase is expressed by ribosomal frameshifting and contains sequence motifs which indicate that toro- and coronaviruses are evolutionarily related.

Sequence analysis of the 3' part (8 kb) of the polymerase gene of the torovirus prototype Berne virus (BEV) revealed that this area contains at least two open reading frames (provisionally designated ORF1a and ORF1b) which overlap by 12 nucleotides. The complete sequence of ORF1b (6873 nucleotides) was determined. Like the coronaviruses, BEV was shown to express its ORF1b by ribosomal frameshifting during translation of the genomic RNA. The predicted tertiary RNA structure (a pseudoknot) in the toro- and coronaviral frameshift-directing region is similar. Analysis of the amino acid sequence of the predicted BEV ORF1b translation product revealed homology with the ORF1b product of coronaviruses. Four conserved domains were identified: the putative polymerase domain, an area containing conserved cysteine and histidine residues, a putative helicase motif, and a domain which seems to be unique for toro- and coronaviruses. The data on the 3' part of the polymerase gene of BEV supplement previously observed similarities between toro- and coronaviruses at the level of genome organization and expression. The two virus families are more closely related to each other than to other families of positive-stranded RNA viruses. Images
Genetic evidence for three unique components in primary cell-wall cellulose synthase complexes in Arabidopsis

In higher plants, cellulose is synthesized at the plasma membrane by the cellulose synthase (CESA) complex. The catalytic core of the complex is believed to be composed of three types of CESA subunits. Indirect evidence suggests that the complex associated with primary wall cellulose deposition consists of CESA1, -3, and -6 in Arabidopsis thaliana. However, phenotypes associated with mutations in two of these genes, CESA1 and -6, suggest unequal contribution by the different CESAs to overall enzymatic activity of the complex. We present evidence that the primary complex requires three unique types of components, CESA1-, CESA3-, and CESA6-related, for activity. Removal of any of these components results in gametophytic lethality due to pollen defects, demonstrating that primary-wall cellulose synthesis is necessary for pollen development. We also show that the CESA6-related CESAs are partially functionally redundant.
Antigenic Epitopes Fused to Cationic Peptide Bound to Oligonucleotides Facilitate Toll-Like Receptor 9-Dependent, but CD4+ T Cell Help-Independent, Priming of CD8+ T Cells1

A priority in current vaccine research is the development of adjuvants that support the efficient priming of long-lasting, CD4+ T cell help-independent CD8+ T cell immunity. Oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN) with immune-stimulating sequences (ISS) containing CpG motifs facilitate the priming of MHC class I-restricted CD8+ T cell responses to proteins or peptides. We show that the adjuvant effect of ISS+ ODN on CD8+ T cell priming to large, recombinant Ag is enhanced by binding them to short, cationic (arginine-rich) peptides that themselves have no adjuvant activity in CD8+ T cell priming. Fusing antigenic epitopes to cationic (8- to 10-mer) peptides bound to immune-stimulating ISS+ ODN or nonstimulating NSS+ ODN (without CpG-containing sequences) generated immunogens that efficiently primed long-lasting, specific CD8+ T cell immunity of high magnitude. Different MHC class I-binding epitopes fused to short cationic peptides of different origins showed this adjuvant activity. Quantitative ODN binding to cationic peptides strikingly reduced the toxicity of the latter, suggesting that it improves the safety profile of the adjuvant. CD8+ T cell priming supported by this adjuvant was Toll-like receptor 9 dependent, but required no CD4+ T cell help. ODN (with or without CpG-containing sequences) are thus potent Th1-promoting adjuvants when bound to cationic peptides covalently linked to antigenic epitopes, a mode of Ag delivery prevailing in many viral nucleocapsids.