Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Performance Management System on Employee Job Satisfaction in Automobile Companies in Western Province, Sri Lanka

Area of the StudyThis study attempts to identify the impact of performance management system on employee job satisfaction of executives in the automobile companies in western province, Sri Lanka.Problem of the StudyThe empirical finding of the impact of performance management system of the employees on their job satisfaction is rare in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, the problem of the study is developed as: Does performance management system of executives in the automobile companies affect their job satisfaction? Method of the studyThe primary data were collected from 248 respondents in automobile companies in western province by administrating a structured questionnaire, which consisted of 44 statements with 5 points Likert scale. The data analyses included the univariat, and bivariate analyses method conducted using SPSS (version 16.0). Findings of the StudyThe major finding of the study is that there is a strong positive impact of performance management system on job satisfaction of executives in automobile companies in western province, Sri Lanka. Also findings reveal that existing level of performance management system is in high range in selected organizations.Conclusion of the StudyIt is concluded that performance management system has strong impact on employee job satisfaction of executives in automobile companies in western province, Sri Lanka.Keywords: Performance Management System, Job Satisfaction, Executives, Automobile Companies
The Impact of Political Instability on Madagascar Vanilla Exports

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the political instability in 2009 affected the Madagascar vanilla exports. Madagascar vanilla sector has experienced robust growth over the past decade which contributes to both the economy and the job creation, especially in northeast region where Vanilla was planted. However, this growth faced a serious problem after the political instability in 2009. This paper shows that the suspension of Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), due to the political instability, had a large negative impact on vanilla exports. To estimate its impacts on vanilla exports, the international trade data permit us to isolate those impacts from various factors between Madagascar and other vanilla exporting countries by using the different-in-different (DID) technique. We take the sample of 2007 to 2011 by using Tobit model with random effects in addition to OLS with fixed effect in order to observe how far political instability hampers the vanilla exports in Madagascar. Through analysis, we find that the political instability has a negative effect on economic growth in terms of Madagascar vanilla exports.
Relationship between MRI-measured bone marrow adipose tissue and hip and spine bone mineral density in African-American and Caucasian participants: the CARDIA study.

CONTEXT An increasing number of studies suggest that bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) might play a role in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis. Our previous study of Caucasian women demonstrated that there is an inverse relationship between BMAT and whole-body bone mineral density (BMD). It is unknown whether visceral adipose tissue (VAT), sc adipose tissue (SAT), and skeletal muscle had an effect on the relationship between BMAT and BMD. OBJECTIVE In the present study we investigated the relationship between pelvic, hip, and lumbar spine BMAT with hip and lumbar spine BMD in the population-based Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) sample with adjustment for whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-measured VAT, SAT, and skeletal muscle. DESIGN T1-weighted MRI was acquired for 210 healthy African-American and Caucasian men and women (age 38-52 yr). Hip and lumbar spine BMD were measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. RESULTS Pelvic, hip, and lumbar spine BMAT had negative correlations with hip and lumbar spine BMD (r = -0.399 to -0.550, P < 0.001). The inverse associations between BMAT and BMD remained strong after adjusting for demographics, weight, skeletal muscle, SAT, VAT, total adipose tissue (TAT), menopausal status, lifestyle factors, and inflammatory markers (standardized regression coefficients = -0. 296 to -0.549, P < 0.001). Among body composition measures, skeletal muscle was the strongest correlate of BMD after adjusting for BMAT (standardized regression coefficients = 0.268-0.614, P < 0.05), with little additional contribution from weight, SAT, VAT, or total adipose tissue. CONCLUSION In this middle-aged population, a negative relationship existed between MRI-measured BMAT and hip and lumbar spine BMD independent of demographics and body composition. These observations support the growing evidence linking BMAT with low bone density.
Dietary supplementation with mulberry leaf flavonoids inhibits methanogenesis in sheep.

The effects of flavonoids on methanogenesis and microbial flora in Dorper × thin-tailed Han crossbred ewes were evaluated in two experiments. To investigate the effects of flavonoids on nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance, 18 ewes (60.0 ± 1.73 kg body weight (BW)) were allotted to two dietary treatments in experiment one, a control diet and the control diet supplemented with flavonoids (2 g/head/day). In experiment two, the effects of supplementary flavonoids on ruminal fermentation and microbial flora were investigated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction with six ewes (67.2 ± 0.79 kg BW) with ruminal cannula assigned to the identical dietary treatments used in experiment one. Supplementary flavonoids improved the apparent digestibility of nitrogen (N, P < 0.001) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF, P = 0.024) and decreased daily CH4 output (P < 0.001). The ruminal pH (P = 0.638) and ammonia (P = 0.690) were not affected by supplementary flavonoids, whereas the total volatile fatty acid (VFA) content increased (P = 0.037). Supplementary flavonoids decreased ruminal populations of protozoans (P = 0.002) and methanogens (P < 0.001) and increased the populations of Fibrobacter succinogenes (P = 0.016). In conclusion, flavonoids improved the digestibility of organic matter and reduced CH4 output by inhibiting the populations of microbes involved in methanogenesis.
Multi-Auto Associative Neural Network based sensor validation and estimation for aero-engine

Aircraft gas turbine engine, being a complex system, uses a wide sensor network to monitor its performance for control and Engine Health Management (EHM) purposes. Both applications necessitate accurate functioning of all sensors, however due to harsh operating conditions, life and accuracy of sensors is affected. Early detection of drift in measurement or fault in sensors is important as it can help in avoiding false alarms in the EHM system. It is equally important to predict the measurement, that the sensor failed to measure, till the time sensor is replaced. An Auto Associative Neural network (AANN) based sensor validation module is an analytically-redundant sensor network, which provides continuous sensor status information and estimates the measurement value in place of faulty measurements during both online and offline data validation. The number of sensors used to monitor engine are large and it is not viable to monitor all the sensors using a single AANN. Hence in this work a novel approach is adopted for sensor validation and Estimation (SVE) where sensors are grouped into smaller sets based on their location and physical relationships between them. By breaking network into smaller groups dual benefit is achieved; first it reduces complexity arising from higher dimensionality, secondly it ensures multiple-validation of each sensor through various networks. The network is trained using data generated from a validated twin spool turbojet engine simulation model. Presented approach is validated through a simplified experiment and results show prompt fault identification and prediction of sensor value with satisfactory accuracy.
Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam

During the recent upheavals in the Middle East, known as the ‘Arab Spring’, one important aspect of British foreign policy has been ignored by the mainstream media: British collusion with radical Islamic actors to promote oil and other commercial or strategic interests. Indeed, this policy has a long history, which this book will tell, and has contributed not only to the rise of radical Islam itself but also to that of international terrorism, which the British government’s new National Security Strategy identifies as the country’s biggest threat. The intelligence agencies say they have prevented twelve terrorist plots in Britain over the past decade, and claim there are 2,000 known terrorist suspects organised in 200 networks. Counterterrorism officials have also warned of a ‘huge spectacular’, and shooting and hostage-taking raids involving gunmen with bombs. The extent of this threat is all too easily exaggerated for political purposes – the former director of MI5, Stella Rimington, has, for example, accused the government of ‘frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties’. But Britain, along with many other countries, clearly does face a threat from radical Islamic groups. The July 2005 London bombings, which killed 52 people, constituted the first ‘successful’ attack by Islamists in Britain, and the British courts have convicted over 80 individuals who planned to kill British citizens in acts of terrorism. Meanwhile, Britain’s most senior military figure has called the threat posed by Islamist extremism ‘the struggle of our generation – perhaps our Thirty Years’ War’.
Top‐down protein characterization facilitated by ion/ion reactions on a quadrupole/time of flight platform

In comparison to bottom‐up proteomics approaches, whereby peptides derived from proteolytic digestion are analyzed, top‐down approaches, involving direct analysis of intact proteins, provide higher specificity for protein identification and are better‐suited for the characterization of sequence variants. However, top‐down protein characterization usually requires more sophisticated instrumentation and methodologies to deal with the more complex tandem mass spectra derived from dissociation of high mass multiply charged intact proteins. Gas‐phase ion/ion reactions are universally applicable and have proved to be useful in mixture analysis and top‐down biomolecule characterization. The coupling of the ion/ion proton transfer reaction in the context of MS/MS has been demonstrated to expand informing power in top‐down protein characterization, particularly with platforms that employ electrodynamic ion trap and TOF mass analysis. In addition, probing protein primary structure using ion/ion electron transfer dissociation usually provides extensive structurally informative fragmentation and also allows for the localization of labile PTMs. Here, the performance of the widely used quadrupole/TOF platform, equipped with ion/ion reaction functionality, for top‐down protein characterization is summarized, and various methodologies employing ion/ion reactions are reviewed.
Image restoration by multivariate-stochastic optimization using improved particle swarm algorithm

Image restoration is a multivariate-stochastic optimization challenge. In this paper, an improved particle swarm algorithm is proposed for image restoration. The proposed method - Optimal Image Restoration using Improved Particle Swarm Algorithm (OIRIPSA) - is analyzed with an approximated (constrained least square error) and a true cost (mean squared error) measures, respectively. Initial swarm of heuristic solutions is constructed arbitrarily along with problem specific knowledge. An optimistic hyper layer is further integrated to enhance the swarm search procedure by constructing an incipient solution in the neighborhood of the generation's best. OIRIPSA is engendering better restoration than Richardson-Lucy algorithm and a state-of-the-art restoration method.
New evidence on predictable validity of grip strength on later life outcomes in Japan

ABSTRACT This study provides new evidence on the predictable validity of grip strength on later life outcomes using a population-based longitudinal survey of middle and older generations in Japan. We show that the level of grip strength contains significant information on health outcome and mortality in the later years although the loss of grip strength does not. Moreover, we confirm that grip strength is associated with socio-economic status, particularly with educational attainment.
Annotated Corpora for Word Alignment between Japanese and English and its Evaluation with MAP-based Word Aligner

This paper presents two annotated corpora for word alignment between Japanese and English. We annotated on top of the IWSLT-2006 and the NTCIR-8 corpora. The IWSLT-2006 corpus is in the domain of travel conversation while the NTCIR-8 corpus is in the domain of patent. We annotated the first 500 sentence pairs from the IWSLT-2006 corpus and the first 100 sentence pairs from the NTCIR-8 corpus. After mentioned the annotation guideline, we present two evaluation algorithms how to use such hand-annotated corpora: although one is a well-known algorithm for word alignment researchers, one is novel which intends to evaluate a MAP-based word aligner of Okita et al. (2010b).
The chemokine CCL2 modulates Ca2+ dynamics and electrophysiological properties of cultured cerebellar Purkinje neurons

The chemokine CCL2 is produced at high levels in the central nervous system (CNS) during infection, injury, neuroinflammation and other pathological conditions. Cells of the CNS including neurons and glia express receptors for CCL2 and these receptors may contribute to a signaling system through which pathologic conditions in the CNS are communicated. However, our understanding of the consequences of activation of chemokine signaling in the CNS is limited, especially for neurons. In many cell types, chemokine signaling alters intracellular Ca2+ dynamics. Therefore, we investigated the potential involvement of this mechanism in neuronal signaling activated by CCL2. In addition, we examined the effects of CCL2 on neuronal excitability. The studies focused on the rat cerebellar Purkinje neuron, an identified CNS neuronal type reported to express both CCL2 and its receptor, CCR2. Immunohistochemical studies of Purkinje neurons in situ confirmed that they express CCR2 and CCL2. The effect of exogenous application on Purkinje neurons was studied in a cerebellar culture preparation. CCL2 was tested by micropressure or bath application, at high concentrations (13–100 nm) to simulate conditions during a pathologic state. Results show that Purkinje neurons express receptors for CCL2 and that activation of these receptors alters several neuronal properties. CCL2 increased resting Ca2+ levels, enhanced the Ca2+ response evoked by activation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 and depressed action potential generation in the cultured Purkinje neurons. Passive membrane properties were unaltered. These modulatory effects of CCL2 on neuronal properties are likely to contribute to the altered CNS function associated with CNS disease and injury.
Oral Flora of Children with "Nursing Bottle Caries"

Plaque from carious and sound tooth surfaces, as well as saliva from children with "nursing bottle caries," contained unusually high levels of Streptococcus mutans; the levels of Streptococcus sanguis in plaque on anterior teeth and Streptococcus salivarius in saliva were unusually low. Lactobacilli were detected in nearly all plaque samples. The findings are discussed in relation to the role of S. mutans and lactobacilli in the initiation of human dental caries and diet-plaque interactions.
Monetary Policy and Efficiency in Real Sector

Most of central banks are responsible for single inflation goal, some central banks (for example FRS) fulfill dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability. Paper argues that the best way to promote sustainable economic growth and at the same time to contribute to low inflation and full employment is to promote the increase in efficiency in real sector. Paper suggests that the tool by which monetary policy can affect efficiency in real sector is interest rate. In particular, in order to promote the increase in efficiency in real sector, monetary policy should provide the equality of interest rate and rate of profit in real sector. Paper also argues that monetary system based on trade finance loan is more conducive to growth in efficiency than monetary system based on money loans.
Imaging of the Pericardium

Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are modalities well suited for imaging of the pericardium and pericardial disease. Both offer excellent resolution with a wide field of view. Both have advantages and disadvantages when compared with each other and with echocardiography. Establishing the diagnosis of constrictive pericarditis is a common indication for CT or MRI of the pericardium. Pericarditis, neoplasms, effusions, and congenital anomalies are additional conditions involving the pericardium that can be diagnosed with CT and MRI.
A preliminary exploration on stochastic dynamic asset allocation models under a continuous-time sticky-price general equilibrium

ABSTRACT This article studies asset allocation problems under endogenous macroeconomic dynamics and monetary policy rules, by merging a continuous-time sticky-price general equilibrium model based on the New Keynesian framework with a stochastic dynamic portfolio selection model. Under optimal allocation strategies, the inverse of the Arrow–Pratt relative risk aversion function of investors decreases monotonically with a rising risk-free nominal interest rate, and exhibits a U shape with respect to inflation. This shows that, under the premise of an inflation-targeting monetary policy rule, the investors’ relative inclination for risky assets grows when inflation deviates from its steady state, in expectation for a countervailing nominal policy rate. The article also uses the model to discuss the macro-prudential problem of the feedback effects of the investors’ intertemporal utility-maximizing behaviour on the economy. Preliminary results show that the existence of risky assets in the economy can have an effect similar to that of the financial accelerator. This gives another possible explanation for the wedge effect beyond the traditional incentive theory.
Reduced Peak Atrial Systolic Mitral Annular Velocity Predicts the Development of Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation

We investigated whether the echocardiographic parameters of the left atrium (LA) can predict the development of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF). Among 14,062 patients (>20 years old) who underwent an echocardiographic examination were evaluated, 2,606 patients who underwent follow‐up ECG with an interval of >6 months were investigated. Newly developed AF was noted in 42 (1.6%) patients with follow‐up duration of 31.8 ± 8.9 months. Cox regression analysis revealed that a higher left atrial volume index (hazard ratio [HR]=1.06; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03–1.09, P < 0.001), relative wall thickness (RWT) of≥0.407 (HR=2.74, 95% CI 1.39–5.41, P=0.004), a reduced peak atrial systolic mitral annular velocity (HR=0.845, 95% CI 0.72–0.99, P=0.037), and an advanced age (HR=1.04, 95% CI 1.01–1.07, P=0.009) were independently related to the development of nonvalvular AF. Therefore, reduced A′, which is parameter of LA contractile function, might be an important predictor for the development of nonvalvular AF. (ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY, Volume 26, July 2009)
Novel Noninvasive Brain Disease Detection System Using a Facial Image Sensor

Brain disease including any conditions or disabilities that affect the brain is fast becoming a leading cause of death. The traditional diagnostic methods of brain disease are time-consuming, inconvenient and non-patient friendly. As more and more individuals undergo examinations to determine if they suffer from any form of brain disease, developing noninvasive, efficient, and patient friendly detection systems will be beneficial. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel noninvasive brain disease detection system based on the analysis of facial colors. The system consists of four components. A facial image is first captured through a specialized sensor, where four facial key blocks are next located automatically from the various facial regions. Color features are extracted from each block to form a feature vector for classification via the Probabilistic Collaborative based Classifier. To thoroughly test the system and its performance, seven facial key block combinations were experimented. The best result was achieved using the second facial key block, where it showed that the Probabilistic Collaborative based Classifier is the most suitable. The overall performance of the proposed system achieves an accuracy −95%, a sensitivity −94.33%, a specificity −95.67%, and an average processing time (for one sample) of <1 min at brain disease detection.
Maritime multi-sensor data association based on geographic and navigational knowledge

The integration of current traffic monitoring operational systems in the field of maritime surveillance is widely acknowledged as a key requirement for borders control and illegal trafficking prevention. In this paper, an overview of the satellite-extended-vessel traffic service (SEV) system for in-situ and earth observation (EO) data association is presented. The description of the cognitive data correlation concept shows the benefits brought to the resulting maritime recognised picture (RMP) in supporting decision making and situation awareness applications.
Mismatches of minor histocompatibility antigens between HLA-identical donors and recipients and the development of graft-versus-host disease after bone marrow transplantation.

BACKGROUND Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) can be a major complication of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation even when the donor and recipient are siblings and share identical major histocompatibility antigens. The explanation may be a mismatch of minor histocompatibility antigens. We previously characterized five minor histocompatibility antigens, HA-1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, that are recognized by T cells in association with the major histocompatibility antigens HLA-A1 an A2. METHODS We collected peripheral-blood leukocytes from 148 bone marrow recipients and their sibling donors, who were genotypically HLA identical. Fifty pairs were positive for HLA-A1, 117 were positive for HLA-A2, and 19 were positive for both. The pairs were typed with cytotoxic-T-cell clones specific for minor histocompatibility antigens HA-1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. RESULTS Mismatches of HA-3 were equally distributed among recipients in whom GVHD developed and those in whom it did not. By contrast, a mismatch of only HA-1 was significantly correlated with GVHD of grade II or higher (odds ratio, infinity; P = 0.02) in adults. One or more mismatches of HA-1, 2, 4, and 5 were also significantly associated with GVHD (odds ratio, infinity; P = 0.006) in adults. These associations were not observed in children. CONCLUSIONS A mismatch of minor histocompatibility antigen HA-1 can cause GVHD in adult recipients of allogeneic bone marrow from HLA-identical donors. Prospective HA-1 typing may improve donor selection and identify recipients who are at high risk for GVHD.