Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Health-related quality of life in PCOS and related infertility: How can we assess this?

In recent years there has been an increasing demand for the design, development and use of questionnaires that can assess patients' experiences of health and illness or their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The application of these questionnaires in research and clinical practice provides information from the patient's perspective on the ways in which symptoms and treatments can affect their daily well-being and functioning. The aim of this paper is to report on the ways in which information on the HRQoL of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can be collected. With particular reference to PCOS–associated infertility, this paper will discuss the types of questionnaires that are currently available. It will discuss the benefits and limitations of the disease-specific PCOS questionnaire, and the other generic and condition-specific tools that have been used in the existing PCOS literature. Recommendations for future researchers interested in measuring HRQoL outcomes in women with PCOS–associated infertility are also made.
Self-Reconfigurable Evolvable Hardware System for Adaptive Image Processing

This paper presents an evolvable hardware system, fully contained in an FPGA, which is capable of autonomously generating digital processing circuits, implemented on an array of processing elements (PEs). Candidate circuits are generated by an embedded evolutionary algorithm and implemented by means of dynamic partial reconfiguration, enabling evaluation in the final hardware. The PE array follows a systolic approach, and PEs do not contain extra logic such as path multiplexers or unused logic, so array performance is high. Hardware evaluation in the target device and the fast reconfiguration engine used yield smaller reconfiguration than evaluation times. This means that the complete evaluation cycle is faster than software-based approaches and previous evolvable digital systems. The selected application is digital image filtering and edge detection. The evolved filters yield better quality than classic linear and nonlinear filters using mean absolute error as standard comparison metric. Results do not only show better circuit adaptation to different noise types and intensities, but also a nondegrading filtering behavior. This means they may be run iteratively to enhance filtering quality. These properties are even kept for high noise levels (40 percent). The system as a whole is a step toward fully autonomous, adaptive systems.
The effect of magnification lenses on reducing musculoskeletal discomfort among dentists

Background: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are the most important problems in the health workforce. These discomforts cause many working days losses, increase absenteeism from work, and impose annual economic costs. Awkward posture is the most important factor among the risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. This study aimed at implementing an interventional ergonomic program to minimize musculoskeletal disorder among dentists. Methods: This semi- experimental study was conducted on 75 dentists of Milad hospital using a census method. The Nordic Questionnaire was used to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders. In this study, the intervention was to apply optical magnification lens whose impact on reducing musculoskeletal disorder had been previously investigated. Corlett and Bishop Scale was used to evaluate musculoskeletal disorders before and after the intervention. Paired t-test was conducted to compare the discomfort intensity before and after the intervention. Results: The results revealed that the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders in neck, back, shoulder, and arm were higher than other areas of the body in dentists. There was a significant difference in discomfort intensity of the neck, shoulder, arm, back, elbow, forearm, and the whole body after the ergonomic intervention (p<0.05). Surveys on improving working conditions using the magnification lens revealed that more than 89% of the individuals expressed that the use of the lens increased the ease while working. Conclusion: The present study revealed that the use of optical magnification loupes, because of providing a suitable posture while working, could reduce musculoskeletal disorders in different areas of the body. Thus, we can predict that the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders will be reduced in dentists in a long run if they use optical magnification loupes.
Behavioral implications of the transition process from products to services

Purpose – This paper attempts to provide a better understanding of behavioral processes and their impact on the transition from products to services.Design/methodology/approach – Case studies are the main tool of theory development. The paper focuses mainly on German and Swiss product manufacturers, whose products require a high level of customer investment.Findings – The objective was merely to explain behavioral dimension of transition. The paper indicated seven behavioral processes which play a critical role during the transition. Managerial service awareness and role understanding, as well as employee service awareness and role understanding seem to be the right triggers to change the behavioral processes in the desired manner.Research limitations/implications – The main focus was on the German and Swiss machinery and medical equipment manufacturing industries, and the remarks are limited to these sectors.Practical implications – The key managerial implications and recommendations can be formulated as.
The Effect of Privacy Involvement and Privacy Policy Disclosure on Individuals' Privacy Behaviour

Privacy emerges as a critical issue in an e-commerce environment because of a fundamental tension among corporate, consumer, and government interests. Although several researchers have examined individuals' privacy concerns and companies' privacy policies, little is known about whether individuals' behaviour is influenced by privacy policy disclosures and by privacy involvement (i.e., the level of an individual's involvement guided by the perceived privacy risk). By conducting a Web-based survey and an online ordering experiment of 210 participants, this study found that individuals are more likely to read the privacy policy statements posted on Web sites and less likely to provide personal information when they experience a high level of privacy involvement as compared to a low level of privacy involvement. This study also found a gap between self-reported privacy behaviour and actual privacy behaviour with respect to reading a privacy policy statement and providing personal information. When individuals were requested to provide personal information, their privacy policy statement reading behaviour was close to their self-reported behaviour. That is, when individuals were asked to provide sensitive personal information they read the privacy policy statement, as they said they would. However, their personal information providing behaviour was different from their self-reported behaviour. That is, when asked to provide sensitive information in order to claim a low value award they provided the information, contrary to what they said they would do. Also, contrary to the prediction of the Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants (MODE) model, the existence of a privacy seal did not affect individuals' behaviour.
Melanin production by Aspergillus nidulans in batch and chemostat cultures.

SUMMARY: In batch culture melanin production by Aspergillus nidulans occurred after the cessation of exponential growth. Melanin production in the chemostat was favoured when the growth rate was a relatively small fraction of the maximum growth rate under the prevailing culture conditions. Growth-limitation by the carbon source induced melanogenesis more strongly than did growth-limitation by the nitrogen source. Melanin production was maximal within the dissolved oxygen tension range 16 to 30 mmHg; it increased with temperature in the range 20 to 37°C and with increase in pH up to 7.9. At high temperature and high pH the ability to produce melanin declined. The melanin was variable in composition. Both soluble and insoluble forms were produced. The soluble form appeared to be less highly polymerized than the insoluble form which was laid down on the hyphal walls and had a microfibrillar structure revealed by the electron microscope.
Hospital and societal costs of antimicrobial-resistant infections in a Chicago teaching hospital: implications for antibiotic stewardship.

BACKGROUND Organisms resistant to antimicrobials continue to emerge and spread. This study was performed to measure the medical and societal cost attributable to antimicrobial-resistant infection (ARI). METHODS A sample of high-risk hospitalized adult patients was selected. Measurements included ARI, total cost, duration of stay, comorbidities, acute pathophysiology, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation III score, intensive care unit stay, surgery, health care-acquired infection, and mortality. Hospital services used and outcomes were abstracted from electronic and written medical records. Medical costs were measured from the hospital perspective. A sensitivity analysis including 3 study designs was conducted. Regression was used to adjust for potential confounding in the random sample and in the sample expanded with additional patients with ARI. Propensity scores were used to select matched control subjects for each patient with ARI for a comparison of mean cost for patients with and without ARI. RESULTS In a sample of 1391 patients, 188 (13.5%) had ARI. The medical costs attributable to ARI ranged from $18,588 to $29,069 per patient in the sensitivity analysis. Excess duration of hospital stay was 6.4-12.7 days, and attributable mortality was 6.5%. The societal costs were $10.7-$15.0 million. Using the lowest estimates from the sensitivity analysis resulted in a total cost of $13.35 million in 2008 dollars in this patient cohort. CONCLUSIONS The attributable medical and societal costs of ARI are considerable. Data from this analysis could form the basis for a more comprehensive evaluation of the cost of resistance and the potential economic benefits of prevention programs.
Reasoning with Multimodal Sarcastic Tweets via Modeling Cross-Modality Contrast and Semantic Association

Sarcasm is a sophisticated linguistic phenomenon to express the opposite of what one really means. With the rapid growth of social media, multimodal sarcastic tweets are widely posted on various social platforms. In multimodal context, sarcasm is no longer a pure linguistic phenomenon, and due to the nature of social media short text, the opposite is more often manifested via cross-modality expressions. Thus traditional text-based methods are insufficient to detect multimodal sarcasm. To reason with multimodal sarcastic tweets, in this paper, we propose a novel method for modeling cross-modality contrast in the associated context. Our method models both cross-modality contrast and semantic association by constructing the Decomposition and Relation Network (namely D&R Net). The decomposition network represents the commonality and discrepancy between image and text, and the relation network models the semantic association in cross-modality context. Experimental results on a public dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in multimodal sarcasm detection.
An apple long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase 2 gene enhances plant resistance to abiotic stress by regulating the accumulation of cuticular wax.

Apple cuticular wax can protect plants from environmental stress, determine fruit luster, and improve post-harvest fruit storage quality. In recent years, dry weather, soil salinization, and adverse environmental conditions have led to declines in apple fruit quality. However, few studies have reported the molecular mechanisms of apple cuticular wax biosynthesis. In this study, we identified a long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase MdLACS2 gene from apple. The MdLACS2 protein contained an AMP-binding domain and demonstrated long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase activity. MdLACS2 transgenic Arabidopsis exhibited reductions in epidermal permeability and water loss; changed in the expression of genes related to cuticular wax biosynthesis, transport, and transcriptional regulation; and differences in the composition and ultrastructure of cuticular wax. Moreover, the accumulation of cuticular wax enhanced the resistance of MdLACS2 transgenic plants to drought and salt stress. The main protein functional interaction networks of LACS2 were predicted, revealing a preliminary molecular regulation pathway for MdLACS2-mediated wax biosynthesis in apple. Our study provides candidate genes for breeding apple varieties and rootstocks with better fruit quality and higher stress resistance.
Dynamic DC: Keeping Your Options Open

Retirees face a tradeoff between two goals, payment certainty and liquidity. Annuities address the former at a cost of the latter. This article lays out an investment approach that aspires to achieve both goals. The heart of this approach is a dynamic investment strategy aimed at sustaining a steady income stream while also minimizing the risk of running out of money. The result is a defined-benefit-like outcome in a defined contribution pension-plan structure.
Innovative Consumers and Market Mavens

Consumer researchers describe two types of consumers they term “the consumer innovator” and “the market maven. ” The former are eager buyers of new products; the second are especially knowledgeable about shopping and buying. The present study examined the relationship between these two constructs as part of a nomological network analysis. We used data from 204 student consumers to test hypothesized relationships among scores on the market maven scale and a measure of innovativeness with opinion leadership, price sensitivity, and self-reports of time and money spent shopping. The analysis showed positive correlations among the measures, but there is clear evidence that the consumer innovator and market maven concepts are separate and distinct. The measure of consumer innovativeness predicted the behavioral criteria better than the market maven scale did. Both concepts may be important to retail managers as they develop strategies for new products.
Social care outsourcing in Britain and its potential occupational health consequences

Abstract This paper considers the potential occupational health effects of the way in which the outsourcing of public social care services is prompting reforms to the employment regimes within voluntary organisations involved in their delivery. It does so by juxtaposing research findings on the nature of these reforms with existing evidence on how key features of such regimes, as well as outsourcing more generally, can impact on the health of workers. The paper concludes that there must be a real concern that current social care outsourcing is impacting negatively on the health of voluntary sector workers. Against this backcloth, the paper calls for further research on such potential negative effects and also identifies several regulatory reforms that could act to counter them.
FINANCIAL REPORTING GAPS AND VALUE RELEVANCE: CHINESE ACCOUNTING STANDARDS AND INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS POST-2001

To gauge the effect of the 2001 official "harmonisation" of the Chinese Accounting Standards (CAS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS) regimes, we examine all companies that simultaneously issued both A and B shares in both the SHSE and SZSE using the Weetman, Jones and Gray (1998) Index of Comparability, testing for differences between companiesâ€™ reported earnings and equities. Ohlsonâ€™s Value Relevance Model (Ohlson, 1995) is also used, associating stock prices with both earnings and book values of these firms to gauge their relative value relevance. Our findings suggest that reported earnings and equities based on CAS are not significantly different from those based on IAS. We infer from our results that the CAS regime has converged with the IAS more substantially than was previously believed and that most existing literature that involves studying the practical differences of CAS from IAS may have been superseded by these findings. The CAS authorities can be cautiously optimistic about the degree of convergence with IAS.
Analysis Effectiveness and Stability of Corporate Marketing Network

Actual corporate marketing network tend to have a large and complex network structure, which affect the operation of enterprises and even dominate marketing network. Based on complex network theory, stability and effectiveness of the definition of corporate marketing network, the establishment of the enterprise network marketing raw form model to analyze effective and stable corporate marketing network features. Keywords-Corporate marketing network; endogenous model; complex network ;effectiveness; stability
A simple time-varying observer for speed estimation of UAV

This note deals with the speed estimation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) using linear acceleration measurements. The estimator is a useful time-varying reduced-order Luemberger like observer such that the observation error is reduced to a time varying linear differential equation. Asymptotic stability of the estimation error is proved using the Lyapunov approach and the Barbalat lemma. Moreover, we generalize the proposed approach to systems with partial accelerations measurements. Conditions for the existence of the observer, which are less restrictive than those given in the literature, are given. A numerical simulation on a Quad-rotor UAV is performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.
The relative tracking ability of South African exchange traded funds and index funds

The Efficient Market Hypothesis holds that it is not possible to ‘beat the market’ and that a passive investment strategy is optimal. Traditionally investors have been able to do this by investing in index funds replicating an index, but the emergence of exchange traded funds (ETFs) has afforded investors with an alternative passive investment strategy. This paper employs several measures of tracking error to test the relative tracking ability of index funds and ETFs which track the FTSE/JSE Top 40 index. We find that ETF's are superior tracking instruments, although there is evidence to suggest that the performance of index funds has improved over the most recent three-year period.
rhoB Encoding a UV-inducible Ras-related Small GTP-binding Protein Is Regulated by GTPases of the Rho Family and Independent of JNK, ERK, and p38 MAP Kinase*

The small GTPase RhoB is immediate-early inducible by DNA damaging treatments and thus part of the early response of eukaryotic cells to genotoxic stress. To investigate the regulation of this cellular response, we isolated the gene forrhoB from a mouse genomic library. Sequence analysis of therhoB gene showed that its coding region does not contain introns. The promoter region of rhoB harbors regulatory elements such as TATA, CAAT, and Sp1 boxes but not consensus sequences for AP-1, Elk-1, or c-Jun/ATF-2. The rhoB promoter was activated by UV irradiation, but not by 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate treatment.rhoB promoter deletion constructs revealed a fragment of 0.17 kilobases in size which was sufficient in eliciting the UV response. This minimal promoter fragment contains TATA and CAAT boxes but no other known regulatory elements. Neither MEK inhibitor PD98059 nor p38 kinase inhibitor SB203580 blocked stimulation ofrhoB by UVC (UV light, 254 nm) which indicates that ERK or p38 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase are not involved in the UV induction of rhoB. Also, phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor wortmannin, which blocks UV stimulation of both JNK and p38 MAP kinase, did not inhibit rhoB activation. Furthermore, activation of JNK by interleukin-1β did not affect rhoBexpression. These data indicate that JNK is not involved in the regulation of rhoB. Overexpression of wild-type Rac as well as the Rho guanine-dissociation inhibitor caused activation ofrhoB. Wild-type RhoB inhibited both basal and UV-stimulatedrhoB promoter activity, indicating a negative regulatory feedback by RhoB itself. The data provide evidence both for a signal transduction pathway independent of JNK, ERK, and p38 MAP kinase to be involved in the induction of rhoB by genotoxic stress, and furthermore, indicate autoregulation of rhoB.
High‐throughput molecular profiling of blood donors for minor red blood cell and platelet antigens

BACKGROUND: ABO and D phenotyping of both blood donors and patients receiving transfusions is routinely performed by blood banks to ensure compatibility. These analyses are performed by antibody‐based agglutination assays. Blood is not tested for minor blood group antigens on a regular basis, however, because of cost and time constraints. This can result in alloimmunization of the patient against one to several minor antigens and may complicate future transfusions.
Lower-Rank Tensor Approximation and Multiway Filtering

This paper presents some recent filtering methods based on the lower-rank tensor approximation approach for denoising tensor signals. In this approach, multicomponent data are represented by tensors, that is, multiway arrays, and the presented tensor filtering methods rely on multilinear algebra. First, the classical channel-by-channel SVD-based filtering method is overviewed. Then, an extension of the classical matrix filtering method is presented. It is based on the lower rank-$(K_1,\dots,K_N)$ truncation of the higher order SVD which performs a multimode principal component analysis (PCA) and is implicitly developed for an additive white Gaussian noise. Two tensor filtering methods recently developed by the authors are also overviewed. The first method consists of an improvement of the multimode PCA-based tensor filtering in the case of an additive correlated Gaussian noise. This improvement is specially done thanks to the fourth order cumulant slice matrix. The second method consists of an extension of Wiener filtering for data tensors. The performances and comparative results between all these tensor filtering methods are presented for the cases of noise reduction in color images, multispectral images, and multicomponent seismic data.
Developing and Implementing Knowledge Management in project-based government organization: A Case study

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the case study of GOV, a project based, small size, government organization and its development and implementation of Knowledge Management to gain competitive advantage and maintain its valuable explicit and tacit knowledge. The dissertation provides a roadmap to developing and implementing Knowledge Management in any organizations using a variety of recommended tools and methodologies including a Knowledge Audit which compromises of knowledge needs analysis, knowledge inventory analysis and knowledge flow analysis. It also discusses how a codification strategy was prioritized for GOV using the results from the Knowledge Audit and a comprehensive SWOT Analysis of GOV’s business internal and external factors. The finding from this dissertation provide evidence that the specific characteristics of GOV and its clear understanding of its business needs have a great influence on how Knowledge Management should be developed and implemented. That is evident through the formulated Knowledge Management Strategy and its set of strategic initiatives and projects that would be implemented on duration of 5 years The conclusions drawn from this study are that although Knowledge Management is a new business concept that lacks solid frameworks and implementation methodologies, organizations can begin the first steps towards its implementation through the analysis its knowledge needs and the alignment of findings to their objectives and overall strategy. Further recommendations to the dissertation include measuring the success of the Knowledge Management implementation of GOV, and revisiting the Knowledge Audit to compare the results and identify the effectiveness of the strategic initiatives and projects