Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Research and Development of 3D Modeling

School of Information System and Management, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China Summary 3D modeling is a key technique to much research and applications. In different fields of research and applications, 3D modeling methods of model-data acquisition and modeling have their own specialties. The paper systemically introduces equipments of 3D data acquisition and modeling methods, discusses the characters and developments of laser scanning system and Image-Based Modeling and Rendering (IBMR) in recent years. The paper also introduces applications of 3D modeling including tissue engineering and heritage protection. Finally, several main problems and a few deficiencies are pointed out and further challenges foreseen from three aspects: modeling retrieval, digitizing method, and dynamic modeling.
Transparency And Bidding Competition In International Wheat Trade

One of the major trade policy problems identified by U.S. interests, including grower groups, traders, and policymakers, is that of pricing transparency. This has been a gnawing issue generally related to the pricing practices of competitor exporting countries with state trading enterprises (STEs). The transparency problem generally refers to the inability to observe rivals' terms of trade (including price, quality, credit, etc.) and is normally associated with commercial exporters competing against STE rivals. The perception being the less transparent competitors (STEs) would have a strategic advantage. A game theory model of bidding competition was developed to simulate the effects of information asymmetry amongst rivals. A Bayes-Nash equilibrium was used to derive equilibrium solutions. Several stylized examples were used to illustrate aspects of competition and to analyze effects on bidding strategies. Results indicate that: 1) anything that reduces uncertainties among rivals would reduce equilibrium bids and prices; 2) bidding situations in which there is less transparency have the effect of increasing bids and prices to buyers, and payoffs to sellers; and 3) increases in the number of rivals have the effect of reducing bids and mitigating the informational advantages of STEs. In all cases, less transparent sellers have an advantage in bidding competition relative to more transparent sellers. That advantage in our stylized case was in the area of 1-2$/mt. However, that advantage is mitigated with an increase in the number of transparent rivals and in the case where more transparent players have acted as agents for an STE and have more information about costs of an STE. Further, cessation of exports under U.S. EEP programs should have decreased the transparency of U.S. firms, increasing their competitiveness in the international grain trade.
Prenatal diagnosis of ventricular septal defect and overriding aorta at 14 weeks' gestation, using trans vaginal sonography

Two fetuses with heart abnormalities were detected by transvaginal sonography at 14 weeks of gestation. In the first fetus, a ventricular septal defect and an overriding aorta were detected and a diagnosis of tetralogy of Fallot was suggested. In addition, cystic hygroma and omphalocoele were visualized and the cytogenetic study revealed trisomy 18. In the second fetus, ventricular septal defect, pericardial effusion, and omphalocoele were detected.
Advertising Uses and Gratifications

Outlines uses and gratifications theory and its limited advertising applications to date. Presents findings from a qualitative study which identifies many marketing and non‐marketing uses of advertising by young Scottish adults. Argues that this supports a view of audiences as active, selective and sophisticated consumers of advertising. Suggests that the active, reward‐seeking consumer of advertising challenges traditional models of advertising effectiveness and requires a reorientation of the advertising‐planning process.
The Relationship of Participation in Budget-Setting to Industrial Supervisor Performance and Attitudes: A Field Study

T HIS paper deals with the general topic of participation in decisionmaking with particular emphasis on participation in budget-setting (i.e., the establishment of an operating budget). "Participation" is a concept used to describe the extent to which a subordinate is allowed to select his own courses of action. However, the term has been defined a variety of ways while being applied to various phenomena (Strauss, 1963, p. 57). The terms participation and nonparticipation are used advisedly and a characterization of the "degree of participation" is explained below. Budgeting is one of many administrative activities which appear to bring out certain kinds of human reactions. The process of budgeting and its product, the budget, have been the topic of numerous written efforts in the past. The present study offers empirical data (from a field setting) which focus on certain hypotheses developed from. the behavioral budgeting literature.
Protease resistance and conformation of laminin.

Laminin, obtained from a tumor basement membrane, was treated with neutral proteases (trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase, subtilisin, Stuphylococcus aureus protease), which all produced similar fragment patterns upon prolonged digestion. The patterns were different from those obtained for fibronectin, which showed a much higher susceptibility to proteolysis by the same enzymes. Four large fragments could be purified which accounted together for more than half of the mass of laminin. They were found to differ in size, amino acid composition, spectral properties and antigenicity. The largest fragment 1 (Mr 260000-300000) was rich in half-cystine (120 residues/1000) and showed a circular dichroism spectrum indicating the absence of α helix and β structure. Fragment 3 (Mr= 50000) possessed beta; structure and was able to bind onto heparin-Sepharose. Fragments 2 (Mr= 50000) and 4 (Mr= 75000) were related structures and their relative yields depended on the protease used. They showed spectra similar to those of fragment 1. Electron microscopy revealed that fragment 1 consists of three rodlike elements (length 26 nm) connected to each other at one end. The other fragments appeared as globules (fragment 3), short rods (fragment 2) or globules connected to a short rod (fragment 4). Data obtained from limited proteolysis indicated that fragment 1 and 4 (or 2) are in close proximity to each other in the three short arms of laminin, which in its intact form has the shape of an asymmetric cross. The long arm appeared to be readily degraded by proteases. Circular dichroism studies of native laminin indicated about 55%, aperiodic structures, 15%β structure and 30%× helix. The α helix was readily destroyed by proteolysis and showed a sharp, reversible transition at 58° C. Stability of these structures was decreased by reduction of disulfide bonds or by increasing concentrations of guanidine. Heat denaturation rendered laminin susceptible to plasmin, which did not degrade the native protein. Cleavage occurred mainly within the 440000-Mrpolypeptide chain of laminin and was accompanied by a partial loss of the long arm.
Decision-making process for project portfolio management

The purpose of this paper is a quantitative study of the risk surrounding the main problem of investment decision making in project portfolio selection. The primary objective is to provide managers with a decision support tool allowing them to choose carefully their investment strategies and reduce risk of failure. The developed computer model consists of three major modules. The first module calculates projects cash-flow using a deterministic method. The second module calculates expected after tax net cash flows and estimates performance indicators for each realisation, thus yielding distribution of return for each project. The third module selects a set of projects (portfolio) using their covariance and semi-covariance matrix. In summary, we will define a selection model for portfolio management of investment projects that will not only take into account risk, but also the effect of the interdependence of projects. The model will be applied to a portfolio of projects in petroleum upstream.
[Candesartan Antihypertensive Survival Evaluation in Japan (CASE-J) trial].

and keywords Objective Hypertensive patients are at increased risk of developing diabetes. Accumulating evidence suggests a close relation between metabolic disturbance and increased arterial stiffness. Here, we examined the association between pulse pressure (PP) and the risk of new-onset diabetes in high-risk Japanese hypertensive patients. Research Design and Methods The CASE-J trial examined the effects of candesartan and amlodipine on the incidence of cardiovascular events in 4,728 high-risk Japanese hypertensive patients. In the present study, we analyzed the relationship between PP at baseline and new-onset diabetes in 2,685 patients without diabetes at baseline (male, 1,471; mean age, 63.7 years; mean BMI, 24.8 kg/m 2 ) as a subanalysis of the CASE-J trial. Results During 3.3 ± 0.8 years of follow-up, 97 patients (3.6%) developed diabetes. In multiple Cox regression analysis, PP was an independent predictor for new-onset diabetes (hazard ratio per 1 SD increase 1.44, 95% CI 1.15-1.79), as were male sex, body mass index and additional use of diuretics, whereas age and heart rate were not. Plots of hazard ratios for new-onset diabetes considering both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) revealed that a higher PP with a lower DBP, indicating that the increased PP was largely due to increased arterial stiffness, was strongly associated with the risk of new-onset diabetes.
THE KNOWLEDGE BAZAAR.

This paper presents field work that challenges existing metaphors of knowledge work as a process shaped by machine or market forces. Instead, as people in organizations jointly engage in the generation of solutions, each exchange between individuals represents both the production and distribution of knowledge; each exchange is valued in multiple (often social) currencies; and each exchange is located in a particular time and place. To more fully capture the practice of knowledge work in organizations, this paper draws from Geertz's 1978 description of a Morrocan Bazaar as both economic and social community. Knowledge work in organizations draws its central characteristics as a bazaar in which the exchange of ideas and expertise is continually shaped by both social and economic forces within the community and the continual flow of goods and services from the environment. Such a perspective highlights several implications for the management of knowledge work. First, the environmental conditions that surroun.
A Knowledge Mining Approach for Effective Customer Relationship Management

The problem of existing customer relationship management CRM system is not lack of information but the ability to differentiate useful information from chatter or even disinformation and also maximize the richness of these heterogeneous information sources. This paper describes an improved text mining approach for automatically extracting association rules from collections of textual documents. It discovers association rules from keyword features extracted from the documents. The main contributions of the technique are that, in selecting the most discriminative keywords for use in association rules generation, the system combines syntactic and semantic relevance into its Information Retrieval Scheme which is integrated with XML technology. Experiments carried out revealed that the extracted association rules contain important features which form a worthy platform for making effective decisions as regards customer relationship management. The performance of the improved text mining approach is compared with existing system that uses the GARW algorithm to reveal a significant reduction in the large itemsets, leading to reduction in rules generated to more interesting ones due to the semantic analysis component being introduced. Also, it has brought about reduction of the execution time, compared to the GARW algorithm.
The ‘U-turn’: Business confi dence in a Karoo town

Business confidence helps explain the sentiments that business owners or managers have towards current and future business conditions. This article compares several ways of measuring business confi dence. Business confi dence is mostly surveyed at the level of the nation-state rather than at the level of municipalities or towns. This article provides a methodology for business-confi dence surveys at the local level. This approach has been piloted in the town of Beaufort West in the Karoo area of South Africa. There are plans for a new uranium mine near Beaufort West, and the researchers speculate on its impact on the broader local business confi dence.
Gray and Color Image C . ontrast Enhanceme 11 t by the Cllrvelet Transform

We present in this paper a new method for con­ trast enhancement based on the curvelet transform. The curvelet transform represents edges better than wavelets, and is therefore well-suited for multiscale edge enhancement. We compare this approach with enhancement based on the wavelet transform, and the Multiscale Retinex. In a range of examples, we use edge de­ tection and segmentation, among other processing applications, to provide for quantitative comparative evaluation. Our find­ ings are that curvelet based enhancement out-performs other enhancement methods on noisy images, but on noiseless or near noiseless images curvelet based enhancement is not remarkably better than wavelet based enhancement. KeywordsWavelets, Ridgelets, CUl'velets, Contrast Enhance­ ment.
Design and Ergonomics. Methods for Integrating Ergonomics at Hand Tool Design Stage

As a marked increase in the number of musculoskeletal disorders was noted in many industrialized countries and more specifically in companies that require the use of hand tools, the French National Research and Safety Institute (INRS) launched in 1999 a research project on the topic of integrating ergonomics into hand tool design, and more particularly to a design of a boning knife. After a brief recall of the difficulties of integrating ergonomics at the design stage, the present paper shows how 3 design methodological tools—Functional Analysis, Quality Function Deployment and TRIZ—have been applied to the design of a boning knife. Implementation of these tools enabled us to demonstrate the extent to which they are capable ofresponding to the difficulties ofintegrating ergonomics into product design.
Supply chain management in food processing sector: experience from India

Food processing is an important link between agriculture sector and the consumers. Importance of logistics and supply chain management is increasing at the global level especially in food processing. Present study is an attempt to explore the status of supply chain management in food processing industry of Punjab. Fifty food processing units were included in the study. Survey queries focused on a range of issues such as recognition of supply chain management as a separate functional area, use of information technology applications, and use of cold chain facilities. An attempt was also made to explore supply chain management practices adopted by food processing units. Results indicate that logistics and supply chain management is still in its infancy in food processing sector. There is considerable scope improving supply chain management practices especially in context of information quality, and postponement.
[Experimental infection of pregnant gilts with Aujeszky's disease virus strain RC/79].

The RC/79 strain of the Aujeszky's disease virus was able to induce reproductive failure of pregnant gilts intranasally inoculated at different gestation periods. Four gilts 40-46 days pregnant (group A) and 6 gilts 70-73 days pregnant (group B) were instilled with 0.2 ml x 10(5) tissue culture infectious dose 50 (TCID50/0.2 ml) of the RC/79 strain into each nostril. Two gilts 70-73 days pregnant (group C) were used as non exposed controls. The three groups were kept in separated boxes and they were observed for clinical signs of infections and samples were collected for determination of viral shedding every day. Viral isolation was attempted in Vero cells (figure 1). From the 2nd to 7th day after inoculation, groups A and B showed fever anorexia, sneezing, coughing and depression; and viral isolation from nasal swabs was possible in 7 gilts at days 4 to 11, 9 gilts developed neutralizing antibodies. The virus caused fetal reabsorption in swine during the first period of pregnancy (group A), while infection during late pregnancy resulted in still birth or normal pigs and one mummification (group B). The entire a live litter was composed of no more than 8 suckling pigs in both groups. At necropsy virus from turbinates, ovary , placenta, spleen and lung could be isolated only from 3 gilts (group B, table 1). In 5 of 35 stillbirth and alive fetuses virus could be isolated from spleen (100%), lung (80%), liver (60%) and brain (40%) indicating that the virus has the ability to cross the placental barrier thus producing lesions in porcine fetuses and causing reproductive failure in sows (table 2). Tissue specimens from these 35 fetuses were fixed in 10% formalin, included in paraffin sectioned and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. In 13 fetuses microscopic lesions i.e. necrotic foci were found in lung (60%), liver (40%) and spleen (20%), these alterations were coincident with gross lesions in most of them. Inclusion bodies were absent. The gilts organs did not present gross lesions.
Compact Narrow Band Non-Degenerate Dual-Mode Microstrip Filter with Etched Square Lattices

A compact narrowband non-degenerate dual-mode microstrip filter with square shape cuts is presented. The structure is developed by loading the conventional non-degenerate dual-mode resonator by open circuit stubs at two opposite corners. The filter bandwidth is controlled by only decreasing the higher cutoff frequency of the conventional type. With Square shape cuts, return loss is improved. A 20% fractional bandwidth filter is designed and implemented on FR4 material with 4.4 dielectric constant and 1.6 mm thickness at center frequency of 1.5 GHz with passband of 1.3 GHz to 1.6 GHz. Analysis has been achieved using the IE3D simulator. Experimental results do agree with simulations.
Estimating sample sizes for binary, ordered categorical, and continuous outcomes in two group comparisons

Sample size calculations are now mandatory for many research protocols, but the ones useful in common situations are not all easily accessible. This paper outlines the ways of calculating sample sizes in two group studies for binary, ordered categorical, and continuous outcomes. Formulas and worked examples are given. Maximum power is usually achieved by having equal numbers in the two groups. However, this is not always possible and calculations for unequal group sizes are given.
Are Foreign Banks Out-Competing U.S. Banks in the U.S. Market?

The market share of foreign-owned banks (subsidiaries, branches, and agencies) in the United States grew dramatically during the 1980s and early 1990s, amid fears that foreign banks were out-competing U.S.-owned banks in their home market. However, more recent data show that growth of the market share of foreign-owned banks has slowed substantially. Furthermore, the data shows that foreign-owned banks in the U.S. have persistently exhibited lower profit rates than counterpart U.S.-owned banks, subsidiaries of foreign banks have operated less efficiently than U.S.-owned banks, and in the last few years the credit quality of foreign banks plunged below that of U . S. -owned banks. These findings call into question fears about foreign banks out-competing U.S. banks in the U.S. market and suggest that despite having captured a substantial share of U.S. banking business, further penetration of the U.S. banking market by foreign-owned banks is far from certain.
Is "CSR" Expenditure or an Investment? Empirical Examination

 Abstract—Now-a-days Corporate Social Responsibility is gaining prominence among the organizations of various fields. Organizations now are emphasizing on CSR initiatives by integrating their business operations with the CSR activities to sustain in this competitive world. Our study is based on secondary data collected from PROWES database for the year 2003 to 2012 for 21 commercial banks The purpose of this study is to know the comparative contributions of societal expenditure and marketing expenditure on profitability, also to compare the growth rate of societal expenditure and growth rate of ratio of the said expenditures before and after dec'07. By categorizing the stated banks as top performer and non top-performer based on their profitability, this study compares the incurred comparative expenditure between said two groups and its likely impact on profit. The analysis shows that societal expenditure has been increased after '07 but not significantly and marketing related expenditure have been increased much more than that of the expenditure made towards society. Again when we observe the profit contributions of these expenditures of the top -performer, we can see that the societal expenditure contributes much as compared to marketing expenditure. So, the question arises why not marketing expenditure routed to societal expenditure so that it can be considered as a win-win situation for corporate and society where they can stimulate profitability along with development of the society .
Prognostic indicators for dogs and cats with cardiopulmonary arrest treated by cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation at a university teaching hospital.

OBJECTIVE To determine the association among signalment, health status, other clinical variables, and treatments and events during cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation (CPCR) with the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) for animals with cardiopulmonary arrest (CPA) in a veterinary teaching hospital. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. ANIMALS 161 dogs and 43 cats with CPA. PROCEDURES Data were gathered during a 60-month period on animals that had CPA and underwent CPCR. Logistic regression was used to evaluate effects of multiple predictors for ROSC. RESULTS 56 (35%) dogs and 19 (44%) cats had successful CPCR. Twelve (6%) animals (9 dogs and 3 cats) were discharged from the hospital. Successfully resuscitated dogs were significantly more likely to have been treated with mannitol, lidocaine, fluids, dopamine, corticosteroids, or vasopressin; had CPA while anesthetized; received chest compressions while positioned in lateral recumbency; and had a suspected cause of CPA other than hemorrhage or anemia, shock, hypoxemia, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, cerebral trauma, malignant arrhythmia, or an anaphylactoid reaction and were less likely to have been treated with multiple doses of epinephrine, had a longer duration of CPA, or had multiple disease conditions, compared with findings in dogs that were not successfully resuscitated. Successfully resuscitated cats were significantly more likely to have had more people participate in CPCR and less likely to have had shock as the suspected cause of CPA, compared with findings in cats that were not successfully resuscitated. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE The prognosis was grave for animals with CPA, except for those that had CPA while anesthetized.