Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in dielectric properties at 460 kHz of kidney and fat during heating: importance for radio-frequency thermal therapy.

We have developed a system to measure the changes due to heating to high temperatures in the dielectric properties of tissues in the radio-frequency range. A two-electrode arrangement was connected to a low-frequency impedance analyser and used to measure the dielectric properties of ex vivo porcine kidney and fat at 460 kHz. This frequency was selected as it is the most commonly used for radio-frequency thermal therapy of renal tumours. Tissue samples were heated to target temperatures between 48 and 78 degrees C in a hot water bath and changes in dielectric properties were measured during 30 min of heating and 15 min of cooling. Results suggest a time-temperature dependence of dielectric properties, with two separate components: one a reversible, temperature-dependent effect and the other a permanent effect due to structural events (e.g. protein coagulation, fat melting) that occur in tissues during heating. We calculated temperature coefficients of 1.3 +/- 0.1% degrees C(-1) for kidney permittivity and 1.6% degrees C(-1) for kidney conductivity, 0.9 +/- 0.1% degrees C(-1) for fat permittivity and 1.7 +/- 0.1% degrees C(-1) for fat conductivity. An Arrhenius model was employed to determine the first-order kinetic rates for the irreversible changes in dielectric properties. The following Arrhenius parameters were determined: an activation energy of 57 +/- 5 kcal mol(-1) and a frequency factor of (6 +/- 1) x 10(34) s(-1) for conductivity of kidney, an activation energy of 48 +/- 2 kcal mol(-1) and a frequency factor of 6 x 10(28) s(-1) for permittivity of kidney. A similar analysis led to an activation energy of 31 +/- 4 kcal mol(-1) and a frequency factor of (4.43 +/- 1) x 10(16) s(-1) for conductivity of fat, and an activation energy of 40 +/- 4 kcal mol(-1) and a frequency factor of 4 x 10(22) s(-1) for permittivity of fat. Structural events occurring during heating at different target temperatures as determined by histological analyses were correlated with the changes in the measured dielectric properties.
Platelet vasopressin levels in childhood idiopathic nephrotic syndrome.

Despite the importance of disturbances in plasma volume in nephrotic patients, the only clinically accepted measurement of this value in common use is plasma renin activity. We assessed the usefulness of plasma vasopressin levels as an index of plasma volume in patients with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome. However, since 80% to 90% of arginine vasopressin circulates bound to platelets, we measured vasopressin levels in platelet-rich and platelet-poor plasma. The nephrotic patients (n = 19) had significantly higher vasopressin levels in platelet-poor and platelet-rich plasma compared with controls (3.2 +/- 0.6 vs 1.0 +/- 0.3 pg/mL, and 10.4 +/- 3.6 vs 3.3 +/- 0.6 pg/mL. respectively). The percent binding of vasopressin to platelets was reduced in nephrotic patients compared with controls (50.2% +/- 6% vs 70.4% +/- 2.9%). The values for platelet-poor vasopressin, but not platelet-rich vasopressin, correlated significantly with the plasma renin activity (r = .83). We conclude that in nephrotic patients, platelet-poor vasopressin levels correlate with plasma renin activity and may provide a useful measure of minute-to-minute vasopressin release in response to changes in plasma volume.
To Be of Special Services.

4.1. 3.1 Another safety feature at Appalachian is our annual campus safety walk. This walk is lead by the University Police Crime Prevention Officer and includes student representatives as well as other key university administrators. The goal of the walk is to survey the adequacy and maintenance of campus lighting and blue light phones. Also, checks are done to see that landscaping near buildings and along walkways does not obscure vision or present other safety hazards.
The influence of appearance, health, and future orientations on tanning behavior.

OBJECTIVE To compare the influence of appearance, health, and future orientations on tanning attitudes and behaviors. METHODS The study was an online survey of 406 volunteers from a university community. RESULTS Appearance and future orientations were more closely related to ultraviolet radiation exposure and protection than was health orientation. CONCLUSIONS Future research and interventions may benefit from closer attention to associations between specific motivational orientations and behaviors.
A personalized interface for supporting multi-users in smart TVs

Smart TVs provide various forms of entertainment including live TV, games, messaging and web search. Though a smart TV is usually shared by all family members, personalization is also necessary. For example, social network service (SNS), e-mail and messaging require privacy, and TV channel navigation will be efficient if each user's preference is separately managed. This paper presents a personalized interface for smart TV with multiple users. A smart TV platform is developed by integrating hardware and software systems, and then an efficient interface on that platform is designed to support personalization. Specially, the proposed interface focuses on a personalized TV channel navigation scheme as current channel navigation systems do not consider each user's preference and thus inefficient to navigate large numbers of TV channels. The proposed scheme addresses this problem by providing personalized channel lists for individual users. It has been implemented on a smart TV development platform, and assessed by simulation and a user test. Experimental results show that the proposed navigation scheme significantly reduces the channel changing delay.1
Job Satisfaction among Sales executives: A Comparative Study of select Private Insurance Companies.

Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s Job experience. There are three important aspects in satisfaction of Job; it is an emotional response to a job situation, it will be measured in terms of how well the end results will match or exceed expectation and it is always referred to in terms of several related attitudes like – pay, promotion, nature of work supervision and opportunities. To the extent that a person’s job fulfils his dominant need and is consistent with his/her expectations and values, the job will be satisfying. So the importance of job satisfaction is fairly evident from a description of the importance of maintaining morale in any industry. If an employee is not satisfied with his work, then both the quantity and quality of his output will suffer. In this context, the present study focused on Job satisfaction among sales executives in selected private insurance companies. The primary data have been collected from sales executives of five private insurance companies- Reliance Life Insurance, Bajaj Alliance Life Insurance, ICICI Prudential, Birla Sun Life Insurance and HDFC Life Insurance. The factors determined to assess the level of satisfaction were Compensation Structure, Training and Development, Communication, Guidance and Monitor, Work Conditions, Affective Components and Overall Job Satisfaction.
Thermal properties of Lu5Ir4Si10 near the charge-density-wave transition

We report the investigations of specific heat, thermal conductivity, as well as thermoelectric power on the charge-density-wave ~CDW! compound Lu5Ir4Si10 as a function of temperature. All thermal measurements consistently exhibit anomalous features around the CDW transition temperature To;80 K. Although the observations can be associated with the CDW formation, the measured anomalies are significantly large, in contrast to those in weak-coupled CDW materials. A quantitative analysis for the specific-heat data near the fluctuation region yields a critical exponent a;2, much larger than the predicted value a50.5 in the extended mean-field theory assuming three-dimensional fluctuations. We also obtained a ratio g*/g58.4, a factor of 6 larger than the BCS value 1.43 in the weak-coupling limit, indicating a strong coupling of this phase transition. Besides, the observed giant excess specific heat DCp /Cp;26% and thermal conductivity Dk/k;15% at To further support this strong-coupling scenario. These large enhancements in Cp and k are attributed to the results of substantially thermal excitation and heat carried by the soft phonons at the transition. In addition, a rapid change in the sign of thermoelectric power at To was observed, which provides a better understanding of the evolution of electronic band structure of the system below and above the CDW formation.
Whose Tail Did Nefermaat's Hunting Dog Bite? Or, How Can Ancient Art Contribute to Biogeography and Paleoclimatology?

The scene in question is located within the fa? ade niche of Nefermaat's chapel at Meydum (29? 24' 3 09 ) near the Fayum Oasis. Nefermaat was a vizier of Snefru, the first pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty (r. 2630-2606 B.C.E.). The southern panel of the fa? ade's western wall hosts the scene discussed here. Part of the mural depicts three canids, which, among other features, possess large black stripes along their flanks. The animals occur in a hunting scene incised in the stone and filled in with colored pastes. On the lowest part of this panel, in Register 7, now in fairly poor condition (Harpur 2001: pi. 5), three canids are pursued by a hunting dog that holds one of them by the base of its tail. The painting possibly depicts a scene from Middle Egypt, perhaps not far from Meydum. However, it is also possible that it is set in Nubia, since Snefru conducted a military campaign in this region, between the First and the Second Cataracts on Egypt's southern frontier. Thus, whichever species Nefermaat's canids belonged to, they most likely lived during the Fourth Dynasty, and geographically along the southern border of Egypt. Petrie published a drawing of this panel made about twenty years after its discovery (1892: pi. 17). According to him, the panel at that time was still "well preserved at the base" with fully preserved pastes displaying "color of purely Egyptian origin. " Thanks to this drawing, it is possible to discern more details of the three canids than can now be seen. These features, in fact, are no longer visible on modern photographs. Some of the details of the animals are intriguing and unique. Their backs and tails are brown, their flanks display very large black stripes, and their tails have a black band near their ends, although the tips of the tails are white. The canids' heads, bellies, and legs are, like the tail tips, also white. Two of these canids have black muzzles, and two have entirely black ears. Their morphology and coloring indisputably match that
Online Network Revenue Management Using Thompson Sampling

Thompson sampling is a randomized Bayesian machine learning method, whose original motivation was to sequentially evaluate treatments in clinical trials. In recent years, this method has drawn wide attention, as Internet companies have successfully implemented it for online ad display. In “Online network revenue management using Thompson sampling,” K. Ferreira, D. Simchi-Levi, and H. Wang propose using Thompson sampling for a revenue management problem where the demand function is unknown. A main challenge to adopt Thompson sampling for revenue management is that the original method does not incorporate inventory constraints. However, the authors show that Thompson sampling can be naturally combined with a linear program formulation to include inventory constraints. The result is a dynamic pricing algorithm that incorporates domain knowledge and has strong theoretical performance guarantees as well as promising numerical performance results. Interestingly, the authors demonstrate that Thompson sampling achieves poor performance when it does not take into account domain knowledge. Finally, the proposed dynamic pricing algorithm is highly flexible and is applicable in a range of industries, from airlines and internet advertising all the way to online retailing.
The shear modulus of metastable amorphous solids with strong central and bond-bending interactions

We derive expressions for the shear modulus of deeply quenched, glassy solids, in terms of a Cauchy–Born free energy expansion around a rigid (quenched) reference state, following the approach due to Alexander (1998 Phys. Rep. 296 65). Continuum-limit explicit expressions of the shear modulus are derived starting from the microscopic Hamiltonians of central and bond-bending interactions. The applicability of the expressions to dense covalent glasses as well as colloidal glasses involving strongly attractive or adhesive bonds is discussed.
Essays on underwriter short covering transactions in initial and seasoned public offerings of equity

This study challenges existing literature in which underwriter "short covering transactions" and "stabilization" are deemed interchangeably. A unique approach is provided to identify the underwriter's true goal in conducting short covering trades in the aftermarket. We find that a significant number of underwriter short covering trades are not for stabilization purpose and when underwriters do employ them to stabilize weak offerings, most of these trades are conducted in clusters. To understand the underwriter's strategy, we compare the impact of clustered and non-clustered short covering transactions on trades and quotes. Our tests consistently reveal an asymmetry in the price impact associated with these two forms of short covering trades.
The R&D Process in the U.S. and Japan: Major findings from the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey

This paper analyzes and compares the objective, the nature and the performance of R&D projects in the US and Japan, based on the first large scale systematic survey of inventors, focusing on the R&D projects yielding triadic patents. Major findings are the following. First, the projects for enhancing the existing business line of a firm account for a large share of R&D projects in both countries, confirming the view that the R&D investment is significantly conditioned by the existing complementary asset of a firm. In both countries, the inventions from R&D for existing business have the highest in-house utilization rate but use least the scientific and technical literature for their conceptions, while the reverse is the case for the inventions from R&D for new technology base (or for cultivating seeds). R&D projects for enhancing the technology base are much more common in the US. This difference can be partly accounted for by US inventors being more likely to have a PhD, but not by the differences in the structure of finance. US government financial support is relatively more targeted to projects for existing business and US venture capital provides support mainly projects for creating new business (6% of them), but not for more upstream projects. Only about 20-30% of the projects are for process innovation in both countries, providing direct evidence for the earlier findings that were based on US patent information. Product innovation generates process patents more often in Japan than in the US (25% vs. 10%), while product innovation projects are relatively more numerous in Japan. In both countries a significant share of inventions (more than 20%) were not the result of an R&D project, and a substantial proportion of such inventions are valued among the top 10% of patents, suggesting that R&D expenditure significantly underestimates inventive activities. A US invention is more often an unexpected by-product of an R&D project (11%) than in Japan (3.4%). The two countries have surprisingly similar distributions of R&D projects in man month and the average team size. In both countries, smaller firms tend to have relatively more high-value patents. In the US, inventors from very small firms (with less than 100 employees) and universities jointly account for more than one quarter of the top 10% inventions, even though they account for only 14% of all inventions. Man-months expended for an invention has a significant correlation with the performance of the R&D projects for existing business, less so for new business and not at all for those enhancing the technology base, suggesting substantial heterogeneity by project types in the determinants of the performance and in the uncertainty. A PhD has a significant correlation with R&D project performance especially for new business.
Graded Regulation of the Kv2.1 Potassium Channel by Variable Phosphorylation

Dynamic modulation of ion channels by phosphorylation underlies neuronal plasticity. The Kv2.1 potassium channel is highly phosphorylated in resting mammalian neurons. Activity-dependent Kv2.1 dephosphorylation by calcineurin induces graded hyperpolarizing shifts in voltage-dependent activation, causing suppression of neuronal excitability. Mass spectrometry–SILAC (stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture) identified 16 Kv2.1 phosphorylation sites, of which 7 were dephosphorylated by calcineurin. Mutation of individual calcineurin-regulated sites to alanine produced incremental shifts mimicking dephosphorylation, whereas mutation to aspartate yielded equivalent resistance to calcineurin. Mutations at multiple sites were additive, showing that variable phosphorylation of Kv2.1 at a large number of sites allows graded activity-dependent regulation of channel gating and neuronal firing properties.
International Association For Hydrogen Energy

The International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE) is an organization dedicated to the advancement and promotion of the Hydrogen Economy concept. The energy crisis in the early 1970s prompted many new ideas for global energy supply; one of them is the hydrogen economy. Membership to the IAHE is open. Membership benefits include a no cost subscription to the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, savings on all other IAHE publications, and reduced registration fees for the workshops, symposia, and conferences organized by the Association. The IAHE is governed by the Board of Directors. The core financial support for the IAHE has been through membership fees, which include journal subscriptions, and some income has been generated by the conferences and selling the books and proceedings. National hydrogen associations have been formed in many countries all over the world, some of which are loosely connected to the IAHE. Keywords: financial support; hydrogen economy; International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE); membership benefits
Analysis of prevalence trends of autism spectrum disorder in Minnesota.

BACKGROUND Alarming increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder have been reported recently in the United States and Europe. OBJECTIVES To quantify and characterize prevalence trends over time in autism spectrum disorder in Minnesota. METHODS We conducted an age-period-birth cohort analysis of special educational disability data from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families & Learning from the 1981-1982 through the 2001-2002 school years. RESULTS Prevalence rates of autism spectrum disorder rose substantially over time within single-age groups and increased from year to year within birth cohorts. Autism spectrum disorder prevalence among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 3 per 10 000 in 1991-1992 to 52 per 10 000 in 2001-2002. All other special educational disability categories also increased during this period, except for mild mental handicap, which decreased slightly from 24 per 10 000 to 23 per 10 000. We found that federal and state administrative changes favoring identification of autism spectrum disorders corresponded in time with the increasing rates. CONCLUSIONS We observed dramatic increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder as a primary special educational disability starting in the 1991-1992 school year, and the trends show no sign of abatement. We found no corresponding decrease in any special educational disability category to suggest diagnostic substitution as an explanation for the autism trends in Minnesota. We could not assess changes in actual disease incidence with these data, but federal and state administrative changes in policy and law favoring better identification and reporting of autism are likely contributing factors to the prevalence increases and may imply that autism spectrum disorder has been underdiagnosed in the past.
Global secondary prevention strategies to limit event recurrence after myocardial infarction: results of the GOSPEL study, a multicenter, randomized controlled trial from the Italian Cardiac Rehabilitation Network.

BACKGROUND Secondary prevention is not adequately implemented after myocardial infarction (MI). We assessed the effect on quality of care and prognosis of a long-term, relatively intensive rehabilitation strategy after MI. METHODS We conducted a multicenter, randomized controlled trial in patients following standard post-MI cardiac rehabilitation, comparing a long-term, reinforced, multifactorial educational and behavioral intervention with usual care. A total of 3241 patients with recent MI were randomized to a 3-year multifactorial continued educational and behavioral program (intervention group; n = 1620) or usual care (control group; n = 1621). The combination of cardiovascular (CV) mortality, nonfatal MI, nonfatal stroke, and hospitalization for angina pectoris, heart failure, or urgent revascularization procedure was the primary end point. Other end points were major CV events, major cardiac and cerebrovascular events, lifestyle habits, and drug prescriptions. RESULTS End point events occurred in 556 patients (17.2%). Compared with usual care, the intensive intervention did not decrease the primary end point significantly (16.1% vs 18.2%; hazard ratio [HR], 0.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.74-1.04). However, the intensive intervention decreased several secondary end points: CV mortality plus nonfatal MI and stroke (3.2% vs 4.8%; HR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.47-0.95), cardiac death plus nonfatal myocardial infarction (2.5% vs 4.0%; HR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.43-0.94), and nonfatal MI (1.4% vs 2.7%; HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.86). A marked improvement in lifestyle habits (ie, exercise, diet, psychosocial stress, less deterioration of body weight control) and in prescription of drugs for secondary prevention was seen in the intervention group. CONCLUSION The GOSPEL Study is the first trial to our knowledge to demonstrate that a multifactorial, continued reinforced intervention up to 3 years after rehabilitation following MI is effective in decreasing the risk of several important CV outcomes, particularly nonfatal MI, although the overall effect is small. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00421876.