Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Intentions of Consumers Participating in TV Call-in Promotions - A Behavioral Analysis

This study discusses the factors of that consumers participate in TV call-in promotion activities. Also try to find out whether demographical variables affect call-in participants' behavior through their influence on psychology and whether product knowledge has an impact on the relationship between demographical variables and participants' behavior. Finally, we use psychological variables to differentiate 0204 market. By applying three-stage regression analysis, we find that call-in participants' interests, the easiness of the questions, product knowledge, and length of time in watching soap operas, will increase the consumer's intention of calling 0204.Furthermore,two-way analysis of variance helps us to identify that product knowledge has no effect on 0204 callers. Moreover, we can divide 0204 market to callers with high, moderate, and low Call-in intentions segments. The main contributions of this study include: first, company should pay attention to consumers' feeling at heart and do some adjustments that will increase calling intentions. Second, in 0204 market, company should focus on regionalism and increase interests for the viewers of moderate call-in intentions.
Metadata Interoperability and Standardization - A Study of Methodology, Part I: Achieving Interoperability at the Schema Level

The rapid growth of Internet resources and digital collections has been accompanied by a proliferation of metadata schemas, each of which has been designed based on the requirements of particular user communities, intended users, types of materials, subject domains, project needs, etc. Problems arise when building large digital libraries or repositories with metadata records that were prepared according to diverse schemas. This article (published in two parts) contains an analysis of the methods that have been used to achieve or improve interoperability among metadata schemas and applications, for the purposes of facilitating conversion and exchange of metadata and enabling cross-domain metadata harvesting and federated searches. From a methodological point of view, implementing interoperability may be considered at different levels of operation: schema level, record level, and repository level. Part I of the article intends to explain possible situations in which metadata schemas may be created or implemented, whether in individual projects or in integrated repositories. It also discusses approaches used at the schema level. Part II of the article will discuss metadata interoperability efforts at the record and repository
Deriving Meaning from Genomic Information

As sequencing of the hUlnan genolne draws to a close, the fruits of this vision have already achieved startling 1l1aturity. By leveraging DNA sequence information toward robust~ new technological platforms, researchers are rapidly recharting the 1l1odern course of molecular genetics. Until now, the currencies of genolnic experimentation have renlained recognizable, if vastly increased in scope. We are still assaying the regulation of gene activity or linking phenotypes to genetic variation only on a scale fouT or five orders of magnitude greater than before. Indeed, many in the scientific comnlunity first elnbraced genomics for its pronlise of a \vealth of data traditionally generated through more painstaking means. But large-scale technologies presage far deeper change in the very way we think about biological systeJns. The results of experilllental genoJnics noisy~ sparse in context, and overwhelmingly vast in scope resist the bounded conclusions drawn from conventional biological study. Rather, these data reflect the cOlnbinatorial con1plexity of cellular systems and challenge us to discenl the pattenls underlying biological design. GenoJllic approaches reveal not only discrete links that connect individual proteins and phenotypes, but also broad comnlunications between parts of pathways, chromosolnes, and cellular process. Ultimately, these studies may prove Inost valuable for providing answers to those questions we never set out to ask. Divining these new sorts of conclusions is a task to which biologists find themselves largely unaccuston1ed. And so, as genolnic data proliferates, accessing and drawing Ineaningful insights will soon pose as great a technological challenge as production of the data itself. In the past t\\'O years, nlore infornlation regarding genetic diversity and nlRNA expression has been released into the public domain than frolll the preceding ten. That this drastic acceleration can be explained primarily by largesc,l1e DNA sequencing capability and the increasing popularity of DNA an-ays
Organic food.

"Organic" or "organically grown" foods are commonly represented as "food grown without pesticides; grown without artificial fertilizers; grown in soil whose humus content is increased by the additions of organic matter; grown in soil whose mineral content is increased with applications of natural mineral fertilizers; has not been treated with preservatives, hormones, antibiotics etc." The substitution of "organic" for "chemical" fertilizers during the growth of plants produces no change in the nutritional or chemical properties of foods. All foods are made of "chemicals. " Traces of pesticides have been reported to be present in about 20 to 30% of both "organic" and conventional foods. These traces are usually within the official tolerance levels. Such levels are set low enough to protect consumers adequately. Indeed, there is no record of a single case of injury to a consumer resulting from the application of pesticides to food crops at permitted levels.
Autophagy Recognizes Intracellular Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in Damaged Vacuoles

Autophagy is responsible for the degradation of cytosolic components within eukaryotic cells. Interestingly, autophagy also appears to play a role in recognizing invading intracellular pathogens. Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) is an intracellular pathogen that normally resides and replicates within the Salmonella-containing vacuole (SCV). However, during in vitro infection a population of S. Typhimurium damage and escape from the SCV to enter the cytosol. We have observed that some intracellular S. Typhimurium are recognized by autophagy under in vitro infection conditions. Immunofluorescence studies revealed that autophagy recognizes the population of S.Typhimurium within damaged SCVs early after infection. The consequences of autophagic recognition of S. Typhimurium are still being elucidated, though a restrictive effect on intracellular bacterial replication has been demonstrated. Results of our in vitro infection studies are consistent with autophagy playing a role in cellular defense against S. Typhimurium that become exposed to the cytosol.
Human renal carcinoma line transfected with interleukin-2 and/or interferon alpha gene(s): implications for live cancer vaccines.

BACKGROUND Combination therapy with systemically administered interleukin-2 (IL-2) and interferon alpha (IFN-alpha) has resulted in long-term objective remissions in 30% of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but toxic effects are clinically significant. PURPOSE We have thus investigated an alternative therapeutic approach--continuous intratumoral production of IL-2 and/or IFN-alpha by a cytokine-transfected human RCC tumor cell line. METHODS Plasmid vectors were used to transfect the R11 RCC line with the genes for human IL-2 and/or IFN-alpha by the calcium phosphate precipitation method. Biologic characteristics of the cytokine-transfected tumor cells were determined by assays of thymidine incorporation and cytotoxicity, fluorescence-activated cell-sorter analysis, Northern blotting, and in vivo studies in C3Hf/Sed/Kam mice rendered T-cell deficient. RESULTS The transfected cell lines produced the following amounts of cytokine per 10(6) cells per day: R11-IL-2 (220 U), R11-IFN-alpha (10,240 U), and R11-IL-2 + IFN-alpha (95 U + 1270 U, respectively). Gamma irradiation did not eliminate cytokine secretion. Morphology and growth rates were identical to those for the parental R11 cell line, except for IFN-alpha-producing clones, which showed significant growth inhibition. All cytokine-producing cells demonstrated increased susceptibility to cell killing by peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL). IFN-alpha producers exhibited enhanced HLA antigen expression and suppressed c-myc messenger RNA expression; when cocultured in vitro, they induced similar changes in parental R11 cells. IL-2 producers could stimulate growth and cytotoxicity of naive (i.e., freshly isolated, uncultured) and activated PBL. All cytokine-producing cells lost their tumorigenicity, as evidenced by failure to grow in the T-cell-depleted mice. When co-injected at a local site but not at a distant site, these cells prevented growth of parental R11 cells. Histologic examination of the injection sites revealed a substantial influx of macrophages. Intraperitoneal administration of IL-2 and/or IFN-alpha could not, however, prevent growth of the parental R11 tumors. CONCLUSION Local production of high concentrations of IL-2 and IFN-alpha at the tumor site is more effective in preventing tumor growth than systemic administration. IMPLICATION Continuous local delivery of cytokines via transfer of cytokine genes into tumor cells for use as live cancer vaccines is a novel strategy for manipulation of host-mediated antitumor immune response in patients with advanced RCC.
Organizational Evolution and HRM: Evidence from Sweden

In order to understand the change process of the new organizational structures in HR (see Ulrich,1997),this paper applies ecological perspective at organizational and population level suggested by Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) and provides a starting point for future research to apply what Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) called “Guided Evolution” perspective. The next objective of this paper is to check if it is possible to come up with a Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across different business environments. it applies qualitative research technique where an interview questionnaire is prepared and four personal interviews are taken from three large Swedish companies with international scope. The data found are then compared with other secondary data to draw the final conclusion for the paper. The findings of this work suggest that, the whole change process corresponds to a “variation” cycle of the evolutionary process which should eventually move to a “selection” cycle. The choice and success of these new structures and roles are dependent on factors such as corporate strategies, adequate knowledge of HR or presence/absence of competition and finally suggest that success factors vary from environment to environment and thus it is not possible to come up with a set of Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across cultures and business environments. Keywords : HR Business Partner, HR Shared Service Center, Organizational Evolution, Changing Role of HR, Change Management
Modeling the effects of generation adequacy policies implemented in North West European countries on the Dutch electricity market

Electricity production plays a crucial role in The Netherlands to support the functioning and development of the entire society. Therefore, it is in the best interest of this country to keep the well functioning of the Dutch electricity market to meet the current and future demand of electricity. However, generation adequacy policies implemented in neighboring countries under European market integration affect the performance of the Dutch electricity market under certain conditions. This study shows that, generation adequacy policies, more precisely capacity mechanisms result in electricity price distortions, redistribution of welfare and to some extent reduction of reliable production capacity in the Netherlands in the short-term. A static equilibrium model of North West Europe electricity market is designed to explore the mentioned cross-border effects on the Dutch electricity market. The results of the model are used to formulate plausible policies to keep the levels of affordability and reliability of electricity in the Dutch electricity market, and to suggest further issues to be researched.
Contributions on fair exchange of digital signatures

Fair exchange protocols aim to allow two parties to exchange digital items in a fair manner. Optimistic fair exchange (OFE) is a kind of protocols that solves the fair exchange problem with the help of a trusted third party (TTP), usually referred to as an ‘arbitrator’. The participation of the arbitrator is only required when there is a dispute between the exchanging parties. In the literature, the highest level of security of optimistic fair exchange is the multi-user security in the chosen-key model, proposed by Huang, Yang, Wong and Susilo in CT-RSA 2008. They showed that an efficient optimistic fair exchange scheme, secure in this sense, can be constructed generically from a conventional signature and a ring signature. In particular, the underlying ring signature is required to be unforgeable under an adaptive attack, against a static adversary in the 2-user setting. Concurrent signatures, introduced by Chen, Kudla and Paterson in Eurocrypt 2004, allow two parties to produce two ambiguous signatures until an extra piece of information, the keystone, is released by one of the parties. Upon the release of the keystone, the ambiguity will be revoked and the signatures bind to their true signers concurrently. Concurrent signatures, however, are known to fall just short of fully solving the long standing fair exchange of signatures problem. The price for not requiring any TTP is that the party who holds the keystone always has an advantage over the other party in controlling when and whether the protocol completes or not. In this thesis, the fair exchange of digital signatures problem is studied. In the first part of this thesis, the OFE security is strengthened and a more practical model which is called enhanced chosen-key model is proposed. Unlike the existing multiuser setting and chosen-key model, an adversary in the enhanced chosen-key model is further provided with the signing oracle that outputs full signatures generated by the signer, and may even be allowed to have access to the arbitrator’s secret key. The necessity for the new model is demonstrated. It is shown that two existing
Adaptive flocking with a virtual leader of multiple agents governed by nonlinear dynamics

We investigate the flocking problem of multiple nonlinear dynamical mobile agents with a virtual leader in a dynamic proximity network. We assume that only a fraction of agents in the network are informed and propose a connectivity-preserving flocking algorithm. Under the assumption that the initial network is connected, we introduce local adaptation strategies for both the weights on the velocity navigational feedback and the coupling strengths that enable all agents to track the virtual leader, without requiring the knowledge of the agent dynamics. The resulting flocking algorithm works even for the case where only one agent is informed.
Surface frustration and texture instability in smectic-A liquid crystals.

Uniform smectic-A plates, floating freely on top of isotropic droplets, show static instabilities. Above a thickness threshold, the stable state of the smectic plate is an hexagonal network of focal conics. This instability is quantitatively explained by the anisotropy of surfaces tensions, which favors the alignment of smetic layers parallel to the air interface and perpendicular to the isotropic phase. This intrinsic frustration seems general for most smectic-A\ensuremath{\rightarrow}isotropic first-order transitions.
Risk factors, barriers and facilitators for linkage to antiretroviral therapy care: a systematic review

Objective:To characterize patient and programmatic factors associated with retention in care during the pre-antiretroviral therapy (ART) period and linkage to ART care. Design:Systematic literature review. Methods:An electronic search was conducted on MEDLINE, Global Health, Google Scholar and conference databases to identify studies reporting on predictors, barriers and facilitators of retention in care in the pre-ART period, and linkage to care at three steps: ART-eligibility assessment, pre-ART care and ART initiation. Factors associated with attrition were then divided into areas for intervention. Results:Seven hundred and sixty-eight citations were identified. Forty-two studies from 12 countries were included for review, with the majority from South Africa (16). The most commonly cited category of factors was transport costs and distance. Stigma and fear of disclosure comprised the second most commonly cited category of factors followed by staff shortages, long waiting times, fear of drug side effects, male sex, younger age and the need to take time off work. Conclusion:This review highlights the importance of investigating interventions that could reduce transport difficulties. Decentralization, task-shifting and integration of services need to be expedited to alleviate health system barriers. Patient support groups and strategic posttest counselling are essential to assist patients deal with stigma and disclosure. Moreover, well tolerated first-line drugs and treatment literacy programmes are needed to improve acceptance of ART. This review suggests a combination of interventions to retain specific groups at risk for attrition such as workplace programmes for employed patients, dedicated clinic and support programmes for men and younger individuals.
Muscle fatigue during intermittent isokinetic shoulder abduction: Age effects and utility of electromyographic measures

Most existing evidence regarding the effects of age on muscular fatigue has focused on prolonged isometric contractions, repeated maximum dynamic contractions and individuals beyond traditional retirement age (>65 years). In the present study, age-related differences in muscle fatigue during submaximal dynamic efforts were examined. There were 24 younger (18–25 years) and 24 older (55–65 years) participants, all of whom were healthy and active, with equal numbers of each gender within each age group. Participants performed repetitive, intermittent shoulder abductions until exhaustion, at peak moments of 30% and 40% of individual maximum voluntary isokinetic contraction (MVIC) and with cycle durations of 20 and 40 s. Fatigue development was determined based on changes in MVIC, electromyographic (EMG) signals and ratings of perceived discomfort (RPD). Following the exhaustive exercises, strength recovery was monitored using a series of MVICs over a 15-min period. Results indicated the existence of an age-related fatigue resistance, with the older group demonstrating significantly slower rates of MVIC decline and RPD increase and smaller modifications in EMG-based fatigue measures. These age effects were generally more pronounced at the higher effort level. Main effects of effort level and cycle duration were also significant, while gender effects appeared to be marginal. Rates of strength recovery were not significantly influenced by age. In addition, the utility of standard EMG-based fatigue measures was assessed. Findings indicated that time-dependent changes in static and dynamic EMG-based measures were roughly comparable in terms of sensitivity and variability, supporting the use of standard EMG analyses for fatigue monitoring during intermittent dynamic contractions.
Saliency meets spatial quantization: A practical framework for large scale product search

Product image search aims to retrieve similar product images based on a query image. While deep learning based features work well in retrieving images of the same category (e.g. “searching for T-shirts from all the clothing images”), they perform poorly when retrieving variants of images within the same category (e.g. “searching for uniform of Chelsea football club from all T-shirts image”), since it requires fine grained matching on image details. In this paper, we present a spatial quantization approach that utilizes spatial pyramid pooling (SPP) and vector of locally aggregated descriptors (VLAD) to extract more discriminative features for style-aware product search. By using the proposed spatial quantization, spatial information is encoded into the image feature to improve the fine grained product image search. Finally, the experiments on a large scale real world dataset provided by Alibaba large-scale image search challenge (ALISC) demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Lexicons, semantic relations and onthologies

The paper discusses several issues concerning the lexicon within a psycholinguistic pragmatic model of language which takes into account both use and competence. Besides semantic information entailed in the word meaning, the lexicon also includes the semantic relations. Therefore, the logical line of research should combine the pragmatic perspective with a model of language competence and language use which would assume that the semantic relations among words must be represented in the lexicon with other knowledge of words, i.e. we need an otology for the lexicon, seen as a non-linguistic object that more-directly represents the world, providing an interpretation or grounding of word senses. This kind of approach is to be used in machine translation and other multilingual applications where a mapping like this could act as an interlingua, enabling the words in one language to be interpreted in another.
Eddy detection using RADARSAT-1 synthetic aperture radar

Two projects undertaken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) have shown success in using spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to identify oceanic eddies and current boundaries. In addition to detecting the frontal area and change in slick patterns, the SAR imagery may also pick up a change in the low-level wind structure as a result of the sea surface temperature (SST) gradient between the eddy and its surroundings affecting the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) stability. This wind fluctuation modulates the sea surface roughness, allowing the eddy boundaries to be imaged by SAR. Two examples, one of an eddy in the Gulf of Alaska, and the second of the Loop Current boundary in the Gulf of Mexico, are analyzed to show the correlation between the SST and surface wind gradients across their boundaries
Clinical implications of chromosomal abnormalities in gastric adenocarcinomas

Gastric carcinoma (GC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide and has a very poor prognosis. Genetic imbalances in 62 primary gastric adenocarcinomas of various histopathologic types and pathologic stages and six gastric cancer–derived cell lines were analyzed by comparative genomic hybridization, and the relationship of genomic abnormalities to clinical features in primary GC was evaluated at a genome‐wide level. Eighty‐four percent of the tumors and all six cell lines showed DNA copy number changes. The recurrent chromosomal abnormalities including gains at 15 regions and losses at 8 regions were identified. Statistical analyses revealed that gains at 17q24‐qter (53%), 20q13‐qter (48%), 1p32–p36 (42%), 22q12‐qter (27%), 17p13‐pter (24%), 16p13‐pter (21%), 6p21‐pter (19%), 20p12‐pter (19%), 7p21‐pter (18%), 3q28‐qter (8%), and 13q13–q14 (8%), and losses at 18q12‐qter (11%), 3p12 (8%), 3p25‐pter (8%), 5q14–q23 (8%), and 9p21‐p23 (5%), are associated with unique patient or tumor‐related features. GCs of differing histopathologic features were shown to be associated with distinct patterns of genetic alterations, supporting the notion that they evolve through distinct genetic pathways. Metastatic tumors were also associated with specific genetic changes. These regions may harbor candidate genes involved in the pathogenesis of this malignancy. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.