Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Trial of Phenylindanedione as an Anticoagulant

At present dicoumarol and ethyl biscoumacetate (bis-3, 3'-(4-oxycoumarinyl)-ethyl acetate; "tromnexan") are the two drugs with a prothrombopenic action which are in common use as anticoagulants. DicoumaroL was the first prothrombopenic drug to come into use, but its toxic effect (due, however, in many instances to indiscrimipate heavy overdosage and also to lack of proper control, including unreliable estimations of the prothrombin time) has led to severe haemorrhage in many cases. The great drawback with dicoumarol is its cumulative action, which may continue long after the drug has been stopped. This cumulative effect necessitates particularly skilled and detailed control of the drug with frequent estimations ofthe prothrombin time if severe haemorrhiage is to be. avoided. Another disadvantage with dicoumarol is the long delay, usually 48 to 72 hours, before a full therapeutic effect is reached. Ethyl biscoumacetate has a much more rapid action than dicoumarol, a therapeutic effect usually being achieved in 18 to 24 hours. Moreover, the effect of ethyl biscoumacetate, unlike that of dicoumarol, is, owing to the rapid metabolism and elimination of the drug, almost never cumulative. The rapid inactivation of ethyl biscoumacetate, however, often makes it difficult to maintain an
Skeletal muscle dysfunction: a ubiquitous outcome in chronic disease?

Skeletal muscle wasting is a debilitating consequence of respiratory disease, particularly well characterised in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, it remains controversial whether peripheral muscle dysfunction is an intrinsic part of the respiratory disease process, or a generalised response to multiple atrophy stimuli. Such debate has not only informed the subtleties of pathophysiology, but has also instigated detailed analyses of the molecular mechanisms involved in the induction of muscle atrophy, identifying the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) as the predominant pathway required for the rapid proteolysis seen in muscle wasting. In this issue of Thorax ( see page 113 ), Mainguy et al contribute to our knowledge of muscle weakness in chronic respiratory disease, characterising peripheral muscle function in patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH). 1 Ten WHO functional class II–III patients with IPAH and 10 matched healthy controls underwent exercise capacity assessment, quadriceps strength testing and peripheral muscle morphology analysis. Patients with IPAH demonstrated a lower proportion of type I fibres in vastus lateralis muscle biopsies than healthy controls (38% vs 50%), and this was associated with reduced quadriceps strength and a relatively higher potential for anaerobic metabolism (enzymatic ratio of phosphofructokinase (PFK)/3-hydroxyacyl CoA dehydrogenase (HDAH)). While there was no correlation between the proportion of type I fibres and muscle strength with pulmonary haemodynamic parameters, a positive correlation was demonstrated for peripheral muscle strength and exercise capacity ( R 2=0.42, p=0.04). The authors conclude that peripheral muscle dysfunction may contribute to exercise intolerance in patients with IPAH. With relatively small numbers in the study groups, …
Optimal Interaction Forces for Natural Robot-Human Handover

— Safe and efﬁcient object handover between robot and human is a critical skill for personal robot interaction [1], [2], [3]. While humans also use a complex mix of speech, gaze, and gestures to indicate the phases of the handover, the actual object transfer relies heavily on tactile and force sensing. In this paper we describe a handover controller that uses force-measurements from the robot arm and hand to trigger the grasp release (robot to human handover) or grasp capture (human to robot). The algorithm was implemented and tested both on a mobile service robot with the Kinova Jaco robot and a stationary workcell with the KuKA LBR4+ robot. Our case study indicates that interaction force thresholds must be matched to the object weight to achieve interaction that feels natural to the users. In fact, users prefer surprisingly low interaction forces, which in turn implies the use of sensitive and well-calibrated robot sensors.
Learning object recommendation for teachers creating lesson plans

E-learning is one of the most popular and beneficial uses of the Internet today. However, it presents a problem known as the "information overload". Current systems of e-learning stored too many contents: on various topics, for different ages, etc.; therefore users often are not sure how to find what they are needing between all the contents available. And this problem is even greater when considering that most current e-learning systems have simple search engines as tools to find resources. In this paper a new algorithm that incorporates recommendations of learning objects from a repository on an e-learning system is presented. At the end, a case study is performed to evaluate the proposal. Techniques of artificial intelligence are used to filter and customize information and recommended items.
Role of the fibrinolytic and matrix metalloproteinase systems in development of adipose tissue

Abstract Obesity is a common disorder and related diseases such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cancer are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in Western-type societies. Development of obesity is associated with extensive modifications in adipose tissue involving adipogenesis, angiogenesis and extracellular matrix proteolysis. The fibrinolytic (plasminogen/plasmin) and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) systems cooperate in these processes. A nutritionally induced obesity model in transgenic mice has been used extensively to study the role of the fibrinolytic and MMP systems in the development of obesity. These studies support a role of both systems in adipogenesis and obesity; the role of specific members of these families, however, remains to be determined.
Effectiveness of Community Radio in Disseminating Market Information among Smallholder Maize Farmers: Experience from Suba Sub-county- Kenya

Community radio is a powerful tool in imparting agricultural knowledge and creating awareness among farmers. However, no evidence shows that community radio could address the dilemma of poor access to market information among maize farmers. This study sought to assess the effectiveness of community radio in accessing market information in this area. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to collect cross-sectional data from a sample of 97 maize farmers using pre-tested and semi-structured questionnaires through face to face interviews. The analytical tools were descriptive statistics, rating of effectiveness and Chi-Square. The findings revealed that majority (82.5%) owned and operate radio sets; (55.7%) obtain information from community radio while (44.4%) obtained information from traditional sources. Large proportion (83.6%) affirmed that community radio was an effective platform for disseminating market information. The Chi- square test for effectiveness of community radio in disseminating market information at 0.01% level of probability showed the calculated Chi-square to be X 2 =50 which is much higher than the Chi-square table value of 11.34 hence community radio was found to be effective tool for communicating agricultural innovations to smallholder farmers. The study recommends use of appropriate language and close interaction between agricultural stakeholders for effective delivery of agricultural information.
Exploring the emotional intelligence of leaders in governance of non-profit sports organizations: A voluntary vs. non-voluntary comparison

Research and practice have overlooked the emotional intelligence (EI) of senior leaders in non-profit organizations. Our research aims to explore and compare the EI capacity of two groups of such leaders; voluntary (i.e., presidents of sport federations) and remunerated (i.e., provincial directors of sports), in the sport governance system of Turkey. The results of a small-scale census revealed that voluntary leaders were older, had more years of sporting experience, and achieved significantly higher EI scores than their paid counterparts. A regression analysis to examine whether age and sporting experience predicted the EI scores returned positive results for age only. A priori and post hoc power analyses assured that results had sufficient power for practically meaningful implications (.95 and .85, respectively). These results suggest that sports-governing non-profit organizations can benefit from some EI training for the development of their leaders, including those younger and with limited sporting experience. We discuss the implications of our findings within the metamorphosis of sports governing bodies from a non-profit organization to a more business-like entity.
ICT Small Businesses’ Access to Bank Financing

Studying small businesses in the ICT industry is of major importance for at least two reasons. First of all, small businesses play a crucial role in supporting growth and creating jobs. Secondly, the ICT industry in France, as in most developed countries, is one of the pillars upon which tomorrow’s economy will be built. Therefore, this article aims at studying access to bank financing by French small businesses in the ICT industry. The analysis covers a sample of 539 firm-years. The empirical results seem to show that these businesses encounter difficulties accessing bank debt and financing their assets, among other things. These difficulties are particularly more significant for small businesses in the ‘service’ segment than for those in the ‘production’ segment.
Stabilometry in functional instability of the ankle and its value in predicting injury.

Stabilometry is an objective method used for studying postural equilibrium quantitatively. Stabilometric recordings were made in 127 soccer players to demonstrate functional instability of the ankle joint. The presence of previous ankle joint injuries, i.e., sprains or fractures, was documented. Reference values for stabilometry were obtained from a group of 30 normally-active non-soccer players without a history of injury to the ankle joint. A pathological stabilometric value was defined as one exceeding the mean value of the reference group by 2 SD. In players with a history of previous ankle joint injury no increased postural sway was found. On the other hand, players showing abnormal stabilometric values ran a significantly (P less than 0.001) higher risk of sustaining an ankle injury during the following season compared to players with normal values. Players with a history of previous ankle joint injury did not run a higher risk compared to players without previous injury. The findings indicate that an ankle joint injury did not result in a persistent functional instability; however, such instability did increase the risk of ankle joint injury.
The research on RTCP feedback mechanism with network tomography

The Network Tomography technology based on RTCP feedback for network monitoring and management is significant. The current RTCP feedback mechanism is defined in RFC3550. In this paper, the RTCP Extended Report (XR) feedback mechanism has been studied. The paper analyses the relationship between the feedback interval and RTCP packet size and the size of the multicast session, points out the shortage of the current feedback mechanism, and puts forward animproved encoding method. Based on the RTCP unicast feedback model, using reasonable encoding XR packets can reduce the feedback bandwidth and promote the feedback rate.
Teaching Entrepreneurship: Impact of Business Training on Microfinance Clients and Institutions

Abstract Most academic and development policy discussions about microentrepreneurs focus on credit constraints and assume that subject to those constraints, the entrepreneurs manage their business optimally. Yet the self-employed poor rarely have any formal training in business skills. A growing number of microfinance organizations are attempting to build the human capital of microentrepreneurs in order to improve the livelihood of their clients and help further their mission of poverty alleviation. Using a randomized control trial, we measure the marginal impact of adding business training to a Peruvian group lending program for female microentrepreneurs. Treatment groups received thirty- to sixty-minute entrepreneurship training sessions during their normal weekly or monthly banking meeting over a period of one to two years. Control groups remained as they were before, meeting at the same frequency but solely for making loan and savings payments. We find little or no evidence of changes in key outcomes such as business revenue, profits, or employment. We nevertheless observed business knowledge improvements and increased client retention rates for the microfinance institution.
Assessing the Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Service Performance in Mediating Effect of Brand Equity With Reference To Banks in India

In competitive global scenario banks are very keen in branding their corporate social responsibility to enhance their service performance to compete effectively. This study was carried out to explore and assess the impact of corporate social responsibility on service performance in banking sector through reputation. To measure the corporate social responsibility, Maignan and Ferrell (2004) CSR scale, for the service performance the SERVPERF Model Parasoarman (1985), and for brand equity the brand equity (BI) index, developed by Aaker (1991) were used. The simple random sampling technique was used to collect the data from 617 banking customers. Structural Equation Modelling was used to measure the impact of corporate social responsibility on service performance through brand equity. The findings of the study indicates that CSR initiatives were linked to stronger service performance of the bank which ends stronger brand performance with the bank
Predicting listener back-channels for human-agent interaction using neuro-dynamical model

The goal of our work is to create natural verbal interaction between humans and speech dialogue agents. In this paper, we focus on generations of back-channel for speech dialogue agents the same way humans do. To create such a system, the system needs to predict the appropriate timing of back-channel on the basis of the human's speech. For the prediction model, we use a neuro-dynamical system called a multiple timescale recurrent neural network (MTRNN). The model is trained using an actual corpus of a poster session of the IMADE project using the presenter's prosodic and visual information as features. Using the model, we conducted back-channel timing prediction experiments. The results showed that our system could predict back-channel timing about 0.5 seconds before generation of back-channel response. Comparing the results with the actual back-channel timing in the corpus, the system showed 37.1% of recall, 31.7% of precision, and 34.2% of F-measure. These results show the model to effectively predict and generate back-channel responses.
An Unsupervised Game-Theoretic Approach to Saliency Detection

We propose a novel unsupervised game-theoretic salient object detection algorithm that does not require labeled training data. First, saliency detection problem is formulated as a non-cooperative game, hereinafter referred to as Saliency Game, in which image regions are players who choose to be “background” or “foreground” as their pure strategies. A payoff function is constructed by exploiting multiple cues and combining complementary features. Saliency maps are generated according to each region’s strategy in the Nash equilibrium of the proposed Saliency Game. Second, we explore the complementary relationship between color and deep features and propose an iterative random walk algorithm to combine saliency maps produced by the Saliency Game using different features. Iterative random walk allows sharing information across feature spaces, and detecting objects that are otherwise very hard to detect. Extensive experiments over six challenging data sets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed unsupervised algorithm compared with several state-of-the-art supervised algorithms.
Do banks manage reputational risk? A case study of European Investment Bank

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the de nitions surrounding reputational risk and study the ways leading banks of European Union treat reputational risk management. Design and Methodology: The paper uses a sample of leading banks of European Union to study the disclosure of reputational risk using qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The paper then uses the case study approach to explore reputational risk management at the
The utility of diagnostic tests in irritable bowel syndrome patients: a systematic review

OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study was to determine the pretest probability of organic GI disease and the accuracy of diagnostic tests for organic GI disease in patients who meet symptom-based criteria for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). METHODS:After a comprehensive literature search for studies examining the accuracy of diagnostic tests for organic GI disease among patients who meet symptom-based criteria for IBS, two independent observers qualitatively assessed the methodology of selected studies and extracted data. Data on the pretest probability of organic GI disease in this population and the accuracy of currently recommended diagnostic tests were converted to descriptive tables.RESULTS:Among patients meeting symptom-based criteria for IBS, the pretest probability of inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, or infectious diarrhea is less than 1%. Currently recommended diagnostic tests rarely identify organic GI disease in patients fulfilling symptom-based criteria for IBS. However, the pretest probability of celiac disease in patients meeting symptom-based criteria for IBS was 10 times higher than the prevalence of celiac disease in the general population.CONCLUSION:There is insufficient evidence to recommend the routine performance of a standardized battery of diagnostic tests in patients who meet symptom-based criteria for IBS. Based upon the increased pretest probability of celiac disease, routine performance of serological tests for celiac disease may be useful in this patient population, though additional study is needed in this area.
Provably More Efficient Q-Learning in the Full-Feedback/One-Sided-Feedback Settings

We propose two new Q-learning algorithms, Full-Q-Learning (FQL) and Elimination-Based Half-Q-Learning (HQL), that enjoy improved efficiency and optimality in the full-feedback and the one-sided-feedback settings over existing Q-learning algorithms. We establish that FQL incurs regret $\tilde{O}(H^2\sqrt{ T})$ and HQL incurs regret $ \tilde{O}(H^3\sqrt{ T})$, where $H$ is the length of each episode and $T$ is the total number of time periods. Our regret bounds are not affected by the possibly huge state and action space. Our numerical experiments using the classical inventory control problem as an example demonstrate the superior efficiency of FQL and HQL, and shows the potential of tailoring reinforcement learning algorithms for richer feedback models, which are prevalent in many natural problems.
A novel modeling method for photovoltaic cells

The mathematical description of current-voltage characteristics for photovoltaic cells are generally represented by a coupled nonlinear equation, which is difficult to solve by analytical methods. In this paper, a novel modeling process is proposed to configure a computer simulation model, which is able to demonstrate the cell's output features in terms of environment changes in irradiance and temperature. Based on a simplified single-diode model, the parameters are determined in the sense of minimum model error and temperature effect. It is tested to simulate three popular types of photovoltaic panels made of different materials, CIS thin film, multicrystalline silicon, and monocrystalline silicon. The effectiveness of this approach is evaluated through comparison of simulation results to the data provided by product's manufacturer.
Innovative Revenue Management Practices with Probabilistic Elements

Sale of products with a probabilistic nature, where customers do not know which product they will receive at the time of service, has become popular over the recent years. In the revenue management literature, there has been a growing interest in understanding these modern approaches using analytical techniques. On the other hand, customer-centric revenue management has been replacing the long-standing inventory-centric approach because of the availability of rich data sets by focusing on understanding and predicting customer behavior and then optimizing price and/or quantity related decisions. In this dissertation, we take a customer-centric approach and do not only provide analytical results, but also empirically investigate how customers make their decisions, which is crucial in order to implement appropriate strategies. We first focus on an innovative hotel revenue management practice called standby upgrades, i.e., a practice where the guest is only charged for the discounted upgrade if it is available at the time of arrival. In particular, Chapter 2 discusses how to optimally price standby upgrades and evaluates their benefits through an analytical model. Chapter 3 uses a major hotel chain’s booking and standby upgrades data to investigate the extent of strategic guest behavior through empirical analysis. Then, we focus on another innovative revenue management practice, but in the mega event industry, called team-specific ticket options. Chapter 4 studies fans’ decision-making process for the 2015 College Football season using a unique data set.
A Novel Adaptive PWM Controller for DC-DC Buck Conversion

In this paper, we present a novel adaptive mechanism for dc-dc buck conversion which employs the system 1-bit feedback error signal to regulate the output voltage. The proposed adaptive error process unit (EPU) makes the output voltage converge efficiently and the multi-phase digital PWM (DPWM) is implemented with a differential ring oscillator. The proposed controller has been validated with simulation results.
A trial towards unifying control protocols: COPS versus Radius/DIAMETER and Mobile IP

New needs in the wireless networking fields have solicited the design and standardization of new protocols. Among these needs our main interests in this paper is global control protocols that can be elaborated between different domains. More specifically, we consider protocols designed for QoS brokerage, AAA aspects and mobility. Since different communities have used these protocols each in its field, we can see that there has been some redundancy between functionalities. In addition, the design was different; we can find also some fine distinction between protocols. In this paper we propose a unified protocol in order to simplify the deployment of such functionalities. Our approach joins the IETF main concern on strongly avoiding the replication of protocols having the same roles.