Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of circuit resistance training and timely protein supplementation on exercise-induced fat oxidation in tetraplegic adults.

BACKGROUND Substrate utilization during exercise in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) remains poorly defined. PURPOSE To investigate effects of circuit resistance training (CRT) and timing of protein supplementation (PS) on fuel utilization in persons with tetraplegia. METHODS Eleven individuals with chronic tetraplegia underwent 6 months of CRT 3 times weekly. Five randomly assigned participants received immediate PS (iPS) administered in split doses prior to and following all exercise sessions. Other participants consumed a matched dose of PS that was delayed until 24 hours post-exercise (dPS). Participants underwent a maximal graded exercise test (GXT) to volitional exhaustion at 4 conditioning time points: 3 months before (-3mo), at the beginning of (0mo), 3 months into (3mo), and 6 months following (6mo) the CRT conditioning program. Respiratory measures were continuously obtained throughout the GXT via open-circuit spirometry. Fuel utilization and energy expenditure were computed from the respiratory data. RESULTS The differences in changes in substrate utilization between the PS groups were not significant as determined by the interaction of PS group and conditioning time point, F (3, 27) = 2.32, P = . 098, η(2) P = . 205. Maximal absolute fat oxidation did not change significantly from 0 to 6mo (mean difference, 0.014 ± 0.031 g/min; P = .170), and fat oxidation remained low never exceeding an average of 0.10 ± 0.09 g/min for any given exercise intensity. CONCLUSION Maximum fat utilization during exercise and fat utilization at matched exercise intensities were not increased in persons with tetraplegia, independent of PS, and levels of fat oxidation remained low after training.
Doing well with change : what helps and what hinders well-educated immigrant women workers?

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the strategies that new immigrant women employ to do well with changes that affect their work. This study asked the questions: What helps and what hinders immigrant women workers to do well with changes that affect their work? What would have been more helpful to do well with these changes? Participants were 10 well-educated immigrant women. Data was gathered using semi-structured, open-ended individual interviews consistent with Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique (CIT). Data was primarily analyzed using the CIT methodology. A total of 182 incidents that were grouped into 9 categories were extracted from the participants' interviews. The categories were: 1) Personal Beliefs/Traits/Values, 2) Relationships with Friends/Family/Colleagues, 3) Taking Action/Building Capacity, 4) Work Environment, 5) Self Care, 6) Skills/Knowledge/Credentials/Education, 7) Personal Issues/Challenges, 8) Contexual Issues/Challenges, and 9) Government/Community Resources. The results reaffirm the findings in the existing literature on immigrant women's thriving, resilience and hardiness and adaptation and transitions after immigration while providing a more personal account of these experiences. Uniquely, while many of the participants spoke of personal sacrifice in order to ensure the well being of their families, the importance of self-care was also highlighted. The factors that immigrant women find helpful and hindering in doing well with change can inform service delivery, program development and future research studies with this population.
Using Relationship Norms to Create Appropriate Relationship Value: Evidence From the Credit Card Industry

In recent years, as credit cards have emerged into competitive markets, many credit card companies have turned to customer relationship management. This study used the concept of customer relationship management to investigate cause and effect among relationship norms, relationship benefit, and relationship value. The sampling population was taken from customers living in Taipei who use credit cards to pay bills. In January 2010, 500 questionnaires were mailed to customers; 401 were returned. A total of 371 valid questionnaires were obtained for analysis. Thus, the effective rate of response was 74%. The empirical results suggest that the main route for building relationships will be by means of encouraging solidarity, which affects functional value via confidence benefits. The managerial implications of this study can point to appropriate strategies for credit card companies in developing and executing their customer service activities more efficiently.
Tangible and intangible resource inequity in customer‐supplier relationships

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the effects of perceived tangible and intangible resource inequity and the moderating effect of long‐term orientation on future collaboration.Design/methodology/approach – Outcome and moderating measures were developed using structural equation modeling. Data were collected at the project level of customer‐supplier relationships via survey among German and Swiss firms. The results were generated with regression and subgroup analyses.Findings – The higher the negative tangible inequity or intangible inequity, the lower the customers' willingness to collaborate on future projects with suppliers. However, negative intangible inequity showed a stronger negative effect than negative tangible inequity. When long‐term orientation is in the model, the effects of inequity are stronger in short‐term relationships.Research limitations/implications – The study extends equity theory and provides a fruitful basis for future research at the project level of the customer‐supplier .
The social externalities of Australian bus and coach operators: how governance affects community prosperity

Governments determine public transport provision based on service provision costs, without attention to valuing social contributions. This thesis explores the social contribution of various governance models in the Australian bus and coach industry by identifying and valuing the ways in which family and non-family bus operators interact with their communities. It asks whether the family-based transport business is the best model for public transport outcomes and whether this model is sustainable. It addresses the role of the industry representative body for operators in promoting and maintaining the best outcomes for community prosperity and encouraging the most effective corporate governance model.
CorefQA: Coreference Resolution as Query-based Span Prediction

In this paper, we present CorefQA, an accurate and extensible approach for the coreference resolution task. We formulate the problem as a span prediction task, like in question answering: A query is generated for each candidate mention using its surrounding context, and a span prediction module is employed to extract the text spans of the coreferences within the document using the generated query. This formulation comes with the following key advantages: (1) The span prediction strategy provides the flexibility of retrieving mentions left out at the mention proposal stage; (2) In the question answering framework, encoding the mention and its context explicitly in a query makes it possible to have a deep and thorough examination of cues embedded in the context of coreferent mentions; and (3) A plethora of existing question answering datasets can be used for data augmentation to improve the model’s generalization capability. Experiments demonstrate significant performance boost over previous models, with 83.1 (+3.5) F1 score on the CoNLL-2012 benchmark and 87.5 (+2.5) F1 score on the GAP benchmark.
Alteration in Natural Resistance of Sarcoma 180 Tumor to Bouvardin (NSC 259968) following Hyperthermia

Sarcoma-180 (S-180) tumor cells grown in Swiss mice displayed natural resistance to Bouvardin (NSC 259968) when administered alone in a single dose or in multiple doses. Hyperthermia treatment (43 °C for 1 hr) alone did not show any tumor growth reduction. However, the drug combined with hyperthermia markedly reduced tumor growth suggesting that hyperthermia alters the natural resistance of S-180 cells to Bouvardin.
Adaptive relay selection scheme using hybrid forwarding protocol

The use of relay nodes in future wireless networks significantly enhances the system capacity and achieves spatial diversity; however, relaying in degraded channel conditions may not be favorable. Hence, relay selection is a major area for research. This paper aims to optimize the channel capacity of a relay network by choosing an optimal relay, following hybrid forwarding protocol, based on adaptive selection. The main contribution of this paper is the Adaptive Relay Table (ART) algorithm, which intelligently utilizes the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) for the selection. Several characteristics are established to replicate a realistic scenario.
Marketing in five “simple” questions!

Peters (1987) describes how after some of his seminars he is asked “But what do I DO? ”. This question is also often directed at people who have been introducing marketing ideas to businessmen—particularly businessmen whose work does not bring them into contact with customers. This article explains how anybody can start to think in marketing terms by asking five simple questions about the organisation they work for. “Simple” to ask, but requiring disciplined thought if answers are to be found which lead to appropriate managerial actions. “Difficult” to answer not least because the answers to each question affect the answers given to the others. In doing so it also introduces a number of basic but important marketing concepts.
Structural and magnetic characterization of as-prepared and annealed FeCoCu nanowire arrays in ordered anodic aluminum oxide templates

Herein, we report on the preparation, structure, and magnetic characterization of FeCoCu nanowire arrays grown by DC electrodeposition inside self-assembled ordered nanopores of anodic aluminum oxide templates. A systematic study of their structure has been performed both in as-prepared samples and after annealing in the temperature range up to 800 °C, although particular attention has been paid to annealing at 700 °C after which maximum magnetic hardening is achieved. The obtained nanowires have a diameter of 40 nm and their Fe0.28Co0. 67Cu0.05 composition was confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Focused ion-beam lamellas of two samples (as-prepared and annealed at 700 °C) were prepared for their imaging in the high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) perpendicularly to the electron beam, where the obtained EDS compositional mappings show a homogeneous distribution of the elements. X-ray diffraction analysis, and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns confir.
Unlocking SME Finance in Argentina with Psychometrics

Access to finance remains a challenge for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Argentina. It is a particularly acute problem among newly created SMEs that have a scant credit record and frequently lack collateral. The authors of this paper carried out a pilot test of an innovative psychometric tool aimed at evaluating credit risk among SME clients of Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires (BCBA), one of the top three public banks of Argentina. SME responses were compared to their historical repayment records to determine if psychometric-based credit scoring models could help ameliorate the constraints to SME finance. A scorecard based on that information and built using international data results in a Gini coefficient between 20 percent and 40 percent: those SMEs rejected by the psychometricbased scorecard with this Gini coefficient have a probability of defaulting that is three to four times greater than those accepted. Along with other policies to reduce information asymmetry in SME lending, such a tool could help relieve constraints to SME finance in Argentina.
Reinforcement Learning in Pacman

We apply various reinforcement learning methods on the classical game Pacman; we study and compare Q-learning, approximate Q-learning and Deep Q-learning based on the total rewards and win-rate. While Q-learning has been proved to be quite effective on smallGrid, it becomes inefficient to find the optimal policy in large grid-layouts. In approximate Q-learning, we handcraft ‘intelligent’ features to feed into the game. However, more powerfully, Deep Q-learning (DQL) can implicitly ‘extract’ important features, and interpolate Q-values of enormous state-action pairs without consulting large data tables. The main purpose of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of Deep Q-learning based on the context of the Pacman game having Q-learning and Approximate Q-learning as baselines.
Subjective Evaluation of Website Accessibility and Usability: A Survey for People with Sensory Disabilities

A novel subjective evaluation model for accessibility is developed utilising a questionnaire survey approach, with reference to the characteristics of disabled groups and the features of university websites. Measuring accessibility, including through usability evaluations, is an important equity step in assessing and improving the effectiveness and usefulness of online learning and general materials for students with disabilities. The popular uptake of blended and online learning warrants an evaluation of the accessibility of web-based university websites for equity in access to quality learning experiences and outcomes. The model conforms to user-centred design theory and is designed on the basis of usability and accessibility statements derived from contemporary accessibility questionnaires and standards. The model is applied to evaluate Australian university web-based systems. The initial data show that 55% of students with sensory disabilities believe the accessibility of their current website content negatively affects their study, and 70% believe the web pages are not well structured for navigation by learners with sensory disabilities.
Steroidogenesis in vitro by homogenates of adrenocortical tissue of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla L.).

Whole homogenates (10%) of eel adrenocortical tissue were incubated with cholesterol- 7-3H and with mixtures of pregnenolone- 16-3H +progesterone-4-14C and progesterone-1,2- 3H +17α-hydroxyprogesterone-4-14C. Cholesterol gave rise to tritiated cortisol arid to a 3ubstance presumptively identified as pregnenolone-3H, while the 2 substrate pairs were partieily transformed to tritium and carbon-14 labeled cortisol and 11-deoxycortisol. The presence of corticosterone, aldosterone or 18-hydroxycorticosteronecould not be detected in either experiment. Analysis of the isotope content of the end-products suggested a relative lack of transformation of pregnenolone to progesterone. Quantitatively, the homogenate technique yielded transformation rates 100-fold higher than obtained by the use of adrenocortical tissue minces. It was concluded that, under these conditions, 11-deoxycortisol is a metabolite in importance equal to cortisol. (Endocrinology 81: 904, 1967)
Donepezil in Alzheimer's disease: a clinical observational study evaluating individual treatment response*

ABSTRACT Objective: A post-marketing surveillance study evaluating the sensitivity of the Individual Symptom Score (IndiSS) in assessing the treatment benefits of donepezil in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) under everyday conditions. Research design and methods: For each patient, up to three ‘especially relevant’ individual symptoms were defined and evaluated during donepezil treatment. Changes were scored on a five-point Likert-type scale, ranging from ‘markedly improved’ (+2) to ‘markedly worsened’ (–2). The mean score for all IndiSS items was calculated after 3 and 6 months. Positive values represented treatment success. In addition, patients with concomitant parkinsonian symptoms (PS+) or cerebrovascular disease (CVD+) were compared with those with neither condition. Results: A total of 2046 patients with AD enrolled. The most frequent IndiSS items were (% patients): memory (24%), disorientation (14%) and loss of initiative/apathy (9%). The mean IndiSS for the overall patient population was +0.7 ± 0.7 points after 3 months and +0.9 ± 0.8 after 6 months. Patients with concomitant PS+ or CVD+ showed similar improvements in IndiSS. Conclusion: Identification and follow-up of individual symptoms is a useful tool for evaluating therapy response to donepezil in everyday practice. Patients with concomitant PS+ or CVD+ benefit from donepezil therapy and show a similar side-effect profile.
Bifurcations of travelling wave solutions for the ZK-MEW equation

By using the bifurcation theory of dynamical systems to the Zakharov-Kuznetsov-Modified Equal-Width (ZK-MEW) equation, we analysis all bifurcations and phase portraits in the parametric space, the existence of solitary wave solutions and uncountably infinite many smooth periodic wave solutions are obtained. Under different parametric conditions, various sufficient conditions to guarantee the existence of the above solutions are given. Some explicit exact solution formulas are acquired for some special cases.
Screening for chronic kidney disease in emerging countries: feasibility and hurdles.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide threat to public health, but the dimension of the problem is probably not fully appreciated. There are ∼1.8 million people in the world who are alive simply because they have access to one form or another of renal replacement therapy [1]. Ninety percent of those live in high-income countries, where the average gross income is in excess of US $10000 per capita. However, the prevalence rate of renal replacement therapy varies among countries particularly in the emerging world, and this is related to the capacity of the health system to provide such a costly treatment rather than a true difference in epidemiology of renal disease [2]. Although data on the prevalence of predialysis CKD in lowand middle-income countries are sparse, we would expect that there are at least comparable numbers of patients with CKD in poor countries as in developed nations. Some examples indicate that the overall prevalence of CKD is 21%, 10.6% and 11% in urban areas, respectively, of Moldova [3], Nepal [4] and China [5]. Data from India also suggest that in a developing country the prevalence rate of CKD could vary almost 5-fold between rural and city populations [6,7]. These observations imply that CKD would affect not only very many people in the developing world, but preferentially the poor within these countries who usually have no information about disease and risk factors and cannot have access to health care. It is also increasingly recognized that the burden of CKD is not limited to its implications on demands for renal
Neurotoxicity and Oxidative Damage of Beta Amyloid 1–42 versus Beta Amyloid 1–40 in the Mouse Cerebral Cortex

Senile plaques (SP), a neuropathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), are characterized by extracellular accumulations of beta amyloid (A beta). SP predominantly contain A beta 42 with a small amount of associated A beta 40. We determined the neurotoxic properties of A beta 42 as compared to A beta 40 by injections into the frontal cortex of three month old C57BL/6 mice. A beta 42 was associated with a significantly larger area of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunoreactivity and a greater density of reactive astrocytes than A beta 40. Immunohistochemical staining for markers of oxidative damage against 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT) and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHDG) were significantly more intense around the A beta 42 injection compared to the A beta 40 injection sites. These findings are consistent with previous in vitro studies and suggest that A beta 42 is more neurotoxic and may generate more free radical damage than A beta 40.
Histone Methyltransferases in Tumor Suppression

It is well established that human cancer can be caused by mutations in the molecular pathways that control cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival. Familial cancer syndromes are associated with mutations in tumor susceptibility genes. However, sporadic common cancers are primarily linked to environmental factors that often lack any obvious mutagens. This raises the question whether mutation is necessary for environmental carcinogens to cause cancer. Histone methyltransferases function to control mitotic inheritance of cell fate and gene expression patterns and can turn environmental effects into heritable changes in cell phenotypes. The discovery of tumor suppressor function for these enzymes has important implications for an epigenetic pathway of cancer.
How Complementarity and Substitution Alter the Customer Satisfaction–Repurchase Link

Customer satisfaction is universally acknowledged as a key driver of customer repurchase behavior, but recent evidence suggests that satisfaction has no effect on repurchase under certain circumstances. In this study, the authors develop a framework for understanding the complex relationships among satisfaction, moderating variables, and repurchase. They propose that the satisfaction–repurchase link is subject to complementary and substitute effects and present satiation and inertia as key theoretical mechanisms that explain and predict those effects. In weak-satiation purchase categories, complementary effects are more likely, which suggests that managers should invest in customer satisfaction and complementary initiatives simultaneously. In strong-satiation purchase categories, substitute effects are more likely, which suggests that managers should invest in either customer satisfaction or substitute initiatives. An empirical test combining survey and longitudinal purchase data from two categories—fashion apparel and automobile service—provides a remarkable degree of support for the propositions. The findings offer new theoretical insights and substantive guidance for managers to effectively allocate resources to initiatives that complement or substitute for customer satisfaction.
Combinative effects of thanh hao miet giap thang (sweet wormwood and tortoise shell decoction) ingredients on antioxidative activity in vitro.

BACKGROUND Traditional formulae usually exhibit therapeutic effects through the combinations of different ingredients. The purpose of this study was to investigate in vitro anti-oxidative activity of Thanh Hao Miet Giap Thang (THMGT) (Sweet Wormwood and Tortoise Shell Decoction) formula and the interactions of its ingredients leading to the overall anti-oxidative effect. MATERIALS AND METHODS We prepared 31 combinations containing two to four of the five ingredients including Herba Artemisia apiacea L (HbA), Carapax Trionycis (Tryonix sinensis) (CT), Rhizoma Anemarrhenae (Anemarrhena asphodeloides) (RzA), Radix Rehmanniae (Rehmannia glutinosa Libosch) (RdR), Moutan Cortex (Paeonia suffruticosa) (MC). These combinations were tested for anti-oxidative activity using DCFH-DA and DPPH assays on Hep G2 cells. We also analyzed changes in expression of genes involved in antioxidant defense system including Nuclear Factor Erythroid-Derived 2-Like 2 (NFE2L2), catalase (CAT), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), cytoplasmic superoxide dismutase (SOD1), mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2). RESULTS The complete formula and all combinations containing Moutan Cortex showed high antioxidant activity in both radical solution-based chemical assay and cellular-based assay. On the contrary, Carapax Trionycis displayed inhibitory effect on the overall antioxidant activity when present in a combination, an effect clearly emphasized in cellular-based assay. Hep G2 cells treated with the formula showed increased gene expression of HO-1 and SOD2 while expression of CAT, SOD1, GPx was unchanged. CONCLUSION Our results suggested that THMGT had anti-oxidative activity essentially through intrinsic reducing capacities and the overall activity of the formula resulted from enhancing and inhibiting interactions of ingredients.