Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing the research performance in excellent research groups in a peripheral country

This paper tries to assess the research performance of excellent research groups during the period 1998-2002 in Valencia, a peripheral Spanish region with low-level absorptive capacity. For that purpose, we use a range of qualitative and quantitative indicators to provide a reliable estimate of the contribution to scientific progress and regional scope made by different research groups. In general, we have found that research groups have diversified their performance with different and nonsystematic behaviour, according to different research incentives. This later finding shows an important influence on the performance of industry-university collaboration, R&D and innovation activities. Assessing the research performance in excellent research groups in a peripheral country
Power Allocation and Subcarrier Pairing for OFDM-Based AF Cooperative Diversity Systems

In this paper, a two-hop amplify-and-forward cooperative diversity system using OFDM modulation was considered. We proposed an associated waterfllling power allocation scheme under separate power constraints at source and relay, which allocated source and relay power in an associated fashion. The scheme first allocated power to subcarriers uniformly, then gave an approximate equivalent channel gain model, and last employed the classic waterfilling algorithm to optimize the power allocation at relay and source, respectively. Moreover, we investigated the subcarrier pairing problem and presented a modified sorted subcarrier pairing algorithm, which considered the effect of source-destination link as well as source-relay link. The simulation results show that the associated waterfilling power allocation scheme and the modified sorted subcarrier pairing algorithm both could achieve higher average rate alone, and that the combination of them could improve the performance further.
Feasibility of a cook-chill system for medium sized, multi-site healthcare facilities

This research study examined the variables that a hospital foodservice director would analyze when considering the possibility of a Cook-Chill food production system for their facility. Data collection from 84 directors who had been involved in the decision making process, was obtained through the use of a specifically designed survey. Directors were asked questions regarding demographics, employee relations, customer satisfaction, manufacturer preference, and financial data. Results indicated that the foodservice directors maintained or increased the level of customer satisfaction after implementing Cook-Chill . The financial aspects showed a return on investment in a relatively short period of time and in the great majority of cases, financial gain could be realized with the reduction of FTE's which is common when converting to Cook-Chill. The volume of equipment can help to predict the success of Cook-Chill technology employed by each facility. A wide range of manufacturers are prevalent, yet it is apparent which ones are represented in the greatest amount of CookChill facilities. The hospitals reported a significantly larger amount of blast chillers as compared to other equipment . This can be predicated upon the fact that they can be used with traditional cook-serve facilities, also. ii The results suggest that there are many variables to consider when contemplating a Cook-Chill food production system for a hospital. Predicting the number of meals appears to be a significant factor, however the number of locations served by one system is also very critical. Concluded in this study are the major issues one would need to analyze their facility for Cook-Chill technology -
An empirical study of employee perceptions of change leadership and the effect on employee stress.

The world is changing more rapidly than ever before. Today's most successful organizations are changing fast and having to make sure that its internal changes are keeping pace with what is happening in the external environment. The process of organizational change can be complex and messy. The responsibility of leaders is to guide employees and the organization through the change process. Employees often view change as disruptive and painful, resulting in stress. This study examines a company that has undergone, and continues to undergo a fast pace of change. The aim of this research is to examine the effect that employee perceptions of change leadership have on their level of stress with a view to exposing the linkages, if any, between these concepts. If such linkages are perceived to exist, then well-conducted and communicated organizational change will be successful in yielding the desired results. Effective change can only be achieved through employees that are motivated, participating in and owning the organizational change.
Scheduling of Page-Fetches in Join Operations

One of the major problems of relational database systems is to find efficient procedures for database operations. This paper discusses procedures to schedule join operations in a paging environment. We assume that the two relations required to be joined are divided into pages and that only a subset of all page-pairs (one page from each relation) are required to be processed. The number of page swappings varies depending on the sequence of the page-pair processing. Our problem is to find the schedules which require the least page-swapping counts. The problem, however, can be represented as a special case of the Hamiltonian path problem and thus it is shown to be NP-complete. Two sufficient conditions for the existence of the minimum solutions are shown, which are based on the Hamiltonian path condition and the Eular path condition. Using these conditions, heuristic procedures for near optimum solutions are obtained.
Nonlinear Characterisation and Modelling of Microwave Semiconductor Devices

There is an increasing need for more accurate models taking into account the nonlinearities and memory effects of microwave transistors. The memory effects are especially important for transistor technologies suffering from relatively large low frequency dispersion, such as GaN baed HEMTs. Nonlinear measurement systems are today available off-the-shelf, but the use of them is still limited. It is therefore important to demonstrate the possibilities these new systems brings to the device characterisation and modelling community. This thesis deals with electrothermal characterisation and modelling of GaN based HEMTs, and also development and utilisation of new nonlinear measurement systems. The electrothermal properties of the AlGaN/GaN heterostructure were characterised, and it was shown that a thermal response is present up to 100 MHz. Moreover, a new characterisation method, making use of nonlinear measurements, allowed for isothermal measurements of the current transport through the access resistances of a GaN based HEMT. A new current transport model was proposed to correctly reproduce the isothermal IV characteristics. Furthermore, the temperature dependence of the high frequency noise was characterised, showing that the major limiting factors for the low noise performance were the access resistances. The combination of high power and low noise makes the GaN based HEMT suitable for monolithically integrated GaN based transceiver front-ends. The first steps toward a transceiver were taken by designing and manufacturing a GaN based receiver front-end consisting of an SPDT switch and an LNA. A new fast multi harmonic active load-pull system was developed, with waveform acquisition capabilities. The speed of the load-pull system was increased by the use of an improved optimisation routine for presenting the wanted load impedances. The load-pull system was capable of presenting dynamically varying load impedances to a transistor, enabling faster device characterisation without the need to build complete amplifiers. The system was also used to characterise the nonlinear distortion in SiC varactors. It was shown that the nonlinear distortion increases the losses, and hence a new general Q-factor description was proposed. Furthermore, a new characterisation method was proposed which enabled the study of memory effects in transistors driven by modulated signals.
Specific immunotherapy in asthma: a comprehensive review

Abstract Background: The prescription of allergen immunotherapy (SIT) in asthma remains a matter of debate and official guidelines often do not provide clear recommendations in this regard. Methods: An extensive review of the literature was untaken. Results: There are many robust studies with SCIT and SLIT showing positive results related to improving asthma symptoms, in particular when asthma was associated with rhinitis. In addition, there are several favourable meta-analyses, although their validity is limited by the heterogeneity of the trials included. The disease modifying effect of SIT (prevention of asthma onset and long-lasting effects) should be considered when prescribing this treatment. Regarding safety, fatalities seem to be rare: in Europe no fatality has been reported over the last two decades, and the same has been observed in USA in the last 4 years. Uncontrolled asthma is universally recognized as the most important risk factor for severe adverse events, but there is no clear demonstration that SIT can worsen or induce asthma. In contrast, of the few studies specifically designed to evaluate asthma, none had a formal sample size calculation, and pulmonary function was assessed as primary outcome only sporadically. Conclusions: According to the presently available evidence, SLIT and SCIT can be used in asthma associated with rhinitis (the most common condition), provided that asthma is adequately controlled by pharmacotherapy. In such cases, a measurable clinical benefit on asthma symptoms can be expected. SIT cannot be presently recommended as single therapy when asthma is the unique manifestation of respiratory allergy.
Evaluation of Recovery and Anesthetic Gas Consumption Using Remifentanil Combined with Low-Flow Sevoflurane Anesthesia in Tympanoplasty

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of low-flow sevoflurane and low-flow sevoflurane supplemented with remifentanil anesthesia on the recovery time, consumption amount of the anesthetic drugs and hemodynamic differences. Materials and Methods: A prospective, randomized and double-blinded study with 50 patients was designed. Following intubation, group S received sevoflurane 1.8 vol%, oxygen, nitrous oxide at 4 l · min–1 and normal saline continuous infusion; group SR received sevoflurane 1.2 vol%, oxygen, nitrous oxide at 4 l · min–1 and 0.25 µg · kg–1 · min–1 remifentanil continuous infusions. Ten minutes after intubation the flow rates decreased to 1 l · min–1. Consumption of each drug, postoperative recovery characteristics and visual analog scale (VAS) scores for pain were recorded. Result: There were no significant differences in hemodynamic parameters, tramadol consumption and VAS scores for pain. The patients in group SR showed faster early recovery as compared to group S. The mean consumption of sevoflurane was 18 ml in group SR, while it was 25 ml in group S. Conclusions: Low-flow sevoflurane anesthesia combined with remifentanil regimen in patients undergoing tympanoplasty surgery resulted in a faster early recovery and decreased sevoflurane consumption.
Efficient visible continuum generation in air-silica microstructure optical fibers with anomalous dispersion at 800 nm

We demonstrate for the first time the efficient generation of a single-transverse-mode continuum with a spectral width of 500 THz, by propagating pulses for 100-fs duration and kilowatt peak powers through an air-silica microstructure optical fiber designed to have anomalous dispersion at 800 nm.
Learning Chordal Markov Networks via Branch and Bound

We present a new algorithmic approach for the task of finding a chordal Markov network structure that maximizes a given scoring function. The algorithm is based on branch and bound and integrates dynamic programming for both domain pruning and for obtaining strong bounds for search-space pruning. Empirically, we show that the approach dominates in terms of running times a recent integer programming approach (and thereby also a recent constraint optimization approach) for the problem. Furthermore, our algorithm scales at times further with respect to the number of variables than a state-of-the-art dynamic programming algorithm for the problem, with the potential of reaching 20 variables and at the same time circumventing the tight exponential lower bounds on memory consumption of the pure dynamic programming approach.
Rachunkowość a deregulacja zawodu księgowego

Purpose – the purpose of the article is present accounting as a book-keeper’s occupation. Design/Methodology/approach – research methods, inductive and deductive reasoning, literature analysis. Findings – having analysed the literature, the author described the history of accounting and the issues of accounting deregulation. Originality/value – the paper presents the role of accounting in a business activity. It points to the very long history of accounting as well as the concept of changes of the book keeper occupation, in accordance with the certificate allowing to keep operate a book keeping service.
Hypoglycemm Increases the Gastric Emptying Rate in Healthy Subjects

OBJECTIVES To compare the gastric emptying rate during normoglycemia with that during insulin-induced hypoglycemia in healthy subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In eight healthy subjects, the rate of gastric emptying of an isotope-labeled meal was assessed by a scintigraphic technique during normoglycemia and hypoglycemia, both controlled by an insulin-glucose clamp. RESULTS The mean time taken to empty 50% of the test meal from the stomach (Tg0) for the solid phase was 43.0 ± 20.0 min during normoglycemia, compared with 16.3 ± 6.6 min during hypoglycemia, P < 0.001. The mean T50 for the liquid phase was 38.0 ± 21.2 and 15.4 ± 10.6 min, respectively, P < 0.001. CONCLUSIONS Insulin-induced hypoglycemia increases the gastric emptying rate in healthy subjects.
Neuropathological assessment and validation of mouse models for Alzheimer's disease: applying NIA-AA guidelines

Dozens of transgenic mouse models, generally based on mutations associated with familial Alzheimer's disease (AD), have been developed, in part, for preclinical testing of candidate AD therapies. However, none of these models has successfully predicted the clinical efficacy of drugs for treating AD patients. Therefore, development of more translationally relevant AD mouse models remains a critical unmet need in the field. A concept not previously implemented in AD preclinical drug testing is the use of mouse lines that have been validated for neuropathological features of human AD. Current thinking suggests that amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangle deposition is an essential component for accurate modeling of AD. Therefore, the AD translational paradigm would require pathologic Aβ and tau deposition, a disease-relevant distribution of plaques and tangles, and a pattern of disease progression of Aβ and tau isoforms similar to the neuropathological features found in the brains of AD patients. Additional parameters useful to evaluate parallels between AD and animal models would include 1) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD biomarker changes with reduced Aβ and increased phospho-tau/tau; 2) structural and functional neuroimaging patterns including MRI hippocampal atrophy, fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), and amyloid/tau PET alterations in activity and/or patterns of pathologic peptide deposition and distribution; and 3) cognitive impairment with emphasis on spatial learning and memory to distinguish presymptomatic and symptomatic mice at specific ages. A validated AD mouse model for drug testing would likely show tau-related neurofibrillary degeneration following Aβ deposition and demonstrate changes in pathology, CSF analysis, and neuroimaging that mirror human AD. Development of the ideal model would revolutionize the ability to establish the translational value of AD mouse models and serve as a platform for discussions about national phenotyping guidelines and standards for models of AD and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Neurogenesis as a potential therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases

In the adult mammalian brain, new neurons are continuously generated from a proliferating population of neural progenitor/stem cells and become incorporated into the existing neuronal circuitry via a process termed adult neurogenesis. The existence of active functional adult neurogenesis raises the exciting possibility that manipulating endogenous neural progenitors, or transplanting the progeny of exogenously expanded neural progenitors, may lead to successful cell replacement therapies for various degenerative neurological diseases. Significant effort is being made to decipher the mechanisms regulating adult neurogenesis, which may allow us to translate this endogenous neuronal replacement system into therapeutic interventions for neurodegenerative diseases. This review focuses on adult neurogenesis as a strategy to derive potential therapies, and discusses future directions in the field.
Dissolution rates of hydrocortisone and prednisone utilizing sugar solid dispersion systems in tablet form.

The utilization of ternary sugar solid dispersion systems and the incorporation of these systems into tablet dosage forms were investigated. The dispersion systems were prepared by the fusion method using 50% sucrose-50% mannitol and 50% sorbitol-50% mannitol. Other systems investigated utilized sorbitol, mannitol, and polyethylene glycol 6000 for comparison. The drug component was hydrocortisone or prednisone. The results from a modified NF XIII dissolution rate determination revealed that the mannitol system had the fastest dissolution rate, followed by sorbitol-mannitol, sucrose-mannitol, sorbitol, and finally, polyethylene gylcol 6000. The corticosteroids were stable and did not decompose during preparation of the dispersion systems or direct compression of the tablets. A short-term stability study revealed that the tablets retained their fast dissolution rates and that the tablet characteristic tests, i.e., tablet hardness, remained unchanged. The use of sugar combinations overcame some difficulties previously reported with single sugar systems.
Comparison of ceforanide, cefazolin, methicillin, and nafcillin in Staphylococcus aureus endocarditis therapy in rabbits

Ceforanide (30 mg/kg) administered every 12 h, cefazolin (20 mg/kg) administered every 8 h and methicillin or nafcillin (40 mg/kg) administered every 6 h were equally effective in reducing the number of Staphylococcus aureus in vegetations in rabbits with endocarditis. These treatments were more effective than methicillin or nafcillin administered every 12 h. Ceforanide produced higher peak concentrations and greater bactericidal activity in serum than the other drugs and had the longest half-life (5.8 h, compared with 0.4 to 0.8 h for the other agents.
125I-labeled peptide mapping of some heat-modifiable proteins of the gonococcal outer membrane

Gonococci from opaque colonies have cell wall outer membrane proteins that are lacking from organisms which form transparent colonies. These "colony opacity-associated" proteins are among a group of "minor" proteins that exhibit heat modification of their apparent subunit molecular sizes, are easily extracted by deoxycholate, have apparent subunit molecular weights varying from 24,000 to 29,000 and are exposed on the surfaces of gonococci. Other minor proteins found on gonococci are the "leukocyte association proteins," whose presence correlates with reactivities of gonococci with human neutrophils. Several of the colony opacity-associated proteins and leukocyte association proteins were subjected to 125I-peptide mapping of protein bands separated by polyacrylamide electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate. The structural similarities and differences among these heat-modifiable surface proteins were studied, as well as their similarities with the major protein of the gonococcal outer membrane. A relatively high apparent degree of structural homology is found among the heat-modifiable proteins from different strains of opaque colony gonococcal forms. There is also some apparent structural homology for 125I-peptides of heat-modifiable versus major proteins of the gonococcal outer membrane.
Corporate strategy and firm performance in finance industry: the moderating role risk management committee

Although there are a lot of studies on corporate strategy and performance, very little research has been carried out on particular industry in a developing country such as Malaysia. Moreover, the studies examined direct impact of strategy on firm performance. Using a sample of thirty seven listed finance firms in Malaysia, we test the moderating effect of separate risk management committee (RMC) on the relationship between corporate strategy and firm performance. Based on agency theory, the study hypothesized that separate RMC moderates the relationship between corporate strategy and firm performance. The result indicates that the presence of a RMC significantly moderate the relationship between non-traditional strategy and firm performance in a positive direction. Our result provide empirical support for agency theory which suggests that presence of subcommittee of the board of directors helps to facilitate the effective monitoring of management thereby reducing the risk taking activities of managers which will enhance firm performance.
Differential early viral gene expression in two stages of human papillomavirus type 16 DNA-induced malignant transformation

Human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 DNA induces progressive transformation in NIH 3T3 cells. Two types of cell lines, PM3T3G0 and PM3T3Fo, were isolated by G418 or focus selection, respectively, after transfection of cells by a recombinant HPV 16 DNA carrying the neo gene. These cell lines exhibited distinct phenotypes compared with controls. Saturation densities of PM3T3G0 and PM3T3Fo lines were two- to three- and five- to sevenfold greater than that of control NIH 3T3 cells, respectively. Neither cell type required high serum for growth, in contrast to NIH 3T3 cells. PM3T3G0 lines were premalignant, whereas PM3T3Fo lines manifested tumorigenicity within 2 weeks. Subpopulations of three PM3T3G0 lines underwent progressive transformation as reflected by focus formation. Analysis of HPV 16-specific mRNA species demonstrated that high levels of early and late gene expression were detected in premalignant PM3T3G0 lines, whereas relatively low quantities of selected gene messages were expressed in malignant transformants. Thus, high levels of viral gene expression are not crucial for malignant transformation.
The 'China Model' of SOE Reform and its Challenges

compared with other countries, China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have seen 30 year’s reform, and then the “China Model” of the SOEs reform emerges. The out-of-date deology, the persistence Pragmaticism, and the worries about uncertainty and risk are the major causes of the emergence of “China Model”. The “China Model” is endogenous and irreversible, but still faces some severe challenges in the future.