Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate disclosure and intellectual capital: the light side of information asymmetry

The paper aims to undertake an in-depth analysis role and contribution of voluntary corporate disclosure and intellectual capital to improve the 'quality' of relationships between companies and the market. Building upon the conceptual framework offered by signalling theory and legitimacy theory, a conceptual approach is used to identify possible advancements in the management of voluntary corporate disclosure and intellectual capital. To support the reflections herein, some evidence of the increasing relevance of human resources and the consequence of participation of human resources in the definition of corporate strategies is analysed in the perspective of information asymmetry. The papers highlight the need for companies: (1) to develop approaches better able to 'feel' the market; (2) to exploit the contribution of human resources in understanding the market; (3) to improve approaches to corporate disclosure based on the contribution of intellectual capital in order to reduce information asymmetry within the market.
Embodied co-design for sharing governance in society

This is paper is the outline of a design-research project focused on the interface of system and life-world (Habermas, 1987). The three year design-research project is approached from the perspectives of politics and administration and design. These perspectives are represented by the two PhD students who collaborate on this project. The project was initiated only four months ago, by a joint effort from a design faculty of a University of Technology and a political-administrative consultancy. The aim of the design-research project is to use the multidisciplinary perspectives to co-design mechanisms for sharing governance in society.
Effects of age, maturity and body dimensions on match running performance in highly trained under-15 soccer players

Abstract The aim of the present study was to compare, in 36 highly trained under-15 soccer players, the respective effects of age, maturity and body dimensions on match running performance. Maximal sprinting (MSS) and aerobic speeds were estimated. Match running performance was analysed with GPS (GPSport, 1 Hz) during 19 international friendly games (n = 115 player-files). Total distance and distance covered >16 km h–1 (D > 16 km h−1) were collected. Players advanced in age and/or maturation, or having larger body dimensions presented greater locomotor (Cohen’s d for MSS: 0.5–1.0, likely to almost certain) and match running performances (D > 16 km h−1: 0.2–0.5, possibly to likely) than their younger, less mature and/or smaller teammates. These age-, maturation- and body size-related differences were of larger magnitude for field test measures versus match running performance. Compared with age and body size (unclear to likely), maturation (likely to almost certainly for all match variables) had the greatest impact on match running performance. The magnitude of the relationships between age, maturation and body dimensions and match running performance were position-dependent. Within a single age-group in the present player sample, maturation had a substantial impact on match running performance, especially in attacking players. Coaches may need to consider players’ maturity status when assessing their on-field playing performance.
Foreign Firms, Technological Capabilities and Economic Performance

This book employs novel techniques to compare technological capabilities and economic performance in seven countries at varying stages of industrial development: Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa and Uganda. The author uses a methodology drawn from the technology capability framework, but extensively adapts and simplifies it to extract common cross-industry parameters for statistical analysis. He employs the framework to compare the technological, local sourcing and performance dynamics of foreign and local firms in a variety of industries.
Vascular endothelial growth factor family gene polymorphisms in preeclampsia in Sinhalese women in Sri-Lanka

Objective: To investigate the association of polymorphisms in the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family genes (VEGFA rs699947, VEGFA rs3025039, PGF rs1042886, KDR rs2071559 and KDR rs2305948) with preeclampsia in Sinhalese women in Sri-Lanka. Methods: We conducted a case-control study where 175 nulliparous Sinhalese women with preeclampsia and 171 normotensive women matched for age, ethnicity, parity and BMI were recruited in tertiary care maternity hospitals in Sri-Lanka. Preeclampsia was diagnosed using international guidelines. DNA extracted from peripheral venous blood and was genotyped using the Sequenom MassARRAY system. χ2-test was used to compare the distribution of allele and genotype frequencies between the cases and the control subjects. Results: The frequency of PGF rs1042886 variant allele (odds ratio (OR) 1.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.1–2.1) and dominant genotype model (aOR 1.6, 95% CI 1.0–2.4) were increased in preeclamptic women compared to controls. VEGFA rs699947, VEGFA rs3025039, KDR rs2071559, and KDR rs2305948 polymorphisms were not associated with preeclampsia. Conclusion: Maternal PGF rs1042886 polymorphism is associated with preeclampsia in Sinhalese women in Sri-Lanka.
The Impact of Optimal Respiratory Gating and Image Noise on Evaluation of Intratumor Heterogeneity on 18F-FDG PET Imaging of Lung Cancer

Accurate measurement of intratumor heterogeneity using parameters of texture on PET images is essential for precise characterization of cancer lesions. In this study, we investigated the influence of respiratory motion and varying noise levels on quantification of textural parameters in patients with lung cancer. Methods: We used an optimal-respiratory-gating algorithm on the list-mode data of 60 lung cancer patients who underwent 18F-FDG PET. The images were reconstructed using a duty cycle of 35% (percentage of the total acquired PET data). In addition, nongated images of varying statistical quality (using 35% and 100% of the PET data) were reconstructed to investigate the effects of image noise. Several global image-derived indices and textural parameters (entropy, high-intensity emphasis, zone percentage, and dissimilarity) that have been associated with patient outcome were calculated. The clinical impact of optimal respiratory gating and image noise on assessment of intratumor heterogeneity was evaluated using Cox regression models, with overall survival as the outcome measure. The threshold for statistical significance was adjusted for multiple comparisons using Bonferroni correction. Results: In the lower lung lobes, respiratory motion significantly affected quantification of intratumor heterogeneity for all textural parameters (P < 0.007) except entropy (P > 0.007). The mean increase in entropy, dissimilarity, zone percentage, and high-intensity emphasis was 1.3% ± 1.5% (P = 0.02), 11.6% ± 11.8% (P = 0.006), 2.3% ± 2.2% (P = 0.002), and 16.8% ± 17.2% (P = 0.006), respectively. No significant differences were observed for lesions in the upper lung lobes (P > 0.007). Differences in the statistical quality of the PET images affected the textural parameters less than respiratory motion, with no significant difference observed. The median follow-up time was 35 mo (range, 7–39 mo). In multivariate analysis for overall survival, total lesion glycolysis and high-intensity emphasis were the two most relevant image-derived indices and were considered to be independent significant covariates for the model regardless of the image type considered. Conclusion: The tested textural parameters are robust in the presence of respiratory motion artifacts and varying levels of image noise.
Acute Inhalation Exposure to Titanium Ethanolate as a Possible Cause of Metal Fume Fever

Occupational inhalation exposure to noxious agents is not uncommon. Herein, we present a 26-year-old male student who had accidental acute inhalation exposure to a large quantity of titanium ethanolate and hydrogen chloride in chemistry lab. He was referred to the emergency department of our hospital with low-grade fever, dyspnea, headache, fatigue and myalgia. After 24 hrs of symptomatic treatment (oxygen therapy and acetaminophen), the fever was subsided and the patient discharged home in a good clinical condition. The presented symptoms could be interpreted as a form of metal fume fever. It can therefore be concluded that organo-metallic compound of titanium metal may have the potential to produce metal fume fever in human.
Changing social contact patterns under tropical weather conditions relevant for the spread of infectious diseases

SUMMARY Weather conditions and social contact patterns provide some clues to understanding year-round influenza epidemics in the tropics. Recent studies suggest that contact patterns may direct influenza transmission in the tropics as critically as the aerosol channel in temperate regions. To examine this argument, we analysed a representative nationwide survey dataset of contact diaries with comprehensive weather data in Taiwan. Methods we used included model-free estimated relative changes in reproduction number, R 0; relative changes in the number of contacts; and model-based estimated relative changes in mean contacts using zero-inflated negative binomial regression models. Overall, social contact patterns clearly differ by demographics (such as age groups), personal idiosyncrasies (such as personality and happiness), and social institutions (such as the division of weekdays and weekend days). Further, weather conditions also turn out to be closely linked to contact patterns under various circumstances. Fleeting contacts, for example, tend to diminish when it rains hard on weekdays, while physical contacts also decrease during weekend days with heavy rain. Frequent social contacts on weekdays and under good weather conditions, including high temperature and low absolute humidity, all might facilitate the transmission of infectious diseases in tropical regions.
Research on the Relationship between Financial Development and Economic Growth: Based on an Empirical Analysis of Shenzhen

In this paper, panel data of Shenzhen from 2000 to 2012 was analyzed and capital, labor, the policy of opening up and other factors were controlled, to make an empirical study of the relationship between financial development and economic growth and draw main conclusions as follows. Financial development can promote economic development. However, financial development and real economic development show heterogeneity. That is to say, financial development hinders the development of real economy.
Chaining Identity Mapping Modules for Image Denoising

We propose to learn a fully-convolutional network model that consists of a Chain of Identity Mapping Modules (CIMM) for image denoising. The CIMM structure possesses two distinctive features that are important for the noise removal task. Firstly, each residual unit employs identity mappings as the skip connections and receives pre-activated input in order to preserve the gradient magnitude propagated in both the forward and backward directions. Secondly, by utilizing dilated kernels for the convolution layers in the residual branch, in other words within an identity mapping module, each neuron in the last convolution layer can observe the full receptive field of the first layer. After being trained on the BSD400 dataset, the proposed network produces remarkably higher numerical accuracy and better visual image quality than the state-of-the-art when being evaluated on conventional benchmark images and the BSD68 dataset.
Impact of Optical Pulsewidth on the Frequency Response of P-i-N Photodiodes

An analytical model to study the influence of the finite optical pulsewidth on the frequency response of P-i-N photodiode is presented. The derivation takes into account the nonuniform carrier generation, the resistance-capacitance (RC) parasitic effects and the Gaussian temporal profile of the generating function. For an InGaAs photodiode with 0.5-¿m intrinsic length and 10-¿ m radii excited by 5-ps full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) pulses at 1.3 ¿m , previously published theory overestimates the bandwidth by over 30% as compared to the present model. The results suggest that for the faithful measurement of the bandwidth, the FWHM of the Gaussian pulses used should be at least an order of magnitude smaller than the transit time of the slower moving carriers.
Unconventional Secretion of Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 Is Mediated by Direct Translocation across the Plasma Membrane of Mammalian Cells

Fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF-2) is a pro-angiogenic mediator that is secreted by both normal and neoplastic cells. Intriguingly, FGF-2 has been shown to be exported by an endoplasmic reticulum/Golgi-independent pathway; however, the molecular machinery mediating this process has remained elusive. Here we introduce a novel in vitro system that functionally reconstitutes FGF-2 secretion. Based on affinity-purified plasma membrane inside-out vesicles, we demonstrate post-translational membrane translocation of FGF-2 as shown by protease protection experiments. This process is blocked at low temperature but apparently does not appear to be driven by ATP hydrolysis. FGF-2 membrane translocation occurs in a unidirectional fashion requiring both integral and peripheral membrane proteins. These findings provide direct evidence that FGF-2 secretion is based on its direct translocation across the plasma membrane of mammalian cells. When galectin-1 and macrophage migration inhibitory factor, other proteins exported by unconventional means, were analyzed for translocation into plasma membrane inside-out vesicles, galectin-1 was found to be transported as efficiently as FGF-2. By contrast, migration inhibitory factor failed to traverse the membrane of inside-out vesicles. These findings establish the existence of multiple distinct secretory routes that are operational in the absence of a functional endoplasmic reticulum/Golgi system.
REDUCED MALE FERTILITY IS COMMON BUT HIGHLY VARIABLE IN FORM AND SEVERITY IN A NATURAL HOUSE MOUSE HYBRID ZONE

Barriers to gene flow between naturally hybridizing taxa reveal the initial stages of speciation. Reduced hybrid fertility is a common feature of reproductive barriers separating recently diverged species. In house mice (Mus musculus), hybrid male sterility has been studied extensively using experimental crosses between subspecies. Here, we present the first detailed picture of hybrid male fertility in the European M. m. domesticus—M. m. musculus hybrid zone. Complete sterility appears rare or absent in natural hybrids but a large proportion of males (∼30%) have sperm count or relative testis weight below the range in pure subspecies, and likely suffer reduced fertility. Comparison of a suite of traits related to fertility among subfertile males indicates reduced hybrid fertility in the contact zone is highly variable among individuals and ancestry groups in the type, number, and severity of spermatogenesis defects present. Taken together, these results suggest multiple underlying genetic incompatibilities are segregating in the hybrid zone, which likely contribute to reproductive isolation between subspecies.
Application of interpretive structural modelling for analysing barriers to total quality management practices implementation in the automotive sector

In the recent era of globalisation and competitive scenario, quality plays a vital role in ensuring customer satisfaction. Total quality management (TQM) involves the implementation of appropriate tools/techniques to provide products and services to customers with best quality. In order to ensure the success of TQM practices in a modern automotive component manufacturing scenario, barriers and their mutual interactions need to be systematically analysed to enable practicing managers for effective deployment. In this context, this study depicts an interpretive structural modelling (ISM)-based approach to understand the mutual influence of TQM barriers. A total of 21 barriers have been identified for TQM practices and ISM model has been developed. The barriers are grouped under four categories (dependent, independent, autonomous and linkage) based on MICMAC analysis. The conduct of the study enabled the decision-makers to systematically analyse the influential barriers for effective deployment of TQM concepts in modern automotive component manufacturing, which is one of the rapidly growing sectors in the Indian scenario.
Service-Oriented Dynamic Connection Management for Software-Defined Internet of Vehicles

Internet of vehicles (IoV) is an emerging paradigm for accommodating the requirements of future intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) with the overwhelming trend of equipping vehicles with versatile sensors and communications modules, and facilitating drivers and passengers with a variety of innovative ITS applications. However, the implementation of IoV still faces many challenges, such as flexible and efficient connections, quality of service guarantee, and multiple concurrent support requests. To this end, in this paper we introduce the software-defined IoV (SD-IoV), which is able to tackle the above-mentioned issues by adopting the software-defined networking framework. We first present the architecture of SD-IoV and develop a centralized vehicular connection management approach. Then, we aim to allocate dedicated communications resources and underlying vehicular nodes to satisfy each service. We formulate the dynamic vehicular connection as an overlay vehicular network creation (OVNC) problem. A comprehensive utility function is also designed to serve as the optimization objective of OVNC. Finally, we solve the OVNC problem by developing a graph-based genetic algorithm and a heuristic algorithm, respectively. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed solution of dynamic vehicular connection management.
Identification of the immunogenic domains in HBsAg preS1 region using overlapping preS1 fragment fusion proteins.

AIM The incorporation of hepatitis B virus (HBV) preS1 region into epitope-based vaccines against HBV has been accepted widely, but the incorporate site and size of preS1 sequence is controversial. Therefore our purpose was to further investigate its immunogenic domains for the epitope-based hepatitis B vaccine design. METHODS Eight GST fusion proteins containing overlapping preS1 fragments in preS1 (21-119) region were expressed in E.coli. Using these purified fusion proteins, the immunogenic domains in preS1 region were identified in detail in mice and humans by Western blot analysis and ELISA. RESULTS The results in mice showed that the immu-nogenic domains mainly existed in preS1 (21-59) and preS1 (95-109). Similarly, these fragments had strong immunogenicity in humans; whereas the other parts except for preS1 (60-70) also had some immunogenicity. More importantly, a major immunogenic domain, preS1 (34-59), which has much stronger immunogenicity, was identified. Additionally, the antibodies against some preS1 fragments, especially preS1 (34-59), were speculated to be virus-neutralizing. CONCLUSION Eight GST fusion proteins containing overlapping preS1 fragments were prepared successfully. They were used for the study on the immunogenic dom-ains in preS1 (21-119) region. The preS1 (34-59) fragments were the major immunogenic domains in the preS1 region, and the antibodies against these fragments were speculated to be virus-neutralizing. Therefore, the incorporation of preS1 (34-59) fragments into epitope-based HBV vaccines may be efficient for enhancement of immune response. Additionally, the results also imply that there are more complex immune responses to preS1 region and more abundant immunogenic domains in humans.
Deletion mapping of chromosome 4q in hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) frequently shows a loss of heterozygosity (LOH) on chromosome 4q. In order to define the commonly affected region on chromosome 4q for further positional cloning of the putative tumor suppressor gene, we carried out allelic imbalance (AI) studies in 41 HCCs using a panel of 43 microsatellite markers. Thirty‐four cases (82.9%) showed AI at one or more loci. Detailed deletion mapping identified 7 independent, frequently deleted regions on this chromosome arm. These were the (1) D4S1615 locus, (2) D4S1598 locus, (3) D4S620 locus, (4) D4S1566 and D4S2979 loci, (5) D4S1617 and D4S1545 loci, (6)D4S1537 locus; and (7) from the D4S2920 to D4S2954 locus. Among these 7 frequently deleted regions, 5 were associated with tumor differentiation. Our results suggest that several putative tumor suppressor genes may be present on chromosome 4q and that the AI of chromosome 4q may play a role in the aggressive progression of HCC. Int. J. Cancer (Pred. Oncol.) 79:356–360, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Self-sustained irregular activity in an ensemble of neural oscillators

An ensemble of pulse-coupled phase-oscillators is thoroughly analysed in the presence of a mean-field coupling and a dispersion of their natural frequencies. In spite of the analogies with the Kuramoto setup, a much richer scenario is observed. The "synchronised phase", which emerges upon increasing the coupling strength, is characterized by highly-irregular fluctuations: a time-series analysis reveals that the dynamics of the order parameter is indeed high-dimensional. The complex dynamics appears to be the result of the non-perturbative action of a suitably shaped phase-response curve. Such mechanism differs from the often invoked balance between excitation and inhibition and might provide an alternative basis to account for the self-sustained brain activity in the resting state. The potential interest of this dynamical regime is further strengthened by its (microscopic) linear stability, which makes it quite suited for computational tasks. The overall study has been performed by combining analytical and numerical studies, starting from the linear stability analysis of the asynchronous regime, to include the Fourier analysis of the Kuramoto order parameter, the computation of various types of Lyapunov exponents, and a microscopic study of the inter-spike intervals.
Time-dependent dysregulation of autophagy: Implications in aging and mitochondrial homeostasis in the kidney proximal tubule

ABSTRACT Autophagy plays an essential role in cellular homeostasis through the quality control of proteins and organelles. Although a time-dependent decline in autophagic activity is believed to be involved in the aging process, the issue remains controversial. We previously demonstrated that autophagy maintains proximal tubular cell homeostasis and protects against kidney injury. Here, we extend that study and examine how autophagy is involved in kidney aging. Unexpectedly, the basal autophagic activity was higher in the aged kidney than that in young kidney; short-term cessation of autophagy in tamoxifen-inducible proximal tubule-specific autophagy-deficient mice increased the accumulation of SQSTM1/p62- and ubiquitin-positive aggregates in the aged kidney. By contrast, autophagic flux in response to metabolic stress was blunted with aging, as demonstrated by the observation that transgenic mice expressing a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3B fusion construct, showed a drastic increase of GFP-positive puncta in response to starvation in young mice compared to a slight increase observed in aged mice. Finally, proximal tubule-specific autophagy-deficient mice at 24 mo of age exhibited a significant deterioration in kidney function and fibrosis concomitant with mitochondrial dysfunction as well as mitochondrial DNA abnormalities and nuclear DNA damage, all of which are hallmark characteristics of cellular senescence. These results suggest that age-dependent high basal autophagy plays a crucial role in counteracting kidney aging through mitochondrial quality control. Furthermore, a reduced capacity for upregulation of autophagic flux in response to metabolic stress may be associated with age-related kidney diseases.