Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 1986 POWER OVER USERS : ITS EXERCISE BY SYSTEM PROFESSIONALS

This paper develops the propositions that information system professionals exert considerable power over system users and that technological advances in system development will not significantly change this situation. The paper explores the ways system professionals can exercise power over users and examines the consequences of various technological trends allegedly able to alter the balance of power between users and system professionals. The notion that the developers of information technology have power that they can use in their dealings with users is intuitively appealing. Information technology is a resource many people value. It seems likely that gatekeepers of information technology would be able, if they chose, to extract rewards from those individuals or groups who depend upon it. This reasoning reflects a theory of power known as "resource dependence. " Another theory explains the power of organizational subunits (i.e. departments, like the information system department) in terms of "strategic contingencies. " In this theory, departmental power results from the combination of three attributes: the ability to cope with environmental or task uncertainty faced by other departments or the organization as a whole, nonsubstitutability (being indispensible) in this coping, and criticality in the subunit's or organization's workflow. Given the high involvement of information system units in other departments' workflows and the dependence of many departments on computing operations, the theory of strategic contingencies suggests the likelihood of powerful system departments. Research appears to find otherwise. Clients of system departments do not generally perceive these units as powerful. We believe it would be unfortunate if the negative findings of these studies discouraged further research on the power of system professionals. The potential consequences of this power for users are simply too significant to remain unexplored. In addition, we believe it a mistake to conclude from these negative findings that system professionals do not exert power over users. First, these studies measure sources of power, not uses of power; there This paper is forthcoming in Communications of the ACM
Image Denoising by Sparse 3-D Transform-Domain Collaborative Filtering

We propose a novel image denoising strategy based on an enhanced sparse representation in transform domain. The enhancement of the sparsity is achieved by grouping similar 2D image fragments (e.g., blocks) into 3D data arrays which we call "groups. " Collaborative Altering is a special procedure developed to deal with these 3D groups. We realize it using the three successive steps: 3D transformation of a group, shrinkage of the transform spectrum, and inverse 3D transformation. The result is a 3D estimate that consists of the jointly filtered grouped image blocks. By attenuating the noise, the collaborative filtering reveals even the finest details shared by grouped blocks and, at the same time, it preserves the essential unique features of each individual block. The filtered blocks are then returned to their original positions. Because these blocks are overlapping, for each pixel, we obtain many different estimates which need to be combined. Aggregation is a particular averaging procedure which is exploited to take advantage of this redundancy. A significant improvement is obtained by a specially developed collaborative Wiener filtering. An algorithm based on this novel denoising strategy and its efficient implementation are presented in full detail; an extension to color-image denoising is also developed. The experimental results demonstrate that this computationally scalable algorithm achieves state-of-the-art denoising performance in terms of both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective visual quality.
Utility of volumetric assessment of cervical funneling to predict cerclage failure

Abstract Objective: To assess the utility of cervical funnel volume as a predictor of cerclage failure. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study of pregnant women with a McDonald cerclage and sonographic evidence of cervical funneling between 1/2008 and 2/2014. Funnel volume (FV) was calculated and used as a correction factor for cervical length (CL) or cerclage height (CH). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to compare the predictive value of CL, CL:FV, CH and CH:FV for cerclage failure at <28 or <34 weeks. CL:FV was further stratified to the <5th, <10th and >10th percentiles and analyzed for prediction of preterm delivery. Results: Subjects with cerclage failure (n = 30) delivered at a mean gestational age of 29.8 +/− 5.3 weeks compared to 38.1+/− 1.39 weeks in those without failure (n = 27; p < 0.001). ROC curves demonstrated CL:FV was the best predictor of delivery <28 weeks (AUC 0.80), while CL was the best predictor of delivery <34 weeks (AUC 0.76). Stratification of CL:FV into <5th versus >10th percentile groups was predictive of early preterm delivery (25.1 weeks versus 34 weeks, p = 0.01). Conclusions: Volumetric assessment of cervical funneling may improve prediction of cerclage failure in the mid-trimester.
A Fast Algorithm for Streaming Betweenness Centrality

Analysis of social networks is challenging due to the rapid changes of its members and their relationships. For many cases it impractical to recompute the metric of interest, therefore, streaming algorithms are used to reduce the total runtime following modifications to the graph. Centrality is often used for determining the relative importance of a vertex or edge in a graph. The vertex Betweenness Centrality is the fraction of shortest paths going through a vertex among all shortest paths in the graph. Vertices with a high betweenness centrality are usually key players in a social network or a bottleneck in a communication network. Evaluating the betweenness centrality for a graph G = (V, E) is computationally demanding and the best known algorithm for unweighted graphs has an upper bound time complexity of O(V2 + VE). Consequently, it is desirable to find a way to avoid a full re-computation of betweenness centrality when a new edge is inserted into the graph. In this work, we give a novel algorithm that reduces computation for the insertion of an edge into the graph. This is the first algorithm for the computation of betweenness centrality in a streaming graph. While the upper bound time complexity of the new algorithm is the same as the upper bound for the static graph algorithm, we show significant speedups for both synthetic and real graphs. For synthetic graphs the speedup varies depending on the type of graph and the graph size. For synthetic graphs with 16384 vertices the average speedup is between 100X - 400X. For five different real world collaboration networks the average speedup per graph is in range of 36X - 148X.
Learning deep visual object models from noisy web data: How to make it work

Deep networks thrive when trained on large scale data collections. This has given ImageNet a central role in the development of deep architectures for visual object classification. However, ImageNet was created during a specific period in time, and as such it is prone to aging, as well as dataset bias issues. Moving beyond fixed training datasets will lead to more robust visual systems, especially when deployed on robots in new environments which must train on the objects they encounter there. To make this possible, it is important to break free from the need for manual annotators. Recent work has begun to investigate how to use the massive amount of images available on the Web in place of manual image annotations. We contribute to this research thread with two findings: (1) a study correlating a given level of noisily labels to the expected drop in accuracy, for two deep architectures, on two different types of noise, that clearly identifies GoogLeNet as a suitable architecture for learning from Web data; (2) a recipe for the creation of Web datasets with minimal noise and maximum visual variability, based on a visual and natural language processing concept expansion strategy. By combining these two results, we obtain a method for learning powerful deep object models automatically from the Web. We confirm the effectiveness of our approach through object categorization experiments using our Web-derived version of ImageNet on a popular robot vision benchmark database, and on a lifelong object discovery task on a mobile robot.
Virus-encoded proteinases and proteolytic processing in the Nidovirales.

IP: 54.191. 40.80 On: Sun, 20 Aug 2017 08:42:34 Journal of General Virology (2000), 81, 853–879. Printed in Great Britain .
Relationships Between Hostility, Anger Expression, and Blood Pressure Dipping in an Ethnically Diverse Sample

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between hostility, anger expression, and blood pressure (BP) dipping. Methods: A 24-hour ambulatory BP was obtained from 34 African Americans and 52 white Americans who were enrolled in a study of sleep, stress, and BP. Self-report measures were used to assess anger expression and hostility. Results: After controlling for body mass index and BP status, African Americans were more likely to be classified as nondippers than white Americans. However, when hostility and anger expression were included in the model, there was no longer a significant relationship between ethnicity and BP dipping. Irrespective of race, high levels of hostility and anger were associated with less nocturnal dipping. Conclusions: These findings suggest that psychological factors may be important in understanding ethnic differences in nocturnal BP decline.
Land Cover Change and Soil Fertility Decline in Tropical Regions

Land cover changes influence the biogeochemistry, hydrology, and climate of the earth. Studies that assessed land cover changes at the global scale mostly focused on: deforestation, cropland expansion, dry land degradation, urbanisation, pasture expansion, and agricultural intensification. For the assessment, remotely sensed land-cover data, census data, and expert knowledge were used. In tropical regions, forest is cleared for the expansion of cropland, wood extraction, or infrastructure expansion. This widely occurs in the Amazon region and in Asia. In many temperate regions, the area under forest is increasing although forest plantations are also on the increase in the tropics. Croplands expanded by 50% during the 20th century, from roughly 1200 million ha in 1900 to 1800 million ha in 1990. It appears that there is no major desertification in the Sahel region and that urbanisation and most highly-populated cities are found in tropical regions. In China, the area under cropland increased from 98 to 130 million ha between 1949 and 1996. In the same period the area under forest almost doubled. In temperate regions, agricultural land is being taken out of production (set-aside), planted with biofuel crops or converted to recreational or building areas. Some areas appear to be more affected by rapid land-cover change because they are studied more intensively. There are several interacting drivers for land cover change but the exponential growth in human population is important. Currently, 95% of the population growth takes place in tropical regions. Soil fertility in tropical regions is affected by rapid land cover changes. The effects of deforestation and grassland conversions as well as agricultural intensification have been fairly well-documented. The spatial and temporal effects of soil fertility change and its interaction with land cover change remains to be investigated.
The evolution of threshold traits: effects of selection on fecundity and correlated response in wing dimorphism in the sand cricket

The quantitative genetic basis of traits can be determined using a pedigree analysis or a selection experiment. Each approach is valuable and the combined data can contribute more than either method alone. Analysis using both sib analysis and selection is particularly essential when there are likely to be nonlinearities in the functional relationships among traits. A class of traits for which this occurs is that of threshold traits, which are characterized by a dichotomous phenotype that is determined by a threshold of sensitivity and a continuously distributed underlying trait called the liability. In this case, traits that are correlated with the liability may show a nonlinear relationship due to the dichotomy of expression at the phenotypic level. For example, in wing dimorphic insects fecundity of the macropterous (long‐winged) females appears in part to be determined by the allocation of resources to the flight muscles, which are almost invariably small or absent in the micropterous (short‐winged, flightless) females. Pedigree analysis of the cricket Gryllus firmus has shown that wing morph, fecundity and the trade‐off between the two have additive genetic (co)variance. It has also been shown that selection on proportion macroptery produced an asymmetric correlated response of fecundity. The present paper details the results of direct selection on fecundity and the correlated response in proportion macroptery. Selection for increased fecundity resulted in increased fecundity within both wing morphs and a correlated decrease in proportion macroptery. Similarly, selection for decreased fecundity resulted in a decrease within morphs and a correlated increase in the proportion of macropterous females. This provides additional evidence that the trade‐off between fecundity and wing morphology has a genetic basis and will thus modulate the evolution of the two traits.
Isolation, Characterization and Biodegradation Assay of Glyphosate Utilizing Bacteria from Exposed Rice Farm

Two bacterial species capable of utilizing glyphosate were isolated from the long term glyphosate exposed rice farm and tested for their abilities to utilize glyphosate at different concentrations. The two bacterial isolates were identified by standard bacteriological methods as Pseudomonas sp and Bacillus subtilis using their morphological, biochemical and growth characteristics. The utilization of glyphosate by the isolates was studied by monitoring their biomass production in basal medium containing glyphosate as phosphorus source at 660nm wavelength using the spectrophotometer. The growth of the isolates in the medium with inorganic phosphate as phosphorus source and the effect of different concentrations of glyphosate on the growth and utilization of glyphosate were also studied by assessing the turbidity in the medium at 660nm wavelength. The isolates showed a significant growth in the basal medium containing glyphosate as phosphorus source (P<0.05). Nevertheless, the test organisms showed a better growth rate in the medium with inorganic phosphate as phosphorus source. The effect of different concentrations showed that Pseudomonas sp grew significantly at concentrations of 7.2 mg/ml to 40 mg/ml while B. subtilis showed a reduction in growth with corresponding increase in glyphosate concentration. The results of this study nonetheless underscored the efficacy of the test bacterial isolates in glyphosate utilization, hence their potential as candidates for bioremediation of glyphosate contaminated farmland in poor resource settings. Keywords : Glyphosate herbicide, Utilization pattern, Pseudomonas sp. , Bacillus subtilis .
School Based Factors and the Dropout Phenomenon: A Study of Zhomba Cluster Secondary Schools in Gokwe District of Zimbabwe

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Space use and its effects on reproductive success of anadromous Atlantic salmon

We combined habitat mapping, radio tracking of adults, redd mapping, and genetic parentage analysis on juveniles for 2 consecutive years to test eight predictions on the reproductive payoffs and individual features associated with space use tactics of anadromous Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in a natural population. Regarding payoffs, we found that (1) males settled in better habitat, visited more redds, and tended to get more mates than males settled in poorer habitat; (2) they also sired more offspring; (3) the latter effect was stronger in the first year, when redds were more aggregated; and (4) female reproductive success increased with habitat quality in their home range, especially in the first year. For individual features, (5) individuals that settled earlier in their home range had better habitat for juvenile production, but only in the first year; (6) females were less mobile than males, especially in the second year; (7) larger males did not settle in better habitats than smaller males; and (8).
Positioning in Olympic Winter sports: analysing national prioritisation of funding and success in eight nations

ABSTRACT Research question: Despite the attention the Olympic Winter Games has received by scholars, there has been little theoretically informed analysis on the positioning of nations in a dynamic environment. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how nations position themselves in the Winter Games by comparing national funding prioritisations of Olympic Winter sports. Research methods: The distribution of funding in 2010/2011 is used as a proxy to examine how eight nations prioritise among seven sports. National policies are analysed at two levels: (a) the concentration of funding among the supported sports is measured using the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) and (b) the Spearman’s rho coefficient is used to examine the correlations between the distribution of funding (2010/2011) and success per sport in the past (1992–2006), recent past (2010) and future (2014). Results and findings: All nations show some prioritisation, but the resulting distribution of funding differs. For example, South Korea diversifies its funding most equally (HHI = 0.18), while Switzerland’s funding is more concentrated (HHI = 0.46). Furthermore, positioning differs depending on the type of sport most prioritised, be it skiing (Australia, Canada, Finland and Switzerland), skating (Japan and the Netherlands), both (South Korea) or bobsleigh/skeleton (Great Britain). Meanwhile, high correlation values were found for Australia, Great Britain, Finland and Japan in all periods, while the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea and Switzerland show high values in specific periods only. The results provide empirical evidence on different positioning strategies regarding the investment in either a focused or a diversified portfolio of targeted sports. Implications: Using a management perspective derived from economics, this study supports national decision-makers to compare prioritisation policies in their own national context.
A NOVEL HYBRID FILTER FEATURE SELECTION METHOD FOR DATA MINING

In recent years many applications of data mining deal with a high-dimensional data (very large number of features) impose a high computational cost as well as the risk of " over fitting ". In these cases, it is common practice to adopt feature selection method to improve the generalization accuracy. Feature selection method has become the focus of research in the area of data mining where there exists a high-dimensional data. We propose in this paper a novel feature selection method based on two stage analysis of Fisher Ratio and Mutual Information. The two-stage analysis of Fisher Ratio and Mutual Information is carried out in the feature domain to reject the noisy feature indexes and select the most informative combination from the remaining. In the approach, we develop two practical solutions, avoiding the difficulties of using high dimensional Mutual Information in the application, that are the feature indexes clustering using cross Mutual Information and the latter estimation based on conditional empirical PDF. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by the SVM classifier using datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. Experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to some other classical feature selection methods and can get higher prediction accuracy with small number of features. The results are highly promising.
Self‐Localization of Sensor Networks

2 Measurement Types and Performance Bounds 4 2.1 Measurements . 4 2.1. 1 Nuisance Parameters . 6 2.2 Cramér-Rao Bounds for Localization . 6 2.2.1 TOA, TDOA, and Distances . 7 2.2.2 AOA and ADOA . 8 2.2.3 RSS and RSSD . 9 2.2. 4 Anchor Nodes as Location Constraints . 9 2.3 Numerical Examples of CRB Analysis . 10 2.3. 1 TOA versus TDOA . 10 2.3. 2 Hybrid Measurement Systems . 12
Development of a Direct Trypan Blue Exclusion Method to Detect Cell Viability of Adherent Cells into ELISA Plates

Cell viability detection is important in cell culture applications including measurement of cell proliferation i.e for understanding cytotoxic effects of compounds on cells. There are some cell viability methods based on fluorescence or non-fluorescence detection. More simplified evaluation for cell viability, such as trypan blue staining, can be preferred before performing fluorescence assays. This appears advantageous when to have a large number of cell samples in ELISA plates after treatments with different concentrations of drug candidates. Thus, further fluorescence assays can include less concentrations rather than experiencing all used along 96-well plates. For this, trypan blue exclusion method is an option. Traditionally, treated cells are harvested by centrifugation and incubated with trypan blue within tubes followed by transferring the mixture into a hemacytometer with two chambers and assessed under the microscope. Nevertheless, using a hemacytometer limits practicability of this method when analyzing various cell samples into 96-well plates at the same time. This study was aimed to adapt trypan blue method to in situ staining of adherent cells cultured on ELISA plates. For this, cells were fixed with different fixatives after trypan blue incubation to maintain cells in impenetrable meshwork, and paraformaldehyde was the most effective fixative. This modified protocol was validated by testing the effect of dimethylsulfoxide-a cytotoxic agent-on cells, and expectedly found that cell viability reduced with higher concentrations of dimethylsulfoxide suggesting that in situ detection of cell viability by trypan blue can be a useful tool for preliminary detection of cells cultured on ELISA plates before performing automatized experiments with such flow cytometer and/or microplate reader.
DISC PROLAPSE AWARENESS AMONG POPULATION IN TAIF- SAUDI ARABIA.

Haneen Suliman Sahrah 1 , Abdulrahman Ahmad Alzahrani 2* , Magda Mansour 1 , Nagwan Elhussein 1 and Rania Mohammed Ahmed 1 . 1. College of Applied Medical Science, Taif University Taif, Saudi Arabia. 2. College of Medicine, Taif University Taif, Saudi Arabia. Manuscript Info Abstract . Manuscript History