Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on Ultraviolet Protection of 100% Cotton Knitted Fabric: Effect of Fabric Parameters

The effect of fabric parameters such as weight, thickness, and stitch density on the ultraviolet (UV) protection of knitted fabrics was studied. Different knitting structures such as plain, pineapple, lacoste, and other combinations of different knitting stitches of knit, tuck, and miss as well as half milano, full milano, half cardigan, full cardigan, 1 × 1 rib, and interlock were prepared. Experimental results revealed that weight was the most important factor that affected UV protection while thickness and stitch density were not the leading factor in determining UV protection.
Impaired Frontal-Limbic White Matter Maturation in Children at Risk for Major Depression

Depression is among the most common neuropsychiatric disorders. It remains unclear whether brain abnormalities associated with depression reflect the pathological state of the disease or neurobiological traits predisposing individuals to depression. Parental history of depression is a risk factor that more than triples the risk of depression. We compared white matter (WM) microstructure cross-sectionally in 40 children ages 8-14 with versus without parental history of depression (At-Risk vs. Control). There were significant differences in age-related changes of fractional anisotropy (FA) between the groups, localized in the anterior fronto-limbic WM pathways, including the anterior cingulum and the genu of the corpus callosum. Control children exhibited typical increasing FA with age, whereas At-Risk children exhibited atypical decreasing FA with age in these fronto-limbic regions. Furthermore, dorsal cingulate FA significantly correlated with depressive symptoms for At-Risk children. The results suggest maturational WM microstructure differences in mood-regulatory neurocircuitry that may contribute to neurodevelopmental risk for depression. The study provides new insights into neurodevelopmental susceptibility to depression and related disabilities that may promote early preventive intervention approaches.
Antibacterial and Antifungal Activity of ZnO Containing Glasses

A new family of non-toxic biocides based on low melting point (1250°C) transparent glasses with high content of ZnO (15–40wt%) belonging to the miscibility region of the B2O3-SiO2-Na2O-ZnO system has been developed. These glasses have shown an excellent biocide activity (logarithmic reduction >3) against Gram- (E. coli), Gram+ (S. aureus) and yeast (C. krusei); they are chemically stable in different media (distilled water, sea-like water, LB and DMEN media) as well as biocompatible. The cytotoxicity was evaluated by the Neutral Red Uptake using NIH-3T3 (mouse embryonic fibroblast cells) and the cell viability was >80%. These new glasses can be considered in several and important applications in the field of inorganic non-toxic biocide agents such as medical implants, surgical equipment, protective apparels in hospitals, water purifications systems, food packaging, food storages or textiles.
The Pre-Program Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Implications for Simple Program Evaluation Strategies

The key to estimating the impact of a program is constructing the counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence. This problem becomes more complicated when agents self-select into the program rather than being exogenously assigned to it. This paper uses data from a major social experiment to identify what would have happened to the earnings of self-selected participants in a job training program had they not participated in it. We investigate the implications of these earnings patterns for the validity of widely-used before-after and difference-in-differences estimators. Motivated by the failure of these estimators to produce credible estimates, we investigate the determinants of program participation. We find that labor force status dynamics, rather than earnings or employment dynamics, drive the participation process. Our evidence suggests that training programs often function as a form of job search. Methods that control only for earnings dynamics, like the conventional difference-in-differences estimator, do not adequately capture the underlying differences between participants and non-participants. We use the estimated probabilities of participation in both matching estimators and a nonparametric, conditional version of the differences-in-differences estimator and produce large reductions in the selection bias in non-experimental estimates of the effect of training on earnings.
Insights into the Antimicrobial Properties of Hepcidins: Advantages and Drawbacks as Potential Therapeutic Agents

The increasing frequency of multi-drug resistant microorganisms has driven research into alternative therapeutic strategies. In this respect, natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) hold much promise as candidates for the development of novel antibiotics. However, AMPs have some intrinsic drawbacks, such as partial degradation by host proteases or inhibition by host body fluid composition, potential toxicity, and high production costs. This review focuses on the hepcidins, which are peptides produced by the human liver with a known role in iron homeostasis, as well by numerous other organisms (including fish, reptiles, other mammals), and their potential as antibacterial and antifungal agents. Interestingly, the antimicrobial properties of human hepcidins are enhanced at acidic pH, rendering these peptides appealing for the design of new drugs targeting infections that occur in body areas with acidic physiological pH. This review not only considers current research on the direct killing activity of these peptides, but evaluates the potential application of these molecules as coating agents preventing biofilm formation and critically assesses technical obstacles preventing their therapeutic application.
Corporate reputation and CSR reporting to stakeholders: Gaps in the literature and future lines of research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of the underdeveloped stream of research that analyses corporate reputation as an outcome of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Design/methodology/approach – The author systematically reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the CSR reporting-reputation relationship, identify several gaps in the body of knowledge and provide new lines of study to develop this relevant stream of research. Findings – The literature review demonstrates that CSR reporting is especially useful to generate corporate reputation. The justification for this idea is provided by as many as five theoretical approaches, while the management of corporate transparency, information quantity and information quality is shown to be crucial to the success of CSR reporting. Originality/value – The value of the paper resides in making the rather underdeveloped, heterogeneous and inconclusive literature on the CSR reporting-reputation link more access.
PRACTICE TRANSFER IN MNES AS THE SOCIALLY EMBEDDED TRANSLATION OF PRACTICES

Purpose With a few exceptions the mainstream literature on learning in MNEs has shown little concern for the transformational nature and the social constitution of learning. We address this gab by drawing on Scandinavian institutionalism, social learning perspectives and comparative institutionalism. Design/methodology/approach – A comparative case study was conducted of two subsidiaries of the same MNE. The subsidiaries received similar practices from HQ but displayed contrasting learning outcomes. Findings – It is shown that learning outcomes differed based on the varying extent to which practices were translated, which depends on the participation of local actors. The difference in participation pattern in turn is rooted in differences in the institutional context of the two subsidiaries. Research limitations/implications – It is recognized that apart from institutional influences, organizational idiosyncrasies may be at work. In addition, we briefly address the question to what extent the notion of contrasting in forms of capitalism is still useful when comparing the German and British institutional context. Practical implications – The findings highlight the importance of involving employees in the translation of new practices. A challenge for MNEs is that learning of new practices can differ by institutional context. Where enabling institutional conditions are absent, conscious effort may be needed to ensure employee participation. Originality/value – This paper highlights that MNE practice transfer rests on the translation of the practice content to the local context, and that subsidiary-level learning processes may be institutionally embedded thus establishing a link between subsidiary learning and the macro-level context. As such, this paper both illustrates the value of social learning perspectives and highlights the relevance of the work of institutionalists for understanding MNE learning processes.
Probing the Mass Distributions in NGC 1407 and Its Associated Group with the X-Ray Imaging Spectroscopic and Optical Photometric and Line-Strength Indices Data

We have studied the mass distributions in the bright E0 galaxy NGC 1407 and its associated group by analyzing Chandra and ROSAT data. To probe the stellar mass distribution, we calculated the stellar mass-to-light ratios by comparing the observed line-strength indices and multicolor photometric data with different stellar synthesis models. We find that the gas is single phase, with a temperature of ≃0.7 keV within 1Re. Outside 1Re, the gas temperature increases quickly outward to >1 keV, indicating its group origin. We reveal that the X-ray surface brightness profile shows a central excess in the innermost region, and on both the total mass and dark matter profiles there is a flattened feature at about ≲1Re, where the gas temperature increases rapidly. This may be a mark of the boundary between the galaxy and group halos. The total mass and dark matter distributions within 0.85Re are cuspy and can be approximated by power-law profiles with indices of ≃2, which are marginally consistent with the generalized NFW profiles with ζ = 2. The mass in outer regions can be well fitted by a single NFW profile, and the derived concentration parameter c (18.6 ± 1.5) is larger than the 68% upper limit for a halo at z = 0 with the given Mvir. We find that the NGC 1407 group has a baryon-dominated core, while the mass in the >1Re region is dominated by dark matter. At the virial radius r200 = 572 ± 118 kpc, the inferred mass and mass-to-light ratio are M200 = 2.20 ± 0.42 × 1013 M☉ and Mvir/LB = 311 ± 60 M☉/LB,☉, respectively, showing that the NGC 1407 group is an extremely dark system, similar to many clusters of galaxies.
Home ownership and the life cycle: An ordered logit approach

This paper presents an ordered logit approach to model the optimal timing of buying a house during the life cycle. The model is applied to three recent Belgian household budget surveys. We find that households postpone homeownership or choose to be lifelong tenant due to an increase of the transaction tax rate, the real interest rate on mortgages and an indicator for the evolution of real house prices. Expenditures on nondurables, on the contrary, have a positive impact on (early) homeownership.
Statistics in society: three case studies in the UK

Public statistics are increasingly produced to facilitate public accountability and engagement at various levels of society i.e. to empower citizens. However, the impact of these statistics and their comprehension has not been systematically studied, indeed the arena in which statisticians work is generally more technical and less oriented to public scrutiny. We explore the role of statistical literacy in citizenship and provide explanations as to how this is necessary to live up to normative ideals. Case studies show how statistics can create social reality, both in terms of categories and numerical summaries, although there may be more than one ‘data story’ derived from the same information, as seen in the case of Mid Staffordshire Foundation Health Trust. Furthermore, public interpretations of these data stories need not be accurate and are rarely appropriate in their criticism of the objectivity represented by statistical analysis. Statistical description for a public audience requires much more than reporting figures relating to the phenomenon being described: such a presentation can be misleading or exclusive as well as restrict political discourse.
Towards Assessing Changes in Degree of Depression through Facebook

Depression is typically diagnosed as being present or absent. However, depression severity is believed to be continuously distributed rather than dichotomous. Severity may vary for a given patient daily and seasonally as a function of many variables ranging from life events to environmental factors. Repeated population-scale assessment of depression through questionnaires is expensive. In this paper we use survey responses and status updates from 28,749 Facebook users to develop a regression model that predicts users’ degree of depression based on their Facebook status updates. Our user-level predictive accuracy is modest, significantly outperforming a baseline of average user sentiment. We use our model to estimate user changes in depression across seasons, and find, consistent with literature, users’ degree of depression most often increases from summer to winter. We then show the potential to study factors driving individuals’ level of depression by looking at its most highly correlated language features.
Time delay for the gravitational lens system B0218+357

Measurement of the time delay between multiple images of a gravitational lens system is potentially an accurate method of determining the Hubble constant over cosmological distances. One of the most promising candidates for an application of this technique is the system B0218+357, which was found in the Jodrell Bank/VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS). This system consists of two images of a compact radio source, separated by 335 milliarcsec, and an Einstein ring which can provide a strong constraint on the mass distribution in the lens. We present here the results of a three-month VLA monitoring campaign at two frequencies. The data are of high quality, and both images show clear variations in total flux density, percentage polarization and polarization position angle at both frequencies. The time delay between the variations in the two images has been calculated using a chi-squared minimization to be 10.5 +/- 0.4 d at 95 per cent confidence, with the error being derived from Monte Carlo simulations of the light curves. Although mass modelling of the system is at a preliminary stage, taking the lensing galaxy to be a singular isothermal ellipsoid and using the new value for the time delay, we obtain a value for the Hubble constant of 69(-19)(+13) km s(-1) Mpc(-1), again at 95 per cent confidence.
Reliability of NAND-2 CMOS gates from threshold voltage variations

The high-level approach for estimating circuit reliability tends to consider the probability of failure of a logic gate as a constant, and work towards the higher levels. With scaling, such gate-centric approaches become highly inaccurate, as both transistors and input vectors drastically affect the probability of failure of the logic gates. This paper will present a transistor-level gate failure analysis starting from threshold voltage variations. We will briefly review the state-of-the-art, and rely upon freshly reported results for threshold voltage variations. These will be used to estimate the probabilities of failure of a classical NAND-2 CMOS gate for (a few) different technologies, voltages, and input vectors. They will also reveal huge differences between the highest and the lowest probabilities of failure, and will show how strongly these are affected by the supply voltage.
Does Microcredit Meet the Needs of all Poor Women? Constraints to Participation Among Desitute Women in Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), together with the World Food Programme of the United Nations (WFP), administers one of the largest microfinance initiatives in the world. Reaching around 450,000 women in each 18-month cycle, the Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) programme constitutes a targeted package of food aid, micro-credit, and functional and social awareness training. Each element of the integrated package is considered to be essential and mutually reinforcing, and successful ‘graduation’ has been thought of in terms of progression from one stage of the process to another. However, recent studies have noted that not all women avail themselves of every aspect of the programme, and that only a minority completes the cycle having participated in all components. The current study was designed to explore the factors that determine the extent of participation among eligible beneficiaries; that is: 1) Who does (or does not) take advantage of each and every component of the development package on offer? ; 2) What socio-economic factors and personal perceptions favour ‘full’ participation (assuming that this is a goal to which poor women equally subscribe)? ; 3) Which elements of IGVGD are most useful to which households? ; and, 4) Can participants’ own perceptions of 'successful participation' be incorporated into a redefined programme that more effectively maximises their constrained capacities and opportunities? Building on two prior studies of the prevalence of incomplete programme participation, the present report documents findings from a household survey of 606 IGVGD women who were engaged in the 1998/99 IGVGD cycle. This geographically stratified random sample was drawn from the earlier statistically representative survey of 7,349 women conducted by Sparrey (2001). While this study does not claim to be nationally representative (nor indeed fully representative of project cycles beyond 1998/99), great care was taken to report findings that do reflect actual conditions in the locations surveyed. What is more, while the severe floods of 1998 cannot be ignored (they did cause damage to homes and livelihoods in a number of the locations surveyed), their impact on the 1998/99 cycle should not be exaggerated. Most women report that their decisions and activities were not directly affected or constrained by the floods.
DOMESTIC TRANSPORT COSTS AND THE LOCATION OF EXPORT-ORIENTED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN SOUTH AFRICA: A CUBIC-SPLINE DENSITY FUNCTION APPROACH

In this paper, we attempt to provide empirical evidence on the significance of domestic transport costs in exports and the spatial location of manufacturing exporters. We use spatially disaggregated data on exports and manufacturing from South Africa and estimate modified cubic-spline density functions for manufactured exports from 354 magisterial districts between 1996 and 2004. It is found that (a) the proximity to a port (hub) is an important consideration in most export-oriented manufacturing firms’ location with more than 70% of all manufacturing exports in South Africa originating from a band of 100 km from an export hub (port); and (b) there appears to be a second band of location of export-oriented manufacturing firms at a distance of between 200 and 400 kilometres from the hub. Over time we found that the number of locations from which manufacturing exports occurred in South Africa increased by 15% between 1996 and 2004 and that manufactured exports in the band between 200 km and 400 km from the nearest hub increased significantly, suggesting either an increase in manufactured exports that depend on natural resources due to demand factors, and/or a decrease in domestic transport costs over the time period.
ADMINISTRATIVE AND COMPLIANCE COSTS OF STATE AND LOCAL TAXES

THE STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE AUTHORS IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE 1966 MONTANA TAX STUDY, ESTIMATES THE ADMINISTRATIVE AND COMPLIANCE COSTS OF EACH OF THE SIGNIFICANT COMPONENTS OF THE STATE AND LOCAL TAX STRUCTURE IN MONTANA. DATA FURNISHED DIRECTLY BY THE STATE TAX COLLECTION AGENCIES AND BY QUESTIONNAIRES SENT TO COUNTY OFFICIALS AND TO SAMPLES OF INDIVIDUAL TAXPAYERS AND BUSINESS FIRMS PROVIDED THE BASIS FOR ESTIMATING COSTS. THE RESULTS ARE SUMMARIZED IN A TABLE. /BPR/
Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the Antifungal Activity of Allicin Alone and in Combination with Antifungal Drugs

The antifungal activity of allicin and its synergistic effects with the antifungal agents flucytosine and amphotericin B (AmB) were investigated in Candida albicans (C. albicans). C. albicans was treated with different conditions of compounds alone and in combination (allicin, AmB, flucytosine, allicin + AmB, allicin + flucytosine, allicin + AmB + flucytosine). After a 24-hour treatment, cells were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure morphological and biophysical properties associated with cell death. The clearing assay was conducted to confirm the effects of allicin. The viability of C. albicans treated by allicin alone or with one antifungal drug (AmB, flucytosine) in addition was more than 40% after a 24-hr treatment, but the viability of groups treated with combinations of more than two drugs was less than 32%. When the cells were treated with allicin alone or one type of drug, the morphology of the cells did not change noticeably, but when cells were treated with combinations of drugs, there were noticeable morphological changes. In particular, cells treated with allicin + AmB had significant membrane damage (burst or collapsed membranes). Classification of cells according to their cell death phase (CDP) allowed us to determine the relationship between cell viability and treatment conditions in detail. The adhesive force was decreased by the treatment in all groups compare to the control. Cells treated with AmB + allicin had a greater adhesive force than cells treated with AmB alone because of the secretion of molecules due to collapsed membranes. All cells treated with allicin or drugs were softer than the control cells. These results suggest that allicin can reduce MIC of AmB while keeping the same efficacy.
Platform Evolution: Coevolution of Platform Architecture, Governance, and Environmental Dynamics

T he emergence of software-based platforms is shifting competition toward platform-centric ecosystems, although this phenomenon has not received much attention in information systems research. Our premise is that the coevolution of the design, governance, and environmental dynamics of such ecosystems inﬂuences how they evolve. We present a framework for understanding platform-based ecosystems and discuss ﬁve broad research questions that present signiﬁcant research opportunities for contributing homegrown theory about their evolutionary dynamics to the information systems discipline and distinctive information technology-artifact-centric contributions to the strategy, economics, and software engineering reference disciplines.