Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Generation of Nanostructures of Mica Supported Lysozyme and Lysozyme-Nanogold Conjugates by Diving Tip Nanowriting

Nanostructures of lysozyme molecules and lysozyme-nanogold conjugates were generated by atomic force microscopy in contact-, tapping- and force-distance-mode on mica in aqueous solution. In contact mode at high ionic strength, adjusted lysozyme concentration and lower loading force a monolayer of defined structure and orientation of lysozyme can be formed by the scan process of the tip. A lateral resolution of the monolayer of about 80 nm could be achieved. At larger loading forces besides a lysozyme monolayer also 3D-aggregates could be generated in parallel. In force-distance mode the volume of 3D-aggregates was studied as function of lysozyme concentration, loading force and number or frequency of up- and down-movement of the tip. Also in tapping mode 3D-aggregates were generated at the selected incubation conditions. Application of the linescan mode for solutions of nanogold or lysozyme-nanogold conjugates allowed the formation of monolayers of linear shape with lateral resolution of about 35 nm on mica. Nanogold line-structures could be connected to macroscopic gold contacts. It is postulated that adjustment of electrostatic interaction between lysozyme and substrate and the applied loading force is critical for monolayer formation. Different to the underlying mechanism of the well-established dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) (Piner et al., 1999) for the presented method of diving tip nanowriting (DTN) adsorption of the molecules from the aqueous bulk phase to the tip and thereafter the flow to the mica surface is discussed. DTN could be used to either contact proteins electrically or to form preaggregates for protein crystallization (Wiechmann et al., 2000)
3D-printed microfluidic chips with patterned, cell-laden hydrogel constructs

Three-dimensional (3D) printing offers potential to fabricate high-throughput and low-cost fabrication of microfluidic devices as a promising alternative to traditional techniques which enables efficient design iterations in the development stage. In this study, we demonstrate a single-step fabrication of a 3D transparent microfluidic chip using two alternative techniques: a stereolithography-based desktop 3D printer and a two-step fabrication using an industrial 3D printer based on polyjet technology. This method, compared to conventional fabrication using relatively expensive materials and labor-intensive processes, presents a low-cost, rapid prototyping technique to print functional 3D microfluidic chips. We enhance the capabilities of 3D-printed microfluidic devices by coupling 3D cell encapsulation and spatial patterning within photocrosslinkable gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA). The platform presented here serves as a 3D culture environment for long-term cell culture and growth. Furthermore, we have demonstrated the ability to print complex 3D microfluidic channels to create predictable and controllable fluid flow regimes. Here, we demonstrate the novel use of 3D-printed microfluidic chips as controllable 3D cell culture environments, advancing the applicability of 3D printing to engineering physiological systems for future applications in bioengineering.
Nth best relay selection with network coding in two‐way relay systems

In this paper, we propose an Nth best relay selection (Nth‐RS) scheme for analog network coding in two‐way relay systems. In traditional two‐way single‐relay selection schemes, only the best one is selected to forward network‐coded signals. However, in practical applications, the best relay may be unavailable because of the scheduling or overload constraints. In this case, we investigate a more general scheme, where the Nth best but available relay is selected. To evaluate the transmission of reliability, the expression of outage probability in exponential–integral form and its asymptotic expression in closed form are presented. Moreover, the upper bound and lower bound of outage probability are also derived. The analysis reveals that the diversity order of Nth‐RS equals to (M − N + 1), where M is the number of relay nodes, and the results are verified by simulations. In order to improve system performance, transmit power between sources and relay is optimally allocated to minimize the upper bound of outage probability under total power constraint. Simulation results show that Nth‐RS scheme with proposed power allocation can achieve substantial improvement over equal power allocation scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An Empirical Analysis on Determinants of Poverty: A Co-Integration Analysis

Globally, about 90% of the poor people of developing world lived in Asia or Africa. Three of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas and 2.1 billion living on less than $ 2 a day and 880 million on less than $ 1 a day and mostly people depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. Poverty is totally out of control in the rural areas of the Pakistan, where people are in a state of deficiency with regards to incomes, clothing, housing, health care and education facilities. According to economics survey 2011- 12, more than 63 percent of the population living in rural areas and depends on agriculture for their livelihood. Agriculture sector contributes in GDP is around 22 percent while it provides employment at least more than 40 percent of the total population. The study analyze the determinants of Poverty in case of Pakistan extracting 31 time series annually observations. The study employed Johansen co integration methodology to test for the existence of a long run relationship between variables. The co integrating regression as far as this considers only the long run property of the model, and does not deal with short run dynamics explicitly. For this, the error correction mechanism is used. The study concluded that all the variables have negative and significant effect on poverty while inflation has positive and significant effect on Poverty.
Does Demographic Change Affect the Current Account? A Reconsideration

Abstract This paper re-examines the impact of demographic factors on the current account balance. To this end, we develop an analytical framework that is more general than the one commonly used in the literature in three aspects. First, it accounts for the facts that the world current account balance must be equal to zero. Second, a bigger economy will have greater impacts on others, but be influenced less by them. Third, a more open economy will have greater impacts on others and at the same time be more readily influenced by them. We then confront two alternative empirical specifications based on both the new and the conventional framework with a panel of data. In contrast to the findings based on the conventional framework, our results with the new framework indicate that population ageing does not appear to have discernible impacts on the current account balance.
Search, Wage Bargains and Cycles

I use an equilibrium model of job matchings with a Nash wage equation to derive the response of wages and unemployment to productivity shocks. By endogenising labour's threat point, I show that wages absorb fully permanent shock but only partially temporary shocks. Hence, unemployment responds to perceived temporary shocks but not to permanent shocks.
Microfirms in peripheral areas: How can evolutionary economic geography contribute in studies of diversification? A case study from Norway

The article discusses whether and how the emerging approach of evolutionary economic geography is fruitful when researching diversification among microfirms in peripheral regions. The author argues that such microfirms represent a source of heterogeneity that potentially could enrich our understanding of economic evolution. The sources of variation and mechanisms of selection operating among diversifying farmers in Norway are examined and diversifying farms are identified as both microfirms and households. The findings indicate that motivation at household level is the key to successful diversification. Further, the findings confirm that microfirms are not only able to influence their own destiny, but also institutional progress at regional level. The author concludes that the role of microfirms as actors and the possibility for the study of the agency of such actors are the major reasons why evolutionary economic geography is a fruitful approach in researching microfirms in peripheral areas.
Malaysia as Global Halal Hub: OIC Food Manufacturers' Perspective

Food hubs have received attention from different groups of people who have interests related to food and agriculture. These include the food manufacturers, suppliers, and also small and medium enterprises. Malaysia as a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has aspirations to be the Halal Food Hub for the OIC member countries. This article aims to understand the determinants that influence the OIC food manufacturers' intention to accept Malaysia as a global Halal Hub. Three hundred manufacturers were interviewed and the data were analyzed descriptively through factor analysis. Theory of planned behavior was used to gauge the OIC manufacturers' intention to accept Malaysia as a Halal Hub. The factors affecting the food manufacturers to accept Malaysia as a Halal Hub for the OIC country members are knowledge of Malaysia's intention to become a Halal Hub, confidence in Malaysia, motivation to comply, and the market potential.
A Structural VAR Model of the Australian Economy

We develop an 11-variable structural VAR for the Australian economy over the period 1980 to 1998. The VAR methodology has only relatively recently been applied in the Australian context, despite its popularity in quantitative macroeconomics internationally. Our model includes an overseas sector which distinguishes between goods and asset markets so as to disentangle the effects of shocks emanating from each source. We utilize our model to dissect the Australian growth cycle into its separate influences and to study the Asian crisis. Throughout there is a strong emphasis upon identifying the impact of monetary policy. Copyright 2000 by The Economic Society of Australia.
Existence of competitive equilibrium in a non-standard exchange economy

NONSTANDARD EXCHANGE ECONOMIES and the associated nonstandard concepts of the core and competitive equilibrium were first defined in Brown-Robinson. In that paper they proved the equivalence between the nonstandard core and the set of nonstandard competitive equilibria. In a second paper, using the equivalence theorem for nonstandard exchange economies, they showed that core allocations in large standard exchange economies were approximately competitive equilibria. In this paper, we shall modify slightly their definition of a competitive equilibrium and then prove the existence of this nonstandard competitive equilibrium. In a future paper, we hope to show that this existence theorem implies the existence of approximate or "e"-equilibria in large standard exchange economies. Our proof is based, in part, on Schmeidler's elegant proof of the existence of a competitive equilibrium for a continuous economy. As in the continuous case we do not assume convexity of preferences, since we use a nonstandard analogue of the Lyapunov theorem, on the convexity of vector-valued measures, due to P. Loeb. We have also benefited a great deal from Auman's seminal papers, and Debreu's paper on the integration of correspondences.
Responsive Evaluation: the Meaning and Special Contribution to Public Administration

Responsive evaluation offers an emerging vision and rationale for evaluation. In the version of responsive evaluation presented here, evaluation is reframed from the assessment of policy interventions on the basis of policy-makers' questions to a dialogue among diverse stakeholder interests that moves towards reciprocal understanding and acceptance. This approach to evaluation is especially appropriate for the field of public administration, given the existing problems of complexity and the potential synergy with interactive and participatory policy approaches. Responsive evaluation and interactive approaches to public policy issues share the same democratic goals of participation and influence, and the alignment between these concepts make both sets of ideas and activities more effective and meaningful. The value and meaning of responsive evaluation and the synergy of this evaluation approach with the concept of public dialogue about important public issues is illustrated by a case study. This concerns a responsive evaluation of an organized policy dialogue about the future of the Dutch aviation infrastructure, known publicly as the Schiphol discussion.
Human Ovarian Cancer Stroma Contains Luteinized Theca Cells Harboring Tumor Suppressor Gene GT198 Mutations*

Background: GT198 is a tumor suppressor gene in breast and ovarian cancer. Results: Tumor stromal cells in various types of human ovarian cancer carry GT198 mutations and express theca cell-specific enzyme CYP17. Conclusion: GT198 mutant tumor stromal cells are luteinized theca cells in ovarian cancer. Significance: Studying mutant tumor stromal cells is crucial for understanding the cause of ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is a highly lethal gynecological cancer, and its causes remain to be understood. Using a recently identified tumor suppressor gene, GT198 (PSMC3IP), as a unique marker, we searched for the identity of GT198 mutant cells in ovarian cancer. GT198 has germ line mutations in familial and early onset breast and ovarian cancers and recurrent somatic mutations in sporadic fallopian tube cancers. GT198 protein has been shown as a steroid hormone receptor coregulator and also as a crucial factor in DNA repair. In this study, using GT198 as a marker for microdissection, we find that ovarian tumor stromal cells harboring GT198 mutations are present in various types of ovarian cancer including high and low grade serous, endometrioid, mucinous, clear cell, and granulosa cell carcinomas and in precursor lesions such as inclusion cysts. The mutant stromal cells consist of a luteinized theca cell lineage at various differentiation stages including CD133+, CD44+, and CD34+ cells, although the vast majority of them are differentiated overexpressing steroidogenic enzyme CYP17, a theca cell-specific marker. In addition, wild type GT198 suppresses whereas mutant GT198 protein stimulates CYP17 expression. The chromatin-bound GT198 on the human CYP17 promoter is decreased by overexpressing mutant GT198 protein, implicating the loss of wild type suppression in mutant cells. Together, our results suggest that GT198 mutant luteinized theca cells overexpressing CYP17 are common in ovarian cancer stroma. Because first hit cancer gene mutations would specifically mark cancer-inducing cells, the identification of mutant luteinized theca cells may add crucial evidence in understanding the cause of human ovarian cancer.
Preference-aware skyline service discovery in the mobile cloud system

Recently, the mobile cloud computing received much attention since it can provide various and powerful services for the mobile user. The service discovery technology in mobile cloud computing is very important to efficiently provide the mobile services. In this paper, we proposed a novel preference-aware skyline service discovery system in the mobile cloud system. The objective of our system is to discover preferable services in the mobile cloud system. Our proposed mobile cloud system is composed of zone-based overlay network. In the overlay network, querying user generates the query with user preference extracted by a Singular Value Decomposition method from the user's service access history. The generated query is sent to the mobile cloud system, and then the query is handled by the distributed skyline query processing mechanism to discover user preferable services with low networking communication cost in the mobile cloud system. We conduct experiments to evaluate the performance of our proposed system.
Measuring international production fragmentation: where do we stand?

Despite the growing importance of international fragmentation of production, it is still difficult to accurately assess its real size and effect. Several different indicators were proposed over the last decade, but their capacity to provide precise and consistent results is often hindered by the lack of proper data. From an academic and a political standpoint, gaining quantitative knowledge on international vertical fragmentation in production and trade is a major challenge, thus calling for robust and accurate measurement tools. As a first step to face this challenge, this paper takes stock of indicators proposed in the literature, highlighting their advantages and drawbacks and stressing the data requirements.
Antenna selection based spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks

In a cognitive radio system, the accuracy of spectrum sensing is critical for both primary and secondary systems. Both cooperative sensing and single-user multiple-antenna techniques have been proposed in the literature to enhance the accuracy of spectrum sensing. However, these techniques may require additional signaling and hardware costs, and can lead to user reliability problems or energy consumption issues. To avoid these problems, we propose a scheme that requires no extra signaling and low hardware costs, while still offering substantial diversity gains for enhancing the sensing performance. This is achieved by combining antenna selection with the spectrum sensing mechanism. We analyze the diversity order of the proposed scheme and show that no loss occurs relative to the case of single-user multiple-antenna sensing. This benefit is achieved while keeping a low implementation complexity as only a subset of RF chains are used in a given time period. Simulations show that a substantial sensing gain can be obtained compared to using other traditional multiple-antenna techniques in some practical cases.
Farmer willingness to pay for seed-related information: rice varieties in Nigeria and Benin

ABSTRACT This study examines farmers’ preferences for seed of new rice varieties (improved and NERICA) and their willingness to pay (WTP) for information embodied in the seed, in villages of Nigeria and Benin. Information might not generate rivalry among its users but excludability is certainly a characteristic of information and its delivery can generate incentives for private participation. Conjoint utility analysis is used to estimate the structure of farmers’ preferences for rice seed. Farmers prefer one variety based on the utility they obtain from its attributes, which depends on their own social and economic characteristics. Contingent methods are used to elicit preferences and rice seed price. The marginal values of attributes are estimated with an ordered probit regression. The WTP for seed-related information is derived from the utility model. The results have implications for the best way to finance extension services in the areas of intervention, particularly for new rice varieties.
An Improved Minimalist Cryptography

Abstract—Security is one of key problems in RFID application. This research is to find a security algorithm for RFID with very low computing requirement. Minimalist Cryptography only needs exclusive Or (XOR) and simple logical control, and it can protect privacy and provide mutual authentication. However, the algorithm has hidden security problems while assuming that the attacker couldn’t monitor the data between RFID readers and tags for continuous sessions. The paper proved this weakness and put forward three ways to improve the weakness, i.e. channel encryption etc. The attacker could only crack the improved algorithm by brute-force attack. The experimental result showed that even by brute-force attack the attack needs more continues sessions after improvement, the cracking time and the record number needed for cracking increased with improved algorithm, and the cracking difficulty increases exponentially when the length of channel key increases, and the encryption complication increases in liner. The improved Minimalist Cryptography provided a safer lightweight security algorithm for RFID.
Technology Mentor Fellowship Program: A Technology Integration Professional Development Model for Classroom Teachers.

This multi-year program was based on the premise a digital divide exists between the technology skill levels of public school faculties compared to those of undergraduate teacher education candidates. The Technology Mentor Fellowship Program (TMFP) matched technologically-proficient pre-service teachers with K-12 teachers to model technology as an instructional tool. A consortium consisting of seven school districts and a university designed an approach for integrating technology into teacher preparation programs that allowed over 5,000 high-need learners to access teachers prepared to teach in increasingly high-tech classrooms. Increasing technology knowledge and skills among participating teachers became evident during the program. NATIONAL FORUM OF TEACHER EDUCATION JOURNAL-ELECTRONIC 2__________________________________________________________________________________
Location-Aware Optimal Resource Selection Method for P2P-Based Contents Management and Real-Time Distribution

With the wide-spread use of high-speed network connections and high performance mobile/sensor terminals available, new interactive services based on real-time contents have become available over the Internet. In these services, end-nodes (e.g, smart phone, sensors), which are dispersed over the Internet, generates the real-time contents (e.g, live video, sensor data about human activity), and those contents are utilized to support many kinds of human activities seen in the real world. For the services, a new decentralized contents distribution system which can accommodate a large number of content distributions and which can minimize the end-toend streaming delay between the content publisher and the subscribers is proposed. In order to satisfy the requirements, the proposed content distribution system is equipped with utilizing two distributed resource selection methods. The first method, distributed hash table (DHT)-based contents management, makes it possible for the system to efficiently decide and locate the server managing content distributions in completely decentralized manner. And, the second one, location-aware server selection, is utilized to quickly select the appropriate servers that distribute the streamed contents to all subscribers in real time. This paper considers the performance of the proposed resource selection methods using a realistic computer simulation and shows that the system with the proposed methods has scalability for a large-scale distributed system that attracts a very large number of users, and achieves real-time locating of the contents without degrading end-toend streaming delay of content. key words: peer-to-peer, content distribution, DHT, location-aware node selection, network coordinate