Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile commerce in the automobile industry

E-commerce continues to grow but will not mature until it becomes truly mobile - information available anywhere, anytime and to anybody. Applying mobile access to computing creates both tremendous commercial opportunities and complexity. It is becoming increasingly portable, as well as convenient as wireless terminals can be installed in automobile dashboards and embedded in all manner of everyday appliances. Automobile manufacturers are beginning to offer wireless services to drivers but most in-car-communications capabilities are still basic. Two primary areas of telematics are on-board telematics (CD ROM) and call centre telematics. It is a big potential market for car manufacturers as millions of drivers spend many hours in their cars. However, the greatest challenges to the growth of mobile commerce are security and privacy issues and hence the lack of consumer confidence in mobile network security.
Suspension culture of hepatocyte‐derived reporter cells in presence of albumin to form stable three‐dimensional spheroids

Several studies in the past have formed 3‐dimensional (3D) spheroids of primary hepatocytes in suspension culture. Unfortunately, primary hepatocytes in a suspension environment tend to lose their differentiated function over time, generally due to damage from fluid shear stress and eventual spheroid settling. We have therefore created a novel suspension culture system, by seeding H35 rat hepatoma cells, a hepatocyte‐derived cell line, in a 24‐well tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS) plate placed atop an orbital shaker to create 3D spheroids. To provide stability to the formed spheroids, we used a long‐chain polymer, bovine serum albumin (BSA), dissolved in the cell culture medium and/or coated on TCPS surfaces placed in suspension configurations. Our results demonstrate that BSA coating of culture surfaces resulted in uniform and well‐defined spheroids with little spheroid settling or “flattening” of cell colonies in either static or suspension configurations. In BSA‐coated suspension systems, spheroid size scaled with the amount of BSA dissolved in culture medium. In static uncoated cultures, the normalized rat albumin production levels were enhanced by addition of BSA within culture medium. Thus, both addition of BSA to culture medium and application of BSA as a surface coating appear to be meaningful avenues for tailoring spheroid morphology and function. This 24‐well plate suspension culture system may be a valuable tool for high throughput investigations of liver cell behavior in a stable, uniform, 3D spheroid state. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110:2548–2555. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Relationship between Income and Net Worth in the United States: A Virtuous Cycle for High- but Not Low-Income Households

ABSTRACT Is there a reciprocal relationship between household income and net worth and does that relationship depend on initial income? Using cross-lagged panel models of household income and net worth data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the authors compare the income-wealth relationships of high- and low-income households from 1989 to 2011. Adjusting for demographic differences, the authors find a reciprocal relationship between income and wealth for high-, but not low-, income households. Results suggest intragenerational mobility works differently by initial income, which could partially explain the difficulty of escaping poverty and low U.S. support for liberal social welfare policy.
MAPPING OF MULTIDRUG RESISTANCE GENE 1 AND MULTIDRUG RESISTANCE-ASSOCIATED PROTEIN ISOFORM 1 TO 5 mRNA EXPRESSION ALONG THE HUMAN INTESTINAL TRACT

Efflux transporters such as P-glycoprotein and multidrug resistance-associated proteins (MRPs) in the intestinal wall restrict intestinal drug transport. To overcome this limitation for enteral drug absorption, galenical targeting approaches have been proposed for site-specific luminal drug release in segments of the gut, where expression of the respective absorption-limiting transporter is minimal. Therefore, expression of multidrug resistance gene 1 (MDR1) and MRP1-5 was systematically investigated in 10 healthy subjects. Biopsies were taken from different segments of the gastrointestinal tract (from duodenum and terminal ileum, as well as ascending, transverse, descending, and sigmoid colon). Gene expression was investigated by quantitative real-time PCR (TaqMan). MRP3 appeared to be the most abundantly expressed transporter in investigated parts of the human intestine, except for the terminal ileum, where MDR1 showed the highest expression. The ranking of transporter gene expression in the duodenum was MRP3 ≫ MDR1 > MRP2 > MRP5 > MRP4 > MRP1. In the terminal ileum, the ranking order was as follows: MDR1 > MRP3 ≫ MRP1 ≈ MRP5 ≈ MRP4 > MRP2. In all segments of the colon (ascending, transverse, descending, and sigmoid colon), the transporter gene expression showed the following order: MRP3 ≫ MDR1 > MRP4 ≈ MRP5 > MRP1 ≫ MRP2. We have shown, for the first time, systematic site-specific expression of MDR1 and MRP mRNA along the gastrointestinal tract in humans. All transporters showed alterations in their expression levels from the duodenum to sigmoid colon. The most pronounced changes were observed for MRP2, with high levels in the small intestine and hardly any expression in colonic segments. This knowledge may be useful to develop new targeting strategies for enteral drug delivery.
28 Years Into “Our Common Future”: Sustainable Development In The Post-Brundtland World

This paper conceptually and empirically reflects on the 28 years since the publication of the Brundtland Report by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 and questions why the world, especially the developing world, is still heading towards an unsustainable path of development. The paper concludes that while the Brundtland Commission has succeeded in getting the international community to integrate environmental concerns into the development process, it has neglected to consider how this integration may be articulated based on certain ethical action-guiding principles. Thus, acknowledging that effective environmental protection is a function of environmental ethics, the way to sustainable development would be for society to return to a non-exploitative, mutually supportive relationship with nature at both individual and institutional levels.
Empirical Studies on Growth and Comparative Development

Empirically, a higher frequency of lightning strikes is associated with slower growth in labor productivity across the 48 contiguous US states after 1990; before 1990 there is no correlation between growth and lightning. Other climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and tornadoes) do not conform to this pattern. A viable explanation is that lightning influences IT diffusion. By causing voltage spikes and dips, a higher frequency of ground strikes leads to damaged digital equipment and thus higher IT user costs. Accordingly, the flash density (strikes per square km per year) should adversely affect the speed of IT diffusion. We find that lightning indeed seems to have slowed IT diffusion, conditional on standard controls. Hence, an increasing macroeconomic sensitivity to lightning may be due to the increasing importance of digital technologies for the growth process.
Geomagnetic field fingerprint from wristband and smartphone clusterization for indoor localization

Nowadays, many wearable and smartphones have their built-in sensors that can be used to obtain the information about location to make an Indoor Localization Systems (ILS). It could be helpful on developing Smart City Systems, where ILS can handle the information collection about space and placement inside a room or building. In this research, we used the datasets from UCI Machine Learning Repository, which consists data of geomagnetic field fingerprint captured by both smartphone and smartwatch sensors from certain locations with timestamps provided, and then followed by clusterization processes to determine whether each device could effectively used for ILS based on radiation emitted in the same environment. For the methods, we used K-means (for k=2 to k=10) and Hierarchical Clustering. After several experiments, hierarchical clustering works best to cluster the data since the outliers problem doesn’t occurred in this algorithm, and every instance get clustered with high homogenity for each member and every clusters differs enough in characteristics. Newer device with more sensor needed for next research.
Stochastic Production and Cost

Most production processes are stochastic in nature. Many firms function by setting production goals and developing output control procedures to help the firm come close to their goals. In general while entrepreneurs may plan to produce some specified level of output, they often do not exactly fulfill their plans: shortfalls or overages occur. In many firms output control is an everpresent part of the firm's activity; automotive manufacturers, food processors and transportation companies are obvious examples. ' Randomness in the production process is not a new topic. Zellner, Kmenta and Dreze [24] resurrected the direct estimation of the Cobb-Douglas model by considering a multiplicative term and firms that maximize expected profit. Feldstein [9] considers a more general Cobb-Douglas case and derives results for the estimation procedure and implications for factor shares of returns-from-production. While there have been a number of papers concerned with stochastic input prices, Rothenberg and Smith [16] appear to be the first to trace out some of the general equilibrium resource allocation effects of assuming the noise to be in input variables rather than the prices. More recently a number of papers [14; 17] have been concerned with estimating stochastic production functions to provide insight about issues of efficiency in production. Mak [13] has extended Shephard's deterministic analysis [18] to the case of stochastic production correspondences. His paper is purely concerned with the technology and does not consider the stochastic production problem in the context of an expected profit maximizing firm. What is new in this paper is the direction of the inquiry. While for the most part the literature has been concerned with the econometrics of analyzing cost and production, our interest will concern the models of cost and production themselves. Specifically we study some of the implications of using standard models for analysis of technology when there is noise (i.e., random disturbances) in the production process. It is shown that ignoring noise
POSITIONING ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC BANK vis-àvis CONVENTIONAL BANK IN INDONESIA USING PARAMETRIC SFA AND DFA METHODS15

This study will measure and compare the efficiency of Conventional and Islamic banks in Indonesia using parametric approach stochastic frontier approach (SFA) and distribution free approach (DFA). These measurements will provide comprehensive and robust results of efficiency of individual bank compare to its peer group. The results using parametric SFA show that in 2002, conventional banks (0.79) were slightly more efficient than Islamic banks (0.77), while in 2003, the efficiency of Islamic banks improved to 0.84 and the efficiency of conventional banks worsen to 0.76, so that Islamic banks have become more efficient than conventional banks. Conventional and Islamic banks have been improving and converged to the highest level of efficiency (1.00) since 2004. The DFA results show that conventional banks (0.89) are only slightly more efficient than Islamic banks (0.87). Conventional public bank (0.93) is the most efficient, while Islamic regional bank (0.84) is the least efficient. Moreover, efficient banks (conventional and Islamic) do not always have lower OCOI (operating costs divided by operating income), while banks with better OCOI usually are more profitable (have better return on assets or ROA). Therefore, technically, Islamic banks have shown their readiness to compete head to head with their conventional counterparts. However, other aspects, such as, number of networks and branches, service quality, convenience, products and services provided, human resources, and pricing, should have become the next priorities for improvements. JEL Classification : C10, C33, G21, G28 Keywords : Islamic Banking, Efficiency, Stochastic Frontier Approach, Distribution Free Approach
Vascular risk factors promote conversion from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer disease

Objective: Growing evidence suggests that vascular risk factors (VRF) contribute to cognitive decline. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of VRF on the conversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia. Methods: A total of 837 subjects with MCI were enrolled at baseline and followed up annually for 5 years. The incidence of AD dementia was investigated. A mixed random effects regression model was used to analyze the association between VRF and the progression of MCI assessed with Mini-Mental State Examination and instrumental Activities of Daily Living. Cox proportional hazard models were used to identify the association between VRF and dementia conversion, and to examine whether treatment of VRF can prevent dementia conversion. Results: At the end of the follow-up, 298 subjects converted to AD dementia, while 352 remained MCI. Subjects with VRF had a faster progression in cognition and function relative to subjects without. VRF including hypertension, diabetes, cerebrovascular diseases, and hypercholesterolemia increased the risk of dementia conversion. Those subjects with MCI in whom all VRF were treated had a lower risk of dementia than those who had some VRF treated. Treatment of individual VRF including hypertension, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia was associated with the reduced risk of AD conversion. Conclusion: VRF increased the risk of incident AD dementia. Treatment of VRF was associated with a reduced risk of incident AD dementia. Although our findings are observational, they suggest active intervention for VRF might reduce progression in MCI to AD dementia.
Improving performance of classification intrusion detection model by Weighted extreme learning using behavior analysis of the attack

This research was aimed to develop classification intrusion detection model by Weighted ELM which presented in [8], bringing analysis of 42 attributes to find the ones related to each format of attack, remaining only 13 attributes which were chosen to use in Weighted ELM working system in order to classify various attack formats and compared to experimental result with SVM+GA [7] and Weighted ELM techniques [8]. The result showed that New Weighted ELM was quite accurate in classifying every format of attack, which the presented working system of the method used RBF Kernel Activation Function and defined Trade-off Constant C value at 22 = 4, giving validity value to be Normal = 99.21%, DoS = 99.97%, U2R = 99.59%, R2L - 99.04% and Probing Attack = 99.13%, average validity value was at 99.39% Comparing to Weighted ELM in [8], found that, the presented method could improve the effectiveness of the former method enable to more classify R2L from 93.94% to 99.04%, and from 96.94% to 99.13% for Probing Attack meanwhile DoS and U2R had lower effectiveness, yet there was resemble effectiveness.
Fault tolerant routing implementation mechanism for irregular 2D mesh NoCs

Network-on-Chip (NoC) is one of the promising communication architecture to provide scalability for many core designs. However, deep sub-micron technology related effects impact NoC reliability. Hence under this condition NoC must continue to provide at-least a path between each pair of its components as long as path is available. In this paper we propose fault tolerant routing implementation solution, targeting the implementation of any distributed routing algorithm for regular as well as irregular 2D meshes generated due to failures. The proposed approach is logic based and does not use any routing table to implement a routing algorithm. Experimental results show that proposed method provides 14% reduction in area when compared with existing logic based on-chip fault tolerant implementations. Further, proposed approach degrades performance gracefully while preserving 100% coverage to all irregular topologies generated from 2D mesh.
Network Newton-Part I: Algorithm and Convergence

We study the problem of minimizing a sum of convex objective functions where the components of the objective are available at different nodes of a network and nodes are allowed to only communicate with their neighbors. The use of distributed gradient methods is a common approach to solve this problem. Their popularity notwithstanding, these methods exhibit slow convergence and a consequent large number of communications between nodes to approach the optimal argument because they rely on first order information only. This paper proposes the network Newton (NN) method as a distributed algorithm that incorporates second order information. This is done via distributed implementation of approximations of a suitably chosen Newton step. The approximations are obtained by truncation of the Newton step's Taylor expansion. This leads to a family of methods defined by the number $K$ of Taylor series terms kept in the approximation. When keeping $K$ terms of the Taylor series, the method is called NN-$K$ and can be implemented through the aggregation of information in $K$-hop neighborhoods. Convergence to a point close to the optimal argument at a rate that is at least linear is proven and the existence of a tradeoff between convergence time and the distance to the optimal argument is shown. Convergence rate, several practical implementation matters, and numerical analyses are presented in a companion paper [3].
Public Service Motivation in Ghanaian Civil Service: A Case Study of Ejisu-Juabeng Municipality

ABSTRACT Civil servants are perceived to possess altruistic motive known as Civil Service Motivation (PSM) which promotes public interest as confirmed in some developed countries. Using the Ejisu-Juabeng Municipality as a case study, this article assesses the existence of PSM in the Ghanaian public sector and finds that PSM exists in the public service but its existence does not ensure maximum output. The workers professed having motives such as sense of social justice, compassion, commitment to public interest, self-sacrifice, and sense of civic duty but indicated their unwillingness to commit their future to the public sector because of poor working conditions.
The Dilemma of Multiculturalism in the Theatre

As an African-American female professor of theatre arts who teaches at San Jose State University in California, a diversely populated university, I find multiculturalism on the surface to be a wonderful concept whose time is long overdue. Terms such as "nontraditional" and "blind" casting plaster audition ads and flow easily from the lips of directors. University and regional theaters market the concept in an effort to diversify their audiences and affirm their "political correctness. " The appearance of diversity permeates the media and the artistic and cultural
FPGA implementation of MMSE metric based efficient near-ML detection

We consider the problem of detecting a vector signal transmitted over a multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) channel. A number of suboptimal detectors have been proposed to solve that problem, given that maximum likelihood (ML) detection is NP-hard. After reviewing the main concepts of the ML and the minimum mean square error (MMSE) metrics, we introduce an unbiased MMSE metric that can be applied to existing MIMO detectors in order to improve their performance. Applying the biased and unbiased MMSE metrics together with a real-valued representation of the system, the performance and complexity of a number suboptimal MIMO detectors is compared in this paper, showing how the QR decomposition-M (QRD-M) can be used to approximate ML performance with low complexity. In order to further validate those results, the QRD-M algorithm has been implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform, showing an excellent fixed-point performance under real-time conditions. Finally, the resulting real-time detector has been compared to state-of-the-art detectors previously implemented, in terms of complexity, error performance and throughput.
Development and Psychometric Properties of the Taiwan Odd–Even Number Sequencing Test: A Nonalphabetic Measure of Working Memory

Alphabetic working memory (WM) tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–III and IV Letter Number Sequencing, are not appropriate for nonalphabetic cultures. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Taiwan Odd–Even Number Sequencing Test (TOENST) and identified representative norms. The TOENST and other mental screening tasks were administered to 300 randomly selected healthy participants, 32 purposive sampling patients with schizophrenia, and 32 quota sampling controls. To investigate reliability and validity, a subset of the 300 healthy participants was randomly selected to receive a second TOENST (n = 30) or conventional WM tests (n = 42). The split-half reliability of the TOENST ranged from 0.69 to 0.95, and its test–retest reliability was 0.75. Criterion validity was demonstrated by significant correlations with conventional WM measures (all p < .05, except semantic verbal fluency), and construct validity was demonstrated by significant correlations with aging (main effect, F10,259 = 10.99, p < .001). Normative data were established, and performance was significantly associated with age and education. TOENST scores of patients with schizophrenia were significantly lower and correlated with frontal lobe tests, but not demographical or clinical characteristics. The TOENST has adequate psychometric properties and clinical utility and is as a viable alternative WM task for nonalphabetic cultures.