Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investing for Good: Making Money While Being Socially Responsible

Proving that it is possible to make wise and profitable investments while still being socially conscious, this book details how to build a profitable portfolio that consists solely of ethically aware companies. It provides complete instructions for selecting, researching and screening potential investment opportunities for a wide range of social concerns - whether or not a company is "green", whether it has defense contracts, what its employee policies and community relations are like, what kind of overseas interests it maintains, how its products or services tally with an investor's preferences and more. The "Domini Social Index" helps readers control and direct their own funds even if invested in mutual funds, pension plans or stocks and bonds. Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini are the authors of "Ethical Investing" and "The Social Investment Almanac 1992".
Is specialization in tourism Harmful to economic growth

A comparison between the growth-effect of specialization in tourism to the growth-effect associated with specialization in manufacturing, could lead to the conclusion that specialization in tourism is detrimental to economic growth. The continuous creation and introduction of new methods and products characterizes the manufacturing sector to an extent unknown to other sectors. The endogenous component of technical progress in manufacturing is of ten regarded as the factor that makes the whole economy grow at a non-diminishing rate in the long run. So, how can an economy without a manufacturing sector, and therefore deprived of its main "engine of growth", grow at rates comparable to chose of economies specialized in manufacturing? The answer lies in how the price of the tourist good changes over time in relation to the price of the manufacturing good so as to partially or entirely offset the sectoral gap in productivity growth. This point can easily be shown by means of a simple two-sector model of endogenous growth, where the growth effects of international specialization are analysed and tested by means of an econometric model.
Expression and analysis of Mycobacterium bovis mpb63–64 fusion gene in Escherichia coli

The DNA fragments of mpb63 and mpb64 were fused by splicing by overlapping extension(SOE) polymerase chain reaction(PCR), and the fusion gene mpb63–64 was cloned into pMD18-T vector, then we got the recombinant plasmid pMD-63–64. pMD-63–64 and pET28a(+) were digested by BamH□and EcoR□ double enzymes.The purified mpb63–64 fusion gene was subcloned into the expression vector pET28a(+), and the prokaryotic expression vector pET-63–64 was constructed. Plasmid containing pET-63–64 was transformed into competence Escherichia coli BL21(DE3). The bacterium was induced by isopropyl-β-D-thiogalactopyranoside(IPTG) and its lysates were loaded directly onto sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis(SDS-PAGE), approximately 40 kDa exogenous protein was observed on the SDS-PAGE. The protein was analyzed by using Western-blotting. The results indicated that the protein was of antigenic reactivity of Mycobacterium bovis. These results could serve as a basis for further studies on the usefulness of the fusion gene and its expression product in the development of subunit vaccine, DNA vaccine and diagnostic reagents against bovine tuberculosis.
Tuning and testing scrolling interfaces that automatically zoom

Speed dependent automatic zooming (SDAZ) is a promising refinement to scrolling in which documents are automatically zoomed-out as the scroll rate increases. By automatically zooming, the visual flow rate is reduced enabling rapid scrolling without motion blur. In order to aid SDAZ calibration we theoretically and empirically scrutinise human factors of the speed/zoom relationship. We then compare user performance with four alternative text-document scrolling systems, two of which employ automatic zooming. One of these systems, which we term 'DDAZ', is based on van Wijk and Nuij's recent and important theory that calculates optimal pan/zoom paths between known locations in 2D space. van Wijk and Nuij suggested that their theory could be applied to scrolling, but did not implement or test their formulaic suggestions. Participants in our evaluation (n=27) completed scrolling tasks most rapidly when using SDAZ, followed by DDAZ, normal scrollbars, and traditional rate-based scrolling. Workload assessments and preferences strongly favoured SDAZ. We finish by examining issues for consideration in commercial deployments.
NIL Is Not Nothing: Recognition of Chinese Network Informal Language Expressions

Informal language is actively used in net-work-mediated communication, e.g. chat room, BBS, email and text message. We refer the anomalous terms used in such context as network informal language (NIL) expressions. For example, “ (cid:2983) (ou3 )” is used to replace “ (cid:5778) ( wo3 )” in Chinese ICQ. Without unconventional resource, knowledge and techniques, the existing natural language processing approaches exhibit less effectiveness in dealing with NIL text. We propose to study NIL expressions with a NIL corpus and investigate techniques in processing NIL expressions. Two methods for Chinese NIL expression recognition are designed in NILER system. The experimental results show that pattern matching method produces higher precision and support vector machines method higher F-1 measure. These results are encouraging and justify our future research effort in NIL processing.
The relativistic phase space and Newman-Penrose basis

We define a complex relativistic phase space which is the space $\mathbb{C}^4$ equipped with the Minkowski metric and with a geometric tri-product on it. The geometric tri-product is similar to the triple product of the bounded symmetric domain of type IV in Cartan's classification, called the spin domain. We show that there are to types of tripotents-the basic elements of the tri-product in the relativistic phase space. We construct a spectral decomposition for elements of this space. A description of compatibility of element of the relativistic phase space is given. We show that the relativistic phase space has two natural bases consisting of compatible tripotents. The fist one is the natural basis for four-vectors and the second one is the Newman-Penrose basis. The second one determine Dirac bi-spinors on the phase space. Thus, the relativistic phase space has similar features to the quantum mechanical state space.
Alleviating Poverty by Linking Smallholders with Agribusiness : Roles of Social Capital and Common Property

Recent decades have witnessed a marked acceleration of agro-industrialisation processes in much of the developing world. This is opening up new opportunities for smallholders, even in isolated areas, to escape poverty by trading in the resulting new markets. There is, however, increasing recognition of the constraints faced by poor smallholders in becoming competitive within such markets. There has also been deepening awareness of the knowledge gaps impeding the design of institutional arrangements capable of surmounting these constraints. The concept of ‘social capital’ has found itself at the centre of efforts to address these knowledge gaps. The focus in this paper is on examining what is known about: the challenges of ensuring that the poor share equitably in the benefits of market liberalisation; the extent to which these challenges involve social capital issues; and how such social capital issues might be addressed most effectively. Included in the review is a summary of findings relevant to these issues from recent research in Indonesia – concerned with contract farming and micro-finance delivery, respectively – involving two of the present authors. A proposal for further research involving all four authors is also presented. The research aim is to evaluate the role that social capital plays in Bali and Lombok (eastern Indonesia) in reducing rural poverty by helping smallholders access market opportunities arising from trade liberalisation. A particular focus would be on understanding of the conditions under which social capital in the form of common property institutions helps smallholders to access such opportunities.
The mental philosophy of John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman's writings in theology, apologetics, history, poetry, and educational theory, among other fields, made him one of the most controversial as well as influential modern Christian thinkers. Central to his religious vision was his innovative and complex "mental philosophy," first sketched out at Oxford during his Anglican years and developed in its most detailed form in his celebrated Grammar of Assent. In The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman, Jay Newman (no relation) presents a careful scrutiny of John Henry Newman's phenomenology of belief and epistemology in the context of the nineteenth-century cleric's major work. He departs from traditional historical and technological approaches to Newman's work on belief and critically examines Newman's contribution in this area from the standpoint of contemporary analytical philosophy. The study examines the sources, aims, and implications of Newman's philosophical project. While it draws attention to the positive value of Newman's original approach, it also explores the weaknesses and dangers of Newman's main phenomenological and epistemological theories. Jay Newman not only makes a significant original contribution to the field of Newman studies but also provides us with a guide to some of the problems and confusions of the Grammar of Assent.
Improving intranet search-engines using context information from databases

Information in enterprises comes in documents and data bases. From a semantic viewpoint, both kinds of information are usually tightly connected. In this paper, we propose to enhance common search-engines with contextual information retrieved from databases. We establish system requirements and anecdotally demonstrate how documents and database information can be represented as the nodes of a graph. Then, we give an example how we exploit this graph information for document retrieval.
An Elementary Transcendental Function Core Library for Reconfigurable Computing

— FPGAs have established performance advantages over other processing technologies. Difficulties in achieving high design productivity counterbalance these performance advantages. High-level languages (HLLs) targeting FPGAs together with low-level core libraries have the potential to overcome these productivity challenges. It is desirable to possess an industry standard for the integration of core libraries into FPGA HLLs. The OpenFPGA CORELIB group is working towards this end. elementary functions on FPGAs are given.
The HCI Benchmark Suite: Stereo and Flow Ground Truth with Uncertainties for Urban Autonomous Driving

Recent advances in autonomous driving require more and more highly realistic reference data, even for difficult situations such as low light and bad weather. We present a new stereo and optical flow dataset to complement existing benchmarks. It was specifically designed to be representative for urban autonomous driving, including realistic, systematically varied radiometric and geometric challenges which were previously unavailable. The accuracy of the ground truth is evaluated based on Monte Carlo simulations yielding full, per-pixel distributions. Interquartile ranges are used as uncertainty measure to create binary masks for arbitrary accuracy thresholds and show that we achieved uncertainties better than those reported for comparable outdoor benchmarks. Binary masks for all dynamically moving regions are supplied with estimated stereo and flow values. An initial public benchmark dataset of 55 manually selected sequences between 19 and 100 frames long are made available in a dedicated website featuring interactive tools for database search, visualization, comparison and benchmarking.
Simulated Binary Crossover for Continuous Search Space

Abst ract. The success of binary-coded genetic algorithms (GAs) in problems having discrete search space largely depends on the coding used to represent the problem variables and on the crossover oper ator that propagates building blocks from parent strings to children strings. In solving optimization problems having continuous search space, binary-coded GAs discretize the search space by using a coding of the problem variables in binary strings. However, the coding of real valued variables in finite-length strings causes a number of difficulties: inability to achieve arbitrary precision in the obtained solution, fixed mapping of problem variables, inherent Hamming cliff problem asso ciated with binary coding, and processing of Holland's schemata in continuous search space. Although a number of real-coded GAs are developed to solve optimization problems having a continuous search space, the search powers of these crossover operators are not adequate. In this paper, the search power of a crossover operator is defined in terms of the probability of creating an arbitrary child solut ion from a given pair of parent solutions . Motivated by the success of binary coded GAs in discrete search space problems, we develop a real-coded crossover (which we call the simulated binary crossover, or SBX) oper ator whose search power is similar to that of the single-point crossover used in binary-coded GAs . Simulation results on a number of real valued test problems of varying difficulty and dimensionality suggest that the real-coded GAs with the SBX operator are able to perform as good or better than binary-coded GAs with the single-point crossover. SBX is found to be particularly useful in problems having multiple op timal solutions with a narrow global basin and in problems where the lower and upper bounds of the global optimum are not known a pri ori. Further, a simulation on a two-variable blocked function shows that the real-coded GA with SBX works as suggested by Goldberg
Optimal timepoint sampling in high-throughput gene expression experiments

MOTIVATION Determining the best sampling rates (which maximize information yield and minimize cost) for time-series high-throughput gene expression experiments is a challenging optimization problem. Although existing approaches provide insight into the design of optimal sampling rates, our ability to utilize existing differential gene expression data to discover optimal timepoints is compelling. RESULTS We present a new data-integrative model, Optimal Timepoint Selection (OTS), to address the sampling rate problem. Three experiments were run on two different datasets in order to test the performance of OTS, including iterative-online and a top-up sampling approaches. In all of the experiments, OTS outperformed the best existing timepoint selection approaches, suggesting that it can optimize the distribution of a limited number of timepoints, potentially leading to better biological insights about the resulting gene expression patterns. AVAILABILITY OTS is available at www.msu. edu/∼jinchen/OTS.
Transmission of Rice Prices from Thailand into West African Markets: The Case of Benin, Mali, and Senegal

ABSTRACT The integration of West African rice market to the world market is assessed in order to derive the implication for food security. To this end, the transmission of rice price changes on the world market to selected markets in West Africa was examined to test for the presence of transaction costs. Using the two-regime threshold cointegration procedure on monthly price data, evidence in support of the hypothesis of asymmetric price transmission was found between Thailand and some West African markets. Price increases on the world market were more quickly transmitted to domestic price than were price decreases in Benin and Mali, suggesting short-run dynamic inefficiencies and the presence of transaction costs. In Senegal, the adjustment was linear, suggesting greater integration with the world rice market. The results suggest that West African governments should design and implement adequate policies to develop the domestic rice sector, improve market infrastructures in order to reduce their country dependency to international markets and ensure food security.
Generating topologically correct schematic maps

This paper studies the creation of schematic maps from traditional vector based carto graphic information An algorithm is proposed to modify positions of lines in the original input map with the goal of producing as output a schematic map that meets certain geomet ric and aesthetic criteria Special emphasis is placed here on preserving topological structure of features during this transformation The known existing methods for preserving topol ogy during map transformation generally involve computing several constrained Delaunay triangulations Mol Gol JBW Rua The algorithm proposed here computes a transformation which preserves topological relations among linear features using simple ge ometric operations and tests
The Role of Unemployment in the Commitment Dissolution Decision among Young Swedes

This paper studies the role of unemployment in the dissolution of relationships by applying a two-step estimation method to an extensive data set, which contains information about young Swedish males and females. Unemployment is recognized as endogenous in the separation decision, and the results show that the effect of unemployment on separation is biased when unemployment is assumed to be exogenous in the separation equation. The probability of separation is found to be increasing with male unemployment, whereas female unemployment decreases the probability of dissolution.
Comparison of CH4 inversions based on 15 months of GOSAT and SCIAMACHY observations

Over the past decade the development of Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) retrievals has increased the interest in the use of satellite measurements for studying the global sources and sinks of methane. Meanwhile, measurements are becoming available from the more advanced Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). The aim of this study is to investigate the application of GOSAT retrievals to inverse modeling, for which we make use of the TM5‐4DVAR inverse modeling framework. Inverse modeling calculations are performed using data from two different retrieval approaches: a full physics and a lightpath proxy ratio method. The performance of these inversions is analyzed in comparison with inversions using SCIAMACHY retrievals and measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‐Earth System Research Laboratory flask‐sampling network. In addition, we compare the inversion results against independent surface, aircraft, and total‐column measurements. Inversions with GOSAT data show good agreement with surface measurements, whereas for SCIAMACHY a similar performance can only be achieved after significant bias corrections. Some inconsistencies between surface and total‐column methane remain in the Southern Hemisphere. However, comparisons with measurements from the Total Column Carbon Observing Network in situ Fourier transform spectrometer network indicate that those may be caused by systematic model errors rather than by shortcomings in the GOSAT retrievals. The global patterns of methane emissions derived from SCIAMACHY (with bias correction) and GOSAT retrievals are in remarkable agreement and allow an increased resolution of tropical emissions. The satellite inversions increase tropical methane emission by 30 to 60 TgCH4/yr compared to initial a priori estimates, partly counterbalanced by reductions in emissions at midlatitudes to high latitudes.
Effect of antibodies on the expression of Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein gene

Antibodies are known to play an important role in the control of malaria infection. However, they can modulate parasite development enhancing infection. The effect of anti-Plasmodium antibodies on the expression of circumsporozoite protein gene (csp) was investigated. Plasmodium falciparum 3D7 in vitro cultures were submitted to: i) anti- circumsporozoite protein monoclonal antibody (anti-CSP-mAb) [1μg/ml, 0. 1μg/ml, 0. 01μg/ml and 0. 001μg/ml] and ii) purified IgG Fab fragment from a pool of malaria patients [1mg/ml and 1μg/ml]; and compared to control cultures. After 24h the number of ring infected erythrocytes was determined in order to calculate invasion efficacy. At 48h culture supernatant was collected, and the amount of circumsporozoite protein determined by ELISA, parasitaemia was calculated and cells were processed for RNA preparation. Expression of csp gene was quantified using Real time RT-PCR. There was an increase in parasite growth when treated with lower anti-CSP-mAb concentration, which was associated with lower csp expression, while 1μg/ml anti-CSP-mAb treatment presented a growth inhibitory effect accompanied by high csp expression.
Understanding Pharmacists’ Intention to Use Medical Apps

Objectives: The goal of this study is to investigate pharmacists’ perception towards mobile medical apps use in pharmacy practice and to explore both the enabling and inhibiting factors that govern the adoption of this Mobile Health tool. Methods: This study employed quantitative research methodology to examine the relationships between key constructs and pharmacists’ intention to use medical apps. Multi-items questionnaire was developed to draw participation of pharmacists from various fields of practice in Malaysia. Quantitative data was analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) modeling statistical technique. Results: The findings provided strong empirical support for six positive determinants (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, result demonstrability, subjective norm, compatibility, facilitating conditions) and two negative (security, resistance to change) determinants of intention to use medical apps. The proposed model had good predictive relevance to infer actual medical apps. Discussion: Pharmacy informaticists are able to manipulate the key factors presented in the research model in such a way to maximize the adoption of medical apps amongst the pharmacists. The study showed that the usefulness of the apps along with their reliability were the most effective influence on intention to use. Pharmacists were also worried about the data security which could potentially hinder the adoption. Conclusions: This study represents a pioneer dual-factor model technology adoption study. It has shed light on the aspects where decision makers from managerial stand-point are able to manipulate to achieve maximum diffusion of mobile technology within the health institution.