Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pulsed Corona Demonstrator for Semi-Industrial Scale Air Purification

Although pulsed corona technology for air purification is widely investigated by the lab experiments, large-scale application has yet to be proven. Industrial systems require large flow handling and thus, high corona power. An autonomous semi-industrial scale pilot wire-cylinder type corona reactor has been constructed for air purification demonstrations. The reactor is powered by a 10-kW spark gap-based pulsed power supply, capable of generating 60-kV 100-ns wide pulses with 1-kHz repetition rate. The pulses are optionally superimposed on a 0-30-kV dc bias to enable electrostatic precipitation. The system has been successfully applied during several field and lab experiments. Conversion data as a function of energy density are presented for NOx, NH3, H2S, toluene, limonene, and fine dust removal. The system proves feasibility of large-scale air purification by pulsed corona.
Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities

Economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade, since the two policies have similar effects on wages. Unlike trade, however, immigration can alter the composition of the local population, imposing potential externalities on natives. While previous studies have addressed fiscal spillover effects, a broader class of externalities arise because people value the 'compositional amenities' associated with the characteristics of their neighbors and co-workers. In this paper we present a new method for quantifying the relative importance of these amenities in shaping attitudes toward immigration. We use data for 21 countries in the 2002 European Social Survey, which included a series of questions on the economic and social impacts of immigration, as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows. We find that individual attitudes toward immigration policy reflect a combination of concerns over conventional economic impacts (i.e., wages and taxes) and compositional amenities, with substantially more weight on the latter. Most of the difference in attitudes toward immigration between more and less educated natives is attributable to heightened concerns over compositional amenities among the less-educated.
Granting an Exit Option to Conduct an Audit

We study a principal-agent relationship with auditing in which information from an audit is ‘soft’ - by conducting an audit, the principal observes the agent's private information, but cannot obtain verifiable evidence on the information. Moreover, the principal's auditing effort is unverifiable in our model. Therefore, besides the agent's misreporting incentive, there is the principal's incentive to accuse the truthful agent even without auditing. If the principal's auditing effort is verifiable, granting no exit option to the agent is optimal although the principal can still accuse a truthful agent after the audit. We show that when the principal's auditing effort is unverifiable, granting an exit option to the agent and auditing are complementary. Without granting an exit option to the agent, no auditing is optimal, and the principal grants an exit option to conduct a sincere audit, which in turn mitigates the agent's misreporting incentive. Our analysis also reveals that, when the cost of auditing is sufficiently large, the principal conducts more sincere audits with a smaller amount of penalty.
Clioquinol and docosahexaenoic acid act synergistically to kill tumor cells

Clioquinol, an 8-hydroxyquinoline derivative (5-chloro-7-iodo-8-hydroxyquinoline) with antimicrobial properties, has recently been found to have cytotoxic activity towards human cancer cell lines at concentrations achieved by oral administration. This study was initiated to determine whether clioquinol could potentiate the antitumor effects of two drugs, doxorubicin and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), believed to act in part via the generation of reactant oxidant species. At low micromolar concentrations, clioquinol had little effect upon cell viability and did not potentiate doxorubicin's cytotoxicity. Clioquinol significantly enhanced DHA's cytotoxic effects, an interaction that was shown to be synergistic by isobolographic analysis. Clioquinol exhibited a synergistic interaction with DHA in reducing nuclear factor-κB activity and inducing apoptosis, and the combination reduced the level of several molecules that promote cell survival, including Akt, p65, and Bcl-2. Interestingly, clioquinol neither induced lipid peroxidation itself nor increased peroxidation brought about by the addition of DHA. However, when cells were pretreated with antioxidant vitamin E, the synergism of clioquinol and DHA was blocked, indicating the essential role of lipid peroxidation for their action. These findings reveal a novel antitumor drug combination that synergistically targets major cell survival signaling pathways. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(7):1864–72]
The new managerialism in local governance: North-South dimensions

In recent times, a wave of public sector reforms has swept through developed, developing and transitional countries, prompting observers to herald the emergence of a 'new public management revolution'. However, this tendency, while evident across a range of nations, both North and South, is a complex, highly uneven and contradictory process. Indeed, we concur with, and seek to develop, the point by Polidano, who notes that it can 'be argued that such a thing as a unified coherent new public management model exists only in concept'. Subsequently, the paper is divided into two main parts. The first provides a brief overview of the broader purported changes in local governance by outlining aspects of Clarke and Newman's thesis concerning the managerialisation of local government. Thereafter, we consider some of the key determinants of, and contradictions within, transitions to the new managerialism in two contrasting contexts, the UK and India. In doing so, we seek to highlight the importance of transitions .
Real And Hypothetical Willingness To Pay For Environmental Preservation: A Non‐Experimental Comparison

The contingent valuation method is often criticised for being grounded in a hypothetical market in which respondents are not actually required to make the contributions they claim to be willing to pay. This paper undertakes a non‐experimental comparison of real and hypothetical donations towards the public good of environmental preservation, based on a carefully defined theoretical framework. Evidence is presented which suggests that the mean hypothetical payment obtained from an open‐ended CV mail survey is likely to be at least four times as high as the real payments that would be collected from a comparable charitable appeal. In addition, it is found that in a hypothetical context people are less likely to opt out of making a donation ‐ however, the donations which are made are on average no larger than those that could be expected in a real payment context. The implication is tentatively that the primary effect of the hypothetical context may be to reduce the extent of extreme free‐riding, as opposed to creating incentives for strategic over‐bidding. These results are subject to a number of significant empirical limitations.
Supply chain risks: development of model and empirical evidence

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between supply chain sources and supply chain risk exposure. The relationship of supply chain risk sources viz. demand risk, supply risk, process/control risk, environmental risk, logistical and catastrophic risks with supply chain risk exposure was tested empirically in Indian automobile industry. An extensive literature review of supply chain risk sources was conducted and hypotheses derived. The data was collected from 79 automotive firms operating in India. Using exploratory factor analysis supply chain risks were condensed into six risk sources constructs. Further, multiple regression analysis was used to characterise the relationship between various risk sources and supply chain risk exposure. Three risk sources viz. demand, supply and catastrophic were found to be most critical in Indian automobile supply chain. Other risk sources viz. environmental, process/control and logistical risk were not found statistically significant.
Fast Hadamard Transform Using the H Diagram

For the Hadamard matrix, a modified factorization procedure is developed that is likely as economical in storage requirements and in the number of computational operations as the conventional fast Hadamard transform. Using this specific factoring method, the procedure for obtaining the fast Hadamard transform may be interpreted as operations on an H diagram. The H diagram was originally derived by Marihugh and Anderson [1] to provide a graphical representation for logic functions.
Mid-femur geometry and biomechanical properties in 15- to 18-yr-old female athletes.

PURPOSE Right-leg mid-femur geometry and biomechanical indices of bone strength were compared among elite cyclists (CYC), runners (RUN), swimmers (SWIM), triathletes (TRI), and controls (C)-10 subjects per group. METHODS Bone cross-sectional areas (CSA), volumes (Vol), and cross-sectional moments of inertia (CSMI) were assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and cortical volumetric bone density (volBMD) was determined as the quotient of DXA-derived bone mineral content (BMC) and MRI-derived cortical bone volume. Bone strength index (BSI) was calculated as the product of cortical volBMD and CSMI. RESULTS RUN had higher (P < 0.05) size- (femur length and body mass) adjusted (ANCOVA) cortical CSA than C, SWIM, and CYC; and higher size, age, and years of sport-specific training- (YST) adjusted cortical CSA than SWIM and CYC. TRI had higher (P < 0.05) size-adjusted CSA than SWIM. SWIM and CYC had significantly larger (P < 0.05) size-adjusted medullary cavity CSA than RUN and TRI, and the difference between CYC and RUN persisted after additional adjustment for age and YST. RUN had significantly (P < 0.05) greater size-adjusted CSMI and BSI than C, SWIM, and CYC; and higher size, age, and YST-adjusted CSMI and BSI than SWIM and CYC. Mid-femur areal bone mineral density (BMD) was significantly (P < 0.05) higher for RUN compared with CYC only, but there were no other differences among groups for BMC, bone volumes, or volumetric total or cortical BMD. CONCLUSIONS Running, a weight-bearing exercise, is associated with more favorable geometric and biomechanical characteristics in relation to bone strength, compared with the weight supported activities of swimming and cycling. Differences may reflect skeletal adaptations to the specific mechanical-loading patterns inherent in these sports.
MACROECONOMIC FACTORS AND INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS (IPOs) IN MALAYSIA

This paper seeks to address the question of whether local macroeconomic variables have any influence on the numbers of IPOs in an emerging market, Malaysia over the period of 1990 to 2008. The evidence of a significant negative relationship between interest rate and the numbers of IPOs, and a significant positive relationship between industrial production and the numbers of IPOs are found. A long-run equilibrium relationship between interest rate, industrial production and numbers of IPOs using cointegration and Vector Error Correction models is found. The impact of interest rate on the numbers of IPO numbers is far greater in the cold IPO regime than during IPO hot regime using Markov regime switching regression model are also found. The empirical finding seems to detect direction of the IPO market reasonably. The results show that hot IPO market regime evolves when the investors begin experiencing extremely high initial returns and their expectation about the future interest rate provide an indication about entrepreneur's/manager's willingness to move to the IPO market. On the other hand, when a government pursues monetary tightening, investors believe that future earnings are expected to shrink due to higher interest rate in future, and valuation of shares would be affected due to lower dividend yield, it keeps investors away from the IPO markets causing cold IPO market.
Color transfer to greyscale images using texture spectrum

Color transfer between two images is one of the most common tasks in image processing. We present a method of pattern recognition to increase the successful possibility of transferring color from color image to greyscale image. A kind of texture descriptor, texture spectrum, plays an important role in the whole procedure. Source image retrieval is used and based on texture-spectrum similarity, which can find the most suitable color images in a color image database. Furthermore, texture-spectrum is also considered to sample color pixels reasonably. We found that the method works well and it can be successfully applied to a variety of images.
Human resource management in foreign-owned subsidiaries: China versus India

This study examines the HRM practices and the role played by the HR department in foreign-owned units located in China and India. The study of 170 Western-owned subsidiaries analyses the extent to which the HRM practices associated with the local professionals and managerial-level employees resemble those of local firms versus those of the (main) Western parent organization, and investigates the degree to which the unit's HR department was perceived to play a strategic role. The results indicate clear differences between HRM characteristics in Western-owned units in China and India, and suggest that the use of expatriates and the background of the HR managers are important determinants of subsidiary HRM.
Do Agglomeration and Technology Affect Vertical Integration? Evidence from Italian Business Groups

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of technology and spatial agglomeration in decisions about vertical integration. It starts from the hypothesis that the business group, defined as a set of firms under common ownership and control, is the appropriate unit to delimit the firm’s boundary. We use information drawn from input–output tables to detect the presence of positive inter‐industry exchanges and whether or not activities in a group are vertically related. Accounting for endogeneity problems, we estimate Probit and Linear Probability models to investigate the role of technology and spatial agglomeration on vertical integration decisions empirically. Consistent with property rights theory, our results show that the technology intensity of acquirers matters for backward integration choices and, moreover, that agglomeration plays a role in vertical integration only when it operates jointly with technology.
Classification of Involuntary Hand Movements

Involuntary movements of arms and legs reflect neural and metabolic processes in the human body. In this paper the focus is on the properties of physiological tremor, shivering, and tremors caused by physical fatigue measured in fingers of a subject. Three different signal modeling paradigms are compared in the paper using accelerometer data. It is first demonstrated that the data can be modeled as a nearly stationary low-order AR process. Next, it is shown that the different data types can be classified using long-term feature distributions in a naive Bayes classifier. Finally, a comparable performance is obtained when the signal is modeled as a Markov process emitting small prototypical movements or jerks.
A unified network for multi-speaker speech recognition with multi-channel recordings

Despite the recent progress in speech recognition, meeting speech recognition is still a challenging task, since it is often difficult to separate one speaker's voice from the others in meetings. In this paper, we propose a joint training framework of speaker separation and speech recognition with multi-channel recordings for this purpose. The location of each speaker is first estimated and then used to recover her/his original speech in a delay-and-subtraction (DAS) algorithm. The two components, speaker separation and speech recognition, are represented by one deep net, which is optimized as a whole using training data. We evaluated our method using simulated data generated from WSJCAM0 database. Compared with the independent training of the two components, our proposed method improved word accuracy by 15.2% when the locations of speakers are known, and by 53.6% when the locations of speakers are unknown.
The Coupling Between Forward Propagating Wave and Backward Propagating Wave for P>hotorefractive Surface Waves

The coupling between forward propagating wave and backward propagating wave of photorefractive surface waves (PR SWs) along the surface of photorefractive crystals (PRC) with periodic corrugations is studied for the first time. The influences of depth and period number of periodical corrugation structures on the coupling between the forward propagating PR SW and backward propagating PR SW are discussed. Especially the influence of nonlinearity on the coupling is studied for the first time. The reflectivity and transmissivity of PR SWs are calculated numerically using coupled-mode theory. The results are significant for the design of integrated optical device utilizing photorefractive surface waves.
Does the CFO matter in family firms? Evidence from Italy

Using data from 708 small and medium Italian firms during the period of 2002–2004, we find that in family firms (FFs) a nonfamily Chief Financial Officer (CFO) drives firm performance in a positive direction. FFs with a nonfamily CFO perform better than both FFs with a family CFO and nonfamily firms. The best performance is achieved when the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is a family member and the CFO is an outsider (nonfamily). An examination of FFs across generations shows that a nonfamily CFO has always a positive effect on firm performance. Our study contributes to the literature on FFs by determining how the presence of a nonfamily CFO has an impact on firm performance. We also contribute to the literature on agency theory by showing that in small FFs: (a) having a family as majority shareholder is not detrimental to firm performance and (b) a nonfamily CFO might serve to mitigate any ineptness of descendant CEOs while retaining ownership and management in the hands of family heirs, thus avoiding the conflict of interest between family ownership and management.
Compressive sensing: To compress or not to compress

In this paper, we consider the compressive sensing scheme from the information theory point of view and derive the lower bound of the probability of error for CS when length N of the information vector is large. The result has been shown that, for an i.i. d. Gaussian distributed signal vector with unit variance, if the measurement matrix is chosen such that the ratio of the minimum and maximum eigenvalues of the covariance matrices is greater or equal to 4 over M over K + 1, then the probability of error is lower bounded by a non-positive value; which implies that the information can be perfectly recovered from the CS scheme. On the other hand, if the measurement matrix is chosen such that the minimum and maximum eigenvalues of the covariance matrices are equal, then the error is certain and the perfect recovery can never be achieved.
Economic Implications of Food Demand in Akoko South West, Ondo State, Nigeria: Aids Approach

The study examined the socio-economic characteristics of food consuming households, estimated the complete demand functions for some selected common food commodities, their prices and expenditure elasticities in Akoko South West (ASW) local government in Ondo state, Nigeria. The study examined demand analysis for food in ASW, using primary data with the use of questionnaire on some selected food-consuming households within the study area. Data collected were subjected to descriptive statistics for estimating demographic variables. The result of the descriptive statistics showed that semolina constituted the largest share of the household total food expenditure, among the low income and rural households but mostly among the married and the medium-size male-headed households who had tertiary-education. The Almost Ideal Demand System results showed that besides being a normal good, price inelastic, and expenditure inelastic, semolina has changed from being a luxury to being a necessity and has become a major food staple in the ASW metropolis. In conclusion, the study discovered that the prices of rice, beans, yam, garri, wheat, yam flour, and semolina were significantly important in the share of household total food budget at constant real income. Finally, the study showed from the result that the importance of semolina in ASW metropolis diet will increase as economic growth continues. This study therefore recommends that effort should be made to boost economic activities of ASW zone. This will increase their income and consequently improve their spending on the nutritious food items. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA
Vertical nanopillars for highly localized fluorescence imaging

Observing individual molecules in a complex environment by fluorescence microscopy is becoming increasingly important in biological and medical research, for which critical reduction of observation volume is required. Here, we demonstrate the use of vertically aligned silicon dioxide nanopillars to achieve below-the-diffraction-limit observation volume in vitro and inside live cells. With a diameter much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, a transparent silicon dioxide nanopillar embedded in a nontransparent substrate restricts the propagation of light and affords evanescence wave excitation along its vertical surface. This effect creates highly confined illumination volume that selectively excites fluorescence molecules in the vicinity of the nanopillar. We show that this nanopillar illumination can be used for in vitro single-molecule detection at high fluorophore concentrations. In addition, we demonstrate that vertical nanopillars interface tightly with live cells and function as highly localized light sources inside the cell. Furthermore, specific chemical modification of the nanopillar surface makes it possible to locally recruit proteins of interest and simultaneously observe their behavior within the complex, crowded environment of the cell.
The effect of stock option grants on voluntary employee turnover

Purpose - The objective of this research is to examine the effect of a broad-based option program on voluntary employee turnover. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines the effect of a broad-based stock option program in a Fortune 100 company during the 1990s and uses logistical analysis. Findings - Employee turnover is an issue due to the costs involved in recruiting and training replacements. Voluntary turnover can be reduced if a cost can be imposed on the departing employee. This cost need not be an explicit cost, but can take the form of a benefit forgone when the employee departs. Along these lines, stock option grants to employees, if properly structured, have the ability to reduce voluntary employee turnover. The paper finds that voluntary turnover is lower during the periods in which the option cannot be exercised, i.e. the vesting period. This effect is strongest for employees approaching retirement, but also holds for employees leaving the company for other reasons. Originality/value - The finding that unvested options reduce or delay voluntary turnover, which while intuitive, has not to the author's knowledge been shown previously, and is important for those involved in the compensation plan design process.