Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of integrated thin film Pt heater and temperature sensors on Si platform

In this paper the design, fabrication methods and characterization of thin film meandered Pt resistive heater (size 20 × 20 mm2) with integrated Pt sensors on Si platform is presented. Pt heaters and temperature sensors were fabricated simultaneously by DC sputtering method. It was found that the fabrication process has significant influence on the electrical properties of the realized thin film resistive layers, which also explains the discrepancies between the calculated and measured values that were obtained during this work. Annealing temperature of the Pt layers was found to influence significantly the final resistance of the deposited layer and was performed at 500°C. To reduce the heat loss, the heater and temperature sensors were covered by Pyrex glass with prefabricated cavity. By this new approach, the power consumption was reduced due to improved thermal insulation. A comparative study was performed and showed that we can decrease the power consumption by more than 25% only by this approach. Measured temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) for temperature sensors and the heater was between 1400-1700 ppm and showed that also the heater can be used as temperature sensing element.
Implications of the Release of Chibok Girls on Nigeria’s War on Terrorism

The year 2013 marked the emergence of the use of women and girls as hostages by the most dreaded Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria. The successful abduction of about 300 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok-Borno State, Nigeria, in the dead of the night boosted the effrontery of the sect to undertake more abduction of hundreds of girls and women even in broad day light in North-Eastern Nigeria. The abduction of the Chibok girls generated both national and international concerns and raised the recognition of the group‟s ruthlessness against women. Various attempts to rescue the Chibok girls by the Nigerian government, humanitarian agencies and the international community failed. Using qualitative descriptive analysis, the paper avows that the controversial release of 21 Chibok girls without battle conditions or reports leaves a lot to speculation. This event represents a symbolism of Boko Haram‟s ability to hold the Nigerian government to ransom at its own terms. It submits that the gradual release of the girls and the sect‟s proposal for the negotiation of 83 more girls raises questions on the terms of the negotiations leading to the release as well as queries the strength of Nigeria‟s anti-terrorism war. The paper recommends that because the release of the 21 hostages may not be the ultimate goal of Boko Haram, the Nigerian state should consciously negotiate on well calculated intelligence and use experts in future negotiation with terror groups in order to construct outcomes that is better than the status quo.
Conformal SIW H-Plane Horn Antenna on a Conducting Cylinder

This letter presents a conformal wide-band substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) H-plane horn antenna mounted on a large conducting cylinder. The effect of a curved low-profile SIW H-plane horn is examined when it is mounted on a conducting cylinder of varying radius. In order to compensate the deterioration of the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of the H-plane horn antenna, two air slots along the sides of the flare part of the antenna are cut. With the utilization of the slots, the matching between the feed line and the horn antenna is improved and the working frequency bandwidth is broadened simultaneously. Measured VSWR of the fabricated antenna is below 2.5 from 6.1 GHz to 19 GHz. The antenna also exhibits stable radiation beam over the same frequency range. It is observed that measured results agree well with simulated ones.
Decision Process, Preferences Over Risk and Consensus Rule: A Group Experiment

The recent literature on individual vs. group decisions over risk has brought about divergent results, mainly depending on the institutional rules through which groups take decisions. While some studies where group decisions relied on the majority rule showed no appreciable difference between individuals and groups’ preferences, others where unanimity among group members was required found collective decisions to be less risk averse than individual ones. Of course, these studies share the imposition of a choice rule to determine the groups’ outcome. Alternatively, in the study at hand, we elicited groups’ preferences over risk using a consensus rule, i.e. leaving groups free to endogenously solve the potential disagreement among their members, just as in many real life instances. Our results from a logit regression unambiguously show that individuals’ preferences are systematically further from the risk neutrality than those of groups. In particular, individuals are more risk seeker than groups when facing gambles with positive expected payoff difference and more risk averse in the opposite case.
On Market Games Arising from Common-Pool Resource Economies

We consider direct markets, pure exchange economies in which agents supply their time and share a common-pool resource which is available for a limited amount of time. If the agents have continuous quasi-linear utilities, such economies generate the entire class of TUgames, thus generalizing Shapley and Shubik’s (1969) and Garratt and Qin’s (2000) results. Economies in which agents’ utilities are also monotone generate the class of monotonic TU-games. In both cases, the core allocations of the game are in a one-to-one and onto relationship with the competitive equilibrium prices of their direct markets. The least core (Maschler, Peleg, and Shapley 1979) and the proportional extended core allocations (Bejan and G omez 2009) are obtained as competitive equilibrium prices of the direct market with government intervention through a system of taxes and subsidies.
Quality function deployment in failure recovery and prevention

ABSTRACT This paper presents a strategic model for proactively recovering and preventing service failures; it employs an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to measure the severity of failure categories and ultimately employs quality function deployment (QFD) to identify the execution order of proactive recovery and prevention strategies. Questionnaires on AHP and QFD were used to collect data. The results show that the three most important strategies, ‘Educational training of employees,’ ‘Managerial level professional expertise and leadership,’ and ‘Staff appraisal, reward, and punishment systems,’ are within the purview of human resources management. Human resource management plays a key role in service failure and recovery management. For individual failure categories, business managers can select those that are most severe and execute proactive recovery and failure prevention strategies. We propose a methodology for designing service recovery systems and that addresses the gap in academic research on proactive recovery and service failure prevention.
Persistence of Biomarker ATP and ATP-Generating Capability in Bacterial Cells and Spores Contaminating Spacecraft Materials under Earth Conditions and in a Simulated Martian Environment

ABSTRACT Most planetary protection research has concentrated on characterizing viable bioloads on spacecraft surfaces, developing techniques for bioload reduction prior to launch, and studying the effects of simulated martian environments on microbial survival. Little research has examined the persistence of biogenic signature molecules on spacecraft materials under simulated martian surface conditions. This study examined how endogenous adenosine-5′-triphosphate (ATP) would persist on aluminum coupons under simulated martian conditions of 7.1 mbar, full-spectrum simulated martian radiation calibrated to 4 W m−2 of UV-C (200 to 280 nm), −10°C, and a Mars gas mix of CO2 (95.54%), N2 (2.7%), Ar (1.6%), O2 (0.13%), and H2O (0.03%). Cell or spore viabilities of Acinetobacter radioresistens, Bacillus pumilus, and B. subtilis were measured in minutes to hours, while high levels of endogenous ATP were recovered after exposures of up to 21 days. The dominant factor responsible for temporal reductions in viability and loss of ATP was the simulated Mars surface radiation; low pressure, low temperature, and the Mars gas composition exhibited only slight effects. The normal burst of endogenous ATP detected during spore germination in B. pumilus and B. subtilis was reduced by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude following, respectively, 8- or 30-min exposures to simulated martian conditions. The results support the conclusion that endogenous ATP will persist for time periods that are likely to extend beyond the nominal lengths of most surface missions on Mars, and planetary protection protocols prior to launch may require additional rigor to further reduce the presence and abundance of biosignature molecules on spacecraft surfaces.
Big data from small samples: Informatics of next‐generation sequencing in cytopathology

The rapid adoption of next‐generation sequencing (NGS) in clinical molecular laboratories has redefined the practice of cytopathology. Instead of simply being used as a diagnostic tool, cytopathology has evolved into a practice providing important genomic information that guides clinical management. The recent emphasis on maximizing limited‐volume cytology samples for ancillary molecular studies, including NGS, requires cytopathologists not only to be more involved in specimen collection and processing techniques but also to be aware of downstream testing and informatics issues. For the integration of molecular informatics into the clinical workflow, it is important to understand the computational components of the NGS workflow by which raw sequence data are transformed into clinically actionable genomic information and to address the challenges of having a robust and sustainable informatics infrastructure for NGS‐based testing in a clinical environment. Adapting to needs ranging from specimen procurement to report delivery is crucial for the optimal utilization of cytology specimens to accommodate requests from clinicians to improve patient care. This review presents a broad overview of the various aspects of informatics in the context of NGS‐based testing of cytology specimens. Cancer Cytopathol 2017;125:236–244. © 2016 American Cancer Society.
Low-cost inkjet-printed FSS band-pass filters for 100 and 300 GHz

This study explores the feasibility and fabrication limits for sub-THz bandpass filters based on frequency selective surfaces (FSS) made using inkjet conductive ink printing. Low-cost, easy-to-make mesh filters that operate up to 300 GHz are suggested. Full-wave electromagnetic solver is utilized for the design of filters, which are then characterized using THz time-domain spectroscopy.
Incorporating Prior Knowledge into Temporal difference Networks

Developing general purpose algorithms for learning an accurate model of dynamical systems from example traces of the system is still a challenging researc h problem. Predictive State Representation (PSR) models represent the state of a dynamical system as a set of predictions about future events. Our work focuse s on improving Temporal Difference Networks (TD Nets), a general class of predictive state models. We adapt the internal structure of the TD Net and we present an improved algorithm for learning a TD Net model from experience in the environment. The new algorit hm accepts a set of known facts about the environme nt and uses those facts to accelerate the learning. Th ese facts can come from another learning algorithm (as in this study) or from a designer’s prior knowledge ab out the environment. Experiments demonstrate that using the new structure and learning algorithm impr oves the accuracy of the TD Net models. When tested in an in finite environment, our new algorithm outperf orms all of the standard PSR learning algorithms.
Monolingual Teachers in Multilingual Settings: Changing Attitudes and Practices.

This article describes a 6-year, districtwide staff-development project that was implemented in an attempt to change teacher attitudes and practices as they relate to English learners (ELs). The specific goals of the project were (a) to help the district’s teachers develop the knowledge base, pedagogical skills, and professional attitudes required to provide the English learners enrolled in their classrooms with effective English language development and academic subject matter instruction, and (b) to enable the teachers who still needed it to earn a Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) certificate. Reflective journal entries and classroom observations were both learning tools and methods of data collection. Results indicate that the project had a positive impact on teacher attitudes and practices.
Intrathecal Adenosine following Spinal Nerve Ligation in Rat: Short Residence Time in Cerebrospinal Fluid and No Change in A1 Receptor Binding

Background Intrathecal adenosine produces a remarkably prolonged effect to relieve mechanical hypersensitivity after peripheral nerve injury in animals. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether this reflected an alteration in kinetics of adenosine in cerebrospinal fluid or in the number of spinal A1 adenosine receptors after nerve injury. Methods Male rats were anesthetized, and the left L5 and L6 spinal nerves were ligated. Two weeks later, a lumbar intrathecal catheter and intrathecal space microdialysis catheter were inserted. Adenosine, 20 &mgr;g, was injected intrathecally in these and in normal rats, and microdialysates of the intrathecal space were obtained. Radioligand binding studies of adenosine A1 receptors were determined in spinal cord tissue from other normal and spinal nerve–ligated rats. Results Adenosine disappeared from rat cerebrospinal fluid within 30 min after intrathecal injection, with no difference between normal and spinal nerve–ligated animals. A1 adenosine receptor binding sites in the spinal cord were increased after spinal nerve ligation. This increase disappeared when adenosine deaminase was added to the membrane homogenates, suggestive of decreased endogenous adenosine in the membranes of nerve-ligated animals. Conclusion These data show that prolonged alleviation of hypersensitivity observed with intrathecal adenosine in this animal model of neuropathic pain is not due to prolonged residence in cerebrospinal fluid, although pharmacokinetics in tissues are unknown. Similarly, there is no evidence for up-regulation in spinal A1 adenosine receptors after spinal nerve ligation, and the adenosine deaminase experiment is consistent with a depletion of adenosine in spinal cord tissue after spinal nerve ligation.
Measuring Proteome Dynamics in Vivo

Proteomics investigations typically yield information regarding static gene expression profiles. The central issues that limit the study of proteome dynamics include how to (i) administer a labeled amino acid in vivo, (ii) measure the isotopic labeling of a protein(s) (which may be low), and (iii) reliably interpret the precursor/product labeling relationships. In this study, we demonstrate the potential of quantifying proteome dynamics by coupling the administration of stable isotopes with mass spectrometric assays. Although the direct administration of a labeled amino acid(s) is typically used to measure protein synthesis, we explain the application of labeled water, comparing 2H2O versus H218O for measuring albumin biosynthesis in vivo. This application emphasizes two distinct advantages of using labeled water over a labeled amino acid(s). First, in long term studies (e.g. days or weeks), it is not practical to continuously administer a labeled amino acid(s); however, in the presence of labeled water, organisms will generate labeled amino acids. Second, to calculate rates of protein synthesis in short term studies (e.g. hours), one must utilize a precursor/product labeling ratio; when using labeled water it is possible to reliably identify and easily measure the precursor labeling (i.e. water). We demonstrate that labeled water permits studies of protein synthesis (e.g. albumin synthesis in mice) during metabolic “steady-state” or “non-steady-state” conditions, i.e. integrating transitions between the fed and fasted state or during an acute perturbation (e.g. following a meal), respectively. We expect that the use of labeled water is applicable to wide scale investigations of proteome dynamics and can therein be used to obtain a functional image of gene expression in vivo.
Outcomes of Patients with Healthcare-Associated Pneumonia: Worse Disease or Sicker Patients?

Background. Healthcare-associated pneumonia (HCAP) is an entity distinct from community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). HCAP has a higher case-fatality rate, due either to HCAP organisms or to the health status of HCAP patients. The contribution of HCAP criteria to case-fatality rate is unknown. Methods. We conducted a retrospective review of adult patients admitted with a diagnosis of pneumonia from July 2007 through November 2011 to 491 US hospitals. HCAP was defined as having at least 1 of the following: prior hospitalization within 90 days, hemodialysis, admission from a skilled nursing facility, or immune suppression. We compared characteristics of patients with CAP and patients with HCAP and explored the contribution of HCAP criteria to case-fatality rate in a hierarchical generalized linear model. Results. Of 436,483 patients hospitalized with pneumonia, 149,963 (34.4%) had HCAP. Compared to CAP patients, HCAP patients were older, had more comorbidities, and were more likely to require intensive care unit (ICU) care. In-hospital case-fatality rate was higher among patients with HCAP, compared to those with CAP (11.1% vs 5.1%, P < .001). After adjustment for demographics, comorbidities, presence of other infections, early ICU admission, chronic and acute medications, early tests and therapies, and length of stay, HCAP remained associated with increased case-fatality rate (odds ratio [OR], 1.35 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.32-1.39]); odds of death increased for each additional HCAP criterion (OR [95% CI]: 1 criterion, 1.27 [1.23-1.31], 2 criteria, 1.55 [1.49-1.62], and 3 or more criteria, 1.88 [1.72-2.06]). Conclusions. After adjustment for differences in patient characteristics, HCAP was associated with greater case-fatality rate than CAP. This difference may be due to HCAP organisms or to HCAP criteria themselves.
Antenatal Prediction of Neonatal Survival in Sacrococcygeal Teratoma

In sacrococcygeal teratoma, the presence of high‐output cardiac failure resulting from arteriovenous shunting through the large tumor has been associated with an adverse outcome. The objective of this study was to determine whether the tumor size and cardiac biomarkers in cord blood can predict neonatal survival in sacrococcygeal teratoma.
A Multimodal Model of Object Deformation Under Robotic Pushing

In this paper, we present a multimodal framework for offline learning of generative models of object deformation under robotic pushing. The model is multimodal in that it is based on integrating force and visual information. The framework consists of several submodels that are independently calibrated from the same data. These component models can be sequenced to provide many-step prediction and classification. When presented with a test example—a robot finger pushing a deformable object made of an unidentified, but previously learned, material—the predictions of modules for different materials are compared so as to classify the unknown material. Our approach, which consists of offline learning and combination of multiple models, goes beyond previous techniques by enabling: 1) predictions over many steps; 2) learning of plastic and elastic deformation from real data; 3) prediction of forces experienced by the robot; 4) classification of materials from both force and visual data; and 5) prediction of object behavior after contact by the robot terminates. While previous work on deformable object behavior in robotics has offered one or two of these features none has offered a way to achieve them all, and none has offered classification from a generative model. We do so through separately learned models which can be combined in different ways for different purposes.
Motion in human and machine: A virtual fatigue approach

Achieving human-like behavior of a robot is a key issue of the paper. Redundancy in the inverse kinematics problem is resolved using a biological analogue. It is shown that by means of "virtual fatigue" functions, it is possible to generate robot movements similar to movements of a human arm subject to muscle fatigue. Analytic method enabling control of robot motions in a human-like fashion is described. An example of an anthropomorphic robot arm performing a screw-driving task illustrates the method.
Marine alkaloid oroidin analogues with antiviral potential: A novel class of synthetic compounds targeting the cellular chaperone Hsp90

Marine organisms and their metabolites are a diverse source of scaffolds for potential pharmacological molecular probes and, less frequently, for pharmaceutical lead compounds. In this study, 157 synthetic analogues of marine sponge‐derived alkaloids clathrodin and oroidin were screened against replicon models of two RNA viruses, hepatitis C (HCV) and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) as part of a larger screening project. Four compounds were found to selectively inhibit the HCV replicon (IC50 1.6–4.6 μm). These belong to the 4,5,6,7‐tetrahydrobenzo[1,2‐d]thiazole class of compounds originally designed to target the ATP‐binding site of bacterial DNA gyrase. The ATP‐binding site of this bacterial protein has high structural similarity to the ATP‐binding site of heat‐shock protein 90 (Hsp90), a host cell chaperone universally required for viral replication, which led us to examine inhibition of Hsp90 as the compounds’ potential mechanism of action. Binding of the four hit compounds to Hsp90 was evaluated through microscale thermophoresis and molecular modeling, which supported our hypothesis of interaction with Hsp90 (Kd 18–79 μm) as basis for the compounds’ antiviral activity. The presented novel structural class of small molecules that target the Hsp90 ATP‐binding site has excellent potential for further antiviral drug development because of the compounds’ low toxicity and synthetic accessibility.
Regional Income Inequality and Economic Growth

The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1172Received October 27, 1995; revised December 27, 1995Chen, Jian, and Fleisher, Belton M. — Regional Income Inequality and EconomicGrowth in ChinaUsing an augmented Solow growth model with cross section and panel data, weﬁnd evidence of conditional convergence of per capita production across China’sprovinces from 1978 to 1993. Convergence is conditional on physical investmentshare, employment growth, human-capital investment, foreign direct investment, andcoastal location. We project that, in the near term, overall regional inequality asmeasured by the coefﬁcient of variation is likely to decline modestly but that thecoast/noncoast income differential is likely to increase somewhat. We evaluate alterna-tive policies to reduce the coast–noncoast income differential and conclude focusingsolely on investment by rural collectives is insufﬁcient. J. Comp. Econom. , April1996, 22(2), pp. 141–164. Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio 43022; The Ohio StateUniversity, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1172.