Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relational Contracts in China: Relational Governance and Contractual Assurance

What enforces contracts in emerging economies such as China, in which the legal system is weak, yet the use of contracts is still prevalent? We offer that relational governance, a social institution, provides contractual assurance. We develop this perspective and empirically examine whether relational governance functions as a substitute for, or supplement to, weak formal enforcement—the courts—and thus promotes the use of contracts in China. Our findings broadly support this perspective: increasing levels of uncertainty and asset specificity are met with higher levels of relational governance, which in turn promotes greater contract customization.
Nonparametric Estimates of the Components of Productivity and Profitability Change in U.S. Agriculture

Recent theoretical advances in total factor productivity (TFP) measurement mean that TFP indexes can now be exhaustively decomposed into unambiguous measures of technical change and efficiency change. To date, all applications of this new methodology have involved decomposing indexes that have poor theoretical properties. This article shows how the methodology can be used to decompose a new TFP index that satisfies all economically-relevant axioms from index theory. The application is to state-level data from 1960 to 2004. In most states, the main drivers of agricultural TFP change are found to have been technical change and scale and mix efficiency change.
Using internet of things technology to create a really platform independent robotics framework

Control software and platforms for single or cooperative robots are highly complicated because they coordinate and administer the interaction of a variety of distributed and heterogeneous hardware and software components in a dynamic world. While most of such systems built on some uniform middleware or control system for all distributed nodes which come with restrictions in flexibility on several levels, we aim at a more flexible and open architecture of autonomous components in the style of IoT. In this paper, we introduce a platform independent robotics framework based on an IoT technology and protocols. We compare our architecture with other recent approaches and according to fundamental criteria, we discuss advantages and drawbacks.
Management of Change Delivery Decision Making Through the Force Field Analysis in Georgia

Children’s generation of Georgia recovers parent’s generations only for 70-80%. According to same data, there are only 14 countries with the similar low indicators. The increase of C-section can cause the decrease of birthdates. WHO recommended The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health - through the creation of an Advocacy Team. (WHO, 2005). This model ensures the relaxed environment where the mothers can receive information delivered by qualified health workers, who teach pregnant women and family members about health and well-being. Advocacy Team comprises - nurses, medical students, and volunteer. Project benefit will be increased antenatal and postnatal care services through the country, in the lead the better attitude and knowledge about health and well-being across all Social levels . Further families will save money because they couldn't pay for C-section Evaluation of the project – annual statistical analysis by NCDC (National Center for Disease Control and Public Health) decrease C-section rate for mother request. Project outcome will be increased maternal and Child health and well-being, Increase right participation from the community, Support of pregnant women and her family economically.
An approach to metamorphic testing for WS-BPEL compositions

Nowadays, Web Service (WS) compositions play an important role in business processes. Languages for composing web services, such as the OASIS WS-BPEL 2.0 standard, open a new field for large-scale programming. However, they also present a challenge for traditional quality assurance because of the inclusion of specific instructions for concurrency, fault compensation, and dynamic service discovery and invocation. Metamorphic Testing (MT) has proved useful to test and improve the quality of traditional imperative programs. This paper discusses how to use MT to test WS compositions in WS-BPEL. Although MT has not been previously applied to this area, promising results have been obtained in a number of different applications. A component diagram for a testing framework implementing this approach is included.
Are Part-time Employees Underpaid or Overpaid? Productivityâ€“wage gaps in Japan

This study presents empirical findings on productivity-wage gaps among certain groups of Japanese employees. More specifically, we estimate the productivity and wage equations of part-time workers, females, and employees with a university education in order to determine whether they are underpaid or overpaid relative to their productivity. The results indicate that the wage levels of part-time workers and females reflect their contribution to firm productivity. Since the estimations are based on mean values, overpaid and underpaid workers may co-exist at the micro level. However, the parity between mean productivity and wages suggests that firms do not discriminate against these types of employees, and set wages efficiently under market competition. In order to reduce the overall inequality in wages, investments in human capital to enhance the productivity of the lower end of the productivity distribution are essential.
Green Fluorescent Protein in the Genetic Transformation of Plants

The genetic transformation of plants is a promising method for introducing and modifying various desirable traits. Several marker genes ( -glucuronidase, GUS; luciferase, LUC; or -galactosidase, LacZ) have been successfully used in genetic transformation protocols. Relatively recently, green fluorescent protein (GPF) marker has become popular due to its many advantages in plant transformation studies. Most importantly, it does not require the addition of any interfering substances like exogenous substrates or enzymes. It also allows for the monitoring of transgenic expression from early stages of transformation through the recovery of living transgenic plants without the need to sacrifice valuable, sometimes sparse, transgenic material. However, the use of GFP is associated with some limitations, mostly related to its low levels of expression, and high toxicity when it is expressed at high levels in plants. This review aims to provide a broad overview of the use of GFP in a wide spectrum of plants. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Low frequency elastic properties of the structural and freezing transitions in single-crystal C60.

We present the first low frequency (0.1-50 Hz) measurements of the complex elastic constant on C 60 single crystals. We have measured a negative dip anomaly of 25% at Ti=261 K, which did not show up in previous elastic studies at 10 4 Hz. The slow relaxation observed near Ti is supposed to be due to the very slow dynamics of the order parameter fluctuations. In addition it is shown that the elastic anomalies observed at 10 4 Hz and 160 K originate from the same physical process as the «glass» transition at 80 K observed in thermal expansivity
The Recategorization of the Rheme and the Structure of the Oral Paragraph in French and in Finnish

At first sight, the intonation systems of French and Finnish – which are typologically distant languages – seem completely different. This paper aims, however, at showing that the discourse-structuring role of the utterance-final pitch rises in spontaneous spoken Finnish is in many respects reminiscent of the final pitch rises that constitute an essential component of the French intonation system (Morel & Danon-Boileau, 1998). Indeed, in both cases, utterance-final pitch rises occurring inside a multi-unit turn seem to “recategorise the rheme as a preamble” for what will follow (Morel & Danon-Boileau, 1998). ‘Preamble’ and ‘rheme’ are the two main constituents of the so-called ‘oral paragraph’, which is the basic structural unit of French discourse according to their model. In addition to comparing the realization of the so-called ‘recategorization phenomenon’ in French and in Finnish, this paper aims at describing the structure of the ‘oral paragraph’ of Finnish within Morel and Danon-Boileau’s framework.
Fractional Talbot effect induced rational-harmonic mode-locking of 40-GHz SOA fiber laser

The 2nd-order fractional Talbot effect is employed to multiply the 10-GHz optical pulse-train injection for 4th-order ration-harmonic-mode-locking of a SOA fiber laser at 40-GHz. With improved modulation-depth by enlarging pulse-extinction-ratio from 0.55 to 2.3, the SOAFL generates 8ps pulsewidth and 170 fs timing jitter when injection-pulse with 2-GHz peak-to-peak chirp.
Idiom Type Identification with Smoothed Lexical Features and a Maximum Margin Classifier

In our work we address limitations in the state-of-the-art in idiom type identification. We investigate different approaches for a lexical fixedness metric, a component of the state-of the-art model. We also show that our Machine Learning based approach to the idiom type identification task achieves an F1-score of 0.85, an improvement of 11 points over the state-of the-art.
The Drosophila Atypical Protein Kinase C-Ref(2)P Complex Constitutes a Conserved Module for Signaling in the Toll Pathway

ABSTRACT Recent results showed the critical role of the mammalian p62-atypical protein kinase C (aPKC) complex in the activation of NF-κB in response to different stimuli. Here we demonstrate using the RNA interference technique on Schneider cells that the Drosophila aPKC (DaPKC) is required for the stimulation of the Toll-signaling pathway, which activates the NF-κB homologues Dif and Dorsal. However, DaPKC does not appear to be important for the other Drosophila NF-κB signaling cascade, which activates the NF-κB homologue Relish in response to lipopolysaccharides. Interestingly, DaPKC functions downstream of the nuclear translocation of Dorsal or Dif, controlling the transcriptional activity of the Drosomycin promoter. We also show that the Drosophila Ref(2)P protein is the homologue of mammalian p62 as it binds to DaPKC, its overexpression is sufficient to activate the Drosomycin but not the Attacin promoter, and its depletion severely impairs Toll signaling. Collectively, these results demonstrate the conservation of the p62-aPKC complex for the control of innate immunity signal transduction in Drosophila melanogaster.
Range Based Multi Microphone Array Fusion for Speaker Activity Detection in Small Meetings

This paper presents a method for speaker activity detection in small meetings. The activity of the participants is deduced from audio streams obtained by multiple microphone arrays. One of the novelty of the proposed approach is that it uses a human tracker that relies on scanning laser range ﬁnders to localize the participants. First, this additional information is exploited by the beamforming algorithm creating the audio streams for each of the microphone arrays. Then, at each array, the speaker activity detection is performed using Gaussian mixture models that were trained before hand. Finally, a fusion procedure, that also uses the location information, combines the detection results of the different microphone arrays. An experiment reproducing a meeting conﬁguration demonstrates the effectiveness of the system.
Assessing the Impact of Online Retailer Models on Consumer’s Attitude and Purchase Intentions

The purpose of this research was to examine the influence of online retailer models on Indian consumer’s attitude towards retail websites and their purchase intentions. Using an online shopping scenario, a case study was conducted on 240 postgraduate marketing students at an Indian university to evaluate the effects of two online shopping website factors on the user’s attitude towards retail websites and their purchase intentions. The findings of the study suggest that players in the e-tailing business should increasingly move towards multi category purchase model to increase the purchase intentions of the consumers. They also need to constantly review and upgrade the services offered to ensure increased intentions to purchase. The findings can enable online retailers in India to explore and shape the Internet as the next big business opportunity.
Scanavert: detection and alarm against ingredient harm

The application relates to the systemic method for detecting unwanted ingredients, in food, beverage, and drug products, on a real-time automated basis, where such products are sold, prepared or served. Customers register their dietary profile via their grocer’s website, embedded in their customer loyalty card, or other means of user ID, choosing among the allergy, prescriptions, illnesses/conditions and dietary allowances menus. Using barcode scanners or camera phones (no customer ID process required) the customer ID is interpreted, followed by the item barcodes. The item barcodes are matched to the ingredient database housing name, composition and ingredients and stored in the process space of the application. The corresponding ingredient information is then compared to the customer profile. The compatibility/incompatibility results are sent back to the client (device) that invoked the request, detailing the substance in the ingredient database that generated the alert, followed by suggested substitutes free of the harmful substance.
Efficient inducible Pan‐neuronal cre‐mediated recombination in SLICK‐H transgenic mice

Large‐scale functional genomics in mice is becoming feasible through projects to develop conditional knockout alleles for every gene. Inducible neuron‐specific gene knockout in such mice will permit the analysis of neuronal phenotypes while circumventing developmental defects or embryonic lethality. Here we describe a transgenic line, termed SLICK‐H, that facilitates widespread inducible conditional genetic manipulation within most populations of projection neurons. In SLICK‐H mice, the Thy1 promoter drives robust and relatively uniform expression of a drug‐inducible form of cre recombinase throughout the peripheral and central nervous system. This permits efficient induction of cre‐mediated genetic manipulation upon tamoxifen administration in adult mice. Importantly, cre activity in the absence of tamoxifen is minimal, permitting tight control of recombination. In the present study, we catalog in detail the transgene expression patterns and recombination efficiencies in SLICK‐H mice. Our results highlight the utility of SLICK‐H mice for functional genomics in the nervous system. genesis 49:942–949, 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Wide Band-Gap Slot Fractal UC-EBG Based on Moore Space-Filling Geometry for Microwave Application

A wide band-gap slot fractal uniplanar compact electromagnetic band-gap (UC-EBG) structure based on the third iteration of Moore space-filling geometry (MSF-UC-EBG) is proposed. By changing the dimensions of the structure and the substrate materials, different band-gap characteristics can be obtained. In this letter, we design two kinds of MSF-UC-EBG structures, fabricated on FR4 and RogersRO3010 substrate, denoted as FR4_EBG and Rogers_EBG, respectively. Two wide band-gaps of 1.43–5.89 GHz (relative bandwidth 121.8%) and 1.09–4.57 GHz (relative bandwidth 122.9%) are achieved when five MSF-UC-EBG unit cells are arranged periodically. The measurements agree well with simulations. Furthermore, the aforementioned FR4_EBGs are integrated with a coplanar-waveguide-fed stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) antenna to research the MSF-UC-EBG's microwave application. After integration, bandwidth performance of SIR antenna is significantly improved. Comparisons of measured bandwidth of SIR antenna with and without FR4_EBGs are made, respectively.
Serum S100B levels in patients with cerebral and extracerebral infectious disease

S100B has been shown to increase in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum after various neurological diseases and it has been postulated that S100B could serve as a serum marker for brain damage. However there is limited information concerning serum S100B levels in infectious diseases of the brain. Blood samples were collected from patients at the Department of Infectious Diseases at or soon after admission. The different diagnoses studied were bacterial meningitis, pneumonia, viral meningitis, cerebral abscess, enteritis, erysipelas, viral encephalitis and neuroborreliosis. A serum S100B level >0.15 μg/l was defined as increased. 57 patients were included in the study. S100B was elevated in 33% of patients (19/57). 73% (8/11) of patients with bacterial meningitis showed increased levels compared to 7% (1/14) of patients with viral meningitis. Viral encephalitis showed the highest mean S100B levels (mean 0.58 μg/l). 25% (6/24) of patients with extracerebral infections showed raised S100B levels. S100B levels were generally higher in patients with cerebral infections than in extracerebral infections. However, both false negative and false positive S100B levels were observed which may limit the use of S100B as a brain specific serum marker.
Outcome of mantle cell lymphoma patients treated at a single institution over the past decade

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a rare non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma entity with a heterogeneous clinical presentation. Various therapeutic considerations in MCL for younger and elderly patients were used over the past decade. We retrospectively analyzed all 44 patients consecutively treated in a tertiary hospital between 2000 and 2010 with newly diagnosed MCL. Patient characteristics, treatment regimens and biological markers were evaluated with regard to overall survival (OS). Treatment regimens were categorized into internationally accepted intensive standard therapies and less intensive alternative treatment regimens given with palliative intent. Biological markers were correlated with clinical outcome by univariate analysis. The median age of the entire study group was 66 years (range: 42–88), with 23 (52%) patients ≥65 years. Thirty‐one (70%) patients received standard regimens, the remaining 13 (30%) patients were treated with other, less intensive regimens with palliative intent. With a median follow‐up of 5.25 years, the three‐year OS rate was 60% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.47–0.77]. Patients treated with standard regimens had a three‐year survival rate of 77% (range: 64–94%). Of these, patients younger than 65 years were observed to have better OS (83% at 3 years; 95% CI 68–100%) than those older than 65 years (69% at 3 years; 95% CI 48–99%). In univariate analysis, the only parameters with a statistically significant prognostic impact on OS were absolute monocyte count as a continuous variable, lactate dehydrogenase and absolute lymphocyte count (>0.5 × 109/l) at diagnosis. In conclusion, our data of an unselected group of patients with newly diagnosed MCL treated at a single centre tertiary hospital are in line with results from larger randomized trials demonstrating an improved OS rate of younger as well as elderly MCL patients within the last decade. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Flow Cytometry Applied in Tissue Culture

Flow cytometry is a powerful technology that allows for the simultaneous analysis of multiple attributes of cells or particles in a liquid medium. The first cytometer used was built during World War II, when [1] developed an equipment where particles flowed through the system to diffuse light through a lens, producing electrical signals sensed by a photodetector. The instrument could detect objects in the order of ~ 0.5 μm in diameter, and is recognized as the first flow cytometer used for observation of biological cells [2]. This would be possible to identify aerosols, bacteria that would possibly biological warfare agents as well as check the efficiency of gas mask filters against particles. In 1950, the same principle was applied to the detection and enumeration of blood cells. As hematology and cellular immunology, two biological areas, that drove the development of flow cytometry [3]. Later, with improved equipment and methods, this technique was adapted to other areas of biology, including the plant kingdom [4]. Already in 1973 the German botanist Friedrich Otto Heller used the Impulszytophotometrie (pulse cytophotometry in German). This scientist did not imagine that it has launched a new field of scientific research, which would later be called flow cytometry in plants.
Two-year Lamivudine treatment for Hepatitis B e Antigen-Negative Chronic Hepatitis B: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Objective We conducted a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study to investigate the efficacy of 2-year lamivudine treatment in hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative chronic hepatitis B. Methods One-hundred-and-thirty-nine treatment-naive patients with HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B were randomized to receive either lamivudine (100 mg daily) or placebo in a 2:1 ratio for 24 months and were followed for an additional 6 months. The primary endpoint was complete response, defined as hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA <10,000 copies/ml and normalization of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels at month 24. Results On intent-to-treat analysis at month 24, significantly more patients in the lamivudine group than in the placebo group had complete response (56% and 11%, respectively; P<0.001) or negative HBV DNA (26% and 6%, respectively; P=0.006). After adjustment of baseline HBV DNA and ALT, the odds ratio for complete response of the lamivudine group versus the placebo group was 10.8 (95% confidence interval: 3.8–30.2; P<0.001). The median log HBV DNA reduction was 3.21 copies/ml for the lamivudine group compared with 0.47 copies/ml for the placebo group (P<0.001). Genotypic resistance was detected in 23% and 31% of patients in the lamivudine group at months 12 and 24, respectively. Negative HBV DNA at month 6 was associated with high complete response (84%) and low drug resistance (1%) at month 24. At month 30, there was no difference between lamivudine and placebo groups in the rates of complete response (26% vs 19%, respectively; P=0.38) or negative HBV DNA (10% vs 2%, respectively; P=0.09). Conclusions Two-year lamivudine treatment is effective in HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B. However, the response is not sustained after treatment cessation.
Glucagon and its Family Revisited

Considered for decades as a contaminant of insulin preparations, gluca-gon was among the very first hormones to be isolated, purified, sequenced, and synthesized during the late 1950s. The field of glucagon research exploded after R.H. Unger and his colleagues in Dallas, TX, described a method permitting its measurement in the plasma by radioimmunoassay. Such assay made it possible to firmly establish the basic principles of glucagon physiology and to discover its pathophysiology. More recently, important progress has been made in exploring the molecular biology of this hormone: the glucagon gene and the glu-cagon-receptor gene have been identified and their expression investigated. Furthermore, the processing of the glucagon gene product has been elucidated and the function of the members of the glucagon family has been clarified. Finally, current investigations are in progress to develop glucagon agonists and antagonists and to identify new modes of administration of the hormone. These various topics will be considered in this review.