Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Return loss improvement in an inset fed triangular patch antenna

An inset fed triangular patch antenna for WLAN designed with improved return loss is presented in this paper. The resonant frequency of the antenna is maintained with improved return loss. The design simulation and optimization of the antenna is carried out in advanced design system 2008. The return loss improved from -8 dB to -32dB by varying the width of inset fed of Micro strip antenna, the gain and radiation pattern of the antenna for variation in inset feed width being the same.
Long-Run Share Performance of UK Firms Engaging in Cross-Border Acquisitions

This study examines the impact of cross-border and domestic acquisitions on the long-run share returns of U.K. acquiring firms. Using a sample of 3260 acquisitions of public and private targets completed during 1984-2000, we find evidence of significantly negative post-acquisition share returns in U.K. domestic acquisitions. In contrast, cross-border acquisitions result in neutral post-acquisition share returns, which are significantly higher than those in domestic acquisitions. However, this difference is only weakly significant when other factors such as the industry of the acquiring company are controlled for. We find evidence that the timing of cross-border acquisitions has a significant effect on post-acquisition returns, with those completed in the 1990s performing significantly better than those completed in the 1980s. Cross-border post-acquisition returns do not differ significantly according to the country of the target company.
Who Gives, Who Takes? “Real America” and Contributions to the Nation–State

Although service to the nation–state features in academic and lay understandings of patriotism, claims of patriotism are rarely examined alongside contributions to the nation–state. The present study examines four behaviors—military enlistment, voting, monetary contributions, and census response—to evaluate the claim that certain parts of the United States, and specifically the communities of “real America,” contribute more than others to the country overall. Consistent with the words of several electoral candidates, ruralness, religiosity, political conservatism, and gun culture collectively identify a distinctive set of communities where residents are both more likely to report “American” as their ancestry and to vote for Republican presidential candidates, including Donald Trump. However, visual and statistical evidence undermine the claim that these communities contribute more than other parts of the country. Instead, and in several respects, these communities make smaller contributions to the nation–state than one would expect based on other characteristics. The findings undermine divisive claims about a “real” America that gives more than its “fair share. ”
Optimization of Leakage Current in SRAM Cell Using Shorted Gate DG FinFET

Scaling of conventional CMOS circuit tends to have short channel effects due to which, effect such as drain induced barrier lowering, hot electron effect, punch through etc takes place and hence leakage increases in the transistor. To minimize short channel effects, double gate FinFET is used. FinFET may be the most promising device in the LSI (large scale integration) circuits because it realizes the self-aligned double-gate structure easily. In this paper, six transistors SRAM cell is designed using the tied gate DG FinFET. Sub-threshold leakage current and gate leakage current of internal transistors are observed and compared with the conventional structure of 6T SRAM cell. DG FinFET SRAM cell is applied with self controllable voltage level technique and then leakage current is observed. Simulation is performed with cadence virtuoso tool in 45 nm technology. The total leakage of DG FinFET SRAM cell is reduced by 34% after applying self controllable voltage level technique.
Authentication enhancement techniques for BAC in 2G E-passport

Electronic passport is one of the hottest research fields nowadays due to reported different attacks against various countries. Several attacks such as brute force attack, guessing machine readable zone's information are performed on Basic Access Control Protocol (BAC) due to its low entropy. This paper presents two proposed authentication enhancement techniques for seed key of BAC. The first proposed enhancement technique depends on a password provided by the citizen as input to the inspection system at the border during the verification process. The second proposed enhancement technique depends on extracting minutiae features from a scanned citizen's fingerprint to increase strength of seed key. Performance evaluation experiments for proposed enhancement techniques are conducted using MATLAB proving that the proposed techniques enhance authentication procedures of BAC and increase entropy of seed key with minimum additional delay. A facial recognition database and fingerprint recognition database are tested proving the strength of proposed techniques against cracking.
Let’s Know! Proximal Impacts on Prekindergarten through Grade 3 Students’ Comprehension-Related Skills

Let’s Know! is a language-focused curriculum supplement developed through the Institute of Education Sciences’ Reading for Understanding initiative aimed at supporting prekindergarten through grade 3 students’ listening and reading comprehension. The current study reports results concerning the impacts of 2 instantiations of Let’s Know! on students’ comprehension-related skills (comprehension monitoring; understanding narrative and expository text, as supported by inference making and knowledge of text structure; and vocabulary) as proximal measures of efficacy. Results from the first cohort of a large, field-based, randomized controlled trial (N = 766 students across grades) indicate large, consistent, and statistically significant effects on curriculum-aligned comprehension monitoring and vocabulary probes relative to control, minimal effects on understanding narrative and expository text probes relative to control, and few differences across the two instantiations. Findings are interpreted with respect to the promise of Let’s Know! for achieving intended comprehension impacts, and limitations and future directions are discussed.
CATEGORIZATION OF COMMERCIAL WEB PAGES

In this paper we describe a new on-line document categorization strategy that can be integrated within Web applica tions. A salient aspect is the use of neural learning in both representation and classification tasks. Within text documents conceived as images, the regions of interest (RoI) containing information meaningful for categorization are identified with the support of a supervised neural network. Text within RoI is represented according to a simple solution that consider the first K words in the text and code them properly. A Kohonen Self-Organizing Map (SOM) is applied to cluster documents that are subsequently labelled b y applying a simple majority voting mechanism. Solutions adopted were evaluated by conducting experiments within the context of on-line price comparison services. Results obtained demontrate that the overall classification strate gy is able to categorize documents satisfectorily taking into account the high variability of Web pages.
Accelerating graph applications on integrated GPU platforms via instrumentation-driven optimizations

Integrated GPU platforms are a cost-effective and energy-efficient option for accelerating data-intensive applications. While these platforms have reduced overhead of offloading computation to the GPU and potential for fine-grained resource scheduling, there remain several open challenges. First, substantial application knowledge is required to leverage GPU acceleration capabilities. Second, static application profiling is inadequate for extracting performance from graph applications that exhibit input-dependent, irregular runtime behaviors. Third, naive scheduling of applications on both CPU and GPU devices may degrade performance due to memory contention. We describe Luminar, a runtime, profile-guided approach to accelerating applications on integrated GPU platforms. By using efficient dynamic instrumentation, Luminar informs resource scheduling about current workload properties. Luminar engenders up to 40% improvements for irregular, graph-based applications, plus 21-80% improvements in throughput and from 3-60% improvements in energy efficiency when scheduling a mix of applications.
Perceived teacher credibility and students’ affect as a function of instructors’ use of PowerPoint and email

ABSTRACT In this study, we extend previous work on instructors’ use of technology by examining how students’ perceptions of teacher credibility and affective experience differ depending on how frequently instructors use two common forms of instructional technology: PowerPoint, which is typically used inside the classroom; and email, which is typically used outside the classroom. Participants read vignettes that randomly manipulated the amount of each technology used by the instructor. Results revealed a positive association between instructor email use and students’ affective experience. For teacher credibility, a more complex pattern emerged, with instructors who combine rare email use with limited PowerPoint use suffering lowest evaluations on teacher credibility. Thus, effective use of classroom technology should avoid ambiguity or communicating a dismissive attitude toward students, who generally seem to prefer a high degree of technological integration in their courses.
MRC guidance on developing and evaluating complex interventions: Application to research on palliative and end of life care

This methods review examines the Medical Research Council’s Guidance on Developing and Evaluating Complex Interventions (MRC GDECI) and its application to research on palliative and end of life care, and potential wider application to research on adult social care practice. The review is a resource for social care researchers, practitioners and managers, educationalists and students involved in developing and evaluating complex interventions, particularly new services or re-configurations of care and support for people at the end of life. The review examines the strengths and limitations of the MRC GDECI and offers recommendations for future use. The review draws on research case examples – in particular the Methods of Researching End of Life Care (MORECare) project. This project developed the MORECare statement detailing best practice guidance for research evaluating end of life care to improve study quality and extend the existing MRC Guidance for research on palliative and end of life care. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EVALUATING END OF LIFE CARE SERVICES IN SOCIAL CARE SETTINGS • The MRC GDECI (Campbell et al. 2007, Craig et al. 2008) requires adaptation for research contexts beyond healthcare to encompass social care settings and the research challenges encountered. Social care offers a wide range of care and support. These include integrated interventions (spanning health and social care) with correspondingly diffuse goals of care and intended outcomes. Services are delivered across a multitude of settings to a diverse population group. • Study designs developing and evaluating complex interventions in social care ought to consider using the MORECare statement. The statement provides 36 best practice solutions for research evaluating services and interventions in end of life care to improve study quality and set a standard for future research. The statement provides a first step in setting common and much needed standards for evaluative research in end of life care (Higginson et al. 2013), and these will have relevance in other social care settings. • To accommodate the complexity of delivering and evaluating services and interventions in end of life care (and other social care contexts) requires a staged approach. This helps to build knowledge moving from development to definitive evaluation, with implementation as a continuous thread. Funders need to invest in researchers to help them develop research expertise in evaluative research methods and to build programmes of research to improve outcomes for users and carers. NIHR School for Social Care Research Methods Review MRC guidance: application to research on palliative and end of life care
Verifying and Modeling the Polarizing Reflectance of Real-World Metallic Surfaces

In computer graphics, a large number of BRDF models have been introduced over the years. Some are purely appearancebased heuristics, while others are physically plausible. To achieve plausibility a lot of work has been done on measuring the actual reflectance of a wide range of material surfaces with BRDF models being fitted against these measurements. In this article, we present a systematic approach to verify the predictions of basic analytical BRDF models based on measurements of real-world samples. We show how to use ellipsometry as a way to verify both the actual polarizing effect as well as the overall reflectance behaviour of metallic surfaces.
Exploring single-sample SNP and INDEL calling with whole-genome de novo assembly

MOTIVATION Eugene Myers in his string graph paper suggested that in a string graph or equivalently a unitig graph, any path spells a valid assembly. As a string/unitig graph also encodes every valid assembly of reads, such a graph, provided that it can be constructed correctly, is in fact a lossless representation of reads. In principle, every analysis based on whole-genome shotgun sequencing (WGS) data, such as SNP and insertion/deletion (INDEL) calling, can also be achieved with unitigs. RESULTS To explore the feasibility of using de novo assembly in the context of resequencing, we developed a de novo assembler, fermi, that assembles Illumina short reads into unitigs while preserving most of information of the input reads. SNPs and INDELs can be called by mapping the unitigs against a reference genome. By applying the method on 35-fold human resequencing data, we showed that in comparison to the standard pipeline, our approach yields similar accuracy for SNP calling and better results for INDEL calling. It has higher sensitivity than other de novo assembly based methods for variant calling. Our work suggests that variant calling with de novo assembly can be a beneficial complement to the standard variant calling pipeline for whole-genome resequencing. In the methodological aspects, we propose FMD-index for forward-backward extension of DNA sequences, a fast algorithm for finding all super-maximal exact matches and one-pass construction of unitigs from an FMD-index. AVAILABILITY http://github.com/lh3/fermi
Analyse de la concurrence bancaire au Maroc : Approche de Panzar et Rosse

Le present document a pour objectif d’evaluer le degre de concurrence prevalant dans le secteur bancaire au Maroc par l’approche de Panzar et Rosse (1987). Les donnees utilisees couvrent la periode 2000-2015. Les resultats du travail montrent que le secteur bancaire marocain affiche une concurrence monopolistique, a l’instar de plusieurs pays developpes et emergents. De plus, l’analyse de l’evolution de la concurrence entre 2000 et 2015 fait ressortir une legere amelioration qui pourrait etre expliquee par une conjoncture economique difficile suite a l’avenement de la crise financiere de 2008, le renforcement du cadre reglementaire et l’accroissement de l’ouverture financiere.
The Effect of Insulin, Dextrose, and Cyanide on the Circular and the Longitudinal Muscles of the Rabbit's Intestine

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. of this problem, I express my appreciation for his guidance and cri ticisrn throughout the fulfilment of this study.
Visualized Elucidations of Ranking by Exploiting Object Relations

For understanding human activity, a useful approach is to rank people according to the strength of their relations to a specified person. Similarly, rankings of objects based on such a relation are used in several fields. Several methods have been proposed for computing the strength of a relation between two objects. These methods do not present a reason why an object has a stronger relation to a specified object than another object has. Therefore, it is difficult for a user to understand a ranking obtained using these methods. On the other hand, the authors recently proposed a method for computing the strength of a relation through mining objects to elucidate the relation. We propose a ranking tool based on this method to afford a better understanding of a ranking. Our ranking tool has the following three characteristics for understanding a ranking: (1) it visualizes a relation by displaying objects that are important for elucidating the relation; (2) it classifies ranked objects into several groups, e.g., the two groups of "petroleum exporting countries'' and "petroleum consuming countries'' for ranking countries based on their respective relations to petroleum; and (3) it visualizes a reason explaining why an object has a stronger relation to a specified object than another object has. We explain novel ideas used in our ranking tool for understanding a ranking based on relations, and claim how effective the features of our tool are by presenting examples.
Crime, Punishment, and Causation: The Effect of Etiological Information on the Perception of Moral Agency

Moral judgments about a situation are profoundly shaped by the perception of individuals in that situation as either moral agents or moral patients (Gray & Wegner, 2009; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), Specifically, the more we see someone as a moral agent, the less we see them as a moral patient, and vice versa. As a result, casting the perpetrator of a transgression as a victim tends to have the effect of making them seem less blameworthy (Gray & Wegner, 2011). Based on this theoretical framework, we predicted that criminal offenders with a mental disorder that predisposes them to antisocial behavior would be judged more negatively when the disorder is described as having a genetic origin than when it is described as environmentally caused, as in the case of childhood abuse or accident. Further, we predicted that some environmental explanations would mitigate attributions of blame more than others, namely, that offenders whose disorder was caused by childhood abuse (intentional harm) would be seen as less blameworthy than offenders whose disorder is caused by an unfortunate accident (unintentional harm). Results from two vignette-based studies designed to test these predictions, conducted with participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 244 and N = 387, respectively), confirmed the first prediction but not the second. Implications of this research for three areas—the psychology of moral judgment, philosophical debates about moral responsibility and determinism, and the practice of the law—are discussed in the sequel.
Improving the Performance of QoS Models in MANETs through Interference Monitoring and Correction

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been proposed for a wide variety of applications, some of which require the support of real time and multimedia services. To do so, the network should be able to offer quality of service (QoS) appropriate for the latency and throughput bounds to meet appropriate real time constraints imposed by multimedia data. Due to the limited resources such as bandwidth in a wireless medium, flows need to be prioritised in order to guarantee QoS to the flows that need it. In this research, we propose a scheme to provide QoS guarantee to high priority flows in the presence of other high as well as low priority flows so that both type of flows achieve best possible throughput and end-to-end delays. Nodes independently monitor the level of interference by checking the rates of the highest priority flows and signal corrective mechanisms when these rates fall outside of specified thresholds. This research investigates using simulations the effects of a number of important parameters in MANETs, including node speed, pause time, interference, and the dynamic monitoring and correction on system performance in static and mobile scenarios. In this report we show that the dynamic monitoring and correction provides improved QoS than fixed monitoring and correction to both high priority and low priority flows in MANETs.
Localization of kinesin in cultured cells

Kinesin was isolated from bovine brain and used to elicit polyclonal antibodies in rabbits. The specificities of the resulting antibodies were evaluated by immunoblotting. Antibodies purified from these sera by their affinity for brain kinesin react with a polypeptide of approximately 120 kD in extracts from bovine brain, PtK1 cells, and mouse neuroblastoma cells. They bind to a pair of polypeptides of approximately 120 kD present in crude kinesin prepared from Xenopus eggs and with a single polypeptide of approximately 115 kD in extracts from Drosophila embryos. Antibodies raised against kinesin prepared from fruit fly embryos (by W. M. Saxton, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN) and from neural tissues of the squid (by M. P. Sheetz, Washington University, St. Louis, MO) cross react with the mammalian, the fly, and the frog polypeptides. Kinesin antigen was localized in cultured cells by indirect immunofluorescence. PtK1 cells in interphase showed dim background staining of cytoplasmic membranous components and bright staining of a small, fibrous, juxtanuclear structure. Double staining with antibodies to microtubules showed that the fibrous object was usually located near the centrosome. On the basis of shape, size, and location, we identify the kinesin-positive structure as a primary cilium. PtK1 cells in mitosis are stained at their poles during all stages of division. The structure stained is approximately spherical, but wisps of faint fluorescence also extend into the body of the spindle. Antibodies to squid or fruit fly kinesin produce identical patterns in PtK1 cells. Controls with preimmune and preabsorbed sera show that the centrosome staining is not due simply to the common tendency of rabbit antisera to stain this structure. Similar centrosome and spindle pole staining was visible when antibodies to bovine brain or squid kinesin were applied to the A6 cell line (kidney epithelial cells from Xenopus laevis). Some possible functions of kinesin localized at the spindle poles are discussed.
Serum Lipids and Breast Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Purpose Epidemiologic studies exploring causal associations between serum lipids and breast cancer risk have reported contradictory results. We conducted a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies to evaluate these associations. Methods Relevant studies were identified by searching PubMed and EMBASE through April 2015. We included prospective cohort studies that reported relative risk (RR) estimates with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the associations of specific lipid components (i.e., total cholesterol [TC], high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDL-C], low-density lipoprotein cholesterol [LDL-C], and triglycerides [TG]) with breast cancer risk. Either a fixed- or a random-effects model was used to calculate pooled RRs. Results Fifteen prospective cohort studies involving 1,189,635 participants and 23,369 breast cancer cases were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled RRs of breast cancer for the highest versus lowest categories were 0.96 (95% CI: 0.86–1.07) for TC, 0.92 (95% CI: 0.73–1.16) for HDL-C, 0.90 (95% CI: 0.77–1.06) for LDL-C, and 0.93 (95% CI: 0.86–1.00) for TG. Notably, for HDL-C, a significant reduction of breast cancer risk was observed among postmenopausal women (RR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.64–0.93) but not among premenopausal women. Similar trends of the associations were observed in the dose-response analysis. Conclusions Our findings suggest that serum levels of TG but not TC and LDL-C may be inversely associated with breast cancer risk. Serum HDL-C may also protect against breast carcinogenesis among postmenopausal women.