Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stopping criteria in evolutionary algorithms for multi-objective performance optimization of integrated inductors

In this paper, the application of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to the evaluation of performance trade-offs of planar inductors, an almost ubiquitous device in radio-frequency microelectronics, is studied. The absence of appropriate stopping criteria in most evolutionary algorithms reveals to be critical in this application. A new stopping criterion based on monitoring a set of performance metrics that account for convergence and diversity is proposed and demonstrated with practical radio-frequency circuit design problems.
Learning for development through co-operation: the engagement of youth with co-operatives in Lesotho and Uganda

With 2011 designated the United Nations Year of the Youth and 2012 the Year of the Co-operative this research contributes to issues raised by these two significant and timely events. The renaissance of co-operatives globally and their revival in countries in Africa has promoted interest and debate around co-operatives as collective values-based businesses and their potential to promote economic and social development and address poverty (UN, 2010). There is also increasing recognition that youth in Africa present both a potential and a challenge for development (UN, 2011). Youth access to education, civic participation and the ability to secure and sustain livelihoods are core concerns. Initiatives to involve youth in co-operatives in Lesotho and Uganda bring these two areas together and are of particular interest. The focus of this thesis is whether and how co-operatives provide opportunities for youth learning and the development of their capabilities and agency to achieve valued goals. The analysis is framed through conceptualisation of co-operatives as learning spaces within which theories of situated , learning are combined with the capability approach. Using qualitative and participatory methods to investigate youth engagement in co-operatives in Lesotho and Uganda the thesis argues that co- operatives provide situated social learning spaces where youth learn for development. Learning emerges within such spaces for: business and vocational knowledge and skills, personal development, collective learning based on trust and co-operator identity, and wider outcomes such as community engagement, enhanced relationships and networks and development of the co- operative form. Learning is, however, both enabled and restricted by: gender, the level of prior formal education, the networks of which a co-operative is a part and the type and success of a co-operative.
CUSTOMER ORIENTATION AND OFFICE SPACE PERFORMANCE: ASSESSING THE MODERATING EFFECT OF BUILDING GRADE USING PLS-MGA

This study presents a framework to measure and empirically validate the relationship between customer orientation and office space performance. The framework uses two types of customer orientation (i.e., responsive customer orientation and proactive customer orientation) and two types of office space performance metrics (i.e., tenant satisfaction and tenant loyalty). Moreover, the building grade (Grade A and Non-grade A) is incorporated into the framework to assess its moderating effect on the relationships. 380 usable responses were collected from building managers in Grade A and Non-grade A buildings using a questionnaire survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was utilized to perform latent variable and multi-group analyses. The findings indicate that proactive customer orientation enhances satisfaction to a level not reached by responsive customer orientation as well as suggesting the applicability of both customer orientations in different scenarios. While proactive customer orientation practices lead to higher satisfaction in Non-grade A office ten-ants, responsive customer orientation practices lead to greater satisfaction in grade A office tenants. The latter tend to be more satisfied with Grade A office and thus loyal. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Gene expression underlying adaptive variation in Heliconius wing patterns: non-modular regulation of overlapping cinnabar and vermilion prepatterns

Geographical variation in the mimetic wing patterns of the butterfly Heliconius erato is a textbook example of adaptive polymorphism; however, little is known about how this variation is controlled developmentally. Using microarrays and qPCR, we identified and compared expression of candidate genes potentially involved with a red/yellow forewing band polymorphism in H. erato. We found that transcripts encoding the pigment synthesis enzymes cinnabar and vermilion showed pattern- and polymorphism-related expression patterns, respectively. cinnabar expression was associated with the forewing band regardless of pigment colour, providing the first gene expression pattern known to be correlated with a major Heliconius colour pattern. In contrast, vermilion expression changed spatially over time in red-banded butterflies, but was not expressed at detectable levels in yellow-banded butterflies, suggesting that regulation of this gene may be involved with the red/yellow polymorphism. Furthermore, we found that the yellow pigment, 3-hydroxykynurenine, is incorporated into wing scales from the haemolymph rather than being synthesized in situ. We propose that some aspects of Heliconius colour patterns are determined by spatio-temporal overlap of pigment gene transcription prepatterns and speculate that evolutionary changes in vermilion regulation may in part underlie an adaptive colour pattern polymorphism.
Tax Evasion in Firms

Tax evasion is low in many countries because thirdâ€ party reporting makes employees unable to cheat. Why do not employees collude with their employer to evade taxes or evade as selfâ€ employed? We explain this puzzle in a model in which employees have both options. A tradeâ€ off between largeâ€ scale efficient production and tax evasion implies that tax evasion per employee is decreasing in firm size. The model predicts that there is a gap between the individually and the collectively optimal evasion in firms and that this gap is increasing in firm size. Using survey data, we find support for both predictions.
Biogenesis of giant mitochondria during insect flight muscle development in the locust, Locusta migratoria (L.). Transcription, translation and copy number of mitochondrial DNA.

The biogenesis of giant mitochondria in flight muscle of Locusta migratoria (L.) was analyzed at the molecular level. During the 2 weeks between the beginning of the last larval stage and the imago capable of sustained flight, individual mitochondria have been shown to enlarge 30-fold and the fractional mitochondrial volume of muscle cells increases fourfold [Brosemer, R.W. , Vogell, W. and Bücher, Th. (1963) Biochem. Z. 338, 854-910]. Within the same period, the activity of cytochrome c oxidase, containing subunits encoded on mitochondrial DNA, increased twofold. However, no significant change in mitochondrial DNA copy number, and even a threefold decrease in mitochondrial transcripts, was observed. Mitochondrial translation rate, measured in isolated organelles, was twofold higher in larval muscle, which can be explained only partly by the higher content of mitochondrial RNAs. Thus, rather unusually, in this system of mitochondrial differentiation, the mitochondrial biosynthetic capacity correlates with the rate of organelle biogenesis rather than the steady-state concentration of a marker enzyme. The copy number of mitochondrial DNA does not seem to play a major role in determining either mitochondrial transcript levels or functional mass.
Multimodal multiparty social interaction with the furhat head

We will show in this demonstrator an advanced multimodal and multiparty spoken conversational system using Furhat, a robot head based on projected facial animation. Furhat is a human-like interface that utilizes facial animation for physical robot heads using back-projection. In the system, multimodality is enabled using speech and rich visual input signals such as multi-person real-time face tracking and microphone tracking. The demonstrator will showcase a system that is able to carry out social dialogue with multiple interlocutors simultaneously with rich output signals such as eye and head coordination, lips synchronized speech synthesis, and non-verbal facial gestures used to regulate fluent and expressive multiparty conversations.
Feature selection for hyperspectral data based on modified recursive support vector machines

In this paper, an improved support vector machines recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) approach for feature selection of hyperspectral data is proposed. An automatic model selection (AMS) algorithm using radius margin bound is integrated into the process of feature selection before feature ranking, and the ranking criterion used by standard SVM-RFE is replaced with a new criterion derived from recursive support vector machines (RSVM). To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency, we apply the new approach to a benchmark Airborne Visible/ Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) dataset. Experimental results indicate that the new approach improves the SVM-RFE in terms of classification accuracy and computational efficiency; moreover, it increases the robustness of feature selection in the presence of noise.
Tourism discourse analysis: Comparing the vocabulary features used in the original and translation of Iranian tourism texts

The aim of this study is to examine the vocabulary features of Iranian tourism texts and their translations in order to find out the extent to which the source and target texts are in line with Duran Munoz’s (2011) suggestions for special tourist language and discourse in terms of vocabulary features. For so doing, the Persian texts and the English translations of 50 pages taken from Iranian official bilingual tourist websites were analyzed. The results indicated that neither the original Iranian tourism texts nor their English translations contained the vocabulary required for tourism discourse.
Music as the Educational Mean in the Making of the "Socialist Man": Music Education in Primary Schools of Croatia (1945-1965)

The task of education and the school system in the first two post-war decades of the Communist Party rule in Croatia was to create “all-round developed socialist men” who would suit the community’s interests by their characteristics. The whole teaching process should have been synchronised to the politics of the ruling class, and to transmit by the school system the ideological principles to younger generations and thus guarantee the implementation of party directives. The curricula in primary teaching proscribed the realisation of very ambitious aims and tasks. A new concert public belonging to the widest working layers of people should have been educated by music teaching, music should have been made a cultural need for all citizens of the country. Such a projection was hardly achievable. The discrepancy between high art and wider layers of society, also visible in the area of music education, could not have been surpassed quickly and easily. The few and insufficiently professionally trained and competent teachers’ personnel did not succeed to adapt quickly enough to ambitious curricula and the educated public’s demands. Enthusiasm and belief in new art’s tasks helped a great effort to be put in the attempt to bring music closer to the young, but despite all the anticipated music education results were humbler than expected. Based on the curricula and cultural and pedagogical magazines texts, this article has offered an insight into the aims and tasks of music education and by using archives documentation and personal testimonies it has considered the results of their implementation in the teaching process.
Promoting healthy eating in pregnancy: What kind of support services do women say they want?

Aim To identify characteristics of the services and support women want to enable them to eat healthily during pregnancy to make a potential future service acceptable to this population. Background An unhealthy diet during pregnancy may have a significant influence on pregnancy outcome, either directly through nutrient deficiencies or indirectly through maternal weight gain. Many pregnant women in the United Kingdom gain too much weight in pregnancy, and this weight gain may lead to an increased risk of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and having an obese child. Thus, there is a need for interventions aimed at improving healthy eating in pregnancy. It is crucial in developing successful interventions to understand how participation can be maximised by optimising intervention acceptability. Methods Four focus groups were conducted; two with prenatal women (n = 9) and two with postnatal women (n = 14). Discussion focused on identifying relevant characteristics of a service targeting prenatal and postnatal women's eating to ensure that a future service was acceptable to the women. Findings The participants’ responses were clustered into three broad themes: (1) early information leading to routine formation of healthier eating habits, (2) the delivery of practical sessions to increase information and (3) health professionals providing support and signposting to services. The participants reported wanting a practical service held in a convenient location, preferably led by women who have been pregnant themselves. The participants also reported wanting to be offered this service in pregnancy to help them get into a routine before they gave birth. Several suggestions for how this service should be marketed were mentioned, including through midwives and the internet. This research provides practical information for how to design support for prenatal women to increase their knowledge and practical skills regarding eating healthily during their pregnancy.
Speech enhancement based on spectral subtraction for speech recognition system

Reverberation is acoustical distortion which degrades the fidelity and intelligibility of speech signal in a speech recognition system. This paper presents a speech enhancement algorithm using an one-microphone for automatic speech recognition system. The proposed algorithm is based on a simple spectral subtraction. To further improve system performance, we employ a method of Voice Activity Detection (VAD) using spectral entropy.
Bayesian Count Data Modeling for Finding Technological Sustainability

Technology developments change society, and society demands new and innovative technology developments. We analyze technology to understand society and technology itself. Much research related to technology analysis has been introduced in various fields. Most of it has been on patent analysis. This is because detailed and accurate results of research and development are patented. In this paper, we study a new patent analysis method based on the count data model and Bayesian regression analysis. Using the count data model, we analyzed the technological keywords extracted from the collected patent documents. We used the prior distribution of Bayesian statistics to reflect the experience and knowledge of the relevant technological experts in the analysis model. Moreover, we applied the proposed model to find sustainable technologies. Finding and developing sustainable technologies is an important activity for companies and research institutes to maintain their technological competitiveness. To illustrate how our modeling could be applied to real domains, we carried out a case study using the patent documents related to artificial intelligence.
Electrospray technique for solid lipid-based particle production

Background: Different preparation methods for the production of lipid micro- and nanoparticles as controlled release formulations have been widely developed. Novel techniques are attracting increasing attention for their preparation. Method: The objective of the present investigation was to produce solid lipid-based micro-nanospheres using the electrohydrodynamic atomization (electrospraying) and to evaluate whether it is a suitable method to prepare drug-loaded particles. Results: Narrowly dispersed spherical particles lower than 1 μm, easily internalized in cells, were obtained using stearic acid and ethylcellulose in a 4.5:0.5 (w/w) ratio. Tamoxifen, as model drug, was encapsulated with good entrapment efficiency. The in vitro release, after an initial burst effect, showed a prolonged drug release. Conclusion: The electrospraying method might be proposed to prepare in a single-step monodisperse lipid-based micro- and nanoparticles in powder form for drug delivery.
Prediagnostic Plasma Adiponectin and Survival among Patients with Colorectal Cancer

Circulating adiponectin is inversely related to the risk of colorectal cancer. However, its influence on colorectal cancer survival is unclear. We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the association between prediagnostic plasma levels of adiponectin and mortality in patients with colorectal cancer. We identified 621 incident colorectal cancer cases who provided blood specimens prior to diagnosis within the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS). Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate HRs and 95% confidence intervals (CI). After a median follow-up of 9 years, there were 269 (43%) total deaths, of which 181 (67%) were due to colorectal cancer. Compared with participants in the lowest quartile of adiponectin, those in the highest quartile had multivariate HRs of 1.89 (95% CI, 1.21–2.97; Ptrend = 0.01) for colorectal cancer–specific mortality and 1.66 (95% CI, 1.15–2.39; Ptrend = 0.009) for overall mortality. The apparent increased risk in colorectal cancer–specific mortality was more pronounced in patients with metastatic disease (HR, 3.02: 95% CI, 1.50–6.08). Among patients with colorectal cancer, prediagnostic plasma adiponectin is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer–specific and overall mortality and is more apparent in patients with metastatic disease. Adiponectin may be a marker for cancers which develop through specific pathways that may be associated with worsened prognosis. Further studies are needed to validate these findings. Cancer Prev Res; 8(12); 1138–45. ©2015 AACR.
[The formation of infliximab and anti-infliximab immune complexes as an explanation for non-responding to infliximab treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: observational study in 4 patients].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the in vivo mechanism of non-responding to infliximab treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and the role of anti-infliximab antibodies by using radiolabeled infliximab. DESIGN Descriptive and comparative study. METHOD Two responding and two non-responding RA patients were infused with radiolabeled infliximab. Subsequently imaging investigations and serum analysis were performed at set times. RESULTS The scintigrams showed that the labelled infliximab was mainly present in the blood until 24 h after infusion. There was a trend of faster blood clearance and higher liver and spleen uptake of 99mTc-infliximab in one non-responding patient. Labelled infliximab was taken up by inflamed joints. The anti-infliximab level was high (1008 and 1641 U/ml) in the non-responders and low or not detectable in the responders. Sucrose gradients of serum revealed antibody complexes in both non-responders. Various sizes of antibody complexes, including very large ones, were observed in one non-responder who developed a serious infusion reaction. CONCLUSION Infliximab-anti-infliximab immune complexes were found to form in RA non-responders due to the presence of significant quantities of anti-infliximab. This finding may partly explain the failure of the infliximab treatment.
Negotiating Sleep: A Qualitative Study of New Mothers

Objective The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn from 20 mothers about their experience of sleep during pregnancy and the immediate months of becoming a new mother. The study was part of a larger randomized clinical trial on an intervention to improve sleep and well-being among new mothers. Methods Semistructured, audiotaped interviews were conducted in which women were asked to describe the continuum of the sleep experience across the pregnancy and early postpartum and to describe strategies they found helpful as they established sleep patterns with their infant. Narrative analysis was used to interpret their stories, and data were managed with Atlas.ti qualitative software. Results and Conclusions Sleep disturbances were common to all of the mothers, and sleep became a negotiated behavior as they adjusted to the mothering role. All of the mothers were surprised at the level of disturbance and exhaustion they experienced. Strategies included enlistment of partners to facilitate naps, development of a “sleep consciousness,” and bed-sharing. Mercer's stages of becoming a mother are used to describe the process of incorporating sleep changes into their lives.
Simplified Frequency Estimation for Unit Scheduling Criteria for Grids With High Wind Penetration

The current unit scheduling criteria on Penghu Island entail applying net load demand to determine the numbers of online diesel units. The net load may underestimate the number of required online units in a system with high wind power penetration, especially under off-peak load and high wind conditions, both of which engender insufficient operating reserves. Therefore, this study proposes new unit scheduling criteria that integrate the system equivalent speed droop with the M factor by considering different loads and wind conditions. This study also identified the maximum allowable power loss and the required size of the operating reserve by considering system reliability. Finally, this study determined the allocation modes for units and the required generation distributions for various loads. In accordance with the requirements of system loads at specific times, the proposed unit scheduling criteria could provide system operators with corresponding unit operating modes, as well as generation distributions, thereby sustaining power reliability and quality levels.
Decreased expression of 14-3-3 in Paracoccidioides brasiliensis confirms its involvement in fungal pathogenesis

The interaction between the fungal pathogen Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and host cells is usually mediated by specific binding events between adhesins on the fungal surface and receptors on the host extracellular matrix or cell surface. One molecule implicated in the P. brasiliensis-host interaction is the 14-3-3 protein. The 14-3-3 protein belongs to a family of conserved regulatory molecules that are expressed in all eukaryotic cells and are involved in diverse cellular functions. Here, we investigated the relevance of the 14-3-3 protein to the virulence of P. brasiliensis. Using antisense RNA technology and Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation, we generated a 14-3-3-silenced strain (expression reduced by ˜55%). This strain allowed us to investigate the interaction between 14-3-3 and the host and to correlate the functions of P. brasiliensis 14-3-3 with cellular features, such as morphological characteristics and virulence, that are important for pathogenesis.
A neuromusculoskeletal model exploring peripheral mechanism of tremor

This paper studies the peripheral mechanism contributing to the tremor of human body. It is known that the reflex loops in peripheral nervous system have significant influences on the tremor. A neuromusculoskeletal model with several reflex loops is developed to explore the origin of tremor. The muscle model is developed based on a Hill-type muscle model. The feedback loops include the spindle organ, Golgi tendon organ and Renshaw cell. Their effects are investigated quantitatively in detail. Some results are in accordance with the previous research. Meanwhile, some new findings are proposed according to the simulation study.