Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CLADDING WAVEGUIDES REALIZED IN Nd:YAG LASER MEDIA BY DIRECT WRITING WITH A FEMTOSECOND-LASER BEAM

We report on realization of buried cladding waveguides in Nd:YAG single crystal and ceramic media by direct femtosecond (fs)-laser writing technique. A classical technique that moves the laser medium transversally to the fs-laser beam, as well as a new scheme in which the laser medium has a motion on a helical trajectory during the inscribing process was used. The waveguides laser emission performances at 1.06 and 1.3 µm have been investigated under the pump at 807 nm with a fibercoupled diode laser that was operated both in quasi-continuous wave (quasi-cw) and in cw regimes. Laser pulses with energy of 3.45 mJ at 1.06 µm and of 1.05 mJ at 1.3 µm (with overall optical-tooptical efficiency of 0.26 and 0.08, respectively) were obtained from a 50 µm in diameter circular waveguide that was inscribed by the helical-moving techniques in a 5.0-mm long, 1.1-at. % Nd:YAG ceramic medium. Characteristics of the laser emission recorded in cw operation are discussed.
An Effect of SNS Performance and Arts Information Service Quality on Initial Trust and Prosumer Activity: Focusing on Dance Performance

Purpose: The present study was designed to examine the casual relationships among performance and arts information service quality, initial trust, user satisfaction, reuse intention and prosumer activity in social network service(SNS). Also, we intended to explore significant factors on use performance of SNS through causal model analysis in the viewpoint of total effect. Methods: As a survey tool, questionnaire has obtained validity and reliability through literature survey, exploratory survey and pretest and sample 403 was selected. For statistical treatment of pretest and main analysis, SPSS18.0 and AMOS18.0 were employed and structural equation model was employed as analysis method. Results: Result of this study shows as follows. Two factors (precision and reciprocal action) have an effect on user satisfaction, initial trust, reuse intention and prosumer activity. We found that with an importance of initial trust, prosumer activity can be a useful and significant factor in causal relationship of SNS. Conclusion: The present study shows that two factors(precision and reciprocal action) in via of initial trust, were important factors that related companies have to emphasize to raise performance, And also we confirmed new factor ‘prosumer activity’through this study. However, the present study has some limitations to be studied in the future. ● Received 11 March 2016, 1st revised 21 March 2016, accepted 22 March 2016 Corresponding Author(chcho@dhu.ac.kr) c 2016, The Korean Society for Quality Management This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-Commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ISSN 1229-1889(Print) ISSN 2287-9005(Online) J Korean Soc Qual Manag Vol. 44, No.1: 199-214, March 2016 http://dx.doi. org/10.7469/JKSQM.2016. 44.1. 199 200 J Korean Soc Qual Manag Vol. 44, No. 1:199-214, March 2016
Cost-Deadline Based Task Scheduling in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a nascent technology which widely spreads among researchers. It provide users with infrastructure, platform and software as amenity which is effortlessly accessible via Internet. In cloud computing, there are numerous tasks needs to be executed by the existing resources to attain best performance, shortest response time, minimal total time for completion, achieve deadline, utilization of resources etc. Scheduling is a complicated task in cloud computing environment where the aim is to schedule the tasks effectively so as to reduce the turnaround time and improve overall performance. Due to these dissimilar objectives, we need to design, develop a noble scheduling strategy to outperform proper division of tasks on virtual machines. Recently existing scheduling algorithm may work proficiently in some perspective. But they are unable to achieve deadline of task and attain maximum profit. In this paper, new mechanism is proposed which take care of deadline and cost, then scheduled the task according to need. Based on the concept of space-shared scheduling policy, this work presents Cost-deadline Based (CDB) task scheduling algorithm to schedule tasks with Cloud-sim by taking into account several parameters including task profit, task penalty, throughput, provider profit, user loss.
Risk, Return and Value in the Family Firm

The present text investigates the singularities of family firms with respect to their control risk aversion, their financial performance and their valuation. With regard to the control risk aversion the text probes a sample of 1215 privately held firms in Switzerland and finds lower leverage levels for family firms affected by undiversified investment, an insufficient separation of private and business wealth, ownership dispersion across siblings. In addition, the text refers to behavioral finance theory and shows that family managers display a strong aversion to control risk which is however influenced by reference points. With regard to financial performance the analysis finds significantly lower returns on equity for family firms. The text reveals that family firms face peculiar agency problems which potentially hamper the evolvement of family firms through strategic and financial inertia, ineffective governance, misalignment of interests, and inefficient information processing. The study finds that family influence is not always a blessing or a curse. Whether family influence positively affects firm performance depends on the strength of family influence, the industry, the firm size and the active generation. With regard to value and valuation the study probes a sample of 142 publicly traded family and nonfamily firms on the Swiss stock market. The outperformance of family firms can be partly explained by their transparent information setting measured by a lower variance in earnings per share which reduces analyst forecast dispersion which positively affects stock performance. In contrast to publicly quoted family firms an analysis of 958 privately owned family firms shows that entrepreneurs subjectively price not only monetary achievements, as cash flow, but also nonmonetary achievements as the age of the firm and their subjective happiness. These findings provide additional insight to entrepreneurial rationales if, as in most cases, a firm is not for sale but is rather intended to be handed over to a subsequent generation.
Evaluations of erectile dysfunction before and after on-pump coronary artery bypass graft surgery

Background: Erectile dysfunction (ED) is common in cardiovascular disease (CVD) and indicates a complication of coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). This study was designed to evaluate the status of erectile dysfunction in patients with CAD before and after CABG surgery. Methods: We designed a prospective cohort study on male patients candidates for elective on-pump CABG between June 2006 to October 2012 in 3 hospitals in Sari, Iran (Fatemeh Zahra, Shafa and Nime-Shaban Hospitals). Patient’s primary data were collected based on the International Index of Erectile Function questionnaire (IIEF-5) at baseline 6 months after surgery. The severity of dysfunction was categorized as, normal, mild to moderate and moderate to severe based on IIEF score. Results: Four hundred twenty-six male patients with mean age of 58.69±12.49 years participated in this study. 166 patients had DM (38.96%) 230 patients had hypertension (54%). 307 patients had three-vessel impairment (72.07%) and 119 patients with one or two vessel impairment (27.93%). The 15.02%, 18.07%, 23%, 31.92% and 11.97%, at baseline changed to 16.90%, 19.95%, 23.71%, 32.22% and 8.21%, at endpoint (P=0.01). Also, the mean±SD of IIEF-5 score before and after surgery was 13.95±5.44 and 14.20±5.69, respectively (P=0.001). Conclusion: The result of our study shows that on-pump CABG surgery has a positive effect on the improvement of erectile dysfunction 6 months after surgery.
Alterations in hippocampal network oscillations and theta–gamma coupling arise before Aβ overproduction in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age‐related neurodegenerative disorder characterized by memory impairments. Brain oscillatory activity is critical for cognitive function and is altered in AD patients. Recent evidence suggests that accumulation of soluble amyloid‐beta (Aβ) induces reorganization of hippocampal networks. However, whether fine changes in network activity might be present at very early stages, before Aβ overproduction, remains to be determined. We therefore assessed whether theta and gamma oscillations and their cross‐frequency coupling, which are known to be essential for normal memory function, were precociously altered in the hippocampus. Electrophysiological field potential recordings were performed using complete hippocampal preparations in vitro from young transgenic CRND8 mice, a transgenic mouse model of AD. Our results indicate that a significant proportion of 1‐month‐old TgCRND8 mice showed robust alterations of theta–gamma cross‐frequency coupling in the principal output region of the hippocampus, the subiculum. In addition we showed that, compared to controls, these mice expressed negligible levels of Aβ. Finally, these network alterations were not due to genetic factors as 15‐day‐old animals did not exhibit theta–gamma coupling alterations. Thus, initial alterations in hippocampal network activity arise before Aβ accumulation and may represent an early biomarker for AD.
Experimental and Theoretical Studies on the Functionalization Reactions of 4-Benzoyl-1,5-Diphenyl-1H-Pyrazole-3-Carboxylic Acid and Acid Chloride with 2,3-Diaminopyridine

The 1H-pyrazole-3-carboxylic acid 2 was converted in good yield (69%) into the corresponding 1H-pyrazole-3-carboxamide 5 via reaction of the acid chloride 3 with 2,3-diaminopyridine (4). A different product, the 3H-imidazo[4,5-b] pyridine derivative 6, was formed from the reaction of 3 with 4 and base in benzene for 5 hours. The structures of the synthesized compounds were determined spectroscopically. The mechanism of the reaction between 3 and 4 was examined theoretically.
Analysis of area spectral efficiency and link reliability in multiuser MIMO HetNets

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) provide an effective way to meet the explosive growth of mobile data traffic. Previous studies have revealed that the successful transmission probability, i.e., the link reliability, of a SISO HetNet is invariant to the base station (BS) density. This indicates that the area spectral efficiency (ASE) can be increased by densifying the network, without sacrificing the link performance. However, in this paper, we shall show that the above invariance property no longer holds in multi-antenna HetNets. More specifically, changing the BS density will affect both the link reliability and the ASE, and there exists a tradeoff between these two important performance metrics. By adopting the Poisson point process to model the BS positions, we develop an exact expression of the successful transmission probability for general multiuser MIMO HetNets. We then use this result to evaluate the tradeoff between the ASE and the link reliability. It is analytically shown that the maximum successful transmission probability of the network is achieved by activating only the tier of BSs with the largest number of antennas per BS, while the maximum ASE is achieved by activating all the BSs. By adjusting the density of each tier of the HetNet, a tradeoff between the link reliability and ASE can be achieved.
COMPOUNDS DESIGNED TO FIT A SITE OF KNOWN STRUCTURE IN HUMAN HAEMOGLOBIN

1 The three‐dimensional coordinates of the atoms in human haemoglobin are known, and there is a specific site in the deoxygenated form of the protein at which 2,3‐diphosphoglycerate (DPG) interacts. 2 Molecular models of this site have been constructed and used to design compounds which should bind to the deoxy conformation and stabilize it. These compounds should thereby promote oxygen liberation, as does DPG. 3 The compounds so designed were found to promote oxygen liberation. Their relative potencies, as assessed by sigmoidal dose‐response curves, are in the predicted sequence.
Synthesis of Tapped-Inductor Switched-Mode Converters

A classification scheme is used to categorize tapped-inductor switched-mode power supplies. This new scheme allows the many possible circuit variants to be displayed in a logical manner and analyzed for practicality and performance. The scheme offers a way of ensuring that no tapped inductor converter circuit is neglected when a tapped-inductor circuit is to be chosen for any particular application.
Improved Enzymatic Method for Determining Mannitol and its Application to Dog Serum after Mannitol Infusion

An enzymatic method for mannitol quantitation has been developed. Its application mannitol levels in serum samples from dogs after mannitol infusion is illustrated. The method is based on the spectrophotometric measurement of the initial rate of NADH formation in the reaction between mannitol and NAD catalyzed by mannitol dehydrogenase. A linear relationship between initial rates and mannitol concentration is seen between 17 mumol/l and 6.7 mmol/l mannitol. From the extent of dilution of the serum sample in the assay this corresponds to serum levels of 0.5 to 200 mmol/l. Because of the high degree of substrate specificity of mannitol dehydrogenase and the extensive dilution of the serum sample in the assay reaction mixture, serum proteins and glucose do not interfere with the reaction. As a result, pre-treatment of samples to remove glucose and deproteinization are necessary.
Carrot intake and incidence of urothelial cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Previous studies regarding the relationship between carrot intake and risk of urothelial cancer have reported conflicting results. Hence we performed a meta-analysis of eligible studies to summarize evidence on this association. A comprehensive search up to January 2017 was performed in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, Cochrane register, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases. The combined odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) for the highest versus the lowest intake of carrot was calculated. A total of six epidemiological studies consisting of four case-control and two cohort studies were included. Overall analysis indicated a significantly reduced risk of urothelial cancer for high intake of carrot (OR = 0.63, 95% CI 0.44–0.90). Obvious significant heterogeneity was observed among included studies (P < 0.001 for heterogeneity; I2 = 79.6%). There was no significant publication bias by Begg's test (P = 0.348) or Egger's test (P = 0.130). In conclusion, this meta-analysis indicates that high intake of carrot is associated with a low incidence of urothelial cancer. Considering the limited included studies and huge heterogeneity, further large well-designed prospective cohort studies are warranted to confirm the findings from our meta-analysis.
Software reliability analysis of laptop computers

Computers freezing to work is a common problem and can cause unexpected damages if the work is important but not saved yet. This kind of problems is often caused by software failures which are hard to predict. This paper focuses on the reliability analysis of laptop computers experiencing multiple occurrences of failures in operation. The failure has been defined as the event that the computer freezes and has to be restarted unintended or by a forced re-start. The failure data was collected during three experiments running on one laptop computer continuously for a period of time under three different running environments. We fit a number of candidate distributions to the time between failures data. The results showed that the conventional Weibull distribution often used in practice is the best choice for all three data sets. However one interesting finding is that the mean time between failures decreases substantially when the computer is heavily stressed. This shows that if the computer is running on a full load, then the work should be frequently saved to avoid the damage.
Students' Perceptions of Aquaculture Education in the Northeast Region.

The purpose of this research was to determine educational benefits, mathematics and science skills, life skills, and the future of aquaculture as perceived by agriculture students in 12 northeastern states. Respondents (TJ= 60) profoundly believed in their aquaculture programs because of the hands-on learning environmentprovided by such programs. Studentsfound their aquaculture programs exciting, challenging, and fin. The process of learning scientific and mathematical concepts transcended age groups and geographic origination, especially for topics relating to chemistry and biology. Additional skills gained included problem solving, teamwork, responsibility, communication and leadership. Respondents viewed the care andmaintenance of an aquaculture system asparamount to the success of an aquacultureprogram. Northeastern agriculture students were adamant in their belief thatpeople (adults andyouth) external to an aquaculture education program were not aware of and/or did not care about the educational benefits derived from such a program. Respondents stated that the aquaculture program was one of the best educational experiences they had acquired in high school, yet they did not have aspirations of working in the aquaculture industry. Respondents believed that increased collaboration between high school teachers and/or school districts will lead to an increase in aquaculture education program enrollments.
Determinants of Commercial Banks' Residual Profitability: An Industry Approach

This study contrasts the reliability of Abnormal ROE (residual income scaled by beginning-of-period book value of equity) estimates based on value drivers with a contextual approach in the commercial bank industry of the OECD countries. We identify the key theoretical variables from the banking and accounting literature and analyze the impact on the prediction of future abnormal ROEs. After regressing the following year's abnormal ROE on those variables, we verify that some of them, related to the competitiveness of banks and the accounting system, play a determinant role. Our evidence suggests that the identification of 'other information' factors, by a contextual approach, might improve the empirical use of the Ohlson Model in commercial banks, especially when they act in competitive environments and/or relevant intangibles are not captured by accounting.
Integrating edge detection and fuzzy connectedness for automated segmentation of anatomical branching structures

Image segmentation algorithms are critical components of medical image analysis systems. This paper presents a novel and fully automated methodology for segmenting anatomical branching structures in medical images. It is a hybrid approach which integrates the Canny edge detection to obtain a preliminary boundary of the structure and the fuzzy connectedness algorithm to handle efficiently the discontinuities of the returned edge map. To ensure efficient localisation of weak branches, the fuzzy connectedness framework is applied in a sliding window mode and using a voting scheme the optimal connection point is estimated. Finally, the image regions are labelled as tissue or background using a locally adaptive thresholding technique. The proposed methodology is applied and evaluated in segmenting ductal trees visualised in clinical X-ray galactograms and vasculature visualised in angiograms. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach achieving high scores of detection rate and accuracy among state-of-the-art segmentation techniques.
Measurement of Power Factors of Standard Capacitors

In the paper, a method for measurement of power factors of standard capacitors is described. Resistors with calculable time constants are used as reference standards. The measurement may be made with an uncertainty of less than 1.10-5 in the range of 1000-10 000 pF and at 1592 Hz.
Designing an Alpha Microprocessor

Processor design teams at Digital and now Compaq Computer Corp. have been designing and building microprocessors for about 20 years. For the past 10 years, they have been designing Alpha processors with the goal of maintaining industry-leading performance during each generation. Over time, the teams have developed a process to support this goal. Defining and designing a high-performance processor is high adventure in computer engineering. Nevertheless, this journey into new technologies and the unknown has a well-defined path. The author, a computer architect, shares the process the Alpha design teams use to develop their processors. From early product definition to delivery of the design (tape out) and debug, the article gives an insider's view of the steps in building a microprocessor. It also gives a glimpse of what it's like to work on such a project. The author sees the most striking and defining characteristic of the Alpha design team as its sense of a shared culture. The design processes are encoded, more often than not, in a set of rituals rather than a set of documents. The process is passed on from the more experienced engineers to those at the start of their careers. This cultural memory is embodied in the group as a whole.
MicroRNA profiling reveals new aspects of HIV neurodegeneration: caspase‐6 regulates astrocyte survival

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNA molecules, which are known to regulate gene expression in physiological and pathological conditions. miRNA profiling was performed using brain tissue from patients with HIV encephalitis (HIVE), a neuroinflammatory/degenerative disorder caused by HIV infection of the brain. Microarray analysis showed differential expression of multiple miRNAs in HIVE compared to control brains. Target prediction and gene ontology enrichment analysis disclosed targeting of several gene families/biological processes by differentially expressed miRNAs (DEMs), with cell death‐related genes, including caspase‐6, showing a bias toward down‐regulated DEMs. Consistent with the miRNA data, HIVE brains exhibited higher levels of caspase‐6 transcripts compared with control patients. Immunohistochemical analysis showed localization of the cleaved form of caspase‐6 in astrocytes in HIVE brain sections. Exposure of cultured human primary astrocytes to HIV viral protein R (Vpr) induced p53 up‐regulation, loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, and caspase‐6 activation followed by cell injury. Transgenic mice, expressing Vpr in microglial cells, demonstrated astrocyte apoptosis in brain, which was associated with caspase‐6 activation and neurobehavioral abnormalities. Overall, these data point to previously unrecognized alterations in miRNA profile in the brain during HIV infection, which contribute to cell death through dysregulation of cell death machinery. —Noorbakhsh, F. , Ramachandran, R. , Barsby, N. , Ellestad, K. K. , LeBlanc, A. , Dickie, P., Baker, G. , Hollenberg, M. D. , Cohen, E. A. , Power, C. MicroRNA profiling reveals new aspects of HIV neurodegeneration: caspase‐6 regulates astrocyte survival. FASEB J. 24, 1799–1812 (2010). www.fasebj. org