Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cloning of λ DNA fragments into pUC19 vector to study the ligation efficiency of NdeI-digested pUC19 and HindIII-digested pUC19 by T4 DNA ligase

Ligation experiments were conducted to examine the ligation efficiencies of HindIIIdigested pUC19 and NdeI digested pUC19 vectors by T4 DNA ligase. HindIII-digested pUC19 was shown to ligate more efficiently than NdeI-digested pUC19. Upon close examination, HindIII-digested pUC19 could also ligate intermolecularly and intramolecularly whereas NdeI-digested pUC19 can only ligate intermolecularly. Ligation of HindIII-digested pUC19 yielded monomeric and multi-meric, circular plasmid with varying degree of supercoiling. Ligation of NdeI-digested pUC19 only yielded multi-meric and possibly linear ligated fragments. Ligation temperature of 4, 16, and 22oC showed that temperature did not significantly affect the ligation efficiency. In order to study the effect of plasmid size on ligation efficiency, cloning of pUC19 fragments of sizes ~3686, 4686, and 6686 kb was attempted. Specific regions from λ DNA were amplified by PCR and these 1000, 2000, and 4000 bp fragments were cloned into pUC19 vectors. However, clones could not be obtained due to time constraints and technical difficulties in the screening step. Improvements on the screening system may increase the likelihood of obtaining desirable clones.
Agile Development Testing Paradigms

Software testing in the agile development is too complex issue in the Information Technology world. Since agile methods don't focus much on testing activities and agile software development doesn't include testing practices required for the quality of project, the process of finding the suitable method for testing, mainly for large scale projects is challenging. In this paper, we propose a concept of integrated agile software testing in a large scale project. This research define the software testing process technologies and principles for the agile software testing and identifies the best practices for testing software products in agile development process.
Anelastic Earth structure from the coherency of the ambient seismic field

[1] Cross correlation of the ambient seismic field is now routinely used to measure seismic wave travel times; however, relatively little attention has been paid to other information that could be extracted from these signals. In this paper we demonstrate the relationship between the spatial coherency of the ambient field and the elastodynamic Green's function in both time and frequency domains. Through measurement of the frequency domain coherency as a function of distance, we sequentially recover phase velocities and attenuation coefficients. From these measurements we generate 1-D shear wave velocity and attenuation models for southern California. The ambient field measurements of attenuation and the exceptional path coverage that results from the many possible interstation measurements allow us to extend Q estimates over a range of frequencies that has previously been difficult to analyze using earthquake data. Measurements from paths that cross major sedimentary basins show both lower wave speeds and lower-quality factors than other paths, as expected. Our results indicate that there is a wealth of information available in the spatial coherency of the ambient seismic field.
A Novel Form of Macrophage Function Inhibition by Leishmania mexicana Infection: Involvement in Inhibition of NF-kB Translocation

Manipulation of host cell signalling pathways and pro-inflammatory proteins expression by Leishmania is critical for Leishmania's survival and resultant pathology. Therefore, the characteristics of long time exposure of promastigotes mediated signalling to the MAP kinases, COX-2, iNOS, NO production and NF-κB pathways were investigated in comparison to LPS stimulation. Promastigotes caused no effect on phosphorylation of the three MAP kinases. Unlike outcome was observed on COX-2, iNOS and NO production using the same manner. Consequently, expressions of these proteins were also NF-κB dependent. Surprisingly, promastigotes inhibit macrophage NF-κB translocation into nucleus following LPS stimulation and caused a reversal of promastigotes mediated inhibition of macrophage COX-2, iNOS and NO production. These data demonstrated for the first time the role of NF-κB translocation in mediating the effect of L. mexicana promastigotes on pro-inflammatory proteins which these proteins play a crucial role in innate immunity against Leishmania infection.
Skill Memories for Parameterized Dynamic Action Primitives on the Pneumatically Driven Humanoid Robot Child Affetto

In this work, we propose an extension of parameterized skills to achieve generalization of forward control signals for action primitives that result in an enhanced control quality of complex robotic systems. We argue to shift the complexity of learning the full dynamics of the robot to a lower dimensional task related learning problem. Due to generalization over task variability, online learning for complex robots as well as complex scenarios becomes feasible. We perform an experimental evaluation of the generalization capabilities of the proposed online learning system through simulation of a compliant 2DOF arm. Scalability to a complex robotic system is demonstrated on the pneumatically driven humanoid robot Affetto including 6DOF.
ATINER ' s Conference Paper Series LNG 2013-0833

Social media in Chinese has seen an explosive growth in the last few years. Due to the quantity of social media big data, it contains consumers’ spontaneous comments on almost any brands, hence a valuable source for surveying customers’ sentiments for business insights. Automatic survey from Chinese social media enabled by Natural Language Processing is a way of doing just that, in scale. This paper presents the general architecture and implementation of a Chinese customer insight system mining from social media, to serve businesses for cases like risk management as well as brand comparison. Benchmarks show that the sentiments extracted by this system reach high precision (about 80%) and fair recall that is comparable with the English system.
An Investigation of End-Users Acceptance Of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems at the Post-Implementation Phase in Mid-Sized Public Organisations In Tanzania

The Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is, described as a package business software system with a database that allows an organisation to automate and integrate its business processes, share common data and practices across its units, in a real-time environment. This study aimed at investigating factors that affect the end-users acceptance of the ERP system during post-implementation phase in Tanzania. The quantitative approach was used. Three mid-sized public organisations in Tanzania who are at the post-implementation phase of ERP systems implementation were randomly selected and the 70 end-users in these organisations were administered with a questionnaire based on the UTAUT model. The model also assisted in generating the study hypothesis from its main dimensions. The hypotheses were then tested by regression analysis of the data generated by the questionnaire and the relationships among the study variables were established. The unit of analysis was individual respondents. The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social issues and facilitating condition affect end-user acceptance of ERP systems; all had a significance of below 0.05. The major conclusion of the study is that all the four dimensions (Performance expectation, Effort expectation, Social influence and Facilitating conditions) of the UTAUT model are indeed factors that influenced in varied magnitude the end-user acceptance of ERP systems in mid-size public organisations in Tanzania, Thus it is recommended that organisations need to pay close attention to these dimensions in order to improve end-user ERP acceptance.
Incorporating many-body effects into modeling of semiconductor lasers and amplifiers

Major many-body effects that are important for semiconductor laser modeling are summarized. We adopt a bottom-up approach to incorporate these many-body effects into a model for semiconductor lasers and amplifiers. The optical susceptibility function computed from the semiconductor Bloch equations (SBEs) is approximated by a single Lorentzian, or a superposition of a few Lorentzians in the frequency domain. Our approach leads to a set of effective Bloch equations. We compare this approach with the full microscopic SBEs for the case of pulse propagation. Good agreement between the two is obtained for pulse widths longer than tens of picoseconds.
Efficacy and Safety of Weekly and Biweekly Cetuximab-Combined FOLFIRI Regimen as First-line Setting in Patients with Metastatic Colorectal Cancer: Experience in a Southern Taiwan Medical Center

Purpose. This retrospective study was designed to analyze the two different regimens of weekly and biweekly cetuximab-combination FOLFIRI chemotherapy, and determine the toxicities and the efficacy of these two different regimens administered in Taiwanese patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Methods. From January 2005 through December 2008, a total of sixty patients with metastatic colorectal cancer receiving target therapy of cetuximab-combination FOLFIRI chemotherapy were analyzed retrospectively. These patients were divided into two groups with different regimens of administration. In Group A, 26 patients received intravenous (IV) cetuximab weekly (400 mg/m^2 as a 120-min IV infusion at first week, then 250 mg/m^2 as a 60-min IV per week). In group B, 34 patients received intravenous (IV) cetuximab biweekly (500 mg/m^2 as a 120-min IV infusion per two-week). According to the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumor (RECIST), characteristics of each patient, toxicities, efficacy or tumor response were regularly recorded. Results. The overall disease control rate (complete response+partial response+stable disease) was comparable of 76.8% (20/26) for group A and 82.4% (28/34) for group B respectively (p=0.602). The progression-free survival was comparable between these two treatments (12 months in group A vs. 13 months in group B; p=0.662). The efficacy of the every-2-weeks regimen was similar to the approved weekly dosing regimen. Among all recorded side effects, the incidence of grade 3 or 4 diarrhea was 11.5% (3/26) in group A and 8.8% (3/34) in group B. Grade 3 skin rash was seen in 3 patients (11.5%) from group A and 5 patients (14.7%) from group B. The incidence of grade 3 or 4 neutropenia /anemia/ thrombocytopenia encounteredwas 11.5% (3/26)/7.7% (2/26)/7.7% (2/26) in group A and 14.7% (5/34)/5.9%/ (2/34)/5.9% (2.34) in group B. There was no significant difference between these two different regimens of administration and all toxicities were easily controlled with standard therapies. No treatment-related deaths occurred in either group. Conclusions. Our results demonstrated similarities in terms of toxicity and efficacy to those obtained by weekly and biweekly administration of cetuximab with combined FOLFIRI chemotherapy in Taiwanese patients.
Consumption Taxation and Endogenous Growth in a Model with New Generations

This article studies the implications of consumption taxation on capital accumulation in a one-sector endogenous growth model with finite horizons. A tax on consumption, when tax revenues are lump-sum rebated to consumers, redistributes income between living generations and future, still unborn, generations, and therefore depresses aggregate consumption and raises saving, stimulating capital accumulation and economic growth. If however the resources from taxation are used for financing unproductive public spending, the effect of the consumption tax on the endogenous growth rate disappears as no intergenerational redistribution of income occurs. Finally, a consumption tax hike accompanied by a compensatory reduction of public debt increases long-run economic growth and reduces the consumption-output ratio. Our results on consumption taxation differ substantially from those obtained within the endogenous growth literature.
MODELING VISUAL AFFORDANCES: THE SELECTIVE ATTENTION FOR ACTION MODEL (SAAM)

Classically, visual attention is assumed to be influenced by visual properties of objects, e. g. as assessed in visual search tasks. However, recent experimental evidence suggests that visual attention is also guided by action-related properties of objects (“affordances”),1,2 e. g. the handle of a cup affords grasping the cup; therefore attention is drawn towards the handle. In a first step towards modelling this interaction between attention and action, we implemented the Selective Attention for Action model (SAAM). The design of SAAM is based on the Selective Attention for Identification model (SAIM). 3 For instance, we also followed a soft-constraint satisfaction approach in a connectionist framework. However, SAAM’s selection process is guided by locations within objects suitable for grasping them whereas SAIM selects objects based on their visual properties. In order to implement SAAM’s selection mechanism two sets of constraints were implemented. The first set of constraints took into account the anatomy of the hand, e. g. maximal possible distances between fingers. The second set of constraints (geometrical constraints) considered suitable contact points on objects by using simple edge detectors. We demonstrate here that SAAM can successfully mimic human behaviour by comparing simulated contact points with experimental data.
Flamo : Filtering Algorithms for Location Based Publish / Subscribe on Moving Objects

Flamo: The growth of social networks and mobile telephony has facilitated the real time propagation of location based services. Instant location based publish/subscribe system are unavoidable for next generation location based models. The existing works in this area are designed for static publishers/ subscribers. To explore the nearby local events and to get instant replies a push model system is necessary where user registers their interests and the server publishes instant relevant answers. In FLAMO we introduces an efficient publish/subscribe method that can easily publish location aware results even for moving subscribers. This uses an R-tree based index by integrating textual descriptions into R-tree nodes is used to achieve results. This method can support both conjunctive queries and ranking queries and also works for both static and moving objects.
A Protocol Structure for Controlling Adaptive Conveyor System in Automatized High Complex Distribution Centers

This paper shows a protocol and execution structure of modules for opportunistic routing with forecast on decentralized control with PLCs. Current routing algorithms focus on small to middle material flow systems. Deadlocks can be determined easily because of the lack of dynamic behavior of the goods. The forecast to determine the expected time of the good at one transportation system can be computed more reliable. For high complex distribution centers with several hundred transportation units the forecast is not reliable enough to ensure the system consistency by avoid deadlocks. Therefore, a routing protocol with a execution structure is needed to manage the partial path and recalculate when needed.
Trickle or treat: The dynamics of nutrient export from polar glaciers

Cold‐based polar glacier watersheds contain well‐defined supraglacial, ice‐marginal, and proglacial elements that differ in their degree of hydrologic connectivity, sources of water (e.g., snow, ice, and/or sediment pore water), meltwater residence times, allochthonous and autochthonous nutrient, and sediment loads. We investigated 11 distinct hydrological units along the supraglacial, ice marginal, and proglacial flow paths that drain Joyce Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. We found that these units play unique and important roles as sources and/or sinks for dissolved inorganic nitrogen and dissolved inorganic phosphorus and for specific fractions of dissolved organic matter (DOM) as waters are routed from the glacier into nutrient‐poor downstream ecosystems. Changes in nutrient export from the glacial system as a whole were observed as the routing and residence times of meltwater changed throughout the melt season. The concentrations of major ions in the proglacial stream were inversely proportional to discharge, such that there was a relatively constant “trickle” of these solutes into downstream ecosystems. In contrast, NO3− concentrations generally increased with discharge, resulting in delivery of episodic pulses of dissolved inorganic nitrogen‐rich water (“treats”) into those same ecosystems during high discharge events. DOM concentrations or fluorescence did not correlate with discharge rate, but high variability in DOM concentrations or fluorescence suggests that DOM may be exported downstream as episodic treats, but with spatial and/or temporal patterns that remain poorly understood. The strong, nutrient‐specific responses to changes in hydrology suggest that polar glacier drainage systems may export meltwater with nutrient compositions that vary within and between melt seasons and watersheds. Because nutrient dynamics identified in this study differ between glacier watersheds with broadly similar hydrology, climate, and geology, we emphasize the need to develop conceptual models of nutrient export that thoroughly integrate the biogeochemical and hydrological processes that control the sources, fate, and export of nutrients from each system.
Investigating the relationship between Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and internal control: exploratory study

This research aims to investigate the effect of ERP systems success in providing adequate effective internal control procedures. In order to explore this relationship, this research has identified three propositions derived from the existing literature. First proposition addresses the relationship between ERP success and the contingency variables (strategy, structure, size, management support, organisational culture, ERP band and the maturity of ERP systems). Second proposition refers to the relationship between the internal control procedures and the seven contingency variables. Last proposition outlines the impact of ERP systems success on internal control procedures. Preliminary result based on exploratory study find that different companies follow different requirements and that mainly depends on ownership. Eight components of COSO’s ERM framework (internal environment, objective setting, event identification, risk assessment, risk responses, control activities, information& communication, and monitoring) are considered in the study, but there are variations regarding their level of involvement. The findings show that ERP systems can reduce the cost, increase the speed of producing results and reports, reduce the errors, and improve internal control procedures. However, the impact of ERP system can be different from one company to another. The study concludes that further quantitative study is required to explain the impact of ERP system success on internal control procedures and to measure the effect of the seven contingency variables. ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: BUS2013-0626 6
OF THE BACK SIDE PASSIVATION LAYER OF SCREEN PRINTED BIFACIAL SILICON SOLAR CELLS

This work compares the back side passivation quality of bifacial silicon (Si) solar cells with boron back-surface-field (B-BSF) of different sheet resistances. The influence of the thickness of an additional dry thermal silicon dioxide (SiO2) to passivate the surface of the B-BSF is also investigated. The passivation quality is compared in two experiments: First Si lifetime samples with boron (B) emitter are passivated and their emitter saturation current densities (J0E) are determined with quasi-steady-state photoconductance (QSSPC) measurements after every process step. Secondly large area bifacial solar cells with different base doping are processed. The cell parameters are determined by illuminated current-voltage (IV) characteristics and the effective minority charge carrier diffusion lengths (Leff) are calculated with a model [1] using the internal quantum efficiencies (IQE) from spectral response measurements. The optimum B-BSF sheet resistance for the bifacial cell concept used is found to be 60 Ohm/sq. The optimum value of the thickness of the SiO2 layer for additional surface passivation is found to be in the range of 1930 nm dependent on the base doping.
Effects of Replacing Fish Oil with Vegetable Oils in Feed for Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Arctic Charr (Salvelinus alpinus)

As global capture of fish has stagnated and fish consumption is increasing due to a growing human population, the demand can only be met by increased aquaculture production. Fish oil (FO), derived exclusively from wild pelagic fish, has traditionally been used as the primary lipid source in fish feeds. For a number of reasons, more sustainable development of aquaculture is necessary where FO needs to be replaced with a more sustainable lipid source. This thesis investigated the effects of FO replacement with two vegetable oils on growth, lipid content, feed preference and swimming performance of two salmonid species; rainbow trout and Arctic charr. In addition, a comparison of lipid content and composition with wild fish was performed to highlight the importance of natural food webs for successful production of specific fish species. The results obtained showed no negative effects on growth of fish fed vegetable oils. However, significant changes in fatty acid profiles were observed in fish tissues, with reduced levels of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA), mainly EPA and DHA, and increased levels of 18:1n-9 and 18:2n-6. Comparisons of fatty acid profiles of wild and farmed Arctic charr showed significant differences in individual n-3 and n-6 fatty acids. The largest difference was found in arachidonic acid (20:4n-6) content with 7-fold higher levels in the phospholipid fraction in white muscle of wild Arctic charr compared with Arctic charr fed marine FO. Cholesterol-lowering effects were observed in fish fed rapeseed oil, possibly explained by the presence of phytosterols in the diet. Swimming performance at 4 oC was significantly reduced in Arctic charr fed a blend of rapeseed oil and palm oil. This outcome is suggested to be an effect of the different levels of n-3 LCPUFA and saturated fatty acids due to their temperature influenced properties. The results in this thesis imply that an appropriate mix of vegetable oils and FO can replace the sole use of FO in fish feeds. However, researchers and feed manufacturers should be encouraged to continue to increase feed diversification in order to optimize the nutritional requirements of farmed fish.
Evolution of Coupled Lives' Dependency Across Generations and Pricing Impact

This paper studies the dependence between coupled lives - both within and across generations - and its effects on prices of reversionary annuities in the presence of longevity risk. Longevity risk is represented via a stochastic mortality intensity. Dependence is modelled through copula functions. We consider Archimedean single and multi-parameter copulas. We find that dependence decreases when passing from older generations to younger generations. Not only the level of dependence but also its features - as measured by the copula - change across generations: the best-fit Archimedean copula is not the same across generations. Moreover, for all the generations under exam the single-parameter copula is dominated by the two-parameter one. The independence assumption produces quantifiable mispricing of reversionary annuities. The misspecification of the copula produces different mispricing effects on different generations. The research is conducted using a well-known dataset of double life contracts.