Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Technology Selection on Innovation Success and Organizational Performance

This paper is to analyze the impact of a company’s technology selection on its innovation success and organizational performance. Technological capability enables a company to add value to products and processes, and its impact on innovation success has been examined. Apart from technological capability, a company also needs technology management capability to manage technological resources effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model for implementation of technology selection, consisting of five elements: technology selection, technological capability, technology management capability, innovation success and organizational performance. The model is empirically tested using the data of 120 Chinese companies acquired by interviews and surveys. The results indicate that a company’s technology selection has no direct impact on innovation success; technology selection has a significant positive impact on technological capability and technology management capability, which, in turn, have a significant positive impact on innovation success; innovation success has a significant positive impact on organizational performance.
The effect of copper-induced oxidative stress on regeneration in Anemonia viridis (Forskäl, 1775)

The release of pollutants such as metals into the aquatic environment has raised concerns over the health of coral reefs, as elevated concentrations of metals are known to cause oxidative stress and bleaching. This is an important issue to address as metals are continuously released into the environment and there is evidence that metals such as copper can still be prevalent after historical mining activities, particularly in estuaries around the Plymouth Sound, UK. Anemonia viridis is commonly found around this area and is used in the literature as a model organism for coral species. A.viridis harbours symbiotic zooxanthellae and is also known to have strong regenerative abilities. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to determine whether copper affected the regenerative abilities of A.viridis, using zooxanthellae density, glutathione content and lipid peroxidation products as indicators of oxidative stress, and 2) to generate new data on the regenerative abilities in A.viridis of different sizes. A new image analysis method was employed to quantify regeneration in tentacles. Results showed that copper induced oxidative stress as there was significant bleaching of zooxanthellae and an increase in total glutathione content (P < 0.05). Oxidative stress appeared to have an adverse effect on the initial growth rates of tentacles. Larger anemones had faster rates of regeneration compared to smaller anemones (P < 0.05) and the symbiont density varied in regenerating tentacles. This study demonstrated that copper had an adverse effect on the symbiotic status and regenerative ability in anemones, which may have implications for the health and growth of anemones and coral reefs worldwide as a result of metal pollution.
Interactive comment on “ LIVVkit 2 . 1 : Automated and extensible ice sheet model validation ” by

The paper entitled "LIVVkit 2.1: Automated and extensible ice sheet model validation" by Katherine Evans et al. presents recent developments of LIVVkit, a verification/validation package for stand-alone ice sheet models and coupled Earth System models. They present here how it can be used to validate a Greenland ice sheet simulation using CISM-Albany and CESM. An analysis of the comparison between the modeled surface mass balance (SMB) and RACMO’s SMB, for example, shows that Greenland’s southwest coast has insufficient ablation.
Responses of Muscle Mitochondrial Function to Physical Activity: A Literature Review

Skeletal muscles play an active role in regulating the metabolic homeostasis through their ability for relating to adipose tissue and endocrine hormones. Contraction of the skeletal muscle leads to increased release of several myokines, such as irisin, which is able to interact with the adipose tissue. Physical activity promotes the irisin mechanism by augmenting the peroxisomes (PGC1-α) in the skeletal muscle. Afterwards, an elevation occurs in the membrane protein of fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5) in muscle, ultimately resulting in production of irisin. The expression of irisin and FNDC5 converts white adipose into the brown type and increases energy consumption by the whole body hindering obesity and diabetes. The effects of regular exercise training on preventing obesity, diabetes, and the related complications, as well as improving health have already been proven. However, the point is that these beneficial effects are due to the cellular-molecular mechanisms, which are still under discussion. In this review, we searched the online databases, including scientific information database (SID), Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, and Scopus. The following keywords were used: training, physical activity, myokine, adipose tissue, PRDM16, PGC-1α, PPARγ, SIRT1, FGF21, bone morphogenetic protein, neurugolin, VEGF, and IL-15. All the articles, including research studies, review articles, descriptive and analytical studies, in addition to cross-sectional researches published during 1998-2017 were reviewed. According to the obtained results, it seems that expression of irisin and FNDC5 converts the white adipose into brown adipose resulting in increased energy consumption. It has been proven in the literature that regular exercise training prevents obesity, diabetes, and the related complications, as well as improving health.
A Miniaturized Omni-directional Negative Permittivity Zeroth-Order Resonance Antenna

─ An Evolved Negative permittivity (ENG) Zeroth-Order Resonance (ZOR) antenna with miniaturized size and ultra-low profile is presented in this paper. By adding parasitic patch and loading meander line in steps, the antenna ZOR operational frequency is decreased from 5.084 GHz to 177.8685 MHz, while keeping the overall dimensions unchanged; which is equivalent to about twenty-eight times electrical size reduction based on the equivalent circuit models. Moreover, the proposed miniaturized antenna with omni-directional radiation performance is promising for the specific lowpower radio applications, such as short range remote control system and household security system. Index Terms ─ Evolved negative permittivity, low-profile, miniaturization, zeroth-order resonance antenna.
Obtaining size-controlled microcapsules by ionic gelation with high and low acyl gellans containing Lactococcus lactis

Control the diameter of microcapsules obtained with functional biopolymer is a crucial parameter in the success of food applications, since it affects the protection of microencapsulated microorganism and also in the texture of the final product. The aim of this study was to assess the obtaining of controlled size microcapsules containing Lactococcus lactis, using mixtures of high acyl gellan (HA) and low acyl gellan (LA). A concentration of 0.2% (w/w) gellan was employed using a simple design, generating the following mixtures: 100HA/0.0LA, 0.0HA/100LA, 25HA/75LA, 50HA/50LA and 75HA/25LA. The diameter of the microcapsules, efficiency of microencapsulation and viability of the microencapsulated microorganism were studied in function of the speed of agitation (400-800 rpm) and surfactant concentration (sorbitan monooleate) (0.00.2%)v/v. The results indicated that mixtures with concentration equal or greater than 50% of HA gellan are not efficient for obtaining microcapsules, only the LA gellan and the mixture 25HA/75LA gave acceptable results. The viability of the microorganism and the efficiency of microencapsulation were descending function of the stirring speed and surfactant concentration. The microcapsules obtained had diameters not greater than 80 µm when the highest concentrations of surfactant (0.2% v/v) and stirring speed (800 rpm) were used, suggesting that the ionic gelation can be used to obtain microcapsules of controlled size (15-75 µm) containing Lactococcus lactis with high viability (83.32%) and high efficiency of microencapsulation (82.4%), which makes it feasible for use in food applications.
Efficient Implementations of Pairing-Based Cryptography on Embedded Systems

Many cryptographic applications use bilinear pairing such as identity based signature, instance identity-based key agreement, searchable public-key encryption, short signature scheme, certificate less encryption and blind signature. Elliptic curves over finite field are the most secure and efficient way to implement bilinear pairings for the these applications. Pairing based cryptosystems are being implemented on different platforms such as low-power and mobile devices. Recently, hardware capabilities of embedded devices have been emerging which can support efficient and faster implementations of pairings on hand-held devices. In this thesis, the main focus is optimization of Optimal Ate-pairing using special class of ordinary curves, Barreto-Naehring (BN), for different security levels on low-resource devices with ARM processors. Latest ARM architectures are using SIMD instructions based NEON engine and are helpful to optimize basic algorithms. Pairing implementations are being done using tower field which use field multiplication as the most important computation. This work presents NEON implementation of two multipliers (Karatsuba and Schoolbook) and compare the performance of these multipliers with differnt multipliers present in the litrature for different field sizes. This work reports the fastest implementation timing of pairing for BN254, BN446 and BN638 curves for ARMv7 architecture which have secrity levels as 128-, 164-, and 192-bit, respectively. This work also presents comparison of code performance for ARMv8 architectures.
Cauchy Combination Test: A Powerful Test With Analytic p-Value Calculation Under Arbitrary Dependency Structures

Abstract–Combining individual p-values to aggregate multiple small effects has a long-standing interest in statistics, dating back to the classic Fisher’s combination test. In modern large-scale data analysis, correlation and sparsity are common features and efficient computation is a necessary requirement for dealing with massive data. To overcome these challenges, we propose a new test that takes advantage of the Cauchy distribution. Our test statistic has a simple form and is defined as a weighted sum of Cauchy transformation of individual p-values. We prove a nonasymptotic result that the tail of the null distribution of our proposed test statistic can be well approximated by a Cauchy distribution under arbitrary dependency structures. Based on this theoretical result, the p-value calculation of our proposed test is not only accurate, but also as simple as the classic z-test or t-test, making our test well suited for analyzing massive data. We further show that the power of the proposed test is asymptotically optimal in a strong sparsity setting. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed test has both strong power against sparse alternatives and a good accuracy with respect to p-value calculations, especially for very small p-values. The proposed test has also been applied to a genome-wide association study of Crohn’s disease and compared with several existing tests. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Membrane perforation by the pore-forming toxin pneumolysin

Significance Pneumolysin, a pore-forming toxin of Streptococcus pneumoniae, assembles into rings on cholesterol-containing membranes of host cells. β-hairpins form a barrel-shaped transmembrane β-sheet that perforates the membrane, leading to cell lysis. In atomistic and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, we resolve how pneumolysin docks to cholesterol-rich bilayers and how membrane pores form. Remarkably, pneumolysin rings are just wide enough that pores form even if lipid efflux is blocked, driven by spontaneous buckling of the lipid plug. In a survey of electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy images, we identify key intermediates along both the lipid-efflux and plug-buckling pathways of pore opening. Pneumolysin (PLY), a major virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae, perforates cholesterol-rich lipid membranes. PLY protomers oligomerize as rings on the membrane and then undergo a structural transition that triggers the formation of membrane pores. Structures of PLY rings in prepore and pore conformations define the beginning and end of this transition, but the detailed mechanism of pore formation remains unclear. With atomistic and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, we resolve key steps during PLY pore formation. Our simulations confirm critical PLY membrane-binding sites identified previously by mutagenesis. The transmembrane β-hairpins of the PLY pore conformation are stable only for oligomers, forming a curtain-like membrane-spanning β-sheet. Its hydrophilic inner face draws water into the protein–lipid interface, forcing lipids to recede. For PLY rings, this zone of lipid clearance expands into a cylindrical membrane pore. The lipid plug caught inside the PLY ring can escape by lipid efflux via the lower leaflet. If this path is too slow or blocked, the pore opens by membrane buckling, driven by the line tension acting on the detached rim of the lipid plug. Interestingly, PLY rings are just wide enough for the plug to buckle spontaneously in mammalian membranes. In a survey of electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) and atomic force microscopy images, we identify key intermediates along both the efflux and buckling pathways to pore formation, as seen in the simulations.
Developing Idea Management Systems: Guidelines for Success

Idea management is identified as one of the most important organizational capabilities that would lead to better innovation outcomes. An idea management system (IMS) is a planned and controlled methodological procedure through which ideas flow from initiation and generation to execution and launch. This paper presents comprehensive guidelines on developing successful idea management systems. The guidelines were developed using action research methodology to develop an idea management system for an Egyptian industrial conglomerate. Results asserted that, besides developing the core functions of the IMS, several enabling organizational factors must also be reconsidered in order for the IMS to yield successful results. Most important core guidelines tackle idea generation techniques, idea submission process, idea evaluation criteria, technology portfolio mapping and project portfolio composition. For the enabling factors, guidelines tackle management support, IMS personnel selection, reward system characteristics, organizational awareness campaigns, IMS testing group, and required effeorts and dedication.
Growth of Molybdenum Trioxide Nanoribbons on Oriented Ag and Au Nanostructures: A Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Study

Abstract We report the growth of molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) nanoribbons (NRs) on epitaxial Ag and oriented Au nanostructures (NSs) using an ultra-high vacuum (UHV)-molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique at different substrate temperatures. An approximately 2 nm silver (Ag) film has been deposited at different growth temperatures (using UHV-MBE) on cleaned Si(100), Si(110), and Si(111) substrates. For faceted Au NSs, an approximately 50 nm Au film has been deposited (using high-vacuum thermal evaporation) on a Si(100) substrate with a native oxide layer at the interface and the sample was annealed in low vacuum (≈10−2) and at high temperature (≈975°C). Scanning electron microscopy measurements were performed to determine the morphology of MoO3/Ag and MoO3/Au composite films. From energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy elemental mapping and line scans it is found that faceted Au NSs are more favorable for the growth of MoO3 NRs than epitaxial Ag microstructures.
Stress Hormone and Oxidative Stress Biomarkers Link Obesity and Diabetes with Reduced Fertility Potential

Objective Tilting the balance in favor of antioxidant agents could increase infertility problems in obese and diabetic individuals. The aim of this study was to evaluate oxidative stress status in semen of men with type 2 diabetes and obesity to investigate whether excessive amounts of oxidative stress, as a result of diabetes and obesity, influence infertility potential. Materials and Methods A case-control study was conducted in men (n=150) attending the Infertility Center of Royan Institute between December 2016 and February 2017. Participants were categorized into four groups; normal weight (BMI<25 kg/m2) and non-type-2 diabetic (control=40), obese and non- type-2 diabetic (obese=40), non-obese and type- 2 diabetic (Nob-DM=35), and obese and type-2 diabetic (Ob-DM=35). The semen analysis was performed according to the World Health Organization criteria. Oxidative stress, DNA fragmentation, sperm apoptosis, and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) were evaluated in semen samples of men. Serum glucose, HbA1c, cortisol, and testosterone levels were determined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method. Results Compared with the control group, sperm motility, progressive motility, and normal morphology were significantly decreased in the obese, Nob-DM, and Ob-DM groups (P<0.01). The obese, Nob-DM, and Ob-DM groups showed significantly lower levels of TAC and higher amounts of oxidative stress, early apoptotic sperm, and the percentage of DNA fragmentation as compared with the control group (P<0.05). Testosterone concentration was decreased in the obese, Nob-DM, and Ob-DM groups when compared with healthy individuals (P<0.05), whereas the cortisol level was significantly increased in the Nob-DM and Ob-DM groups in comparison to the obese and control group (P<0.01). Conclusion Increased amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and DNA fragmentation in men affected by either diabetes or obesity could be considered prognostic factors in sub-fertile patients, alerting physicians to an early screen of male patients to avoid the development of infertility in prone patients.
Environment Detection and Path Planning Using the E-puck Robot

Automatic path planning is one of the most challenging problems confronted by autonomous robots. Generating optimal paths for autonomous robots are some of the heavily studied subjects in mobile robotics applications. This paper documents the implementation of a path planning project using a mobile robot in a structured environment. The environment is detected through a camera and then a roadmap of the environment is built using some algorithms. Finally a graph search algorithm called A* is implemented that searches through the roadmap and ﬁnds an optimal path for robot to move from start position to goal position avoiding obstacles Full Text: PDF DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/ijra.v5i3. 1011
Novel Method for Tracing the Location of IP Spoofers

It is long known attackers may utilize long-established source IP place to duvet their real areas. To capture the spoofers, more than a few IP traceback mechanisms were proposed. However, due to the challenges involving deployment services, there was now not any broadly adopted IP traceback solution, at least on the internet level. Accordingly, the mist on the locations of spoofers has under no circumstances been dissolute till now. This paper proposes passive IP traceback (PIT) that bypasses the deployment difficulties of IP traceback approaches and comes up with a option to the difficulty. PIT investigates web control Message Protocol (ICMP) error messages (named course backscatter) induced by means of spoofing traffic, and tracks the spoofers based on public on hand expertise corresponding to topology. Alongside these lines, PIT can realize the spoofers with no association necessity. This paper represents the factors, accumulation, and the factual outcome on manner backscatter, exhibits the methods and adequacy of PIT, and demonstrates the caught areas of spoofers via applying PIT on the way backscatter information set. These results can aid additional expose IP spoofing, which has been studied for long but never well understood. As on the grounds that of some obstacles PIT cannot work in the entire spoofing assaults, it can be a worthy mechanism of tracing a spoofers before an internet-degree traceback system has been deployed in real.
Avaliação in vitro do aparelho DIAGNOdent para diagnóstico oclusal

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness and reliability of laser fluorescence measurements in relation to occlusal caries diagnosis. DIAGNOdent 2095 (Kavo, Biberach, Germany), which has been developed especially for caries diagnosis, was utilized. Five (5) teeth were examined in the pilot test; after that, ten (10) teeth were examined in order to calibrate both examiners. Data were obtained from 66 teeth (36 molars and 30 premolars), totalizing 144 sites identified through photographs of the occlusal surfaces. Reproducibility was evaluated in 10 teeth. The interexaminer Spearman correlation (r) was 0.89 and the intra-examiner, 0.93 and 0.97 (examiner A and B, respectively). Validation was carried out by histological examination (stereomicroscope). For the two examiners the sensitivity of the device was relatively high, varying from 0.81 to 1.00, while specificity varied according to which validation criterion was used (0.77 - 0.86: enamel lesion / 0.52 - 0.59: dentin lesion). It was concluded that DIAGNodent presented good capacity of identifying any alteration of the dental surface, nevertheless it presents the disadvantage of accomplishing many false-positive diagnosis when the validation criterion is dentin lesion.
Optimal greenhouse cultivation control: survey and perspectives

Abstract A survey is presented of the literature on greenhouse climate control, positioning the various solutions and paradigms in the framework of optimal control. A separation of timescales allows the separation of the economic optimal control problem of greenhouse cultivation into an off-line problem at the tactical level, and an on-line problem at the operational level. This paradigm is used to classify the literature into three categories: focus on operational control, focus on the tactical level, and truly integrated control. Integrated optimal control warrants the best economical result, and provides a systematic way to design control systems for the innovative greenhouses of the future. Research issues and perspectives are listed as well.
A Mean-Variance Portfolio Optimal Under Utility Pricing

An expected utility model of asset choice, which takes into account asset pricing, is considered. The obtained portfolio selection problem under utility pricing is solved under several assumptions including quadratic utility, exponential utility and multivariate symmetric elliptical returns. The obtained unique solution, called optimal utility portfolio, is shown mean-variance efficient in the classical sense. Various questions, including conditions for complete diversification and the behavior of the optimal portfolio under univariate and multivariate ordering of risks as well as risk-adjusted performance measurement, are discussed.