Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF ANATASE ON RUTILE TIO

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) rutile nanoflowers were fabricated using acidic hydrothermal method. TiO2 nanoflowers were successfully grown on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates. The hydrothermal reaction time and amount of titanium butoxide (TBOT) precursors were optimized to be 10 hours and 2 ml, respectively. Fabrication of TiO2 using spray pyrolysis technique produced TiO2 nanoparticles. The surface morphology of the TiO2 nanoflowers and nanoparticles were studied using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) to detect the changes in surface morphology as a result of varied parameters. The crystalline phases of TiO2 samples were investigated using X-ray Diffractions (XRD). From the XRD analysis, TiO2 nanoflowers produced using the hydrothermal method were of rutile phase while TiO2 nanoparticles produced using the spray pyrolysis technique were of anatase phase. Thus, when the two fabrication processes were mixed, anatase-rutile phased TiO2 particles were produced. Photo-degradation of TiO2 nanoflowers were analyzed using methyl orange dye. UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer was used to observe the absorbance of methyl orange before and after UV light exposure to the TiO2 samples. The degradation rates of methyl orange by rutile, anatase-rutile and anatase were 4.35%, 88.8% and 98%, respectively. Thereon, cervical cancer cells were exposed to the TiO2 samples to check the biocompatibility of the fabricated TiO2. The cervical cancer cells showed biocompatibility towards the fabricated TiO2. Lastly, photo-catalytic activity of the fabricated TiO2 was studied on cancer cells. The fabricated TiO2 showed little effect to the cancer cells as no change in cell size were observed after UV exposure due to the low electron excitation on TiO2 surface. Thus, the photo-catalysis reaction did not occur.
Pressure observations by the Curiosity rover: Initial results

REMS‐P, the pressure measurement subsystem of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rover Environmental Measurement Station (REMS), is performing accurate observations of the Martian atmospheric surface pressure. It has demonstrated high data quality and good temporal coverage, carrying out the first in situ pressure observations in the Martian equatorial regions. We describe the REMS‐P initial results by MSL mission sol 100 including the instrument performance and data quality and illustrate some initial interpretations of the observed features. The observations show both expected and new phenomena at various spatial and temporal scales, e.g., the gradually increasing pressure due to the advancing Martian season signals from the diurnal tides as well as various local atmospheric phenomena and thermal vortices. Among the unexpected new phenomena discovered in the pressure data are a small regular pressure drop at every sol and pressure oscillations occurring in the early evening. We look forward to continued high‐quality observations by REMS‐P, extending the data set to reveal characteristics of seasonal variations and improved insights into regional and local phenomena.
Impact of scaled-down on dissolved oxygen fluctuations at different levels of the lipase synthesis pathway of Yarrowia lipolytica

Impact des fluctuations en oxygene dissous a differents niveaux de la synthese de lipases par Yarrowia lipolytica. L'influence des fluctuations de la concentration en oxygene dissous sur la production de lipase par Yarrowia lipolytica a ete etudiee dans des bioreacteurs scale-down permettant de reproduire a l'echelle du laboratoire les fluctuations caracteristiques de l'echelle industrielle. Dans notre cas, ces fluctuations ont ete generees par un systeme de controle de la vanne d'admission d'air du bioreacteur. Differentes frequences d'ouverture/fermeture de la vanne d'admission d'air ont ete considerees et leur impact a ete estime a trois etapes de synthese de la lipase : l'expression du gene LIP2 codant pour la lipase (par RT-qPCR), la traduction des ARNm en proteine (par un systeme rapporteur LacZ) et l'excretion de la lipase dans le milieu de culture (par dosage de l'activite lipase dans le milieu de culture). De cette maniere, il a pu etre montre que les fluctuations en oxygene dissous affectent la synthese de la lipase au niveau transcriptionnel.
Multisensor 3D tracking for counter small unmanned air vehicles (CSUAV)

A variety of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) have been developed for both military and civilian use. The typical large UAV is typically state owned, whereas small UAVs (SUAVs) may be in the form of remote controlled aircraft that are widely available. The potential threat of these SUAVs to both the military and civilian populace has led to research efforts to counter these assets via track, ID, and attack. Difficulties arise from the small size and low radar cross section when attempting to detect and track these targets with a single sensor such as radar or video cameras. In addition, clutter objects make accurate ID difficult without very high resolution data, leading to the use of an acoustic array to support this function. This paper presents a multi-sensor architecture that exploits sensor modes including EO/IR cameras, an acoustic array, and future inclusion of a radar. A sensor resource management concept is presented along with preliminary results from three of the sensors.
CONCEPTUAL MODELING TOOL AT THE EARLY DESIGN PHASE

Although CAD systems have evolved considerably in functionality, expressiveness and modeling power over the last decades, their user interfaces are still tied to legacy principles and are not suited to the initial stages of product development. They exhibit steep learning curves, cumbersome and overly structured dialogues, including hundreds of commands. While much of this functionality may be required by the sheer complexity of the tasks these systems are designed to help, we believe the user interface could benefit from simpler paradigms based on sketching and drawing to reduce unneeded complexity, especially in the conceptual design phase. In what follows, we present the CIGRO system that provides a reduced instruction set calligraphic interface to create polyhedral objects using an incremental drawing paradigm evocative of paper and pencil drawings. Users sketch lines on an axonometric projection, which are automatically beautified and connected to existing parts of the drawing. Such line drawings are then converted to a three-dimensional model through a reconstruction process guided by an axonometric inflation method. While much work remains to be done, comparative usability evaluation tests conducted with expert and new users yielded very promising results.
Preliminary evidence of discourse improvement with dopaminergic medication

Dopaminergic therapy can improve motor functioning in Parkinson’s disease (PD), but its effect on spoken discourse is poorly understood. This study addressed whether discourse produced during a one-minute monologue would be affected by medication withdrawal. We performed a detailed analysis of semistructured speech samples in 38 patients with PD, including measures of efficiency, syntactic complexity, cohesion (i.e., lexical and grammatical ties between sentences), and coherence (i.e., semantic relationship between the utterances and the topic, or between utterances). We found that patients produced more efficient and coherent monlogues when on versus off medication. As discourse relies heavily on cognitive processes such as working memory, these findings are consistent with research showing improved working memory and executive processes with dopaminegic medication.
Working Paper Series ISSN 1177-777 X Graph-RAT Programming Environment

Graph-RAT is a new programming environment specializing in relational data mining. It incorporates a number of different techniques into a single framework for data collection, data cleaning, propositionalization, and analysis. The language is functional where algorithms are executed over arbitrary sub-graphs of the data. Analytical results can be conducted using collaborative filtering or machine learning techniques. The example algorithms are under BSD license.
Forecasting with Non-spurious Factors in U.S. Macroeconomic Time Series

Time instability in factor loadings can induce an over tting problem in forecasting analyses since the structural change in factor loadings in ates the number of principal components and thus produces spurious factors. This paper proposes an algorithm to estimate non-spurious factors by identifying the set of observations with stable factor loadings based on the recursive procedure suggested by Inoue and Rossi (2011). I found that 51 out of 132 U.S. macroeconomic time series of Stock and Watson (2005) have stable factor loadings. Although crude principal components provide eight or more factors, there are only one or two non-spurious factors. The forecasts using non-spurious factors signi cantly improve out-of-sample performance. JEL Classi cation Number: C12, C38, E17
Determinant Attributes of City Brand Personality That Influence Strategic Communication

This paper examines the determinant attributes of city brand personality that influence strategic communication of Bandar Melaka world heritage city UNESCO. The results will provide insight on the development of a city brand personality scale, that can be applied in the Malaysian context. Based on Aaker (1997), Brand Personality Scale (BPS), the study adjusted the scale used in the Bandar Melaka for strategic communication. The study approaches the issues from several perspectives including the marketing, tourism, strategic management and human communication in Bandar Melaka. It employs to administer the process of structural equation modelling to investigate the causal relationships between the dimensions of city brand determinants and city brand itself for strategic communication. Questionnaire surveys and interviews on measuring the determinants of city brand employs to examine the respondents’ perceptions of the dimensions of city brand affected the overall city brand evaluations. Data collects from the internal stakeholders that involving directly or indirectly for planning and developing of Bandar Melaka. The study has found four dimensions of the city brand personality, “Peacefulness”, “Malignancy”, “Sophistication” and “Uniqueness”. The City Personality Scale (CPS) proposes four dimensions with a total of seventeen items can be applied to the communication perspective of city brand in Malaysia. Implications for the stakeholders were discussed. They should consider the relative importance of brand dimensions in their overall city brand evaluations for strategic communication. City brand plays a pivotal role in contemporary strategic communication, and is the subject of much literature, both professional and academic. This study is perhaps one of the first to investigate city brand personality for strategic communication in Malaysia. Key words: City branding; City brand personality; Strategic communication; Bandar Melaka
The diagnosis of the technical-tactical preparation of judo competitors during the World Championships (2009 and 2010) in the light of the new judo sport rules

Background: Very important changes in judo sport combat regulations were introduced in 2009–2010. The purpose of those changes was to make judo combat more attractive and to eliminate or reduce the techniques which do not derive from the accepted classification of judo techniques (grasping opponent’s legs). The aim of our research was to determine the impact of the new judo rules on the effectiveness of techniques and the results achieved by men’s national judo teams. Material/Methods: The material comprised 811 judo men’s contests documented by audio-video recorder during the World Championships in Rotterdam (2009), and the World Championships in Tokyo (2010). The fights were described using the graphic method of registration. The most effective teams were determined taking into account medals won and places taken in particular weight categories whereas predominant techniques were described by means of the technicaltactical preparation indices. Results: Based on the championships results it was determined that during the 2009 World Championships the most effective teams were as follows: Korea, Russia and Ukraine. The predominant throwing techniques were seoi nage, kuchiki taoshi and kosoto gari, and the hand throws group was the most effective. During the 2010 World Champs the order of teams was as follows: Japan, France, Uzbekistan. Seoi nage, uchimata, osoto gari were the most often executed throws; and the leg throws were the most effectively performed. Conclusions: Diminishing the effectiveness of hand throws (during World Champs 2010): kuchiki taoshi and sukui nage and increase in the effectiveness of leg techniques: kouchi gari, uchimata, osoto gari was close with increase of Japan’s performance (men’s group). Our findings will serve as basis for improving training programmes for judo competitors.
Performance Analysis of MapReduce Implementations for High Performance Homology Search (Unrefereed Workshop Manuscript)

Homology search to be used in emerging bioinformatics problems such as metagenomics is of increasing importance and challenge as its application area grows more broadly while the computational complexity is increasing, thus requiring massive parallel data processing. Earlier work by some of the authors have devised novel algorithms such as GHOSTX, but the master-worker parallelization to enumerate and schedule for data processing was done with a privately developed, MPI-based master-worker framework called GHOST-MP. An alternative is to utilize the now-popular big data software substrates, such as MapReduce with abundant associated software tool-chains, but it is not clear whether the massive resource required by metagenomic homology search would not overwhelm its known limitations. By converting the GHOST-MP master-worker data processing pipeline to accommodate MapReduce, and benchmarking them on a variety of high-performance MapReduce incarnations including Hadoop and Spark, we attempt to characterize the appropriateness of MapReduce as a generic framework for metagenomics that embody extremely resource consuming requirements for both compute and data.
Local Communities' Perspectives towards Nature Conservation: A Study of Taman Negara Pahang, Kuala Tahan Malaysia

Gazetting specific areas for preservation may not be a popular action, at least, among the local communities. They argue their rights are denied, particularly when they are not granted to collect forest produces in selected zones of the protected land. In many conservation efforts, local support is fundamental to effective conservation attempts. This paper presents preliminary findings of an on-going study that addresses local communities" perspectives on nature conservation efforts at Taman Negara Pahang, Malaysia. The study aims to explore influential factors that shape the locals" views on preservation activities surrounding Kuala Tahan. Focus group interviews were employed for this study with 24 respondents from two groups of Malay residents and one group of indigenous people, the Batek Negrito. Overall, respondents showed supportive attitudes towards the management of national park and conservation activities. The findings indicate the receipt of economic benefits from ecotourism increase local support for nature conservation, where the respondents were aware that a well-conserved national park is important to earn an income from tourists. Other factors like environmental and socio-cultural benefits from ecotourism, community understandings and awareness of parks, community cultures and traditions, community relationship with park authorities were also found to have impacts on people"s perspectives towards nature conservation. Unlike local Malays, a conflict was discovered between the park management and the aboriginal community due to the Batek were prohibited from selling the park resources to earn additional income. The study suggests the ecotourism development should be enhanced by increasing the promotion to attract more tourists and improving the local infrastructure needs in order to win the local support for achieving conservation goals.
Creativity, innovations and firm performance in an emerging transition economy

Despite the longstanding consensus that creativity is the seedbed of innovation, the limited literature in this area fails to explore the contribution of various aspects of creativity to different stages of the innovation process or the mechanisms used by the management to foster the creativity of employees. This paper adopts a more complex strategy in order to highlight the role of creativity in the entire innovation process from the decision to innovate to investment in innovation, the transformation of innovation input into output and the effect of innovation output on productivity. A multi – stage CDM – type model encompassing different elements of creativity and practices designed to enhance creative potential is applied to the most recent Community Innovation Survey data. In modelling the management of creativity a distinction is made between decisions of firms to hire creative employees and the methods used to foster creativity of personnel such as multidisciplinary work teams, financial incentives and training for creativity. The results indicate that employees with creative skills and the adoption of creativity – enhancing methods by the management are important factors for innovation and better performance of enterprises. They also point to sectoral differences in the impact of creativity on innovation.
In vitro regeneration, flowering, and cell culture of Centaurea species

This study was conducted to establish a protocol for in vitro flowering of Centaurea cyanus and cell cultures of Centaurea montana. In four weeks, 50 to 60 adventitious shoots developed on leaf explants cultured in MS medium supplemented with 2.0 mg/L benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 0.1 mg/L indole-3- acetic acid (IAA). In vitro flowering and seed set occurred in C. cyanus when the shoots were incubated on MS basal medium supplemented with B5 vitamins, 100 mg/L myo-inositol and 30 g/L sucrose for 4 weeks under 16 h photoperiod. Young leaves of C. montana cultured on MS medium supplemented with 1.0 to 6.0 mg/L 2, 4- dichloroxypenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D) alone or in combination with 0.5 mg/L BAP generated callus. Liquid MS medium containing 2.0 mg/L 2, 4-D produced greater fresh weight (FW), dry weight (DW) and packed cell volume (PCV) compared to MS medium with 1 mg/L 2, 4-D in a 30 day culture cycle. The results indicate that MS medium modified with appropriate phytohormones can be used to achieve efficient shoot regeneration and in vitro flowering of C. cyanus and cell cultures of C. montana . C Key words: entaurea cyanus, Centaurea montana , cell and tissue culture, in vitro flowering.
Structural effects of pressure on monoclinic chlorite: A single-crystal study

Abstract A single-crystal X-ray diffraction study in a diamond anvil cell up to 5.41 GPa was carried out on a clinochlore [monoclinic polytype IIb-2, S.G. C2/m, (Mg9.09Fe2+1.01Mn0.02Ti0.01Cr0.02Al1.80)Σ=11.95(Si6.35 Al1.65)Σ=8O20(OH)16] from Val Malenco, Italy. The bulk modulus of monoclinic clinochlore calculated by fitting unit-cell volumes and pressures to a third-order Birch-Murnaghan Equation of State (EoS), is K0 = 71(9) GPa with K’ = 8(5). Axial compressibility values were β0aEoS = 3.8(1), β0bEoS = 3.6(1), and β0cEoS = 5.4(5) 10.3 GPa.1, showing that axial anisotropy is much less than that found for other phyllosilicates. Compressibility data are in fair agreement with literature data, which are based on powder neutron and synchrotron diffraction methods. Results were compared with the behavior of the triclinic polytype of similar composition and coexisting in the same rock. Symmetry has little overall influence on compressibility, but compared with the triclinic polytype of similar composition and coexisting in the same hand specimen, the monoclinic polytype is slightly less rigid. Comparison of structural refinements at different pressures showed that structural deformations mainly affect the interlayer region, where hydrogen bonds are important for the structural properties of the phase. The mean decrease in OH-O distances was about 9% in the pressure range 0.5 GPa. Structural behavior was very similar to that found for the triclinic polytype. Although energy differences between polytypes are relatively small, their compressional behavior may have implications in terms of relative stability. A computation of molar volume applying an isothermal EoS shows that the triclinic polytype is lower in volume up to 0.9 GPa, above which the volume of the monoclinic phase is smaller. This fact gives information on the relative stability of the two polytypes and a possible explanation for the greater abundance of the triclinic polytype in low to medium-P environments, as is commonly observed in nature.
The Pricing Kernel and Time-Series Characteristics of Asset Returns †

Starting from an information process governed by a geometric Brownian motion we derive the properties of asset returns when the elasticity of the pricing kernel is not constant. We show that in this case asset returns are predictable. It is also shown that asset prices are governed by a timehomogeneous stochastic differential equation only if the elasticity of the pricing kernel is constant. Moreover, we propose a general characterization of pricing kernels which generates analytical asset price processes. The numerical simulations show that declining elasticity of the pricing kernel may explain short-term momentum and long-term reversals in asset returns. JEL classification: G12
Haematological parameters, semen characteristics and sperm morphology of male albino rat (wistar strain) treated with Aloe vera gel

Haemograms, semen characteristics and sperm morphology of the male albino rat (wistar strain) treated with Aloe vera gel was studied. A. vera gel has been widely used for both medicinal and non-medicinal purposes. Fifteen male clinically healthy albino rats weighing between 0.15 to 0.24 kg and 16 to 20 weeks of age were randomly assigned to three groups A, B and C. Groups A and B were the experimental groups while Group C was the control group. The experimental groups A and B were treated with A. vera gel at 300 and 200 mg/kg body weight, respectively for 10 days. The findings showed that the sperm motility from group A (64.00 ± 6.80) and B (66.00 ± 8.74) were lower (P 0.05). It was concluded that the use of A. vera gel for 10 days consecutively has an adverse effect on sperm cells characteristics and morphology, and can precipitate infertility in the male wistar strain albino rats when administered at concentration higher than 300 mg/kg body weight. However, it has no negative effect on the blood parameters. Key words: Aloe vera gel, albino rats, semen characteristics, sperm morphology, haematology.