Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The transient behaviour of alloys solidified from below prior to the formation of chimneys

We investigate interactions between interfacial disequilibrium and compositional convection during the freezing of an alloy from below to form a mushy layer. A theoretical model is developed in which a stagnant mushy layer underlies a melt that is convecting vigorously, driven by compositional gradients associated with undercooling at the mush-liquid interface. In a series of laboratory experiments, we measure the interfacial undercooling in aqueous solutions of ammonium chloride contaminated to varying degrees by copper sulphate. It has recently been found (Huppert & Hallworth 1993) that a small amount of copper sulphate added to a solution of ammonium chloride significantly inhibits the formation of chimneys in the mushy layer that forms when the solution is cooled below its liquidus. It is our thesis that this phenomenon can be explained in large part by the consequences of the interactions between compositional convection and interfacial undercooling that are investigated herein. The measured undercooling is a function of the rate of advance of the interface and is found to be a very strong, increasing function of the concentration of copper sulphate in solution. The theoretical model is evaluated using parameter values appropriate to the experimental system and it is found that the transient development of the mushy layer depends significantly on the level of interfacial disequilibrium. In particular, it is predicted that the time taken for the Rayleigh number associated with the mushy layer to reach any particular value increases enormously as the level of interfacial disequilibrium increases and that the Rayleigh number can have an upper bound that is less than the critical value needed for the onset of convection within the mushy layer. This suggests that the formation of chimneys in the mushy layer can be similarly delayed or prohibited, in agreement with the experimental findings of Huppert & Hallworth (1993). Additionally, the model predicts that under certain conditions the solid fraction can increase away from the cooled boundary leading to trapping of the interstitial liquid. The model also describes a mechanism for macrosegregation of alloys cooled and solidified from below.
Analysis of the Predictors of Default for Portuguese Firms

The paper presents an insolvency risk analysis of Portuguese companies with three techniques: logistic regression, discriminant analysis and support vector machines (SVM). It identifies the most critical predictors of default based on the accounting, employee and debt concentration data. A comparison of the three methods reveals a superiority of SVM. Non-financial information such as employee data and the debt concentration index appear to be strong predictors of default.
Solid-State Reaction and Vacancy-Type Defects in Bilayer Fe/Hf Studied by the Slow Positron Beam

The positron annihilation lifetimes and the Doppler broadening by slow positron beam are measured in thin Fe films with thickness 500 nm, a thin Hf film with thickness 100 nm, and the bilayer Fe (50 nm)/Hf (50 nm) on quartz glass substrate. We have analyzed the behavior in vacancy-type defects in each layer through some deposition temperatures and annealing. It is observed that the thin Fe film, the thin Hf film, and the bilayer Fe (50 nm)/Hf (50 nm) already contain many vacancy-type defects. We have investigated the change of densities of the vacancy-carbon complex and the small vacancy-cluster with carbons, through solid-state amorphization of Fe (50 nm)/Hf (50 nm) bilayer.
Production of "Dilpodia scrobiculata" and "Diplodia pinea" Pycnidia on Ground Austrian Pine Needle Agar Medium

The in vitro production of fruiting structures represents an important tool for the morphological identification of fungal genera or species. It is also important for the controlled production of spores to be used in experiments. However, some fungal species do not readily sporulate in pure culture. In the present study we induced the production of pycnidia of Diplodia scrobiculata and D. pinea, two species recalcitrant to sporulation in pure culture, by growing them on two media containing ground Austrian pine needle. The two fungal species grew equally rapidly on both media and pycnidial primordia were produced on the medium surface after only 4 days at room temperature. Conidia matured in less than two weeks and their germination rate at 25°C was about 96%, indicating high viability.
Nuclear Activity in Circumnuclear Ring Galaxies

We have analyzed the frequency and properties of the nuclear activity in a sample of galaxies with circumnuclear rings and spirals (CNRs). This sample was compared with a control sample of galaxies with very similar global properties but without circumnuclear rings. We discuss the relevance of the results in regard to the AGN feeding processes and present the following results: (i) bright companion galaxies seem not to be important for the appearance of CNRs, which appear to be more related to intrinsic properties of the host galaxies or to minor merger processes; (ii) the proportion of strong bars in galaxies with an AGN and a CNR is somewhat higher than the expected ratio of strongly barred AGN galaxies from the results of Ho and co-workers; (iii) the incidence of Seyfert activity coeval with CNRs is clearly larger than the rate expected from the morphological distribution of the host galaxies; (iv) the rate of Sy 2 to Sy 1 type galaxies with CNRs is about three times larger than the expected ratio for galaxies without CNRs and is opposite to that predicted by the geometric paradigm of the classical unified model for AGNs, although it does support the hy-pothesis that Sy 2 activity is linked to circumnuclear star formation. The possible selection effects of the sample are discussed, and we conclude that the detected trends are strong enough to justify high quality observations of as large as possible sets of galaxies with circumnuclear rings and their matched control samples.
Capital Structure and Corporate Performance in Nigeria Petroleum Industry: Panel Data Analysis

Problem statement: The actual impact of capital structure on corporate performance in Nigeria has been a major problem among researchers that has not been resolved. Approach: The study looks at the impact of capital structure on corporate performance in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry. Results: The study employed panel data analysis by using Fixed-effect estimation, Random-effect estimation and Maximum likelihood estimation. It was found out that there was positive relationship between earnings per share and leverage ratio on one hand and positive relationship between dividend per share and leverage ratio on the other hand. Conclusion/Recommendations: It is therefore recommended that the management of the industry should do more to improve on its leverage ratio.
REVERSE MICELLE FORMATION OF THE DIPEPTIDE "Boc- Ile-Ile-NHMe"

The dipeptide derivative Boc-Ile-Ile-NHMe synthesized in our laboratory is found to form reverse micelles in the presence of water in chloroform solvent. Reverse micelles finds it’s importance in the field of drug delivery. The critical micellar concentration (cmc) has been determined by varying the temperature for each R value, where R is the ratio of water to peptide concentration. The R value has been changed from a minimum value of 0.52 to a maximum value of 10. The aggregation number has also been determined for the micelles formed for different R values at room temperature. The change in the micropolarity of the micellar environment has also been monitored using pyrene. The thermodynamic parameters ' Gqm,' Hqm and ' Sqm has also been determined for the system.
A Laser Fabrication of Magnetic Micromachines by Using Optimized Photosensitive Ferrofluids

We report here a laser fabrication of magnetic micromachines by using optimized photosensitive ferrofluids. Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared by thermal decomposition and subsequent ligand exchange. And then, they were dispersed into photoresist. As a representative illustration, a magnetic microturbine with high surface flatness was fabricated, and its rotation speed could reach as high as 400 rpm under revolving magnetic field.
Running head: HK-UK INTERGENERATIONAL EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS 1 Efficiency of Executive Function: A Two-Generation Cross-Cultural Comparison of Samples from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

While Asian preschoolers acquire executive functions (EFs) earlier than their Western counterparts (e.g., Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses & Lee 2006), little is known about whether this advantage persists into later childhood and adulthood. Addressing this gap, the current study presented four computerized EF tasks (providing measures of inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility and planning) to a large sample (n = 1,427) of 9to 16-year-olds and their parents living in the United Kingdom and in Hong Kong. Highlighting the importance of combining developmental and cultural perspectives, our findings showed both similarities and contrasts across sites. Specifically, adult EF performance did not differ across sites and agerelated changes in EF for both children and parents as well as a modest intergenerational correlation appeared culturally invariant. In contrast, school-aged children and young adolescents in Hong Kong outperformed their UK counterparts on all four EF tasks, consistent with previous findings from preschool children.
Towards a comparison criteria for CDeLP

The development of systems with the ability to reason about change notion and actions has been of great importance for the artificial intelligence community. The definition and implementation of systems capable of managing defeasible, incomplete, unreliable, or uncertain information has been also an area of much interest. With a few exceptions research on these two ways of reasoning was independently pursued. Nevertheless, they are complementary and closely related, since many applications that deal with defeasible information also depends on the occurrence of events and time. DeLP is an argumentative system appropriate for commonsense reasoning. The defeasible argumentation basis of DeLP allows to build applications that deal with incomplete and contradictory information in dynamic domains. Thus, the resulting approach is suitable for representing agent’s knowledge and for providing an argumentation based reasoning mechanism for that agent (see for example [6, 1]). It is interesting to extend this system adding mechanisms to manage events and time as CDeLP [7]. Here we analyze how to develop a comparison criteria for arguments built up from causal information and considers commonsense rules of inertia.
A nonparametric Bayesian approach for counterfactual prediction with an application to the Japanese private nursing home market

This paper proposes a new inferential framework for structural econometric models using a nonparametric Bayesian approach. Although estimation methods based on moment conditions can employ a flexible estimation without distributional assumptions, they have difficulty conducting a prediction analysis. I propose a nonparametric Bayesian methodology for an estimation and prediction analysis. My methodology is applied to an empirical analysis of the Japanese private nursing home market. This market has a sticky economic circumstance, and my prediction simulates an intervention that removes this circumstance. The prediction result implies that the outdated circumstance in this market is harmful for consumers today.
A Study on NPA of Public Sector Banks in India

Non-Performing Assets are a burning topic of concern for the public sector banks, as managing and controlling NPA is very important. The current paper with the help of secondary data, from RBI website, tried to analyse the 6 years, (2008-2013) net non-performing asset data of 26 public sector banks, by using Annova statistics, and with the help of SPSS software. The main objective of the study is to find out if there are any significant differences in the mean variation of the concerned banks. This paper also focuses on the reason behind the NPA and its impact on banking operations.
Trophic biology of antarctic shallow-water echinoderms

Antarctic echinoderms appear to be adapted to a benthic environment characterized by long-term low availability of food resources. As predicted for a low-energy system, most echinoderms appear to expend little energy on feeding. Moreover, they are primarily generalists which opportunistically &splay scavenging or necrophagous feeding habits. Others exploit detrital material, or ingest microorganisms from the benthos and plankton. Those echinoderms which are feeding specialists exploit prey which are low in energy content yet extremely abundant, such as sponges. Even though in&viduals may have a low energy intake, it is likely that echinoderms play a significant role in energy transfer in antarctic benthos, as they are among the most abundant of epibenthic macroinvertebrate groups in shallow antarctic seas.
Minimizing Internal Data Theft in Cloud Through Disinformation Attacks

Cloud computing has changed the way computing takes place significantly. It is a new computing model which enables parties to make use of its services such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) in pay per use fashion. The users of cloud computing need not to indulge in huge capital investments as the resources are made available by cloud service providers. There are security challenges in cloud computing. One such challenge is data theft attacks. The existing mechanisms such as encryption are not able to present insider data theft attacks. Recently Stolfo et al. presented a mechanism to prevent insider data theft attacks using offensive decoy technology. In this paper we implement this technology by building a web based prototype that demonstrates the efficiency of the decoy technology. When the application suspects unauthorized access it throws challenges besides launching disinformation attack using decoy information. This prevents insider theft. The empirical results revealed that the mechanism is capable of providing security against insider data theft attacks.
Heterogeneous researchers in a two-sector representative consumer economy

Research activities have uncertain outcomes. The question asked in this paper is whether or not this uncertainty can be a central piece on the explanation of long run consumption growth paths. More specifically, we inquire how the existence of different research projects, with different degrees of uncertainty, contributes to unpredictable consumption growth paths. The proposed scenario is a two-sector representative consumer model with researchers that invest in different innovation projects. There is heterogeneity in terms of risk associated to research programs (researchers invest in projects with the same expected outcome but different volatility). This difference in volatility, combined with an adaptive learning – bounded rationality rule, implies an aggregate index of technology and a consumption growth rate that do not present a predictable pattern over time.
Robust time-series retrieval using adaptive segmental alignment

OF THE DISSERTATION Robust Time-Series Retrieval Using Adaptive Segmental Alignment By Shahriar Shariat Talkhoonche Dissertation Director: Vladimir Pavlovic The problem of time-series retrieval arises in many fields of science and constitutes many important sub-problems including indexing, storage, representation, similarity measurement, etc. The center piece of time-series retrieval is, however, measurement of similarity between the query and the stored sequences in the data-base. Since different time-series sampled from similar phenomena can have variable lengths and/or warping, simple distance metrics such as Euclidean distance are either undefined or do not provide an accurate similarity measure. Therefore, alignment methods such as dynamic time warping have been proposed. They essentially rely on the distance between every sample point of contrasting sequences and recover their alignment using dynamic programming. These algorithms are effective when the sequences are noise-free and causal. In this work we introduce the concept of segmental sequence alignment. We claim that dynamically dividing the contrasting sequences into subsequences and recovering the optimal and monotonic matching between them instead of individual time-points can result in constructing a similarity measure more robust to noise and non-causality. We propose two different approaches and variants of them to accomplish segmental sequence alignment.
Effects of Leonardite Applications on Yield and Some Quality Parameters of Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.)

The present study was carried out at Suleyman Demirel University research farm in Isparta during2008 and 2009 crop seasons to determine the effects of leonardite (54.5% organic matter) on yield and quality of potato. Four leonardite doses (0, 200, 400, 600 kg ha-1) and four potato cultivars (Van Gogh, Milva, Lady Olympia, Agata) were used in the study. A total of seven traits (plant height, tuber number per plant, marketable tuber yield, total tuber yield, protein content, vitamin C content and specific gravity) were measured. Significant differences were detected between control and leonardite applications for all the traits studied. Statisticallysignificant differences were not found between the leonardite doses for plant height and specific gravity. There was no significant difference between 400 and 600 kg ha-1 leornardite application for tuber number per plant, marketable tuber and total tuber yield, protein and vitamin C contents. Leonardite applications increased number of tubers per plant by 22%, marketable tuber yield by 38% and total tuber yield by 15% compared with the control. These results suggest that 400 kg ha-1 leonardite combination to the standard fertilization will be sufficient to obtain adequate yield and quality tubers in potatoes
Epidemiology of pseudoexfoliation syndrome: a hospital based comparative study

Background: Pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PEX), is an age-related condition with generalized disorder of the extracellular matrix (ECM) characterized by a pathological accumulation of polymorphic fibrillar extracellular material in ocular tissue and various visceral organs. The search for the etiology of pseudoexfoliation syndrome has been directed towards both genetic and environmental factors. It is associated with many ocular and systemic complications. Methods: The study was a hospital based comparative clinical study with 100 consecutive patients with pseudoexfoliation and age and sex matched 100 patients as control without pseudoexfoliation. The patients were registered on a Pre-structured Proforma which included patients’ demographic detail, history and examination. Examination protocol including visual acuity with snellen’s chart for literate patients and E-Chart for illiterate patients, intraocular pressure (by Goldmann applanation tonometry), slit lamp examination and fundus examination. Results: The mean age of cases was 65.93± 7.82 years ranging from 49 to 85 years. The mean age of controls was 63.98± 7.06 years ranging from 50 to 80 years (p=0.139). 72% of cases were more than 60 years old. Male female ratio was 1.63:1. Most of the cases were from Budgam, Bandipora and Ganderbal areas. Spring water was proportionately more frequently used as water source in cases (χ =18.5, p=0.000), and tube well water in controls. The mean duration of smoking was 26.63±24.74 pack years for cases and 14.88±17.10 pack years for controls (p=0.000). Average duration of daytime exposure for cases was 6.68±2.13 hours and for controls it was 4.52±2.53 hours. Among cases 12 patients (12%) were on treatment for glaucoma whereas among controls, 1 patient (1%) was on treatment for glaucoma. With respect to dietary habits, there was no difference between cases and controls. Farmers comprised of 49% of cases, followed by House wives and government employees. Conclusions: The study concludes that PEX is very common in our region, increasing with age and more in men. Smoking, occupations involved with sunlight exposure, spring water as water source are possible risk factors for PEX. Glaucoma and cataract are common ocular complications of the syndrome.
EFFECT OF CANNABINOIDS ON TESTICULAR ISCHEMIA-REPERFUSION INJURY IN RAT

Anandamide is an endogenous ligand for cannabinoid receptors and has endothelial protective effect against ischemic preconditioning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cannabinoids on reperfusion injury due to testicular torsion-detorsion (T/D). A total of 36 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into 6 groups. Testicular ischemia was achieved by twisting the right testes 720◦ counters clockwise for 1 hour and reperfusion was allowed for 4 hours after detorsion. In baseline (normal) group, bilateral orchiectomies performed after anesthesia. Sham operated group was served as a control group. Torsion/detorsion group underwent 1 hour testicular torsion and 4 hours of detorsion. Anandamide (cannabinoid agonist) group received pretreatment with intraperitoneally anandamide 30 min before torsion. AM251 (CB1 antagonist) group, received intraperitoneally injection of AM251 45 min before torsion. Anandamid/AM251 (An/AM) group received administrations of AM251 45 min before torsion and anandamide 30 min before torsion. The ipsilateral malondialdehyde (MDA) level in T/D group were significantly higher versus control and base line groups. Ipsilateral MDA values in anandamid group were significantly lower than T/D and An/AM groups. There were also significant decreases in catalase activity in T/D group compared with control and base line groups. These values were significantly higher in cannabinoid group versus T/D and An/AM groups. Anandamide increased ipsilateral intratesticular antioxidative markers and decreased free radicals formation during reperfusion phase after unilateral testicular torsion, which was reflected in lesser testicular MDA level. Furthermore, the effects of anandamide were mediated via cannabinoid receptors, since AM251 could abolish these effects.
Towards achieving sustainable market access by South African smallholder deciduous fruit producers : the road ahead

Markets with high purchasing power, like export markets, offer opportunities for African smallholder farmers to move out of poverty. Logically, production for such higher value markets requires a different set of farm resources than the basic factors of production like land and labour. Yet it is not clear which other resources smallholder producers require to participate in different markets including high value markets. Using case studies from the Western Cape Province of South Africa, the authors identify resources that smallholder producers in developing countries require to increase competitiveness and sustain participation in high value markets. An analysis of the cases suggests that smallholder producers who are either in strategic partnerships or mentorship programmes with private sector firms are able to sustain their participation in high value markets. For smallholder producers who have not been integrated with high value markets yet, development of factor markets could be the first step towards achieving sustainable market access.