Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes and household welfare: An investigation of India's employment guarantee programme

Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes are widespread in developing countries. We focus on one such administrative failure? the persistent delay in paying beneficiaries on time in India's iconic anti-poverty programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Using a life cycle model, we argue that a long wage payment lag in this flagship programme could adversely affect the welfare of the poor through two channels. First, it imposes an implicit consumption tax on the household.
Interplay of the T cell receptor/CD3 complex and the co-stimulatory molecule SLAM in immune responses

Human CD150 (SLAM) is a glycoprotein expressed on the surface of T, B, natural killer, and dendritic cells. The extracellular domain of CD150 is the receptor for measles virus and CD150 acts as a co-activator on T and B cells. We characterized the mouse and human CD150 genes, each of which comprises seven exons spanning approximately 32 kb. Mouse CD150 mRNA was detected in T cells and in most thymocyte subsets, except CD4ñ 8ñ cells. Surprisingly, the CD4ñ 8ñ thymocytes of CD3γδnull mice, but not of Ragnull or severe combined immunodeficiency mice, expressed CD150. Whereas high levels of CD150 were found in Th1 cells, only small amounts were detectable in Th2 cells. CD150 expression was up-regulated upon in vitro activation of mouse T cells by anti-CD3. The complete mouse CD150 gene is highly homologous to its human orthologue in terms of nucleotide sequences and intron/exon organization. The human genomic sequences indicate that all isoforms detected so far have arisen from alternative splicing events. As judged by fluorescence in situ hybridization, mouse CD150 mapped to Chromosome (Chr) 1, band 1H2. 2ñ 2.3, and human CD150 was found on Chr 1q22. Human and mouse CD150 share sequence homologies with six other genes, five of which ñ CD84, CD229 (Ly-9), CD244 (2B4), CD48, and 19A ñ are localized in a 250-kb segment in close proximity to the human gene. Their location and their sequence similarities strongly suggest that the CD150 family of cell surface receptors arose via successive duplications of a common ancestral gene.
Speed control of three phase induction motors using PowerFlex 525 compact AC drive

Most of the control systems have to make things move and that generally involves motors. Lifting, blowers, conveyors, pumping, robotics, and fans – pretty much everything uses a motor of some kind. All-purpose single or three-phase motors are huge for simple on/off systems and Inverter-duty motors are particularly designed for operation with variable frequency drives (VFD). They convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, which produces a mechanical rotary action that does some form of work. Alternating current motors are the common types of motors used in commercial and industrial applications. The fundamentals of drive programming and configuration with the PowerFlex 525 compact Alternating current drive, the CompactLogix PLC and the Studio 5000 Logix Designer software is used for configuring these drives. A characteristic that provides complete parameter groups for all the range applications used for the PowerFlex 525 AC Drive. The PowerFlex drive is used with ControlLogix, CompactLogix controllers and different Allen-Bradley products. Point-to-point positioning mode options used for the accurate motor stop at positioning in that system to save money and time during system operation, development, and maintenance. The addition of Allen-Bradley motor control devices into the Logix control devices helps to reduce programming time, ease startup, commissioning and streamline diagnostics.
Integrated Steering and Differential Braking for Emergency Collision Avoidance in Autonomous Vehicles

Controlling the lateral dynamics of an autonomous vehicle confronting a sudden obstacle requires optimal use of tires’ force capacities. In these situations, autonomous steering may not be able to respond fast enough to prevent collision or instability. This paper presents an integrated controller for autonomous vehicles, capable of suitably reacting to emergency situations when a sudden obstacle appears on the road. The proposed controller employs differential braking conservatively when needed, to produce an additional yaw moment, thereby improving a vehicle’s lateral agility and responsiveness without endangering vehicle stability. A longitudinal controller is also designed to track a desired longitudinal velocity. Model predictive control (MPC) method is used for developing a combined path planning and tracking controller with a hierarchical structure that prioritizes (1) collision avoidance, (2) vehicle stability, and (3) path tracking. The effectiveness of the proposed integrated MPC controller is evaluated by simulating an experimentally validated CarSim model to demonstrate the controller’s capability in preventing instability and collisions.
Microphysiological Systems: gold standard approach towards in vitro biomimetics and its potential to drive forward the fisheries sector to the next level

High attrition rates of drug candidates in clinical trials are caused owing to the utilization of traditional cell culture and experimental animal models for preclinical drug screening. Besides, major bottlenecks affecting the crude pipeline of drug development process are time and cost involved. It takes nearly 13 to 15 years for an efficient drug to reach the market and the cost of breeding, housing and, later on disposing the experimental animal models, is extravagant. Differences between human and animal physiological conditions and signaling mechanisms compromise the drug efficiency testing protocol resulting in clinical trial failure. In this scenario, 2-D culture systems stole the limelight providing a platform for reducing drug discovery and development pipeline shortcomings, but failed in the long run. Subsequently, alternating strategy to overcome such bottlenecks has recently emerged in the name of Microphysiological Systems. These hold great potential to act as surrogates by virtue of their biomimetic attribute in providing accurate prediction of drug effects through physiologically relevant organ-organ interactions. The far reaching applications of microphysiological systems in the fields of toxicology, medicine, disease modeling and so on, have major implications in fisheries sector as well, leading to the in vivo modeling of two renowned fish models, zebrafish and rainbow trout, as microphysiological systems. This mini review has described different types of microphysiological systems and shed light on their immediate need in the present scenario. For the first time, current advances and applications in context to the field of fisheries have also been discussed stating that this new age technology has the potential to open new avenues to researchers, experts and scientists in fisheries sector in the ensuing years.
The Relationship of Internal Marketing and Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Brand Citizenship Behavior on Credit Card Issuers’ Call-Center Staff in Thailand

Internal marketing (IM) is a concept in the topic of service marketing, which allows an organization to treat employees as a customer to make them satisfied in the job and give better service quality. This study aims to explore the relationship between satisfaction of internal marketing (IM), brand citizenship behavior (BCB) and Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study is quantitative research. Data was collected by using questionnaires with 466 call-center staff in credit card issuer firms in Thailand which do not use outsource call-center service providers. This study uses structural equation modelling (SEM) and descriptive statistics to analyse the collected data. The result of this study shows that satisfaction of internal marketing has a direct effect on organizational citizenship behavior and brand citizenship behavior. Furthermore, brand citizenship behavior has a greater effect on organizational citizenship behavior than the internal marketing. However, satisfaction of internal marketing has an indirect effect on organizational citizenship behavior via brand citizenship behavior. Keywords: Internal Marketing, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Brand Citizenship Behavior, Credit Card Issuers, Call-Center Staff
An Acoustic Discrimination Method for Impact Load Based on Artificial Neural Network

In order to meet the engineering requirements of non-contact measurement of impact load and realize the intelligent identification of its characteristic parameters, this paper attempts to establish a method to analyze and learn the audio characteristics generated by accidental loads, such as impact and explosion, and to identify the impact load characteristics in reverse. The method, which is based on energy conservation, momentum conservation and strokes law, used p-norm in mathematics to extract the basic characteristics of impact load, and the frequency analysis to find the inevitable connection between the audio characteristics impulse-induced and the impact load characteristics. At last, “Acoustic Discrimination for Impact Load Identification (ADII)” by adopting the functions of artificial neural networks about learning, categorization and generalization was implemented.
Elucidation of Initiation and Maintenance Mechanisms of X Chromosome Inactivation

X chromosome inactivation is a program of gene silencing on one of two female mammalian X chromosomes to equalize X-linked gene expression to XY male counterparts. This developmentally-regulated chromatin change is initiated on either the maternal or paternal X chromosome early in embryonic development and, once established, is maintained on the chosen chromosome for the lifetime of the female. The onset of X chromosome inactivation is regulated by the long noncoding transcript Xist and an open question is the field is how embryonic developmental cues trigger expression of Xist and onset of X chromosome inactivation. The correlation of pluripotency with repression of Xist in the mouse system has led to a model where pluripotency transcription factors repress X chromosome inactivation by binding to a region within the first intron of Xist gene. Thus differentiation would release the repression of Xist. We rigorously tested this intron1 hypothesis in a transgenic mouse model and refute that intron1 binding is responsible for the developmental regulation of X chromosome inactivation.A second set of studies focused on the maintenance phase of X chromosome inactivation with the goal of discovering novel chromatin factors that contribute to the remarkable stability of gene silencing on the entire X chromosome. We took an unbiased screening approach, designing a high throughput assay with primary mouse cells bearing reporters on the inactive X, and screened genome-wide siRNA and chemical libraries. We report that knockdown of chromatin-associated protein Atf7ip or its previously characterized interactors reactivates silenced genes of the inactive X chromosome. From chemical screening, we found that the compound Resveratrol can lead to reactivation of silenced genes as part of a novel drug combination. We show evidence that Resveratrol inhibits the dNTP biosynthetic enzyme ribonucleotide reductase in this context. This finding has spurred a collaboration investigating Resveratrol as part of a rationale drug combination for cancer therapy. In summary, these studies demonstrate that X chromosome inactivation is powerful and flexible model for the interrogation of mammalian chromatin regulation mechanisms with relevance for disease therapy.
Machine learning-powered prediction of recurrence in patients with non-small cell lung cancer using quantitative clinical and radiomic biomarkers

Lung cancer is a fatal disease, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) being the most prevalent type. One of the main purposes of researching NSCLC is identifying patients at high risk for recurrence after surgical resection so that specific and suitable treatments can be found for them. The classification of cancer by anatomic disease extent, that is, by tumor-size (T stage) and nodal-involvement (N stage), is the most widely accepted determinant of appropriate treatment and prognosis among practicing clinicians. However, TN stage-based risk prediction can be inaccurate, as there is moderate observer variability when reporting the size of the lesion. Here, we propose a lung cancer–recurrence prediction model using principal component analysis (PCA) and machine learning (ML) techniques and considering radiomic features and clinical data, including the TN stage. After being filtered by a statistical model, the principal components, including Tand N-stage data and the handcrafted radiomic features from CT images, were applied to various ML models (i.e., random forests, support vector machines, naive Bayesian classifiers, and both boosting). We conducted this study, not only on recurrence, but also recurrence within two years of surgical resection, since more than 80% of recurrence occurs within this time frame. In both cases, the experimental results showed that combining radiomic features and clinical data improves the prediction of lung-cancer recurrence over that of models that only use TN stage data in terms of the 5-fold cross-validation accuracy mean, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), the area under the ROC curve (AUC), and Kaplan-Meier curves. Finally, this model has been embedded in a website and is being prepared for the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) medical device registration and approval in South Korea.
fleck: Fast approximate light curves for starspot rotational modulation

In the associated paper submitted to AAS Journals, we show that ensembles of light curves of stars in young clusters can be used to constrain their spot distributions. One can imagine that photometric surveys of young clusters are essentially observing the same star at many different inclinations, allowing us to marginalize over the unknown inclinations of the individual stars if we model their light curves as a population.
The Impact of Interest Rate, Exchange Rate and European Business Climate on Economic Growth in Romania: An ARDL Approach with Structural Breaks

The role of the interest and exchange rates in sustaining economic growth has been a highly researched subject. Therefore, this study examines the influence of the monetary policy interest rate, the real exchange rate and the business climate in the Euro area on the economic growth in Romania. For this purpose, we have applied a pre-test for structural breaks to identify the existence of structural breaks, followed by the traditional unit root tests and the unit root tests with structural breaks to verify the stationarity of the variables. The results of the Bound cointegration test led to the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) short-run model that measures the short-run impact of the interest rate, exchange rate and the business climate in the Euro area on the economic growth of Romania. Our findings show that in the short run, the economic growth is negatively influenced by the interest rate, and positively by the exchange rate. We also indicate that the business climate in the Euro area has mixed effects on the economic growth. Finally, considering the growing interdependence between the internal and external (European) business environment, the results are highly significant for handling the interest and exchange rates in sustaining economic growth.
Sensorless Ripple Current Mode Control to Achieve Inductor-Deviation-Tolerant BCM Operation for Boost Converter

For switched mode power converters, boundary conduction mode (BCM) operation is an attractive alternative to improve the bandwidth, overall size, and efficiency. In this article, a sensorless ripple current mode (SRCM) controller is proposed to achieve inductor-deviation-tolerant BCM operation for boost converter. Compared to conventional approaches with current sensing or ZCD, the proposed controller relies on a digital algorithm to ensure consistent BCM operation. The algorithm calculates on/off durations of the main switch so that the inductor current valley value converges to zero. The convergence process is proved by a damped current model with considerations of parasitics and output voltage ripple. Since the convergence is not related to the inductor value, the SRCM controller achieves inductor-deviation-tolerant BCM operation. Furthermore, to improve the power efficiency, an optimal transition condition and a compensation time are adopted to achieve valley switching (VS). Finally, both consistent BCM operation and VS are achieved by the proposed control strategy. Simulations and experimental results prove that the controller effectively improves the closed-loop stability, the robustness to inductor deviation, and the power efficiency.
Identification of quantitative trait loci associated with iron deficiency chlorosis resistance in groundnut (
 Arachis hypogaea
 )

Iron deficiency chlorosis is an important abiotic stress affecting groundnut production worldwide in calcareous and alkaline soils with a pH of 7.5–8.5. To identify genomic regions controlling iron deficiency chlorosis resistance in groundnut, the recombinant inbred line population from the cross TAG 24 × ICGV 86031 was evaluated for associated traits like visual chlorosis rating and SPAD chlorophyll meter reading across three crop growth stages for two consecutive years. Thirty-two QTLs were identified for visual chlorosis rating (3.9%–31.8% phenotypic variance explained [PVE]) and SPAD chlorophyll meter reading [3.8%–11% PVE] across three stages over 2 years. This is the first report of identification of QTLs for iron deficiency chlorosis resistance- associated traits in groundnut. Three major QTLs (>10% PVE) were identified at severe stage, while majority of other QTLs were having small effects. Interestingly, two major QTLs for visual chlorosis rating at 60 days (2013) and 90 days (2014) were located at same position on LG AhXIII. The identified QTLs/markers after validation across diverse genetic material could be used in genomics-assisted breeding.
Preparing and testing the reliability of long-afterglow SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ phosphor flexible films for temperature sensing

Owing to its stability and environment-friendly properties, the SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ (SAOED) phosphor has attracted major scientific interest. With various applications, such as in emergency signage, luminous paints, and traffic signs, it can have a considerable impact on everyday activities. However, SrAl2O4 easily undergoes hydrolysis in the presence of atmospheric moisture. To remedy this, we prepared a phosphor film by spin coating to improve its water resistance. The SAOED was coated with epoxy resin glue without destroying the SrAl2O4 crystals. A series of reliability tests were conducted on the phosphor films and bare phosphors: high-temperature and high-humidity (HT) tests, thermal-cycling (TC) tests, and xenon lamp aging (XLG) tests. Then, the crystal phase, surface morphology, photoluminescence (PL), afterglow decay, and temperature-dependent PL were analyzed. The X-ray diffraction patterns show that the hydrolysis reaction of SAOED occurred easily, with the SrAl2O4 phase becoming the Sr3Al2 (OH)12 phase and SrAl3O5(OH) generated under HT tests. The PL intensity of the thin film of SAOED decreased 57.2%, 79.3%, and 98.8% after HT tests, XLG tests for 168 h, and TC tests with 10 repetitions from 233 K to 423 K, respectively. Moreover, the afterglow decay time of the SAOED phosphor film was longer than that of bare phosphors. The developed flexible films are excellent candidates for temperature sensing because they exhibit temperature-dependent PL intensity and are highly sensitive to surrounding temperature variation 300–420 K. Thus, SAOED films with stable luminescent signals can be used in energy-efficient, long-lasting temperature-sensing devices, which, apart from being environment-friendly, play a role in improving public safety infrastructure.
Effect of microbial phytase and diet fermentation on ileal and total tract digestibility of nutrients and energy in growing pigs

A digestibility experiment using six ileally cannulated growing gilts (initial BW 31.6 kg) was carried out to study the effect of microbial phytase and diet form on apparent ileal and total tract digest - ibilities of dry matter (DM), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca) and energy and on apparent ileal digestibility of amino acids. The basal P-deficient diet was fed either dry or mixed with water (feed:water ratio 1:2.5) and fermented in a laboratory setup. The enzyme was added to the dry diet at four levels (0, 1 000, 1 500 and 3 000 U/kg) and to the liquid fermented diet at two levels (0 and 1 000 U/kg) using a 6 × 6 Latin square design. The supplementation of microbial phytase to the basal diets significantly ( P < 0.05) improved ileal and total tract digestibility of P and tended to improve the digestibility of Ca. Phytase sup - plementation at 3 000 U/kg to the dry diet improved ileal and total tract P digestibility by approximately 30 and 60%, respectively. A similar effect was found in the liquid fermented diet supplemented with phytase at 1 000 U/kg. As a result of improved P digestibility, faecal P excretion was reduced by 20-40%. There was no significant effect of phytase addition or diet fermentation on the digestibility of DM, N, energy or amino acids. The response in amino acid digestibility to phytase calculated with acid insoluble ash as a marker was slightly higher than that calculated with Cr 2 O 3 .