Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optical forces in the T-matrix formalism

Optical tweezers are a crucial tool for the manipulation and characterisation, without mechanical contact, of micro- and nanoparticles, ranging from biological components, such as biomolecules, viruses, bacteria, and cells, to nanotubes, nanowires, layered materials, plasmonic nanoparticles, and their composites. Despite the many interdisciplinary applications, only recently it has been possible to develop an accurate theoretical modelling for the mesoscale size range. This goes beyond the strong approximations typically used for the calculation of optical forces on particles much smaller (dipole approximation) or much larger (ray optics) than the wavelength of the trapping light. Among the different methods used to calculate optical forces on model particles, the ones based on the transition matrix (T-matrix) are currently among the most accurate and efficient, particularly when applied to non-spherical particles, both isolated and interacting, or in composite structures. Here, we first give an overview of the theoretical background on optical forces, optomechanics, and T-matrix methods. Then, we focus on calculations of optical trapping on model polystyrene nanowires with the aim to investigate their scaling with nanowire length at the mesoscale. We compare the force constant dependence with approximations at small or large length with respect to the trapping wavelength and with calculations on spheres, pointing out the role of shape.
HIGH VOLTAGE SWITCHING SYSTEM FOR ELECTROWETTING ON-DIELECTRIC (EWOD)

Electrowetting-On-Dielectric (EWOD) is becoming a standout amongst all the broadly used method for controlling small amount of liquid on a flat electrode surface. Scaling down the EWOD process has been a technological development recently as it appeared to have better integration and automation of numerous procedures on a single device. The applied voltage plays an important role in this study. A low voltage will diminish the ionization effect happening within the droplet. Insufficient ionization will further cause the inability of droplet movement. Therefore, a high voltage must be applied to initiate droplet movement. This study focuses on high voltage switching system for electrowetting process. Results achieved shown that MOSFET IRF 740 acted as the best switching component for the system. Besides, this study proves the feasibility of electrowetting by describing the fabrication and testing of different dielectric layers using high voltage switching system. As for the coating of dielectric layer, cooking oil showed the most noticeable results out of all the materials
Poultry welfare in terms of poultry red mite (Dermanyssus gallinae) impact and control

Technological solutions and environmental conditions have a significant impact on infestation intensity and the problems around D. gallinae control. Changes in keeping laying hens in EU, in terms of D. gallinae influence, have not led to the welfare of the layers. On the contrary, they have contributed to the spreading of disease, have worsened conditions for control and accentuated harmful consequences. Apart from the poultry, these changes have also had a negative impact on the welfare of humans, through a toxicological and zootonic risk, and economic damages. Conventional cages so far provide the most appropriate environment for D. gallinae control. Opportunities for improving, even solving the problem of D. gallinae control in egg production do exist, however they require a changing the entire approach hitherto.
“Rhetoric Mix” of Argumentations: How Policy Rhetoric Conveys Meaning of Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development

Policymakers increasingly demand private enterprises to help solve social and ecological challenges faced by nations worldwide. In this article, we use Toulmin’s rhetoric model to explain how European Union policy rhetoric articulates the meaning of entrepreneurship for sustainable development. Our findings demonstrate a “rhetoric mix” of argumentations through which policy rhetoric conveys three meanings of entrepreneurship—beneficiary in corrective sustainability, contributor in constructive sustainability, and opportunistic operator in assertive sustainability—and imposes shared beliefs that frame the policy discourse. In conclusion, we introduce a framework of “rhetoric mix” to advance research on entrepreneurship policy discourse and sustainable entrepreneurship.
ECOWAS COMMON CURRENCY: HOW PREPARED ARE ITS MEMBERS?

ABSTRACTThis study operationalizes the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) to investigate the preparedness of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members to form a Monetary Union (MU). Inflation and output models are estimated, with the sample 1988:01 to 2017:12 for the former and 1967 to 2016 for the latter. Analyses of ECOWAS convergence criteria, impulse responses, variance decompositions and correlations of shocks of these two models, reveal that the shocks across the ECOWAS members are asymmetric. The conclusion is that ECOWAS members as a whole are not well-prepared and therefore a full-fledged pan-ECOWAS MU is not advisable. It is also found that members of the European Monetary Union (EMU) tend to be a better fit for OCA than the ECOWAS members. The study recommends various courses of action such as fostering coordination among Central Banks of ECOWAS members, and providing a fund to serve as an incentive for countries that may incur cost rather than benefit if the single currency is created. LA MONEDA COMÚN DE LA ECOWAS: ¿CUÁN PREPARADOS ESTÁN SUS MIEMBROS? RESUMENUtilizamos el Área Monetaria Óptima (AMO) para indagar cuán preparados están los miembros de la Comunidad Económica de Estados de África Occidental (ECOWAS, Economic Community of West African States) para formar una Unión Monetaria (UM). Estimamos modelos de inflación y producto con datos de 1988:01-2017 y 1967-2016 respectivamente. Los análisis de criterios de convergencia, impulso-respuesta, descomposición de varianza y correlación de choques de estos modelos revelan que los choques entre estos países son asimétricos. Concluimos que estos países no están bien preparados y, por tanto, una UM pan-ECOWAS no es aconsejable. Además, los integrantes de la Unión Monetaria Europea (UME) tienden a satisfacer mejor una AMO que los de ECOWAS. Nuestro análisis recomienda fortalecer la coordinación entre los bancos centrales de la ECOWAS y un fondo que incentive a los países que incurran en costos en lugar de beneficios si se crea la moneda única.
GENETIC ASSESSMENT IN SOME MEDICINAL PLANTS UTILIZING MOLECULAR MARKERS

The interest in medicinal plants is not only due to the fact that it is a source of food additives, but it is also a major source of medicines. Medical plants contain many important vital ingredients used in the treatment of many diseases. Therefore, medicinal plants are considered a safe source of medical drugs. Many medicinal plants have a significant economic importance to increase their demand. The plant families include many families, such as solanaceae family, which is one of the largest plant families with more than 3000 plant species And the plants of this family contains many important biological components and because of its importance, it was necessary to study and identify these plants by making fingerprinting, detect the molecular genetic markers for this family, study the genetic diversity of these species and determine the relationships between species of this family by using genetic techniques such as the technique of Inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR). The results obtained in the five solanaceae species (Lycium shwaii, Hyoscyamus muticus, Solanum nigrum from Northwestern coast, Solanum nigrun from Saint Katherine, and Nicotiana gluca) indicated that, 6 primers were applied. The HB15 primer which gave 12 bands, showed the highest polymorphism 58.33%, and the 49A primer, which gave 6 bands gave a lowest polymrphism 16.66% between the used plants populations, these results mean that ISSR technique is an powerful tool to make genetic diversity assessment for species.
Strategic Management Methods in Non-profit Making Organization

: Paper deals with analysis of strategic management methods in non-profit making organization in the Czech Republic. Strategic management represents an aggregate of methods and approaches that can be applied for managing organizations - in this article the organizations which associate owners and keepers of non-state forest properties. Authors use these methods of strategic management: analysis of stakeholders, SWOT analysis and questionnaire inquiries. The questionnaire was distributed electronically via e-mail. In October 2013 we obtained data from a total of 84 questionnaires. Based on the results the authors recommend the using of confrontation strategy which improves the competitiveness of non-profit making organizations.
Humor production in long-term romantic relationships: What the lack of moderation by sex reveals about humor’s role in mating

Abstract This manuscript explores whether the associations between partner humor production and relationship satisfaction and humor’s importance in romantic relationships are moderated by sex. Study 1 reports a meta-analysis (k = 10; N = 2,167) of the association between partner humor production (i.e., perceived; partner effects) and relationship satisfaction, and whether associations were moderated by participant sex. Contrary to predictions, partner humor production was more strongly associated to men’s relationship satisfaction than women’s satisfaction. Study 2 surveyed pairs of romantic partners (N = 246) regarding their production of humor, their appreciation of partner humor, and the importance of humor in their relationship. Results indicated no moderations by sex in the association between partner humor production and humor’s importance in the relationship.
Secure and Efficient Vehicle-to-Grid Energy Trading in Cyber Physical Systems: Integration of Blockchain and Edge Computing

Smart grid has emerged as a successful application of cyber-physical systems in the energy sector. Among numerous key technologies of the smart grid, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) provides a promising solution to reduce the level of demand–supply mismatch by leveraging the bidirectional energy-trading capabilities of electric vehicles. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient V2G energy trading framework by exploring blockchain, contract theory, and edge computing. First, we develop a consortium blockchain-based secure energy trading mechanism for V2G. Then, we consider the information asymmetry scenario, and propose an efficient incentive mechanism based on contract theory. The social welfare optimization problem falls into the category of difference of convex programming and is solved by using the iterative convex–concave procedure algorithm. Next, edge computing has been incorporated to improve the successful probability of block creation. The computational resource allocation problem is modeled as a two-stage: 1) Stackelberg leader–follower game and 2) the optimal strategies are obtained by using the backward induction approach. Finally, the performance of the proposed framework is validated via numerical results and theoretical analysis.
The moderation effect of social factors on marketing factors in consumer research

Abstract Consumer research tends to isolate the impact of marketing and social factors. Little has been done to include both. This paper aimed to find out what would happen when these two sets of factors are included. Two models were built in this paper, Model I with the marketing factors only and Model II with both the marketing and social factors. Data was collected in Ireland among more than 1473 transition year students in a personal survey regarding their willingness to learn Chinese. Data were analysed by using structural equation modelling (SEM). Results showed the two social variables, acculturation and intergenerational influence, significantly consolidated the effects of brand awareness on both brand trust and purchase behaviour; and they diminished the impact of brand trust on purchase behaviour. Empirical evidence suggested the worthiness for marketing researchers to examine both marketing and social factors in consumer research.
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Academic Engagement of Students

Higher education around the world is undergoing serious transformations as a result of technological, social, and economic processes. Universities from various countries are trying to secure a competitive position for themselves on the international market for educational services. Currently thousands of universities from different countries are trying to enter the race to join the race for international rankings. In their quest to reach the top of the rankings some countries seek to follow the experience of other, more successful nations by adopting their “best” practices. It is not surprising that all countries wish to secure a prosperous future for themselves and take efforts to avoid remaining on the sidelines of world development. However, a factor such as culture or national mentality may undermine the strategies and transformation processes that are being developed. The goal of this study is to conduct a cross-cultural analysis of the academic engagement of students from Russian, Chinese, Japanese, American, and British universities and determine the role that cultural differences play in existing educational systems. The study sample consisted of 26,648 Bachelor’s students who were enrolled at universities in the United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, and Russia during the 2016–2017 academic year. We used data from the “Student Experience in the Research University” (SERU) international research project to construct an index of student class involvement on the basis of a factor analysis. The results of our univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that students from Japanese, Chinese, American, British, and Russian universities demonstrate qualitatively different levels of academic involvement, which depends on the organization of the educational process as well as the cultural traditions of these countries. Thus, the Chinese students turned out to be the least engaged, since they were not required to actively participate in class discussions or to discuss additional questions related to the course with the instructor. Russian and American students demonstrated the highest level of engagement compared with other students from countries in the survey. The author emphasizes the need to take into account existing cultural aspects when developing educational strategies, interacting with foreign students in the classroom, as well as conducting comparative studies.
Hermes: an ensemble machine learning architecture for protein secondary structure prediction

Motivation Protein structure predictions, that combine theoretical chemistry and bioinformatics, are an increasingly important technique in biotechnology and biomedical research, for example in the design of novel enzymes and drugs. Here, we present a new ensemble bi-layered machine learning architecture, that directly builds on ten existing pipelines providing rapid, high accuracy, 3-State secondary structure prediction of proteins. Results After training on 1348 solved protein structures, we evaluated the model with four independent datasets: JPRED4 - compiled by the authors of the successful predictor with the same name, and CASP11, CASP12 & CASP13 - assembled by the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction consortium who run biannual experiments focused on objective testing of predictors. These rigorous, pre-established protocols included 7-fold cross-validation and blind testing. This led to a mean Hermes accuracy of 95.5%, significantly (p<0.05) better than the ten previously published models analysed in this paper. Furthermore, Hermes yielded a reduction in standard deviation, lower boundary outliers, and reduced dependency on solved structures of homologous proteins, as measured by NEFF score. This architecture provides advantages over other pipelines, while remaining accessible to users at any level of bioinformatics experience. Availability and Implementation The source code for Hermes is freely available at: https://github.com/HermesPrediction/Hermes. This page also includes the cross-validation with corresponding models, and all training/testing data presented in this study with predictions and accuracy.
Electronically augmented gait abnormality assessment following lower extremity trauma

Abstract Background: Objective evaluation of patient outcomes has become an essential component of patient management. Along with patient-reported outcomes, performance-based measures (PBMs) such as gait analysis are an important part of this evaluation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of utilizing a wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) in an outpatient clinic setting to assess its ability to provide clinically relevant data in patients with altered gait resulting from lower extremity trauma. Methods: Five orthopaedic trauma patients with varying degrees of gait pathologies were compared to 5 healthy control subjects. Kinematic data were simultaneously recorded by the IMU and a gold standard Vicon video motion analysis system (Vicon Motion Systems Ltd, Oxford, UK) during a modified 10-m walk test. Raw data captured by the IMU were directly compared to Vicon data. Additionally, 5 objective gait parameters were compared for controls and the 5 trauma patients. Results: The IMU data streams strongly correlated with Vicon data for measured variables used in the subsequent gait analysis: vertical acceleration, vertical displacement, pitch angular velocity, and roll angular velocity (Pearson r-value > 0.9 for all correlations). Quantitative kinematic data in post-trauma patients significantly differed from control data and correlated with observed gait pathology. Conclusions: When compared to the gold standard motion capture reference system (Vicon), an IMU can reliably and accurately measure clinically relevant gait parameters and differentiate between normal and pathologic gait patterns. This technology is easily integrated into clinical settings, requires minimal time, and represents a performance-based method for quantifiably assessing gait outcomes. Level of Evidence: Diagnostic Level 1.
Telmisartan improves the metabolic, hematological and inflammasome indices in non-alcoholic fatty liver infiltration: A pilot open-label placebo-controlled study

Objective:This study aimed to investigate the pleotropic effects of telmisartan against the metabolic derangement, and the maturation of the inflammasome (interleukins 1β and 18) that associated with NAFLD.Methods:This open label clinical trial was carried in the Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine at University of Sulaimani in cooperation with the Shar Hospital in the Sulaimani-Iraq. A total number of 51 NAFLD patients were recruited and grouped randomly into Group I (n=25) treated with placebo and Group II (n=26) treated with telmisartan (20 mg single oral dose, daily) for 8 weeks. Anthropometric measurements, fasting lipid profile and glucose levels, hematological indices, hepatic-fibrosis assessment, and inflammatory (including interleukins 1β and -18) markers were determined.Results:Telmisartan significantly reduced the waist circumference, blood pressure, triglyceride-glucose index, and aspartate transaminase enzyme. A significant high value of hepatic fibrosis in Group I patients compared with Group II patients was observed. Telmisartan significantly reduced the inflammasome markers, granulocyte number and without producing a significant effect against platelet count.Conclusions:Short-term therapy with low dose telmisartan can suppresses the maturation of inflammasome manifested by significant low levels of serum IL-1β and IL-18. This effect associated with improvement of the metabolic derangement and decreasing the liver fibrosis in NAFLD.
Offset-Cancellation Sensing-Circuit-Based Nonvolatile Flip-Flop Operating in Near-Threshold Voltage Region

For ultra-low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices powered by batteries or energy harvesting, a nonvolatile flip-flop (NV-FF) operating in the near-threshold voltage (NTV) region has been widely studied to save both standby and active power. However, in the NTV region, the NV-FF suffers from restore yield and performance degradation due to the increase in process variation combined with the decrease in supply voltage. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the previous NV-FFs according to supply voltage scaling and suggests the design directions for implementing the NV-FF that can operate with compact area and high performance even in the NTV region. Through the comparative analysis, a novel offset-cancellation sensing-circuit (OCSC)-based NV-FF, which adopts a separate latch and sensing circuit structure and an offset-cancellation technique, is proposed. The Monte Carlo HSPICE simulation results using industry-compatible 65-nm model parameters show that the proposed NV-FF satisfies a target restore yield with 32% area, 88% speed, and 82% energy savings in comparison with a representative NV-FF of the merged latch and sensing circuit structure.
Crashworthiness of a crisscross-reinforced square honeycomb under out-of-plane crashing

Abstract In this article, the crashworthiness of a crisscross-reinforced square honeycomb under out-of-plane crashing was investigated theoretically and numerically. The square honeycomb is formed by the improved crisscrosses. The webs of the crisscross have variable thickness and unequal section length, which make the property of the honeycomb improved. An explicit formulation was deduced for predicting the mean crushing force. A finite element method based numerical analysis model was built to calculate the crashworthiness, and a surrogate model based multi-objective optimisation model was set up for designing the cross-sectional parameters including the thickness and the section lengths of webs. The theoretical prediction results have a good agreement with the numerical results, and the prediction formulation was further modified by the numerical results. The theoretical and numerical results showed the thickness of the crisscross webs greatly affect the crashworthiness. A square honeycomb with high specific energy absorption and low peak crushing force was obtained through optimising the cross-sectional parameters of the honeycomb. The specific energy absorption increases about 70% and the peak crushing force drop over 40% after the optimisation.
Agency, guidance and gender – interrelated aspects of early childhood education settings

ABSTRACT Social interaction is one of the many things what preschool life is about, and how social life is constituted is of importance to understand. In early childhood education settings, children are guided and fostered by teachers and by each other in different directions. The overall aim of the article is to make a contribution to a deeper understanding of how children’s agency is performed as a constantly gendered social activity and how this is affected by the guidance they receive from teachers. The relationship between agency, gender and guidance is scrutinised. By using Foucault’s concepts discipline and power in combination with understandings of childhood and gender order this is explored. The empirical material consists of ethnographic observations in two preschools, and the results show how agency, gender and guidance need to be understood as relational processes when highlighting aspects of children’s social life in ECE.