Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved Structure Refinement Through Maximum Likelihood

When crystal structures of proteins or small molecules are used to address questions of scientific relevance, the accuracy and precision of the atomic coordinates are crucial. Accordingly, the atomic model is generally improved by refining it to improve agreement with the observed diffraction data. The refinement of crystal structures is conventionally based on least-squares methods but such procedures are handicapped since conditions necessary for the use of the least-squares target are not satisfied. It is proposed here that refinement should be based on maximum likelihood and two maximum-likelihood targets have been implemented in the program XPLOR. Preliminary tests with protein structures give dramatic results. Compared to least-squares refinement, maximum-likelihood refinement can achieve more than twice the improvement in average phase error. The resulting electron-density maps are correspondingly clearer and suffer less from model bias.
Synthesis of decentralized variable gain robust controllers with guaranteed ℒ 2 gain performance for a class of uncertain large-scale interconnected systems

We consider a design problem of a decentralized variable gain robust controller with guaranteed L2 gain performance for a class of uncertain large-scale interconnected systems. For the uncertain large-scale interconnected system, the uncertainties and the interactions satisfy the matching condition. In this paper, we show that sufficient conditions for the existence of the proposed decentralized variable gain robust controller with guaranteed L2 gain performance are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, simple illustrative examples are shown.
Expanding Global Production Networks: The emergence, evolution and the developmental impact of the offshore service sector in the Philippines

Contemporary globalisation is characterised by an expansion of global production networks in services. Developments in information and communications technology have enabled the relocation of services across national borders, or, the offshoring of services. This has had profound implications for where in the world services are produced and where service employment is created. Scholars assume that a changing international division of service labour presents an important opportunity for developing countries to achieve economic development on the basis of exporting services, but empirically grounded studies from the perspective of developing countries are still scarce. Over the past decade, one million workers have found employment in the offshore service sector in the Philippines, primarily in Metro Manila’s call centres. This study investigates the emergence, evolution and the impact of the changing spatial division of service labour from the perspective of firms and subsidiaries located ‘offshore’ in the Philippines. It empirically examines how and why the offshore service sector in the Philippines has emerged, how it has evolved, and how it impacts economic development. Theoretically, the study expands the global production network framework by adapting the concept to the study of services and by combining its analytical concepts of power, embeddedness, and value with insights from economic geography and development studies to assesses to what extent services offshoring can be seen as a new ‘model’ of economic development. This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of contemporary processes of economic globalisation and expands economic geographical research on global production networks in services.
Preliminary Findings on the Use of Targeted Therapy in Combination with Sodium Phenylbutyrate in Recurrent Advanced Pancreatic Cancer—A Potential Strategy for Improved Survival

Metastatic pancreatic cancer carries an estimated five-year survival rate of only 2%. Gemcitabine-based chemotherapy remains a first-line standard-of-care treatment for elderly patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Combination chemotherapy FOLFIRINOX offers better results, but it is not recommended for the older patient population due to substantial toxicity. Standard-of-care second-line treatment is not yet established and is used in approximately 30% of patients since performance status is too low to consider further therapy. Targeted therapies with a single agent and in combinations have been tested in numerous clinical trials, but except for the combination of gemcitabine and erlotinib, have not yet proven efficacy. Here, we present preliminary findings of improved overall survival (OS) using a combination of sodium phenylbutyrate with various chemotherapeutic and targeted agents in stage IV A and B pancreatic cancer patients who failed at least one line of chemotherapy. The results suggest a strategy of simultaneous interruption of signal transmission involving multiple pathways in the second-line treatment that are believed to interfere with cell cycle, cancer cell metabolism, autophagy and maintenance of cancer stem cells and promote apoptosis. In this group of patients, median OS was higher compared to other second-line therapies (10.5 months compared to between 2.9 and 6.5 months in other studies, and in the best supportive care group, 2.3 months). Given the understanding that our findings are preliminary, we propose the validation of our initial results using a well-designed Phase I/II trial in recurrent advanced pancreatic cancer.
Malay farmers in Johore in the wave of capitalism economy during the colonial period of 1910-1957

In general, during the British colonial period of 1910-1957, the agricultural economy of the Johore Malays consisted of a group of farmers who lived in certain settlement areas, especially in the villages. Their agricultural activities can be defined as a group of people who owned or rented lands in small scale and used the manual system in the implementation of their work. This farming community in Johore was usually made up of the Malays. The agricultural activities in Johore in the early 20 th century had played an important role to the economic development in the state. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the patterns of land tenure system that were practised in Johore during the British colonial period from 1910 to 1957. The system had manifested a form of more complex agricultural activity. In fact, land administration during the colonial period had made ‘land’ as a commercial asset that could be traded. This situation brought a huge impact to the Malays in Johore because it was different from the traditional system which had been practised for centuries. However, the Malays in Johore still enjoyed certain advantages because they still owned their lands until the ‘Malay Reservation Enactment’ was gazetted in 1913, which brought great influence to the development of agricultural economy of the Malay community. This action was very important in protecting the rights and position of the Johore Malays as the native community in the state. Generally, lands owned privately by the Malays were in small scale. Thus, the situation indirectly led them to undertake agricultural activities which emphasized food crops. This can be seen clearly in several districts in Johore, such as Batu Pahat, Muar, Segamat and Endau. In order to examine the colonial’s land administrative system and the impact
Quantitative structure-activity relationship biodegradability modeling in biofiltration of petroleum volatile organic compounds.

A quantitative structure activity-relationship (QSAR) biodegradability model was developed to predict removal capacity of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a compost biofilter. Experimental data for o-Xylene, 1,3,5Trimethylbenzene and 1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene was used to develop the model. Biodegradability rate was correlated with three molecular and five quantum mechanical derived descriptor variables. Regression results showed very strong significance between biodegradability of compounds and their molecular weight, Mw (r 2 = 0.995), log octanol-water partition coefficient, pKow (r 2 =0.880), highest occupied molecular orbital energy, Ehomo (r 2 = 0.989), lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy, Elumo (r 2 = 1.000) and energy gap, ∆E (r = 0.987). Model significance with excited state energy, Ees (r 2 = 0.678) and ground state dipole moments,μ (r = 0.649) was strong. Log Henry’s Constant, H, had weak significance of r 2 = 0.461. The descriptors were screened and a complete biodegradability model developed using molecular weight and logarithm octanol-water partition coefficient. The model was calibrated using toluene, ethylbenzene, benzenepropyl-, decane and undecane VOCs and tested. Results showed high prediction of xylene and trimethylbenzene isomers, toluene, ethylbenzene, benzenepropyl-, decane and undecane biodegradability in the biofilter.
A Robust Control Method for Lateral Stability Control of In-Wheel Motored Electric Vehicle Based on Sideslip Angle Observer

In-wheel motored powertrain on electric vehicles has more potential in maneuverability and active safety control. This paper investigates the longitudinal and lateral integrated control through the active front steering and yaw moment control systems considering the saturation characteristics of tire forces. To obtain the vehicle sideslip angle of mass center, the virtual lateral tire force sensors are designed based on the unscented Kalman filtering (UKF). And the sideslip angle is estimated by using the dynamics-based approaches. Moreover, based on the estimated vehicle state information, an upper level control system by using robust control theory is proposed to specify a desired yaw moment and correction front steering angle to work on the electric vehicles. The robustness of proposed algorithm is also analyzed. The wheel torques are distributed optimally by the wheel torque distribution control algorithm. Numerical simulation is carried out in Matlab/Simulink-Carsim cosimulation environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed robust control algorithm for lateral stability control of in-wheel motored vehicle.
MIMO-OFDM channel estimation in the presence of carrier frequency offset

A multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication system with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is expected to be a promising scheme. However, the estimation of the carrier frequency offset (CFO) and the channel parameters is a great challenging task. In this paper, a maximumlikelihood(ML-) based algorithm is proposed to jointly estimate the frequency-selective channels and the CFO in MIMO-OFDM by using a block-type pilot. The proposed algorithm is capable of dealing with the CFO range nearly ±1/2 useful OFDM signal bandwidth. Furthermore, the cases with timing error and unknown channel order are discussed. The Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for the problem is developed to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. Computer simulations show that the proposed algorithm can exploit the gain from multiantenna to improve effectively the estimation performance and achieve the CRB in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). © 2005 Hindawi Publishing Corporation.
Entropic Lattice Boltzmann Method for Two-Phase Flows

Numerical simulation of multiphase flows often represents a challenging task for classical Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) schemes based on the macroscopic description of the fluid state leading to the Navier-Stokes equations. The reason lays in the fact that these flows are often driven by phenomena originating at mesoor micro-scales which need to be modeled into macroscopic equations. Unlike conventional CFD methods, the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is based on microscopic models and mesoscopic kinetic equations in which dynamics is evolved by the movement of fictitious clusters of particles on a fixed lattice. Due to this kinetic nature, the LBM has been found to be particularly useful in applications involving interfacial dynamics and complex boundaries, e.g. multiphase or multicomponent flows. However, despite of many attempts to model multiphase flows using LBM, the current approaches are still unable to address complex dynamical effects in an efficient and a quantitative fashion. In this dissertation, firstly, a thermodynamically consistent lattice Boltzmann model that enables complex simulations of dynamics two-phase flows is proposed. The key innovation is the application of the entropic lattice Boltzmann stabilization mechanism to effectively control and stabilize the numerical artifacts that might arise at the interface of a liquid-vapor system. The former together with a polynomial regularization of known equation of states bring about a substantial increase in the operating range of multiphase simulations and thus allowing us to carry out simulations of
Smarr formula and an extended first law for Lovelock gravity

We study properties of static, asymptotically AdS black holes in Lovelock gravity. Our main result is a Smarr formula that gives the mass in terms of geometrical quantities together with the parameters of the Lovelock theory. As in Einstein gravity, the Smarr formula follows from applying the first law to an infinitesimal change in the overall length scale. However, because the Lovelock couplings are dimensionful, we must first prove an extension of the first law that includes their variations. Key ingredients in this construction are the Killing–Lovelock potentials associated with each of the higher curvature Lovelock interactions. Geometric expressions are obtained for the new thermodynamic potentials conjugate to the variation of the Lovelock couplings.
A micromagnetic investigation of magnetite grains in the form of Platonic polyhedra with surface roughness

Micromagnetic calculations have been carried out for spherical magnetite particles with surface roughness consisting of patterns of conical bumps based on regular (Platonic) convex polyhedra. The purpose was to examine the effect of surface irregularities while avoiding overall shape anisotropy, which generally plays a dominant role in determining hysteresis properties. We considered three morphologies based on the tetrahedron (4 apices), the icosahedron (12 apices), and the dodecahedron (20 apices). Grains of three sizes were considered: 30 nm (single‐domain, SD), 90 nm (on the single‐domain/pseudo‐single‐domain boundary, SD/PSD), and 120 nm (stable pseudo‐single‐domain, PSD). We find that the morphologies investigated have very little effect on the hysteresis parameters of SD and marginal SD/PSD grains. However, in the PSD grains, coercivity increases significantly as bump amplitude increases from 0.1 to 0.9. This lends support to the long‐standing notion that surface protuberances on larger grains are a possible source of paleomagnetically significant stable remanence, although the very high coercivities (on the order of 100 mT) observed in some rocks cannot be achieved. Classical Stoner‐Wohlfarth shape anisotropy remains the only explanation for such ultra‐stable remanence in magnetite‐bearing rocks. This is confirmed by a specific example of a model “skeletal” grain consisting of three orthogonal parallelepipeds.
A pseudo‐Lagrangian method for remapping ocean biogeochemical tracer data: Calculation of net Chl‐a growth rates

A key goal in understanding the ocean's biogeochemical state is estimation of rates of change of critical tracers, particularly components of the planktonic ecosystem. Unfortunately, because ship survey data are not synoptic, it is difficult to obtain spatially resolved estimates of the rates of change of tracers sampled in a moving fluid. Here we present a pseudo-Lagrangian transformation to remap data from under-way surveys to a pseudo-synoptic view. The method utilizes geostrophic velocities to back advect and relocate sampling positions, removing advection aliasing. This algorithm produces a map of true relative sampling locations, and allows for determination of the relative locations of observations acquired along streamlines, as well as a corrected view of the tracer's spatial gradients. We then use a forward advection scheme to estimate the tracer's relative change along streamlines, and use these to calculate spatially resolved, net specific rates of change. Application of this technique to Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) fluorescence data around an ocean front is presented. We obtain 156 individual estimates of Chl-a fluorescence net specific rate of change, covering similar to 1200 km(2). After incorporating a diffusion-like model to estimate error, the method shows that the majority of observations (64%) were significantly negative. This pseudo-Lagrangian approach generates more accurate spatial maps than raw survey data, and allows spatially resolved estimates of net rates of tracer change. Such estimates can be used as a rate budget constraint that, in conjunction with standard rate measurements, will better determine biogeochemical fluxes.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MFIs IN SOUTH ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Previous studies indicate that microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have different operational strategies to MFIs in South Asia (SA). Given the recent emphasis placed on the feasibility of MFIs to achieve the dual goals of outreach and sustainability concurrently, we examine and compare the relationship between sustainability and outreach of MFIs in LAC with MFIs in SA. Our results indicate that trade-offs exist between outreach and sustainability in both regions. However, the severity of trade-off is dependent on which goal MFIs decide to focus on in each region.
Service quality, customers’ satisfaction, and profitability: an empirical study of Saudi Arabian insurance sector

Financial performance is the fundamental aspect to test the performance of the companies. The performance of insurance sector, like any other service industry, is supposed to depend significantly on customers. When it comes to customers, it is an established fact that customer satisfaction would be an important element. Customer satisfaction primarily depends on the quality of service it gets. It can be safely hypothesized that better service quality would lead to higher satisfaction, which would ultimately lead to higher profits for the company. Studies on this relationship in the insurance sector for Saudi Arabia are missing. Hence, this study aims at studying both the profitability of companies and quality of service and tries to relate it to customer satisfaction. The results are quite surprising, as the study establishes that although the qualities of services are found wanting in many areas, companies are earning good profits. A probable reason could be the statutory nature of the services. Nevertheless, this study recommends improving the quality of services and differentiating services between age groups for further improvement.
Numerical Simulations of the 1 May 2012 Deep Convection Event over Cuba: Sensitivity to Cumulus and Microphysical Schemes in a High-Resolution Model

This paper evaluates the sensitivity to cumulus and microphysics schemes, as represented in numerical simulations of the Weather Research and Forecasting model, in characterizing a deep convection event over the Cuban island on 1 May 2012. To this end, 30 experiments combining five cumulus and six microphysics schemes, in addition to two experiments in which the cumulus parameterization was turned off, are tested in order to choose the combination that represents the event precipitation more accurately. ERA Interim is used as lateral boundary condition data for the downscaling procedure. Results show that convective schemes are more important than microphysics schemes for determining the precipitation areas within a high-resolution domain simulation. Also, while one cumulus scheme captures the overall spatial convective structure of the event more accurately than others, it fails to capture the precipitation intensity. This apparent discrepancy leads to sensitivity related to the verification method used to rank the scheme combinations. This sensitivity is also observed in a comparison between parameterized and explicit cumulus formation when the Kain-Fritsch scheme was used. A loss of added value is also found when the Grell-Freitas cumulus scheme was activated at 1 km grid spacing.
Organomineralization processes in freshwater stromatolites: a living example from eastern Patagonia

Living stromatolites have been mostly described within shallow marine and (hyper)saline lacustrine environments. Southernmost South America lacks detailed investigations of these (organo)sedimentary buildups, particularly in regions experiencing extreme and variable environmental conditions. Here, we report and describe living freshwater stromatolites in the Maquinchao region, north‐western Patagonia, Argentina. Fossil stromatolites characterized by globular and cauliflower shapes are also present in a continuous palaeoshoreline of a former lake at an altitude of 830 m, whereas their living counterparts only occur in the calm waters of sheltered or meandering sections of the Maquinchao River. The living stromatolites and their host waters have been sampled and studied using various chemical and microscopic techniques to better constrain the environmental versus biological factors controlling their development. Our results indicate that today stromatolites only proliferate in freshwater when Ca2+ levels are high. A microscopic inspection of the living stromatolite mat indicates stronger photosynthetic activity in the upper green layer associated with crypto/microcrystalline calcite (nanoglobules) compared to the lower beige‐white biofilm. This biofilm contains more low‐Mg calcite (rhombohedra) precipitates, which can form millimetre‐sized aggregates in the underlying anoxic layer. Although sulphate‐reducing bacteria are living in the entire mat, they appear more abundant and widely distributed in the lower beige‐white layer and are always associated with Mg calcite. Low salinity and low‐turbidity water along with microbial (photosynthetic and heterotrophic) activity are the most important factors promoting low‐Mg calcite precipitation in the Maquinchao Basin. These conditions are very different from those proposed for recently described lacustrine stromatolites at high altitude in the subtropical and tropical Andes as well as in Chilean Patagonia. Hence, all these observations in modern freshwater stromatolites show the importance of geomicrobiological studies in identifying proxies of the hydrological conditions prevailing during their formation.
Visitor Preference Factors toward Shopping Centres’ Thematic Corridor Study of Gandaria City, Indonesian Shopping Centre

The existence of thematic corridor at shopping centre is one of the competitive uniqueness of shopping centres in Asian, especially shopping centres in Indonesia. This current research focuses on exploring visitors’ perception towards the setting of thematic corridor at shopping centre. Excitement, happiness and arousal will encourage visitors’ satisfaction to explore the shopping centre environment. This study is conducted under mixed method, started from focus group and continued with quantitative factorial analysis. The samples are 175 visitors of Gandaria City in Jakarta. Visitors’ perception towards the ideal factors that shape the comfort for thematic corridor at shopping centre are the corridor legibility, social image and interaction, and thematic corridor decoration.
Paul’s 'former conduct in the Judean way of life' (Gal 1:13) … or not?

Various arguments are made about Paul’s 'Jewishness/ Judeanness' as a follower of Jesus Messiah, for example, that Paul essentially remained to be 'Jewish/Judean' and that he still fully operated in the world of 'Judaism'. These claims are investigated by answering three sets of questions derived from a proposed general model of ethnicity, which is developed with the help of cultural anthropology (ethnicity theory).