Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of chicken peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolated from freshly drawn blood versus 24 h refrigerated blood

Abstract Background and Aim: The peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) is an excellent cell source for in vitro studies, particularly those involving immunology. The aim of this study was to determine the quality and quantity of chicken PBMCs isolated from freshly drawn blood as well as blood that had been chilled for 24 h. In addition, the survival of PBMCs cultured in medium was investigated. Materials and Methods: Blood samples were collected from 12 Betong and 12 Leghorn chickens. Hemograms were analyzed. Density gradient centrifugation was used to isolate PBMCs. PBMCs (2×106 cells/mL) were cultured in a culture medium and incubated in a CO2 incubator for 5 consecutive days. The number of viable cells was determined using the trypan blue dye exclusion method. Results: Blood samples were obtained from healthy chickens. There was no statistically significant difference in the total amount of PBMC between fresh and refrigerated blood samples from both chicken breeds. The viability of PBMCs isolated from fresh blood (95%) was significantly greater than blood refrigerated for 24 h (90-92%) in both breeds. Furthermore, the viability of PBMCs isolated from both blood samples decreased significantly over time, from 90-95% to 60-65%. Conclusion: The total number of PBMC in fresh and refrigerated blood was not significantly different. Fresh blood-derived PBMCs had significantly higher viability than 24 h refrigerated blood PBMCs. Furthermore, the viability of PBMCs decreased significantly over time.
Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Agriculture and Food Supply Chains: System Dynamics Modeling for the Resilience of Smallholder Farmers

COVID-19 has caused severe agriculture and food supply chain disruptions, significantly affecting smallholder farmers who supply most of the world’s food, specifically their changes in vulnerability, resilience, and food loss and waste. Therefore, the objective of this study was to understand the complex causal and feedback relationships for this system by developing a dynamic hypothesis and causal loop diagrams utilizing the System Dynamics methodology. Results provide a roadmap for dialogue and a framework for case-specific model development and help to guide policy decisions for smallholder farmers’ survival during health crises.
‘To be included among people’: families’ perceptions of schooling and contingent negotiations in a rural Tibetan community in China

ABSTRACT State schooling is currently transforming Tibetans’ perceptions and everyday experiences in Western China. Based on interviews with rural Tibetan parents and grandparents, and using subjectification as an analytical concept, this paper argues that schooling, alongside socio-economic changes, powerfully shapes the subjectivities of Tibetan parents and grandparents. Against their own sense of exclusion due to lack of schooling, they justified their support of schooling with recourse to promises of state schooling for their children to ‘be included among the people’ through social mobility. Set in the context of the School Consolidation Policy(SCP), this study illustrates the ‘double directionality’ of this subjectification process where participants were made into as well as becoming certain kinds of subjects through navigations of their social arena. Trivialising the SCP’s challenging implications observed around rural China, participants supported schooling for the perceived better quality education under the SCP. Meanwhile, they were making contingent negotiations to ensure children learn Tibetan culture and language through school education as well as other mechanisms.
Modeling and fabrication of tuned circuits for optical meta-materials

Recently there has been a drive to create artificial optical materials, or meta-materials, with a specified electrical permittivity and magnetic permeability at optical frequencies. Control over these properties can give rise to new physical phenomena, such as a negative refractive index and "super lensing", with potential applications in nanophotonic systems and nanolithography. Because most materials do not exhibit magnetic behaviour at optical frequencies, control over the effective magnetic permeability is achieved using patterned metal structures much smaller than the wavelength of light. The electric currents induced in the structures produce magnetic fields that may be in phase or may oppose the magnetic field of the incident light. When combined with dielectric materials, these structuresform coupled inductor-capacitor (LC) circuits that can resonate at frequencies in the optical spectrum. Since the resonant properties of the LC circuits control the properties of the meta-material, it is important to understand how changes in shape, size and the position of the subwavelength components affect the resonances. Using the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method, we study a number of different inductor-capacitor configurations. By applying the concepts of lumped impedance to the electromagnetic fields, the resonant frequencies and Q factors of the tuned optical circuits are determined from the FDTD data. Our in-house electron beam lithography system has been used to fabricate some of the structures. Results of the simulations, the nano-fabrication process and experiments on the meta-materials will be presented.
Development of a chemosensor probe based on functionalised poly[β-(1→4)-2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose]-cobalt nanoparticles for the selective detection of flunitrazepam

ABSTRACT Flunitrazepam abuse as ‘date-rape’ drug is on the increase. A colorimetric probe was developed by grafting cobalt nanoparticles (CoNPs) onto poly[β-(1→4)-2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose] functionalized thymol blue (CFTB) backbone for the detection of flunitrazepam drug in human urine (ex-situ). Studies revealed an interaction between CFTB and Co with the formation of a five-membered ring chelated compound (FTIR), while high thermal stability properties were displayed by CFTB-CoNPs without any change in the composition of the material (TGA). The distribution of CoNPs showed an irregular spherical pore deposited on the surface of CFTB (SEM) in the dimension of 100 nm (TEM). The interaction between the CFTB-CoNPs probe and the flunitrazepam was due to ionic bonding between the protonated amine group in the biopolymer and the fluoro group of flunitrazepam. The highly selective and sensitive CFTB-CoNPs probe was able to detect at 1. 00µg/L with an instant and distinct colour change from wine to orange.
Precision Capacitive Voltage Divider for Impulse Voltagge Measurements

This paper describes a precision capacitive voltage divider for impulse voltage measurements. The main feature of the new divider is a compressed-gas capacitor in the high-voltage arm. The divider is insensitive to environmental influences, possesses outstanding high-frequency properties, and causes little loading of the high-voltage circuit. Its excellent linearity and stable ratio permit meaningful high-voltage pulse measurements in the megavolt range.
Mitigating State-Drift in Memristor Crossbar Arrays for Vector Matrix Multiplication

In this Chapter, we review the recent progress on resistance drift mitigation techniques for resistive switching memory devices (specifically memristors) and its impact on the accuracy in deep neural network applications. In the first section of the chapter, we investigate the importance of soft errors and their detrimental impact on memristor-based vector–matrix multiplication (VMM) platforms performance specially the memristance state-drift induced by long-term recurring inference operations with sub-threshold stress voltage. Also, we briefly review some currently developed state-drift mitigation methods. In the next section of the chapter, we will discuss an adaptive inference technique with low hardware overhead to mitigate the memristance drift in memristive VMM platform by using optimization techniques to adjust the inference voltage characteristic associated with different network layers. Also, we present simulation results and performance improvements achieved by applying the proposed inference technique by considering non-idealities for various deep network applications on memristor crossbar arrays. This chapter suggests that a simple low overhead inference technique can revive the functionality, enhance the performance of memristor-based VMM arrays and significantly increases their lifetime which can be a very important factor toward making this technology as a main stream player in future in-memory computing platforms.
TELEHEALTH FOR FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: EXPERTS’ OPINIONS

Telehealth interventions (TI) are broadly defined as the use of information and communication technologies to deliver information, diagnosis, or educational services. While the use of TI was previously just a choice to support children with special needs and their families, they have become a necessity nowadays when performing face-to-face education and training practices are almost impossible. The current qualitative study aims at describing the opinions and recommendations of the experts toward the basic characteristics of TI, guidelines for successful practices, ethical considerations, potential problems, and solutions associated with TI process. Six experts experienced with implementing and conducting research on remote training and coaching participated in the semi-structured interviews that were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. The analysis revealed four themes: (a) Characteristics of TI, (b) important points in TI, (c) potential problems, and (d) potential solutions. Overall, the findings may shed light on the general conceptual and terminological definition of TI, discussions regarding to feasibility of TI in Turkey, and effective TI practices. Also, the findings may guide future practitioners, researchers, or teachers in conducting or investigating the effectiveness of TI.
A Case Study in Electronic Commerce and Open Source Software Development

Foundation #IIS-0083075, and from the Defense Acquisition University by contract N487650-27803. No endorsement implied. This study investigates how to understand and transform an organizational system for internal or external operations using Open Source E-Commerce or E-Business capabilities. This entails a case study within one firm that has undertaken an organizational initiative to develop, deploy, use, and support open source software systems for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), E-Commerce (EC) or E-Business (EB) services. The objective is to identify and characterize the organizational resources and development capabilities that lie at the center of the initiative. By learning what these resource are, and how the are arrayed into product development capabilities, can give executive decision-makers knowledge needing to determine whether or not to undertake a pilot study or product development effort that exploits the potential of open source EC and EB resources. The study provides a survey of large, mid-size, small, and start-up companies that are making strategic investments in open source software systems for ERP, EC, and EB products or service offerings. Large companies include IBM, SUN, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, SAP, and AOL within the IT industry, and also Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW) and Barclays Global Investors (BGI) in the international banking industry. Mid-size companies include Red Hat, VA Software, Progress Software, and CollabNet. Many of these mid-size companies provides open source software development products and services to the large companies listed here. A number of small and start-up companies are described, including those like ActiveState, JBoss, Jabber and Compiere which have become global market leaders in their respective market niches within the past year by relying on the development and deployment of open source software products and services. The global success of these companies suggests careful study and consideration of strategic investment activities are timely matters to pursue. This motivates the case study that follows. The case study examines GNUenterprise.org, an international virtual enterprise focused on the development and deployment of free open source software system framework for ERP and EB. The framework supports the development and integration of information system components for customer relationship management, corporate financial systems, and other business-to-business system modules. The study uses a Web-based approach to provide the data that empirically grounds this resource-based view of an organizational system. These data and the accompanying analysis help to what's involved in developing and deploying open source EC or EB capabilities, how it works; and the conditions that shape …
An improved asymmetric defected ground structure cell and its application to lowpass filter

An improved asymmetric defected ground structure cell is presented and analyzed. Based on this structure, a microstrip lowpass filter with low passband loss and high stopband suppression is designed and fabricated. Measured passband losses are below 1 dB, and a sharp slop is obtained at passband frequency fringe. The suppression is no <30 dB in stopband from 2.98 to 10 GHz. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 2933–2935, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24778
BIOSEALING: A METHOD FOR IN SITU SEALING OF

Leakages in civil-engineering water retaining constructions or in natural imper- vious layers are a major problem in constructional and environmental applications. Tra- ditional techniques for sealing these leakages have many disadvantages as they are expensive and environmental unfriendly. Much research has been done for using microor- ganisms to induce bioclogging for sealing the leakages. BioSealing is a novel method, developed by Deltares, for suitable in situ clogging of leakages in subsurface construc- tions and natural layers. It is caused by stimulating bacteria that are naturally present in the subsurface. Both laboratory and field tests have shown that BioSealing can success- fully repair leakages in water retaining civil constructions like sheet pile walls and earth dams. A reduction with a factor 5-20 was achieved in all cases. This method has as huge advantage that the leak location does not need to be known precisely and that sealing takes place specifically at the location of the leak.
Innovation Cube: Triggers, Drivers and Enablers for Successful Innovations

Research on innovation has explained the relationships between institutions of higher learning, companies and the markets from both market driven and resource driven perspectives. However, innovation still remains more of an art than a science. Key researchers have lamented that it is difficult for most companies to scan the market place to identify new innovation opportunities. This paper describes a framework called Innovation Cube that is the building block for helping companies identify new innovation opportunities. This cube is constructed using three attribute-pairs called drivers, triggers and enablers of innovation. The paper discusses examples of the types of innovations represented in each of the four quadrants of the three planes that result from the drivers, triggers and enablers of innovation.
Life cycle assessment of ethanol production from tropical banagrass (Pennisetum purpureum) using green and dry processing technologies in Hawaii

This study conducted well-to-pump and well-to wheel life-cycle assessment of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during ethanol production from tropical Banagrass (Pennisetum purpureum) using green-processing (with the use of fresh feedstocks) and dry or conventional processing (with the use of dried feedstocks) in the state of Hawaii. 10 000 MJ of energy was used as a functional unit with a systematic boundary drawn based on relative mass, energy, and economic value method using a 1% cutoff value, and the results were compared to those of conventional gasoline, and ethanol from corn and other ethanol lignocellulosic feedstocks. Detailed techno-economic model was built using the SuperPro designer. Ethanol yields were estimated at 0.27 l/kg (green processing with fungal co-product), 0.27 l/kg (green processing without co-product), and 0.29 l/kg (dry-processing) of feedstock, respectively. The well-to-pump analysis indicate that ethanol production consume 8200 MJ (green processing with co-p.
La value relevance de la norme IFRS 16 dans le contexte marocain

The implementation of IFRS 16 - Leases, on January 1, 2019, by introducing a unique model for accounting lease contracts for lessees, is supposed to meet the common objective of the international and the American accounting standard setters (IASB and FASB), to improve the method of accounting for leases (operating and financing) and provide accurate and relevant accounting information. In this context, this study aims to analyze the value relevance of the adoption of IFRS 16, in companies listed on Casablanca stock exchange, by employing the valuation framework developed by Ohlson (1995), widely used in the literature to assess the value relevance of accounting information by its ability to explain stock market prices. Results confirm those obtained by previous research on the value relevance of IFRS standards in Morocco, concluding that the transition to IFRS 16 did not lead to the production of more relevant financial information compared to the old standard (IAS 17). This study aims to enrich the current literature that is interested in the application of IFRS standards in the context of developing countries. Its results also help to inform accounting standard setters in these countries in their plans to modernize their accounting information systems. Our research nevertheless has limitations, including the size of the sample, given the optional application of IFRS in Morocco, as well as the relatively limited depth in terms of time since the transition to the standard in 2019. JEL Classification: M4. Paper type: Empirical research.
Routing Optimization Algorithm of Spatial DTN Network Based on Multiattribute Decision

Delay or stop (DTN) tolerance space network is considered to be a technology that can trade with a limited or restricted field communication area. In the space DTN network architecture, routing is very important. This article is based on the best-in-class multiattribute decision-making DTN network routing optimization algorithm. The goal is to use the optimized DTN network routing algorithm multiattribute decision-making algorithm and conduct a more in-depth study on the field information mechanism multipath decision algorithm and network path. Aiming at the problems of long link delay and frequent link interruption of current deep-space communication characteristics, and solving the impact on communication caused by system performance degradation. This paper adopts the multiattribute decision-making model algorithm to construct simulation tests, introduces the DTN network architecture, and analyzes the four attributes of the multi-attribute decision-making link bandwidth, node data forwarding rate, link establishment delay, and network error rate. The experimental results show that, in the spatial information network, the high-speed movement of nodes and the highly dynamic nature of the network make the deep-space network topology unstable and long communication delay; the change of the link mode and switch connection in the network will cause the routing table to update. This routing update method requires the exchange of topology information between all networks; when the forwarding rates of adjacent nodes are 100%, 90%, 95%, and 70%, nodes can only perform routing independently when they meet. The decision attribute algorithm has obvious changes to the attributes of any node in the spatial DTN network. The most obvious is that the link establishment delay has reached the standard of 5 or more.
The cultural influences of narrative content on consumers’ perceptions of helpfulness

The rapid development of text analytics enables marketers to obtain the information extracted from the narrative content in user-generated content (UGC). Recent studies have also demonstrated that people with different cultural backgrounds may express their opinions about their purchase in diverse manners. This study focuses on the impact of the narrative content of consumers’ perception of helpfulness. It first identifies four contextual dimensions to propose a theoretical model, demonstrating that perceptions of helpfulness may differ in respect to the consumers’ varied cultural backgrounds (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism). By using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), the study empirically tests the hypotheses by analyzing 111,857 movie reviews collected for 167 American movies released both in the United States and in China from 2013 to 2016. The results reveal that individualist consumers perceive an online review that contains more self-description and future-focus content as helpful, whereas collectivist consumers rely more on online reviews containing social description and past-focus content.
Antecedents of Dividend Payout Among Listed Non-Financial Companies listed in Nairobi Securities Exchanges, Kenya

: The objective of this study was to establish the antecedents of dividend payout among listed non-financial Companies listed in Nairobi Securities Exchanges, Kenya, with four specific objectives; to establish the effect of profitability, capital expenditure, leverage and liquidity on dividend pay-out of listed non-financial companies in NSE. The study was founded on Modigliani and miller hypothesis, signalling hypothesis, birds in hand fallacy, Agency and clientele policy. Using correlation research design, the study examined the antecedents of dividend pay-out of listed non-financial companies listed in Kenya for the period 2008 to 2019. The result showed a positive and significant relationship between dividend pay-out ratio and profitability, liquidity and leverage. It also shows negative association between dividend pay-out and capital expenditure. It was concluded that capital expenditure significantly influences dividend paid out negatively. Interest payment for long term debt takes priority as a charge on the profit made by the company. An improvement of a company's liquidity would lead to a better compensation to shareholder inform of dividend distributions. Listed companies therefore are expected to pay dividends when the companies are performing well because otherwise shareholders may question the proceeding of the announced profit or results to signaling effect. Listed companies should arrange the financing of capital expenditure so as ensure shareholder remains at an advantage and enable the company to recover its cost on capital and expected returns.