Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Education and Labour Market Outcomes in the Future Generation?

This paper estimates the long-term impacts of PROGRESA, the Mexican flagship conditional cash transfer programme, on the educational attainment and the labour market performance of children aged 18 years or younger in 1997. Based on the household panel in 1997-2017, we utilise the initial experimental design where the programmes were allocated randomly at the village level in a phased manner. After controlling for the attrition bias by Inverse Probability Weights and the unobservable time-invariant household characteristics, we estimate the intent to treat (ITT) effect by Propensity Score Matching and weighted OLS and Probit models. After 20 years, children of the poor eligible households in the early treated villages outperformed the matched children in the control villages. Early beneficiaries achieved better educational attainments in both durations and levels and were more likely to work and earn a higher salary in the regular and non-regular labour markets. We also find spillover effects on children of non-poor households in the treated villages for education and voluntary/nonsalaried work. Disaggregation by age groups and gender shows that early-age nutritional support has a long-term positive effect on education and employment for females, while early educational support benefited males rather than females in terms of tertiary education and employment and wages in the regular market. The study provides robust evidence to support Heckman's (2012) conclusion that the education of disadvantaged children should be prioritised by public policies not only for the sake of fairness and social justice but also for the productivity of the economy. JEL Classification: I26 I28 I38 J24
Women’s participation and challenges to the liberal script: A global perspective

Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women’s participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently, however, a variety of populisms and nationalisms have emerged to present alternatives to liberalism, including in the international arena. We explore here their implications for women’s participation in public life. We use cross-national data to analyze changes in women’s participation in higher education, the polity, and the economy 1970–2017. We find that women’s participation on average continues to expand over this period, but there is evidence of a growing cross-national divergence. In most domains, women’s participation tends to be lower in countries linked to illiberal international organizations, especially in the recent-most period.
Study on Friction Compensation for Shipborne Tracking Antenna Servo System

First, a certain type of ship azimuth servo system as an example, mathematical model with friction is established, then using LADRC to estimate and compensate the friction disturbance, greatly inhibit the effects of these disturbances on the servo system. The simulation results show that the method of ADRC can greatly improves system capacity and anti-friction disturbance.
Microfabricated Broadband Components For Microwave Front Ends

Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Thesis directed by Prof. Zoya Popovi´c Broadband components for microwave and millimeter-wave RF front ends enable increased flexibility and functionality, such as using one front end for multiple electronic warfare frequency bands or using frequency scanning to electronically steer the main beam of a radar array. This thesis explores the usefulness of a sequential copper deposition, microfabrication process known as the PolyStrata T M process for broadband passive elements in two frequency ranges: 4-18 GHz and 130-180 GHz. The 4-18 GHz band research focuses on taking advantage of the low loss, low dispersion, high isolation, and relatively high power handling capability of the PolyStrata T M process by enabling passive parts of a MMIC to be moved off chip, thus saving expensive semiconductor wafer area. Specifically assembly structures referred to as sockets, inductors, and bias tees are designed, fabricated, and tested as a means of hybridly integrating MMICs, SMDs, and Polystrata T M lines. Measured data is in agreement with full-wave simulations and shows that PolyStrata T M integration introduces minimal parasitics and is therefore an attractive packaging technology. The 130-180 GHz band research focuses on taking advantage of the accuracy and tight tolerances of the PolyStrata T M process to make frequency-scanning, traveling-wave, slotted waveguide arrays at G-band using a WR-05 compatible PolyStrata T M waveguide. The array achieves scanning greater than 1 • /GHz, and more than 20 • steering with less than 15% fractional bandwidth. The a 20-element slot array has a beamwidth of 6.3 • near the center of the band (150 GHz). The array is 2 cm in length, has a mass of approximately 0.063 mg, can be connected to standard waveguide, and is scalable to a 2-D array. Dedication To my parents and grandparents, for their love, support, and examples to which I aspire. v Acknowledgements First and foremost, I extend my deepest thanks to Professor Zoya Popovi´c for this opportunity afforded me by her tireless efforts and for teaching me all the the immeasurables that are not found in any class or on any printed page. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Professor Dejan Filipovi´c, not only for the role on my committee, but also …
Analysis and design of ultra-wideband power divider by micro-genetic algorithm

An ultra-wideband Wilkinson power divider based on micro-genetic algorithm (micro-GA) is presented. The proposed power divider consists of four isolation resistors and four-section of microstrip lines with different characteristic impedances and lengths. The even-odd mode analysis method is used in the design procedure to calculate scattering parameters of the Wilkinson power divider. Based on the scattering parameters, the optimized parameter values of the power divider are obtained from the micro-GA, including characteristic impedances and electrical lengths of microstrip lines and also the values of isolation resistors. The measured results show that the proposed Wilkinson power divider has a broadband response from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz with a return loss greater than 14.0 dB and an isolation better than 17.0 dB. These results validate the effectiveness of the proposed micro-GA design method.
Design and Simulation of Microstrip Patch Antenna for Bandwidth Enhancement through Slotting

This paper presents a comparison between conventional simple Microstrip Patch Antenna (MPA) and the Antenna design by incorporation of various types of slots. Performance parameters like Bandwidth, Gain, Directivity, Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) and Return loss of Slotted MPA have been evaluated and compared with that obtained from conventional Microstrip Patch Antenna without slot. The results show that the bandwidth of the Microstrip Patch Antenna increases without degradation in other parameters. The modelling of the proposed antenna and parameters evaluation of proposed antenna has been implemented in Finite Element Method (FEM) based software 'High Frequency Structure Simulation' (HFSS) ver 10.0
Integration of numerical and field-theoretical techniques in the design of single- and multi-band rectennas for micro-power generation

We introduce an integrated design methodology for the optimization of RF-to-DC conversion efficiency of multi-band rectennas (rectifying antennas), with the aim of harvesting the RF energy available in humanized environments. Existing RF sources can either operate at known frequencies, power budgets, and locations, or can be ubiquitously available at different frequency bands, and with unknown directions of incidence and polarizations. In all cases, the RF link power budget may be extremely low. In order to harvest a significant quantity of energy, it is thus mandatory to place a very special care in the design of each part of the receiving/storing system. For this purpose, the receiving antenna must be optimized together with the rectifying circuit and the load. In our work, this is accomplished by a rigorous design tool based on the concurrent use of nonlinear/electromagnetic (EM) CAD tools and EM theory. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by comparing the computed and measured performance of single- and multi-band rectennas, both linearly and circularly polarized. Such antennas are designed to harvest RF energy from a variety of cellular and WiFi systems that are normally present in civil environments.
SSA-HIAST: A Novel Framework for Code Clone Detection

: In the recent era of software development, reusing software is one of the major activities that is widely used to save time. To reuse software, the copy and paste method is used and this whole process is known as code cloning. This activity leads to problems like difficulty in debugging, increase in time to debug and manage software code. In the literature, various algorithms have been developed to find out the clones but it takes too much time as well as more space to figure out the clones. Unfortunately, most of them are not scalable. This problem has been targeted upon in this paper. In the proposed framework, authors have proposed a new method of identifying clones that takes lesser time to find out clones as compared with many popular code clone detection algorithms. The proposed framework has also addressed one of the key issues in code clone detection i.e., detection of near-miss (Type-3) and semantic clones (Type-4) with significant accuracy of 95.52% and 92.80% respectively. The present study is divided into two phases, the first method converts any code into an intermediate representation form i.e., Hash-inspired abstract syntax trees. In the second phase, these abstract syntax trees are passed to a novel approach “Similarity-based self-adjusting hash inspired abstract syntax tree” algorithm that helps in knowing the similarity level of codes. The proposed method has shown a lot of improvement over the existing code clones identification methods.
A Sequence-to-Sequence Transformer Model for Disconnection Aware Retrosynthesis

Retrosynthesis is an approach commonly undertaken when considering the manufacture of novel molecules. During this process, a target molecule is broken down and analyzed by considering the bonds to be changed as well as the functional group interconversion. In modern computer-assisted synthesis planning tools, the predictions of these changes are typically carried out automatically. However there may be some benefit to the decision being guided by those executing the process: typically, chemists have a clear idea where the retrosynthetic change should happen, but not how such a transformation is to be realized. Using a data-driven model, the retrosynthesis task can be further explored by giving chemists the option to explore specific disconnections. In this work, we design an approach to provide this option by adapting a transformer-based model for single-step retrosynthesis. The model takes as input a product SMILES string, in which the atoms where the transformation should occur are tagged accordingly. This model predicts precursors corresponding to a disconnection occurring in the correct location in 88.9% of the test set reactions. The assessment with a forward prediction model shows that 76% of the predictions are chemically correct, with 14.1% perfectly matching the ground truth.
The Evaluation of a Tactile Display for Dismounted Soldiers in a Virtusphere Environment

Here we describe the evaluation of the THATO (TeleHaptic Assistance for Tactical Operations) mobile tactile messaging system in a “virtusphere” environment. THATO was developed to aid dismounted soldier-to-soldier communications, situation awareness, and navigation during tactical operations. The THATO Android application stores tactile message designs that are instantiated with context specifics and played through its interface to Tactile Control Units (TCUs) when a command is received from another soldier, the soldier’s location relative to a planned route or landmark/entity of interest triggers a message, or the soldier requests information (e.g. through voice recognition). Two previous evaluations of THATO and its evolving language produced promising results, but only six participants were involved in each and the fidelity was limited with participants simply standing and verbalizing their interpretations of messages played in a random order. Here the results of a lab experiment are presented where twenty participants were involved and fidelity was improved by having participants also respond to messages with appropriate physical behaviors within a 10 foot hollow sphere capable of rotating upon wheels placed beneath it. Overall, participants received twelve types of message, each with between one and four pieces of information, and recognized all parts of a message 95.9% of the time.
Seismic Design Charts for Coupled Shear Walls

Charts are presented for the seismic design of uniform fixed‐base coupled shear wall buildings by the response spectrum method using the first two modes. The building is treated as a continuum and its actual mode shapes are utilized for evaluating the various modal responses; namely, the top deflection, the shear force and moments in the walls, and the shear force in the connecting medium. The distributions of the moments and shears along the height are also presented, thus permitting the curtailment of reinforcements where appropriate. The results are given for practical values of the two nondimensional parameters which between them incorporate all the geometric and material properties of the system. The use of the design charts is demonstrated through the example of a 26‐story building. The comparison with available approximate results based on the mode shapes of a slender cantilever shows small differences for the RSS response. However large ones occurred for the response in the second mode. Thus, for .
Low-Temperature Performance Characterization of Biomodified Asphalt Mixtures that Contain Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement

The sustainability movement in paving materials has led to the increased use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). New developments in this area in the recent past include the use of biomodified asphalt binders (BMBs) such as those containing bio-oils derived from swine manure. The study reported in this paper examined the low-temperature properties of RAP and virgin BMB mixtures to determine if these mixtures exhibited better low-temperature performance than conventional hot-mix asphalt (HMA). Disk-shaped compact tension [DC(T)], Superpave® indirect tension (IDT), and acoustic emission (AE) tests were employed to characterize low-temperature properties of the asphalt mixtures. BMB mixtures exhibited higher DC(T) fracture energies than HMA at all RAP levels. In addition, BMB mixture fracture energy displayed a reduced dependence on RAP content. The difference in average fracture energy between BMB and HMA mixtures increased with higher RAP contents. Furthermore, BMB mixtures displayed consistently higher creep compliance, which indicated that these mixtures could alleviate thermal stresses more easily than HMA. A recently developed AE testing procedure evaluated the effects of BMB as well as RAP in the mixtures. The overall trends identified through AE testing were consistent with the findings from the DC(T) and IDT tests. In addition, AE results suggested a fundamental change in the behavior of the BMB RAP mixture relative to the HMA RAP mixture (i.e., rejuvenating effect). In general, it was observed that BMB RAP mixtures exhibited low-temperature cracking behavior superior to that of HMA mixtures.
Correlation-based Transition Modeling for Three-dimensional Aerodynamic Configurations

The prediction of boundary-layer transition is an important element of airfoil and wing design as the correct prediction of transition locations influences the resulting lift and drag forces and, thus, the overall performance. Boundary-layer transition is characterized by boundary-layer quantities like the velocity profiles in the boundary layer along a streamline or the momentum thickness computed from these profiles. In Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), many codes are based on the finite-volume discretization of the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. Computations with these codes yield no information about streamlines in the flow, which means the characterizing quantities for boundary-layer transition are not directly available. To deal with this, two different approaches were introduced into the DLR TAU code, the unstructured CFD solver of DLR for aircraft analysis and design.
Bovine serum albumin detection by using molecularly imprinted surface plasmon resonance sensors

Molecular imprinted polymers (MIP) have key-lock pattern binding properties specific to the size and shape of target molecules. In this study, we have prepared detection platforms based on a molecularly imprinted surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor that can detect bovine serum albumin (BSA) sensitively, selectively, quickly, and in real time. The polymeric film prepared on the SPR sensor surface by molecular imprinting method was obtained by selecting the N-methacryloyl-(L)-glutamic acid molecule as a suitable functional monomer using ultraviolet polymerization. Three different imprinting methods, such as epitope, bulk, and surface imprinting methods, were used to examine the imprinting efficiency. Real-time measurements were performed with BSA imprinted SPR sensor provide linearity in the concentration range from 0.10 to 7.50 nM and indicate a detection limit value of 0.015 nM. Furthermore, we performed the selectivity experiments, where transferrin and hemoglobin were chosen as competitor agents. Overall, the SPR sensor prepared by the epitope imprinting approach has been found to be highly selective and sensitive for bovine serum albumin. To statistically assess the reusability of the sensor, intraday experiments were tested three times with five replicates. The RSD% value less than <1.3 indicates high reproducibility for both sensor production and reproducibility of the method. Validation studies were carried out via enzyme-linked immunosorbent analysis technique (ELISA) in order to demonstrate the applicability of the BSA imprinted SPR sensor. Due to their features such as reusability, fast response time, and ease of use, these SPR sensors, which could be used as an alternative to albumin monitoring approaches, can also be adapted to detect and monitor other proteins in real time.
Super-resolution of multipath channels in a spread spectrum location system

In a direct sequence spread spectrum based vehicle location system, the arriving signal is normally correlated with the original pseudonoise (PN) sequence to determine the range estimate. The authors use super-resolution techniques to improve the resolution of the range estimate beyond that of the traditional PN correlation method. It is shown that the improvement ranges from twice to more than 40 times for both simulated and measured channels.
Utilizing and adaptation of the absorptive capacity concept in a virtual enterprise context

The author is involved in a multi-year programme to establish a number of large-scale manufacturing SME collaboration projects. It was anticipated that some web-based tools used previously by larger firms could be adapted, but limits in the capabilities of the participant firms and the emergence of a different business model led to a change in approach. Participants had quite diverse internal ICT capabilities that might be used for bidding collaboratively for manufacturing contracts, or for operating as an extended enterprise. Some way of mapping the functional project needs and comparing these with participant capabilities was needed. In this paper an adaptation of the notion of absorptive capacity where both a firm's resource base and its knowledge base are considered is used as a framework to better understand participant requirements. This was subsequently used in building a web-based virtual enterprise support system that utilized simple, lowest cost system components.
Machining Performance and Optimizing Machining Parameters of Al2O3–TiC Ceramics Using EDM Based on the Taguchi Method

Investigating machining performance of conductive ceramics (Al2O3 + 30 vol% TiC) using electrical discharge machining (EDM) is the aim of this work. The EDM machining parameters such as machining polarity, peak current, auxiliary current with high voltage, pulse duration, no load voltage, and servo reference voltage were chosen to explore the effects on material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR), and surface roughness (SR). The L18 orthogonal array based on the Taguchi experimental method was adopted to determine EDM machining characteristics systemically, and the experimental data were statistically analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). Experimental results showed EDM is a feasible process to shape conductive ceramics, and relationships between machining characteristics and parameters were examined. Moreover, machining parameter optimal combination levels in machining conductive ceramics via EDM were also determined.
Color space influence on ANN skin lesion classification using statistics texture feature

This study aims to investigate the ability of an artificial neural network to differentiate between malign and benign skin lesions based on two statistics terms and for RGB (R red, G green, B blue) and YIQ (Y luminance, and I and Q chromatic differences) color spaces. The targeted statistics texture features are skewness (S) and kurtosis (K) which are extracted from the histograms of each color channel corresponding to the color spaces and for the two classes of lesions: nevi and melanomas. The extracted data is used to train the Feed-Forward Back Propagation Networks (FFBPNs). The number of neurons in the hidden layer varies: it can be 8, 16, 24, or 32. The results indicate skewness features computed for the red channel in the RGB color space as the best choice to reach the goal of our study. The reported result shows the advantages of monochrome channels representation for skin lesions diagnosis.