Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of Piezoelectric Gas Micro Pumps with the PDMS Check Valve Design

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a� novel piezoelectric actuator for a gas micro pump with check valve� having the advantages of miniature size, light weight and low power� consumption. The micro pump is designed to have eight major� components, namely a stainless steel upper cover layer, a� piezoelectric actuator, a stainless steel diaphragm, a PDMS chamber� layer, two stainless steel channel layers with two valve seats, a PDMS� check valve layer with two cantilever-type check valves and an acrylic� substrate. A prototype of the gas micro pump, with a size of 52 mm ×� 50 mm × 5.0 mm, is fabricated by precise manufacturing. This device� is designed to pump gases with the capability of performing the� self-priming and bubble-tolerant work mode by maximizing the stroke� volume of the membrane as well as the compression ratio via� minimization of the dead volume of the micro pump chamber and� channel. By experiment apparatus setup, we can get the real-time� values of the flow rate of micro pump and the displacement of the� piezoelectric actuator, simultaneously. The gas micro pump obtained� higher output performance under the sinusoidal waveform of 250 Vpp. � The micro pump achieved the maximum pumping rates of 1185� ml/min and back pressure of 7.14 kPa at the corresponding frequency� of 120 and 50 Hz.
Modeling Money Demand in India: Testing Weak, Strong & Super Exogeneity

This study investigates the following two issues. First, whether money demand function can be estimated by a partial model (conditional Model) in particular, by a single equation specification like the partial adjustement model and distributed lag model, or by a full system method (joint distribution) like Vector autoregressive (VAR) model. Different concepts of exogeneity have been exploited to see the exogeneity status of all the variables under consideration for extimation of the money demand function and it has been found that price and interest rates are weakly exogenous for money implying that the partial model (but not single equation) may be appropriate. It has also been found that only price and short term interest rates are super exogenous with respect to the parameters of the demand for M3 implying that the money demand function should not be inverted to get the price equation. Secondly, this paper also examines the stability of the long run money demand for M3 in India during the period 1981-1998. In spite of the large shocks due to financial liberalization during 1990, the long run demand for M3 is found to be stable. Here it is worthwhile to mention that stability of money demand is a prerequisite condition for super exogeneity
Physics-Based Nonrigid Registration for Medical Image Analysis

In this paper we describe a new algorithm for nonrigid registration based on an elastically deformable model. The use of registration methods has become an important tool for computer-assisted diagnosis and therapy. Our goal was to improve analysis in various applications of neurology and neurosurgery by improving nonrigid registration. A local gray level similarity measure is used to make an initial sparse displacement field estimate. The field is initially estimated at locations determined by local features after which a linear elastic model is used to infer the volumetric deformation across the image. The associated partial differential equation is solved by a finite element approach. A model of empirically observed variability of the brain was created from a dataset of 155 young adults. Both homogeneous and inhomogeneous elasticity models were compared. Although a two and three dimensional version of our method was implemented, we focus on the description of the three dimensional case. For computational efficiency a parallel implementation of each part of the algorithm was developed. The algorithm has been used for various medical applications including interpatient registration of MR scans of the brain, intraoperative images of neurosurgery showing brain shift, a study of gait and balance disorder and preliminary results for a template driven segmentation approach for the caudate.
Deep Semantic-Preserving and Ranking-Based Hashing for Image Retrieval

Hashing techniques have been intensively investigated for large scale vision applications. Recent research has shown that leveraging supervised information can lead to high quality hashing. However, most existing supervised hashing methods only construct similarity-preserving hash codes. Observing that semantic structures carry complementary information, we propose the idea of cotraining for hashing, by jointly learning projections from image representations to hash codes and classification. Specifically, a novel deep semantic-preserving and ranking-based hashing (DSRH) architecture is presented, which consists of three components: a deep CNN for learning image representations, a hash stream of a binary mapping layer by evenly dividing the learnt representations into multiple bags and encoding each bag into one hash bit, and a classification stream. Mean-while, our model is learnt under two constraints at the top loss layer of hash stream: a triplet ranking loss and orthogonality constraint. The former aims to preserve the relative similarity ordering in the triplets, while the latter makes different hash bit as independent as possible. We have conducted experiments on CIFAR-10 and NUS-WIDE image benchmarks, demonstrating that our approach can provide superior image search accuracy than other state-of-the-art hashing techniques.
Determinants of male floating behaviour and floater reproduction in a threatened population of the hihi (Notiomystis cincta)

Floating males are usually thought of as nonbreeders. However, some floating individuals are able to reproduce through extra‐pair copulations. Floater reproductive success can impact breeders’ sex ratio, reproductive variance, multiple paternity and inbreeding, particularly in small populations. Changes in reproductive variance alter the rate of genetic drift and loss of genetic diversity. Therefore, genetic management of threatened species requires an understanding of floater reproduction and determinants of floating behaviour to effectively conserve species. Here, we used a pedigreed, free‐living population of the endangered New Zealand hihi (Notiomystis cincta) to assess variance in male reproductive success and test the genetic (inbreeding and heritability) and conditional (age and size) factors that influence floater behaviour and reproduction. Floater reproduction is common in this species. However, floater individuals have lower reproductive success and variance in reproductive success than territorial males (total and extra‐pair fledglings), so their relative impact on the population's reproductive performance is low. Whether an individual becomes a floater, and if so then how successful they are, is determined mainly by individual age (young and old) and to lesser extents male size (small) and inbreeding level (inbred). Floating males have a small, but important role in population reproduction and persistence of threatened populations.
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology Comparative Study of Qrs Detection in Single Lead and 12-lead Ecg Based on Entropy and Combined Entropy Criteria Using Support Vector Machine

Application of Support Vector Machine (SVM) for QRS detection in single lead and 12-lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) using entropy and combined entropy criterion is presented in this paper. The ECG signal is filtered using digital filtering techniques to remove power line interference and base line wander. SVM is used as a classifier for detection of QRS complexes in ECG. Using the standard CSE ECG database, both the algorithms performed highly effectively. The performance of the algorithm with sensitivity (Se) of 99.70% and positive prediction (+P) of 97.75% is achieved when tested using single lead ECG with entropy criteria. It improves to 99.79% and 99.15% respectively for combined entropy criteria. Similarly for simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signal, sensitivity of 99.93% and positive prediction of 99.13% is achieved when tested using entropy criteria and sensitivity of 99.93% and positive prediction of 99.46% respectively is achieved for combined entropy criteria. The percentage of false positive and false negative are reduced substantially when simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signal is used. The proposed algorithms perform better as compared with published results of other QRS detectors tested on the same database. 1. INTRODUCTION The electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important tool for providing information about functional status of the heart. Analysis of ECG is of great importance in the detection of cardiac anomalies. In a clinical setting, such as intensive care units, it is essential for automated systems to accurately detect and classify electrocardiographic signals. The correct performance of these systems depends on several important factors, including the quality of the ECG signal, the applied classification rule, the learning and testing dataset used. The ECG is characterized by a recurrent wave sequence of P, QRS and T-wave associated with each beat. The QRS complex is the most striking waveform, caused by ventricular depolarization of the human heart. Once the positions of the QRS complexes are found, the locations of other components of ECG like P, T-waves and ST segment etc. are found relative to the position of QRS, in order to analyze the complete cardiac period. In this sense, QRS
The Fate of Greece in a ‘Genuine Economic and Monetary Union’: Lessons from a small island state. CEPS Hi-Level Brief, 19 June 2015Friday, 19 June 2015

As the Greek debt drama reaches another supposedly decision point, Daniel Gros urges creditors (and indeed all policy-makers) to think about the long term and poses one key question in this CEPS High-Level Brief: What can be gained by keeping Greece inside the euro area at “whatever it takes”? As he points out, the US, with its unified politics and its federal fiscal transfer system, is often taken as a model for the Eurozone, and it is thus instructive to consider the longer-term performance of an area of the US which has for years been kept afloat by massive transfers, and which is now experiencing a public debt crisis. The entity in question is Puerto Rico, which is an integral part of the US in all relevant economic dimensions (currency, economic policy, etc.). The dismal fiscal and economic performance of Puerto Rico carries two lessons: 1) Keeping Greece in the eurozone by increasing implicit subsidies in the form of debt forgiveness might create a low-growth equilibrium with increasing aid dependency. 2) It is wrong to assume that, further integration, including a fiscal and political union, would be sufficient to foster convergence, and prevent further problems of the type the EU is experiencing with Greece.
Ontological driven product knowledge representation

Ontology based product modeling technology can achieve a more efficient knowledge sharing in enterprise and among enterprises. However, these models must be of semantic correctness and universal applicability. Although there already exist many solutions for how to build product ontology, little research has been undertaken on these models' quality evaluation. This paper gives the analysis of the function which ontology takes in product knowledge expression stack. Theoretically based on highly general ontological notions drawn from Analytical Philosophy, a two-layer evaluation discipline for product ontology is proposed. One layer is to restrict the arbitrary usage of a model language's semantic expression power, which can help to get rid of the two modeling deficiencies: construct excess and construct overload. The other layer is to normalize the ontology model structure through meta-property analysis, including the analysis related to essence, rigidity, identity and unity.
Facial Aesthetics: Babies Prefer Attractiveness to Symmetry

The visual preferences of human infants for faces that varied in their attractiveness and in their symmetry about the midline were explored. The aim was to establish whether infants' visual preference for attractive faces may be mediated by the vertical symmetry of the face. Chimeric faces, made from photographs of attractive and unattractive female faces, were produced by computer graphics. Babies looked longer at normal and at chimeric attractive faces than at normal and at chimeric unattractive faces. There were no developmental differences between the younger and older infants: all preferred to look at the attractive faces. Infants as young as 4 months showed similarity with adults in the ‘aesthetic perception’ of attractiveness and this preference was not based on the vertical symmetry of the face.
In Vitro Antioxidant Activity of Ethanolic Extract of a Medicinal Mushroom, Ganoderma Lucidum

Aim: The aim of the present study was to analyze the antioxidant contents and evaluate the antioxidant potential of Ganoderma lucidum.Materials and Methods:Wild collected G.lucidum was powdered and extracted with ethanol using soxehlet apparatus.Total phenolics,flavones and ascorbic levels were estimated following standard procedures.Subsequently,reducing power,DDPH radical,superoxide,hydroxyl radical and nitric oxide radical scavenging effects of the extracts at different concentrations were evaluated following standard methods. Results:The extract contained 42.41±2.21mg/g of phenolics,13.57±1.57 mg/g of flavones and the ascorbic acid amount was 1.33±0.12 mg/g . Total reducing power of the extract was 1.38 OD/ml at 240mg/ml concentration.DPPH radical scavenging activity was concentration dependent, showing maximum percent inhibition(72.24%) at 250mg/g.Similarly,hydroxyl,superoxide and nitric oxide scavenging potential also at their maximum at higher concentrations.Hydroxyl scavenging effect was 64.69% at 250 mg/g,superoxide radical inhibition was 73.54% at 300 ug/ml and 65.87% inhibition of nitric oxide was noted at 200 mg/ml. Conclusion:Ethanolic extract of G.lucidum showed appreciable amount of antioxidant compounds and also good free radical scavenging effects against different free radicals.The study shows that G.lucidumcompounds can be better antioxidant supplement for nutrients.
Dialect Handling in Hybrid Machine Translation

In this paper, we describe an extension to a hybrid machine translation system for handling dialect Arabic, using a decoding algorithm to normalize non-standard, spontaneous and dialectal Arabic into Modern Standard Arabic. We prove the feasibility of the approach by measuring and comparing machine translation results in terms of BLEU with and without the proposed approach. We show in our tests that on real-live broadcast input with transcriptions of dialectal speech we achieve an increase on BLEU of about 1%, and on web content with dialect text of about 2%.
Risk Factors for Gallstone Formation after Surgery for Gastric Cancer

Purpose The incidence of gallstones after gastrectomy for gastric cancer is higher than in the general population. However, the causes and mechanisms of post-gastrectomy gallstones are unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of gallstone formation and the risk factors for their development after gastrectomy for gastric cancer. Materials and Methods Of 1,744 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital between January 2010 and December 2012, 1,284 were included in this study and retrospectively reviewed. Patients' age, sex, body mass index (BMI), tumor location, stage, type of gastrectomy, type of reconstruction, and extent of node dissection were evaluated. Results The incidence of gallstones after gastrectomy for gastric cancer was significantly higher in men than in women (P=0.019). Exclusion of the duodenum during reconstruction was associated with a significantly higher incidence of gallstones (P=0.003). Overweight and obese patients with BMI ≥23 kg/m2 had significantly higher incidence of gallstones than those with a lower BMI (P=0.006). Multivariate analysis showed that obesity (hazard ratio, HR=1.614; 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.135~2.296; P=0.008), male sex (HR=1.515, 95% CI: 1.029~2.231, P=0.033), and exclusion of the duodenum (HR=1.648, 95% CI: 1.192~2.280, P=0.003) were significant, independent risk factors for gallstones after gastrectomy. Conclusions The cumulative incidence of gallstones for 5 years after gastrectomy was 15.3%. Male sex, obesity, and exclusion of the duodenum were risk factors for gallstone formation after gastrectomy. Careful surveillance will be required for these patient groups after gastrectomy.
Do Educated Leaders Matter?

This article uses data on more than 1,000 political leaders between 1875 and 2004 to investigate whether having a more educated leader affects the rate of economic growth. We use an expanded set of random leadership transitions because of natural death or terminal illness to show, following an earlier paper by Jones and Olken (2005), that leaders matter for growth. We then provide evidence supporting the view that heterogeneity among leaders’ educational attainment is important with growth being higher by having leaders who are more highly educated.
An Introduction to Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice

Glossary ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2 The Economic System 29 CHAPTER 3 Riba vs. Rate of Return 57 CHAPTER 4 Financial Instruments 75 CHAPTER 5 Risk Sharing as an Alternative to Debt 99 CHAPTER 6 The Islamic Financial System 113 CHAPTER 7 The Stability of the Islamic Financial System 137 CHAPTER 8 Islamic Financial Intermediation and Banking 151 CHAPTER 9 Capital Markets 173 CHAPTER 10 Non-bank Financial Intermediation 207 CHAPTER 11 Performance of Islamic Financial Services 225 CHAPTER 12 Financial Engineering 245 CHAPTER 13 Risk Management 275 CHAPTER 14 Regulation of Islamic Financial Institutions 299 CHAPTER 15 Corporate Governance 323 CHAPTER 16 Globalization and its Challenges 351 CHAPTER 17 Issues and Challenges 365 Bibliography 393 Index 399
Sliding mode robust control for formation of multiple underactuated surface vessels

The paper studies the formation control problem for multiple underactuated surface vessels by utilizing leader-follower approach with parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, and the proposed formation control method that the follower tracks a reference trajectory based on the leader's position and the predetermined formation without the need for leader's velocity and dynamics. A virtual ship is constructed such that its trajectory converges to the reference trajectory of the follower in limited time. The Ships formation control model is established on the virtual ship under leader-follower mode. The robust controller can effectively deal with parameter uncertainties and external disturbances by combining backstepping with sliding-mode control method, which can make the follower move along the trajectory of the virtual ship, maintain the desired formation with leader and achieve the purpose of formation control. A Simulation of the formation control for the multiple underactuated surface vessels is performed by using three real Northern Clippers. Results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Structuring effective copreneurial teams

Despite growing numbers and increased research attention, few empirical studies have focused on copreneurial family businesses, and hardly any guidelines exist on how these couples should manage their marriage and business relationships. Against this background the primary objective of this study was to empirically assess the influence of selected structural-based factors on the effectiveness of South African copreneurships. The teamwork literature proposes that the success of a team depends on how the team is structured or set up, but the empirical findings of this study demonstrate that elements of structure are related to certain measures of success but not to others. More specifically, the results suggest that the success of a marriage between copreneurs is not influenced by the success of the business, but that the more structural elements such as Leadership , Needs alignment and Role clarity are in place, the more satisfied the spouses are likely to be with both their business and their marital relationship.
The Interplay between Cloud-based SOA and IT Departments: Research Directions

Cloud-based SOA refers to an application architecture within which all functionalities are defined as independent services with cloud-based APIs that can be used to leverage external computing resources through ubiquitous Internet access. This paper uses cloud-based SOA as a new form of IT-enabled enterprise transformation to reconceptualize the roles of IT departments. A proposed conceptual framework argues that IT departments and cloud-based SOA are mutually influenced. Upon reviewing relevant literature, this paper suggests that research should reexamine critical success factors in cloud-based SOA implementations and investigate influences of cloud-based SOA implementations in the reconstruction of IT departments. Research questions and propositions are developed to guide research in this area.
Simulations of Mars Rover Traverses

Artemis (Adams‐based Rover Terramechanics and Mobility Interaction Simulator) is a software tool developed to simulate rigid‐wheel planetary rover traverses across natural terrain surfaces. It is based on mechanically realistic rover models and the use of classical terramechanics expressions to model spatially variable wheel‐soil and wheel‐bedrock properties. Artemis's capabilities and limitations for the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) were explored using single‐wheel laboratory‐based tests, rover field tests at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Yard, and tests on bedrock and dune sand surfaces in the Mojave Desert. Artemis was then used to provide physical insight into the high soil sinkage and slippage encountered by Opportunity while crossing an aeolian ripple on the Meridiani plains and high motor currents encountered while driving on a tilted bedrock surface at Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater. Artemis will continue to evolve and is intended to be used on a continuing basis as a tool to help evaluate mobility issues over candidate Opportunity and the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover drive paths, in addition to retrieval of terrain properties by the iterative registration of model and actual drive results.