Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF INDONESIAN SAGO STARCH : IN COMPARISON WITH ARENGA SAGO , WHEAT , CORN , AND TAPIOCA

Physicochemical properties of native sago starch obtained from Metroxylon sp. Palms in Southeast Sulawesi Indonesia, such as chemical composition, total stach content, apparent amylose content, pasting properties, endothermic thermal behaviour, starch paste clarity, freeze-thaw stability, hardness of gel, and microscopic structure of the granules, were analysed. As a comparison, those properties of Metroxylon sago starch obtained from a different source, sago starch derived from Arenga sp. Palms, wheat corn, and tapioca starches were also analysed. All sago starch samples contained less fat and protein, compared to cereal starches. These starch samples contained amylose of 25.27 – 27.47 %, significantly higher compared to wheat, corn, and tapioca starches with amylose content of 21.45, 21.63, and 18.21% respectively. In general, Metroxylon sago starch samples exhibited relatively higher peak viscosity in its RVA pasting curves, and higher endothermic energy. The samples of Metroxylon sago starch had bigger granules sizes, and had a more transparent paste. The gels of the Metroxylon sago starch were harder, and showed a relatively better stability to freezythaw treatment. The information obtained in this experiment will be important for the utilisation of the sago starch in the food industry.
Oncologic theranostics: recognition of this concept in antigen-directed cancer therapy for colorectal cancer with anti-TAG-72 monoclonal antibodies

The term theranostics was originally coined in 1999 within the private pharma ceutical sector of corporate America [1,101,102]. Nevertheless, the notion of a specific agent having both a diagnostic and therapeutic component to its functionality clearly predates this neologism and is not a new concept to the field of oncology. In this regard, we believe that one long-standing example of oncologic theranostics is antigendirected cancer surgery using radiolabeled anti-tumor-associated glyco protein-72 (TAG-72) monoclonal antibodies.
Occupational Choice of Return Migrants in Moldova

This paper analyzes the occupational choice of return migrants. Using the survey data on different aspects of migration in Moldova, we find that those who stayed illegally in the host country tend to go into wage employment on return to the home country. We also show that relatively better educated migrants tend not to be in formal employment (i.e., appear not to participate in the labor market), whereas those with relatively lower skills or who obtained a worse-than-expected outcome in the host country are more likely to be wage employed in the home country on return. We offer an economic analysis of these paradoxical results.
Post-Entry Struggle for Life and Pre-Exit Shadow of Death from a Financial Perspective

Abstract The success or failure of small, young, and private firms depends highly on the evolution of their financial position. This paper considers the post-entry/pre-exit adjustment process of firms, with focus on financial (debt-to-asset ratio) and labor productivity dynamics. Empirically examining financial relationships has been difficult, due to a lack of data on small, young, and private firms. We find that the post-entry struggle for life results in highly productive entrants reducing their leverage. Pre-exit dynamics see firm growth and relative firm size fall, with rising leverage. Increasing leverage hints at a shadow of death. Selection and survivor effects contribute to post-entry dynamics, while turnover and transition effects contribute to pre-exit dynamics.
Public-Service Motivation: A Multivariate Test

Is there public-service motivation ? In comparison to private employees, are public employees more likely to value extrinsic rewards over intrinsic rewards ? Utilizing data from the General Social Survey, public- and private-sector workers are compared with regard to the incentives that they value most highly in a job. This study contributes to the research literature on the difference between public and private employees by providing a multivariate analysis of survey data collected using a national sampling frame. Logistic regression results indicate that public employees are more likely to place a higher value on the intrinsic reward of work that is important and provides a feeling of accomplishment. Additionally, private-sector workers are more likely to place a higher value on such extrinsic reward motivators as high income and short work hours. These findings suggest that public-service motivation does exist. Individuals employed in public organizations value different motives than those employed in private organizations.
Total Quality Management and employees' involvement: A case study of an Australian organisation

Although much has been said about people being the primary resource in an organisation practising Total Quality Management (TQM), this area has been neglected by many companies implementing TQM. This paper presents a detailed case study of an Australian organisation that is recognised as a ‘quality’ company and discusses a number of issues relating to employee involvement. The case study finds that employee involvement was a major focus of the company when TQM was first implemented. However, this was lost when the company became more outward focused. The lack of ongoing employee involvement at the shop-floor level has been identified as a major reason for the non-sustainability of TQM in the organisation.
The Impact of Changes in the FTSE 100 Index

This paper examines both the long-term and short-term impact associated with changes in the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index. We find that stocks exhibit positive (negative) abnormal long-run performance following their inclusion in (deletion from) the index. There is also evidence of significant short-term cumulative abnormal returns around the event. The reversal of these price effects suggests that short-term buying (selling) pressure (possibly from index trackers) moves prices temporarily away from equilibrium. An analysis of stock liquidity implies speculators may trade in advance of the announcement, while index trackers trade between the announcement and event dates. Finally, the organisation of the FTSE 100 Index enables us to conduct an analysis of stocks that just avoid being relegated from (fail to be promoted to) the FTSE 100.
The End of the African Renaissance

Twenty years ago, African leaders and intellectuals proclaimed an African renaissance. The grim days of postcolonial Africa, they said, were over. The end of the Cold War and the growing popular disgust with misrule had created an opportunity for lasting change. In its place would come democracy, development, and peace. ‘‘Africa cries out for a new birth. We must, in action, say that there is no obstacle big enough to stop us from bringing about a new African renaissance,’’ President Nelson Mandela of South Africa told a meeting of regional leaders in 1994. In a nutshell, the African renaissance was an attempt to have a fruitful encounter with modernity after decades of self-destructive ones. While no targets were set, the trends were supposed to be up. For perhaps a decade or so, they were. But since the early 2000s, the trends in the region have worsened. Today, it is time to admit that the African renaissance is over. Across the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, tyranny, stagnation, and conflict are on the march again. What is troubling, besides the end of the renaissance, is that Western countries have little interest and even less leverage to affect changes in Africa. But preventing Africa’s slide into oblivion is at least a pressing humanitarian issue, if not a security issue. Lives matter, and saving them will require a stiffer resolve than Western leaders showed in the 1960s and 1970s, when the last African renaissance collapsed. Do Western countries, especially the United States, have the political willpower and capacity to rise to the coming challenge?
Work Reorganization in an Era of Restructuring: Trends in Diffusion and Effects on Employee Welfare

High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) took root in the early 1990s but then faced an environment of organizational turmoil and restructuring. This paper, drawing on a second-round survey of employers that replicated and extended a 1992 survey, addresses two questions: whether HPWO practices continued to spread, and whether their productivity and quality gains redounded to employees' benefit. The results show that HPWO practices continued to diffuse at a rapid rate between the 1992 and 1997 survey dates, although more slowly for self-managed teams than for other practices. With regard to the second question, however, the author finds that adoption of HPWO practices in 1992 was associated with increased layoff rates in subsequent years and no compensation gains. In addition, HPWO practices are linked to employment reorganization, such as reductions in contingent and managerial employment.
Noncanonical interactions between serum transferrin and transferrin receptor evaluated with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

The primary route of iron acquisition in vertebrates is the transferrin receptor (TfR) mediated endocytotic pathway, which provides cellular entry to the metal transporter serum transferrin (Tf). Despite extensive research efforts, complete understanding of Tf-TfR interaction mechanism is still lacking owing to the complexity of this system. Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI MS) is used in this study to monitor the protein/receptor interaction and demonstrate the ability of metal-free Tf to associate with TfR at neutral pH. A set of Tf variants is used in a series of competition and displacement experiments to bracket TfR affinity of apo-Tf at neutral pH (0.2–0.6 μM). Consistent with current models of endosomal iron release from Tf, acidification of the protein solution results in a dramatic change of binding preferences, with apo-Tf becoming a preferred receptor binder. Contrary to the current models implying that the apo-Tf/TfR complex dissociates almost immediately upon exposure to the neutral environment at the cell surface, our data indicate that this complex remains intact. Iron-loaded Tf displaces apo-Tf from TfR, making it available for the next cycle of iron binding, transport and delivery to tissues. However, apo-Tf may still interfere with the cellular uptake of engineered Tf molecules whose TfR affinity is affected by various modifications (e.g., conjugation to cytotoxic molecules). This work also highlights the great potential of ESI MS as a tool capable of providing precise details of complex protein-receptor interactions under conditions that closely mimic the environment in which these encounters occur in physiological systems.
Training Reform: Back to Square One?

A number of recent inquiries into Australia's national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications.
Uses and Abuses of Estimates of the Underground Economy

ered valuable by at least a part of society (narcotics production and distribution, prostitution, gambling). These activities can be large in some countries and should be counted in the national accounts of all countries although they rarely are. Their omission affects the comparability of data across countries. The incomes generated by illegal activities are rarely taxed. ' Many other activities, such as those associated with the subsistence or informal sectors, are estimated, rather than measured, and are generally not taxed because of the low value they generate to those who engage in them. In conclusion there are many reasons, beside the ones discussed in this paper why the measurements of national output may not be complete. About two decades ago, a few economists became convinced that many normal economic activities, that should be measured and taxed, were taking place 'underground' or in the 'shadow' thus presumably escaping the attention of the statistical offices, of the tax authorities, and, more generally, of the government regulators. Some of these economists also claimed that, like Alice in Wonderland, these hidden activities were growing in a 'ridiculous fashion'. (See Gutmann, 1977; and Feige, 1979). By the late 1970s, the role of government had grown enormously, so that the level of taxation and the tax rates had risen sharply and regulations had proliferated in many countries. See Tanzi and Schuknecht (1997). These developments had created strong incentives for individuals and enterprises to go 'underground' to avoid taxes and regulatory restrictions. Thus, a good case could be made that what came to be called the underground economy was a phenomenon to worry about. Newspaper articles were ready to accept the
A content-based CT lung image retrieval system for assisting differential diagnosis images collection

In this paper, a content-based scheme for assisting collecting similar medical image to be used for the tutorial of differential diagnosis is presented. The system uses visual-based user interface to allow the user to enter or query an image by selecting the region of interest (ROI) regions; and uses neural network to classify the relationship between the images stored in database. The system will output a set of candidate images that are texturalsimilar to the query image. If there are more than one input blocks, the system will perform multiple query and then combining the result set to obtain the most similar one to output. We extract the major 2D FFT coefficients to represent the texture features of each marked region and uses Kohonen self-organizing network to classify those extracted FFT coefficients. In the query stage, the system first individually checks which texture category is the query block in then uses intersection and some criteria to identify the most likely candidate image. The experimental results show that in simple query, 96.6% of images can be correctly retrieved with the displacement up to 22% of the block size. Based on this result, when user input more than one block, the impact of the shift variation due to human marking would be small.
Comparison of transobturator tape (TOT) vs Burch method in treatment of stress urinary incontinence

This study aim was to compare the efficacy of transobturator tape (TOT) as a new sling procedure, and Burch colposuspension as the gold standard surgical technique, in the treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI). This prospective randomised clinical trial was conducted on 62 women with SUI diagnosed with urodynamic test in Vali-e-Asr Hospital, Tehran, Iran. Patients were allocated into two surgery groups, randomly; TOT and Burch (31 patients in each group). After treatment, they were followed-up for long-term outcome. The average duration of follow-up was 22 and 28 months in the TOT and Burch group, respectively. Operation duration and hospital stay in the TOT group was significantly less than the Burch group (p = 0.001). The rate of complete cure, improvement and failure in the TOT group was 90.3%, 9.7% and 0%, respectively, as well as 74.2%, 19.4% and 6.5% in the Burch group. In the TOT group, 90.3% of patients were very satisfied, 6.5% moderately satisfied and 3.2% were less satisfied; none of them were unsatisfied. It is concluded that the TOT procedure is a safe and effective option with less operation time and shorter in-hospital stay for SUI treatment.
Enhanced radiation‐mediated cell killing of human cervical cancer cells by small interference RNA silencing of ataxia telangiectasia‐mutated protein

The ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) protein, which is mutated in the inherited disease ataxia telangiectasia (AT), is a key activator of cell cycle checkpoint, initiating cell response to DNA damage and ensuring genomic stability. AT cells exhibit defects in all cellular responses to ionizing radiation and radiomimetic chemicals. Inactivation of ATM may therefore make cells fail to execute many responses to DNA damage and improve the cells' sensitivity to radiation. Recent developments in the use of small interference RNA molecules (siRNAs) to inhibit specific protein expression have highlighted the potential use of siRNA as a therapeutic agent. In this study, we have designed and exogenously delivered plasmids encoding siRNAs targeting ATM to human cervical carcinoma SiHa cells and generated a stable cell line, SiHaATM. SiHaATM cells displayed minimal levels of ATM protein and showed a marked increase in sensitivity to radiation. Together, these data provide strong evidence for the potential use of siRNA as a novel radiation/chemotherapy-sensitizing agent.
Do Inland Provinces Benefit from Coastal Foreign Direct Investment in China?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China is heavily concentrated in the coastal regions. Do inland provinces benefit from coastal FDI? We use a provincial-level panel dataset and employ the fixed-effects instrumental variables regression technique to investigate the interregional spillovers from coastal FDI to inland provinces. The study finds that, on average, coastal FDI has a negative impact on the economic growth of inland provinces. In addition, depending on the different trade activities engaged in (i.e. whether processing trade or ordinary trade), coastal FDI has different impacts on the economic growth of inland provinces.
Real-Option Valuation of Build-Operate-Transfer Infrastructure Projects under Performance Bonding

AbstractThis study assesses the effect of performance bonding on the valuation of a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project by extending the classical Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) call option model. As common features in BOT contracts, a performance bond is a penalty imposed on concessionaires who exercise contractual rights to terminate participation in a project. In the real-option context, termination rights grant concessionaires the flexibility in managing market uncertainties that can increase the valuation of an infrastructure project, but the penalty impairs this flexibility and reduces valuations. A case study numerically illustrates the BSM model and indicates that performance bonding can destroy the flexibility and project valuations inherent in termination rights even when the penalty is moderate. Balancing performance bonds and termination rights is necessary because both are important in establishing and maintaining long-term contractual relationships in privatized BOT infrastructure projects.
H5 Antibody Detection by Blocking Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Using a Monoclonal Antibody

Abstract Many commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) are unable to differentiate antibody responses to different avian influenza virus (AIV) subtypes. Developing an ELISA for specifically detecting the H5 antibody is the purpose of this study. Four monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) were raised using A/duck/Yunlin/04 (H5N2). They were confirmed as being specific to H5. Two of these antibodies showed hemagglutination inhibition (HI) activity using the HI test. Using immunodot blot assays, three Mabs recognized both Eurasian and American H5, whereas the other Mab recognized only the tested Eurasian H5 virus. When testing denatured H5 antigen, one of the Mabs lost its antigen binding activity using Western blotting. For detecting the H5 humoral response in serum, one monoclonal antibody was purified and labeled with horseradish peroxidase to set up a blocking ELISA. Chicken sera that blocked H5 Mab binding by >29% were considered H5 antibody positive. Inhibition percentages for sera from chickens infected with other AIV subtypes, H1 to H15, were <29%. This blocking ELISA was used for 478 field chicken serum samples. The results showed that the sensitivity and specificity of this ELISA were 98.3% (232/236) and 95.9% (232/242), respectively. This blocking ELISA could be used specifically for detecting the H5 humoral responses in chickens.
The Welfare Implications of Minimum Quality Standards

Previous analysis of the social welfare implications of minimum quality standards has yielded no decisive results. In this paper the specific nature of consumer and producer responses to quality standards is incorporated into the analysis. Both consumer and producer gains are shown to be impossible when consumers can perceive quality before purchase, even if low quality produce is diverted to secondary markets. Standards unambiguously reduce net social benefits. The paper explores the possibility that minimum quality standards are a form of rent-seeking behavior.
Towards energy-balanced data transmission for lifetime optimization in wireless sensor networks

Energy balance is a critical issue in wireless sensor networks. Several mixed data transmission (MDT) schemes have been proposed to achieve energy balance. However, most existing works are lack of theoretical study, especially understanding the relationship between network-wide energy balancing and lifetime optimization. In this paper, we conduct comprehensive theoretical analysis to the two-level based MDT scheme when applying to network-wide energy balancing, and eventually to maximize the network lifetime. We propose a novel network model, named energy balance area (EBA), and formally analyze its characteristics under the two-level based MDT scheme. To maximize the network lifetime, we convert the transmission probability allocation problem in the MDT scheme into an EBA partitioning (EBA-PT) problem, which is shown to be NP-hard. We then propose a heuristic approximation algorithm to determine the optimal configuration of EBAs, which is proven in this paper to be the key for maximizing the network lifetime. In this way, we obtain a near-optimal result. Our experimental studies show that network lifetime can be further improved as compared the hop-by-hop and the two-level based MDT schemes.
Triple doses: a view of seamen's health

The health of seamen of all nations has long been a subject of concern. In this paper Brian Nolan stresses the specific social and economic situations of life at sea which produce their own injury, disease and death, and highlights the need for greater concern and actions by unions and employers to lessen the present high cost of seafaring to seamen.
An Exploratory Examination of the Influence of National Culture on Cross-National Product Diffusion

This study examines the direct influence of national culture on the cross-national diffusion of innovations. Focusing on seven technological innovations across 13 European countries, the authors use Hofstede's multidimensional approach to culture to investigate this relationship. They find support linking four cultural dimensions—individualism, masculinity, power distance, and long-term orientation—to cross-national product diffusion. The findings suggest that national culture explains a relatively sizable amount of variation in cross-national diffusion rates. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications of these results, including prescriptive guidance with respect to product launch strategy and tactics.