Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enabling smart contributions for sustainable urban development

Urbanization as a global tendency continuously imposes an issue about smart solutions that make life comfortable , safe and environmentally friendly in cities. It is a challenge to transform a city into a smart and sustainable, with the aim to be adaptive enough to address the challenges of the future and to react to innovative or unexpected developments. Smart sustainable city concept is still evolving and meets with different perceptions of technological, environmental, economic and social relations. Therefore, this paper aims to deliver possible basis for the functioning of a smart and sustainable city in the so-called "smartization" process. Smart technologies that asses, monitor and manage data and processes in space are widely discussed. This research is based on a holistic approach in order to show that a successful transformation with clear progress can be achieved by implementing smart technologies with sustainable monitoring process and by integrating the main stake-holders to make the path to smartness successful for all people involved. In that manner cities are accelerating their transformation towards sustainable objectives, creating cleaner, cooperative places which fosters use of resources more efficiently and is flexible to future changes and innovations.
BAGAIMANA TATA KELOLA PERUSAHAAN DAN NEGARA BERINTERAKSI DALAM PENGUNGKAPAN LINGKUNGAN PERUSAHAAN DI ASEAN?

Abstract— This study tries to determine how the regulatory environment of the nation interacts with company governance to affect the amount of pengungkapan lingkungan. The research uses quantitative methods (panel data regression). Data was obtained from a database of 109 ASEAN public companies during 2012-2020. The results demonstrate that: (1) Higher environmental disclosures is more likely to occur in firms with great corporate governance (β = 0,002; p-value<0,05). (2) Likewise, if the company operates in a country with supportive state governance (β = 0,008; p-value<0,1). (3) Corporate and state governance work together (complementary) regarding environmental disclosures (β = 0,000; p-value<0,1). The research contributes evidence on the association connecting corporate governance and agency theory and supports it, the state and environmental disclosures. The study emphasizes the significance of environmental disclosures in combating climate change as well as ASEAN's low level of awareness and compliance. The study findings provide further insight by interacting corporate and state governance which are the two main considerations for environmental disclosure. Keywords:ASEAN; Agency Theory; Corporate Governance; Country Governance; Environmental Disclosures.
Incidence and risk factors for gallstones in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A large case‐control study

The risk for gallstones (GD) in inflammatory bowel diseases and the factors responsible for this complication have not been well established. We studied the incidence of GD in a cohort of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) patients and investigated the related risk factors. A case‐controlled study was carried out. The study population included 634 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients (429 CD, 205 UC) and 634 age‐matched, sex‐matched, and body mass index (BMI)‐matched controls free of GD at enrollment, who were followed for a mean of 7.2 years (range, 5‐11 years). The incidence of GD was calculated by dividing the number of events per person‐years of follow‐up. Multivariate analysis was used to discriminate among the impact of different variables on the risk of developing GD. The incidence rates of GD were 14.35/1,000 persons/year in CD as compared with 7.75 in matched controls (P = 0.012) and 7.48/1000 persons/year in UC patients as compared with 6.06 in matched‐controls (P = 0.38). Ileo‐colonic CD location (OR, 2.14), disease duration >15years (OR, 4.26), >3 clinical recurrences (OR, 8.07), ileal resection >30 cm (OR, 7.03), >3 hospitalizations (OR, 20.7), multiple TPN treatments (OR, 8.07), and long hospital stay (OR, 24.8) were significantly related to GD in CD patients. Conclusion: Only CD patients have a significantly higher risk of developing GD than well‐matched hospital controls. Site of disease at diagnosis, lifetime surgery, extent of ileal resections, number of clinical recurrences, TPN, and the frequency and duration of hospitalizations are independently associated with GD. (HEPATOLOGY 2007;45:1267–1274.)
Concurrent skew and control step assignments in RT-level datapath synthesis

As well as the schedule affects system performance, the control skew, i.e., the arrival time difference of control signals between registers, can be utilized for improving the system performance, enhancing robustness against delay variations, etc. The simultaneous optimization of the control step assignment and the control skew assignment is more powerful technique in improving performance. By our preliminary study, we have proven that, even if the execution sequence of operations assigned to the same resource is fixed, the simultaneous optimization problem under a fixed clock period is NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a heuristic algorithm for the simultaneous control step and skew optimization under given clock period, and we show how much the simultaneous optimization improves system performance. This paper is the first one that uses the intentional skew to shorten control steps (and hence a real application time) under a specified clock period. The proposed algorithm has the potential to play a central role in various scenarios of skew-aware high level synthesis.
Artificial sunlight and ultraviolet light induced photo-epoxidation of propylene over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst

The light irradiation parameters, including the wavelength spectrum and intensity of light source, can significantly influence a photocatalytic reaction. This study examines the propylene photo-epoxidation over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst by using artificial sunlight (Xe lamp with/without an Air Mass 1.5 Global Filter at 1.6/18.5 mW·cm−2) and ultraviolet light (Mercury Arc lamp with different filters in the range of 0.1–0.8 mW·cm−2). This is the first report of using artificial sunlight to drive the photo-epoxidation of propylene. Over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst, the propylene oxide (PO) formation rate is 193.0 and 112.1 µmol·gcat−1·h−1 with a PO selectivity of 35.0 and 53.7% under UV light and artificial sunlight, respectively. A normalized light utilization (NLU) index is defined and found to correlate well with the rate of both PO formation and C3H6 consumption in log–log scale. The light utilization with a mercury arc lamp is better than with a xenon lamp. The selectivity to PO remains practically unchanged with respect to NLU, suggesting that the photo-epoxidation occurs through the same mechanism under the conditions tested in this study.
Formulation and Evaluation of Niosomes

Span 20-based niosome was prepared by lipid film hydration technique and loaded with Newcastle disease vaccine. Three batches with Span 20, cholesterol and dicetyl phosphate in micro molar ratios of 10:10:1; 15:15:1 and 20:20:1 were prepared and evaluated for encapsulation efficiency using haemagglutination test. The morphology of the vesicles was studied by means of transmission electron microscopy. Particle size, zeta potential and polydispersity index were determined by photon correlation spectroscopy using a nanosizer. Adjuvanticity was assessed using haemagglutination inhibition test. The vesicles of Span 20-based niosomes were distinct, near spherical large unilamellar vesicles. The vesicles were of varied sizes (<1000 nm) with the entrapped Newcastle disease vaccine in the core of the vaccine. The zeta potential had a peak at -50 mV. The polydispersity index was 0.68. Haemagglutination inhibition test showed a 71% increment in immune response over that of the marketed La Sota® vaccine which had a 60% increment in immune response. The niosomal vaccine did not alter but rather enhanced the immunogenicity of the Newcastle disease vaccine.
Effects of recombinant apolipoprotein A-I(Milano) on aortic atherosclerosis in apolipoprotein E-deficient mice.

BACKGROUND We previously reported marked inhibitory effects of recombinant apolipoprotein (apo) A-I(Milano)/phospholipid complex (A-I[Milano]/PC) on neointimal lesions in balloon-injured iliofemoral arteries of hypercholesterolemic rabbits. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that apo A-I(Milano)/PC would inhibit aortic atherosclerosis in apo E-deficient mice. METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-five apo E-deficient mice fed a high-cholesterol diet were included in the study. Control mice were killed at 20 (n=8) or 25 (n=7) weeks. Treated mice received 18 injections of either 40 mg/kg apo A-I(Milano)/PC (n=15) or PC only (n=5) intravenously every other day from 20 weeks until death at 25 weeks. Aortic atherosclerosis was identified with Sudan IV staining. Lipid and macrophage contents of the aortic sinus plaques were measured after oil-red O and Mac-1 antibody staining, respectively, and quantified with computed morphometry. In control mice, from 20 to 25 weeks, aortic atherosclerosis increased by 59% (11 +/- 1% versus 17 +/- 5% of the aortic surface, P=.002), and lipid content increased by 45% (22 +/- 8% versus 32 +/- 6% of plaque area, P=.02) without a significant change in macrophage content (10.8 +/- 2% versus 13.2 +/- 6%). Compared with 20-week-old untreated control mice, PC only-treated mice at 25 weeks demonstrated a 32% increase in aortic atherosclerosis (11 +/- 1% versus 15 +/- 4%, P=.01) and an increase in lipid content (22 +/- 8% versus 47 +/- 3%, P<.0001) without a change in macrophage content (10.8 +/- 2% versus 11 +/- 2%). In comparison with 20-week-old untreated control mice, 25-week-old apo A-I(Milano)/PC-treated mice demonstrated no increase in aortic atherosclerosis (11 +/- 1% versus 10 +/- 4%, P=NS), a 40% reduction in lipid content (22 +/- 8% versus 13 +/- 8%, P=.01), and a 46% reduction in macrophage content (10.8 +/- 2% versus 5.8 +/- 2.9%; P=.03). Serum cholesterol levels were markedly elevated in all groups and did not change significantly with apo A-I(Milano)/PC or PC only. In vitro, apo A-I(Milano)/PC stimulated cholesterol efflux from cholesterol-loaded FU5AH hepatoma cell lines in a dose-dependent manner, whereas PC only or PC-free apo A-I(Miano) had no effect. CONCLUSIONS Recombinant A-I(Milano)/PC prevented progression of aortic atherosclerosis and reduced lipid and macrophage content of plaques in apo E-deficient mice despite severe hypercholesterolemia. Thus, A-I(Milano)/PC may have a role in inhibiting progression and promoting stabilization of atherosclerosis.
A method to decompose multiple-output logic functions

This paper shows a method to decompose a given multiple-output circuit into two circuits with intermediate outputs. We use a BDD for characteristic function (BDD for CF) to represent a multiple-output function.Many benchmark functions were realized by LUT cascades with intermediate outputs. Especially, adders and a binary to BCD converter were successfully designed. Comparison with FPGAs is also presented.
Users' Collaboration as a Driver for Reputation System Effectiveness: a Simulation Study

Reputation management is about evaluating an agent's actions and other agents' opinions about those actions, reporting on those actions and opinions, and reacting to that report thus creating a feedback loop. This social mechanism has been successfully used, through Reputation Management Systems (RMSs) to classify agents within normative systems. Most RMSs rely on the feedbacks given by the member of the social network in which the RMS itself operates. In this way, the reputation index can be seen as an endogenous and self produced indicator, created by the users for the users' benefit. This implies that users’ participation and collaboration is a key factor for the effectiveness a RMS. In this work the above factor is explored by means of an agent based simulation, and is tested on a P2P network for file sharing.
A reappraisal of the uncanny valley: categorical perception or frequency-based sensitization?

The uncanny valley (UCV) hypothesis describes a non-linear relationship between perceived human-likeness and affective response. The “uncanny valley” refers to an intermediate level of human-likeness that is associated with strong negative affect. Recent studies have suggested that the uncanny valley might result from the categorical perception of human-like stimuli during identification. When presented with stimuli sharing human-like traits, participants attempt to segment the continuum in “human” and “non-human” categories. Due to the ambiguity of stimuli located at a category boundary, categorization difficulty gives rise to a strong, negative affective response. Importantly, researchers who have studied the UCV in terms of categorical perception have focused on categorization responses rather than affective ratings. In the present study, we examined whether the negative affect associated with the UCV might be explained in terms of an individual's degree of exposure to stimuli. In two experiments, we tested a frequency-based model against a categorical perception model using a category-learning paradigm. We manipulated the frequency of exemplars that were presented to participants from two categories during a training phase. We then examined categorization and affective responses functions, as well as the relationship between categorization and affective responses. Supporting previous findings, categorization responses suggested that participants acquired novel category structures that reflected a category boundary. These category structures appeared to influence affective ratings of eeriness. Crucially, participants' ratings of eeriness were additionally affected by exemplar frequency. Taken together, these findings suggest that the UCV is determined by both categorical properties as well as the frequency of individual exemplars retained in memory.
Valuing practice: The place of practical legal research in academic life

Practical legal training has traditionally been the poor relation of the legal education family. Along with the similarly placed clinical legal education, it is a latecomer to formal legal education and its academic value is regarded with some reservation by those involved in more mainstream areas of academia. These reservations are not entirely unfounded. While few could deny the value of practical legal training in terms of teaching and contribution to the legal community, it is in the contribution to research and scholarship that practical legal training may be seen to be less successful. Few academics who teach in practical legal training go on to conduct research into it, external funding opportunities in this area are quite limited and such research as is conducted is not perceived to have a high academic value. This paper draws on a research project conducted by the writers to explore the climate influencing research in practical legal training and the standards by which its research successes are measured. The paper relies on interview data obtained from PLT academics to ascertain obstacles to research in PLT and to postulate how positive outcomes for valuing practical legal training research might be achieved.
Privacy policies and practices: inside the organizational maze

How are corporations handling sensitive personal information today? How are they cufting the policies and practices that govern the use of such information? This article establishes a new foundation for examining information privacy issues by first assessing the value - laden process through which information privacy policies and practices are created in corporations and then reviewing corporate approaches to information privacy in light of implied societal expectations. The findings of this study are sobering. Corporations that routinely handle personal information (medical, financial, purchase records) operate without policies in many areas. Even where policies do exist, they often conflict with practices in the organization
Evaluation of Peritoneal Microbubble Oxygenation Therapy in a Rabbit Model of Hypoxemia

Alternative extrapulmonary oxygenation technologies are needed to treat patients suffering from severe hypoxemia refractory to mechanical ventilation. We previously demonstrated that peritoneal microbubble oxygenation (PMO), in which phospholipid-coated oxygen microbubbles (OMBs) are delivered into the peritoneal cavity, can successfully oxygenate rats suffering from a right pneumothorax. This study addressed the need to scale up the procedure to a larger animal with a splanchnic cardiac output similar to humans. Our results show that PMO therapy can double the survival time of rabbits experiencing complete tracheal occlusion from 6.6 ± 0.6 min for the saline controls to 12.2 ± 3.0 min for the bolus PMO-treated cohort. Additionally, we designed and tested a new peritoneal delivery system to circulate OMBs through the peritoneal cavity. Circulation achieved a similar survival benefit to bolus delivery under these conditions. Overall, these results support the feasibility of the PMO technology to provide extrapulmonary ventilation for rescue of severely hypoxic patients.
Discovering trust patterns in ego networks

In the past decade, online social networks have provided invaluable data in understanding how social networks change in time while attracting new users and fostering relationships among members. The concept of social trust was developed to explain why and how much users trust each other to become friends or expose their personal data. Existing work on social trust analyze behavioral features and profile attributes to find trust between pairs of users. Although useful, these works suffer from the problem of incomplete, inaccurate and inconsistent social network data. We approach the problem of analyzing trust from an ego network perspective. We observe new friendships, group formations and structural roles of users in ego networks to outline three trust questions. Answers to these questions provide insights into how social trust can be measured from user connections.
A Novel Throughput Enhancement Method for Deep Learning Applications on Mobile Devices With Heterogeneous Processors

Contemporary smartphones integrate dedicated AI accelerators alongside CPUs and GPUs, in response to the growing demand for deep learning applications. While existing software development kits (SDKs) for these devices provide neural network optimization techniques, they often lack system-level optimizations, specifically in distributing layers across heterogeneous processors. This paper introduces a novel approach to enhance the throughput of deep learning applications through the utilization of quantization and pipelining techniques. The proposed technique employs different quantization schemes for activation data and filter weights to minimize accuracy drop. A genetic algorithm is employed to explore the extensive design space of layer-wise mapping and pipelining, aiming to find the best pipelining solution. To estimate performance of each solution candidate, the actual execution time of the application on the device is measured, accounting for unique smartphone characteristics, such as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and OS scheduling. The impact of thermal throttling on throughput is also investigated by running benchmark applications continuously for 10 minutes. Our technique is validated through experiments conducted on Google Pixel 6 and Samsung Galaxy S22. Throughput enhancements, ranging from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 5.4$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 7.6$ </tex-math></inline-formula> on Google Pixel 6 and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 35.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 44.2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> on Samsung Galaxy S22, are achieved, compared to single-processor mappings for networks with floating-point parameters. It confirms that significant performance improvements can be achieved through the proposed software optimization methodology on contemporary smartphones with diverse constraints at the user level.
Shared spaces: transportation, artificiality, and spatiality

We begin by reviewing current spatial approaches to CSCW (mediaspaces, spatial video conferencing, collaborative virtual environments and telepresence applications) and classifying them along the proposed dimensions of transportation, artificiality and spatiality. This classification leads us to identify new shared space applications; so called mixed realities. We present an example of a mixed reality called the Internet Foyer, an application which provides a unified entry point into an organisation's physical and electronic environments and which supports awareness and chance encounters between the occupants of physical and synthetic space.
Evaluation of a Laser Doppler Flowmeter for Measurement of Tissue Blood Flow

An instrument for measurement of tissue blood flow based on the laser Doppler principle was evaluated using a fluid model. A unique and linear relationship between flowmeter response and flux of red cells was demonstrated with red cell velocities and volume fractions within the normal physiological range of the microcirculatory network of the skin. Different degrees of oxygenation proved to influence the Doppler signal only to a minor extent. The study also shows that the Doppler signal is formed essentially by heterodyne mixing of light beams backscattered in static structures and moving red cells.
Additive Phase Noise in Linear and High-Efficiency X-Band Power Amplifiers

This paper compares additive (residual) phase noise of linear and highly saturated high-efficiency MESFET and HBT 10 GHz power amplifiers (PA). A custom discriminator measurement system is developed to characterize the PAs and exhibits a phase noise floor of -164dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset for a 10 GHz fundamental. The additive phase noise measurements show a phase noise of -120dBc@1kHz for the class-E MESFET PA, a roughly 10-dB increase when compared to the class-A PA with the same device. The HBT amplifier exhibited nearly the same phase noise in class-E and linear class-A
The effect of antigen dose on CD4+ T helper cell phenotype development in a T cell receptor-alpha beta-transgenic model

The dose of foreign antigen can influence whether a cell-mediated or humoral class of immune response is elicited, and this may be largely accounted for by the development of CD4+ T helper cells (Th) producing distinct sets of cytokines. The ability of antigen dose to direct the development of a Th1 or Th2 phenotype from naive CD4+ T cells, however, has not been demonstrated. In this report, we show that the antigen dose used in primary cultures could directly affect Th phenotype development from naive DO11.10 TCR-alpha beta-transgenic CD4+ T cells when dendritic cells or activated B cells were used as the antigen- presenting cells. Consistent with our previous findings, midrange peptide doses (0.3-0.6 microM) directed the development of Th0/Th1-like cells, which produced moderate amounts of interferon gamma (IFN-gamma). As the peptide dose was increased, development of Th1-like cells producing increased amounts of IFN-gamma was initially observed. At very high (> 10 microM) and very low (< 0.05 microM) doses of antigenic peptide, however, a dramatic switch to development of Th2-like cells that produced increasing amounts of interleukin 4 (IL-4) and diminishing levels of IFN-gamma was observed. This was true even when highly purified naive, high buoyant density CD4+ LECAM-1hi T cells were used, ruling out a possible contribution from contaminating "memory" phenotype CD4+ T cells. Neutralizing anti-IL-4 antibodies completely inhibited the development of this Th2-like phenotype at both high and low antigen doses, demonstrating a requirement for endogenous IL-4. Our findings suggest that the antigen dose may affect the levels of endogenous cytokines such as IL-4 in primary cultures, resulting in the development of distinct Th cell phenotypes.