Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relation Between ESR 2 Genotypes and Reproductive Performance of a Large White x Landrace Sow Population

The aim of the present study was to investigate any potential association of ESR2 genotypes with prolificacy in pigs. Polymerase chain reaction – restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was performed for genotyping ESR2 gene in pig populations derived from a commercial farm in Greece. 400 sows were genotyped in total and the records of five litters concerning Total Number of Born (TNB), Number of Born Alive (NBA), Number of Born Dead (NBD), Number of Born Mummified (NBM) and Number of Weaned (NW) piglets were used in the association analysis. The population found to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, while the total number of born piglets, the number of piglets born alive, the number of piglets that born dead and the number of the piglets born mummified did not differ between the observed ESR2 genotypes. However, the AB genotype gave statistically significant (P<0.05) higher values of the number of weaned piglets and lower values concerning the aborted pigs. According to our results, the AB genotype of ESR2 gene are in favor of producing larger litter size, suggesting that the certain gene may be used in Marker-assisted selection (MAS) programmes for a rapid improvement of the reproductive characteristics in pigs.
Wideband P-Shaped Dielectric Resonator Antenna with Coaxial Probe Feed

In this paper, design of wideband Coaxial Probe feed P-Shaped Dielectric Resonant Antenna is proposed. The proposed structure has bandwidth of 4.1GHz (S11< -10dB) ranging from 5.05GHz to 9.15GHz which is 85.4% of total bandwidth from 4.5GHz to 9.3GHz. Antenna has return loss of -61.29dB that is only a micro part of input power is reflected back resulting to a highly efficient antenna. Designed antenna is a low profile antenna with height of 10mm.Resonant frequency of proposed antenna is 6.14 GHz, suitable for wireless system like WiMAX, WLAN, C-band applications. Simulation and parametric analyses of proposed P-shaped antenna is done using CST (Computer Simulation Technology) Microwave Studio Suite 10. Keywords: Dielectric resonator antenna (DRA), Impedance bandwidth (IBW), Perfect conductor, Resonant frequency, Return loss (S11).
Focusing of Microcrystals and Liquid Condensates in Acoustofluidics

Manipulation of high-density materials, such as crystals and liquid condensates, is of great importance for many applications, including serial crystallography, structural and molecular biology, chemistry, and medicine. In this work, we describe an acoustic technique to focus and harvest flowing crystals and liquid condensates. Moreover, we show, based on numerical simulations, that the acoustic waves can be used for size-based particle (crystals, droplets, etc.) separation. This is an essential technological step in biological research, medical applications, and industrial processes. The presented technology offers high precision, biocompatibility, ease of use and additionally, is non-invasive and inexpensive. With the recent advent of X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) technology and the associated enormous importance of a thin jet of crystals, this technology might pave the way to a novel type of XFEL injector.
Group Entropies: From Phase Space Geometry to Entropy Functionals via Group Theory

The entropy of Boltzmann-Gibbs, as proved by Shannon and Khinchin, is based on four axioms, where the fourth one concerns additivity. The group theoretic entropies make use of formal group theory to replace this axiom with a more general composability axiom. As has been pointed out before, generalised entropies crucially depend on the number of allowed degrees of freedom N. The functional form of group entropies is restricted (though not uniquely determined) by assuming extensivity on the equal probability ensemble, which leads to classes of functionals corresponding to sub-exponential, exponential or super-exponential dependence of the phase space volume W on N. We review the ensuing entropies, discuss the composability axiom and explain why group entropies may be particularly relevant from an information-theoretical perspective.
Chemical Stability and Leaching Behavior of One-Part Geopolymer from Soil and Coal Fly Ash Mixtures

Aluminosilicate minerals have become an important resource for an emerging sustainable material for construction known as geopolymer. Geopolymer, an alkali-activated material, is becoming an attractive alternative to Portland cement because of its lower carbon footprint and embodied energy. However, the synthesis process requires typically a two-part system for alkali activation wherein the solid geopolymer precursor is mixed with aqueous alkali solutions. These alkali activators are corrosive and may be difficult to handle in the field-scale application. In this study, a one-part geopolymer in which coal fly ash was mixed with solid alkali activators such as sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate to form a powdery cementitious binder was developed. This binder mixed with soil only requires water to form the soil-fly ash (SO-CFA) geopolymer cement, which can be used as stabilized soil for backfill/foundation. This geopolymer product was then evaluated for chemical stability by immersing the material with 5% by weight of sulfuric acid solution for 28 days. Indication suggests that the geopolymer exhibited high resistance against acid attack with an observed increase of unconfined compressive strength even when the immersion time in acidic solution was increased to 56 days. The mineralogical phase, microstructure, and morphology of the material were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), respectively. Results not only confirmed the formation of gypsum due to acid attack but also indicated the dissolution of anorthite and albite that may have caused the microstructure to be composed of sodium aluminosilicate hydrate (N–A–S–H) and calcium (alumino) silicate hydrate (C(–A)–S–H) with poly(ferro-sialate-siloxo) and poly(ferro-sialate-disiloxo) networks. A column leaching test with deionized water was also performed on the soil-fly ash geopolymer to study the leachability of metals in the material. Results showed that arsenic exhibits higher mobility in the geopolymer as compared to that of cadmium, chromium, and lead.
THE REASONS OF FAILURE IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESS AND THE ROLE OF SCHOOL LEADERS WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF SCHOOL CULTURE

This study investigates the reasons of failure in organizational change process and the role of school leaders within the context of school culture. This study emphasizes the importance of the school culture and school leaders in organizational change process. This study was based on literature review. Successful organizational change eases with planned change initiatives that aim corporate culture and integrate this culture with change process. The role of school leaders is of great significance in this context. As a conclusion, it can be said that schools, the role of school leaders and school cultures must be taken into consideration in establishing new ways of working and reform models and in fostering improvement and development especially if we don’t want our schools to fail.
Estimation of Partial Differential Equations with Applications in Finance

Linear parabolic partial differential equations (PDE's) and diffusion models are closely linked through the celebrated Feynman-Kac representation of solutions to PDE's. In asset pricing theory, this leads to the representation of derivative prices as solutions to PDE's. Very often implied derivative prices are calculated given preliminary estimates of the diffusion model for the underlying variable. We demonstrate that the implied derivative prices are consistent and derive their asymptotic distribution under general conditions. We apply this result to three leading cases of preliminary estimators: Nonparametric, semiparametric and fully parametric ones. In all three cases, the asymptotic distribution of the solution is derived. We demonstrate the use of these results in obtaining confidence bands and standard errors for implied prices of bonds, options and other derivatives. Our general results also are of interest for the estimation of diffusion models using either historical data of the underlying process or option prices; these issues are also discussed.
Optimization of Conditions for the synthesis of new Triphenylphosphonium-Substituted phthalocyanine from Tetrabrominated Phthalocyanine using Experimental Design Method

An experimental design has been drawn up to optimize the experimental conditions of the synthesis of new Triphenylphosphonium-substituted phthalocyanine from tetrabrominated phthalocyanine. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to study the influence of molar ratio of tetrabrominated phthalocyanine to triphenylphosphine, reaction time and the reaction temperature. Quadratic model was developed for yield of Triphenylphosphonium-substituted phthalocyanine using Design-Expert software NEMRODW. The model was used to calculate the optimum operating conditions for synthesis of Triphenylphosphoniumsubstituted phthalocyanine. The optimum conditions were obtained as follows: n (tetrabrominated phthalocyanine TTBPc ): n (triphenylphosphinePPh3) = 1:20, reaction time 12 h and reaction temperature 120°C. Under these conditions, the yield of Triphenylphosphonium-substituted phthalocyanine reached 70%.
Has Social Care Performance in England Improved ? An Analysis of Performance Ratings across Social Services Councils

Performance measurement in the English public secto r has been implemented in a top-down manner. The mechanics of this regime (cen tralised targets, public reporting of performance data and the use of rewards and pena lties) are driven by central government and are intended to hold agencies to acc unt for their performance and regulate their behaviour. This paper examines whet her the operation of such a regime has resulted in the improved performance of social care organisations. Comparable data from Northern Ireland Health and Social Servic s Trusts, where performance measurement processes are less centrally driven and rewards and penalties are less contingent on ratings, are used to investigate the potential impact of different performance regimes. Indicators of admissions to r esidential care and delayed discharges from hospital are used to signal progres s in the meeting of social care objectives in the two countries. We find that in England social care organisations h ave broadly improved their performance over time in composite (‘star’) ratings and with generally higher ratings across individual indicators, with noteworthy impro vement across key threshold indicators (measures which councils must perform we ll on to obtain a good summary rating). The comparative analysis highlights the d ifferences across the two countries with an improvement in performance over time in Eng la d and a fairly static picture in Northern Ireland. These improvements may reflec t a host of factors other than the incentives created by centralised targets and measu r s. Our data show, for example, that external characteristics of English councils p redominantly influence their being reported as ‘poor performers’. Evidence suggests that the rate of performance impr ovement reflects the incentives inherent in the English performance system. An inc entive structure that promotes the
Particle size of liposomes influences dermal delivery of substances into skin

In the present study, the influence of vesicle size on the penetration of two fluorescently labeled substances into the human skin was investigated. For the measurements either a hydrophilic fluorescent compound [carboxyfluorescein (CF)] or a lipophilic one [1,1′-dioctadecyl-3,3,3 ′,3′-tertramethylindocarbo-cyanine perchlorate (DiI)] were encapsulated into vesicles. Liposomal formulations were prepared by extruding the vesicles through polycarbonate membrane filters with pores of different sizes. In vitro penetration studies into human abdominal skin were performed by using the Franz diffusion cell and a standardized skin stripping technique in attempt to find an optimum size for topical drug delivery by liposomes. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) was used to visualize the effect of penetration ability of liposomal DiI. The maximum DiI fluorescence in the skin was observed with smaller liposomes of 71 nm diameter. The liposomes with a size of 120 nm diameter showed statistically enhanced penetration of CF into the skin as compared to larger ones. The results indicated that the CF penetration was inversely related to the size of the liposomes, which was confirmed by the data of the confocal laser scanning microscopy studies. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Resolution limit of a phononic crystal superlens

triangular array of steel cylinders in methanol, all surrounded by water. The image resolution of the PC flat lens beats the Rayleigh diffraction limit because bound modes in the lens can be excited by evanescent waves emitted by the source. These are modes that only propagate in the direction parallel to the water-lens interface. These modes resonantly amplify evanescent waves that contribute to the reconstruction of an image. By employing the finite difference time domain method and ultrasonic experiments, we also explore the effect on the image resolution and focal point on various structural and operational parameters, such as source frequency, geometry of the lens, source position, and time. The mechanisms by which these factors affect resolution are discussed in terms of the competition between the contribution of propagative modes to focusing and the ability of the source to excite bound modes of the PC lens. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.83. 224301
A Antisocial Behavior

Antisocial personality traits like psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism are correlated with sexual coercion (Figueredo et al. 2015), criminality (Hare 1985), and deception (Azizli et al. 2016). Antisocial behavior can be presented alone or in the context of antisocial personality disorder (see Hashmani 2019a). Unsurprisingly, traits, like these, and the behaviors that may manifest from them have led professionals to strive to reduce these traits and their behaviors to relatively little avail. It may be that attempts to reduce antisocial behaviors and traits have generally failed because efforts to do so are based on a faulty premise. This premise is the often implicit, but dominant, cultural and academic epistemology known as the standard social science model. This model is built on philosophical “insights” from Rousseau who considered people to be “noble savages” corrupted by society and can be seen in modern clinical and social psychology in the form of “environmental determinism. ” Environmental determinism is a philosophical position that places contextual, cultural, and circumstantial factors as the primary and immediate cause of behaviors and values (including antisocial ones) and attempts to dismiss or downplay the role of genetics, biology, or physiology in accounting for human (but generally not nonhuman animal) behavior. Much of this work in psychology and the social sciences has been fueled by explicit and implicit blank slate thinking, which has been portrayed as flawed (Pinker 2003). In essence, when people who adopt this framework are asked why there is “evil” in the world, they reply: because of conditioning, bad childhood experiences, or modeling “bad” behavior. Over the last 30 years, a challenge has been brought to this type of thinking in the form of evolutionary psychology (Confer et al. 2010), referred to as an interactionist paradigm (Crawford and Anderson 1989). That is, evolved
A NEW APPROACH TO EDGE DETECTION USING RULE BASED FUZZY LOGIC

Edge is a basic feature of image. The image edges include rich information that is very significant for obtaining the image characteristic by object recognition.Edge detection is the most commonly used technique in image processing. So this paper represents a modified rule based fuzzy logic technique, because fuzzy logic is desirable to convert the uncertainties that exist in many aspects of image processing. Here firstly the gradient and standard deviation is calculated and used as input for fuzzy system. The traditional algorithm like Sobel, Prewitt, LoG are implemented and then the results are compared with modified algorithm and concluded that the proposed technique is to find the more fine edges and reduce the pixels that are not belonging to the edge.
Neuropsychological Evaluation of Young Adults with Ischemic Stroke

Background and purpose: The neuropsychological profile of young stroke patients is a relatively underinvestigated subject. As the etiology, risk factors, stroke subtypes, and stroke severity seem to differ in the young from those of an older age group, the neuropsychological defects also may have their own age-related differences. Methods: We used data of 1008 consecutive patients aged between 18 to 49 years with first-ever ischemic stroke enrolled into Helsinki Young Stroke Registry, 1994 to 2007. We analyzed the data of 525 patients who underwent a brief neuropsychological examination during the first 3 months post-stroke. The testing concentrated on certain neuropsychological disorders and did not include comprehensive evaluation of all cognitive fields. The neuropsychological test results were categorized and valued numerically. Results: In our patients, verbal (31.8%) and visual memory (29.4%) and were the most commonly impaired fields according to brief neuropsychological evaluation reports, whereas orientation (1.0%), amnestic (1.0%) and agnostic (1.9%) disorders occurred most rarely. Most severe impairments were detected in the field of verbal memory (6.7%). Regarding demographic differences, men had more visual memory disorder (32.5% vs. 24.4%) and women more depression (22.8% vs. 7.1%). Patients aged 40-49 years had more visual memory disorder (33.3%) than patients aged 15-39 years (22.1%). Conclusions: Our finding that verbal memory is susceptible to impairments is in line with previous studies around the subject. In addition, we found that visual memory is a relatively common neuropsychological field to impair in young patients after ischemic stroke. Our survey did not include evaluation of executive functions, problem solving or significant aphasia, which has to be taken account of when regarding the results.
Public Opinion and Development Issues: A Survey of Irish University Student Opinions

Abstract:The Irish government, like many other governments around the world, is concerned with maintaining public support for its development programme. Surveys of Irish public opinion on international development assistance have shown high levels of support combined with relatively low levels of knowledge. Contextualising these finds with surveys of public opinion in other states indicates that while the development project has a comparatively high level of support in Ireland, the Irish population has a comparatively unsophisticated understanding of both the causes of underdevelopment and the range of possible policy solutions. The last major survey of Irish public opinion on development was conducted in 2002, at the beginning of the recent major increases in the aid budget. This article discusses the finding of a survey of university students in Ireland conducted in 2006-7, after the Irish government committed itself to reaching the United Nations target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on official development assistance by 2012. The findings of this survey have implications for the content of development education at third level. Students are already persuaded that development is important and are motivated to donate or act; development education efforts, however, need to focus more on creating a better understanding of the causes of underdevelopment and the structural factors relating to interactions between wealthy and poor states.
The whereabouts of power: politics, government and space

Abstract In a world where it has become almost commonplace to talk about power as centralised or distributed, concentrated or diffuse, deterritorialized or dispersed even, it is all too easy to miss the diverse geographies of power that put us in place. The binary talk that forces us to choose between a centred or a decentred view of power, or to shuffle between them in an effort to blur clearly demarcated scales, leaves little room to move beyond defined distances and settled proximities in relation to the exercise of power. In this paper, a more spatially‐curious dialogue of power is opened up which foregrounds associational as well as instrumental forms of power which can make a difference to how we act politically.
Hadrontherapy: a Geant4-Based Tool for Proton/Ion-Therapy Studies

Hadrontherapy is a C++ , free and open source application developed using the Geant4 Monte Carlo libraries. The basic version of Hadrontherapy is contained in the official Geant4 distribution (www.cern.ch/Geant4/download), in- side the category of the advanced examples. This version permits the simulation of a typical proton/ion transport beam line and the calculation of dose and fluence distributions inside a test phantom. A more complete version of the program is separately maintained and released by the authors and it offers a wider set of tools useful for Users interested in proton/ion-therapy studies. It gives the possibility to retrieve ion stopping powers in arbitrary geometrical configuration, to calculate 3D distributions of fluences, dose deposited and LET of primary and of the generated secondary beams, to simulate typical nuclear physics experiments, to interactively switch between different implemented geometries, etc. In this work the main characteristics of the actual full version of Hadrontherapy will be reported and results dis- cussed and compared with the available experimental data. For more information the reader can refer to the Hadrontherapy website.
Comparing value-at-risk methodologies

In this paper, we compare four diﬀerent Value-at-Risk (V aR) methodologies through Monte Carlo experiments. Our results indicate that the method based on quantile regression with ARCH eﬀect dominates other methods that require distributional assumption. In particular, we show that the non-robust methodologies have higher probability of predicting V aRs with too many violations. We illustrate our ﬁndings with an empirical exercise in which we estimate V aR for returns of S˜ao Paulo stock exchange index, IBOVESPA, during periods of market turmoil. Our results indicate that the robust method based on quantile regression presents the least number of violations.
A New Approach to the Valuation of Intangible Capital

In this paper, I argue that intangible capital is not a distinct input to production like physical capital or labor but rather it is the glue that creates value from other inputs. This perspective naturally leads to an empirical model in which intangible capital is defined in terms of adjustment costs. Estimates of these adjustment costs using firm-level panel data suggest that there are no appreciable intangibles associated with R&D and advertising whereas information technology creates intangibles with a 70% annual rate of return a sizable figure that is nevertheless much smaller than reported in previous studies. As a bridge to previous research, I show that much larger estimates can be obtained by using ordinary least squares, which ignores the possibility that the value of the . rm and its investment policy are simultaneously determined. Larger estimates can also be obtained by ignoring the possibility that the stock market overstates the value of intangible-intensive companies.