Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Insight into Corporate Social Responsibility in Senegal

Over the past decades, the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been renowned and identified as being able to significantly contribute to poverty alleviation and development. Yet, research on CSR in developing countries remains rather scarce. This thesis presents a preliminary empirical assessment of the nature of CSR in Senegal. Through an embedded mixed method design, both broad numeric trends and detailed views are collected on CSR practices and drivers of companies that are considered to be active in CSR in Senegal. The findings of this thesis revealed that CSR mainly remains the domain of multinational companies and that companies manifest different meanings and practices of CSR. Driven by moral and ethical motivations, the majority of the companies perceived CSR to constitute of philanthropic responsibilities, while a small share employed a more integrated and comprehensive interpretation of CSR. Even though they are based on good intentions, CSR practices tend to focus primarily on a limited number of issues and stakeholders, making the CSR activities of the majority of companies rather meagre and sparse. However, due to the absence of an enabling environment in which CSR could be leveraged, this thesis argues that the findings should be qualified within the existing contextual realities and supports the belief that such contextual realities influence the nature of CSR.
Comparative Extraction of Pectic and Polyphenols from Mexican Lime Pomace and Bagasse

Mexican lime bagasse and pomace are rich in pectin and they also represent an important source of value-added compounds such as polyphenols. Two different options for the combined recovery of pectin and phenolic compounds from Mexican lime bagasse and pomace, two byproducts of industrial lime processing, were developed. Conventional and microwave-assisted extraction methods were used. All pectic extracts presented a degree of esterification in the range of 70%. Pomace extracts had the higher pectin yield and the lower polyphenol content. Among the bioactive compounds identified by HPLC were two flavonones, naringin and hesperidin, all compounds were present in low concentration in the pectic extracts. Microwave pectic extracts presented depolymerization, as observed by molecular weight determination (12 KDa) and compared against conventional pectic extracts which presented a molecular weight of 670 KDa. The film forming capacity of pectic extracts was also evaluated. Antioxidant activity of pectic extracts was also assessed by three different methods; all extracts showed a better activity in Fe2+ chelating assay (62.85-73.32%) and lipid oxidation inhibition (63.07-72.28%) than in DPPH radical inhibition (5.32-6.65%). These findings indicate a correlation between the amount of phenolic compounds and the antioxidative capacity. Conventional pectic extracts from Mexican lime bagasse and pomace presented bioactive compounds with potential application for edible films and coatings in food industry.
Caspase-12 as a Biomarker of Aquatic Pollution in Oreochromis niloticus

Biomarkers have recently been used in studies of aquatic environment. Here we present data on stress related bio-markers in Oreochromis niloticus (Nile tilapia) as indicators of aquatic pollution. The samples of study were collected from contaminated aquatic habitats (Qaroun Lake and its neighboring fish farm), in comparison with the reference site. Heavy metal concentrations as Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu and Cd were determined in the water and the fish tissues. Oxidative stress biomarkers (Malondialdehyde, reduced glutathione, glutathione S transferase and catalase) together with endoplasmic reticulum stress biomarker (Caspase-12) were determined in both the blasma and the tissue samples. Histopathological examination of kidney and muscles with SDS electrophoresis of muscle proteins were used to study the influence of pollution on Nile tilapia. Heavy metal concentrations of water and tissue samples from contaminated habitats were significantly higher than the reference site. A highly significant difference in stress related biomarkers was recorded in the fish from contaminated habitats. Histopathological modulations and disrepairs were observed in fish tissues collected from contaminated habitats. Results have shown differences in banding pattern of muscle proteins of Nile tilapia collected from polluted sites. These results provide evidence that caspase-12 is a useful biomarker for aquatic pollutions.
The Prevalence and Patterns of Allergic Sensitization in Isparta , Turkey Isparta ’ da Görülen Alerjik Duyarlılaşma Paternleri ve Sıklığı

1 Ayşe Aynali1, Buket Cicioğlu Arıdoğan1, Ayşe Gül Ergün2, Emel Sesli Çetin1, Selçuk Kaya3, Süleyman Akif Çarsancaklı1 1Medical Microbiology Department, Suleyman Demirel Univresity, Faculty of Medicine, Isparta, 2Medical Microbiology Laboratory, Konya Numune Hospital, Konya, 3Medical Microbiology Laboratory, İzmir Katip Celebi University, Ataturk Training and Research Hospital, İzmir, Turkey Allergic Sensitization Patterns in Isparta The Prevalence and Patterns of Allergic Sensitization in Isparta, Turkey
Characters, Fun and Games: Creating Common Ground between Students and Children as Co-Design Partners.

Design methods that include the end user of a product in the design process can be useful for undergraduate Product Design projects. These approaches allow a novice designer to gain the perspective of others and to work with them first hand on a problem. When designing for children, this can add valuable insight for design decisions and also provide inspiration around the young person’s world. However there can be difficulties with time constraints and also the ethics of including children in projects that may be stressful. Here we explore a particular approach to Co-design, with students working alongside children to understand more about their emotional needs and aspirations during the creation of character designs for product design applications. The children were asked to create fictitious cartoon characters that have desired attributes, personal qualities and behaviors that relate to a given scenario. Subsequently this influenced the conceptualization of a product under development for the scenario. The devices being conceptualized were for final major projects and included: a) a blood glucose monitor for young diabetics b) a product to encourage children to eat healthily and grow their own c) a toy to encourage outdoor play. Character design was found to be an enjoyable activity for all, with a tangible outcome that facilitated communication between the student and pupil. It also provides a relatively sensitive method for getting information about the youngster’s feelings and aspirations within the context defined.
The Relationship between Fiscal Sustainability and Currency Crises in Some Selected Countries

Abstract The aim of this article is to assess whether a Fiscal Sustainability Indicator (FSI) can be used to predict the probability that a currency crisis occurs. The FSI developed by Croce and Juan-Ramón (2003) is employed. Two different definitions for currency crises are used to evaluate whether they induce different results in the analysis. In general, the results suggest that the lagged FSI has an explanatory power over currency crises in some countries.
Writing in early adolescence : A review of the role of self-efficacy beliefs

This review examines and summarizes 16 research studies examining the writing self-efficacy beliefs of 6th to 10th grade students. In the majority of the studies, self-efficacy was found to play a primary role in predicting student writing performance. Students with learning disabilities were found to over-estimate their ability to complete specific writing tasks. Several studies found gender differences, with boys rating their confidence higher than girls, although actual performance did not differ. Grade-level differences in perceived efficacy for writing were found in some studies, but not in others. Most studies emphasized that those working with young adolescents need to be aware of the importance of self-efficacy and other motivational beliefs in conjunction with academic functioning. Difficulties with specificity of self-efficacy measures, and with correspondence between measure and critical task were found in several studies. The article concludes with suggestions for future self-efficacy research. (Contains 58 references and 2 tables of data. Appendixes contain a summary of reviewed studies and a chart indicating specificity of self-efficacy measures and correspondence between self-efficacy measure and critical task.) (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Writing in early adolescence: A review of the role of self-efficacy beliefs
The role of knowledge and capabilities in a sustainable product chain context - a literature review

Sustainable development is a huge contemporary environmental challenge and a topic that has been widely discussed over the last decades. Managing environmental issues organizations has traditionally had an ‘in-house’ environmental focus, but attention has more and more turned from these in-house environmental aspects towards an approach where environmental concern is extended to include the life cycle of a product. There is a diversity of concepts that relate to environmental concern and sustainability of products and supply chains. But all in all the common denominator of this perspective is environmental consideration that stretches the traditional focus on individual actors towards a holistic environmental product chain perspective - here referred to as a ‘sustainable product chain’ perspective. Focus in this body of literature is on having a broader environmental perspective and interactions with actors upstream and downstream the product chains, therefore a number of authors within this field have also focused on the sharing of knowledge, resources and organizational capabilities within and between product chain actors. Knowledge as an academic field is vast and contains numerous different directions and there are several ways of viewing and understanding knowledge. As knowledge and organizational capabilities for sustainable product chains is a young and emerging field this has prompted a literature review with the aim of exploring which knowledge perspectives are dominant in the literature on knowledge and organizational capabilities in sustainable product chains and to examine its role in a sustainable product chain context. The review shows that the field is dominated by assumptions that knowledge is something that can be created, and transferred from one party to another, similar to an object. Thus, knowledge is treated in a rather simplistic matter.
Biosolid Soil Application: Toxicity Tests under Laboratory Conditions

A large volume of generated sewage sludge makes its disposal a problem. The usage of sludge in agriculture is highlighted by a number of advantages. However, heavy metals and other toxic compounds may exercise harmful effects to soil organisms. This study evaluated the possible toxic effects of a biosolid sample, under laboratory conditions, for 30 days, using diplopods Rhinocricus padbergi and plants Allium cepa (onion) as test organisms. The data obtained demonstrated that the biosolid raw sample had genotoxic potential for Allium cepa root tip cells. In the diplopods exposed to biosolid sample, epithelium disorganization in the midgut and a reduction of the volume of the hepatic cells were observed after 7 days of exposure. After 30 days, the animals still showed a reduction of the volume of the hepatic cells, but in minor intensity. Allium cepa analysis showed genotoxicity, but this effect was reduced after 30 days of bioprocessing by diplopods. This study was important to know the effects as well as to determine how this waste could be applied concerning the soil living organisms and plants.
Some Remarks on the Socio‐Cultural Background of Restoration Ecology

Restoration ecology plays an important role in nature conservation policy in Europe today. It establishes the scientific basis for restoring ecosystems altered or destroyed by man to a more “natural” state. The goals of restoration ecology can generally be described in terms of increased biodiversity, enhanced water retention capacity, avoidance of soil erosion, etc. In practice, however, a discrepancy exists between the high ideals of restoration goals and reality, where one often encounters limiting factors. These limiting factors can include the conflict between different restoration goals, the unpredictability of restoration goals owing to long‐term effects and stochastic events, the insufficient social acceptance of landscape changes during restoration processes, and the use of restoration processes themselves (e.g., undisturbed succession, certain management measures like impoverishment of fertilized areas) as restoration goals in place of a certain resource quality (such as species composition, population sizes, water quality). Two examples from southern Germany show that restoration goals in European cultural landscapes can only be implemented successfully when they are integrated into the respective land use systems.
Advanced integrated process and ESD protection structure to optimize the GOI, HCE, and ESD performance for subquarter micron technology

In this study, the super-steep retrograde N-channel doping profile was found to degrade the gate oxide integrity (GOI), hot carrier lifetime and the ESD performance. Therefore, a simple method was proposed to from the conventional -channel doping profile without adding the masking step. In addition, to improve the oxide/Si interface quality, a modified LDD structure with As and P31 co-implant followed by gate re-oxidation was also proposed to improve the hot carrier lifetime. To improve the ESD failure threshold, after the real-time I-V characteristics measurement during ESD zapping event and detail failure analysis, a modified multi-finger protection structure with P+ diffusion into source regions was also proposed to relieve the current crowding effect. Moreover, for reducing the snapback voltage, a P- type dopant was proposed to implant into the drain region of the ESD transistor.
我們為何使用部落格? 部落格之接受、使用、與應用研究 Why Do We Blog ? The Blog Acceptance , Usage , and Application 研 究 生:張耀升 Student

Blogs, or weblogs, have been experiencing a rapid growth rate in recent years. Blogs are easy to use and possess interactive features, thus attracting wide use and leading them to be regarded as communication media in web-based information technology. Therefore, blogs have become an increasingly popular form of communication on websites, and have been adopted by users for several applications in domains such as journalism, business, and education. However, why do so many people like to use blogs? What blog applications can do for us? The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the blog acceptance and usage behaviors, and its applications. This thesis contains two studies. The first study incorporates the technology acceptance model with media choice factors to explain and predict the blog acceptance behaviors. The media choice factors include media richness, critical mass, social influence, and media experience. The technology acceptance factors include perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use. An online field survey was conducted and the structure equation modeling method was applied to investigate the empirical strength of the relationships in the proposed model. 521 experienced blog users were surveyed to examine this model. The results strongly support the proposed hypotheses indicating that technology acceptance and media choice
Speech Planning for V1CV2 Sequences: Influence of the Planned Sequence

The paper studies the potential influence of the structure of a language (in terms of phonological units) on the anticipatory coarticulation. It is hypothesized that speech gestures are optimally planned and that the size of the planned sequence is influenced by language constraints. The status of the syllable is studied via simulations with a speech production model and experimental data.
Performance Analysis of Cooperative Networks based on WiMAX BICM LDPC-ID

Wireless technology has two main uses. One is mobile and the other is fixed wireless. Mobile systems are fragile so far as data robustness is concerned. To make system reliable for services that use high data rate such as triple play, they need to have a resilient communication technology. For high data rate services, MIMO systems are used in 4G technology. Cooperative networks are being used to avoid signal impairments and power attenuation in various networks. This paper is a work on WiMAX LDPC technology which is employed with cooperative network. Several channel models are used to check robustness of the system. The simulation is made by setting certain parameters. The channel capacity approaching coding technique LDPC having coding gain method BICM-ID is also used. These parameters are precondition to simulation that is being made here. The research work focuses on the performance analysis of WiMAX system using the LDPC and BICM technique. A comparative analysis of the system is also carried out in the end with the contemporary research and inference is pointed based on those results.
Excited states and energy relaxation in stacked InAs/GaAs quantum dots

Excited states and energy relaxation processes are studied for stacked InAs/GaAs QD's with GaAs cap layers grown by migration enhanced epitaxy. Photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra reveal the excited state spectrum as a function of size for self-assembled InAs QD's in multilayered samples with 36-ML spacers. The observed energy shifts and splittings are consistent with those of hole states numerically calculated for pyramidal QD's supporting assignment to the transition between the electron ground |000〉 and the |001〉 excited hole state. The optical results suggest the island shape uniformity to improve in multilayered samples, which is attributed to the contribution of the buried islands to the surface strain altering the island formation kinetics and energetics that also underlie vertical self-organization. Time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) results yield a lifetime of 40 ps for the first excited |001〉 hole state, attributed to multiphonon relaxation processes bridging the approximately 100 meV level separation, and ground-state lifetimes around 700 ps independent of the detection energy. At high excitation densities saturation of QD states leads to long-living excited-state PL and up to 1 ns delay in the ground-state PL decay, showing radiative decay to be the dominant recombination process in the QD's. The results presented contribute to the understanding of PLE spectra of an inhomogeneous QD ensemble, which is argued to be sensitive to the shape uniformity, the excited-state spectrum, and competing recombination processes.
M ay 2 01 8 Algebraic Cutting Equations

The cutting equations are diagrammatic identities that are used to prove perturbative unitarity in quantum field theory. In this paper, we derive algebraic, upgraded versions of them. Differently from the diagrammatic versions, the algebraic identities also holds for propagators with arbitrary, nonvanishing widths. In particular, the cut propagators do not need to vanish off shell. The new approach provides a framework to address unsolved problems of perturbative quantum field theory and a tool to investigate perturbative unitarity in higher-derivative theories that are relevant to the problem of quantum gravity, such as the Lee-Wick models and the fakeon models.
Evaluation on the Structural Indices Unveil Performance Variation among Dorper, Local and their F1 Crossbred Sheep Population in Ethiopia

The study was conducted at Sirinka Agriculture Research Center to assess the structural indices of local, local x pure Dorper 50% crossbreds and pure Dorper sheep. The study was performed based on body linear measurements and three hundred three (303) sheep were selected for this study. From the total samples 81, 128 and 94 sheep were local, 50% crosses and pure Dorper, respectively. The animals were grouped into three age groups based on pairs of Permanente incisor as (0 pairs of permanent incisor, 1 pairs of permanent incisor, and ≥ 2 pairs of permanent incisor). General linear model of SAS 2008 was used for statistical analysis of the collected data. Ten Structural indices were calculated for the three sheep populations separately. The average values of structural indices were compared within a breed while the correlation between structural indices was studied. Sex, age and sex by age interaction effect were the fixed effects considered for the analysis. Body index, weight index, thoracic development, body ration, height slop, length index, width slop, depth index, balance and pelvic index were used in the standard formula to calculate structural indices. Weight index (24.82 kg, 26.61 kg), height slop (2.95 cm, 1.71 cm), width slop (0.85 cm, 0.93 cm), body index (78.57 cm, 88.42 cm), thoracic development (1.14 cm, 1.28 cm) and pelvic index (77.61 cm, 85.08 cm) were the total mean value of local and crossbred sheep, respectively. As a conclusion, pure Dorper and crossbred sheep exhibit meat type traits. It was suggested to observe the performances of pure Dorper and crossbreds in farmers’ management condition.
Random Fuzzy Complementarity Problem

In this paper, we introduce and study a random fuzzy complementarity problem in Hilbert spaces. We define an iterative algorithm for finding the approximate solutions of this class of complementarity problem and establish the convergence of iterative sequences generated by proposed algorithm. Our result can be viewed as generalization of many known corresponding results. One example is constructed in support of our problem.
Adaptive modelling and forecasting of offshore wind power fluctuations with Markov‐switching autoregressive models

Wind power production data at temporal resolutions of a few minutes exhibit successive periods with fluctuations of various dynamic nature and magnitude, which cannot be explained (so far) by the evolution of some explanatory variable. Our proposal is to capture this regime-switching behaviour with an approach relying on Markov-switching autoregressive (MSAR) models. An appropriate parameterization of the model coefficients is introduced, along with an adaptive estimation method allowing accommodation of long-term variations in the process characteristics. The objective criterion to be recursively optimized is based on penalized maximum likelihood, with exponential forgetting of past observations. MSAR models are then employed for one-step-ahead point forecasting of 10 min resolution time series of wind power at two large offshore wind farms. They are favourably compared against persistence and autoregressive models. It is finally shown that the main interest of MSAR models lies in their ability to generate interval/density forecasts of significantly higher skill. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.