Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rough bare soil reflectivity model

A semiempirical model for the reflectivity of rough bare soil is presented. One of the main objectives of this new model development was to derive a simple model with few model parameters and a wide applicability. A large number of ground-based measurements in the 1-100-GHz range at H and V-polarization and incidence angles between 20/spl deg/ and 70/spl deg/ were used for the model development.
Online Research: Now & Next 2011 (Warc), Kings Fund, London, 1 March 2011

These are two summaries based on presentations from the above conference, both concerned with improving engagement in the research process. The first, from Jon Puleston, discusses ways to engage more effectively with respondents in online research. The agenda proposed by Puleston includes the application of methods used in qualitative research, and computer games – usually termed ‘gamification’. The second, by Niels Schillewaert, discusses ways to engage more effectively with all the key stakeholders in market research, around an ENgagement and ACTivation (ENACT) framework. They provide further perspectives on this key theme of ‘engagement’ following on from the Conference Notes published in IJMR Vol. 53 Issue 1, based on presentations from the ASC conference held last September.
Achieving strategic objectives through operational modeling

An organization achieves competitive advantage by right strategic positioning and operational effectiveness. For the organization, the cost of its products and services is influenced by the effectiveness of the business processes that drive the organization. Effectively managing those processes, in the context of key performance measures, can reduce the cost and thereby ensuring organizational effectiveness. In this paper, we introduce a framework to identify the most effective actions that help translate strategy to organizational effectiveness.
[Protective effects and mechanisms of OSR on primary cultured hippocampus neurons subjected to anoxic injury in neonatal rat].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the protective effects of oxysophoridine (OSR) on primary cultured hippocampus neurons subjected to anoxia injury in neonatal rats and its mechanism. METHOD The model of anoxia injury of hippocampus neurons in neonatal rats were primarily cultured in vitro by physical oxygen deficiency using glucose-free culture fluid. The survival rate of neurons, the leaking rate of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), the intracellular contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO), the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) and nitric oxide synthase (NOS) were measured. The intracellular free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) in hippocampus neurons were detected with Ca(2+)-sensitive dual wavelength fluorescence spectrophotometer. RESULT Neuron death occurred in the anoxia injury model group with increase of LDH leaking rate, the contents of NO, MDA, intracellular [Ca2+] and the elevated activity of NOS while decreased activities of SOD and GSH-PX. The hippocampus neurons subjected to anoxia injury were alleviated in OSR (0.625, 5, 10 microg x L(-1)) group. CONCLUSION OSR has significant protective effects on hippocampus neurons subjected to anoxic injury. The mechanism of its protective effect may relate to its reduction of calcium overload and against oxidation injury.
Survivable Hierarchical Optical Path Network Design With Dedicated Wavelength Path Protection

In this paper, we propose a novel network design algorithm that yields the hierarchical optical path network with dedicated wavelength path protection. A hierarchical optical path network provides two granularities in implementing dedicated protection in the optical layer, namely waveband path protection and wavelength path protection. The characteristics of both protection mechanisms are investigated. We develop the concept of the source-destination Cartesian product space to aggregate closely located traffic demands, which leads to a significant reduction in network resources needed. The proposed wavelength path protection algorithm achieves lower network costs than that possible with waveband protection when traffic volume is relatively small. On the other hand, in the large traffic demand area, both schemes offer almost the same cost, which makes the waveband protection scheme attractive because of its operational simplicity. Numerical results clarify that survivable hierarchical optical path network is more cost effective than the single layer optical path network with optical layer protection, irrespective of which protection scheme is utilized.
Heme Oxygenase-1 Inhibits the Proliferation of Pancreatic Stellate Cells by Repression of the Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase1/2 Pathway

Activation of pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) is the key process in the development of pancreatic fibrosis, a common feature of chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. In recent studies, curcumin has been shown to inhibit PSC proliferation via an extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)1/2-dependent mechanism. In addition, curcumin is a potent inducer of the cytoprotective enzyme heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in other cell types. Therefore, the aims of this study were to 1) characterize the effect of curcumin on HO-1 gene expression in PSCs, 2) explore whether HO-1 induction contributes to the inhibitory effect of curcumin on PSC proliferation, and 3) clarify the involvement of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family in this context. Cultured rat PSCs were incubated with curcumin and assessed for HO-1 up-regulation by Northern blot analysis, immunoblotting, and activity assays. The effect of HO-1 on platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-induced PSC proliferation and MAPK activation was determined by immunoblotting, cell proliferation assays, and cell count analyses. Curcumin induced HO-1 gene expression in PSCs in a time- and dose-dependent manner and inhibited PDGF-mediated ERK1/2 phosphorylation and PSC proliferation. These effects were blocked by treatment of PSCs with tin protoporphyrin IX, an HO inhibitor, or transfection of HO-1 small interfering RNA. Our data provide evidence that HO-1 induction contributes to the inhibitory effect of curcumin on PSC proliferation. Therefore, therapeutic up-regulation of HO-1 could represent a mode for inhibition of PSC proliferation and thus may provide a novel strategy in the prevention of pancreatic fibrosis.
Valuation of Dividends of Indonesian Listed Firms

Using a large sample of 3,066 firm-year observations, representing 372 distinct firms listed on IDX during the period 1995-2012, we show that dividends are reliably positively priced by the capital market, violating thus the dividend displacement theorem. This result persists even after controlling for some typical factors that affect firm value (capital structure, risk) and the effect of factors not separately identified, but priced by the capital market (other information). Dividends are positively correlated to future profitability over and above current accounting earnings. Both findings show that dividends play a central role on the Indonesian capital market. The also results show the extent to which dividends displace information for value and forecasting in other accounting variables. We also model “other information” that captures institutional factors that we are unable to model explicitly. Finally, we show evidence that earnings management after 2002 is contractually-efficient rather than opportunistic.
The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework

The OAuth 2.0 authorization framework enables a third-party application to obtain limited access to an HTTP service, either on behalf of a resource owner by orchestrating an approval interaction between the resource owner and the HTTP service, or by allowing the third-party application to obtain access on its own behalf. This specification replaces and obsoletes the OAuth 1.0 protocol described in RFC 5849. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
Employee Turnover in a Regional Commercial Bank

This study explored employee turnover in a commercial bank in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Apparently there is a need to curb dysfunctional mobility of human capital in the banking sector in the region. A cross-sectional mixed method design was used to collect data. A stratified sample of banking employees completed a semi-structured questionnaire. Key informant interviewing and a focus group discussion were employed to gather supplementary data. Archival data was used in the calculation of turnover rates. The results show a relatively low overall employee turnover rate, and differences in turnover rates for different job levels and gender distributions. The turnover rate for older and young employees is relatively similar. Factors that contribute to job dissatisfaction include better job offers elsewhere, poor compensation, a lack of promotional opportunities, and Black Economic Empowerment initiatives. The findings of the study provide evidence of the most pressing turnover problems that a bank in a less affluent geographic region experiences. The impact of job dissatisfaction on the productivity, efficiency and service delivery in the bank is highlighted and a number of human resource practices are recommended to manage employee and to develop much needed human capital in the banking sector in the region. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n27p371
DCGAN for classroom images

Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have been used for generating images that look real but are in fact generated by an artificial neural network. However, they have shown to be quite unstable. In 2015, authors of [5] proposed a set of guidelines for building generative networks that should make the networks more stable and better to train. They call these instructions DCGAN. In this work we built and trained a DCGAN model on classroom images following the guidelines given in the original article. We demonstrate that the model is indeed able to generate images that resemble classrooms despite the difficult and noisy training images. Keywords—DCGAN, LSUN classrooms.
Storm Spotting and Public Awareness since the First Tornado Forecasts of 1948

Abstract The history of storm spotting and public awareness of the tornado threat is reviewed. It is shown that a downward trend in fatalities apparently began after the famous “Tri-State” tornado of 1925. Storm spotting’s history begins in World War II as an effort to protect the nation’s military installations, but became a public service with the resumption of public tornado forecasting, pioneered in 1948 by the Air Force’s Fawbush and Miller and begun in the public sector in 1952. The current spotter program, known generally as SKYWARN, is a civilian-based volunteer organization. Responsibility for spotter training has rested with the national forecasting services (originally, the Weather Bureau and now the National Weather Service). That training has evolved with (a) the proliferation of widespread film and (recently) video footage of severe storms; (b) growth in the scientific knowledge about tornadoes and tornadic storms, as well as a better understanding of how tornadoes produce damage; and (c) th.
Fast and efficient visible trajectories planning for the Dubins UAV model in 3D built-up environments

SUMMARY In this paper, we study the visible trajectories planning for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) modeled with a Dubins airplane in 3D urban environments. Our method is based on a fast and exact spatial visibility analysis of the 3D visibility problem from a viewpoint in 3D built-up environments. We consider the 3D urban environment buildings modeled as cubes (3D boxes) and present an analytic solution to the visibility problem. Based on an analytic solution, the algorithm computes the exact visible and hidden parts from a viewpoint in the urban environment. We present a local trajectory planner generating the most visible trajectory in a known 3D urban environment model, taking into account the dynamic and kinematic UAV constraints. The planner computes, at each time step, the next UAV's attainable velocities and explores the most visible node, while avoiding buildings as static obstacles in the environments, using the velocity obstacle method. The visibility type of the trajectory can be configured beforehand as visible roofs and surfaces in the environments. We demonstrate our visibility and trajectory planning method in simulations in several 3D urban environments, showing visible trajectory planning capabilities.
The Relationship of Earnings Quality with Disclosure Level of Social, Economic and Environmental Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility in Tehran Stock Exchange

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship of earnings quality with disclosure level of social, economic and environmental dimensions of corporate social responsibility in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The study is an applied research adopting a descriptive method. The spatial domain of the study was all the companies listed in TSE. The temporal domain was from 2008 to 2012. The research sample consisted of 88 companies listed in TSE. Earnings quality was considered as the independent variable while the disclosure level of economic, social and environmental dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) was regarded as the dependent variable. Firm size, financial leverage, firm age and industry type were considered as the four control variables in the study. Three research hypotheses were developed and the relative data were collected. Regression analysis was used to analyze the data. The results showed no significant correlation between earnings quality and disclosure level of CSR environmental dimension in the companies listed in TSE. However, there was a significant correlation of earnings quality with disclosure level of economic and environmental dimensions. It is recommended that managers and other decision makers pay greater attention to the issue of earnings quality in order to increase the disclosure level of corporate social responsibility dimensions.
Employee Satisfaction: A Case Study at Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad

Employee satisfactions emerge as the central subject in this study because employee satisfaction is one of the most important factors in determining the success of an organization. Leading from such probe, this study formulates a model to test factors that drive towards employee satisfaction. The study considers the most positive and unique factors that most organization has, thus suggests that core factors for employee satisfaction notably are leadership style, working environment, employee rewards and welfare, and organization culture. The analysis involved two phases of qualitative and quantitative techniques. First, the study is based on the management of Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad (BMMB) to explore how far the relevant factors opined the literature review synchronized with the issue being examined. In the second phase, the study developed a questionnaire, based on the findings to reach out 1,216 employees of BMMB in 1999. This study found few differences in the factors that affected employee satisfaction. Various independent variables hypothesized were significant. In view of more than one independent variable, the multiple regression analysis is adopted in this study. It is assumed that these independent variables: leadership style, working environment, employee rewards and welfare, and organization culture, explained the employee satisfaction variation. The results show that there is significant relationship between employee satisfaction and these independent variables. The statistical package for the social sciences was used to analyze the data. It is anyhow the result shows that the independent variable: organizational culture—the most important variable that determines employee satisfaction.
A New Emergency Management for the New Millennium

Natural and technological disasters cannot be solved in isolation and the emergency management practie is re-inventing itself to deliver services that will meet the needs of the communities. Public participation is expected and there is a need for consensus building regarding hazards and risk reduction and decision-makers are beginning to regard emergency management as they would any other major social issues.
Adult pilocytic astrocytomas: clinical features and molecular analysis.

BACKGROUND Adult pilocytic astrocytomas (PAs) are rare and have an aggressive clinical course compared with pediatric patients. Constitutive Ras/RAF/MAPK signaling appears to be an important oncogenic event in sporadic PA. We evaluated clinical data and molecular profiles of adult PAs at our institution. METHODS We identified 127 adult PAs in our institutional database. Cases with available tissue were tested for BRAF-KIAA1549 fusion/duplication (B-K fusion) by fluorescence in situ hybridization and submitted for mutation profiling using the Sequenom mutation profiling panel. Subgroup analyses were performed based on clinical and molecular data. RESULTS The majority of adult PAs are supratentorial. Twenty-two percent of cases had an initial pathologic diagnosis discordant with the diagnosis made at our institution. Recurrence was seen in 42% of cases, and 13% of patients died during follow-up. Adjuvant radiotherapy following surgical resection was associated with a statistically significant decrease in progression-free survival (P = .004). B-K fusion was identified in 20% (9 of 45) of patients but was not associated with outcome. No BRAF V600E mutations (0 of 40 tested) were found. CONCLUSION This was the largest single institution series of adult PA. A significant proportion of adult PAs follow an aggressive clinical course. Our results support a period of observation following biopsy or surgical resection. B-K fusion in adult PA does not influence outcome, and BRAF V600E mutation appears to be a very rare event. Further study of tumor biology and optimal treatment is needed, given a more aggressive clinical behavior.
A Case Study of Global Supply Chain Risk Management

Today due to the social, political and environmental pressures a lot of companies have outsourced production to oversea manufacturers, and the complexities of the chains have been mounting especially quickly. Managing risk in the supply chain has never been as challenging as it is today. In this paper a comprehensive quantitative risk evaluation and mitigation model in global supply chains is developed which from several disciplines - supply chain management, logistics, economics and international business. A case study is provided which in view of a company whose products are manufactured in China and sold in U.S. The paper identified four risks including supply risk, operational risk, demand risk and financial risk and modeled as probabilistic distributions of the outcome. Moreover, the paper implemented and integrated some risk mitigation strategies such as hedging and speculation in the simulation model for further investigation.
Design of a neural network for the classification of patterns into K classes using a linear programming-based method

When a set of patterns is not linearly separable, the problem of designing and training a neural network for classification using discrete activation functions is NP-complete. For this reason, the main efforts of researchers in this area are aimed at designing efficient algorithms that produce good heuristic solutions. The majority of the reported results propose variations and modifications of the classical algorithm for perceptron training in order to obtain the number of neurons in the hidden layer and the corresponding matrix of weights. The algorithm presented transforms the original set of training patterns into a linearly separable set. When the procedure for verifying linear separability is applied, the weights corresponding to the output layer are obtained. As the end result of the proposed algorithm, a trained neural network is obtained that correctly classifies the set of patterns into K classes.
(Acetato-κO)(aqua-κO)(2-{bis[(3,5-dimethyl-1H-pyrazol-1-yl-κN 2)methyl]amino-κN}ethanol-κO)nickel(II) perchlorate monohydrate

In the structure of the title complex, [Ni(CH3CO2)(C14H23N5O)(H2O)]ClO4·H2O, the NiII centre has a distorted octahedral environment defined by one O and three N atoms derived from the tetradentate ligand, and two O atoms, one from a water molecule and the other from an acetate anion. The molecules are connected into a three-dimensional architecture by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The perchlorate anion is disordered over two positions; the major component has a site-occupancy factor of 0.525 (19).
Heat shock-mediated cell cycle blockage and G1 cyclin expression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

For cells of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, heat shock causes a transient inhibition of the cell cycle-regulatory step START. We have determined that this heat-induced START inhibition is accompanied by decreased CLN1 and CLN2 transcript abundance and by possible posttranscriptional changes to CLN3 (WHI1/DAF1) cyclin activity. Persistent CLN2 expression from a heterologous promoter or the CLN2-1 or CLN3-1 alleles that are thought to encode cyclin proteins with increased stability eliminated heat-induced START inhibition but did not affect other aspects of the heat shock response. Heat-induced START inhibition was shown to be independent of functions that regulate cyclin activity under other conditions and of transcriptional regulation of SWI4, an activator of cyclin transcription. Cells lacking Bcy1 function and thus without cyclic AMP control of A kinase activity were inhibited for START by heat shock as long as A kinase activity was attenuated by mutation. We suggest that heat shock mediates START blockage through effects on the G1 cyclins.
A nonlinear principal component decomposition

The idea of summarizing the information contained in a large number of variables by a small number of "factors" or "principal components" has been widely adopted in economics and statistics. This paper introduces a generalization of the widely used principal component analysis (PCA) to nonlinear settings, thus providing a new tool for dimension reduction and exploratory data analysis or representation. The distinguishing features of the method include (i) the ability to always deliver truly independent factors (as opposed to the merely uncorrelated factors of PCA); (ii) the reliance on the theory of optimal transport and Brenier maps to obtain a robust and ef? cient computational algorithm and (iii) the use of a new multivariate additive entropy decomposition to determine the principal nonlinear components that capture most of the information content of the data.
Conceptual Framework for Corporate Governance in Nigeria - Challenges and Panaceas

This research paper reviews the conceptual framework of corporate governance in Nigeria and seeks to understand current best practice, the challenges, the failure and offered policy recommendations as panaceas for efficient implementation of empirically validated international corporate governance best practice in Nigeria. This paper identified the underdeveloped nature of the Nigerian economy as a major obstacle to efficient functioning of corporate governance. Legally binding shareholders’ rights are undermined, members of board of directors are randomly handpicked from a pool of cronies and there is complete lack of transparency and disclosure in the system. The existence of institutional regulatory framework in Nigeria is constrained with lack of enforcement mechanism to properly implement laws and regulations on corporate governance best practice. Lessons learned are difficult to document for future reference which complicate resources allocation from the surplus areas of enforcement to deficit areas in the implementation process.