Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurements of ozone absorption cross section with ratiometric and non-ratiometric methods

In ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy, absorption cross section (ACS) is a parameter important for calculating ozone concentrations. In this work we have determined the ACS at the room temperature and normal pressure. The ozone con- centration has been recorded in the region 450-989 ppm, using a compact aluminium gas cell of 5 cm optical path length. We have also compared the results derived with the ratiometric and non-ratiometric methods based on the Beer-Lambert law. Our experimental results demonstrate that the non-ratiometric method can compete with the ratiometric method whenever the measuring times are relatively short.
Determining the kinetic energy spectrum in the upper ocean Master thesis in Geosciences Meteorology and Oceanography

The turbulent dynamics of the upper ocean is a topic widely discussed by scientists. Previous investigations have shown support for two main theories; the surface quasi-geostrophic theory and the two dimensional turbulence theory. In this thesis we used statistical methods such as velocity spectra and velocity structure functions with direct oceanic measurements in the upper Atlantic ocean. At scales smaller than the deformation radius, the energy spectra and structure functions are consistent with a forward enstrophy cascade, as in two dimensional turbulence. We do not, on the other hand see any clear indications of an upscale energy cascade, despite that the peak in the energy spectrum is above the deformation radius. Whether the latter is due to an inverse cascade or direct forcing (e.g. by the Gulf Stream pinching off rings) is unclear. The results thus support two dimensional turbulence theory, rather than surface quasi-geostrophy.
Analytical Estimation of Doppler Shift in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks for Enhanced Detection in Accident Avoidance Campaigns

Road accidents are a global public health hazard. The concept of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enables implementation of wireless communication technologies to realize safety in vehicular environment in response to growing concerns of road accident injuries. Preliminary research findings indicate that majority of vehicular accidents involve non-impaired drivers who, if alerted of the impeding danger, would avoid such crashes. Solutions have been proposed in collision avoidance through cooperative safety applications supported in vehicle-tovehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. While the existing protocols relying on pilot carriers adequately address the fixed and low mobility scenarios, high vehicular mobility is perturbed by Doppler shift which renders the existing protocols ineffective by degrading the received signal quality. In this paper a method based on analytical techniques is developed to enhance signal detection by yielding more accurate Doppler shift estimates. Numerical results indicate that the proposed method outperforms the methods based on existing algorithms.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) The visual extent of an object : suppose we know the object locations

The visual extent of an object reaches beyond the object itself. This is a long standing fact in psychology and is reflected in image retrieval techniques which aggregate statistics from the whole image in order to identify the object within. However, it is unclear to what degree and how the visual extent of an object affects classification performance. In this paper we investigate the visual extent of an object on the Pascal VOC dataset using a Bag-of-Words implementation with (colour) SIFT descriptors. Our analysis is performed from two angles. (a) Not knowing the object location, we determine where in the image the support for object classification resides. We call this the normal situation. (b) Assuming that the object location is known, we evaluate the relative potential of the object and its surround, and of the object border and object interior. We call this the ideal situation. Our most important discoveries are: (i) Surroundings can adequately distinguish between groups of classes: furniture, animals, and land-vehicles. For distinguishing categories within one group the surroundings become a source of confusion. (ii) The physically rigid plane, bike, bus, car, and train classes are recognised by interior boundaries and shape, not by texture. The non-rigid animals dog, cat, cow, and sheep are recognised primarily by texture, i.e. fur, as their projected shape varies greatly. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11263-011-0443-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users. J.R. R. Uijlings ( ) · A.W. M. Smeulders Institute for Informatics, ISIS Lab, Science Park 107, 1098 XG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: JRR.Uijlings@uva.nl R.J.H. Scha Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (iii) We confirm an early observation from human psychology (Biederman in Perceptual Organization, pp. 213–263, 1981): in the ideal situation with known object locations, recognition is no longer improved by considering surroundings. In contrast, in the normal situation with unknown object locations, the surroundings significantly contribute to the recognition of most classes.
Using Product Innovation as Eco-Branding to encourage Sustainable Lifestyles - An Exploratory Student Approach to Business Strategy

Recently, new market demands and customer expectations have forced companies to expand their commitment to sustainability and to offer new eco-friendly solutions. It is therefore of increasing importance for companies to expand their product portfolio with new sustainable and innovative designs. New product solutions have the ability to change how we as individuals live and use resources in our everyday life. This offers great opportunities for companies and designers to use creative technology innovation as a tool to promote new sustainable lifestyles. This paper discusses the challenge of using product innovation as eco-branding and how an exploratory approach to this has been used in a number of student projects. Based on in-depth analyses of different brands and their existing products, students created ten new brand, product and service concepts. The sustainability aspect was particularly stressed both in the created concepts and in the accompanying business and brand strategies. In the paper, we report on the overall description of the project as well as the overall results. Finally, we will describe one case in more detail and discuss the project approach in regards to the actual result and contribution to the student learning experience and insight on eco-branding.
Virulence and horizontal transmission of selected Brazilian strains of Beauveria bassiana against Cosmopolites sordidus under laboratory conditions.

Virulence of Brazilian selected strains of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin, their infectivity at different temperatures and horizontal transmission potential on adults of Cosmopolites sordidus (Germar) (Coleoptera Curculionidae) were investigated. No relation was observed between groups formed by molecular analysis and the biological activity of tested B. bassiana against C. sordidus in preliminary screening bioassay. LC50 after a ten-day period was 3.9 × 10 7 and 2.6 × 10 8 conidia ml -1 for the selected strains CG1013 and CG1027, respectively. LT50 at 21, 25 and 29 °C was less than 7.4 days for a 2 × 10 8 conidia ml -1 suspension of CG1013. LT50 for CG1027 were up to 11 days for the same temperatures. Fungal transmission occurred among infected and healthy individuals. Density increase of inoculated insects in the population increased the mortality of non-inoculated insects for both strains. The number of conidia produced per cadaver was similar for the two strains. However, horizontal transmission efficacy of CG1013 was higher than that observed for CG1027. Mortality of non-inoculated adults at a ratio of 2:10 of infected to healthy adults was 10% for CG1027, after 20 days of exposure. At the same ratio, mortality of non-inoculated insects was 34% for CG1013. Our results indicate the potential of the strain CG1013 of B. bassiana as a biocontrol agent against the banana weevil.
Employment Strain : The Hidden Costs of Precarious Employment Final Research Report for the WSIB RESEARCH ADVISORY COUNCIL

Three measures make up our “Employment Strain” model: employment relationship uncertainty; employment relationship effort; and, employment relationship support. This new framework was used to measure the characteristics of precarious employment and their effect on health using data from a structured, self-administered, population-based survey completed by 3,244 workers, and 82 semi-structured interviews using a stratified sampling technique to select participants.
Inferring transcriptional regulation on the promoter level and its applications to diseases

Gene regulation is important in maintaining cell identity and in higher organisms is a very complex process with many layers of regulation. Genome-wide transcriptional studies that define gene expression across different cells and tissues give important insights into overall gene regulation of a cell as well as the impact of dysregulation in diseases. With the recent advances of high-throughput sequencing methods, it has become increasingly feasible to elucidate transcriptional regulation in the cell, under normal conditions or during cell perturbation. The aim of this thesis is, using these genome-wide profiling methods, to study in depth the regulatory promoter regions. In Paper I, we knocked down 4 transcription factors in the THP-1 cell line and applied Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (CAGE) with sequencing. We were able to elucidate de-novo the transcriptional binding motifs of these 4 transcription factors as well as build perturbation driven gene regulatory networks. In Paper II, we utilized a similar approach on DYX1C1, a dyslexia susceptibility gene. Using perturbation studies and gene expression profiling with microarrays, the perturbed genes corresponded to the previously described neuronal migration phenotype that was speculated to be linked to the function of this gene. Furthermore, using mass spectrometry, we were able to identify novel protein interacting partners for DYX1C1 and combining with already available data build protein level interaction network. In Paper III, relying on the post-mortem brain samples from the FANTOM5 project, and using CAGE in conjunction with a single molecule sequencer, we identified brain specific transcriptional start sites and brain specific alternative promoters. Additionally, we identified differences between adult and infant brain, interestingly noting many of them originating from alternative promoters. We also classified differences between 15 brain regions into 4 distinct groups and built underlying transcription factor interaction networks. In Paper IV, using the FANTOM5 database we investigated the promoter structure and expression of 3 genes implicated in Rett syndrome. We identified novel promoters, silencing of FOXG1 in the cerebellum, as well as the low correlation between MECP2 and FOXG1 expression. Interestingly, although expression of FOXG1 is limited to the brain and MECP2 is ubiquitous, MECP2 motif activity is significantly lower in the brain than in other tissues, while no differences were observed for FOXG1 motif activity. In summary, our genome-wide studies employing quantitative gene expression measures on promoter level resolution let us describe how cells are different, let us obtain insights into likely underlying regulatory mechanisms as well as gave us the opportunity to explore diseases. ISBN 978-91-7549-123-3
A fictitious domain approach for Fluid-Structure Interactions based on the eXtended Finite Element Method

In this work we develop a fictitious domain method for the Stokes problem which allows computations in domains whose boundaries do not depend on the mesh. The method is based on the ideas of Xfem and has been first introduced for the Poisson problem. The fluid part is treated by a mixed finite element method, and a Dirichlet condition is imposed by a Lagrange multiplier on an immersed structure localized by a level-set function. A stabilization technique is carried out in order to get the convergence for this multiplier. The latter represents the forces that the fluid applies on the structure. The aim is to perform fluid-structure simulations for which these forces have a central role. We illustrate the capacities of the method by extending it to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with a moving rigid solid.
It Pays to Violate: How Effective are the Basel Accord Penalties in Encouraging Risk Management?

The internal models amendment to the Basel Accord allows banks to use internal models to forecast Value-at-risk (VaR) thresholds, which are used to calculate the required capital that banks must hold in reserve as a protection against negative changes in the value of their trading portfolios. As capital reserves lead to an opportunity cost to banks, it is likely that banks could be tempted to use models that underpredict risk and hence lead to low capital charges. To avoid this problem the Basel Accord introduced a backtesting procedure, whereby banks using models that led to excessive violations are penalised through higher capital charges. This paper investigates the performance of five popular volatility models that can be used to forecast VaR thresholds under a variety of distributional assumptions. The results suggest that, within the current constraints and the penalty structure of the Basel Accord, the lowest capital charges arise when using models that lead to excessive violations, thereby suggesting the current penalty structure is not severe enough to encourage adequate risk management. In addition, this paper suggests an alternative penalty structure that is more effective at aligning the interests of banks and regulators.
Breeding Waxy Maize Hybrid for Fresh Quality : Integration between Domestic and Exotic Germplasm

Waxy maize (Zea mays L. var. certain) hybrid program has been established since 2003 at Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA), began upon collection activity of waxy maize nationwide germplasm. During 2003 to 2012, total 160 accessions of local waxy maize were collected based on the four ecosystem regions includedNorth-West mountain (Lai Chau, Dien Bien and Son La province); North-east mountain (Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Lang Son and Lao Cai provinces); mountain region of North coastal Central (Quang Tri province) and Highland central (Dac Lak, Gia Lai and Lam Dong provinces). Along with the collected local waxy maize germplasm, the 36 exotic waxy maize germplasm was also imported, exchanged and commercial waxy maize hybrids in Vietnam market. Evaluation of waxy maize germplasm diversity and identified usefultraits like drought tolerance, diseases -resistance, eating quality, especially thinner pericarp thickness, anthocyanin content for utilization and maize database establishment in VNUA. Currently, the mostgrown commercial maize varieties are hybrids. However, some waxy corn varieties derived in themountainous regions of Vietnam, where most ethnic minority people are counties are openpollinated varieties (OPVs). Therefore, the improved OPVs are pivotal properties in these regions. Two local waxy maize varieties wereselected by thefull-sibmethod toenhancepopulationsare Khau li and Xa li luot. The results indicated that the selection method has significantly help to improve the numerous traits of interest of this population such as plant height, yield components and fresh ear yield Khau li which are shown to be higher 0.61 ton/ha and Xa li luot is 0.67 ton/ha via three consecutive cycles. Development of the inbred line for the hybrid breedin gprogram in CRDI was initiate dby use of 43 domestic and 36 exotic germplasm for inbred waxy maize line development. During 2009 to 2016, it has generated and evaluated 1683 of inbred lines on the genetic diversity, eating quality, anthocyanin content, drought tolerance, GCA, SCA base on phenotyping traits and applying molecular breeding. Hybrid waxy maize breeding wassuccessfully generated withfour waxy maize hybrids are VNU16, VNUA 69, MH8 and HUA 601 which revealed high fresh ear yield good eating quality, while a purple waxy maize hybrid is NT141 with high-quality and high anthocyanin content. Five waxy maize hybrids were taken into Vietnam Nation Inspection and Testing Network from 2013; they were shown higher yield and quality to compare with the controlled variety. The integration between the use of domestic and exotic germplasm could be successfully improved the diversity of waxy maize germplasm and hybrid breeding for traits of interest such as high fresh with husk yield and good eating quality. Liet VV et al Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, 2017, 4(9):254-270 Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research 255
Cell Cycle Modification in Trophoblast Cell Populations in the Course of Placenta Formation

It is well established that the presence of the diploid chromosome set in cell nuclei of the majority of tissues is a characteristic of vertebrates. This peculiarity was supplemented by the rule of the relative constancy of DNA in nuclei with diploid chromosome set (Boivin et al., 1948). However, some cells contain doubled or multiplied chromosome set as compared to other cells of the organism or other individuals of the species. As distinct from the generative polyploidy in which polyploidy covers all cell types including gametes, somatic polyploidy extents to cells of several tissues (Brodsky, Uryvaeva, 1985). At present there are numerous data that the cells of some tissues of animal and plants appear to be polyploid. The incidence of polyploidy in the tissues of animals and plants as well as levels of ploidy is described in detail in quite a few books and reviews (Geitler, 1953; Tschermak-Woess, 1971; Nagl, 1978, 1981, 1995; Brodsky, Uryvaeva, 1985; Raikov, 1982; Zybina, 1986; D’Amato, 1989; Zybina, Zybina, 1996; Edgar, Orr-Weaver, 2001; Ravid et al., 2002). A large body of data on incidence of polyploidy in animal and plant tissues enabled W. Nagl to make a conclusion that polyploidy is a widespread phenomenon characteristic of the overwhelming majority of eukaryotes (Nagl, 1978; 1981; 1995). According to Nagl, Vertebrata represent a specific taxon that differs from other eukaryotes in the extent of polyploidy among the differentiated cells. Thus, in insects and higher plants, nearly all normal, differentiated cells are polyploid. The majority of Mammalia and, most probably, other Vertebrates, are characterized by the diploid chromosome set in most cells including both proliferative and the tissue-specific cells. Polyploidy in Vertebrata is present in many cell types, i.e., hepatocytes, cardyomyocytes, megakaryocytes and some others (Brodsky, Uryvaeva, 1985; Hancock et al, 1993; Kudryavtsev et al, 1993; Nagl, 1995; Anatskaya et al, 2001). It suggests that propagation of vertebrates is, probably, due to an advantage of the mitotic cycle that involves a machinery of accurate reproduction of diploid cells over other cell reproduction cycles that result in polyploidization. It cannot be ruled out that the biological advantage of mitosis has made it possible the wide distribution of Vertebrata. Nevertheless, genome multiplication characteristic of wide range of highly differentiated cells in different taxons suggests an undoubtedly important biological significance of polyploidy in the lifespan of some specific cell types.
A MODIFIED TAYLOR RULE FOR THE CENTRAL BANK OF TURKEY* (CBRT): 2003-2012

In this paper we investigated whether the Central bank of Turkey (CBRT) followed a strict Taylor Rule during 2003-2012. We found that it has not, due to different reasons in different periods: inflation targeting policy before the global crisis and trying to achieve the joint targets of price and financial stabilities after the crisis. Furthermore we tried to formulate a modified Taylor Rule which fitted the actual courseof nominal interest rate during 2010-2012 as closely as possible. In contrast with our estimated modified Taylor Rule which indicated that the nominal interest rates were increased only by 0.49% in practice during 2010-2012, the estimated standard Taylor Rule suggested an increase of the nominal interest rates by 1.23% during 2008-2010 for each percentage change in the inflationary gap. Hence, this displayed a loose monetary policy with respect to the strict Taylor Rule. As a matter of fact, in January 2014, CBRT had to increase its policy interest rate down from 4 % up to 10 %
Do Higher Tax Rates Encourage/Discourage Tax Compliance?

In this survey, we try to summarize what economists know about how increasing tax rate affects both tax evasion and the willingness to pay taxes. We show how this apparently trivial question presents puzzling results. This paper introduces the main contributions that have attempted to explain the apparent contradiction between the empirical evidence on the reaction of taxpayers to changes in tax rate levels and the results obtained by the standard models of tax evasion. In an effort to shed some light on this issue, the paper primarily concludes that there is more than enough room for further research on the relationship between tax evasion and tax rates given the many gaps in the literature concerning on this topic.
Outlier and target detection in aerial hyperspectral imagery: a comparison of traditional and percentage occupancy hit or miss transform techniques

The use of aerial hyperspectral imagery for the purpose of remote sensing is a rapidly growing research area. Currently, targets are generally detected by looking for distinct spectral features of the objects under surveillance. For example, a camouflaged vehicle, deliberately designed to blend into background trees and grass in the visible spectrum, can be revealed using spectral features in the near-infrared spectrum. This work aims to develop improved target detection methods, using a two-stage approach, firstly by development of a physics-based atmospheric correction algorithm to convert radiance into re ectance hyperspectral image data and secondly by use of improved outlier detection techniques. In this paper the use of the Percentage Occupancy Hit or Miss Transform is explored to provide an automated method for target detection in aerial hyperspectral imagery.
Investments in Biodiversity Prospecting and Incentives for Conservation

There is considerable interest in biodiversity prospecting (the search for valuable new products from natural sources) as a conservation strategy. In an earlier paper, we have argued that the value of the marginal species (and, by extension, the incentives for the conservation of the habitat on which it is found) is small. In this paper, we show that investments in biodiversity prospecting are unlikely to increase incentives for conservation by much. If the value of the marginal species were appreciable, researchers ought already to have made investments to exploit it. If it is not, it is doubtful that additional investments will generate any substantial increase. It is important to be clear about our findings: we are not saying that none of the myriad uses of biodiversity is important. Quite to the contrary, we are saying that if biodiversity is important, more effective strategies for its conservation must be found.