SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
Discrimination and group identities

Opportunities in life in Europe de facto hinge on group memberships that de jure should not matter for individual outcomes – prompting EC president Ursula von der Leyen to press for renewed efforts to answer the question: “Why do racism and discrimination endure in our societies?”

Located at the Department of Microeconomics and Public Economics at Maastricht University and in collaboration with the University of Applied Police Sciences Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, I want to contribute to answering two research questions: i) Which types of group identities more vs. less likely induce discriminatory behavior? and ii) Which types of persons are more vs. less likely to adopt such group identities?

In WP1 I plan to conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of economic experiments studying discrimination. It will focus on the strengths of different types of group identities and on individual heterogeneity in their adoption. Doing so, this meta-study will provide key empirical insights at an unprecedented level of detail into the mechanics of discriminatory group identities and their interaction with individual levels of readiness to adopt them - a trait labeled 'groupiness'.

In WP2 I will conduct an experimental study to dissect ‘groupiness’ by investigating a) if long-term exposure to environments of stronger vs. weaker group identities has an impact on individual levels of ‘groupiness’ and b) whether individuals who have a higher readiness to follow rules in general are also more likely to show ‘groupy’ behavior.

The insights gained will allow for the development of substantially improved theoretical models of group identity based discriminatory behavior and will be also very informative for practitioners aiming at changing group identities for the better. In particular, the results obtained will directly be exploited for informing and potentially improving the professional training of young women and men striving to become law enforcement officers.
An empirical analysis of factors affecting sharing economy growth

Research background: There are widely recognized benefits of sharing economy for entrepreneurs and consumers. The European Commission emphasizes the importance of European countries being open to new opportunities that sharing economy brings. In order to promote the development of sharing economy, it is important to understand what factors contribute to its development.&#x0D; Purpose of the article: The presented paper aims to identify the main factors relevant for the growth of sharing economy and to determine whether there are factors which are more significant for the development of the sharing economy than others. Based on reviewed literature, the Authors compiled a set of indicators and employed them for research purposes. The selected indicators were assigned into four main groups: technological, political and regulatory environment, economic and social-cultural environment.&#x0D; Methods: The authors used two multicriteria methods (SAW and APH), which were applied to the set of indicators and modeled five different situations by attributing significance to the indicators. The Authors have applied this set of indicators for assessing the following selected countries: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the United Kingdom. The data covers the years 2011–2015.&#x0D; Findings &amp; Value added: The results of the research show that technological readiness and social-cultural environment are significant for the development of sharing economy. For further research the Authors recommend the creation of a composite Sharing Economy Index (SHEI).
Stratospheric flying opportunities for high-speed propulsion concepts

The stratosphere is the highest layer in the atmosphere where aircraft can still fly. Nevertheless, it is presently rarely exploited for commercial aviation. As Europe’s Vision for Aviation predicts globally a six-fold increase in passenger by 2050, flight levels above the troposphere become attractive and maybe the only way to realize this. 

While the lower stratosphere could still be reachable for classical aircraft, the higher altitudes would demand for higher speeds. Various technologies, systems and novel aircraft concepts related to high-speed transport have progressed rapidly over the last 20 years showing their technical feasibility and readiness up to TRL-3. Technology roadmaps elaborated by industrial and research teams indicated their readiness-level can easily be brought up to TRL-6 by 2035 provided the related application can be shown to be commercially exploitable.

The first project goal covers the multi-functional integration of propulsion, aerodynamics, airframes and on-board systems across various disciplines to define and detail a high-speed aircraft configuration enabling long-haul travels.
However, Europe should have simultaneously a directive which flight altitudes are environmentally sustainable on the basis of fuel type and emission rates. This parametric mapping of the stratospheric climate impact covers the second goal of the project.

Last but not least, the potential of stratospheric flight relies also on economic viability. Apart from potential routes, aircraft capacity and performance, development and exploitation costs… the third goal will also consider human factors, social acceptance, implementation and noise issues. 

The present proposal will, contrary to regular viability studies, perform a bottom-up approach. The validity will follow a sound technical and scientific approach and shall demonstrate environmental and economic compatibility. This enables then a formulation of regulatory, technological and socio-economic barriers.
FREEGIS

FreeGIS aims to tackle the issues of GIS as a tool Free Open Source Open for  recording,analysis, visualization, and the return of geographic information. FreeGIS  is a timely study of the project CoCOS-CEOS, consolidated by the Free Software  Center South Tyrol.  FreeGIS aims to identify the characteristics of the development of multi-language capabilities  of GIS software, define the specifications of a reference implementation consisting exclusively of  free software components, define and create a FreeGIS Date Licence.  All project actions are preceded by an analysis of the status quo and generate  publication of guidelines, dealing especially with the PA, for a more conscious and that  aims at maximizing the potential of GIS Open Source Free.
Display apparatus with a crack detection line

A display apparatus includes a substrate including a display area where a plurality of pixels are provided and a non-display area surrounding the display area, an encapsulation layer including an inorganic layer and an organic layer and covering the display area, a dam disposed in the non-display area to surround the display area and to block a flow of the organic layer, a pad disposed in one edge of the non-display area and spaced apart from the dam in the non-display area, an auxiliary buffer layer spaced apart from the dam and disposed in the non-display area to overlap an end of the inorganic layer, a power auxiliary line disposed between the dam and the auxiliary buffer layer and electrically connected to the pad to receive a voltage from the pad, and a crack detection line spaced apart from the power auxiliary line and electrically connected to the pad.
CABLE TROUGH

A cable trough for installing cables alongside a railway line or other right of way is described. The cable trough is constructed using longitudinally oriented reinforcing fibers coated with polymeric resin that generally aligns the reinforcing fibers with the length of the cable trough. One or more angled members extend at an angle from one or more sidewalls to a bottom of the cable trough. One or more connector clips may be used to secure respective portions of the cable trough to one another. The cable trough is provided with a cover that may be removably secured to an elongate channel to protect the cables housed within the cable trough. Elbows, corners, tees, and other connectors may be provided to run the cable trough in any desired direction. A method of installing cables in a cable trough is also described.
Local 21's Quest for a Moral Economy

The industrial working class began the middle decades
of the twentieth century with unlimited hope and
possibility but ended them fraught with
disillusionment and dismay. This marked a disjointed
experience as optimism for the future gave way to
disenchantment. With the ratification of the National
Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the National
Labor Relations Act in 1935, hundreds of thousands of
workers across the United States became union
members. The euphoria that this initial burst of
unionization created, however, could not be sustained
throughout the post-World War II years. The Cold War,
McCarthyism and later the onset of
de-industrialization ushered in new phases in working
class history marked by the gradual ineffectiveness
of the working class to shape domestic policy.
Expression of NKp30, NKp46 and DNAM-1 activating receptors on resting and IL-2 activated NK cells from healthy donors according to CMV-serostatus and age

Human natural killer (NK) cells are innate lymphoid cells with capacity to kill tumor cells and virus-infected cells. According to the expression of CD56 and CD16 several NK cell subsets have been identified, a major CD56dimCD16+ subpopulation characterized by higher cytotoxic capacity, two CD56bright subsets (CD16-and CD16+) that represent different maturation stages and the fourth CD56-CD16+ subset that correspond to activated dysfunctional NK cells. Previous studies have shown quantitative changes in the frequency, phenotype and distribution of NK cell subsets depending on CMV-serostatus and age. We have analyzed the expression of NKp30, NKp46 and DNAM-1 NK activating receptors on resting and IL-2 activated NK cells from CMV-seronegative and seropositive healthy young donors and from CMV-seropositive elderly individuals. Our results showed that CMV-serostatus of healthy young donors is associated with phenotypic differences on both CD56bright and CD56dim NK cells with an increase of NKp46 and a decrease of NKp30 expression respectively. A reduced expression of DNAM-1 related to ageing and a lower NKp30 expression associated with CMV-seropositivity were observed. The expression of NKp46 and NKp30 was lower in CD57+ NK cells while the expression of DNAM-1 was increased. In vitro NK cell activation by IL-2 increased the expression of NKp46 and NKp30. In summary, both age and CMV-serostatus influence the expression of these cytotoxicity activating receptors that will have functional consequences. In elderly donors is difficult to isolate age from the effect of chronic CMV infection since in our study all elderly donors were CMV-seropositive. The possibility of modulating the expression of these activating receptors by cytokines such as IL-2 may open new opportunities for improving age-associated deterioration of NK cell function.
Smart end-to-end massive iot interoperability, connectivity and security

SEMIoTICS aims to develop a pattern-driven framework, built upon existing IoT platforms, to enable and guarantee secure and dependable actuation and semi-autonomic behaviour in IoT/IIoT applications. Patterns will encode proven dependencies between security, privacy, dependability and interoperability (SPDI) properties of individual smart objects and corresponding properties of orchestrations involving them. The SEMIoTICS framework will support cross-layer intelligent dynamic adaptation, including heterogeneous smart objects, networks and clouds, addressing effective adaptation and autonomic behaviour at field (edge) and infrastructure (backend) layers based on intelligent analysis and learning. To address the complexity and scalability needs within horizontal and vertical domains, SEMIoTICS will develop and integrate smart programmable networking and semantic interoperability mechanisms. The practicality of the above approach will be validated using three diverse usage scenarios in the areas of renewable energy (addressing IIoT), healthcare (focusing on human-centric IoT), and smart sensing (covering both IIoT and IoT); and will be offered through an open API.

SEMIoTICS consortium consists of strong European industry (Siemens, Engineering, STMicroelectronics), innovative SMEs (Sphynx, Iquadrat, BlueSoft) and academic partners (FORTH, Uni Passau, CTTC) covering the whole value chain of IoT, local embedded analytics and their programmable connectivity to the cloud IoT platforms with associated security and privacy. The consortium is striving for a common vision of creating EU’s technological capability of innovative IoT landscape both at European and international level.
Towards outcome-based regulatory compliance in aviation security

Transport Canada is reviewing its Aviation Security regulations in a multi-year modernization process. As part of this review, consideration is given to transitioning regulations where appropriate from a prescriptive style to an outcome-based style. This raises new technical and cultural challenges related to how to measure compliance. This paper reports on a novel approach used to model regulations with the Goal-oriented Requirement Language, augmented with qualitative indicators. These models are used to guide the generation of questions for inspection activities, enable a flexible conversion of real-world data into goal satisfaction levels, and facilitate compliance analysis. A new propagation mechanism enables the evaluation of the compliance level of an organization. This outcome-based approach is expected to help get a more precise understanding of who complies with what, while highlighting opportunities for improving existing regulatory elements.
Development of measurement system for adsorption of long-lived radon decay products on the leaf surface of tobacco plants

Our previous studies indicated the suitability of tobacco plants for biomonitoring remediated depositories, due to their 210Po and 210Pb accumulation ability. The methods and requirements of testing 210Pb uptake by leaf-surface adsorption was investigated and implemented in the construction of a controlled environment. Uranium ore (theoretical Rn concentration 638 Bqm−3) was the main source of radon and progeny. Rn concentrations were measured by RAD7, AlphaGUARD, EQF 3220, RTM 2100 and CR-39 SSNTDs (411–516 Bqm−3). Activity concentrations of the attached and unattached fractions were determined by EQF 3220. The results are indicative of good measurement setup for tracking 210Po(Pb) uptake pathways.
Unterstützung kleiner Unternehmen mit einem Umsatz von über 500 000 BGN zur Bewältigung der wirtschaftlichen Folgen der COVID-19-Pandemie

Unterstützung kleiner Unternehmen mit einem Umsatz von über 500 000 BGN zur Bewältigung der wirtschaftlichen Folgen der COVID-19-Pandemie
CARRIER CONSISTING OF A BIODEGRADABLE MATERIAL FOR A DISC-SHAPED DATA CARRIER

The invention concerns a carrier which consists of a biodegradable material for a disc-shaped data carrier (1), in particular a compact disc, with a locking device (2) which engages detachably through a central hole (3) in the data carrier (1). The locking device (2) comprises an ejector cam (4) disposed between a plurality of snap-action cams (5). The ejector cam (4) and the snap-action cams (5) are formed by a substantially continuous panel.
International human microbiome coordination and support action

Humans are microbial, living in close functional interaction with their skin and mucosal microbiomes. Human-microbes interplay has proven essential for the maintenance of health and well-being and profiling of microbiomes will become an essential feature of the personalized preventive nutrition and medicine of tomorrow. Europe has gained a leading position in microbiome science and yet to fulfill societal expectations, an international consensus will be essential on key aspects. These include i) clinical trial design as well as analytical standards, ii) definitions of healthy microbiomes as a function of numerous factors, accounting for confounders, iii) means of demonstrating causality of altered host-microbes interactions in diseases and iv) processes for the development of clinically relevant, validated biomarkers. The International Human Microbiome Concertation and Support Action (IHMCSA) will tackle all necessary steps to open the perspective of managing nutrition and health of the microbial human. Involving key stakeholders representing the multiplicity of actors concerned, including citizens, IHMCSA will map existing material, delineate necessary steps and pathways for innovation and build consensus on priorities and means for the future of microbiome science and its translation. This will lead to recommendations, validated by an international Strategic Steering Committee as well as academies of medicine of the world, directed to the European Commission, international research programmes, funding and regulatory agencies and decision makers of health systems. To ensure sustainability of the proposed measures, IHMCSA will promote unified repositories for sharing standards, SOPs and data, and contribute to the structuration of the European Microbiome Centers Consortium with a role in gathering world microbiome networks of excellence. With IHMCSA, human-associated microbiomes will be recognized for their true value in contributing to secure the future of mankind.
Determination of the mechanical properties of the skin of pig foetuses with respect to its structure.

Skin is an important barrier protecting the organism against external environmental factors. Determination of its mechanical characteristics as regards its structure has significant scientific and application value. In this work, uniaxial tensile tests were conducted to determine the basic mechanical parameters of skin with respect to its structure. The subject of the study were skin samples taken from domestic pig foetuses. They were excised from different parts of body, in the direction parallel to the long axis of the body. Regardless of the sampling site, the tests revealed no significant differences in the values of the maximum tensile strength (2.08 ± 0.25 MPa) and the conventional Young's modulus (5.87 ± 1.52 MPa). The mechanical and structural tests confirmed that regardless of the sampling region the skin of domestic pig foetuses may constitute a human skin substitute model.
Smart capture phases for proteomics, glycomics and biomarker assays

The overall objective of BioCapture is to develop novel robust assays for proteinaceous biomarkers associated with cancer
and to develop innovative tools for assaying elusive cancer related posttranslational modifications in proteins. This will be
achieved by exploiting robust glycan, peptide and protein binders in the form of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) or plastic antibodies alongside generic enrichment combined with selected reaction monitoring-based mass spectrometry assays. In addition, sequence specific MIPs for multiple proteotypic peptides will be developed for use as capture phases in array format followed by MS or fluorescence based readout as well as a coupling of both detection techniques. The artificial receptors will be developed by various Molecular Imprinting techniques. The research results will lead to technological advances having a major impact on 1) health care since it will profit from methods for earlier, more reliable diagnosis of diseases, 2) drug discovery allowing a faster target or biomarker identification; and 3) biochemistry research laboratories in resulting in improved protein fractionation tools for revealing low abundant post translational modifications. The training of researchers will be performed by a consortium consisting of in total 15 partners whereof 6 polymer/materials research groups, 5 protein/glycan chemistry/analysis groups, 1 separation technology companies, 2 expert groups on platforms for multiplex analysis and one diagnostic company. This forms the basis for a very exciting interdisciplinary training program. Thus 11 early stage researchers (ESRs) working on specific tasks within five work packages will follow a rich training program providing a well-balanced spectrum of scientific, business and entrepreneurial skills.
Spray drying of cefixime nanosuspension to form stabilized and fast dissolving powder

Abstract Size reduction to a nanoscale is a relatively new approach to overcome solubility and bioavailability issues of many drugs such as cefixime (CFX). However, nanoparticles and specifically nanosuspensions are prone to many instabilities like aggregation and sedimentation. One of the main solutions is transforming liquid nanosuspension into dry powder. In this study, cefixime (CFX) nanosuspension was co-spray dried in the presence of different carriers (lactose, mannitol and sorbitol) in 3 ratios of nanoparticles (NPs)/carriers (1, 1.5 and 4 ( w / w )). Physicochemical properties of the obtained powders were assessed in terms of particle size, morphology, thermal behavior, flowability, dissolution profile and aggregation over 6 months. Co-processing of NPs resulted in the formation of partially spherical particles with deeply wrinkled surfaces in the sizes ranging from 3.61 to 12.18 μm. Flowability showed improvement of all microparticles and thermal analysis demonstrated an amorphous state. Results suggest that among carriers, sorbitol based microparticles had the same dissolution profile as the initial NPs (29-fold increase in maximum solubility compared to unprocessed CFX) and could preserve reconstituted NPs' size efficiently after storage. This shows the feasibility of using sorbitol as a promising carrier for spray drying of nanosuspensions which was mostly used for co-processing of solid lipid nanoparticles, proteins and peptides before.
Re-Think all plastic packaging

The ReTAPP project aims at producing wood-based fructose for production of plastic bottles and all plastic packaging. 

The ReTAPP project will generate fructose from wood to commercial process as a replacement for food/starch based fructose. The fructose is further converted to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) – a chemical that can be used to produce a biobased polymer, Polyethylene Furanoate (PEF). Ultimately, ReTAPP will make it possible to make the plastics from wood – a solution not just sustainable and 100% renewable, but also technically and economically superior to the technologies and materials used today. 

In ReTAPP, the consortium will improve the processes through enzymatic solutions to positively impact quality, performance and economics: In the end, the wood-based fructose must be better than food-based fructose for further in chemical conversion in industrial scale. Even more importantly, the overall process, including but not limited to the fructose conversion, is also made economically more sustainable than the petroleum or the food-based solutions. Ultimately, the 100% renewable packaging is more affordable and has better qualities, such as barrier properties, than the most common thermoplastic resin: polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

ReTAPP enables the collaboration between consortium members to address the entire value-chain and achieve objectives none of the companies could achieve alone. European competitive advantage can be found in strength of collaboration between masters of their field, such as MetGen, SEKAB and Avantium.