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Atmospheric dependent, gas sensitive resistors seem to be good candidates for detecting critical air pollution levels. Recently, great progress has been made in the development of various sensor types, but less attention seems to be paid to the integration of sensor elements with different characteristics. The aim of this international project is to develop a smart hybrid gas multi‐sensor module for environmental applications, i.e. by combining classical thick‐ and thin‐film elements with polymer‐film based sensors and also a signal processing ASIC within a single package, which should be useful for all sensor types. The module should enable multi‐sensor operation as well, when connected to an intelligent signal‐processing unit.

This paper aims to empirically assess the impact of gender diversity and board of directors’ size on Islamic banks’ performance.

Hand-collected data set including 27 banks from 2005 to 2013 is used to investigate the effect of the above mechanisms on banks’ performance as measured by return on equities and return on assets. The study uses pooling regression, which requires estimating a single equation on different cross-sectional data. Specifically, ordinary least squares is used to estimate the model.

Obtained results suggest that the presence of women on the board of directors does not have a significant influence on banks’ performance. However, gender diversity in the management department is found to have a negative and significant impact. Besides, the findings prove that the board of directors’ size adversely affects banks’ performance.

Findings of this study will enhance a better understanding of the interrelationships between performance measures and determinants, which can improve estimations of key inputs in the decision-making process. Such deeper understanding should provide policy and decision makers with an important part of the framework needed to provide quality outcomes. In addition, the results of this study provide some beneficial insights on performance determinants to the policymakers, industry leaders and bank managers. Accordingly, those parties could enhance the profitability of Sudanese Islamic banks by improving capitalisation and assets utilisation and by improving banks operation efficiency, leverage and by reducing the size of the board of directors. Industry leaders and bank managers could also benefit from the findings on bank age, which suggest that they can learn from the experience of newly established banks, as the latter are shown to be able to use their resources to generate more profits.

Results suggest that in the future, Islamic banks should focus on how to weaken the negative performance effect of female executives’ participation. Besides, banks should work to decrease labour market discrimination and increase long-term career commitment amongst women.

After reviewing the literature, the research objective was not accounted for by the existing empirical works. Indeed, the role of gender diversity and board of directors’ size on a bank’s performance was not examined in the case of Sudanese Islamic banks.

Au stud bump bonding technology is an effective means to realize heterogeneous integration of commercial chips in the 2.5D electronic packaging. The purpose of this paper is to study the long-term reliability of the Au stud bump treated by four different high temperature storage times (200°C for 0, 100, 200 and 300 h).

The bonding strength and the fracture behavior are investigated by chip shear test. The experiment is further studied by microstructural characterization approaches such as scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive spectrometer and so on.

It is recognized that there were mainly three typical fracture models during the chip shear test among all the Au stud bump samples treated by high temperature storage. For solder bump before aging, the fracture occurred at the interface between the Cu pad and the Au stud bump. As the aging time increased, the fracture mainly occurred inside the Au stud bump at 200°C for 100 and 200 h. When aging time increased to 300 h, it is found that the fracture transferred to the interface between the Au stud bump and the Al Pad.

In addition, the bonding strength also changed with the high temperature storage time increasing. The bonding strength does not change linearly with the high temperature storage time increasing but decreases first and then increases. The investigation shows that the formation of the intermetallic compounds because of the reaction between the Au and Al atoms plays a key role on the bonding strength and fracture behavior variation.

The aim of this work is to assess antiproliferative effects of phenolic extracts from Bacaba (Oenocarpus bacaba) and Jenipapo (Genipa americana) fruits through a comparison of assays.

Bacaba and Jenipapo phenolic extracts in a concentration range from 0 to 1400 μg/mL were tested by four different assays (MTT, MUH, methylene blue, trypan blue) to assess the antiproliferative potential of the phenolic compounds of these fruits.

MTT test can be applied with confidence to assess antiproliferative activity to the fruits extracts here studied. The extract of Bacaba showed higher antiproliferative activity than the one of Jenipapo.

Getting to know biofunctional properties of locally consumed fruits such as Bacaba and Jenipapo could enhance commercial properties to these fruits. This study is the first to one to assess the antiproliferative activity of the Brazilian fruits Bacaba and Jenipapo.

Polymeric materials have gained a wide theoretical interest and practical application in sensor technology. They can be used for very different purposes and may offer unique possibilities. The paper gives a broad summary about the sensor structures and sensing polymer films used in a wide variety of sensors. Finally, the present status and perspectives as well as the advantages of specific polymer based sensors are summarised.

The opportunity for mutual benefit across Europe to develop low‐cost MCM technologies arose from recognition of the scientific skills and design and prototyping capabilities in organic and inorganic circuits in countries of Central Europe. As a result, the leading research institutions and small/medium‐size enterprises of Hungary, Romania and Slovenia together with relevant institutions of the UK and Belgium proposed and received approval for a European Union INCO‐Copernicus project “Cheap multichip models” to establish fast prototyping low cost multichip module (MCM) technology facilities. The project commenced in May 1997.

This chapter argues that the key Eurozone imbalances are not a failure of nation states. At the heart of the integration process is the convergence criteria – limits on government deficit, debt, interest rate, inflation, etc. While these were intended to eliminate asymmetries across countries, the conception of convergence was too narrow since the euro designers completely ignored the elephant in the room – that countries were on different technological frontiers. I show that this difference is an important determinant of the key macroeconomic imbalances across the Eurozone. It follows that the primary convergence criterion should be limits on non-price competitive gaps across countries. The chapter overturns the simplistic view of price competitiveness and illustrate that the regulating forces of competition originate from productive structures.

This article sets out to answer two interrelated questions: is it advisable for developing countries to use public procurement efforts for development, and should more developing countries join the World Trade Organization (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)? We survey key arguments for and against joining the GPA, and argue that government procurement should not be seen only as an indirect support measure for development, but also as a direct vehicle for promoting innovation and industries and, thus, growth and development. We also show that using public procurement for development assumes high levels of policy capacity, which most developing countries lack. In addition, we show how the GPA as well as other WTO agreements make it complicated for the developing countries to benefit from public procurement for innovation. The article suggests that the developing countries could apply a mix of direct and indirect (so-called soft) public-procurement-for-innovation measures. In order to do this, developing countries need to develop the policy capacity to take advantage of the complex and multi-layered industrial policy space still available under WTO rules.

During the 1950‐1979 period, the governments of Central America often pursued “cheap‐food” policies. A general‐equilibrium model is employed to show how these policies contributed to the resource‐allocation patterns observed in the region during this period. The model also shows how cheap‐food policies contributed to the observed shift in the functional distribution of income from wages to rents and profits. An empirical test verifies the contribution of bean‐pricing policy to the shift in land resources away from food crops in Costa Rica, and the causes behind the relaxation of cheap‐food policies in the 1980s are discussed.

This paper attempts to trace and describe the role played by the government sector – the state – in promoting economic growth in Western societies since the Renaissance. One important conclusion is that the antagonism between state and market, which has characterised the twentieth century, is a relatively new phenomenon. Since the Renaissance one very important task of the state has been to create well‐functioning markets by providing a legal framework, standards, credit, physical infrastructure and – if necessary – to function temporarily as an entrepreneur of last resort. Early economists were acutely aware that national markets did not occur spontaneously, and they used “modern” ideas like synergies, increasing returns, and innovation theory when arguing for the right kind of government policy. In fact, mercantilist economics saw it as a main task to extend the synergetic economic effects observed within cities to the territory of a nation‐state. The paper argues that the classical Anglo‐Saxon tradition in economics – fundamentally focused on barter and distribution, rather than on production and knowledge – systematically fails to grasp these wider issues in economic development, and it brings in and discusses the role played by the state in alternative traditions of non‐equilibrium economics.