Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Solid Rocket Motor for Experimental Sounding Rockets

Experimental Sounding rockets are major contributors for research in the field of aerospace engineering. However, experimental sounding rockets are rarely used by institutes in India for student research projects. A major factor that forestalls the use of sounding rockets in student research projects is the unavailability of rocket motors which involves complex machining and explosive propellants, this problem was encountered by us while developing sounding rocket for research and learning purpose. The paper is focused on design and construction of a solid rocket motor that can be utilised as the main propulsion unit in experimental sounding rockets by researchers. Initially, basic designs were evaluated and the different concepts of propellant configuration were observed. The availability, ease of manufacturing and casting of propellants was a major factor in determining the suitable propellant. Based on these observations the theoretical values of the combustion chamber parameters were obtained and the materials were selected accordingly. A basic small scale experimental design was fabricated and tested extensively. Integrating all the testing and theoretical data the final motor was fabricated and tested for expected outputs. The paper explains all the factors involved in construction of a rocket motor of desired specific impulse and will act as a valuable asset for students engaged in experimental rocketry. The motor constructed will be utilized in a sounding rocket intended for atmospheric and aerodynamic research for student learning. The motor can be also utilized as a propulsion unit in research fields other than aerospace and will be an affordable propulsion unit for research purposes.
Comments on “Carbon Valuation in UK Policy Appraisal: A Revised Approach”

1. I support the general approach taken to the cost of carbon; the arguments for primarily reliance on marginal abatement costs are persuasive, and stated well in the draft. Estimates of the social cost of carbon are sufficiently problematical and incomplete that they should play little or no role in policy appraisal. The determination of overall targets for greenhouse gas reduction should be, and often is in practice, based on a precautionary response to catastrophic worst-case risks, not calculations of the social cost of carbon.
The Effect of Video Games on Iranian EFL Learners' Vocabulary Learning

This study explored the effect of video games as a new tool for Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) vocabulary learning. To conduct the study, 40 intermediate EFL learners, both male and female, were chosen through a TOEFL proficiency test. The participants were divided into two groups (10 males and 10 females in each): a control group and an experimental group. While the control group studied vocabulary via traditional classes, the experimental group experienced vocabulary learning (the same words) via a video game called Runaway: A Road Adventure. The results of the study revealed that learning vocabulary via video games is beneficial, and that males are more inclined toward video-game learning than females.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 7-15-2012 Assessing Website Performance In The Line Of The Is Impact Model

This research proposal presents a novel study that aims to contribute to the understanding of factors that impact on the performance of Australian university business school websites. The proposed study addresses the current limitations of website performance measurement and incorporates a multilevel perspective that accounts for user and organisational perspectives on website performance. This study adopts the IS-Impact model, developed by Gable et al. (2008) as its primary theoretical foundation and applies Shannon & Weaver’s (1949) Communication Theory to develop a conceptual model of website performance as a tool for understanding multilevel website usage as a measure of website performance. The study employs a two-phase quantitative survey research method incorporating an exploratory and confirmatory phase. The exploratory phase aims to test the completeness and the applicability of the IS-Impact model’s dimensions and measures in the university website context. The confirmatory phase aims to further validate the model and instrument derived from the exploratory phase, as well as to reconfirm the model and measures using quantitative data.
Clinical Interventions in Aging Dovepress

effects of annatto-derived tocotrienol supplementation on osteoporosis induced by testosterone deficiency in rats Background: Previous animal models have demonstrated that tocotrienol is a potential treatment for postmenopausal osteoporosis. This study evaluated the antiosteoporotic effects of annatto-derived tocotrienol (AnTT) using a testosterone-deficient osteoporotic rat model. and testosterone groups. The baseline group was euthanized without undergoing any surgical treatment or intervention. The remaining groups underwent orchidectomy, with the exception of the sham group. AnTT 60 mg/kg/day was given orally to the AnTT group, while the testos-terone group received testosterone enanthate 7 mg/kg per week intramuscularly for 8 weeks. Structural changes in trabecular bone at the proximal tibia were examined using microcomputed tomography. Structural and dynamic changes at the distal femur were examined using histo-morphometric methods. Serum osteocalcin and C-terminal of type 1 collagen crosslinks were measured. Bone-related gene expression in the distal femur was examined. Results: There were significant degenerative changes in structural indices in the orchidectomized group (P0.05), but no significant changes in dynamic indices, bone remodeling markers, or gene expression (P0.05) when compared with the sham group. The AnTT group showed significant improvement in structural indices at the femur (P0.05) and significantly increased expression of bone formation genes (P0.05). Testosterone was more effective than AnTT in preventing degeneration of bone structural indices in the femur and tibia (P0.05). Conclusion: AnTT supplementation improves bone health in testosterone-deficient rats by enhancing bone formation. Its potential should be evaluated further by varying the dosage and treatment duration.
Pancultural Aspects of the Human Conceptual Organization of Emotions

This study investigated whether certain elementary properties of the human conceptual system for categorizing emotions are pancultural or are specific to particular languages and cultures. From similarity judgments provided by native speakers, multidimensional scalings of emotion-related words in Gujarati, Croatian, Japanese, Chinese, and English provided evidence of several pancultural properties. In all five languages, emotion-related words ,fell in roughly a circular order in a space definable by two dimensions: pleasure-displeasure and arousal-sleep. Similar results were obtained from unilingual and bilingual subjects.
Organizational factors and process capabilities in a KM strategy: toward a unified theory

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of knowledge management (KM) enablers on KM activities in the context of Malaysian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The effects of organizational culture, transformational leadership, organizational structure, and technology utilization as infrastructural KM enablers are examined on KM activities as knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, application, and protection. Design/methodology/approach A total of 227 responses from SMEs’ top management are used to assess the measurement and structural models applying partial least squares-structural equation modeling. Findings The results show that technology utilization and organizational structure are two main factors in KM activities (all structural relationships are supported). Surprisingly, organizational culture is only associated with knowledge conversion and protection and the findings indicate no relationships between organizational culture and knowledge acquisition and application. The results also indicate a positive relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge acquisition and the hypotheses on the association between transformational leadership and knowledge conversion, application, and protection are rejected. Practical implications The results of importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) imply that technology utilization has the highest importance on knowledge acquisition, conversion, and protection while organizational structure has the highest importance on knowledge application. The results of IPMA also show that organizational culture has the highest performance on all KM activities. Originality/value This study is amongst the few that examines the structural relationships between organizational factors and KM activities in a SME context.
Analysis of HMM-Based Lombard Speech Synthesis

Humans modify their voice in interfering noise in order to maintain the intelligibility of their speech – this is called the Lombard effect. This ability, however, has not been extensively modeled in speech synthesis. Here we compare several methods of synthesizing speech in noise using a physiologically based statistical speech synthesis system (GlottHMM). The results show that in a realistic street noise situation the synthetic Lombard speech is judged by listeners both as appropriate for the situation and as intelligible as natural Lombard speech. Of the different types of models, one using adaptation and extrapolation performed the best.
Early diagnosis of dengue disease using fuzzy inference system

Fuzzy expert system is a knowledge-based system, which is considered as one of the most common form of artificial intelligence in medicine(AIM) system with medical knowledge of a particularly defined task, and able to reach a proper conclusion by using the specific data from individual patient. In fuzzy inference system, a set of rules are used for representing the knowledge or data of a particular problem. Dengue fever, caused by the dengue virus, a mosquito-borne human viral pathogen is an infectious tropical disease. In a small proportion of cases Dengue disease is considered as one of the life threatening disease and delay of the diagnosis may lead to increase the risk level of the disease. Therefore, it is very important to detect the dengue disease at early stage. Thus this work was aimed to design an expert system for the early diagnosis of dengue disease using Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), a powerful tool for dealing with imprecision and uncertainty. The designed FIS can be used for early diagnosis of dengue disease of a patient by using his/her physical symptoms and medical test reports as input variables and converting these input variables into fuzzy membership functions.
VICTOR: Vinflunine in advanced metastatic transitional cell carcinoma of the urothelium: A retrospective analysis of the use of vinflunine in multi-centre real life setting as second line chemotherapy through Free of Charge Programme for patients in the UK and Ireland

There is no standard of care in the UK or Ireland for second-line chemotherapy for patients with advanced transitional cell carcinoma (TCCU). Vinflunine is approved for TCCU patients who have failed a platinum-based regimen, and is standard of care in Europe but is not routinely available in the UK. Data were collected retrospectively on patients who received vinfluine as a second-line treatment. The aims were to document the toxicity and efficacy in a real life setting. Data were collected on 49 patients from 9 sites across the UK and Ireland [median age, 64 (IQR, 57–70) years, 33 males]. All patients had advanced metastatic TCCU. Thirteen patients had bone or liver metastases, 4 patients had PS 2 and 11 patients had HB <10. Median vinflunine administration was 3.5 cycles (range 1–18). Most common grade 3–4 toxicities were constipation (4 patients) and fatigue (3 patients). Partial response rate was 29% (14 PR, 11 SD, 19 PD, 4 NE, 1 not available). Median OS was 9.1 (6.0, 12.7) months. Results are consistent with real life data from Europe. Toxicity is further reduced with prophylactic laxative and oral antibiotics. Vinflunine is an efficient and tolerable second line treatment in advanced TCCU.
Towards a Universal Turnover Model for the IT Work Force – A Replication Study

The IT industry is characterized by high turnover. In this study we tested a turnover model based on Igbaria (1992) and Moore (2002) using two datasets from the USA and Austria. The American data consist of 624 IT professionals and managers. The Austrian dataset consists of 677 production workers and professionals from an IT company. The results show that the model fits both datasets. The best fit was found for older employees and highly educated employees.
Cognitive Responses to Stress, Depression, and Anxiety and Their Relationship to ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) Symptoms

This research sought to answer the question “To what extent do symptoms related to depression, anxiety and stress interfere with the valid measurement of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? ” More specifically, “To what extent do these factors affect the Conner‟s Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS; Conners, Erdhardt, & Sparrow, 1999) and the BADDS (Brown Attention Deficit Disorder Scale; T. E. Brown, 1996), popular measures of ADHD status? ” I examined the number of people in “higher stress situations” scoring above accepted critical values on the subscales of the CAARS and on the BADDS in comparison to the general population. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between the level of depression, anxiety, stress, and ADHD symptomatology and to determine the amount of variance of CAARS and BADDS scores accounted for by each of these other psychological variables. Three separate groups of people participated in this study: students from a Psychology 100 subject pool; students going to health or counselling services; and a group of nurses employed in a local hospital. Participants completed questionnaires regarding selfreported levels of depression, anxiety, stress, life experiences, role stress, coping skills, and ADHD symptoms. Self-reported levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and other factors were positively correlated with scores on the measures of ADHD symptomatology. People who reported more anxiety, more depression, and/or more stress were more likely to score above critical values on the ADHD measures. Running head: RELATIONSHIP OF DASS TO ADHD SYMPTOMS iii
A better understanding of the role and underlying mechanism of stimulating mental imagery in improving the creativity of “ordinary” users

Stimulating the creative abilities of users involved in co-creation practices is crucial for companies and co-creation platforms. These “ordinary” users, sought after to provide ideas for new products and/or services, are often not particularly creative. Stimulating their creative capacity is, therefore, critical. From this perspective, mental imagery, whose role in the creative process has often been stressed in psychology, appears to play a key role. The objective of this research is to examine whether, by increasing the activity of mental imagery, stimulating mental imagery can increase participants’ creativity. Two experiments confirm the mediating role of mental imagery and underline the positive effects of such stimulation on the creativity of the ideas generated.
Bad Corporate Governance and Powerful CEOs in Banks : Poor Performance , Excessive Risk-taking , and a Misuse of Incentive-based Compensation *

A misuse of incentive-based compensation and poor corporate governance in the financial sector are mentioned as two of the main competing causes of the financial crisis. This paper examines these two causes looking at the Danish banking sector where nearly a fifth of all listed banks have disappeared during the financial crisis – several of these banks being relatively large. The results show that banks with incentive-based compensation to the CEO have taken significantly more value-destroying risk and therefore performed significantly worse than other banks. However, it is shown that this is not caused by the incentive-based compensation but is instead related to more fundamental corporate governance problems in a majority of the banks. The main problem is a lack of shareholder monitoring and a weak disciplinary effect of the market for corporate control, due to dispersed ownership and restrictions on shareholder rights in the form of voting and ownership ceilings etc. In banks without shareholder monitoring, the CEO becomes very powerful – a power that depending on the type of the CEO has been used in different ways. It turns out that banks where the CEO has used this power to increase his own compensation considerably by introducing incentive-based compensation are also the banks that have taken significantly more risk and performed significantly worse than other banks. Furthermore, the excessive risk-taking was already taking place before the introduction of incentive-based compensation. Thereby, politicians and other regulators should pay much more attention to solving the fundamental corporate governance problems in banks rather than just regulating executive compensation.
Towards an Understanding of Interest Development: Challenges and Opportunities for Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools

Many studies have examined the psychology of interest and interest development, with these studies spanning various fields such as educational psychology, personality development, and vocational guidance. However, the pragmatic benefit of being able to accurately measure interests has often overshadowed the broader potential benefits of research into interest development. Drawing from research across different fields, this article summarises the historical evolution of research into interest development, culminating with the four-phase model of interest development as advanced by Hidi and Renninger (2006). It proceeds to examine the impact of this research on the work of psychologists and counsellors in schools. Finally, this article concludes by problematising the current dominance of assessment services and the use of interest inventories, while exploring potential opportunities to better support student engagement through a broader understanding of interest development.
Race and Ethnicity, Obesity, Metabolic Health, and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Postmenopausal Women

Background It is unclear whether obesity unaccompanied by metabolic abnormalities is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk across racial and ethnic subgroups. Methods and Results We identified 14 364 postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative who had data on fasting serum lipids and serum glucose and no history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes at baseline. We categorized women by body mass index (in kg/m2) as normal weight (body mass index 18.5 to <25), overweight (body mass index 25 to <30), or obese (body mass index ≥30) and by metabolic health, defined first as the metabolic syndrome (metabolically unhealthy: ≥3 metabolic abnormalities) and second as the number of metabolic abnormalities. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to assess associations between baseline characteristics and cardiovascular risk. Over 13 years of follow-up, 1101 women had a first cardiovascular disease event (coronary heart disease or ischemic stroke). Among black women without metabolic syndrome, overweight women had higher adjusted cardiovascular risk than normal weight women (hazard ratio [HR] 1.49), whereas among white women without metabolic syndrome, overweight women had similar risk to normal weight women (HR 0.92, interaction P=0.05). Obese black women without metabolic syndrome had higher adjusted risk (HR 1.95) than obese white women (HR 1.07; interaction P=0.02). Among women with only 2 metabolic abnormalities, cardiovascular risk was increased in black women who were overweight (HR 1.77) or obese (HR 2.17) but not in white women who were overweight (HR 0.98) or obese (HR 1.06). Overweight and obese women with ≤1 metabolic abnormality did not have increased cardiovascular risk, regardless of race or ethnicity. Conclusions Metabolic abnormalities appeared to convey more cardiovascular risk among black women.
Semantic Nearest Neighbor Search in OWL Ontologies

A nearest neighbor search procedure is presented, for retrieving resources in knowledge bases expressed in OWL. The procedure exploits a semidistance for annotated resources, that is based on a number of dimensions corresponding to a committee of features represented by OWL concept descriptions. The procedure can retrieve resources belonging to query concepts expressed in OWL, by analogy with other training instances, on the grounds of the classification of the nearest ones w.r. t. the dissimilarity measure. Besides, it may also be able to suggest new assertions that are not logically entailed by the knowledge base due to open world semantics. In the experimentation, where we compare the performance of the procedure to running a reasoner, we show that it can be quite accurate and augment the scope of its applicability, improving w.r. t. previous prototypes that adopted other semantic measures.
Alcohol Abuse as a Rite of Passage: The Effect of Beliefs about Alcohol and the College Experience on Undergraduates' Drinking Behaviors

Qualitative studies of alcohol's ritual influences indicate that college undergraduates who drink heavily tend to view alcohol use as integral to the student role and feel entitled to drink irresponsibly. Our analyses, based on a standardized measure of these beliefs administered to approximately 300 students, confirmed these findings. Among our sample, beliefs about alcohol and the college experience had an effect on levels of alcohol consumption similar in magnitude to that of other variables commonly associated with a risk for heavy drinking. Moreover, the alcohol beliefs index moderated the effects of three risk factors—gender, high school drinking, and friends' use of alcohol—on respondents' drinking behaviors. These findings are discussed within the context of the anthropological literature on liminality and rites of passage and with regard to strategies for intervention that address the structural roots of the widespread abuse of alcohol on college campuses.
Acoustic Emission and Modal Frequency Variation in Concrete Specimens under Four-Point Bending

The Acoustic Emission (AE) and Dynamic Identification (DI) techniques were applied simultaneously, in an original way, to examine the stress dependent damage progress in pre-notched concrete beams tested in four-point bending. The damage mechanisms were characterized by analyzing the AE signals registered during the tests, conducted by increasing the specimen’s vertical deflection. In particular, the dominant fracture mode was identified, and correlations between dissipated and emitted energies were investigated. Moreover, variations in the natural bending frequencies, produced by the crack advancement under loading, were detected and put in relation with the cumulated AE energy. Two different types of piezoelectric (PZT) sensors, operating in well distinct frequency ranges, were used to measure AE and modal signals. This study may be of interest with an outlook on possible correlations between a multi-parameter structural monitoring and the solution of inverse problems by numerical models.