Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QA/QC in Transport Infrastructures: Issues and Perspectives

Transport infrastructures (road and highway networks, railways, terminal facilities, airports, mass transit systems, bicycle paths and pedestrian walkways, etc.) have significant impacts on the development of regional and national economies. However, the effectiveness of these impacts over the time has to be established based on the actual quality of all the pertaining components of the infrastructure asset (pavement, safety barriers, signals, illumination, embankment, drainage, etc.). Quality can be interpreted as the degree of excellence of a product or service, or as the degree to which a product or service satisfies the needs of a specific customer or, finally, as the degree to which a product or service conforms with a given requirement. In more detail, quality assurance (QA) refers to all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that a product or facility will perform satisfactorily in service. At the same time, quality control (QC), also called process control, relates to those QA actions and considerations necessary to assess and adjust production and construction processes so as to control the level of quality being produced in the end product (Fig.1). Note that QA (which includes QC) is an infrastructure (e.g. highway) agency responsibility and involves all the process (planning, design, plan and specifications, construction, etc.), while QC is a producer–contractor responsibility which mainly affects construction. Furthermore, QC is not simply QA in construction, due to the fact that both independent assurance and acceptance procedures refer to QA in construction but they are NOT a part of QC. The entire QA/QC process includes: i) setting up the initial data collection or experimentation to determine typical parameters of current construction; ii) designing the acceptance plan itself, including selecting quality characteristics (and corresponding specification limits), statistical quality measure (and corresponding quality levels), buyer’s and seller’s risks, lot size, number of samples (sample size), specification and/or acceptance limits, and payment–adjustment provisions. As is well known (Burati et al, 2003), traditionally, highway specifications spelled out in detail the work that was to be done by the contractor under the form of materials and methods specifications (also called method specifications, recipe specifications, or prescriptive specifications). In this case, specifications direct the contractor to use specified materials in definite proportions and specific types of equipment and methods to place the material. On the contrary, end result specifications require the contractor to take the entire responsibility for supplying a product or an item of construction.
Molecular gas in NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA) - XI. A complete gravity torque map of NGC 4579: new clues to bar evolution

In this paper we create a complete gravity torque map of the disk of the LINER/Seyfert 1.9 galaxy NGC 4579. We quantify the efficiency of angular momentum transport and search for signatures of secular evolution in the fueling process from r ∼ 15 kpc down to the inner r ∼ 50 pc around the active galactic nucleus (AGN). We use both the 1− 0a nd 2−1 line maps of 12 CO obtained with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI) as part of the NUclei of Galaxies-(NUGA)-project. The CO(1−0) and CO(2−1) PdBI maps at 2.0 �� × 1.3 �� and 1.0 �� × 0.6 �� resolution, respectively, include the short spacing correction provided by IRAM-30 m data. We derive the stellar potential from an NIR (K band) wide field image of the galaxy. The K-band image, which reveals a large-scale stellar bar and a weak nuclear oval, together with a high-resolution Hi map of NGC 4579 obtained with the Very Large Array (VLA), allow us to extend the gravity torque analysis to the outer r ≥ 2 kpc disk. The bulk of the gas response traced by the new CO PdBI+30 m maps of NGC 4579 presented here follows the expected gas flow pattern induced by the bar potential in the presence of two inner Lindblad resonances (ILR) at r ∼ 500 pc and r ∼ 1.3 kpc. The morphology of the outer disk traced by Hi suggests that the neutral gas is currently piling up in a pseudo-ring formed by two winding spiral arms that are morphologically decoupled from the bar structure. The pseudo-ring is located inside the bar corotation (rCR ∼ 6 kpc) and close to the predicted position of the ultra harmonic resonance (UHR) (rUHR ∼ 3.8 kpc). The derived gravity torque budget in NGC 4579 shows that inward gas flow is occurring on different spatial scales in the disk. In the outer disk, the decoupling of the spiral allows the gas to efficiently populate the UHR region, and thus produce net gas inflow on intermediate scales. The corotation barrier seems to be overcome by secular evolution processes. The gas in the inner disk (r ≤ 2 kpc) is efficiently funneled by gravity torques down to r ∼ 300 pc. Closer to the AGN (r < 200 pc), gas feels negative torques due to the combined action of the large-scale bar and the inner oval. The two m = 2 modes act in concert to produce net gas inflow down to r ∼ 50 pc, providing clear smoking gun evidence of inward gas transport on short dynamical timescales (∼1−3 rotation periods).
Hierarchical visual mapping with omnidirectional images

A topological mapping framework designed for omnidirectional images is presented. Omnidirectional images acquired by the robot are organized as places which are represented as nodes in the topological graph/map. Places are regions in the environment over which the global scene appearance of all acquired images is consistent. A hierarchical loop closure algorithm is proposed which quickly sifts through the places to retrieve the most similar places and another level of thorough similarity analysis is performed over the images belonging to the retrieved places. An Image similarity metric based on spatial shift of local image features across omnidirectional/panoramic image pairs is proposed. Newly proposed VLAD (Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors) descriptors have been used for loop closure at place and image levels. Accuracy and efficiency of our system are corroborated with experimental results on three publicly available datasets. It is shown that our approach achieves good loop closure recall rates even without using epi-polar geometry verification common among many other approaches.
Describing Textures in the Wild Mircea Cimpoi

Patterns and textures are key characteristics of many natural objects: a shirt can be striped, the wings of a butterfly can be veined, and the skin of an animal can be scaly. Aiming at supporting this dimension in image understanding, we address the problem of describing textures with semantic attributes. We identify a vocabulary of forty-seven texture terms and use them to describe a large dataset of patterns collected “in the wild”. The resulting Describable Textures Dataset (DTD) is a basis to seek the best representation for recognizing describable texture attributes in images. We port from object recognition to texture recognition the Improved Fisher Vector (IFV) and Deep Convolutionalnetwork Activation Features (DeCAF), and show that surprisingly, they both outperform specialized texture descriptors not only on our problem, but also in established material recognition datasets. We also show that our describable attributes are excellent texture descriptors, transferring between datasets and tasks; in particular, combined with IFV and DeCAF, they significantly outperform the state-of-theart by more than 10% on both FMD and KTH-TIPS-2b benchmarks. We also demonstrate that they produce intuitive descriptions of materials and Internet images.
Numerical study of high speed jets in crossflow

Large-eddy simulation (LES) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) are used to study an underexpanded sonic jet injected into a supersonic crossflow and an overexpanded supersonic jet injected into a subsonic crossflow, where the flow conditions are based on the experiments of Santiago & Dutton (J. Propul. Power, vol. 13 (2), 1997, pp. 264–273) and Beresh et al. (AIAA J., vol. 43, 2005a, pp. 379–389), respectively. The simulations successfully reproduce experimentally observed shock systems and vortical structures. The time averaged flow fields are compared to the experimental results, and good agreement is observed. The behaviour of the flow is discussed, and the similarities and differences between the two regimes are studied. The trajectory of the transverse jet is investigated. A modification to Schetz et al.’s theory is proposed (Schetz & Billig, J. Spacecr. Rockets, vol. 3, 1996, pp. 1658–1665), which yields good prediction of the jet trajectories in the current simulations in the near field. Point spectra taken at various locations in the flowfield indicate a global oscillation for the sonic jet flow, wherein different regions in the flow oscillate with a frequency of $St=fD/u_{\infty }=0.3$ . For supersonic jet flow, no such global frequency is observed. Dynamic mode decomposition of the three-dimensional pressure field obtained from LES is performed and shows the same behaviour. The DMD results indicate that the $St=0.3$ mode is dominant between the upstream barrel shock and the bow shock for the sonic jet, while the roll up of the upstream shear layer is dominant for the supersonic jet.
Analyzing Developer Sentiment in Commit Logs

The paper presents an analysis of developer commit logs for GitHub projects. In particular, developer sentiment in commits is analyzed across 28,466 projects within a seven year time frame. We use the Boa infrastructure’s online query system to generate commit logs as well as files that were changed during the commit. We analyze the commits in three categories: large, medium, and small based on the number of commits using a sentiment analysis tool. In addition, we also group the data based on the day of week the commit was made and map the sentiment to the file change history to determine if there was any correlation. Although a majority of the sentiment was neutral, the negative sentiment was about 10% more than the positive sentiment overall. Tuesdays seem to have the most negative sentiment overall. In addition, we do find a strong correlation between the number of files changed and the sentiment expressed by the commits the files were part of. Future work and implications of these results are discussed.
The chicken cornea as a model of wound healing and neuronal re-innervation

Purpose The cornea is the major refractive component of the eye and serves as a barrier to the external environment. Understanding how the cornea responds to injury is important to developing therapies to treat vision disorders that affect the integrity and refractive properties of the cornea. Thus, investigation of the wound healing responses of the cornea to injury in a cost-effective animal model is a valuable tool for research. This study characterizes the wound healing responses in the corneas of White Leghorn chicken. Methods Linear corneal wounds were induced in post-natal day 7 (P7) chicks and cellular proliferation, apoptosis and regulation of structural proteins were assessed using immunohistochemical techniques. We describe the time course of increased expression of different scar-related markers, including vimentin, vinculin, perlecan and smooth muscle actin. Results We find evidence for acute necrotic cell death in the corneal region immediately surrounding cite of incision, whereas we failed to find evidence of delayed cell death or apoptosis. We find that the neuronal re-innervation of SV2-positive axon terminals within the corneal stroma and epithelium occurs very quickly after the initial scarring insult. We describe an accumulation of cells within the stroma immediately underlying the scar, which results, at least in part, from the local proliferation of keratocytes. Further, we provide evidence for scar-induced accumulations of CD45-positive monocytes in injured corneas. Conclusions We conclude that the chick cornea is an excellent model system in which to study wound healing, formation of scar tissue, and neuronal re-innervation of sensory endings.
Circular Polarization in Pulsar Integrated Profiles: Updates

We update the systematic studies of circular polarization in integrated pulse profiles by Han et al. Data of circular polarization profiles are compiled. Sense reversals can occur in core or cone components, or near the intersection between components. The correlation between the sense of circular polarization and the sense of position angle variation for conal-double pulsars is confirmed with a much large database. Circular polarization of some pulsars has clear changes with frequency. Circular polarization of millisecond pulsars is marginally different from that of normal pulsars.
Participation of Women in Aquaculture in Three Coastal Districts of Bangladesh: Approaches Toward Sustainable Livelihood

Women's contribution to small-scale aquaculture is often unrecognized and the real benefits from their involvement in activity are not objectively assessed. The present study focused on the women's participation in Danish International Development Assistance (DANIDA) assisted small scale aquaculture projects in three coastal Districts of Bangladesh. The findings reveal that in most projects women's role is significant. Women have more knowledge in terms of the management of the production for example, scheduling, harvesting, feeding frequency, removal of unused feeds, etc. Women also have been found directly involved in preparation of cage and maintenance, identification of male and female prawn, procuring of good quality seed and stocking of fish. Women in some programs are also found to be selling fish on their own. Most of the women sell by the farm-gate, local bazaar and to the middlemen. The most important positive aspect of change is that now women participants' family income has increased which is mostly used for food, health and education. Women's participation in project, according to the findings, ensures certain extent of social and economic empowerment in the rural societies. The present fisheries project fails to take into account how the women participants are going to continue when projects are withdrawn. Women would like to be engaged in aquaculture after the project support is withdrawn though there is not much scope for savings which could be used as investment to continue their involvement. However, they expressed that they would like to sustain through NGO loan, local moneylender and petty personal savings.
School Climate : Learning Environment as a Predictor of Student ’ s Academic Achievement

The main objective of this study was to determine the effect of learning environment on students` academic achievement at secondary school level. The study was causal comparative using correlation. The Study which, was conducted on a sample of 1473 secondary schools students in the selected from the public schools of five selected districts of Punjab province. Data was collected through Student School Climate Questionnaire (SCSQ) that contained 18 items at 5-point Likert scale. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were ensured through the experts’ opinions and pilot testing. The overall reliability of the questionnaire was 0.77. Positive correlation (r =.725) was found between the Learning Environment and Students academic achievement. The factors of Learning Environment i.e. group procedures; teacher behavior and curriculum have a positive correlation with the academic achievement of the students. The study further showed that Learning Environment has positive effect on students’ academic achievement which measured through regression analysis i.e. Academic Achievements = -13.726+76.786(Learning Environment). The findings of this study suggest that students achieve high scores in schools with healthy learning environment.
Learning Opinionated Patterns for Contextual Opinion Detection

This paper tackles the problem of polar vocabulary ambiguity. While some opinionated words keep their polarity in any context and/or across any domain (except for the ironic style that goes beyond the present article), some other have an ambiguous polarity which is highly dependent of the context or the domain: in this case, the opinion is generally carried by complex expressions (“patterns”) rather than single words. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an original hybrid method, based on syntactic information extraction and clustering techniques, to learn automatically such patterns and integrate them into an opinion detection system.
Concrete and Abstract Cost Semantics for Spreadsheets

We give a simple but precise operational semantics for the evaluation of extended spreadsheet formulas, with array formulas, sheet-defined functions and closures, as found in the Funcalc spreadsheet platform [1]. We build on this to give a simple cost semantics, inspired by [2], for evaluation of a spreadsheet formula and for full and minimal recalculation of a spreadsheet. Following the ideas presented by Schmidt [3] we provide a big-step trace-based abstract interpretation for the cost semantics. We then present a set of functions which can be used to calculate the cost of executing an evaluation of a spreadsheet expression following Gomez et al. [4], inspired by Rosendahl [5]. These functions are related to the above operational semantics, cost semantics and abstract interpretation. The above semantic presentations all form the formal foundations for various cost calculations implemented in the Funcalc spreadsheet platform. These calculations are evaluated experimentally.
Does Board Ethnic Diversity Impact Board Monitoring Outcomes?

This study investigates whether board ethnic diversity is associated with stronger board monitoring outcomes. We explore a range of outcomes; CEO compensation, accounting misstatements, CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, and acquisition performance, but find no evidence to support this. We also find no evidence that board ethnic diversity improves overall firm performance, even for those firms with higher agency problems. Our results are robust across different methodologies and have important practical implications by informing the current public policy debate on board ethnic diversity.
Monetary Policy, Ination and Unemployment1

To what extent did deviations from the Taylor rule between 2002 and 2006 help to promote price stability and maximum sustainable employment? To address that question, this paper estimates a New Keynesian model with unemployment and performs a counterfactual experiment where monetary policy strictly follows a Taylor rule over the period 2002:Q1 2006:Q4. The paper nds that such a policy would have generated a sizeable increase in unemployment and resulted in an undesirably low rate of ination. Around mid-2004, when the counterfactual deviates the most from the actual series, the model indicates that the probability of an unemployment rate greater than 8 percent would have been as high as 80 percent, while the probability of an ination rate above 1 percent would have been close to zero. 1The Reserve Bank of New Zealands discussion paper is externally refereed. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reect the views of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. I am especially grateful to Ulf Söderström for very helpful comments. I would like to thank Fabio Canova, Iris Claus, Rebecca Craigie, Manu De Veirman, Francesco Furlanetto, Bill Gavin, Pedro Gomis, Alfred Guender, Leni Hunter, Peter Ireland, Punnoose Jacob, Günes Kamber, Özer Karagedikli, Jonathan Kearns, Leo Krippner, Kirdan Lees, Thomas Lubik, Anella Munro, Bruce Preston, Pierre-Daniel Sarte, Christie Smith, Chris Waller and Raf Wouters for very useful feedback. I am grateful to seminar and conference participants at SWIM 2010, AMW 2010, SED Montreal 2010, WMD Sydney 2010, ACQM Adelaide 2010, the University of Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington. 2Address: Economics Department, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, 2 The Terrace, PO Box 2498, Wellington, New Zealand. email address: nicolas.groshenny@rbnz.govt. nz. ISSN 11777567 c Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Andrés owing to range expansion Surfing in tortoises ? Empirical signs of genetic structuring

Supplementary data ml http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/suppl/2013/03/28/rsbl.2012. 1091.DC1. ht "Data Supplement" References http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/9/3/20121091.full. html#ref-list-1 This article cites 14 articles, 4 of which can be accessed free Subject collections (74 articles) molecular biology  (629 articles) evolution  (616 articles) ecology  Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections
Influence of plant growth regulators and pinching on plant growth attributes and quality attributes of African marigold ( Tagetes erecta L . )

The field experiment was conducted to study the effect of plant growth regulators and pinching for increasing growth and quality of African marigold. An experiment was laid out in Factorial Randamized Block Design along with 14 treatments and replicated thrice. Two F 1 hybrids namely V 1 Gold Benz tall and V 2 Maxima yellow were taken for the study comprising GA 3 @ 50, 100 and 150ppm, NAA @ 50, 100 and 150ppm, MH @ 250, 500 and 750ppm, Alar @ 200, 400 and 600ppm and pinching with untreated control. Among the varieties V 1 recorded the tallest plants (78.59cm), maximum number of leaves and leaf area (324.62 and 90.91cm), highest flower diameter, stalk length, single flower weight and flower volume (8.31cm, 8.11cm, 11.22g and 113.96cc), whereas V 2 produced the shortest plants (35.58cm), minimum number of leaves and leaf area (282.97 and 85.00 cm), flower diameter, stalk length, single flower weight and flower volume (7.94cm, 6.99cm, 10.11g and 103.15cc). But V 2 registered the highest number of laterals plant (12.85) followed by V 1 observed the least number of laterals plant 12.53. The plant sprayed with of GA 3 @ 150ppm was found most effective as it registered the maximum plant height (70.44cm), number of laterals plant (16.13) number of leaves plant (383.76), leaf area (113.51 cm) and diameter of fully opened flower (9.64cm), length of flower stalk (9.79cm), single flower weight (12.81) and flower volume (130.11) and it was followed by GA 3 @ 100ppm.
US adolescent food intake trends from 1965 to 1996

AIM To examine adolescent food consumption trends in the United States with important chronic disease implications. METHODS Analysis of dietary intake data from four nationally representative United States Department of Agriculture surveys of individuals 11–18 years of age (n = 12 498). RESULTS From 1965 to 1996, a considerable shift in the adolescent diet occurred. Total energy intake decreased as did the proportion of energy from total fat (39% to 32%) and saturated fat (15% to 12%). Concurrent increases occurred in the consumption of higher fat potatoes and mixed dishes (pizza, macaroni cheese). Lower fat milks replaced higher fat milks but total milk consumption decreased by 36%. This decrease was accompanied by an increase in consumption of soft drinks and non-citrus juices. An increase in high fat potato consumption led to an increase in vegetable intake but the number of servings for fruits and vegetables is still below the recommended five per day. Iron, folate, and calcium intakes continue to be below recommendations for girls. CONCLUSIONS These trends, far greater than for US adults, may compromise health of the future US population.