Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An analysis of determinants of access to and use of credit by smallholder farmers in Suakoko District, Liberia

Agricultural credit has been argued to be very important for sustainable agricultural development and poverty reduction in rural areas. This study seeks to identify and to analyze the determinants of smallholder farmers’ access to and use of credit in Suakoko district, Bong County, Liberia. This research is quantitative using a survey questionnaire distributed to 105 smallholder farmers. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and causal analysis was performed using a binary Logit regression model. Results from regression indicate that 39% of the farmers were credit users. The marginal effects of bank account and other sources of income show significant and positive effects on access to credit. However, education, occupation and group membership are significant but have negative effects on access to credit by smallholder farmers. The results also show that 38% of credit users applied credit received for agricultural activities, while the rest utilized it for non-agricultural activities. It is recommended that a policy should be established to ensure older farmers gets adult literacy while younger farmers get formal education. Moreover, the government should issue a policy aimed at increasing opportunities for off-farm activities through creation of jobs and motivating self-employment. Finally, the government should promote the creation of development groups geared towards providing collateral support for members and also serve as guarantors for farmers to receive banks credit/loans in order to increase agricultural productivity in the study area. Key words: Credit access, rural, farmers, smallholder, Suakoko district, Liberia.
Evaluation of explosion pressure of portable small liquefied petroleum gas cylinder

This study aims to estimate the explosive pressures and permanent volume expansion of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) portable small LPG cylinder fuel tanks using experimental and finite element analysis (FEA) approaches. Experimental explosion testing was carried out by means of a hydrostatic device in which the cylinders were pressurized with water. LPG tanks are subjected to increased internal equal pressure in FEA modeling. Three‐dimensional nonlinear models were developed and evaluated under irregular boundary conditions. For analysis, the required real shell properties including the source region and thickness variations were investigated. Therefore, the results of burst pressures and volume expansions are predicted and compared with the experimental ones. The results of finite element method showed similar results with the results obtained from the experiments. The results provide a description of the stages of the explosion and the hazards arising from the damage to the tanks.
Fully Analytical Compact Model for the I–V Characteristics of Large Radius Junctionless Nanowire FETs

In this paper, we developed an analytical model for the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I{-}V$</tex-math></inline-formula> characteristics of junctionless nanowire FETs (JLNWFETs) in which the radius of the nanowire is large enough to allow quantum confinement effects to be neglected. The model is valid for all bias regimes, subthreshold, depletion and accumulation, and it is fully analytical, do not requiring the numerical solution of integrals or transcendental equations. Our compact model is validated in comparison to available results in the literature, with agreement equivalent to much more complex approaches.
Refining the Threat Calculus of Technology Threat Avoidance Theory

The number of people using fitness devices and mobile health applications creates unprecedented amounts of healthrelated fitness data. In the United States, healthcare regulations do not consider the data that these devices collect as protected health information when no covered entity is involved; therefore, the law does not provide such data with the same legal protections as an individual’s health records. Thus, users must ensure that they keep their data safe from potential data breaches and malicious activities. In this study, we analyze users’ motivations to implement safeguards to protect their private health-related fitness data. To test user motivation, we issued wearable activity tracking devices and an associated online health fitness data account to students. We instructed the students about how to use the fitness device and how the device connected to the user’s phone and Web-based application. We then had them complete a survey to determine how they form their threat perceptions and other factors influencing their avoidance motivations for computer-security incidents. With the exception of safeguard cost and privacy concerns, results support a revised threat calculus in the TTAT model and the original model constructs.
Increasing energy production of a ducted wind turbine system

This article focuses on evaluating the performance of a relatively new system of a ducted wind turbine with an omnidirectional capture system, the INVELOX system. In the present study, the improvement of such patented system has been developed by performing a detailed numerical analysis varying several geometrical parameters and analysing the effect of changing wind velocity and wind direction. At first, the model validation was performed and the performance of the original system against the wind direction changes was analysed observing that the highest speed ratios are obtained for two specific directions. Based on the previous results, the most critical features of the system have been identified, and then it has been approached a geometric improvement of the system aiming at increasing the system productivity. The results show there is a possibility to largely improve the overall design and extract more energy from the wind respect with the original design.
UNDERSTANDING, MODELING AND SUPPORTING CROSS-DEVICE WEB SEARCH

Recent studies have witnessed an increasing popularity of cross-device web search, in which users resume their previously-started search tasks from one device to later sessions on another. This novel search mode brings new user behaviors such as cross-device information transfer; however, they are rarely studied in recent research. Existing studies on this topic mainly focused on automatic cross-device search task extraction and/or task continuation prediction; whereas it lacks sufficient understanding of user behaviors and ways of supporting cross-device search tasks. Building an automated search support system requires proper models that can quantify user behaviors in the whole cross-device search process. This motivates me to focus on understanding, modeling and supporting cross-device search processes in this dissertation. To understand the cross-device search process, I examine the main cross-device search topics, the major triggers, the information transfer approaches, and users’ behavioral patterns within each device and across multiple devices. These are obtained through an on-line survey and a lab-controlled user study with fine-grained user behavior logs. Then, I work on two quantitative models to automatically capture users' behavioral patterns. Both models assume that user behaviors are driven by hidden factors, and the identified behavioral patterns are either the hidden factors or a reflection of hidden factors. Following prior studies, I consider two types of hidden factors --- search tactic (e.g., the tactic of information re-finding/finding would drive to click/skip previously-accessed documents) and user knowledge (e.g., knowing the knowledge within a document would drive users to skip the document). Finally, to create a real-world cross-device search support use case, I design two supporting functions: one to assist information re-finding and the other to support information finding. The effectiveness of different support functions are further examined through both off-line and on-line experiments. The dissertation has several contributions. First, this is the first comprehensive investigation of cross-device web search behaviors. Second, two novel computational models are proposed to automatically quantify cross-device search processes, which are rarely studied in existing researches. Third, I identify two important cross-device search support tasks and implement effective algorithms to support both of them, which can beneficial future studies for this topic.
Acrylamide Content of Turkish Black Tea, Instant and Turkish Coffee Samples

Bu calismada, Turk ve hazir kahve ile siyah cay orneklerinin akrilamid icerikleri, herhangi bir turevlendirme basamagi olmadan gaz kromatografisi kutle spektrometrisi ile belirlenmistir. Numune hazirlama yontemi iki asamadan olusmaktadir. Ilk basamak, izolasyon asamasidir. Bu adimda, etanol ile Carrez I ve II cozeltileri ornek karisimlarina eklenmistir. Kati faz ekstraksiyonu ikinci adimi olusturmaktadir. Calismada, C18 kartusu temizleme icin kullanilmistir. Tespit ve tayin limiti sirasiyla 1,11 ve 3,66 ng/mL’dir. Sekiz hazir kahve orneginde 4,48 ile 15,71 µg/kg arasinda degisen akrilamid miktari belirlenmistir. Yedi Turk kahvesi numunesi ise, 3,89 ile 88,44 µg/kg arasinda degisen yuksek bir akrilamid icerigine sahiptir. On yedi siyah cay numunesinden sadece bes tanesinde, 7,02 ile 19,85 µg/kg arasinda degisen miktarda akrilamid tespit edilmistir.
The Consequences of Air Density Variations over Northeastern Scotland for Offshore Wind Energy Potential

Hywind-Scotland is a wind farm in Scotland that for many reasons is at the leading edge of technology and is located at a paradigmatic study area for offshore wind energy assessment. The objective of this paper is to compute the Capacity Factor ( C F ) changes and instantaneous power generation changes due to seasonal and hourly fluctuations in air density. For that reason, the novel ERA5 reanalysis is used as a source of temperature, pressure, and wind speed data. Seasonal results for winter show that C F values increase by 3% due to low temperatures and denser air, with economical profit consequences of tens of thousands (US$). Hourly results show variations of 7% in air density and of 26% in power generation via FAST simulations, emphasizing the need to include air density in short-term wind energy studying.
A Miniaturized On-Chip BPF With Ultrawide Stopband Based on Lumped Pi-Section and Source-Load Coupling

In this letter, an on-chip bandpass filter (BPF) with ultrawide-stopband and high selectivity is designed and manufactured by 2-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gallium arsenide (GaAs) HBT technology. For the sake of selectivity and rejection of the BPF, an extra pair of transmission zeros (TZs) locating at both sides of the passband is produced by introducing source–load coupling. Moreover, to improve the rejection of the BPF, a Pi-section circuit is designed so that a TZ is obtained at the upper sidebands. The measurement results show that the bandwidth covers 2.4–4.3 GHz, while its insertion loss is 2.05 dB at 3.35 GHz. In addition, this BPF achieves more than 30-dB sideband suppression format both at 0–1.3 GHz and 5.6–40 GHz. The BPF size is very compact only, i.e., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.6~\text{mm}\times1.5~\text{mm}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.02\lambda \text{g}\,\,\times 0.05\lambda \text{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>); to the best of our expertise, this is the widest sideband suppression with such a compact on-chip size.
Integrated approach for site-specific nitrogen management in North Dakota, USA

Nitrogen (N) management is important for farmers in North Dakota to maximize economic return and environmental stewardship. Fall soil sampling for soil nitrate is important to N management. Zone soil sampling is highly recommended over grid soil sampling. Zone development tools include remote imagery, soil electrical and magnetic sensors, multi-year yield maps and topography. Nutrient rate research to support site-specific fertilizer application shows that N rate and yield are not related between fields. Therefore, N rate is not yield-goal based. Zone sampling does not aid in-season N needs. Algorithms are published for use of active-optical (AO) sensors for corn, and work continues in sugarbeet, confection sunflower, and spring wheat. Use of zone soil sampling and the use of active-optical sensors can provide improved site-specific N management.
A Survey of Behavioral Models for Social Robots

The cooperation between humans and robots is becoming increasingly important in our society. Consequently, there is a growing interest in the development of models that can enhance and enrich the interaction between humans and robots. A key challenge in the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) field is to provide robots with cognitive and affective capabilities, by developing architectures that let them establish empathetic relationships with users. Over the last several years, multiple models were proposed to face this open-challenge. This work provides a survey of the most relevant attempts/works. In details, it offers an overview of the architectures present in literature focusing on three specific aspects of HRI: the development of adaptive behavioral models, the design of cognitive architectures, and the ability to establish empathy with the user. The research was conducted within two databases: Scopus and Web of Science. Accurate exclusion criteria were applied to screen the 4916 articles found. At the end, 56 articles were selected. For each work, an evaluation of the model is made. Pros and cons of each work are detailed by analyzing the aspects that can be improved to establish an enjoyable interaction between robots and users.
Changing the Day-Ahead Gate Closure to Wind Power Integration: A Simulation-Based Study

Currently, in most European electricity markets, power bids are based on forecasts performed 12 to 36 hours ahead. Actual wind power forecast systems still lead to large errors, which may strongly impact electricity market outcomes. Accordingly, this article analyzes the impact of the wind power forecast uncertainty and the change of the day-ahead market gate closure on both the market-clearing prices and the outcomes of the balancing market. To this end, it presents a simulation-based study conducted with the help of an agent-based tool, called MATREM. The results support the following conclusion: a change in the gate closure to a time closer to real-time operation is beneficial to market participants and the energy system generally.
Development of a Novel Hybrid Intelligence Approach for Landslide Spatial Prediction

We proposed an innovative hybrid intelligent approach, namely, the multiboost based naïve bayes trees (MBNBT) method for the spatial prediction of landslides in the Mu Cang Chai District of Yen Bai Province, Vietnam. The MBNBT, which is an ensemble of the multiboost (MB) and naïve bayes trees (NBT) base classifier, has rarely been applied for landslide susceptibility mapping around the world. For the modeling, we selected 248 landslide locations in the hilly terrain of the study area. Fifteen landslide conditioning factors were selected for the construction of the database based on the one-R attribute evaluation (ORAE) technique. Model validation was done using statistical metrics, namely, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC). Performance of the hybrid model was evaluated and compared with popular soft computing benchmark models, namely, multiple perceptron neural network (MLPN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and single NBT. Results indicated that the proposed MBNBT (AUC = 0.824) model outperformed the popular models, namely, the MLPN (AUC = 0.804), SVM (AUC = 0.804), and NBT (AUC = 0.800) models. Analysis of the model results also suggested that the MB meta classifier ensemble model could enhance the prediction power of the NBT model. Therefore, the MBNBT is a suitable method for the assessment of landslide susceptibility in landslide prone areas.
Enhanced Linear Iterative Detector for Massive Multiuser MIMO Uplink

For massive multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, linear detectors, such as minimum mean square error (MMSE), suffer from unbearable computational pressure due to the large-scale matrix inversions. Various iterative detectors, such as Jacobi and steepest descent (SD) as well as their enhanced variants, are applied to improve the performance and complexity trade-off. However, their benefits would not maintain when: 1) the number of users is close to that of the base station antennas and 2) channel correlation is considered. To address this problem, an iterative detector based on SD and Barzilai–Borwein (BB) algorithms entitled SDBB is introduced in this paper. Furthermore, a novel enhanced SDBB (ESDBB) detector is proposed, which combines SDBB with SD to achieve better performance in the challenging scenarios. Both theoretical and numerical results are detailed to demonstrate the advantages of ESDBB in balancing the performance and complexity. Specifically, attaining faster convergence and better bit error rate (BER) results, ESDBB outperforms methods, including adaptive Jacobi and successive over relaxation (SOR). An efficient hardware architecture for the ESDBB detector is also proposed. Implementation results on a Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7VX690T FPGA show the advantages of the proposed ESDBB detector compared to the state of the art (SOA) in terms of throughput (31.3 Mb/s) and efficiency.
AGILE ORGANIZATIONAL MODEL FOR MANAGING LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS

Local self-government units often consider project management as an accompanying activity and therefore do not accord it the appropriate level of importance. The term “agile” refers to a series of methods developed for more flexible project management. Thus, the background of an agile concept and its content are presented in this paper. Furthermore, the concept is compared with traditional project management methodologies. However, a priori implementation of agile-based model in an unrealistic solution can cause more damage than good. Hence, this paper proposes an agile-based matrix organizational model that adapts to the needs and particularities of the work environment in which it implemented, especially the various activities of government bodies. The model will define a new and flexible management structure for local self-government units based on the development of human resources, constant change of culture, and regular activities of government bodies, thereby improving their reliability and effectiveness.
The Interaction of Study Materials and Spaced Review on Transfer and Relational Learning.

In two experiments, researchers investigated whether the advantages of studying graphic organizers over outlines for learning text structure and transfer from a chapter-length text are restricted to study sequences that use delayed, rather than immediate, review. In the first of these studies, reported here, 89 undergraduates studied 1 of 3 sets of study materials, reviewed them immediately or 2 days later, and then were tested. Materials were the text, the text with graphic organizers, or the text plus a set of outlines. Results indicate that although graphic organizers facilitated learning text structure across both review occasions, they facilitated transfer of text knowledge only when review was delayed. The study also found evidence that students who delayed their review of graphic organizers used more effective study strategies. These findings are explained within the framework of the deactivation hypothesis (D. Krug, T. B. Davis, and J. A. Glover, 1990). (Contains 2 tables and 16 references.) (Author/SLD) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** The Interaction of Study Materials and Spaced Review on Transfer and Relational Learning Andrew D. Katayama, Daniel II Robinson, Thomas Devaney Mississippi State University
Perception of running shoe cushioning: wear test vs. controlled experiment

Footwear developers employ feedback from human wear testers to assess the functionality and acceptability of their products. However, there is often poor correspondence between perceptions reported in wear tests and in vitro measurements of running shoe characteristics. This study evaluated runners’ ability to perceive differences in running shoe cushioning under controlled conditions and compared those results with wear test outcomes. Five running shoe conditions were chosen based on the ASTM F1976 impact test results (g-max) to span a typical range of cushioning scores with g-max differences among shoes distributed between 0.9 and 6.5 g. Samples of each shoe condition were used by an independent group of wear testers for about one month and 160 km of running. They provided ratings of various shoe attributes, including ‘heel cushioning’ and ‘forefoot cushioning’, using a 1–7 Likert-type scale. In a laboratory study, 50 healthy runners evaluated the same five shoe conditions and ranked them from ‘least cushioned’ to ‘most cushioned’. For each of the 10 possible pair-wise shoe comparisons, the probability that subjects would rank the shoes consistently with g-max scores was calculated as a function of the difference in g-max between shoes. There were no significant differences in wear test cushioning ratings among the four most cushioned shoes. However, using the ranking protocol, subjects were able to detect differences in cushioning with a ‘least noticeable difference’ of 1.4 g and demonstrated increasing sensitivity with larger difference magnitudes. In contrast to a typical wear test protocol, the laboratory test demonstrated that runners are able to perceive cushioning differences of sufficient magnitude, consistent with mechanical test results, under appropriately controlled conditions.
Fluxes of nutrients and primary production between the main channel and floodplain backwaters of the Lower Mississippi River—Development of a simulation model

Connection between rivers and their floodplain is critical to the function of fluvial systems; however, there has been little research quantitatively examining the dynamics of this interaction for large, alluvial rivers. Critical questions include the following: What are the rates and mechanisms of materials and energy exchange, and in what ways does the exchange impact ecosystem functioning? To address these questions, we built a simple model of a hypothetical reach of the Lower Mississippi River (LMR) containing a single backwater. The model is based on empirical data obtained from the LMR system. Our primary objectives for the model were to assess potential backwater impacts on river nitrate transport and in subsidizing phytoplankton biomass to the main channel. Simulations run over a 10‐year period suggest that on an annual basis, (a) LMR backwaters remove NO3–N, and it would require a temporal mean of 34,400 ha functioning like the model backwater, or 2.8 times the current area of oxbow lakes, to eliminate 100% of the river flux of NO3–N of our study region; (b) it would require inputs of phytoplankton from a mean of 5,242 ha of sites functioning like the model backwater to produce observed river flux of phytoplankton biomass; and (c) backwater function is sensitive to the controlling elevation in linking channels hence subject to management. Although simple, this model is a useful first step in quantifying the significance of river–backwater connectivity on ecological processes of the LMR system.