Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the Mechanical Properties of Red Oak 2 by 4'S

Efficient utilization of the U.S. hardwood supply depends upon developing better methods of grading lumber and assigning allowable property values to structural lumber produced from hardwood species. This study evaluated the properties of lumber cut from logs of the northern red oak species group and tested in bending, and in tension and compression parallel to the grain. Compared to published values derived by ASTM D245 clear-wood procedures, the results of this study indicate that significant increases in allowable properties could be obtained using procedures based on tests of full-size lumber given in ASTM D1990. The relationships between hardwood lumber strength in compression parallel to the grain and bending strength and between tension parallel to the grain and bending strength were found to be similar to those for softwood species. Thus, procedures used to assign properties to machine-graded softwood species should be applicable to northern red oak.
Production Efficiency of Smallholder Vegetable Farms in Ilam District, Eastern Hill, Nepal

Efficiency in vegetable production is a critical issue for enhancing productivity, generating income and supplying nutrients for Nepalese rural people. The study aimed to measure and to analyze the production efficiency of smallholder vegetable farms in eastern hill, Nepal, using Nepal vegetable crops survey (2010) data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal. The results of maximum likelihood estimates of Stochastic Frontier Analysis revealed that the mean technical efficiency score was 0.77, implied that 23 percent production could increase by simply improving vegetable farming practices. The production was contributed by land, labor, seed, compost, fertilizer, pesticide, farm capital, seed types, credit, technical support and sex of household head. Therefore, this study recommend policies on improvement of land, develop skillful labor, promote improve seed, encourage composting, easily access of fertilizer, pesticide and farm capitals, promoting women farmer, enhance technical support and access of credit to vegetable farmers.
Severe summer rainfall in China associated with enhanced global warming

Trends of extreme wet and dry conditions during recent decades were examined using observed data for eastern China. Mean precipitation for the region has shown a significant down- ward trend from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, and a positive trend since the late 1970s. The change in trend since the late 1970s, i.e. the period during which enhanced global warming emerged, is most prominent. The linear trend of the mean summer rainfall anomalies over the 4 subregions studied was +7.5% decade -1 . Changes in the trend of severe wet and dry events are not symmetrical. During the period 1977-1998, the number of severe wet stations increased at the rate of 20.3 decade -1 , but the trend for severe dry events was only -5.4 decade -1 . Similar rainfall changes can be found over many global land areas. The summer rainfall in eastern China showed only a negligible secular trend during the period 1880-1998. However, the decadal variations were clear. The mean rainfall in 1990-1998 was higher than for any other decade in the last 100 yr. The linear trend of the 33-station mean during 1977-1998 was +47.5 mm decade -1 ; such a strong increase is unprecedented in the record since 1880. Decadal variations and global warming may both play important roles in the recent significant increase in summer rainfall. This paper also presents the results of greenhouse and/or aerosol forcing experiments, in which summer precipitation over eastern China is generally estimated to rise. There are many uncertainties, however, in the regional precipitation simulations. For example, the modeled rainfall is sensitive to whether aerosols are included or not. Further research is needed to determine whether there is a substantial relationship between the rainfall changes in China and global greenhouse warming.
Does within-household specialisation explain husbands’ better job-education-match?

Married male workers are found to have a lower incidence of overeducation. A theoretical explanation for this phenomenon is lacking. We test in our study whether the traditional specialisation of spouses’ time between home and market production tends to improve a husband’s jobeducation-match (JEM). We test this hypothesis first by drawing on the method used in the marriage wage premia literature based mainly on the model of Becker (1985). In addition, we perform a new test following the theory of François (1998), which requires less restrictive assumptions. Overall, our results show that within-household specialisation (WHS) explains a substantial part of the superior JEM of husbands, regardless of whether a wife’s labour market participation (experience) or both spouses housework hours are used to measure specialisation. The results and in particular the independent and significant impact of women’s housework hours on their husbands’ JEM, however, speak clearly in favour of François’ theory and against the explanation of Becker. Testing for an endogeneity bias due to a possible sorting process of more able husbands with “traditional” spouses or a measurement error of the JEM does not alter these conclusions.
Investigation of the CRT performance of a PET scanner based on liquid xenon: A Monte Carlo study

The measurement of the time of flight of the two 511 keV gammas recorded in coincidence in a PET scanner provides an effective way of reducing the random background and therefore increases the scanner sensitivity, provided that the coincidence resolving time (CRT) of the gammas is sufficiently good. Existing commercial systems based in LYSO crystals, such as the GEMINIS of Philips, reach CRT values of ~ 600 ps (FWHM). In this paper we present a Monte Carlo investigation of the CRT performance of a PET scanner exploiting the scintillating properties of liquid xenon. We find that an excellent CRT of 60-70 ps (depending on the PDE of the sensor) can be obtained if the scanner is instrumented with silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) sensitive to the ultraviolet light emitted by xenon. Alternatively, a CRT of 120 ps can be obtained instrumenting the scanner with (much cheaper) blue-sensitive SiPMs coated with a suitable wavelength shifter. These results show the excellent time of flight capabilities of a PET device based in liquid xenon.
Emergence of the mass discrepancy-acceleration relation from dark matter-baryon interactions

The observed tightness of the mass discrepancy-acceleration relation (MDAR) poses a fine-tuning challenge to current models of galaxy formation. We propose that this relation could arise from collisional interactions between baryons and dark matter (DM) particles, without the need for modification of gravity or ad hoc feedback processes. We assume that these interactions satisfy the following three conditions: (i) the relaxation time of DM particles is comparable to the dynamical time in disk galaxies; (ii) DM exchanges energy with baryons due to elastic collisions; (iii) the product between the baryon-DM cross section and the typical energy exchanged in a collision is inversely proportional to the DM number density. As a proof of principle, we present an example of a particle physics model that gives a DM-baryon cross section with the desired density and velocity dependence. For consistency with direct detection constraints, our DM particles must be either very light (m ≪ mb) or very heavy (m≫ mb), corresponding respectively to heating and cooling of DM by baryons. In both cases, our mechanism applies and an equilibrium configuration can in principle be reached. In this exploratory paper, we focus on the heavy DM/cooling case because it is technically simpler, since the average energy exchanged turns out to be approximately constant throughout galaxies. Under these assumptions, we find that rotationally-supported disk galaxies could naturally settle to equilibrium configurations satisfying a MDAR at all radii without invoking finely tuned feedback processes. We also discuss issues related to the small scale clumpiness of baryons, as well as predictions for pressure-supported systems. We argue in particular that galaxy clusters do not follow the MDAR despite being DM-dominated because they have not reached their equilibrium configuration. Finally, we revisit existing phenomenological, astrophysical and cosmological constraints on baryon-DM interactions in light of the unusual density dependence of the cross section of DM particles.
On bounded cocycles of isometries over minimal dynamics

We show the following geometric generalization of a classical theorem of W. H. Gottschalk and G. A. Hedlund: a skew action induced by a cocycle of (affine) isometries of a Hilbert space over a minimal dynamical system has a continuous invariant section if and only if the cocycle is bounded. Equivalently, the associated twisted cohomological equation has a continuous solution if and only if the cocycle is bounded. We interpret this as a version of the Bruhat-Tits Center Lemma in the space of continuous functions. Our result also holds when the fiber is a proper CAT(0) space. One of the applications concerns matrix cocycles. Using the action of $\mathrm{GL} (n,\mathbb{R})$ on the (nonpositively curved) space of positively definite matrices, we show that every bounded linear cocycle over a minimal dynamical system is cohomologous to a cocycle taking values in the orthogonal group.
Neoplasias mamárias caninas em Santos, Brasil: perfil clinicopatológico e de sobrevida

Tumors of the mammary glands are the most common neoplasms in dogs in our country; however, there are few Brazilian reports dedicated to clinicopathological and survival studies about this disease. This report aims the clinical and pathological study of canine mammary tumors in the Santos Metropolitan Region, an area in Sao Paulo state with an estimated canine population of 120,000 animals. Data of 14,298 dogs were collected retrospectively from the medical records of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital of the Metropolitan University of Santos – Sao Paulo – Brazil. During the study period, from records of 317 females with histopathological diagnosis of neoplasia, 170 were mammary epithelial lesions distributed in 13 benign tumors, 152 malignant (89.4% of diagnosis) and 5 non-neoplasic epithelial lesions (ductal hyperplasia). The highest prevalent malignant tumor was tubular carcinoma (38.2% of diagnosis) and Grade I tumors, corresponding to 73.0% of all diagnosis. The results have shown clinical staging of canine mammary neoplasms as an important prognostic survival factor and, in a multivariate analysis, tumor diameter, tumor grade, adjuvant chemotherapy and recurrence as covariates with predictive value for survival. Moreover, the high prevalence of tubular carcinoma qualifies the canine population ofSantosas a promising model for the translational study of this disease.
Efficiency of equilibria in restricted uniform machine scheduling with total weighted completion time as social cost

In the last decade, there has been much progress in understanding scheduling problems in which selfish jobs aim to minimize their individual completion time. Most of this work has focused on makespan minimization as social objective. In contrast, we consider as social cost the total weighted completion time, that is, the sum of the agent costs, a standard definition of welfare in economics. In our setting, jobs are processed on restricted uniform parallel machines, where each machine has a speed and is only capable of processing a subset of jobs; a job's cost is its weighted completion time; and each machine sequences its jobs in weighted shortest processing time (WSPT) order. Whereas for the makespan social cost the price of anarchy is not bounded by a constant in most environments, we show that for our minsum social objective the price of anarchy is bounded above by a small constant, independent of the instance. Specifically, we show that the price of anarchy is exactly 2 for the class of unit jobs, unit speed instances where the finite processing time values define the edge set of a forest with the machines as nodes. For the general case of mixed job strategies and restricted uniform machines, we prove that the price of anarchy equals 4. From a classical machine scheduling perspective, our results establish the same constant performance guarantees for WSPT list scheduling. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012
Gut evacuation rates in "Nephrops norvegicus" (L., 1758): laboratory and field estimates

) were calculated from the slope of the regression of the natural logarithm of dry stomach content weight versus time, using data obtained by the “serial slaughter method”. The values obtained during laboratory (R=0.172 h -1 ) and field experiments (R=0.177 h -1 ) are compared with gut evacuation rates reported for other marine organisms. The results obtained for both experiments are within the range of the values in the literature, even in the case in which different methodologies were used.
Combining bainite and martensite in steel microstructures for light weight applications

Nowadays, the market offers advanced highstrength steels (AHSS) with improved combinations of strength and ductility with respect to conventional steels (Figure 1). Most of the AHSS are based on multiphase microstructures. Thus, for example, dual phase (DP) steels have microstructures containing martensite and ferrite. Further developments led to the design of steels containing more complex microstructures, for instance consisting of combinations of ferrite, bainite, martensite, and retained austenite. The interest in having retained austenite in the microstructure is due to the ability of this metastable phase to transform into martensite during the application of mechanical loading, which significantly contributes to the strengthening of the material. This phenomenon is called the transformationinduced plasticity (TRIP) effect, and steels having such multiphase microstructures are named TRIP steels. Martensitic (MART in Figure 1) steels are based on fully martensitic microstructures, leading to high levels of strength, but these materials perform poorly on elongation. New applications in the automotive and energy sectors are demanding steels with improved combinations of mechanical properties. These demands defined a new research area for the design of new steels, as indicated in Figure 1. New strategies to fulfil these demands are based on the design of more attractive steels with ultra-fine grained microstructures, containing combinations of strong phases such as martensite and bainite. The presence of retained austenite in these microstructures is also desirable in order to make use of the TRIP effect1 2. Heat treatments for the development of carbide-free bainite (CFB) steels consist of full austenitization followed by an isothermal step at a temperature in the bainite range4 (Figure 2a). The formation of bainite occurs by the nucleation and displacive growth of bainitic ferrite sub-units until they reach a certain size. In the process, carbon diffuses from the carbon-supersaturated sub-unit to the surrounding austenite5. By alloying the steel with elements such as silicon or aluminium, carbide precipitation in the austenite is inhibited, and thus the austenite becomes carbon enriched as the transformation progresses. Combining bainite and martensite in steel microstructures for light weight applications
Reliability-Based Analysis of Recycled Aggregate Concrete under Carbonation

Durability represents a crucial issue for evaluating safety and serviceability of reinforced concrete structures. Many studies have already focused on carbonation-induced corrosion of natural aggregate concrete (NAC) structures, leading to several prediction models to estimate carbonation depth. Less research is devoted instead on recycled aggregate concrete (RAC), about which limited experimental works exist aimed at assessing the carbonation coefficient in accelerated tests. Additionally, deteriorating processes are subject to uncertainty, when defining materials, geometry, and environmental actions during the service life of structures. This work presents a reliability-based analysis of carbonation resistance of RACs, using experimental carbonation coefficients derived from the literature, and applied in the full-probabilistic method prosed in fib Bulletin 34. Results demonstrate how aggregates replacement ratio and w/c ratio influence the reliability of RAC carbonation resistance.
A Primal-Dual Estimator of Production and Cost Functions within an Errors-in-Variables Context

In 1944, Marschak and Andrews published a seminal paper on how to obtain consistent estimates of a production technology. The original formulation of the econometric model regarded the joint estimation of the production function together with the first-order necessary conditions for profit-maximizing behavior. In the seventies, with the advent of econometric duality, the preference seemed to have shifted to a dual approach. Recently, however, Mundlak resurrected the primal-versus-dual debate with a provocative paper titled Production Function Estimation: Reviving the Primal. In that paper, the author asserts that the dual estimator, unlike the primal approach, is not efficient because it fails to utilize all the available information. In this paper we propose that efficient estimates of the production technology can be obtained only by jointly estimating all the relevant primal and dual relations. Thus, the primal approach of Mundlak and the dual approach of McElroy become special cases of the general specification. In the process of putting to rest the primal-versus-dual debate, we tackle also the nonlinear errors-in-variables problem when all the variables are measured with error. A Monte Carlo analysis of this problem indicates that the proposed estimator is robust to misspecifications of the ratio between error variances.
Computational fluid dynamics analysis for improving temperature distribution in a chili dryer

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a numerical tool that is highly accurate to simulate a very large number of applications and processes. The CFD analysis has emerged as a viable technique to provide effective and efficient design solutions. In this paper, a CFD analysis for improving temperature distribution in a chili dryer is presented. The CFD technique is used to simulate the temperature distribution inside the chamber. For this purpose, the continuity, momentum and energy equations are considered. The results obtained by CFD analysis based on a specific geometry are presented in order to improve the temperature distribution. In addition, these results were verified experimentally. The distribution of temperatures showed small differences around 4 K during the warming up period. The simulation and experimental results can be useful for further designs of chili dryers with different specific geometries.
Conceptualising the role of innovation: Attributes for examining consumer adoption of mobile innovations

Services across different consumer markets are being introduced as mobile phones applications for them to be usable on-the-go. Mobile wallet and Mobile ticketing are two such applications that have been recently introduced in the Indian context. For achieving an increased adoption rate of these innovations, it is important to understand the behaviour of the factors that help consumers form positive intentions about such innovations, in turn leading to the acceptance and use of those innovations. This paper, thus aims at developing a theory-based conceptual framework for examining the user adoption of mobile innovations using the innovation-attributes that have been shown in the recent literature to have considerable influences on the acceptance of innovations. Innovation-attributes from Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, Tornatzky and Klein’s meta-analysis, and Moore and Benbasat’s perceived characteristics of innovating theory will be used in developing the conceptual framework for examining the adoption of mobile innovations.
The Effect of US Holidays on the European Markets: When the Cat's Away…

type="main" xml:lang="en"> This paper presents evidence of the existence of a return effect on European stock markets coinciding with New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) holidays, which is particularly marked after positive closing returns on the NYSE the previous day. The effect is large enough to be exploited by trading index futures. This anomaly cannot be explained by seasonal effects, such as the day of the week effect, the January effect or the pre-holiday effect, nor is it consistent with behavioural finance models that predict positive correlation between trading volume and returns. However, examination of factors such as information volume or investor mix provides a reasonable explanation.
The Stages of Change Scale Among Brazilian Alcohol Dependents

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and factor structure of the 32-item University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) by performing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on 326 first-referral outpatients with alcohol dependence. Results suggest that the Brazilian version successfully measured the proposed factors while incorporating a correlational structure of the factors (precontemplation, contemplation, action, and maintenance). Internal consistency ranged from 0.77 to 0.79 according to Cronbach's alpha, indicating acceptable reliability for URICA, with the exception of the Maintenance scale (0.63). The results have been compared with previous work, and the reasons for discrepancies are discussed.
Effect of farm yard manure and press mud on fertility status of alkaline soil under maize-wheat cropping sequence

An experiment was conducted on an alkaline clay loam soil of Golagamdi, India during 2005-2006 to study the effect of Farm Yard Manure and pressmud on fertility status of alkali soil under maize-wheat cropping sequence. The treatment consist of three levels of organic manure M0- no manure; M1- FYM at the rate of 10 tha-1; M2- Pressmud at the rate of 5 tha-1 and six fertilizer levels; F0- no fertilizer; F1- 75% of recommended N and P; F2-100% of recommended N and P; F3- 75% of recommended N and P+S+Zn+Fe; F4-100% of recommended N and P+S+Zn+Fe; F5- 100% of recommended N and P+foliar spray of 1% multi-micronutrient. The direct effect of FYM (M1) and pressmud (M2) reduced pH of soil. The maximum pH (8.26) was recorded from control after the harvest of wheat and the lowest (8.17) from F5. The highest EC (0.38 dS m-1) was recorded from F5 followed by F4 (0.37 dS m-1) and the lowest from control (0.27 dS m-1). The pressmud was more effective in reducing soil pH and increasing the EC than by FYM. The application of FYM (M1) and pressmud (M2) increased the available N, P, S, Fe, Zn, Cu and Mn in soil. The available N, S, Fe and Zn content under pressmud application was more than the FYM. However, the residual effect of FYM (M1) maintained higher available P (71.49 kg ha-1), K, Zn than PM (M2). Residual effect of the pressmud (M2) showed maximum available S (27.99 mg kg-1) as compared to FYM (M1) (15.86 mg kg-1). M2F3 and M2F4 treatment combinations performed better than other combinations regarding the S and Zn content of soil. The direct effect of pressmud was higher in case of Fe content than FYM. The residual effect of both FYM (1.02 mg kg-1) and pressmud (1.01 mg kg-1) significantly increased DTPA extractable Mn content in soil over control (3.27 mg kg-1) after wheat harvest. Direct effect of FYM on maize was found slightly depressed DTPA extractable Cu contents as compared to pressmud. However, the Cu content was increased again after the harvest of wheat. Key words: Farm yard manure (FYM), pressmud, residual effect, electrical conductivity (EC), maize-wheat cropping.