Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experience with Seismic Dilatometer ( SDMT ) in various soil types

The seismic dilatometer (SDMT) is the combination of the standard flat dilatometer (DMT) with a seismic module for measuring the shear wave velocity VS. This paper summarizes the experience gained from a large number of SDMT tests performed in 2004-2007 at over 30 sites. In particular the paper presents an overview of the SDMT equipment, comparisons of VS measured by SDMT and by other methods and a selection of SDMT results and related comments. The paper also illustrates the major issues of present research on use and applications of the SDMT, mostly focused on the development of methods for deriving the in situ G-γ decay curves and for evaluating the liquefaction resistance of sands based on SDMT results. ISC'3
Project Title: PILOT SCALE DEMONSTRATION AND EVALUATION OF INNOVATIVE NON-DESLIMED NON-CLASSIFIED GRAVITY-

Coal preparation plants are required in some cases to produce a high-grade product using a low specific gravity cut-point. For these situations, a second higher gravity separation would be desirable to generate a mid-grade product that can be utilized for electricity generation thereby maximizing coal recovery. A study was conducted to evaluate the potential of achieving efficient separations at two different density cut-points in a single stage using a three-product dense medium cyclone. Variations in density cut-point and process efficiency values were quantified as a function of the feed medium density, feed medium-to-coal ratio, and feed pressure using a three-level experimental design program. Results indicate the ability to effectively treat coal over a particle size range from 6mm to 0.15mm while achieving both lowand high-density cut-points up to 1.95 relative density. Ash content decreased from 27.98% in the feed to an average of 7.77% in the clean coal product and 25.76% in the middlings product while sulfur content was reduced from 3.87 to 2.83% in the clean coal product. The overall combustible recovery was maintained above 90% while producing clean coal products with ash and total sulfur content as low as 5.85 and 2.68%, respectively. Organic efficiency values were consistently about 95% and probable error values were in the range of 0.03 to 0.05, which indicates the ability to provide a separation performance equivalent to or better than traditional coal cleaning technologies.
Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in Turkey : Evidence from the Past Two Decades

This paper employs an autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model to measure inflation variability and to test the relationship between the level and variability of the inflation rate. We use the monthly wholesale price series between 1982:10 and 1999:12. The test results indicate that inflation and its variability has a significant positive correlation. The current study provides further evidence in support of the Friedman (1977) hypothesis that high inflation also leads to more variable inflation. * Assistant Professor, Bilkent University, 06533 Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey. 2 e-mail: neyapti@bilkent.edu. tr
Examining the Effectiveness of Home-Based Pelvic Floor Muscle Training in Treating Sexual Dysfunction in Women

Background: Sexual dysfunction is a common problem among women during their reproductive period and can decrease the quality of women’s social lives, as well as their overall quality of life. Aim: The purpose of this paper was to determine the effects of pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) with home biofeedback therapy (HBT) on sexual life and quality of life in patients with sexual dysfunction. Methodology: The sample consisted of 36 patients who were randomized into a PFMT group (n=18) and a control group (n=18). The PFMT group was treated with HBT for 10 weeks, while the control group did not receive any treatment during this time. Frequency, percentages, mean, χ, Wilcoxon rank, and Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze. Results: There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of age, education, employment status, level of income, number of pregnancies, births, mode of delivery, and health problems. The average age of women was 34±3 years old in the biofeedback group and 35±2 years old in the control group. Sexual dysfunction, quality of life and pelvic floor muscle strength improved significantly in women who received the HBT compared to the controls. Conclusions: PFMT with HBT is an effective treatment for improving sexual dysfunction in women. HBT increases pelvic floor muscle strength, which leads to significant improvement in women’s sexual function and quality of life.
General Education Teachers’ Perceived Self-Efficacy in Teaching Students with Disabilities in Oman

The objective of this study was to determine general education teachers’ level of self-efficacy in teaching inclusive classrooms and to investigate whether general education teachers’ level of self-efficacy vary according to the domain of knowledge and skills. In addition, the current study examined the relationship between teachers’ gender, school level taught, teaching experience and their self-efficacy. Finally, this study explored the relationship between general education teachers’ self-efficacy and their attitudes toward inclusion. Seven hundred three general education teachers participated in this study. The mean scores of the teachers on the self-efficacy domains suggest that they had high levels of perceived self-efficacy in classroom management, moderate levels in collaboration and assessment, and low levels in special education. The findings also indicated that the perception of general education teachers as to their level of self-efficacy varied significantly according the domain of knowledge and skills. The findings also revealed that male teachers reported significantly higher levels of self-efficacy than female teachers. Moreover, the findings indicate that teachers’ teaching experience and school level taught had a significant relationship with their self-efficacies in some of the domains. Finally, the results showed significant positive correlations between teacher’s self-efficacy and their attitudes towards inclusion.
CONSTRAINED POLE OPTIMIZATION FOR MODAL REVERBERATION

The problem of designing a modal reverberator to match a measured room impulse response is considered. The modal reverberator architecture expresses a room impulse response as a parallel combination of resonant filters, with the pole locations determined by the room resonances and decay rates, and the zeros by the source and listener positions. Our method first estimates the pole positions in a frequency-domain process involving a series of constrained pole position optimizations in overlapping frequency bands. With the pole locations in hand, the zeros are fit to the measured impulse response using least squares. Example optimizations for a mediumsized room show a good match between the measured and modeled room responses.
Genetic studies of variability , character association and path analysis of yield and its component traits in potato ( Solanum tuberosum L . )

Potato is one of fourth largest and versatile non-cereal food crop in the world. Considering the importance of potato the present investigation was taken up at the Instructional Farm BCKV, Nadia, West Bengal during 2012-2013 for 16 characters of 23 potato genotypes. Genotype G-4 was found to be tallest of growth which also shown good per-se performance with respect to leaf length, steam girth, lateral leaflet length and terminal leaflet breadth. The genotypes J-99/243, MS-1/4053, K. Khyati and K. Bahar were promising with respect to total production of tubers of which MS-1/4053, also accompanied by a number of superior yield related characters like highest plant height, steam girth and weight of tubers plant-1 and these line can be used in breeding program with other high yielding genotypes to increase productivity. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance was recorded in tuber breadth and tuber number. Number of tubers plot-1 and plant height showed positive correlations with maximum direct effect on yield and these characters can be considered for selection of high yielding genotypes on the basis of their phenotypic data because these character were least influenced by environment.
INFLUENCING SELF-EFFICACY LEVELS BY ALEXANDRIA SCOTT MOXLEY Honors Thesis Appalachian State University Submitted to the College of Business In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration

The goal of this study was to analyze how priming individuals would affect general self-efficacy levels. The sample consisted of 209 undergraduate students from Appalachian State University who completed the New General Self-Efficacy scale. The subjects received one of four prompts that either implicitly or explicitly primed them to think of themselves as leaders or experience stereotype threat with respect to gender and self-efficacy. Overall, our participants all reported very high self-efficacy levels with little variance in the scores. Results indicated that females did not experience stereotype threat when explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine. Males who were explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine did not report higher self-efficacy than those who were implicitly primed. Males did not report higher self-efficacy than females. Females who were explicitly primed to think of themselves as leaders did not report higher self-efficacy than those explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine. Participants who had held a leadership position did report higher self-efficacy than those who had not. Further research should be conducted in this area to determine if other types of priming may influence self-efficacy levels.
Reconstruction of BSDF based on optimization of microrelief normal distribution

24–28 сентября 2017, Пермь, Россия 37 Reconstruction of BSDF based on optimization of microrelief normal distribution V.G. Sokolov, D.D. Zhdanov, I.S. Potemin, N.N. Bogdanov, A.D. Zhdanov, E.U. Denisov sokolovv1969@gmail.com|ddzhdanov@mail.ru|ipotemin@yandex.ru| nnbogdanov@corp.ifmo. ru|adzhdanov@corp.ifmo. ru 1 The Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics RAS, Moscow, Russia; 2 ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Empirical analysis of performance of CDM projects : case study China

5% of the Chinese CDM projects registered until end of June 2007 (4 projects) and 10% of the projects that had been submitted for public comments before June 2006, but not been submitted for registration by June 2007 (2 projects) are evaluated in terms of the barriers they face, lead times and expected CER generation, additionality argumentation, stakeholder participation and sustainability benefits. Small-scale CDM projects in China might be facing more technological and financial barriers than large ones. The amount of CERs forecasted changes as projects progress from validation to registration and issuance, due to new standardised baseline information published by China’s DNA and to barriers related to the new technologies. Overperformance of some projects could be caused by underestimation of the plant load factor in the PDDs. Delays in the expected start of the crediting period are also observed, caused by delays in the DNA approval, the CDM registration, the acquisition of governmental permits, the use of new baseline and monitoring methodologies, or difficulties in achieving financial closure. All projects in the sample follow the Tool for the demonstration and assessment of additionality. They all argue having investment barriers, but only half perform a complete investment analysis. Other barriers mentioned are technological, unsuitable infrastructure, organisational and prevailing practice. Both projects lagging in the validation step lack independent sources of information, sufficiently objective barrier analysis and detailed common practice analysis in their additionality argumentation. China has no specific procedure for CDM stakeholder participation, but the method most frequently used appears to be the written survey, followed by the public meeting. Several of the projects do not provide sufficient information on the consultation methods. In none of the projects the contributions to sustainable development are described quantitatively. Possible negative environmental impacts are a matter of concern for stakeholders in most projects, but are addressed by developers. The expectation most commonly expressed by stakeholders is the creation of local employment, which is also the sustainability benefit most commonly offered by CDM projects. 1 Miriam Schröder, from Potsdam University, contributed to the report by undertaking preliminary research on the case studies.
THE EFFECT OF COMPUTER SIMULATIONS ON THE PROCESS OF STUDENTS PERFORMING DC CIRCUIT ANALYSIS EXPERIMENTS

This study aimed to examine the effect of computer simulations on the process of students performing dc circuit analyses experiments. The participants in the research were 24 pre-service teachers enrolled in a state university Department of Physics Education. The research recruited a study group and a control group; data were collected with an "Experimental Procedure Observation Rubric" developed by the researchers. The rubric consists of eight sub dimensions named as “Setting up the experiment”, “Suitability of the experiment setup”, “Connecting the power source”, “Connecting the measurement instruments”, “Using the measurement instruments”, “Performing the experiment”, “Data collection and interpretation”, “Completing the experiment in the time allotted”. Rubric for each student was scored by two different researchers during the experiment. The consistency between the scores was then examined by the Cohen’s Kappa test. The Kappa test result showed a statistically significant and high level of compliance between the scores of the researchers. The results of the analysis of the data obtained determined that when experiments were supported with simulations, this had a positive effect on the experimental procedure. The analysis of the scores obtained in the sub-scales of the data collection instrument showed that there was a significant difference in favor of the study group in the scores recorded in the domains of "Setting up the experiment," "Suitability of the experiment setup," "Connecting the measurement instruments," "Data collection and * Öğr. Gör. Dr., Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Buca Eğitim Fakültesi Fizik Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı, E-posta: fatih.onder@deu.edu. tr ** Doç. Dr., Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Buca Eğitim Fakültesi Bilgisayar ve Öğretim Teknolojileri Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı, E-posta: zafer.tanel@deu.edu. tr 1088 Fatih ÖNDER Zafer TANEL Turkish Studies Volume 13/27, Fall 2018 interpretation," and "Completing the experiment in the time allotted. " There was no significant difference between the other dimensions of rubric.
Awareness and Accessibility of Existing Tertiary Eye Care Facility by Rural Dwellers of Aramoko Community

Availability and accessibility of eye care facility are important at all levels of eye care in order to eliminate avoidable blindness. Purpose: This study was to assess the awareness and accessibility of the existing eye care facility by the rural dwellers of Aramoko community. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross sectional community based survey was carried out among all individuals aged 5 years and above who presented with eye complaints during a sponsored eye camp in the locality. Using a pre-designed and pre-tested interview schedule the following information, demographic characteristics, awareness and accessibility of the eye care facility at the state capital was obtained. Ocular examination was done and diagnosis made. Data obtained were recorded and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. Results: A total of 127 participants were screened: 54 (42.5%) males and 73 (57.5%) females with a male to female ratio of 1:1.4. The awareness level of the existing eye care facility was 78 (61.4%); 53.8% among participants >50 years and 46.2% among those <50 years. Of the 78 (61.4%) that were aware 14 (17.9%) had access to the existing facility despite having eye complaints. There was strong correlation between gender and access to eye care facility (ANOVA F=8.817, p=0.004). Refractive error 71(55.9%) topped the list of diagnosis. Conclusion: Despite high level of awareness of this existing eye care facility there was low accessibility to the facility with indicators of inadequate and insufficient eye care services.
HIGH STRAIN RATE SENSITIVITY OF GLASS / EPOXY / CLAY NANOCOMPOSITES

In general, composite materials are rate sensitive to their mechanical properties. In order to determine these properties, dynamic tensile tests are performed on drop mass test setup, which provides mechanical data at strain rates up to 1000 s -1 , filling the gap between conventional low speed instruments and split Hopkinson bar tests. The present research work is to study the effect of strain rate on the tensile behavior of glass/epoxy and its clay nanocomposites. The clay in terms of 1.5, 3 and 5 wt% are dispersed in the epoxy resin using mechanical stirrer followed by sonication process and glass/epoxy nanocomposites are prepared by hand layup technique followed by compression molding technique. Characterization of the nanoclay is performed using X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique is used for full field measurement of strain and strain rate using high speed camera. An array of 128 X 128 pixels is used to achieve 100,000 frames per second for obtaining dynamic strain. Stress strain measurements are reported for glass/epoxy and its clay nanocomposites over a range of strain rates from 0.0016 to 450 s -1 and the variation of tensile modulus, strength and failure strain with strain rate are studied. The tensile modulus (18 GPa) and tensile strength (315 MPa) increase significantly up to 106% (37 GPa) and 67% (526 MPa), respectively at the highest strain rate for neat glass/epoxy composite. It is observed that the tensile modulus increases monotonically as the clay loading increases and 1.5 wt% clay loading found as optimal loading for tensile strength.
EFFECT OF SIZE AND HEIGHT OF FRUIT WITHIN THE TREE ON CONTENT OF OIL IN HASS AND FUERTE AVOCADOS (Persea americana Mill.)

En el presente ensayo, se determinó el efecto de la altura y el calibre de la fruta sobre la madurez. Para esto se cosecharon cada 14 días frutos cvs. Hass y Fuerte, de calibre “grande” (220 g) y calibre “pequeño” (promedio 140 g) en 2 alturas dentro del árbol, bajo 2 m y sobre 3 m. Los períodos de muestreo fueron desde el 19 de julio hasta el 8 de noviembre del 2005 para el cv. Hass y desde el 14 de junio hasta el 4 de octubre del 2005 para el cv. Fuerte. En cada fecha de muestreo fueron evaluados los parámetros peso fresco, diámetro ecuatorial, contenido de humedad y contenido de aceite. En el cv. Fuerte el calibre tiene relación con la madurez, frutos más grandes poseen más contenido de aceite, no así para el cv. Hass. No hubo efecto de la altura (p≤0,05) sobre la madurez, en ambos cultivares. El diámetro ecuatorial está muy relacionado con el peso, no así con el porcentaje de aceite, en los cvs. Hass y Fuerte.
ACEI working paper series LOCAL GOVERNMENT ALLOCATION OF CULTURAL SERVICES

In the present paper we analyse the allocation process of cultural services in Norwegian municipalities. The cultural sector on this administrative level is decomposed into the following eight subcategories: children and youth activities, libraries, cinemas, museums, arts dissemination, sports, cultural schools, and other cultural services. By means of budget shares for these eight cultural services and a residual sector consisting of all other municipal services, we estimate a system of demand relations which are interdependently linked to each other by a budget restriction. Our analyses are based on data from 406 out of 429 Norwegian municipalities during the period 2002 to 2010. In the empirical analyses we mainly focus on the effects of income variation for the cultural services. We estimate effects of free income, matching grants to each sector, and user fees and other sector-specific income for each sector. We also estimate crowding-out effects for the cultural sectors of demographic variables indicating higher demand for services like education, child care, and health services. Our results confirm previous results. There are interesting differences within the group of cultural services, and these are partly related to different national standardization and regulation among the cultural services. In the concluding section we discuss some cultural policy implications of the results obtained. * e-mail: lars.hakonsen@hit.no ** e-mail: loyland@tmforsk.no Vidar Ringstad, Luis César Herrero and participants at the IV Workshop on Cultural Economics and Management in Bilbao, 2012, are gratefully acknowledged for comments and suggestions for improvements on an earlier version of this paper. Any remaining errors are our own.
Signs , symptoms and vocal function in individuals with dysphagia treated for head and neck cancer

Objetivos: Avaliar a presença de sinais e sintomas vocais e função vocal em indivíduos com disfagia, tratados de câncer de cabeça e pescoço – CCP e identificar os valores de corte dos respectivos instrumentos. Métodos: Estudo prospectivo com 96 indivíduos (68 homens e 28 mulheres), divididos em grupo experimental – GE (pacientes tratados de CCP com disfagia, independente de queixa vocal) e grupo controle – GC (sem queixas autorrelatadas de voz e deglutição, pareados em média de idade e sexo com GE), que responderam a um questionário com dados de identificação e caracterização da amostra, Lista de Sinais e Sintomas Vocais – LSS, e dois protocolos de avaliação vocal (Índice de Função Glótica – IFG e Escala de Sintomas Vocais – ESV). Por fim, as notas de corte dos protocolos foram identificadas por meio da curva ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic). Resultados: Indivíduos do GE apresentaram mais sinais e sintomas vocais e maiores escores no IFG e ESV que os indivíduos do GC, além de pior autoavaliação vocal. Os três instrumentos apresentaram máxima área sob a curva ROC, com valores de corte ESV=17, IFG=4 e LSS=6 pontos. Conclusão: Indivíduos tratados de CCP com disfagia apresentam mais sinais e sintomas vocais, pior autopercepção da disfunção vocal e maior prejuízo nos aspectos de limitação, emocional e físico da voz, que indivíduos vocalmente saudáveis. Os três instrumentos evidenciaram sensibilidade e especificidade máximas, podendo ser utilizados como ferramentas de triagem.
Compute Faster and Learn Better: Model-based Nonconvex Optimization for Machine Learning

Nonconvex optimization naturally arises in many machine learning problems. Machine learning researchers exploit various nonconvex formulations to gainmodeling flexibility, estimation robustness, adaptivity, and computational scalability. Although classical computational complexity theory has shown that solving nonconvex optimization is generally NP-hard in the worst case, practitioners have proposed numerous heuristic optimization algorithms, which achieve outstanding empirical performance in real-world applications. To bridge this gap between practice and theory, we propose a new generation of model-based optimization algorithms and theory, which incorporate the statistical thinking into modern optimization. Particularly, when designing practical computational algorithms, we take the underlying statistical models into consideration. Our novel algorithms exploit hidden geometric structures behind many nonconvex optimization problems, and can obtain global optima with the desired statistics properties in polynomial time with high probability.