Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supporting the success of an information systems project : viewpoints on education and replacement of the project manager

Pirhonen, Maritta Supporting the Success of an Information Systems Project Viewpoints on Education and Replacement of the Project Manager Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2013, 66 p. (+ included articles) (Jyvaskyla Studies in Computing, ISSN 1456-5390; 172) ISBN 978-951-39-5474-1 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-5475-8 (PDF) Finnish summary Diss. Information systems (IS) have enormous economic influence to organizations' performance. The studies of IS project success or failure suggest that many projects still fail. The objective of this dissertation is to discover how IS projects can be supported to attain success. The research area is studied from the viewpoints of education and replacement of the project management. First, academic project management education as a means to provide students with skills and competence needed in successful project management is studied. Then, the reasons for replacement of the project manager (RPM) during an IS project and its effects on project success are examined. Finally, suitable theories for studying the RPM phenomenon are explored. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are employed. The findings show that academic project management education using the project based learning model by utilizing real-world tasks enables students to practice the soft skills and competences needed in project management. In addition, the results indicate that there are a number of reasons that cause RPM: a project manager s personal life situation becomes inconsistent with the project, inadequate competence of the project manager, the client demands a replacement or the project manager is needed in another project inside the organization. RPM affects project management success, the project s schedule and cost, communications, team spirit and personal chemistry. Finally, the results suggest that Alter s Work System Theory, Engestrom s Activity Theory (AT) and Gregor’s theories seem to be suitable for studying the phenomena. This study offers recommendations for designing academic project management studies. In addition, contradictions that explain RPM emphasize the importance of handling the RPM situation in a controlled way.
A laboratory study of frazil evolution in a counter-rotating flume

A series of experiments was carried out using a counter-rotating flume that is housed in a computer-controlled cold room. A digital image process system (DIPS) was used to observe frazil ice processes. In particular, the effects of air temperature and flow velocity on the supercooling and frazil ice processes were examined. The super cooling process was found to be strongly related to air temperature and water depth, but only weakly related to water velocity. The water velocity has a strong influence on frazil evolution, frazil size, and number of the particles, however. The measured frazil size distribution by volume was found to be reasonably well approximated by a log-normal distribution. Frazil growth continues in number and size during supercooling and appears to reach a stable state at the end of the principal period of supercooling. All characteristic parameters of the supercooling processes and frazil size distribution were found to be related to the Reynolds number, an index of the intensity of f.
Analysis of deteriorative changes in seeds of cultivated rice under ambient storage condition

Seed deterioration is a serious problem where seeds are usually stored without adequate humidity and temperature control. In the present study storage potential of four different types of cultivated rice varieties viz Mahsuri (HYV), Bokul Bora (Local glutinous rice), Kola Joha (Local aromatic rice) and Ronga Sali (Local pigmented rice) has been evaluated under ambient storage condition based on different physiological and biochemical parameters. Effect of packaging material on the storability of the rice seeds was evaluated using three different types of packaging materials viz. Cloth bag, HDPE interwoven bag and HDPE bag (600gauges). The highest seed viability was maintained by seeds stored in HDPE Interwoven bag (100%) by Ronga Sali followed by Bakul Bora (98.22%), Mahshuri (96.55%) and Kon Joha (97.89%) and followed by HDPE bag. Among the tested varieties Kola Johaan aromatic variety is found to be most sensitive and prone to deterioration. The estimated biochemical parameters indicate gradual changes in all the tested varieties with increase in storage period. Seeds stored in HDPE Interwoven bags had the highest mean α-amylase activity (0.390μg) followed by the seeds stored in HDPE bags (0.362μg) and Cloth bags (0.352μg). Bokul Bora exhibited highest alpha amylase activity after storage of ten months and lowest was observed in Kola Joha indicating higher storage potential of the glutinous variety which is also assayed in the germination percentage and other vigour parameters. Variation in MDA content in tested rice varieties throughout the storage period indicates possibility of genetic factors associated with storability of different types of rice cultivars.
Properties of concrete made with crushed concrete as coarse aggregate

Synopsis Effects of using recycled concrete of different qualities as coarse aggregate upon the strength and deformation of concrete are reported. Tests on the aggregates showed that the recycled concrete aggregates have lower specific gravity and higher absorption capacity than the original crushed granite aggregate. The resistance to mechanical actions such as impact, crushing and abrasion for the recycled concrete aggregates is also lower. The effects of using recycled concrete aggregates instead of natural aggregates in concrete are: reduction in compressive strength up to 25%; reduction in modulus of elasticity up to 30%; improvement in damping capacity up to 30%; and higher amounts of drying shrinkage and creep. Available methods of predicting the modulus of elasticity on the basis of compressive strength for conventional concrete overestimate the modulus of elasticity for recycled-aggregate concretes.
Factors Influencing Job Satisfaction of Technical Personnel in the U.S., Singapore, and India

ABSTRACTThe projected job growth rate for technical personnel such as computer programmers, drafters, engineering technicians, and science technicians is expected to grow at an average of 25% per year. Improving the job satisfaction of employees becomes critical as these technical personnel begin to be considered the elite workers who provide the competitive edge. This research investigates the factors that affect job satisfaction of technical employees in three countries. The results show that only two factors, job characteristics and organizational progressiveness, influenced job satisfaction in all the three countries. Thus multi-national corporations need to enrich the employees' jobs and position their organizations progressively if they want their employees to be satisfied. Also U.S. technical personnel perceived that they needed to become managers to attain better job status and pay; this perception was not supported by counterparts in Singapore and India. This result indicates that it is important.
Modelling maintenance effects on manufacturing equipment performance: results from simulation analysis

Equipment maintenance and system reliability are important factors affecting the organisation’s ability to provide quality and timely services to customer. While maintenance remains an important function to manufacturing, it is only recently that attempts have been made to quantify its impact on equipment performance. In this research, an approach of linking maintenance with equipment performance is developed using simulation modelling. The modelling approach involves defining probabilistic models and assumptions affecting system performance, such as: the probabilistic model for the initial failure rate/intensity of the equipment; the probabilistic model for the system deterioration and corresponding effect; the probabilistic model for the random times of corrective maintenance (CM) and preventive maintenance (PM) that takes into the account the types of maintenance plans/policies and the potential dependency between CM and PM times; and the probabilistic model for the random effects of CM and PM on the reliability of the equipment. Using a continuous manufacturing equipment, the model is used to analyse the impact of deterioration, failures and maintenance (policies, timing and efficiency) on equipment performance. It is shown that modelling the effect maintenance provides a basis of evaluating maintenance efforts with the potential application in performance evaluation and decision support while investigating opportunities for manufacturing equipment performance improvement.
Use of high throughput amplicon sequencing and ethidium monoazide dye to track microbiota changes in an equol-producing menopausal woman receiving a long-term isoflavones treatment

This work describes the impact of long term consumption of an isoflavone-rich dietary daily supplement on the composition and diversity of the faecal microbiota of a menopausal, equol-producing woman. Sequencing of 16S rDNA amplicons was performed on faecal samples taken at 0, 1, 3 and 6 months of treatment. Additionally, and for comparative purposes, ethidium monoazide (EMA) was used to avoid detection of DNA from dead bacteria. Members of two genera of the family Coriobacteriaceae (Eggerthella and Collinsella) were found in greater proportions at all sampling points during isoflavone supplementation. Different genera of the family Ruminococcaceae (e.g., Ruminococcus and Faecalibacterium), as well as members of the family Lachnospiraceae (Coprococcus) also underwent significant increases. For this last genus a positive correlation with the levels of equol excretion in urine was found. Currently bacterial strains known to be involved in isoflavone metabolism and equol production have been assigned to these taxa. The use of EMA dye allowed us to unravel those bacterial gut linages (e.g., Lachnospiraceae) that were more susceptible to damage. Our study contributes to the identification of microorganisms possibly involved in the production of isoflavone-desirable metabolites (such as equol), which could ultimately be isolated and further used as probiotics by people who cannot naturally benefit from isoflavones.
Automatic Pavement-Distress-Survey System

An automatic pavement-distress-survey system that uses laser, video, and image processing techniques has recently been developed. This system consists of a survey vehicle and a data-processing system. The survey vehicle can measure cracking, rutting, and longitudinal profile simultaneously, without contact, rapidly and accurately. The data-processing system can convert the measured data automatically into formats that can be used in the pavement data bank. As for cracking, cracks over 1 mm wide can be measured, and it is easy to output the various parameters calculated from length, width, direction, position and number of cracks. The cracking processor uses a unique line-finding algorithm that can extract a crack in a noisy road image by analysis of projection curves. This algorithm is implemented in special-purpose high-speed hardware. In this hardware, up to 512 32-bit microprocessors execute in parallel. This system allows automatic crack recognition that has conventionally only been performed by humans.
Agronomic performance of lettuce cultivars in different seasons and shading conditions

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the agronomic performance of nine lettuce cultivars (Gloriosa, Pira Verde, Stella, Ceres, Grandes Lagos, Rubinella, Crocantela, Elisa and Vera), in three seasons (autumn-winter, spring and summer) and evaluate the effect of shade netting in spring and summer. Ten experiments were carried out, using the soilless cultivation systems in a sheltered environment. The experimental design was completely randomized, six benches were used in the autumn-winter season and four in both spring and summer, with 44 pots per bench. Lettuce seedlings were transplanted into 3-liter pots filled with sand. During the spring and summer seasons experiments were conducted with and without a 18% black shade netting placed 1.5 m above the plants. Nutritional supply was provided by nutrient solution recirculating in an automatically operated irrigation system. The evaluated traits were as follows: number of leaves, fresh and dry leaf matter, stem length, stem diameter, fresh and dry stem matter, fresh and dry shoot matter, root length and fresh and dry root matter. The cultivars Gloriosa (in autumn-winter), Grandes Lagos and Gloriosa (in the spring) and Crocantela and Vera (in the summer), presented greater matter yield and are deemed the most suitable for cultivation in these seasons. The use of a shade netting within the sheltered environment did not improve the performance of the cultivars and its use is not necessary in the spring and summer.
Paradigms and Research Programmes

This chapter studies paradigms and research programmes. A paradigm consists of a set of understandings of a scientific community during a historical period. At the most fundamental level, paradigms employ ontological assumptions. This means that the scientific community agrees on which things and phenomena exist and are meaningful for scientific inquiry. These assumptions determine the type of scientific investigations that are deemed worth pursuing. In addition, scientists inside a paradigm share a common methodological understanding of how to do science. Against the background of these broad and general understandings, scientists inside a paradigm formulate theories and carry out empirical research. Imre Lakatos developed the concept of ‘research programmes’ as an alternative to ‘paradigms’.
Evaluating and Comparing the Physical Properties of Spliced Yarns by Regression and Neural Network Techniques

Different spliced yam properties (strength, bending, abrasion, and appearance) are merged into a single score, also known as the total score, which is then used to analyze the overall performance of the yarns. A regression model and neural network model are set up according to the total score to predict the performance of the spliced yams, and the two analysis techniques are compared. According to the analytical results. the neural network model gives a more accurate prediction than the regression model.
Flatness-based Control of Torsional-Axial Coupled Drilling Vibrations

The main purpose of this contribution is the control of both torsional and axial vibrations occurring along a rotary oil well drilling system. The considered model consists of a system of wave equations with non-linear coupled boundary conditions. We propose a flatness-based control approach to tackle the trajectory tracking problem guaranteeing the suppression of harmful dynamics. The closed loop control design ensures the stability of the error dynamics. Moreover, numerical simulations illustrate the efficiency of the established control laws.
Influence of Traffic Loading on the Seismic Reliability Assessment of Highway Bridge Structures

Traditionally, the impacts of traffic and earthquake loading have been considered independently when assessing bridge reliability. This paper presents a framework for joint seismic and live-load fragility assessment of highway bridges. Full probabilistic analyses accounting for variation in bridge parameters, ground motion, and truck load and position are proposed to develop bridge system fragility curves and to identify the critical truck position that renders the bridge most vulnerable to earthquakes. A fragility surface is derived for the critical truck position at which the failure probability is conditioned on the governing vehicle weight in addition to ground motion intensity, thus depicting the impact of truck load on bridge seismic fragility. This fragility surface is convolved with the governing vehicle weight distribution (obtained from weigh-in-motion data) and probability of truck occurrence (function of truck flow rate) to determine traffic-informed conditional seismic reliability estimates. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on a case study of a multispan continuous steel girder bridge in the central and southeastern United States. The framework can find ready extensions to assess the joint impact of earthquake and live loads for other bridges and hazard conditions and can offer a basis for deriving reliability-based load combinations consistent with emerging trends in bridge design.
Smart energy management for off-grid hybrid sites in telecoms

Hybrid power infrastructure is often viewed as an alternative system configuration for off-grid telecom base stations. These systems are used to reduce the fuel consumption of diesel generator sites and often rely on wind or solar to supplement some of the power to the load. The ability of a site to use the renewable energy efficiently becomes more critical on sites where the quality of the wind or solar resource is poor or highly variable. The long term and short term effects of wind and solar power contributions to the system are demonstrated using historical wind speed/solar irradiation data over a 3 year period. A feasible approach is proposed to improve the efficiency of the system by analysing the rate of change of the renewable energy source(s). Using several successive measurements, the battery charging system can be restrained temporarily to allow for the initial stages of diurnal weather patterns. These patterns may later negate the need for the charging cycle which can result in wasted power should a renewable power source increase its power output during a generator charging cycle.
Simulation of precipitation on centrifuge models of slopes

This paper discusses methods for realistic simulation of slope failure owing to heavy precipitation in a centrifuge. A rain simulator was developed to provide precipitation that satisfies the conditions in a centrifuge so that the impact pressure on the ground surface in the centrifuge (pm) was reduced to the same level in the prototype (pp). Pneumatic spray nozzles, producing fine droplets with a mean diameter of 20 µm, yield large precipitation intensity of 1500 mm/h on the model at 50g. Accordingly, the model precipitation intensity (rm) was provided by n times the corresponding prototype precipitation intensity (rp). Several sets of centrifuge tests were conducted to observe the progress of failure in the shallow section of the slope. Heavy precipitation induces an increase in the saturation of the soil from the surface. Flow failure was observed repeatedly in the shallow section through progress of the wetting front. In addition, experiments using different viscosity used in the liquid for precipitat.
Comparative study of Bacillus clausii and multistrain probiotics in the management of acute diarrhoea in children

Background: Diarrhoea is the second most common cause of under-five mortality especially in developing world. Many studies have been conducted so far using different probiotic strains with variable outcome. So, the aim of the present study was to compare the clinical efficacy of Bacillus clausii and multi strain probiotic formulation as adjunct treatment of acute diarrhoea.Methods: This prospective single blind randomized controlled clinical trial included 300 infants and children between 6 months to 6 years of age admitted in a tertiary care hospital Sylhet, Bangladesh with acute watery diarrhoea having varied dehydration status ranging from no to severe dehydration excluding shocked state. Cases were randomly assigned to three groups which were group I (n=100) comprised of children who were treated with standard treatment (according to WHO guideline) only as control group, group II (n=100) who received standard treatment plus Bacillus clausii and group III (n=100) who received standard treatment plus multi strain probiotic formulation (Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Bifidobacterium breve, Bifidobacterium infantis, Streptococcus thermophilus). Primary outcome variables were duration, frequency of diarrhoea and consistency of stool. Secondary outcome variable was duration of hospital stay.Results: Mean duration of diarrhoea was significantly shorter (p=0.001) in group III (2.62 days) compared to group I (3.26 days) and group II (3.22 days). Frequency of diarrhoea was significantly lower on day 3 of probiotic administration in group III (p <0.05) and on day 5 of treatment in group II (p <0.05). Stool consistency significantly improved on day 3 in group III (p <0.05) while it was on day 4 in group II. The duration of diarrhoea, hospital stay, stool consistency and frequency of stool on day 3 were not statistically significant (p >0.05) in group II in comparison to group I and group III.Conclusions: Multistrain probiotic formulation is effective in reducing the duration, frequency of diarrhoea and duration of hospital stay.
Input–Output Finite-Time Stabilization of T–S Fuzzy Systems Through Quantized Control Strategy

The issues of input–output finite-time stability and stabilization of Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy systems with time-varying state delay and exogenous input signal are studied in this article. For the stabilization process, a controller that does not share the same membership functions as the system is considered and the state feedback is quantized by using a logarithmic quantizer. The desired stability criterion for the addressed fuzzy system is first derived without the control term. It is then extended to the case in which the proposed controller is present. The stability criteria are given in the form of matrix inequalities, which are supported by the augmented Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional, generalized free-weighting-matrix approach and Finsler’s lemma. Moreover, as a special case, an asymptotic stability criterion is obtained and used in a comparative study. As a result, the time-delay interval is much larger than some of the works published very recently, which is due to the augmented Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional construction. In addition, the effectiveness and practicability of the theoretical findings are validated with simulation examples.
Determining the Isotopic Composition of Surface Water Vapor Flux From High-Frequency Observations Using Flux-Gradient and the Keeling Methods

The isotopic composition of surface water vapor flux (δ) is a quantity frequently used to investigate the local and regional water cycle. In this study, the δ determined with the Keeling method was evaluated against the flux-gradient method and the Craig-Gordon model prediction. Previous studies have shown that the choice of regression fitting methods can bias the δ intercept results and precision of the Keeling method. Here, the Keeling method was applied to high-frequency (0.2 to 1 Hz) data measured at a cropland and a lake site to test different regression methods. Results show that the Keeling method with the York’s solution (YS) and the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression produced robust estimates of δ when compared with the flux-gradient method. Increasing concentration range reduced the standard error of estimate but did not bring obvious improvement to the bias error for the YS and OLS regression. The Keeling result was better using data from two sampling heights than only one. There was evidence that the Keeling method with the OLS regression slightly outperformed the flux-gradient method during periods with small vertical vapor gradient. Results also show that the Keeling method with the geometric mean regression gave highly biased estimate of δ for the types of isotope ratio infrared spectroscopy analyzer deployed in this study. These results can inform δ calculations and future experimental designs. Hosted file yongbo_hu_ess_supplementary. docx available at https://authorea.com/users/530103/articles/ 597281-determining-the-isotopic-composition-of-surface-water-vapor-flux-from-highfrequency-observations-using-flux-gradient-and-the-keeling-methods