Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acoustic design of open-plan offices

The acoustic conditions in open-plan offices were investigated in a Nordic cooperation project. Measurements were carried out in five open-plan offices along with a questionnaire to gather the staff’s subjective judgments.A programme for the acoustic measurements was drawn up, specifying how to perform the measurements and which type of parameters to measure.The acoustic parameters included are Reverberation time T20, Early decay time (EDT), Clarity (C50), Speech transmission index (STI), Speech intelligibility index (SII), Privacy index (PI), Rate of spatial decay of sound pressure levels per distance doubling (DL2 ), Excess of sound pressure level with respect to a reference curve (DLf), and background noise levels in occupied and unoccupied offices.A refurbishment programme was carried out in two of the offices. Measurements were performed after refurbishment and a questionnaire was completed. It is concluded that parameters relating to sound propagation, such as DL2 and DLf, are appropriate for the acoustic evaluation of open-plan spaces.A refurbishment programme was carried out in two open-plan offices. It has been shown that DL2 and DLf are sensitive to the acoustic treatment carried out and that they also reflect an improvement in the subjective judgment as regards the acoustic environment in general. Moreover, these parameters can be converted into a (comfort) radius indicating the distance for achievement of a certain reduction of the sound level from a sound source.This application could serve as a practical tool for the acoustic planning of open-plan offices.
Primary caregivers’s provision of a healthy diet in a resource constrained environment in South Africa.

Background: Primary caregivers are frequently hearing mixed messages about healthy eating therefore, making it essential for these caregivers to have a clear understanding of what healthy eating is. The lack of understanding of what constituents healthy and nutritionally dense eating has not been investigated in low income families South Africa. Methods: A qualitative, cross-sectional study involving 10 in-depth interviews. Participants were purposefully selected. Data was analyzed manually using the thematic framework analysis method. The data was analyzed by means of thematic framework analysis Results: Primary caregivers struggled to provide daily access to food for their children, and at times would turn to family and friends for assistance in meal provision either through actual food or short-term financial assistance. For caregivers, limited resources impacted the ability of being able to provide a healthy diet. However, it was indicated that while shopping, caregivers looked for foods that were stated to be healthy and low in fat as well as for vitamins. These items were only accessible if they were cheap. Unemployment of fathers as well as absent fathers placed a great burden on mothers and grandmothers in the study group as this meant they needed to provide the nutritional, financial, emotional and physical care of the family. Conclusion: Primary caregivers’ food choices were based on the availability of resources, the cost, as well as access to quality food in the surrounding areas. It was also limited to what they were able to carry. Based on the reflection of primary caregivers, it was indicated that the consumption of processed foods and refined carbohydrates was high, while that of fruits and vegetables was low. Primary caregivers wanted the opportunity to learn about what a healthy diet is and how to be able to provide one for their family with their limited financial resources.
Meta-Regression in Auditing Research: Evaluating the Evidence on the Big N Audit Firm Premium

SUMMARY: The issue of whether the Big N audit firms charge higher fees is one of the most extensively researched areas in the auditing literature. This issue is also important to regulators. This paper applies a new technique—meta-regression analysis—to extract generalizable results from the research examining the premium charged by the Big N audit firms. The method first allows us to examine whether publication bias explains the inconsistent results of previous research on this issue. We are then able to examine contextual differences across studies that can explain when a Big N premium may or may not arise. The findings show that a statistically significant publication bias is present in research about the Big N audit firm premium, and the premium is somewhat overstated. Although this is a concern, the extent of publication bias is not so strong as to eliminate evidence of a remaining premium. Breaking down the publication bias shows evidence consistent with researchers with Big N audit firm affiliation.
A Wind Tunnel Study of the Effects of Splitter Plate Position and Angle on the Lift-Drag Ratio of a Circulation Controlled Elliptical Airfoil

Abstract : Wind tunnel tests were conducted to determine the effects of splitter plate position and angle on the lift-to-drag ratio of a circulation controlled airfoil. The model was a 20 percent thick, five percent cambered elliptical airfoil, with a blowing slot for circulation control located at the 96 percent chord position on the upper surface. A splitter plate of 1.5-in. chord was mounted on the lower aft surface of the airfoil in five different test configurations. The tests were run at a constant Reynolds number, based on the model chord, of 770,000, while the angle of attack and the secondary blowing were varied at each test increment.
Experimental studies of the shear behavior of LiteSteel Beams

This paper presents the details of experimental studies on the shear behaviour of a recently developed, cold-formed steel beam known as LiteSteel Beam (LSB). The LSB section has a unique shape of a channel beam with two rectangular hollow flanges and is produced by a patented manufacturing process involving simultaneous cold-forming and dual electric resistance welding. To date, no research has been undertaken on the shear behaviour of LiteSteel beams with torsionally rigid, rectangular hollow flanges. In the present investigation, experimental studies involving more than 30 shear tests were carried out to investigate the shear behaviour of 13 different LSB sections. It was found that the current design rules in cold-formed steel structures design codes are very conservative for the shear design of LiteSteel beams. Significant improvements to web shear buckling occurred due to the presence of rectangular hollow flanges while considerable post-buckling strength was also observed. Experimental results are presented and compared with corresponding predictions from the current design codes in this paper. Appropriate improvements have been proposed for the shear strength of LSBs based on AS/NZS 4600 design equations.
Shopped : The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets

An elegant demolition of the supermarket miracle, this book charts the impact that supermarkets have had on every aspect of our lives and culture. Did you know. ; Almost 50% of supermarket fruit and vegetables contain pesticide residues? * UK supermarkets make 40p on every GBP1 spent on bananas while plantations workers are paid just 1p? * Supermarkets operate a climate of fear amongst their suppliers? * Every time a supermarket opens the local community loses on average 276 jobs? In the 1970s, British supermarkets had only 10% of the UK's grocery spend. Now they swallow up 80%, influencing how we shop, what we eat, how we spend our leisure time, how much rubbish we generate, even the very look of our physical environment. Award-winning food writer Joanna Blythman investigates the enormous impact that these big box retailers are having on our lives. She meets the farmers who are selling food to supermarkets for less than they need to survive, the wholesalers who have been eliminated from the supply chain, travels to suburban retail parks to meet the teenagers and part-timers who stack our shelves and reveals the hoops third world suppliers must jump through to earn supermarket contracts. This thought-provoking, witty and sometimes chilling voyage of discovery is sure to make you think twice before you reach for that supermarket trolley quite so enthusiastically ever again.
The official FA guide to basic team coaching

'The official guides to success on and off the pitch. ' This Official Football Association series provides invaluable and essential advice and information about key football skills for anyone involved in football, of any age and level. The books are especially aimed at those involved in grassroots football, who may not have the back up and help that they might need to realise the full potential of their involvement in the game. Each book in this series is packed with practical exercises and features, information and expert advice, which will improve your understanding and enhance your ability and enjoyment of the world's greatest game. A straightforward, lively and practical guide, this book covers the essential aspects of coaching including ethics and developing a code of conduct, team strategies, tactics, leadership and management. It looks at both attacking and defending squad practices, and has a chapter devoted to coaching goalkeepers. This book is essential reading for anyone involved in football - not just coaches and those interested in coaching, but players and parents also. 'Be a part of the game. '
Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division

EVENT AGENDA Time Session Title 0700-0800 Registration 0800 Welcome, NSTIC Agreements Officer – Ms. Proctor 0800-0830 Strategic Overview, NSWCDD Technical Director – Mr. Fiore 0830-0845 NSTIC Management Overview , NSTIC Executive Director Mr. Kearney 0845-0900 NSTIC OTA & TAM Introduction, NSWCDD NSTIC Portfolio Manager – Mr. Walsh 0900-0915 NETWORKING BREAK 0915-1145 Technology Area and Statement of Need Presentation 1145-1245 LUNCH 1245-1515 Technology Area and Statement of Need Presentation 1515-1530 NETWORKING BREAK 1530-1715 Technology Area and Statement of Need Presentation 1715 Closing Remarks
A Spectro-Temporal Framework for Compensation of Reverberation for Speech Recognition

The objective of this thesis is the development of signal processing and analysis techniques that would provide sharply improved speech recognition accuracy in highly reverberant environments. Speech is a natural medium of communication for humans, and in the last decade various speech technologies like automatic speech recognition (ASR), voice response systems etc. have considerably matured. The above systems rely on the clarity of the captured speech but many of the real-world environments include noise and reverberation that mitigate the system performance. The key focus of the thesis is on the robustness of ASR to reverberation. In our work, we first provide a new framework to adequately and efficiently represent the problem of reverberation in speech feature domains. Although our framework incurs modeling approximation errors, we believe that it provides a good basis for developing reverberation compensation algorithms. Based on our framework, we successfully develop a number of dereverberation algorithms. The algorithms reduce the uncertainly involved in dereverberation tasks by using speech knowledge in terms of cepstral auto-correlation, cepstral distribution, and, non-negativity and sparsity of spectral values. We demonstrate the success of our algorithms on clean-training as well as matched-training. Apart from dereverberation, we also provide an approach for noise robustness via a temporal-difference operation in the speech spectral domain. There, via a theoretical analysis, we predict an expected improvement in the SNR threshold shift for white-noise conditions. We also empirically quantify and study speech-feature level distortion with respect to speech-signal level additive noise. Finally, we provide a new framework for a joint reverberation and noise representation and compensation. The new framework generalizes the spectral domain reverberation framework by incorporating an additive noise term. Working under the new framework, we combine our dereverberation and noise compensation approaches for better dereverberation as well as for the most challenging speech recognition task that includes both noise and reverberation components.
From Battery Cages to Barns: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of a National Standard for Cage-Free Egg Production

Legislation concerning the well being of farm animals has become a major focus in the animal rights movement, especially as it pertains to intensive confinement systems, such as housing egg-laying hens in battery cages. Informational asymmetries in the market for eggs represent a market failure, as producers have few incentives to inform consumers on modern egg production methods, which they may perceive as cruel. This study uses cost-benefit analysis to examine the effects of a hypothetical U.S. ban on caged egg production to assess whether such a standard would produce use and non-use benefits in excess of producer and consumer costs. Newly available data on the value of human altruism towards layers is considered, in addition to changes to consumer and producer surplus, as well as producer transition costs. I find that $57 billion in benefits compared $38 billion in costs is realized as a result of a cage-free mandate. The findings, however, show that 95% of the benefits arise from the high values for altruism that are enjoyed by only a small portion of the U.S. population with very strong preferences for farm animal welfare. Further, higher egg prices may disproportionately affect the poor, as eggs are an inexpensive source of high-quality protein. In the short term, instead of outlawing battery cages, animal advocacy groups should focus on legislation mandating producers to label egg cartons with information on housing systems in order to better inform consumers on the matter and help narrow the wide gap in consumer preferences.
Approaches to Reducing the Temperature Sensitivity of Propulsion Systems for Artillery Ammunition.

Abstract : A number of approaches to reduce the temperature sensitivity of ADF gun ammunition across the operational range (-6 deg C to +63 deg C) have been reviewed and analysed. Increases in range of about 5% for Hamel are possible, and a solution would maintain compatibility with the existing gun system. While successful in rocket propellants, no chemical additives have been identified which give similar control of temperature sensitivity in gun propellants. LOVA ammunition appears to offer the best potential and has the added advantage of enhanced munition and platform survivability. Two changes involving gun design are at early stages of RD control tube primers and variable volume gun tube. Both should be monitored for future applicability, including fail-safe aspects.
Genetic Diversity and Epidemiology of Norovirus in Children with acute sporadic gastroenteritis in Shanghai, China, 2012-2017

Background Noroviruses are considered the important causes of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) across all age groups especially in children under five years. We investigated the prevalence and molecular epidemiology of norovirus in outpatient children from Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Methods A total of 1433 stool specimens were collected from children under ﬁve years with acute gastroenteritis between January 2012 and December 2017. All the samples were analyzed by conventional reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for genogroup II targeting both the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and partial capsid genes. Norovirus Genotyping Tool v.2. 0 (https://www.rivm.nl/mpf/typingtool/norovirus/) was used for genotyping strains, and phylogenetic analyses were conducted by MEGA 6.0. Results During 2012 to 2017, NoVs were detected in 15.4% (220/1433) of the samples, with high detection rate in children aged 7-12 months (19.2%, 143/746) and in September (27.7%, 33/119). Based on genetic analysis of RdRp, GII.Pe (74.5%%, 137/184) was the most predominating RdRp genotype from 2013 to 2017 while GII.P4 played a dominant role in 2012 (55.6%, 21/36). The most prevalent NoVs genotype was GII.4 (73.6%, 162/220) during 2012 to 2017 among the capsid genotypes. According to genetic analysis of RdRp and capsid sequences, the strains were clustered into 19 RdRp/capsid genotypes, and 12 of them were discordant RdRp and capsid genotypes, such as GII.Pe/GII.4-Sydney_2012, GII.P12/GII.3, GII.P7/GII.6, GII.Pe/GII.3, GII.P16/GII.2. GII.Pe/GII.4-Sydney_2012 was completely instead of the pandemic of GII.P4-2006b/GII.4-2006b since 2013 and distributed across all age groups in children. Conclusions The present study shows high detection rates and genetic diversity of circulating NoVs genotypes in paediatric AGE samples from Shanghai. The findings emphasize the importance of continuous molecular surveillance of emerging NoVs strains.
SAFETY AT RURAL THREE- AND FOUR-ARM JUNCTIONS. DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF ACCIDENT PREDICTION MODELS.

The purpose of the work was to study the safety of main road junctions with the help of accident prediction models. The districts of the Finnish Road Administration undertook an inventory of all at level junctions of major roads in the summer of 1988. The inventory included a total of 2,700 junctions. The number of police-reported accidents and of their victims in 1983-1987 were studied with accident prediction models as a commission from the Road Administration. The variation in the number of accidents was explained with traffic volumes and the variables collected in the junction inventory. Only the junctions with no major changes within the study period were included in the models. We made separate models for 915 three-arm and 847 four-arm junctions. The work was based on the theory of generalized linear models. The goal was to estimate in a reliable manner the expected value of the number of accidents. The actual number of accidents was assumed to vary around the expected values according to Poisson or negative binomial distributions. Separate models were made for injury accidents involving motor vehicles only, injury accidents involving unprotected road users, all injury accidents, the number of accident victims, single accidents, crossing accidents, turning accidents, and rear-end accidents. The most important variables were those describing the magnitude and distribution of motor vehicle volumes. The number of accidents and their victims were generally found to be proportional to the total number of vehicles passing through the junction. The risk of accidents seems to increase as the traffic share of the minor road increases. Several variables describing the road environment were also in the models. A new method for determining the soundness of accident prediction models was developed during the work. The method is based on estimating the amount of systematic variation in the accident data, i.e. the variation that can be explained, and separating from it the variation due to pure randomness. Accident models explained most of the systematic variation in the number of accidents. The systematic variation, however, generally accounts for just 30% of the total variation in the number of accidents. A method is described of obtaining a reliable estimate for the expected number of accidents at a single junction based on the accident models and the observed number of accidents in the past.
Artillery Meteorological Analysis of Project PASS.

Abstract : The Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory, US Army Electronics Command, conducted a comprehensive experiment in ballistic meteorology during November-December 1974 at White Sands Missile Range. The purpose was to determine what improvement might be made in the representativeness of meteorological messages furnished to artillery batteries by collecting all meteorological data available in a corps size area, performing a relatively simple analysis, and disseminating the results to the batteries. One thousand rounds of 8-inch howitzer ammunition were fired over a 5-week period with concurrent meteorological data taken at eight sites on the Missile Range. The most striking feature of the results is the relatively small deviation in predicted impact (less than 40 m range sigma) due to meteorological error in 85% of the 79 firing series analyzed. (Author)
Impact of the Phase 2 Infantry Advanced Leader Course (ALC)

Abstract : A longitudinal research effort assessed the training value of the revised Infantry Phase II ALC on Soldier job performance (near transfer) and determined the impact of relevant training inputs (i.e., trainee characteristics, training design, and work environment factors) on the transfer process. Data from questionnaires, interviews and performance ratings were collected pre- and post-ALC and 3-5 months later at the students' unit from ALC students, supervisors, and peers. The research findings suggest that ALC positively impacted students' confidence to employ both NCO competencies and ALC tasks. Moreover, this confidence did not decline substantially when reassessed three to five months later at the unit. Nevertheless, additional findings indicated that ALC could be improved. Areas addressed included modifying the structure and format of the ALC to take advantage of the more experienced students knowledge and background, ensuring comparability between the resident and MTT versions of ALC, providing more hands-on experiences, deleting modules with minimal training value/opportunities for professional growth, selecting and training qualified cadre, setting and enforcing achievable course standards, and selecting qualified students to attend ALC. Issues related to various training input variables affecting transfer of ALC knowledge and skills to job performance were also addressed. Finally, suggestions for enhancing learning and transfer in ALC were provided.
Hand hygiene compliance in Dutch general practice offices: an observational study.

Background Hand hygiene (HH) is considered one of the most important measures to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI). Most studies focus on HH compliance within the hospital setting, whereas little is known for the outpatient setting. The aim of this study was to evaluate compliance with HH recommendations in general practitioners (GPs) office, based on World Health Organization (WHO) guideline.Methods An observational study was conducted at five Dutch GPs-practices in September 2017. We measured HH compliance through direct observation using WHO’s ‘five moments of hand hygiene’ observation tool. All observations were done by one trained professional.Results We monitored a total of 285 HH opportunities for 30 health care workers (HCWs). The overall compliance was 37%. Hand hygiene compliance was 34%, 51% and 16% for general practitioners, practice assistants, and nurses, respectively. It varies between 63% after body fluid exposure and no HH performance before-, during and after home visit of a patient (defined as moment 5). The preferred method of HH was soap and water (63%) versus 37% for alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR). Conclusions HH compliance among HCWs in Dutch GPs was found to be low, especially with regard to home visits. The WHO recommended switch from hand wash to ABHR was not implemented by the majority of HCWs in 5 observed GPs offices.