Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ICE FORCES ON AN ISOLATED CIRCULAR PILE

The purpose of this paper is to present a mathematical model for calculating the forces that a moving ice cover will exert against an isolated circular pile. One of the requirements of the model is a knowledge of the relationship between the strain rate in the ice and the rate at which the cover is moving relative to the pile. Two approaches are used to establish this relationship; the first empirical and the second analytical. For the empirical approach, the stress-strain curve observed in the laboratory for constant strain rate tests is made to correspond to the load-penetration curve for a pile test. Both of these curves have a maximum or yield stress for the first cycle of load in the ductile range of behaviour. The assumption made is that the strain immediately adjacent to the central part of the front of the pile at maximum load is equal to the strain associated with the maximum stress for the constant rate of strain tests. This approach is limited at this time because little information is available on the dependence of the load on penetration and rate of penetration of a pile. Noble and Hussain used a stress function for the plane strain case to develop an exact elastic solution for inclusion problems. The results of this investigation were used to develop a relationship between penetration and strain for the pile problem for the elastic condition. This relationship provided the basis for an assumed dependence of strain on penetration when the ice is no longer behaving elastically. Using this relationship it is possible to determine the load on the pile from information on the strength and deformation properties of ice measured in the laboratory. The calculation of the thrust exerted on a pile assumes that the structure of the ice adjacent to the pile deteriorates by the formation of internal cracks. At a critical stress that depends upon the strain rate and temperature, the deterioration is sufficient to allow a zone of failure to develop. In uniaxial compressive tests this coincides with the occurrence of yield. The strain rate in the ice immediately adjacent to the pile is established from the assumed dependence of the strain on the penetration and the rate of penetration. Loads are calculated by assuming the dependence of maximum load on strain rate to be that measured for uniaxial compression. It is appreciated, however, that the failure zone in the pile problem propagates at a different angle relative to the grains of the ice than for simple compression, but no information is yet available on how this will affect the yield stress. Attention is given to the effect of temperature. The calculation is considered valid for the case where the ice is initially in uniform and intimate contact with the pile.
Assessment of Spatial Variability of Soil Nutrient Status in Rice Ecosystem Using Nutrient Index in Anaimalai Block, Coimbatore

In the back drop of food crisis gripped India during 1960’s the concept of green revolution was commenced to meet human need of fast growing population. Agriculture production was attentively considered as a main target to satisfy food constraints among the raising population. Traditional farming methods gave way to farming with high yield seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Subsequently India has achieved a remarkable growth in agriculture, increasing food grain production from 83 mt in 1960-61 to about 252.23 mt in 2015-16. To augment food grain production, fertilizer consumption raised abruptly from 1 million tonnes (1960) to 25.6 million tonnes in 2016-2017 (FAI, 2017).
A Sustainable Irrigation System for Small Landholdings of Rainfed Punjab, Pakistan

Drip irrigation has long been proven beneficial for fruit and vegetable crops in Pakistan, but the only barrier in its adoption is the high cost of installation for small landholders, which is due to overdesigning of the system. In the present study, the cost of a conventional drip irrigation system was reduced by redesigning and eliminating the heavy filtration system (i.e., hydrocyclon, sand media, disc filters (groundwater source), pressure gauges, water meters, and double laterals). Purchasing the drip system from local vendors also reduced the cost. Field trials were conducted during 2015 and 2016 to observe the productive and economic effects of low-cost drip irrigation on vegetables (potato, onion, and chilies) and fruits (olive, peach, and citrus). The low-cost drip irrigation system saved 50% cost of irrigation and increased 27–54% net revenue in comparison with the furrow irrigation system. Further, water use efficiency (WUE) was found from 3.91–13.30 kg/m3 and 1.28–4.89 kg/m3 for drip irrigation and furrow irrigation systems, respectively. The physical and chemical attributes of vegetables and fruits were also improved to a reasonably good extent. The present study concluded that low-cost drip irrigation increased the yield by more than 20%, as compared with traditional furrow irrigation, and thus, it is beneficial for the small landholders (i.e., less than 2 hectares).
Validation of Models for Quantifying Safety Performance of Driveways on State Highways

This Final Report documents the validation of urban and rural arterial safety performance functions (SPFs) developed for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) SPR 720 study titled Quantifying Safety Performance of Driveways on State Highways. For this previous effort, the research team determined that the crash reporting that indicated a driveway may have been involved in the crash was not a dependable variable, so they developed SPFs for all non-intersection-related arterial crashes (of which many were likely due to vehicle interactions at driveway locations). Due to a limited sample size in the original study, the Final Report for SPR 720 recommended sampling of additional study sites and validation of the original study models based on these new randomly sampled locations. The information in this report reviews the subsequent validation effort and the resulting recommendations. In general the original models performed very well in response to the validation tests. The research team evaluated spatial transferability, spatial-temporal transferability, and individual coefficient stability and significance. The urban model performed well with the spatial transferability resulting in statistically equivalent values, the spatial-temporal transferability providing similar values but not statistically equivalent at the 95 percent level, and all but one of the model variables (titled “Other DW”) determined to be statistically significant. The rural model also performed well as it was determined to provide statistically equivalent predictions for spatial transferability as well as for spatial-temporal transferability. In addition, the validation analysis for the individual coefficients found that only the “Four.Travel. Lanes” and the “Number.of. DW.Clusters” variables were not statistically equivalent at the 95 percent level. Ultimately, the research team developed enhanced models with the enriched data set so as to refine the original models and simplify their structure, where feasible.
Improving automated 3D reconstruction methods via vision metrology

This paper aims to provide a procedure for improving automated 3D reconstruction methods via vision metrology. The 3D reconstruction problem is generally addressed using two different approaches. On the one hand, vision metrology (VM) systems try to accurately derive 3D coordinates of few sparse object points for industrial measurement and inspection applications; on the other, recent dense image matching (DIM) algorithms are designed to produce dense point clouds for surface representations and analyses. This paper strives to demonstrate a step towards narrowing the gap between traditional VM and DIM approaches. Efforts are therefore intended to (i) test the metric performance of the automated photogrammetric 3D reconstruction procedure, (ii) enhance the accuracy of the final results and (iii) obtain statistical indicators of the quality achieved in the orientation step. VM tools are exploited to integrate their main functionalities (centroid measurement, photogrammetric network adjustment, precision assessment, etc.) into the pipeline of 3D dense reconstruction. Finally, geometric analyses and accuracy evaluations are performed on the raw output of the matching (i.e. the point clouds) by adopting a metrological approach. The latter is based on the use of known geometric shapes and quality parameters derived from VDI/VDE guidelines. Tests are carried out by imaging the calibrated Portable Metric Test Object, designed and built at University College London (UCL), UK. It allows assessment of the performance of the image orientation and matching procedures within a typical industrial scenario, characterised by poor texture and known 3D/2D shapes.
Tuning the deformation mechanisms of boron carbide via silicon doping

Si-doped boron carbide could be a promising material for the next-generation body armor. Boron carbide suffers from a loss of strength and toughness when subjected to high shear stresses due to amorphization. Here, we report that a small amount of Si doping (~1 atomic %) leads to a substantial decrease in stress-induced amorphization due to a noticeable change of the deformation mechanisms in boron carbide. In the undoped boron carbide, the Berkovich indentation–induced quasi-plasticity is dominated by amorphization and microcracking along the amorphous shear bands. This mechanism resulted in long, distinct, and single-variant shear faults. In contrast, substantial fragmentation with limited amorphization was activated in the Si-doped boron carbide, manifested by the short, diffuse, and multivariant shear faults. Microcracking via fragmentation competed with and subsequently mitigated amorphization. This work highlights the important roles that solute atoms play on the structural stability of boron carbide and opens up new avenues to tune deformation mechanisms of ceramics via doping.
Internal Marketing: Study of Lecturer Organizational Commitments on Private University in Indonesia

The purpose of this research is to examine the organizational commitment model based on a three component of organizational commitment (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). This research used multidimensional variables that affect organizational commitment in an integrated manner namely religiosity, internal marketing, organizational justice and job satisfaction. The method of data collection was done by using a survey through questionnaire. The number of samples of 200 people used non-probability sampling with a purposive sampling method. Description of respondents' assessments of constructs had a higher mean value than the standard deviation of 4 and 5, which means that the research construct was good and very good. The results of the SEM assumption tests were all normally distributed data with a critical ratio of ± 2.58. Measurement model test results using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were all valid indicators which confirmed latent variables. Validity used convergent validity with a loading factor ≥ 0.50. The reliability test resulted construct validity ≥ 0.70, while the results of the variance extracted above ≥0.50. The structural model modification test results can be seen from the goodness of fit that showed the value of good fit. Not all hypotheses were proven, internal marketing affected organizational justice, organizational justice influenced job satisfaction, job satisfaction was proven to affect organizational commitment and internal marketing was proven to influence organizational commitment mediated by organizational justice and job satisfaction. Overall, the results of this research indicated that organizational commitment was influenced by various factors, namely internal marketing, organizational justice and job satisfaction, while religiosity either directly or indirectly did not affect organizational commitment.
The underlying characteristics of sleep behavior and its relationship to sleep-related cognitions: a latent class analysis of college students in Wuhu city, China

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to gain insight into the sleep quality of college students and related factors from a new perspective by using Latent Class Analysis (LCA). A total of 1,288 college students from four universities in Wuhu city participated in the study. LCA was used to identify the classes of sleep behaviors. Differences in class membership related to selected research factors were examined using multinomial logistic regression analysis.Four distinct classes of behaviors were identified: (1) good sleep (Class 1, 31.8%), (2) prolonged sleep latency (Class 2, 49.1%), (3) sleep disturbances and daytime dysfunction (Class 3, 6.8%), (4) multiple poor sleep behavior (Class 4, 12.3%). The latent classes of sleep behavior were correlated with the DBAS-16 total score (rs = −0.109, P < 0.001). Learning pressure and mental state during the day could affect overall sleep (Class 2, Class 3 and Class 4), and female students were at higher risk of severe sleep problems (Class 3 and Class 4), while bedtime exercised could improve mild sleep problems (Class 2). The sleep behavior of college students in Wuhu city has obvious class heterogeneity, and different influencingfactors may affect sleep to varying degrees. In addition, our research provides a basis for targeted intervnetion in college student’s sleep.
Investigation of the radiopacity and cytotoxicity of albodent - novel strontium carbonate incorporated calcium silicate based dental cement

Introduction. Calcium silicate (CS) dental cements have numerous clinical indications in dentistry including pulp capping, root end surgery, perforation repair and apexification/apexogenesis treatment. Materials and methods. Novel CS based dental cement with incorporation of SrCO3 radiopacifier named ALBO-DENT was used as an experimental cement material while Portland cement (Aalborg, Denmark) and ProRoot MTA (Tulsa Dental, USA) were used as controls. The radiopacity evaluation was performed using digital Trophy Radiographic system with an intention to precisely determine the minimum of radiopaque agent needed to confer to ISO radiopacity requirement. Thereafter, biocompatibility of material was tested in in vitro conditions in mouse fibrosarcoma L929 cell culture treated with materials? extracts. Cell morphology was observed using phase-contrast microscopy, while cell viability was measured using crystal violet (CV) and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assays. Results. Radiopacity evaluation revealed that 30%wt addition of SrCO3 was necessary to achieve satisfactory radiopacity (3.45 mm Al). Cytotoxicity analysis using CV and MTT assays revealed that pure extracts of ALBO-DENT presented superior biocompatibility when compared to PC and MTA controls while serial dilutions of experimental cements? extracts as well as that of PC and MTA did not influence L929 cell viability. Conclusions. Novel formulation of CS cement - ALBO-DENT presented satisfactory radiopacity and adequate biocompatibility.
The hydrogeological and geotechnical properties of household waste in relation to sustainable landfilling.

This thesis reports an investigation into the hydrogeological and geotechnical properties of household wastes within the context of sustainable landfilling and, particularly, the development of a high rate flushing bioreactor. The design and construction of a large-scale (2-metre diameter) purpose built compression cell used in the research are described. Tests on a number of different household waste materials (including pulverised and aged wastes) were undertaken at varying applied loads up to 600 kPa, equivalent to a 60 metre depth of landfill. Results of variations in refuse density, stiffness, absorptive capacity, effective porosity and hydraulic conductivity are reported against average effective stress in the waste. It was concluded that the hydrogeological properties of household waste vary considerably with effective stress and, hence, with depth in landfills. For example, the hydraulic conductivity of crude household waste could reduce by over three orders of magnitude from approximately 1x10 m/s to 1x10 m/s between placement (with minimal compaction) and burial to a depth of 60 metres. The principles of sustainable development are considered and applied to landfilling. The view that the polluting potential of landfills should be reduced to acceptable levels within a generation is supported. In most cases this will require that contaminants in the landfill are removed by introducing water into the site and recirculating and flushing leachate from it. The feasibility of achieving this with a variety of different leachate recirculation systems is examined in the light of the findings of the research. A new module has been written for MODFLOW, the USGS's groundwater flow model, to allow hydraulic conductivity to vary throughout simulations with effective stress. The altered code is used to model a grid of leachate abstraction and injection wells to illustrate the potential for flushing. It is concluded that changes are needed to current landfill design and operational practices to enable wastes to be flushed efficiently within landfills. It is argued, in particular, that there are significant benefits of operating landfills with large saturated zones. Abstract
Comparative analysis and modeling of surface roughness in drilling

Drilling is one of the basic, most frequently performed materials removing process in manufacturing industry. In spite of significant increase in the demand for economically producing holes, drill manufacturing is still considered as an esoteric art. The drilling operation is frequency used as a preliminary step for many operation like boring, reaming and tapping. Surface roughness plays an important role in product quality and manufacturing process planning.
Experimental unsteady aerodynamics relevant to insect-inspired flapping-wing micro air vehicles

Small hand-held micro air vehicles (MAVs) can serve many functions unsuitable for a manned vehicle, and can be inexpensive and easily deployed. MAVs for indoor applications are underdeveloped due to their demanding requirements. Indoor requirements are best met by a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FMAV) based on insect-like flapping-wing flight, which offers abilities of sustained hover, aerial agility, and energy efficiency. FMAV development is hampered by a lack of understanding of insect-like flapping-wing aerodynamics, particularly at the FMAV scale. An experimental programme at the FMAV scale (Reynolds number on the order of 104) was undertaken, investigating: leading-edge vortex (LEV) stability, flapping kinematic effects on lift and the flowfield, and wing planform shape effects on the flowfield. For these experiments, an apparatus employing a novel flapping mechanism was developed, which achieved variable three-degreeof-freedom insect-like wing motions (flapping kinematics) with a high degree of repeatability in air up to a 20Hz flapping frequency. Mean lift measurements and spatially dense volumetric flowfield measurements using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (PIV) were performed while various flapping kinematic parameters and wing planform were altered, to observe their effects. Three-dimensional vortex axis trajectories were reconstructed, revealing vortex characteristics such as axial velocity and vorticity, and flow evolution patterns. The first key result was the observation of a stable LEV at the FMAV scale which contributed to half of the mean lift. The LEV exhibited vortex breakdown, but still augmented lift as Reynolds number was increased indicating that FMAVs can exploit this lifting mechanism. The second key result was the identification of the trends of mean lift versus the tested kinematic parameters at the FMAV scale, and appropriate values for FMAV design. Appropriate values for lift generation, while taking mechanical practicalities into account, included a flat wingtip trajectory with zero plunge amplitude (Θ), angle of attack at mid-stroke (αmid) of ∼ 45◦, rotation phase (τ) of +5.5%, and maximum flapping frequency and stroke amplitude. To my Dad, for sparking my interest in flight
Are Islamic Banks Really More Solvent Than Conventional Banks in a Financial Stable Period?

The knowledge value produced by this research was established in particular by the methodological challenges of the comparative study. Based on a process of bibliographic research, available conditional observation and necessary statistical tests, we innovated an equiprobable comparison between the solvencies of conventional and Islamic banks over the period (2010-2018). Our study is not only a matter of dealing generically with the financial solvency question of conventional and Islamic banks, but also, we analysed the inherent implications and difficulties that may alter the results and influence the establishment of an operative evaluation of financial institutions. Two samples were taken from two reference populations. The core populations are all existing conventional and Islamic banks in the selected countries. The choice of banks is limited to countries whose banking systems incorporate both Islamic and conventional banks regardless of the proportion of each system in the country's banking market. Subsequently, each list bank was reduced on the basis of qualitative and quantitative filtering criteria. Therefore, each conventional bank has its closest Islamic equivalence in terms of capital and size taken from the same country. This restriction reduced the sample size to 63 banks each. The selected banks are all large and listed in different stock exchanges around the world. In conclusion, we found that conventional banks are more solvent than Islamic banks during a financial stable period.
The relationship between culture and e-business website acceptance : a comparative study of Arab and UK cultures

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