Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cyclic Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Beams with Corroded Transverse Steel Reinforcement

This study examined the seismic performance of reinforced concrete beams with corrosion only induced in the transverse steel reinforcement by using cyclic loading. The beams were designed with closely spaced steel hoops as transverse reinforcement conforming to the seismic design provisions of the ACI 318 code. Seven beams were constructed. One beam was used as a control without corrosion. The other six beams were subjected to six levels of corrosion in the potential plastic hinge region by using an electrochemical method. Corrosion test results indicated that pitting corrosion increased with an increasing corrosion level. The hoops fractured at a corrosion weight loss of 35%. Cyclic test results indicated that the beams could sustain a corrosion weight loss of 6% in the hoops and still maintain ductile flexural behavior. The corrosion of hoops adversely affected the deformation capacity of the beams significantly, yet did not significantly influence the load-carrying capacity of the beams. The residual shear strength provided by concrete and steel was still sufficient to develop flexural yielding, even for beams with hoops corroded to fracture. Methods were developed to estimate the residual shear strength and ductility of reinforced concrete beams with corroded hoops. The amount of corrosion substances filled in the cracks’ volume was approximately 25% of the reduced volume of steel due to corrosion. Although shear strength estimation based on the average corrosion weight loss was not conservative, the shear strength estimation based on the minimum residual cross-sectional area was too conservative at a high corrosion level due to severe pitting corrosion. Shear strength estimation based on average weight loss and minimum residual cross-sectional area produced results that describe the experimental behavior more reasonably.
Effect of Early Mobilization from Bed to Wheel Chair on Regional Ventilation Distribution Assessed by Electrical Impedance Tomography in Respiratory Failure Patients

Backgrounds: There was limited knowledge about the effect of early mobilization on regional lung ventilation in patients with respiratory failure. The aim of the study was to examine whether electrical impedance tomography (EIT) could help to predict the improvement in ventilation distribution due to mobilization.Methods: Forty-one patients with respiratory failure, who had weaned from ventilator and received early mobilization were prospectively enrolled in this study. EIT was used to assess regional lung ventilation distributions at 4 timepoints during the early mobilization from bed to wheelchair (Tbase: baseline, supine position at the bed, T30min: sitting position on the wheelchair after 30min, T60min: sitting position on the wheelchair after 60min, Treturn: return to supine position on the bed after early mobilization). The EIT-based global inhomogeneity (GI) and center of ventilation (CoV) indices were calculated. EIT images were equally divided into four ventral-to-dorsal horizontal regions of interest (ROIs 1-4). Depending on the improvement of ventilation distribution in dependent regions at T60min (threshold set to 15%), patients were divided into recruited (DR) and non-recruited (Non-DR) groups. Results: From the bed to the wheelchair, a significant and continuous increase of dependent regional ventilation distribution (ROI 3+4: baseline vs. T30min, vs. T60min: 45.9±12.1 vs. 48.7±11.6 vs. 49.9±12.6, p=0.015) and COV (COV baseline vs. T30min, vs. T60min: 48.2±10.1 vs. 50.1±9.2 vs. 50.5±9.6, p=0.003). Besides, there was a significant decrease of GI at T60min. Patients in the DR group (n=18) had significantly higher oxygenation than the Non-DR group (n=23) after early mobilization. ROI4Tbase was significantly negatively correlated to ΔSpO2 (R=0.72, p＜0.001). Using a cut-off value of 6.5%, ROI4Tbase had a 79.2% specificity and 58.8% sensitivity to predict response of dependent region recruitment due to early mobilization. The corresponding area under curve was 0.806 (95%CI, 0.677-0.936). Conclusions: EIT may be a promising tool to predict the ventilation improvement resulted from early mobilization.Trial registration: Effect of Early Mobilization on Regional Lung Ventilation Assessed by EIT, NCT04081129. Registered 9 June 2019 - Retrospectively registered, https://register.clinicaltrials. gov/prs/app/action/SelectProtocol? sid=S00096WT&selectaction=Edit&uid=U00020D9&ts=2&cx=v2cwij
Maintenance Training Simulator Fidelity and Individual Differences in Transfer of Training

This study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between simulator fidelity and training effectiveness. Two aspects of simulator fidelity were manipulated, namely, the degree to which a training simulator “looked like” actual equipment (physical fidelity), and the extent to which it “acted like” real equipment (functional fidelity). A transfer of training design was used to assess learning. Performance on an electromechanical troubleshooting task was correlated with a number of individual difference variables. Results indicated that physical and functional fidelity were interdependent and that temporal measures were most sensitive to fidelity manipulations. Low functional fidelity was associated with longer problem solution and inter-response times. Persons with high analytic abilities took longer to solve problems, but required fewer troubleshooting tests and made fewer incorrect solutions.
Evaluation of factors influencing the inelastic seismic performance of torsionally asymmetric buildings

This paper addresses some fundamentally contradictory conclusions drawn by Tso and Ying1 and the authors2 regarding the additional seismic ductility demand in asymmetric building structures and the adequacy of certain code torsional provisions. It also clarifies a number of issues arising from the different approaches employed in the two studies. The Mexico 76 and 87 code torsional provisions are taken as examples. Results show that the structural element at the stiff edge is the more critical and that the Mexico 76 code torsional provisions (among others) are inadequate, substantially underestimating the strength demand of this element. On the other hand, the Mexico 87 code torsional provisions are found to be over-conservative. Recommendations are also given for improving the form and effectiveness of these code torsional provisions.
Artificial neural-network-based protection scheme for controllable series-compensated EHV transmission lines

Controllable series compensation (CSC) is one of the main flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) devices, which have the ability to improve the utilisation of existing transmission systems. However, the implementation of this technology changes the apparent line impedance, which is controlled by the firing angle of thyristors, and is accentuated by other factors. This poses problems for conventional protection schemes. The paper proposes an adaptive protection scheme, based on neural networks, with special emphasis on the analysis of the zone-1 performance. The paper describes, in detail, the feature extraction, sampling rate, data window length and training of the designed artificial neural networks (ANNs). The main idea of the protection scheme is to employ an artificial neural network (ANN) to make a decision based on extracting useful features in the desired spectra within a certain frequency range under fault conditions. System simulation and test results are presented and analysed in this paper to indicate the feasibility of using an ANN-based protection scheme in CSC transmission systems.
A comparison of 2008 National Classification System for Contaminated Sites scores to preliminary quantitative risk assessment hazard quotients

The 2008 National Classification System for Contaminated Sites (NCSCS) is used by federal departments and agencies to prioritize contaminated site management funding. In this paper, site scores calculated using the 2008 NCSCS are compared to hazard quotients calculated using a preliminary quantitative risk assessment (PQRA) protocol to assess whether acceptable correlations exist. The authors conclude that NCSCS site scores are positively correlated with PQRA hazard quotients, but the data scatter precludes developing defensible mathematical relationships.
The Impact of Electronic Human Resource Management (E-HRM) Practices on Business Performance in Jordanian Telecommunications Sector: The Employees Perspective

This Paper aimed to identify the impact of electronic human resource management practices through the main study dimensions represented in the (e-recruitment, e-selection, e-training, e-performance appraisal, e-communications, e-compensation) on the operational performance through the main dimensions represented on the (Time, cost, quality of service and flexibility) in the telecommunications sector in Jordan represented by three companies of Cellular Communications (Zain, Orange and Umniah). The study population consisted of all employees in supervisory positions in the three companies totaling (329) male and female employees. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers used the descriptive analytical method, and a stratified random sample consisting of 178 employees male and female were selected.To collect the needed data a questionnaire was developed and distributed to the sample; data was analyzed using SPSS statistical software, as has the process of analysis based on descriptive statistics and statistical analytical. The results showed that there is existence of a positive statistically significant impact to dimensions of electronic human resources management (e-recruitment, e- selection, e-training, e-performance appraisal, e-communications, and e-compensation) on the dimensions of operational performance (time, cost, quality of service, and flexibility).
Characterization of the mechanical properties of the cape gooseberry fruit (Physalis peruviana L.) Caracterización de propiedades mecánicas del fruto de la uchuva (Physalis peruviana L.)

RESUMEN Colombia is the world’s leading producer of the cape gooseberry and it is a crop of great importance due to its high demand in the international market. The fruit, the part that is sold, is an ovoid-shaped, juicy berry, and its harvest starts when the fruit is orange-colored and the cap surrounding the fruit is yellowcolored. This labor is done manually. During this phase of collection, subsequent handling and transport to the places of packaging and marketing, the fruit is subjected to multiple loads which may deteriorate it in different ways, resulting in significant product losses. Rheological tests of unidirectional compression, punctures, and cuts at the peduncle were performed in order to characterize the mechanical response of the fruit to the type of forces exerted at harvest and post-harvest handling. It was found that the fruit’s firmness in unidirectional compression in the axial direction, with a ripeness grade of four, was 38.6 N, while the force required to separate the fruit from the peduncle was 15.1 N. The mechanical behavior of the cape gooseberry corresponds to a viscoelastic, anisotropic, highly variable material. Colombia es el principal productor mundial de uchuva y constituyendose en un cultivo de gran importancia por su requerimiento en los mercados internacionales. El fruto, que es la parte que se comercializa, es una baya jugosa en forma de globo u ovoide. Su cosecha se inicia cuando los frutos toman una coloracion anaranjada y el capuchon o ‘capacho’ que encierra la fruta se torna de color amarillo, esta labor se realiza en forma manual. Durante esta fase de recoleccion y en las posteriores de manipulacion y transporte a los lugares de empaque y comercializacion el fruto se ve sometido a multiples cargas que pueden deteriorarlo de diversas maneras lo que resulta en perdidas significativas de producto. Se realizaron ensayos reologicos de compresion unidireccional, puncion y corte en pedunculo, a fin de caracterizar su respuesta mecanica al tipo de fuerzas que soporta en su manejo durante la cosecha y la poscosecha. Se encontro que la firmeza del fruto en compresion unidireccional en direccion axial y para grado de madurez cuatro es de 38,6 N, a la vez que la fuerza requerida para separar el fruto del pedunculo es de 15,1 N. El comportamiento mecanico del fruto de la uchuva corresponde a un material viscoelastico, anisotropico y de muy alta variabilidad.
BIST/DFT for performance testing of bare dies and MCMs

High emphasis on performance and high cost of MCM repairs necessitates a frame work for performance testing of dies, substrates, and final MCMs. Application of performance tests to bare dies is very expensive due to the need for small and high speed probes and ATE, BIST, scan, and boundary scan can provide a framework to accomplish performance testing in a cost effective manner. It has been shown that traditional BIST, scan, and boundary scan techniques do not provide the framework for performance testing. Special BIST and scan design techniques that can be employed to guarantee high coverage of delay faults are described. Typically, these techniques produce BIST test pattern generators and scan chain designs that require slightly increased hardware overhead over conventional BIST/scan. However, they can drastically decrease the complexity of bare die performance testing. Furthermore, when used in combination with the proposed enhanced boundary scan design, they provide a framework for detection and diagnosis of dynamic failures. <<ETX>>
An Opportunity Missed In Tourism-ledRegeneration: Sulukule

Tourism-led regeneration is one of the most significant agenda items in Istanbul where lively and serious discussions on urban regeneration workings still continue to a great extent. Within the scope of such tourism-led urban regeneration efforts are the District of Fatih, the Neslisah and Hatice Sultan Quarters, known by the public under the name Sulukule, where mostly Romany citizens are living. It was designated as a “Redevelopment Area” in 2005. Applications started to be implemented without providing any applicable “participation models” for the involvement of the affected parties and brought along with them a lot of conceptual and theoretical discussions as well as urban strains. On the other hand, work related to events to be organized for the selection and designation of Istanbul as one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2010 is rapidly continuing. This paper aims to expose the “hasty and fickle” approach that is going on now, and has been for some years in the public sector, ignoring the concept of “participation” and disregarding any reactions, leading to an essential missed opportunity that is very important for tourism-led regeneration and may even have a negative effect. It can result in losses for Istanbul, currently preparing for the organization of the events to be implemented on the occasion of selection and designation of Istanbul as one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2010, and there is an urgent need to investigate the problems likely to be experienced in the period ahead in respect of the displaced people, and to make suggestions in this respect.
Multiproduct Kanban-like Control Systems

Kanban Control Systems are widely used to control the release of parts in multistage manufacturing systems operating under a pull mechanism, i.e. production of new parts is triggered based on the actual demands arriving to the output of the system. Most of the work on Kanban Control Systems deals with single-product manufacturing systems, although Kanban Control Systems have also been used in multiproduct environments. The aim is to study in detail the behaviour of Kanban Control Systems in the context of multiproduct manufacturing systems. In addition to the classical Kanban Control System, we also consider two more general Kanban-Like Control Systems known as Generalized Kanban Control System and Extended Kanban Control System. When extending these pull control mechanisms to multi-product systems, we distinguish two cases, whether kanbans are dedicated to a single part type or shared among the different part types. We provide an in-depth analysis of each of the resulting control mechanism and discuss some important issues arising from the study.
Improved cell segmentation using deep learning in label-free optical microscopy images

: The recently popular deep neural networks (DNNs) have a significant effect on the improvement of segmentation accuracy from various perspectives, including robustness and completeness in comparison to conventional methods. We determined that the naive U-Net has some lacks in specific perspectives and there is high potential for further enhancements on the model. Therefore, we employed some modifications in different folds of the U-Net to overcome this problem. Based on the probable opportunity for improvement, we develop a novel architecture by us-ing an alternative feature extractor in the encoder of U-Net and replacing the plain blocks with residual blocks in the decoder. This alteration makes the model superconvergent yielding improved performance results on two challenging optical microscopy image series: a phase-contrast dataset of our own (MDA-MB-231) and a brightfield dataset from a well-known challenge (DSB2018). We utilized the U-Net with pretrained ResNet-18 as the encoder for the segmentation task. Hence, following the modifications, we redesign a novel skip-connection to reduce the semantic gap between the encoder and the decoder. The proposed skip-connection increases the accuracy of the model on both datasets. The proposed segmentation approach results in Jaccard Index values of 85.0% and 89.2% on the DSB2018 and MDA-MB-231 datasets, respectively. The results reveal that our method achieves competitive results compared to the state-of-the-art approaches and surpasses the performance of baseline approaches.
The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice On Creating And Maintaining Your Blog

From the Publisher: Weblogs--frequently updated, independently produced, and curiously addictive--have become some of the most popular sites on the Web today. The Weblog Handbook is the first book to explain how weblogs work and explore their impact on the media landscape. There is no formula for creating a superb weblog--but there are lessons to be drawn from maintaining one. In The Weblog Handbook, Rebecca Blood draws on her experience as an early participant in the weblog community to share what she has learned in three years of "living online. " With a clear and engaging voice, Rebecca explains how to choose among the available tools, even walking the beginner through the process of creating their first weblog. Along the way she answers commonly asked questions concerning weblog etiquette, how to attract readers, and the qualities that make a weblog stand out, alerting the novice to considerations--and pitfalls--they didn't know to ask about. For students of digital culture, The Weblog Handbook provides an account of the history of the movement, an explanation of the "weblog method", and a thoughtful examination of weblogs and journalism. Finally, Rebecca examines how the weblog community has grown and changed, the dangers confronting it, and the ways in which weblogs are affecting and affected by both online and offline culture.
Membrane assisted technology appraisal for water reuse applications in South Africa

Water scarcity, pertaining to many interrelated issues e.g. rapid urbanisation and increasing water pollution, has been acknowledged around the world. Water reuse has emerged as a viable water conservation measure to satisfy water demand in many communities. Among the diversity of wastewater treatment processes, membrane assisted treatment technologies have been employed for different water reuse scenarios. In this regard, one of the most critical problems is how to select an appropriate membrane technology for a water reuse scenario. This research therefore develops a decision making framework for selection of wastewater treatment technology. The framework is applied to different non-potable reuse scenarios in South African cities and suburban areas by employing a multi criteria analysis method. The results show that this approach is able to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis which can help in comparing and selecting wastewater technologies.
THE APPLICATION OF STATISTICAL CONCEPTS TO THE WIND LOADING OF STRUCTURES.

In the Paper the statistical concepts of the stationary time series are used to determine the response of a simple structure to a turbulent, gusty wind. This enables the peak stresses, accelerations, deflexions, etc., to be expressed in terms of the mean wind velocity, the spectrum of gustiness, and the mechanical and aerodynamic properties of the structure. In this connexion it is pointed out that the resistance in fluctuating flow may be significantly greater than that in steady flow, such as that prevailing in most wind-tunnel tests. An expression for the spectrum of gustiness near the ground is given, which takes into account its variation with mean wind velocity, roughness of the terrain, and the height above ground level. The statistical distribution of peak values over a large number of years is related to the statistical distribution of mean values by means of a so-called “gust factor”. A map defining the climate of extreme hourly wind speeds over the British Isles is provided. In association with the gust factor, this enables predictions of extreme peak wind loads with any given return period to be made. As an illustrative example, the wind loads which might arise on a flexible arc-lamp standard and a rigid water tower are compared. This emphasizes the considerable differences which may arise in the effective wind loads owing to differences in the local ground roughness and the dynamic characteristics of the structure.
A multi-level investigation of emergent leadership and dispersion effects in virtual teams

The overarching goal of the proposed study is to develop and test a mediated multi-level model of leadership emergence in virtual teams, which aims to better understand not only the processes that result in leadership emergence in self-managed virtual teams, but also how patterns of emergent leadership and team member dispersion can impact team performance in collaborative activities. Virtual teams, which can be defined as “a collection of individuals who are geographically and/or organizationally or otherwise dispersed and who collaborate via communication and information technologies in order to accomplish a specific goal” (Zigurs, 2003), continue to grow in importance as to how organizations function in the 21 century (Hertel, Konradt, & Orlikowski, 2004; Lipnack & Stamps, 2000), and the benefits to companies and individuals are numerous. For employees, virtual teamwork offers flexibility in work-life balance, a decrease in time spent in travel and commuting, and a greater range of workrelated opportunities and experiences, particularly for individuals with physical disabilities. For organizations, virtual teams offer cost savings on office space and travel, an increased knowledge base and accelerated organizational learning, access to a wider range of expertise and qualified labor, and increased productivity (Jude-York, Davis, & Wise, 2000; Gillam & Oppenheim, 2006). The model to be tested in the proposed study is predicated on the input mediator output input (IMOI) model proposed by Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt (2005). Also, heeding the recent call for researchers to better incorporate the potential of attribution theory (see Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 1986) in explaining organizational behavior (Martinko, Harvey, & Dasborough, 2010), the interpersonal attribution model proposed by Gilbert & Malone (1995) is applied within the IMOI framework for the purposes of this study. At the individual level, the model provides a theoretical linkage between communication behaviors and several outcomes,