Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fixed chain-based wireless sensor network for intelligent transportation systems

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are distributed and interconnected wirelessly sensors that are used in a variety of fields of our daily life, such as the manufacturing, utility operations and traffic monitoring. Many WSN applications come with some technical weaknesses and issues, especially when they are used in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). For ITS applications that use a fixed chain topology which contains road studs deployed at ground level, there are some challenges related to radio propagation, energy constraints and the Media Access Control (MAC) protocol. This thesis develops a ground level radio propagation model for communication between road studs, and energy efficiency metrics to manage the resources to overcome the energy constraints, as well as a MAC protocol compatible with chain topology and ground level communication. For the challenges of the physical layer, this thesis investigates the use of a WSN for communicating between road-based nodes. These nodes are situated at ground level, and two-way wireless communication is required between the nodes and from the nodes to a roadside control unit. Field measurements have been carried out to examine the propagation close to the ground to determine the maximum distance between road-based nodes as a function of the antenna height. The results show that for a frequency of 2.4 GHz, a range of up to 8m is achievable with 2mW equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP). An empirical near-ground level radio propagation model has been derived, and the predicted results from this model are shown to match closely to the measured results. Since wireless sensor networks have power constraints, green energy efficiency metrics have been proposed for low-power wireless sensors operating at ground level. A numerical analysis is carried out to investigate the utilisation of the green energy efficiency metrics for ground level communication in wireless sensor networks. The proposed metrics have been developed to calculate the optimal sensor deployment, antenna height and energy efficiency level for the near ground wireless sensor. As an application of the proposed metrics, the relationship between the energy efficiency and the spacing between the wireless sensor nodes has been studied. The results provide guidance for energy efficient deployment of near ground level wireless sensors.
Metabolic Syndrome Is Associated With Advanced Liver Fibrosis Among Pediatric Patients With Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) among children is a growing concern with potential significant outcome. This study aims to investigate the relationship between hepatic steatosis, metabolic syndrome, and liver fibrosis among children with obesity and diabetes mellitus. Methodology: Children aged 6–18 years old were recruited from pediatric obesity and diabetes clinic in University Malaya Medical Center (UMMC) between year 2016 and 2019. Data on basic demographics, anthropometric measurements and clinical components of metabolic syndrome were collected. Transient elastography was performed with hepatic steatosis and liver fibrosis assessed by controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) and liver stiffness measurement (LSM) respectively. Mild, moderate and severe steatosis were defined as >248, >268, and >280 dB/m respectively, and LSM above 7.0 kPa for fibrosis stage F ≥ 2, 8.7 kPa for F ≥ 3, and 10.3 kPa for F4 (cirrhosis). Results: A total of 57 children (60% male) with median age of 13 years old were recruited. Fifty (87.7%) of the children are obese and 27 (54%) out of 50 are morbidly obese. Among 44 (77.2%) patients with steatosis, 40 (70.2%) had severe steatosis and 18 (40.9%) had developed liver fibrosis of stage 2 and above. Advanced fibrosis or cirrhosis was detected in 8 (18.2%) children with presence of steatosis. Twenty-three out of 57 (40.4%) was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. Fibrosis is three times more likely to occur in the presence of metabolic syndrome (OR = 3.545, 95% CI: 1.135–11.075, p = 0.026). Waist circumference is a significant predictor of fibrosis after multiple regression analysis. Conclusion: Obese children with metabolic syndrome are more likely to have advanced liver fibrosis compared to those without metabolic syndrome. Waist circumference predicts development of liver fibrosis.
CHARACTERIZATION OF MILK CLOTTING PROPERTIES OF ADULT CATTLE RENNET MODIFIED WITH Moringa oleifera SEEDS AND ITS SUITABILITY AS CALF RENNET ALTERNATIVE IN CHEESE MAKING

The present study focused on the mixing of adult cattle rennet with Moringa seeds during the extraction process to improve its strength and use it as an alternative for the calf rennet in cheese production. The Moringa oleifera seeds powder were mixed with adult cattle rennet at a ratio of 2%. Crude and partially purified extracts (using ammonium sulphate 60% concentration) were used. The study include six different milk coagulants; adult cattle rennet extract (ARE), mix of adult cattle rennet with Moringa seeds (AME), partially purified adult cattle rennet extract (ARP), partially purified adult rennet mixed with Moringa seeds (AMP), commercial rennet (RRE) and calf rennet extract (CRE). The flocculation time, clotting time, clotting activity, proteolytic activity, the optimum pH and temperature for clotting activity, curdling quality (RCQ) and protein profile of curd formed were determined (SDS-PAGE). The physical properties include water release (WR) and water holding capacity (WHC), yield and sensory attributes of Domiati cheese made by using different coagulant extracts were estimated. The results showed that CRE has shorter flocculation and clotting time and higher milk clotting activity but ARE had the opposite, in the midst were treatments AME, ARP and AMP. The pH range of 5.5 to 6.5 and temperature between 50 60°C were suitable for milk clotting activity of milk coagulants. The best (RCQ) was found to be for the curd formatted by CRE, AMP, ARP and RRE. Physical properties gave the lowest (WR) and highest (WHC) in CRE curd cheese, followed by AMP, RRE, ARP and AME cheese, whilst it was observed the contrary in ARE. Electrophoretic patterns show that the levels of degradation αs-casein, κ-casein and β-casein differed with milk coagulant types. Using Moringa seeds and partially purified by ammonium sulphate improved yield and cheese sensory with characteristic; coherent texture and creamy taste. In conclusion mixing of adult cattle rennet with Moringa seeds powder during the extraction process and/ or partially purified gave an opportunity to be used as an alternative to calf rennet in cheese making.
GIFT: Gesture-Based Interaction by Fingers Tracking, an Interaction Technique for Virtual Environment

Three Dimensional (3D) interaction is the plausible human interaction inside a Virtual Environment (VE). The rise of the Virtual Reality (VR) applications in various domains demands for a feasible 3D interface. Ensuring immersivity in a virtual space, this paper presents an interaction technique where manipulation is performed by the perceptive gestures of the two dominant fingers; thumb and index. The two fingertip-thimbles made of paper are used to trace states and positions of the fingers by an ordinary camera. Based on the positions of the fingers, the basic interaction tasks; selection, scaling, rotation, translation and navigation are performed by intuitive gestures of the fingers. Without keeping a gestural database, the features-free detection of the fingers guarantees speedier interactions. Moreover, the system is user-independent and depends neither on the size nor on the color of the users’ hand. With a case-study project; Interactions by the Gestures of Fingers (IGF) the technique is implemented for evaluation. The IGF application traces gestures of the fingers using the libraries of OpenCV at the back-end. At the front-end, the objects of the VE are rendered accordingly using the Open Graphics Library; OpenGL. The system is assessed in a moderate lighting condition by a group of 15 users. Furthermore, usability of the technique is investigated in games. Outcomes of the evaluations revealed that the approach is suitable for VR applications both in terms of cost and accuracy.
A multilevel investigation on antecedents for employees’ exploration of enterprise systems

ABSTRACT Employees’ system exploration behaviour is critical for contemporary firms to fully derive benefits from investments in an enterprise system (ES). Based on the adaptive structuration theory (AST), it is proposed that employees’ exploration of an ES is mainly influenced by three fundamental components at different theoretical levels: task, technology, and the organisational environment. Accordingly, we develop a multilevel research model to interpret how task variety, system modularity, and local management commitment jointly affect employees’ system exploration. Our model is tested with a survey of ES users in 35 business units of six firms that have already implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and several meaningful findings were discovered. At the individual level, both system modularity and task variety can directly affect employees’ system exploration, and the direct effect of system modularity is positively moderated by task variety. Further, unit-level local management commitment can either directly affect, or positively moderate, the relationship between task variety and system exploration. Limitations and implications for research and practice are discussed.
Education 3.0 system to enhance twenty-first century skills for higher education learners in Thailand

ABSTRACT This paper proposes an education 3.0 system called Mutual Learning Community (MLCOM) by combining the subsystems of the Virtual based Learning Classroom (VLC), Mobile based Learning Classroom (MLC), and Flipped Learning Classroom (FLC). In terms of originality, the findings lead to the key elements of the system architecture to develop MLCOM, which enhance twenty-first century skills for higher education learners in Thailand. The list of discovered elements for each subsystem indicates that a virtual smart classroom consists of (1) learning and innovation via a smart agent, Inno Ed Tools, (2) experience exchange via technological educational media, (3) access to learning resources various media in the virtual smart classroom, and (4) testing and evaluation of work submitted via the virtual smart classroom system. Smart classroom application consists of (1) presenting questions or problems, (2) identifying information for answering questions or problems, and (3) choosing media and information technology to research, as well as (4) evaluating information and sources critically, (5) connecting information and formulating a summary, and (6) presenting the project. A flipped classroom consists of (1) self-learning preparation, (2) various online media for diverse learners, (3) learning reflection and questioning, (4) in-class collaboration, (5) learning transition facility, and (6) learning evaluation. However, the construction of such a community was no implemented in this paper due to limited resources and the sheer enormity of scale required for the task.
Metallomics

Metallomics can be defined as the comprehensive analysis of metals in cells, cell compartments, or a specific tissue type. In most cases, mass spectrometry plays a key role in the speciation analysis. The reader gets acquainted with relevant instrumental as well as application aspects of metallomics approaches, paving the road to understanding fate, pathway, and action of metals in environment and organisms. The observation of shifts in metal balances in the cell is a key to understand the pathogenesis of various diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer's disease.
Radar Signal Processing for Sensing in Assisted Living: The challenges associated with real-time implementation of emerging algorithms

This article covers radar signal processing for sensing in the context of assisted living (AL). This is presented through three example applications: human activity recognition (HAR) for activities of daily living (ADL), respiratory disorders, and sleep stages (SSs) classification. The common challenge of classification is discussed within a framework of measurements/preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification algorithms for supervised learning. Then, the specific challenges of the three applications from a signal processing standpoint are detailed in their specific data processing and ad hoc classification strategies. Here, the focus is on recent trends in the field of activity recognition (multidomain, multimodal, and fusion), health-care applications based on vital signs (superresolution techniques), and comments related to outstanding challenges. Finally, this article explores challenges associated with the real-time implementation of signal processing/classification algorithms.
Estimating word-level quality of statistical machine translation output using monolingual information alone

Abstract Various studies show that statistical machine translation (SMT) systems suffer from fluency errors, especially in the form of grammatical errors and errors related to idiomatic word choices. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of using monolingual information contained in the machine-translated text to estimate word-level quality of SMT output. We propose a recurrent neural network architecture which uses morpho-syntactic features and word embeddings as word representations within surface and syntactic n-grams. We test the proposed method on two language pairs and for two tasks, namely detecting fluency errors and predicting overall post-editing effort. Our results show that this method is effective for capturing all types of fluency errors at once. Moreover, on the task of predicting post-editing effort, while solely relying on monolingual information, it achieves on-par results with the state-of-the-art quality estimation systems which use both bilingual and monolingual information.
Mispricing of Really Dirty Surplus and the Trading Behavior of Short Sellers.

We study whether equity short sellers arbitrage the complexity of “really dirty surplus” (RDS) and how their trading behavior impacts others. RDS refers to accounting items that can arise when financial statements recognize equity transactions, mainly in other comprehensive income (OCI), at other than fair value. Measured as the difference between the recognized item and its fair value, an investor cannot directly observe RDS in financial statements. Using a unique dataset on security lending, we find that shorting demand increases and shorting supply decreases for firms deemed to have low or negative RDS in their financial statements. Because the supply of shortable RDS stocks does not meet the demand, constrained short sellers who seek to arbitrage RDS face higher borrowing costs. This implies that traders in the equity shorting market impact other investors by mitigating but not eliminating quickly the potential market mispricing of RDS. and RDS_Bottom , for firm-year observations in the top and the bottom terciles of RDS, respectively, we find an asymmetric effect of RDS. That is, the coefficients on RDS_Top and RDS_Bottom are significantly positive and negative (with p-value < 0.05). These results indicate that the asymmetric effect of RDS on loan fee occurs for firms located at the extreme two tails of RDS distribution. While fees are determined by shorting demand as well as supply, they also appear to play an informational role. That is, lending fees deliver private negative news from the supply side in addition to shorting demand.
An evaluation of a simulation learning task in finance education

Abstract A classroom-based simulation activity is conducted in a third-year finance subject, involving teams of students negotiating a business sale or purchase. A case study approach provides a basis for interpretation. Interviews with students, along with statistical information and relevant policy documents, were analyzed and interpreted to generate the findings. The effectiveness of the simulation activity is evaluated and showed that it enhanced learning and involved students drawing on a range of graduate capabilities in meeting a negotiated outcome. The authors also report that the effectiveness of the activity as gauged from the perspective of the students is also supported.
The Effect of Website Quality and Brand Image on Consumer Purchase Decisions with Trust as an Intervening Variable (Case Study at Bukalapak.com)

This study aims to analyze the effect of Website Quality and Brand Image on Consumer Purchase Decision with Trust as Intervening Variable (Case Study on Bukalapak.com). The object of research used is Bukalapak.Com customer as many as 100 respondents. While the determination of the sample using purposive random sampling technique. The analytical technique used is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The result of analysis in this research shows that (1) website quality has positif and significant effect on purchasing decision, (2) Brand Image has positif and significant effect on purchase decision, (3) Trust has a positif and significant effect on purchase decision, (4) website quality has positif and significant effect on trust, and (5) Brand image has positif and significant effect on trust.
Dynamic marketing capabilities implemented into social media

This work aims at defining so-called dynamic marketing capabilities (DMC) in social media as the emerging construct important from perspective of both: marketing science and marketing practice. It is also oriented at identification of particular company resources that are strongly related to applying dynamic capabilities towards social media. This is a conceptual paper based on literature review. Specifically, we combine insights from dynamic capabilities theory, prior studies on dynamic marketing capabilities and the literature on social media marketing. DMC in social media seems to very promising construct that capture current trends in the business environment and at the same time, reflects paradigm changes that occur in management science, and in marketing, particularly.
Discovering the formal definition of limit through exploration in dynamic geometry environments

The formal definition of limit is one mathematical idea that gives difficulties to most students. Therefore, it is necessary to provide engaging activity in order to construct the students’ understanding about the definition. This study aims to shed light on designing activities with dynamic geometry software to facilitate the students in discovering the formal definition of limit. Forty-eight students participated in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from the students’ responses in and attitudes toward the activities. The students’ responses were gathered directly by using the dynamic geometry software whereas an online questionnaire was used to collect the students’ attitudes. The results of the study then presented in this paper. Further, a set of suggestions in designing and implementing dynamic geometry environments to foster students’ understanding about formal definition of limit was also proposed.
Seller reputation impact on sales performance in public e-marketplace Bukalapak

Seller reputation system (SRS) is an online facility in the public e-marketplace to assess how trustworthy a seller is. SRS becomes important for customers to increase transactional confidence and help customers avoiding untrustworthy sellers. Previous research indicates that different countries with different cultures will lead to different results on how seller reputation influence sales performance. This study aims to investigate the impact of seller reputation on the number of sales in the context of the Indonesian market. This research uses Bukalapak as the case study, which the majority of its customers are Indonesian. Further, this study employ multiple regression analysis on smartphone sales data. The result shows that in Indonesian online market context, the number of seller’s followers does not affect sales number. Furthermore, price and seller positive reviews have a significant impact on sales performance. This study provides insight for sellers in the Indonesian marketplace on how to improve sales performance based on seller reputation.
Methods to Construct Uniform Covering Arrays

Uniform covering arrays are covering arrays in which every column has the same alphabet. In recent years, a number of methods to construct such arrays have been developed. Here, we review several of these methods organizing them into six classes: algebraic, recursive, exact, greedy, metaheuristic, and transformations. The objective of this paper is to highlight the strategy of some representative algorithms of each class. Most of the reviewed methods are accompanied by examples and/or pseudocodes. This paper ends with a discussion about the general strengths and weaknesses of each class of methods.
Elastic computation placement in edge-based environments

Today, technologies such as machine learning, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things are integrated in end-user applications more frequently. These technologies demand high computational capabilities. Especially mobile devices have limited resources in terms of execution performance and battery life. The offloading paradigm provides a solution to this problem and transfers computationally intensive parts of applications to more powerful resources, such as servers or cloud infrastructure. Recently, a new computation paradigm arose which exploits the huge amount of end-user devices in the modern computing landscape - called edge computing. These devices encompass smartphones, tablets, microcontrollers, and PCs. In edge computing, devices cooperate with each other while avoiding cloud infrastructure. Due to the proximity among the participating devices, the communication latencies for offloading are reduced. However, edge computing brings new challenges in form of device fluctuation, unreliability, and heterogeneity, which negatively affect the resource elasticity. As a solution, this thesis proposes a computation placement framework that provides an abstraction for computation and resource elasticity in edge-based environments. The design is middleware-based, encompasses heterogeneous platforms, and supports easy integration of existing applications. It is composed of two parts: the Tasklet system and the edge support layer. The Tasklet system is a flexible framework for computation placement on heterogeneous resources. It introduces closed units of computation that can be tailored to generic applications. The edge support layer handles the characteristics of edge resources. It copes with fluctuation and unreliability by applying reactive and proactive task migration. Furthermore, the performance heterogeneity and the consequent bottlenecks are handled by two edge-specific task partitioning approaches. As a proof of concept, the thesis presents a fully-fledged prototype of the design, which is evaluated comprehensively in a real-world testbed. The evaluation shows that the design is able to substantially improve the resource elasticity in edge-based environments.