Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SLAM-Based MR with Animated CFD for Building Design Simulation

In advanced society, the existing building stock has huge social, economic, and environmental impact. There is a high demand for stock renovation, which gives existing buildings new lives, rather than building new ones. During the renovation process, it is necessary to simultaneously achieve architectural, facilities, structural, and environmental design in order to accomplish a healthy, comfortable, and energy-saving indoor environment, prevent delays in problem solving, and achieve a timely feedback process. This study tackled the development of an integrated system for stock renovation by considering computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Mixed Reality (MR) in order to allow the simultaneous design of a building plan and thermal environment. The CFD analysis enables the simulation of the indoor thermal environment, including the effects of daylight and ventilation. The MR system visualizes the simulation results intuitively and makes renovation projects perform in a very efficient manner with regard to various stakeholders. In addition, a new CFD animation generation method is proposed in MR system, in order for users to consider the entirety of changes in the thermal environment.
PortLoc: A Portable Data-Driven Indoor Localization Framework for Smartphones

Editor’s note: Fingerprinting is essential for indoor navigation and localization due to its low cost, accuracy, and resiliency to multipath effects in constrained environments. This article aims to overcome the challenge of device heterogeneity and describes a portable lightweight fingerprinting framework while improving localization accuracy. —Paul Bogdan, University of Southern California
The Investigation of the Critical Success Factors for Price Strategy of Information Technology (IT) Services

Objectives: The aim of the research is to investigate the critical success factors for price strategy of information technology (IT) services. The discrepancy between the isolated focus of the research on the influential variables on pricing decisions and the multi­-dimensional reality of the marketing mix that managers must deal with is the theory-­practice gap. This research seeks to reduce the theory-practice gap by identifying the reciprocal dependencies between internal price-setting and external price strategy, examining the personal views of pricing managers on the critical success factors, and determining recommendations for practical pricing process improvements. Methodology: The researcher sets an antithetic point to the previous, mainly quantitative, pricing research by performing an interpretive approach to overcome the deficiencies in the research quality and provide explorative research. The research method of choice, considering the high complexity of pricing research, is a sequential semi-structured interview accompanied by a cognitive mapping process that focusses on the IT services industry. The case study strategy enables enlarging the horizon of study beyond the context. The appreciation of every single opinion of ten professional pricing managers from different international IT companies serves to gain in-depth insights and a colourful bandwidth of perspectives. Criteria such as trustworthiness, systematicity, reflexivity, and transparency, in conjunction with a member-checking process assess the high research quality. Contribution: The findings and their interpretations uncover the objectives, the critical success factors, and the reciprocal dependencies of price-setting and price strategy. Recommendations for practical improvement like a versatile pricing manager role, a standardization of the IT service catalogue, a paradigm change in price-setting, and the proposition of a new four-category pricing model toolbox complete the ambition of reducing the theory-practice gap. Limitations: Limitations can arise through the number of research participants, their individual experience and temporal retrospection, and the complexity of cognitive mapping. Sector-specific findings cannot easily be transferred to other industries.
Comparison of chemical compositions in wood and bark of Persian silk tree (Albizia julibrissin Durazz.)

ABSTRACT This research was conducted to identify and compare the chemical compositions in Persian silk tree (Albizia julibrissin Durazz.) from different parts of wood and bark, using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy, gas and liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS, LC-MS), and elemental analysis. FTIR analysis showed significant differences in the chemical structure of bark and wood at peaks that belong to the cellulose and hemicelluloses. According to the results, the C-O-C asymmetric stretch vibration in cellulose and hemicelluloses peak of Persian silk tree was lower in the bark and ѵC=O in quinone or p-quinone peak was higher in the bark. The results of GC-MS showed 12 chemical constituents in the bark and 43 in the wood, respectively. Among these, hexadecanoic acid and inositol were in common. According to the LC-MS analyses, bark samples were rich in lignan compositions and triterpenoid saponins, whereas wood was poor in these compositions. Altogether 61 compositions have been tentatively identified and described from bark and wood tissues; many of them were identified for the first time. Energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectrometry illustrated that the bark contained iron and aluminium, sodium, phosphorus, sulphur and chlorine, while these elements did not exist in wood.
Legality of Cryptocurrency in Indonesia

The existence of cryptocurrency has attracted controvercies world wide. Many people, including Indonesian, had benefit from cryptocurrency, meanwhile there were also more people suffered lost from “investment” in cryptocurrency. The aim of this research was to make clear the legal status of cryptocurrency in Indonesia. This research was a normative legal research. It conducted literature review to obtain the required data. Data obtained and used in this research were secondary data, which consisted of primary, secondary and tertiary legal documents. Data obtained from literature review were analysed using normative comparative method with qualitative approach. The result proved that as currency, the existence of cryptocurrency for payment was legally prohibited. The involvement of Indonesian citizen in the “investment” in form of crytocurrency can be treated as against public policy even though the issuance of such cryptocurrency was subject to foreign applicable laws.
Effect of Genotype X Environment Interaction on the Performance of Hybrid Sorghum Genotypes in Moisture Stressed Areas of Ethiopia

Genotype x environment (GxE) interaction and yield-stability analysis is an imperative in measuring varietal stability and suitability for cultivation over seasons and ecological zones. Developing high performing and stable genotypes across different locations is of most importance to plant breeders. This study was conducted using 84 hybrid lines to identify the most stable and high yielding genotypes. To gain these objective, multiple-environmental trials (MET) was undertaken annually across locations. AMMI model has shown that the largest proportion of the total variation in grain yield was attributed to environments and somehow to genotypes. GGE bi-plot analysis also visualized the winner genotype at each area and to identify high yielding and stable genotypes. The genotype with the high yield in SR is G66, and in KB G27, G10, G79, in SH G25, G78, G86 and G68 while, in SR the best genotypes is G66. The other vertex genotypes (G1, G32, G51, 71 and G26 are poorest in all environments. Environments, AM and SH exerted strong interaction forces while the rest two did less. On the other hand, the genotypes near the origin are not sensitive to environmental interaction and those distant from the origins are sensitive and have large interaction. Hence, G1, G5, G66, G71, G18, G10 and G25 had more responsive since they were far away from the origin whereas the genotypes G54, G29, G23, G4, G9, G5, G43, G13 and G7 were close to the origin and hence they were less sensitive to environmental interactive forces while genotypes G38, G11, G45 and G76 were the most closest to the origin and hence had almost no interaction forces. Generally, G74 can be recommended for specific adaptation whereas G2 and G16 relatively for broader adaptation.
Evaluation of oxygen budget and mechanical aeration requirements of red tilapia cage-culture in earthen ponds

The oxygen budget (OB) and aeration requirements were evaluated of red tilapia cage-culture in earthen ponds using two culture ponds (0.48 ha and 0.64 ha) on a commercial fish farm in Pathum Thani, Thailand. These two ponds were installed with two (3 HP) and four (2.5 HP) long-armed paddle wheel aerators, respectively. The data were collected for two consecutive crops (12 wk/crop). The results showed that the OB at night was 3.10 ± 0.08 mg/L, with 93.48 ± 0.88% total oxygen production from the aerators and 76.55 ± 2.01% of the total oxygen was consumed by fish. During the day, the oxygen budget was 10.45 ± 3.49 mg/L, with 67.08 ± 2.95 % from aerators and 91.54 ± 1.13% of the total oxygen was consumed by fish. The maximum power requirement for the aerators at night was 5.00 ± 0.20 HP/ha while during the day, no supplementary aeration was required and so the power requirement then was zero. However, the farmer used aerator power of 14.07 HP/ha for 22.5 hr/d, which exceeded the pond requirements, and the power wastage could be reduced by powering off 50 % of the aerators at night and 100% during the day unless there were a crisis. Thus, increased energy efficiency and a huge cost saving can be achieved in the production cost to farmers.
Predicting head pose from speech

Speech animation, the process of animating a human-like model to give the impression it is talking, most commonly relies on the work of skilled animators, or performance capture. These approaches are time consuming, expensive, and lack the ability to scale. This thesis develops algorithms for content driven speech animation; models that learn visual actions from data without semantic labelling, to predict realistic speech animation from recorded audio. We achieve these goals by _rst forming a multi-modal corpus that represents the style of speech we want to model; speech that is natural, expressive and prosodic. This allows us to train deep recurrent neural networks to predict compelling animation. We _rst develop methods to predict the rigid head pose of a speaker. Predicting the head pose of a speaker from speech is not wholly deterministic, so our methods provide a large variety of plausible head pose trajectories from a single utterance. We then apply our methods to learn how to predict the head pose of the listener while in conversation, using only the voice of the speaker. Finally, we show how to predict the lip sync, facial expression, and rigid head pose of the speaker, simultaneously, solely from speech
Volatility Episodes and Patterns in Currency Returns

Portfolio management under episodes of high volatility spurs difficult decision-making for asset managers in the pursuit of risk minimization as benefits from international diversification become less relevant. Dynamics of currencies under such developments add a new layer of risk. A clear description of the reaction of currencies to volatility shocks perceived in capital markets is therefore important for the success of risk management undertakings. Our paper studies the persistence of the impact of volatility changes on currencies, to enhance the prediction needed for international portfolio risk management. Our analysis focuses on the highest ranked currencies in terms of over-the-counter (OTC) foreign exchange turnover according to the latest Triennial Central Bank Survey of the Bank of International Settlements (2019). We use daily bilateral rates of 29 currencies against the US dollar collected from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) and Pacific Exchange Rate Service. Our approach identifies high-volatility episodes in financial markets based on VIX, which is a widely used indicator of global financial market volatility, between January 1999 and December 2019. Specifically, we investigate the behaviour of exchange rates against the US dollar during these episodes of volatility in financial markets, by considering the first four moments of currency return distribution in a Statistical Clustering methodological framework. We find that, overall, currency returns have a rather homogeneous behaviour in turbulent times, which generates difficulties in distinguishing separate asset classes in the foreign exchange market. We cannot distinguish separate asset classes in the foreign exchange market based on currency return distributions, but knowing that currency returns exhibit similar patterns may prove to be useful for portfolio managers for designing their active investing and/or hedging strategies in a highly correlated world.
A Qualitative Exploration of Racial and Ethnic Differences in Cost of Care Conversations Among Older Adults

Background: The rapidly growing racially diverse, aging population in the United States is presenting unique challenges for our social, economic, and healthcare systems. Rising health care costs, increased patient cost-sharing, and limited financial resources make this generation of older Americans susceptible to large medical bills or debt which disproportionally impacts older racial/ethnic minorities. Cost-of-care (CoC) conversations between patients and doctors is one recommended approach to containing health care costs and alleviating patients’ financial burden of care.Methods: The current study used focus group methodology to qualitatively explore the contextual factors that influence CoC conversations in a diverse sample of older adults (N=27). Results: Three focus groups were held with White (n=10), African American (n= 9) and Hispanic/Latino (n=8) participants. Thematic analysis yielded four broad themes. Results suggest that CoC conversations are not occurring with physicians, although conversations are occurring with dentists and pharmacists. Contributors to CoC conversations included positive provider affect, rapport/relationship building, and communication. Barriers included: new age physicians, lack of physician training, wait time, lack of focus on the patient, language, provider preferences, fear of physicians, and religion; however, there was little similarity across racial/ethnic groups.Conclusions: The results of this qualitative study suggest that cost-of-care conversations are not occurring between providers and their patients. Several barriers, contributors, and solutions to cost-of-care conversations were identified by focus group participants, which have important implications for the field, and are addressed in this manuscript.
The effect of Facebook users’ satisfaction and trust on stickiness: The role of perceived values

This study aims to explore the impact of satisfaction and trust on stickiness to Facebook. Also, it proposed that hedonic value, emotional value, and social value act as critical antecedents to Facebook stickiness. A quantitative methodology is used to examine the research questions. The research model was tested with data from 511 university students and five academic professors using an online survey. The proposed hypotheses were tested using regression analysis. Furthermore, Data were collected from targeted participants with Facebook experience, among the 511 participants, 353 were females (69.1%), and 158 were males (30.9%). The SEM analysis showed that satisfaction positively and significantly did affect stickiness, where trust did not. Also, results showed while hedonic value affected satisfaction, it did not impact trust. Hence, the results confirmed that hedonic value served as important value concerns for Facebook users. Nevertheless, the study found that both emotional value and social value impacted satisfaction and trust. The current research has enriched the existing study in the fields of customers’ satisfaction and trust on stickiness to Facebook. Moreover, this research is one of the earliest studies that proved that customer value creation serves as an important driving factor for customer satisfaction to generate stickiness to SNS. This study’s results help policymakers and designers of SNS to understand what value factors affect users’ stickiness to Facebook. Their marketing plans and decisions can be accordingly adjusted. This study suggests that marketers need to pay full attention to social value by adding more interactive features such as comments, likes, and shares in order to build social image and increase one’s social influence.
Characteristics of symptom in patients with hepatic cirrhosis of different etiologies

Backgrounds: The complications of hepatic cirrhosis are responsible for death and hospitalization. We aimed to analyze the clinical characteristics in cirrhotic symptom according to etiology.Methods: A total of 1,573 admissions of decompensated hepatic cirrhosis in the hospital were enrolled between September 2014 and August 2019. We described the relationships between major symptoms and cirrhotic etiologies. We assessed the secondary hepatic encephalopathy for each cirrhotic etiology.Results: Among all complications, the constituent ratio of gastrointestinal hemorrhage was 37.87%, followed by ascites and jaundice with 23.70% and 11.40%, respectively. Gastrointestinal hemorrhage was more presented in hepatitis B and hepatitis C than in alcoholic cirrhosis (57.59%, 47.86% and 42.19%, p < 0.05). No significant difference was found between hepatitis B and hepatitis C for all symptoms. Jaundice was the major symptom in primary biliary cirrhosis and autoimmune cirrhosis. Alcoholic cirrhotic patients had a higher rate to develop secondary encephalopathy than other etiologies (13.51%, p < 0.05). Conclusions: Gastrointestinal hemorrhage was the main symptom for hospitalization in decompensated cirrhotic patients. Patients of hepatitis cirrhosis were more likely to have gastrointestinal hemorrhage than those of alcohol cirrhosis. Patients of alcohol cirrhosis were likely to develop a secondary encephalopathy following the presentation of other symptoms.
Choropleth Mapping with Uncertainty: A Maximum Likelihood–Based Classification Scheme

Choropleth mapping provides a powerful way to visualize geographical phenomena with colors, shadings, or patterns. In many real-world applications, geographical data often contain uncertainty. How to incorporate such uncertainty into choropleth mapping is challenging. Although a few existing methods attempt to address the uncertainty issue in choropleth mapping, there are limitations to widely applying these methods due to their strong assumption on the distribution of uncertainty and the way in which similarity or dissimilarity is assessed. This article provides a new classification scheme for choropleth maps when data contain uncertainty. Considering that in a choropleth map, units in the same class are assigned with the same color or pattern, this new approach assumes the existence of a representative value for each class. A maximum likelihood estimation–based approach is developed to determine class breaks so that the overall within-class deviation is minimized while considering uncertainty. Different methods—including linear programming, dynamic programming, and an interchange heuristic—are developed to solve the new classification problem. The proposed mapping approach has been applied to map the median household income data from the American Community Survey and simulated disease occurrence data. Test results show the effectiveness of the new approach. The linkage between the new approach and the existing methods is also discussed. Key Words: choropleth mapping, map classification, maximum likelihood estimation, uncertainty.
The Link between Locus of Control Orientation and Patients’ Adherence to Medication After Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

The main cause of disease is tobacco smoking. Symptoms of the disease gradually appear from age 40 and above, and men are more likely to be effect with the disease than women around the world. The study focused on the relationship between awareness of the locus control orientation and of patients’ adherence to medication and in making appropriate decisions that avoid complications of disease and reduce the risk factors. A Descriptive Correlational Design is used through the present study in order to determine link between locus of control orientation and patients’ adherence to medication after chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. From October, 17 th , 2018 to June, 13 th , 2019. A Non- Probability (Accidental Sample) of (104) patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The study is conducted in Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf City’s hospitals. The study instrument is adopted and developed by the researcher to investigate the study phenomenon. The study results indicate that there is a direct and high significant and positive correlation between locus of control orientation and adherence to medication. The study concludes that there is a correlation between locus of control orientation and patients’ adherence to medication after chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
The Role of Anthocyanins in Plant Tolerance to Drought and Salt Stresses

Drought and salinity affect various biochemical and physiological processes in plants, inhibit plant growth, and significantly reduce productivity. The anthocyanin biosynthesis system represents one of the plant stress-tolerance mechanisms, activated by surplus reactive oxygen species. Anthocyanins act as ROS scavengers, protecting plants from oxidative damage and enhancing their sustainability. In this review, we focus on molecular and biochemical mechanisms underlying the role of anthocyanins in acquired tolerance to drought and salt stresses. Also, we discuss the role of abscisic acid and the abscisic-acid-miRNA156 regulatory node in the regulation of drought-induced anthocyanin production. Additionally, we summarise the available knowledge on transcription factors involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis and development of salt and drought tolerance. Finally, we discuss recent progress in the application of modern gene manipulation technologies in the development of anthocyanin-enriched plants with enhanced tolerance to drought and salt stresses.