Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Estimation of Deformation from Observation Differences Using Some Evolutionary Optimisation Algorithms

In this paper, an original modification of the generalised robust estimation of deformation from observation differences (GREDOD) method is presented with the application of two evolutionary optimisation algorithms, the genetic algorithm (GA) and generalised particle swarm optimisation (GPSO), in the procedure of robust estimation of the displacement vector. The iterative reweighted least-squares (IRLS) method is traditionally used to perform robust estimation of the displacement vector, i.e., to determine the optimal datum solution of the displacement vector. In order to overcome the main flaw of the IRLS method, namely, the inability to determine the global optimal datum solution of the displacement vector if displaced points appear in the set of datum network points, the application of the GA and GPSO algorithms, which are powerful global optimisation techniques, is proposed for the robust estimation of the displacement vector. A thorough and comprehensive experimental analysis of the proposed modification of the GREDOD method was conducted based on Monte Carlo simulations with the application of the mean success rate (MSR). A comparative analysis of the traditional approach using IRLS, the proposed modification based on the GA and GPSO algorithms and one recent modification of the iterative weighted similarity transformation (IWST) method based on evolutionary optimisation techniques is also presented. The obtained results confirmed the quality and practical usefulness of the presented modification of the GREDOD method, since it increased the overall efficiency by about 18% and can provide more reliable results for projects dealing with the deformation analysis of engineering facilities and parts of the Earth’s crust surface.
Safety Attitude of Operating Room Personnel Associated With Accurate Completion of a Surgical Checklist: A Cross-sectional Observational Study

Objective How the checklist is executed in routine practice may reflect the teamwork and safety climate in the operating room (OR). This cross-sectional study aimed to identify whether the presence of a fully completed checklist in medical records was associated with teams’ safety attitudes. Methods Data from 29 French hospitals, including 5677 operated patients and 834 OR professionals, were prospectively collected. The degree of checklist compliance was categorized for each patient in 1 of 4 ways: full, incomplete, inaccurate, and no checklist completed. The members of OR teams were invited to complete a questionnaire including teamwork climate measurement (Safety Attitudes Questionnaire) and their opinion regarding checklist use, checklist audibly reading, and communication change with checklist. Multilevel modeling was performed to investigate the effect of variables related to hospitals and professionals on checklist compliance, after adjustment for patient characteristics. Results A checklist was present for 83% of patients, but only 35% demonstrated full completion. Compared with no checklist, full completion was associated with higher safety attitude (high teamwork climate [adjusted odds ratio for full completion, 4.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.75–9.76]; communication change [1.31, 1.04–1.66]; checklist aloud reading [1.16, 1.02–1.32]) and was reinforced by the designation of a checklist coordinator (2.43, 1.06–5.55). Incomplete completion was also associated with enhanced safety attitude contrary to inaccurate completion. Conclusions Compliance with checklists is associated with safer OR team practice and can be considered as an indicator of the extent of safety in OR practice.
Process Evaluation of Recombinant Chitin Deacetylase Expression in E. Coli Rosetta pLysS Cells using Statistical Design of Experiments

Chitin is a natural polymer with N-acetylglucosamine units, extracted from seafood waste as a major source. It remains an underexplored polymer due to its crystalline structure. The commercial applicability can be improved if we could make it soluble. One of the routes employed to decrease this crystallinity is the conversion of chitin to chitosan via deacetylation. The industrial production of chitosan uses chemical methods, which leaves the process footprint on the environment. The greener alternative approach to producing chitosan is using chitin deacetylases (CDA). The enzymatically converted chitosan with known characteristics has a wide range of applications, importantly in the biomedical field. In the present paper, we report heterologous expression of CDA from a marine moneran; Bacillus aryabhattai B8W22. The process and the nutritional conditions were optimized for the submerged fermentation condition of E. coli Rosetta pLysS expressing the recombinant CDA using the design of experiment tools. The employment of central composite design (CCD) resulted in a ~2.39 fold increase in the total activity of expressed CDA with the process conditions of induction temperature at 22 ºC, agitation at 120 rpm, and 30 h of fermentation. The nutritional conditions required for the optimized expression were 0.061% glucose concentration and 1% lactose in media. The employment of these optimal growth conditions could result in cost-effective large-scale production of the lesser-explored moneran deacetylase, embarking on the greener route to produce biomedical grade chitosan.
The Heroine Myth: The Little Woman’S Transformation From Literature To Cinema

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott’s literary source and numerous film adaptations) have won the love of mass audiences and the interest of feminist critics as they represent the “American female myth” and provide ample room for interpretation. The novel itself simultaneously asserts and undermines Victorian gender norms, and each subsequent film adaptation redefines these norms from the standpoint of its time. An analysis of Greta Gerwig’s latest film adaptation of 2019 traces how contemporary cinema remythologizes Victorian gender norms to construct contemporary normative models of gender identity. This study, using the “heroine myth” model, presents Little Women as a female developmental narrative that includes the successive passage of three stages: Wonderful Child - Beautiful Virgin - Wise Mother. The adaptation of Greta Gerwig offers two options for the development of the heroine - the first corresponds to the book, and the second demonstrates the following sequence: Wonderful Child Beautiful Virgin - Wonderful Virgin. These changes allow the heroine to maintain her transformative nature, which she is forced to sacrifice in the traditional scenario. At the same time, the preservation of the duality of the ending can be interpreted as an assertion of the variability of women's life or as a concession to romantic conventions while formally defending feminist values.
Airfoils Aerodynamic Efficiency Study in Heavy Rain via Two Phase Flow Approach

Heavy rainfall greatly affects the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft. There are many accidents of aircraft caused by aerodynamic efficiency degradation by heavy rain. In this Paper we have studied the heavy rain effects on the aerodynamic efficiency of cambered NACA 64-210 and symmetric NACA 0012 airfoils. Our results show significant increase in drag and decrease in lift. We used preprocessing software gridgen for creation of geometry and mesh, used fluent as solver and techplot as postprocessor. Discrete phase modeling called DPM is used to model the rain particles using two phase flow approach. The rain particles are assumed to be inert. Both airfoils showed significant decrease in lift and increase in drag in simulated rain environment. The most significant difference between these two airfoils was the NACA 64-210 more sensitivity than NACA 0012 to liquid water content (LWC). We believe that the results showed in this paper will be useful for the designer of the commercial aircrafts and UAVs, and will be helpful for training of the pilots to control the airplanes in heavy rain Keywords—airfoil, discrete phase modeling, heavy rain, Reynolds number
CONSTRAINTS IN ADOPTION OF WHEAT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY PERCEIVED BY THE SMALL FARMERS

The study was conducted in 12 villages of Bharatpur district of Rajasthan with the sample size 225 small farmers cultivating wheat crop. Results indicated that the varieties of constraints were responsible for low adoption of wheat production technology however, few of them were most important such as , lack of soil testing facility, lack of knowledge about chemical control of weeds, water salinity, use of chemicals weed control is not as effective as hand weeding, lack of knowledge about soil treatment, lack of proper storage facility, non availability of under ground water for irrigation, lack of knowledge about plant protection and seed treatment, non availability of HYV seed in time, costly chemicals for soil treatment, inadequate irrigation facility, lack of technical help about plant protection measures, non-availability of plant protection equipments, lack of conviction about pesticides and adulteration of insecticides, nonavailability of fumigants , non availability of fertilizers in time and lack of awareness about soil analysis. This trends to imply that more educational efforts are required to be undertaken by extension agency for improvement of knowledge and accelerating the pace of production by way of more adoption of new technologies of wheat cultivation.
Measuring Organic and Mechanistic Cultures

Abstract Knowledge workers in today's high-technology organizations require environments with organic characteristics. To retain highly skilled knowledge workers, managers need to determine whether their organizations exhibit organic or mechanistic cultures. Culture is an important factor in successful technology implementation, innovation, mergers, acquisitions, job satisfaction, organizational success, and team effectiveness. This article discusses organic and mechanistic organizational cultures and the organizational culture assessment (OCA) tool. The tool gives an organization's culture type and a numerical score for each of five culture elements. Survey results indicate that the OCA adequately measures organizational culture.
How dense are we? Another look at urban density and transport patterns in Australia, Canada and the USA

For at least two decades, urban policy in Australia has been based on the belief that high levels of car use and poor public transport are mainly the result of low urban densities. There has been considerable debate about the evidence on which these policies are based, but until recently there has been no common data-set that allows densities and transport patterns to be compared on a consistent and rigorous basis. As a result of recent changes to data collection and publication systems by the Australian, Canadian and United States national census agencies, it is now possible to compare urban densities and transport mode shares (for the journey to work) across the three countries' urban areas on a consistent basis. This paper presents the results of this comparison. Australian cities have similar densities to those of Canadian cities and the more densely-populated US cities. There are variations in density among cities, but these show little or no relationship to transport modes share, which seems more closely related to different transport policies. These findings are very different from those on which current urban policies are based, and suggest the need for a radical rethinking of those policies.
Suppression of coupled-slotline mode on CPW using air-bridges measured by picosecond photoconductive sampling

For the first time, the effect of air-bridges on the suppression of the unwanted coupled-slotline (CSL) mode on a coplanar waveguide (CPW) is experimentally observed up to 250-GHz bandwidth, based on the picosecond photoconductive sampling technique. The CSL mode is initially originated from the asymmetric pulse generation on the CPW using ultrashort laser pulses and photoconductive switches. We find that more than two crossover air-bridges are needed to remove the unwanted CSL modes. The parasitic capacitance for the crossover air-bridge over the CPW and the parasitic inductance for the ground connecting air-bridge along the CPW are crucial in determining the signal distortion.
A comparative study of gate direct tunneling and drain leakage currents in n-MOSFET's with sub-2 nm gate oxides

This work examines different components of leakage current in scaled n-MOSFET's with ultrathin gate oxides (1.4-2.0 nm). Both gate direct tunneling and drain leakage currents are studied by theoretical modeling and experiments, and their effects on the drain current are investigated and compared. It concludes that the source and drain extension to the gate overlap regions have strong effects on device performance in terms of gate tunneling and off-state drain currents.
Effect of Lightweight Aggregate Impregnation on Selected Concrete Properties

The impregnation of lightweight aggregate (LWA) is an alternative method to its pre-moistening, which is used to limit the loss of fresh concrete workability due to the aggregate’s ability to absorb a great amount of mixing water. The aim of this study was to access the effectiveness, by pre-coating LWAs with cement paste, in modifying the properties of concrete composites. Two types of lightweight aggregates (Lytag and Leca) characterized with a relatively open-structure shell were selected. The other changeable parameters taken into consideration in this research were: LWA size, initial moisture of aggregate before the impregnation process and type of cement paste applied as an impregnant. Sixteen concretes prepared with pre-moistened and pre-coated lightweight aggregates were subject to a density test in different moisture conditions, a water absorption test and a compressive strength test. On the one hand, the pre-coating of LWAs with cement paste resulted in a relatively slight increase in concrete density (by up to 19%) compared to the pre-moistening of LWAs. On the other hand, it caused a very significant reduction (by up to 52%) in the composite’s water absorption and an incomparably greater growth (by up to 107%) in compressive strength. The most crucial factors determining the effectiveness of impregnation of LWAs with cement pastes in improvement of composite properties were the aggregate type and its size. The composition of impregnating slurry and the initial moisture content of LWA before pre-coating also mattered.
RELIABILITY DESIGN PROCEDURES FOR FLEXIBLE PAVEMENTS

A procedure is developed to analyze layered elastic flexible pavement systems in terms of reliability. Rosenblueth's method is used to estimate the expected value and variance of the strains (dependent parameters), based on the input mean values of independent parameters, i.e., aircraft load, layer thicknesses, and material moduli. Relationships between reliability level and allowable strain repetition of the designed system provide a decision‐making tool for engineers to design pavements at a desired reliability level. The design can be optimized by selecting thicknesses of bituminous concrete and base layers so that the pavement fails in fatigue cracking of the bituminous concrete and subgrade at nearly the same traffic level for a given reliability level. The performance of conventional flexible pavement is sensitive, in descending order, to variations of gear load P, thickness of the granular base h2, subgrade modulus E3, and thickness and modulus of the bituminous‐concrete surface course h1 and E1, r.
Mechanism and Evolution of Soil Organic Carbon Coupling with Rocky Desertification in South China Karst

To study the spatial distribution characteristics of soil organic carbon (SOC) coupled with rocky desertification, 1212 soil samples from 152 soil profiles were sampled from different karst landforms, including karst low hills/virgin forest (KLH) in Libo County, a karst peak-cluster depression (KPCD) in Xingyi County, a karst canyon (KC) in Guanling County, a karst plateau basin (KPB) in Puding County and a karst trough valley (KTV) in Yinjiang County. The spatial distribution characteristics of the responses of SOC, SOC density (SOCD), rocky desertification and soil bulk density (SBD) to different influencing factors were analyzed. The relationships among SOC, SOCD, rocky desertification and SBD were analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis. The SOC storage capacity was characterized by using SOCD, and then the SOC storage capacity in different evolution stages of karst landforms was assessed. The SOC contents of KLH, KPCD, KC, KPB and KTV ranged from 6.16 to 38.20 g·kg−1, 7.42 to 27.08 g·kg−1, 6.28 to 35.17 g·kg−1, 4.62 to 23.79 g·kg−1 and 5.24 to 37.85 g·kg−1, respectively, and their average SOCD values (0–100 cm) were 7.37, 10.79, 7.06, 8.51 and 7.84 kg·m−2, respectively. The karst landforms as ordered by SOC storage capacity were KPCD > KPB > KLH > KTV > KC. The SOC content was negatively correlated with the SBD; light rocky desertification may lead to SOC accumulation. The rocky desertification degree and SBD were closely associated with slope position and gradient. Rocky desertification first increased, then decreased from mountain foot to summit, and increased with increasing slope gradient. However, the SBD decreased from mountain foot to summit and with increasing slope gradient. The SOC contents on the northern aspect of the mountains were generally higher than the other aspects. In summary, rock outcrops controlled the SOC contents in the studied regions. The slope position, gradient and aspect influenced the composition and distribution of vegetation, which influenced the evolution of rocky desertification. Therefore, these factors indirectly affected the SOC content. Additionally, the SOCD decreased with increasing rocky desertification. During the different evolution stages of karst landforms, the SOC storage capacity first decreases, then increases.
The impact of information transparency on the dynamic behaviour of a hybrid manufacturing/remanufacturing system

A combined manufacturing/remanufacturing system is modelled and its dynamic behaviour is investigated using a control engineering approach. The model is an extension of the automated pipeline, inventory and order based production control system (APIOBPCS), which is well understood from a dynamic perspective. It is assumed that the remanufacturing process is based on a PUSH policy. Utilising different levels of information transparency from the remanufacturing process, three system types are developed and compared. Mathematical and simulation analyses of the system types were undertaken and their robustness to remanufacturing process uncertainties were tested. Our analysis indicates that the greater the degree of information transparency, the greater the robustness of the hybrid system.
On Exploiting Message Leakage in (Few) NIST PQC Candidates for Practical Message Recovery Attacks

In this work, we propose generic and practical side-channel attacks for message recovery in post-quantum lattice-based public key encryption (PKE) and key encapsulation mechanisms (KEM). The targeted schemes are based on the well known Learning With Errors (LWE) and Learning With Rounding (LWR) problem and include three finalists and six semi-finalist candidates of the ongoing NIST’s standardization process for post-quantum cryptography. Notably, we propose to exploit inherent ciphertext malleability properties of LWE/LWR-based PKEs as a powerful tool for side-channel assisted message recovery attacks. The use of ciphertext malleability widens the scope of previous attacks with the ability to target multiple operations for message recovery. Moreover, our attacks are adaptable to different implementation variants and are also applicable to implementations protected with concrete shuffling and masking side-channel countermeasures. Our work mainly highlights the presence of inherent algorithmic properties in LWE/LWR-based schemes that can aid side-channel attacks for message recovery, thereby stressing on the need for strong side-channel countermeasures against message recovery for LWE/LWR-based schemes.
Teaching engineering and technology: cognitive, knowledge and problem-solving taxonomies

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the objectives and methods of teaching engineering and technology education (ETE) through the lens of three educational taxonomies in cognitive, knowledge and problem-solving perspectives. This analysis is useful in light of today's increasing interest in teaching engineering and technology in K-12 education, instead of crafts or manual skills. Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploratory study. Technology and engineering education is a relatively new area in K-12 education, and little has been written about the use of general educational taxonomies for analysing and designing the teaching and learning of this subject. Findings – The literature analysis teaches us that fostering students' higher-order capabilities such as design and problem solving in engineering and technology cannot take place in isolation from specific knowledge. Instruction should be designed to: develop a certain degree of factual, procedural, conceptual and meta-cognitive knowledge in rel.
The Distributional Impacts of Economic Instruments to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transport

The research reported in this was conducted under the project The Social Impacts of Environmental Taxes: Removing Regressivity, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation under it Programme on Environment and Social Concerns. The project is investigating the social implications of environmental taxes and charges in relation to four environmental issues - the household use of energy, water and transport, and the generation of waste. The is a report of the component on the household use of transport.
Damage detection in plates using two-dimensional directional Gaussian wavelets and laser scanned operating deflection shapes

Mode shape analysis by wavelet transform has been used effectively for vibration-based damage detection in plates. As an extension of previous studies, this study focuses on an improved method for damage detection in plates: scrutiny of operating deflection shapes by two-dimensional directional Gaussian wavelet transforms. With this method, the proposed two-dimensional directional Gaussian wavelet can characterize directional information about damage; moreover, the operating deflection shapes can be used to address the real-time dynamic characteristics of a plate. To identify damage, the local surface of the plate is scanned using a scanning laser vibrometer to generate the local operating deflection shape, which is interrogated by two-dimensional directional Gaussian wavelets for damage. The feasibility of the method is numerically demonstrated using a low-magnitude operating deflection shape of a two-sided clamped plate, incorporating white noise with signal-to-noise ratio of 40 dB. The applicability of the method is then experimentally validated by detecting a cross-like notch in a suspended aluminum plate with the operating deflection shapes measured by a scanning laser vibrometer. Numerical and experimental results show that the method is capable of revealing directional features of small damage with high precision and strong robustness against noise. It appears that this damage detection method is related only to the spatially distributed measurement of vibrational responses in local critical regions of the plate. With this local property, the method requires no numerical or physical benchmark models for the entire structure in question nor any prior knowledge of either the material properties or the boundary conditions of the structure. (The Matlab code performing directional Gaussian wavelet transform can be provided by the corresponding author as per request.)