Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parametric study of cyclic loading effects on the creep behavior of polymers and polymer based composites

xiii An investigation of the cyclic loading effects on the time dependent response of Nylon 6/6 and a piezoelectric Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) based composite material is presented. A consistent experimental program has been developed with the main objective to determine the creep behavior of the materials under cyclic loading conditions. An extensive testing procedure employed in this study has involved multiple experimental stages consisting of tensile stress-strain tests, constant load creep tests, and tests under sustained tensile loads with superimposed harmonic oscillations. The creep behavior of Nylon 6/6 and the PVDF based composite has been investigated depending on three loading parameters, mean stress, vibration frequency and amplitude. The study has been performed over a wide range of temperature conditions. The results of this investigation have provided a general view on the cyclic creep response of the materials under investigation, where Nylon 6/6 is a solid polymer and PVDF is an electroded polymer. Nonlinear creep effects induced by cyclic loading conditions have been observed in both materials. The results of the study have demonstrated the limitations of linear viscoelastic theory and have served as a basis for constitutive model development and microstructural analyses of polymers subjected to asymmetric cyclic loading regimes.
Flapjax: a programming language for Ajax applications

This paper presents Flapjax, a language designed for contemporary Web applications. These applications communicate with servers and have rich, interactive interfaces. Flapjax provides two key features that simplify writing these applications. First, it provides event streams, a uniform abstraction for communication within a program as well as with external Web services. Second, the language itself is reactive: it automatically tracks data dependencies and propagates updates along those dataflows. This allows developers to write reactive interfaces in a declarative and compositional style. Flapjax is built on top of JavaScript. It runs on unmodified browsers and readily interoperates with existing JavaScript code. It is usable as either a programming language (that is compiled to JavaScript) or as a JavaScript library, and is designed for both uses. This paper presents the language, its design decisions, and illustrative examples drawn from several working Flapjax applications.
A comparison study: applying segmentation to array CGH data for downstream analyses

MOTIVATION Array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) allows detection and mapping of copy number of DNA segments. A challenge is to make inferences about the copy number structure of the genome. Several statistical methods have been proposed to determine genomic segments with different copy number levels. However, to date, no comprehensive comparison of various characteristics of these methods exists. Moreover, the segmentation results have not been utilized in downstream analyses. RESULTS We describe a comparison of three popular and publicly available methods for the analysis of array CGH data and we demonstrate how segmentation results may be utilized in the downstream analyses such as testing and classification, yielding higher power and prediction accuracy. Since the methods operate on individual chromosomes, we also propose a novel procedure for merging segments across the genome, which results in an interpretable set of copy number levels, and thus facilitate identification of copy number alterations in each genome. AVAILABILITY http://www.bioconductor. org
Socioeconomic factors associated with choice of delivery place among mothers: a population-based cross-sectional study in Guinea-Bissau

Background Maternal death outcome remains high in Guinea-Bissau. Delivery-related complications and maternal mortality could be prevented by increasing women’s access to skilled pregnancy care. Socioeconomic status (SES) is often associated with low health service utilisation in low/middle-income countries. In Guinea-Bissau, little is known on the relationship between SES and use of health facility for delivery. In this study, we examined the association between women’s choice of health facility delivery with their SES. Methods Current data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted in Guinea-Bissau, 2014 were used in this study. The place of delivery (home or health facility) was the outcome variable of interest using 7532 women of reproductive age (15–49 years). Respondents’ characteristics were described by summary statistics, while multivariable logistic regression model was used to examine the association of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics on facility-based delivery. Adjusted ORs, 95% CIs and p values were computed to identify significant determinants. Results Results show that in proportion of women delivering at home was higher than of delivery at a health facility. Overall percentage of women who delivered at health facility was 39.8%, with the rate being substantially higher among urban (67.8%) compared with their rural (30.2%) counterparts. Percentage of delivering at home was highest in Oio region (23.8%) and that of delivery at a health facility was highest in the Sector Autónomo de Bissau region (18.7%). In the multivariable analysis, women in urban areas compared those who had no education, those who had primary and secondary/higher level of education were 2.2 and 3.3 times more likely to deliver at a health facility. The odds of facility were also highest among the women from the richest households, 5.3 and 5 times among urban and rural women, respectively. Conclusion Based on these findings, the study concludes that the percentage of health facility delivery is low in Guinea-Bissau, which can be promoted through scaling up women’s SES. The findings could guide healthcare policy-makers to address the issue of unskilled delivery services and increase the use of facility-based delivery particularly among the disadvantaged women.
THESIS ORGANIZATION

China and the United States have taken different paths to arrive at their respective stage of technological development. The United States obtained leadership in technological innovation through its competitive bid to remain technologically superior to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. China developed late, taking a leapfrog approach to play catch-up to the West. This is now changing as Cold War priorities end and globalization provides incentives for off shoring of U.S. technology companies to China. The shift to rely more on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) for military technology means keeping the United States a leader in innovative, civilian technologies is a security issue complicating this economic interdependence. Since technological interdependence with China is a given, how can the United States compete with China economically, politically, and militarily in East Asia? Export controls, that kept technology out of the hands of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, do not work in a global political economy where commercial competitiveness is so vital and technology rapidly innovates and has global availability. A new comprehensive approach is needed to solve the inadequate dual-use technology export control structure. This new approach is required to meet current and future U.S. security and economic demands. The United States should use Strategic Technological Collaborative Leadership (STCL) to lead the region in finding new technological solutions for the region’s environmental and energy demands. STCL would then lend itself to a CollaborativeEngagement policy that would have political, security, economic, and social benefits for the United States and the entire East Asian region. The collaborative structure set up in the United States to support this policy will also provide a comprehensive means to ensure an efficient and effective technology control process. This process would ensure critical dual-use technology innovations stay within the United States and thus preserve the U.S. innovative technology base while minimally affecting commercial trade with China. These policy attributes will be especially important as nanotechnology, which is inherently interdisciplinary and collaborative, brings innovations with the promise of further enhancing this collaborative effort in a positive direction. There is an opportunity
Comparing Cubes of Typed and Type Assignment Systems ( Annals of Pure and Applied Logic

Types can be used as predicates for terms of λ-calculus in two different ways. A first approach is to define terms directly decorated with types; in this fully typed approach, every closed term comes with a unique, intrinsic type. A typed system consists of a set of (derivation) rules for proving judgements of the shape Γt t Mt : φt, where Mt is a typed term, φt is a type, and Γt is a context. The meaning of such a judgement is that the term Mt has type φt under the context Γt, where Γt records the types of the free variables of Mt and φt. Alternatively, in the type assignment approach, types can be assigned to terms of the untyped λ-calculus. A type assignment system consists of a set of (derivation) rules for proving judgements of the shape Γ M : φ, where M is a term of the untyped λ-calculus, φ is a type, and Γ is a context that assigns types to the free variables of M and φ. Such a judgement can be understood as that we can assign the type φ to the λ-term M, when types are assigned to the free variables of M and φ as specified in the context Γ. In this approach, types are viewed as predicates, or properties, of terms, and each closed term can be assigned either none or infinitely many types. When we look at λ-calculus as a paradigmatic programming language, the first approach corresponds to explicitly typed languages, like for example Haskell, whereas the second corresponds to ML-like languages, where the user can write programs in a completely untyped language, and types are automatically inferred at compile time. The latter can be considered to be the construction of an abstract interpretation of the program, that can be used as a correctness criterion.
The influence of suburban development and metropolitan fragmentation on language variation and change: Evidence from Greater St. Louis

Abstract The distances between urban and suburban spaces, while small in Euclidean terms, have a rather large social reality. This paper calls attention to two reasons for this—suburban development and metropolitan fragmentation—and situates these phenomena within the context of sociological and historical thought about metropolitan areas. I test their role in linguistic variation through a case study of three Northern Cities Shift features (raised trap, fronted lot, and lowered thought) in English of the St. Louis metropolitan area. I show that these features diffused throughout the region in three different ways. Additionally, phonological conditioning of lot-fronting differs between urban and suburban speakers, and retreat from urban dialect features is led in the suburbs. These findings highlight the need to consider the geography of metropolitan areas more deeply in studies of language variation and change in metropolitan areas, as similarity across a metropolitan area should not be assumed a priori.
Noncatalytic Alcoholysis of Oils for Biodiesel Fuel Production by a Semi-batch Process

1F ood Engineering Division, National Food Research Institute, NARO, 2-1-12 Kan-nondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8642, Japan 2D epartment of Global Agricultural Sciences, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan 3A ICS Corporation, 3-1217 Koushin, Moriyama-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 463-0079, Japan 4Department of Food Science, Ishikawa Prefectural University, 1-308 Suimatsu, Nonoichi 921-8836, Japan
Grain‐ to multiple‐grain‐scale deformation processes during diffusion creep of forsterite + diopside aggregate: 1. Direct observations

We uniaxially deformed fine‐grained (~ 1 μm) forsterite + diopside (5 and 20 vol %) aggregates in the diffusion creep regime. Prior to deformation, line markers were milled on a lateral surface of a cylindrical sample to detect single‐ to multiple‐grain‐scale deformation. We performed deformation experiments and observations of the marker‐etched surface after sample cooling multiple times on the same specimens. The strain measured at the scale of several tens of grains from macroscopic shortening of the markers parallel to the compression axis is consistent with the total strain of the sample. However, microscopically, the markers are intensely segmented and rotated at the grain scale increasing with the sample strain. Meanwhile, essentially, no deformation is observed within the grains in most of the samples. The surface microstructures, including the deformation of the markers, reveal the serial operations of grain boundary migration, grain boundary sliding, rigid body grain rotation, and grain neighbor switching, which correspond well to processes expected in diffusion‐controlled superplasticity. This sequence is commonly observed in both samples consisting of forsterite grains of tabular and equiaxed grain shapes, which have been shown to develop notable crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO) and random (or weak) CPO, respectively, during diffusion creep. Intragranular regions of relatively larger forsterite grains in the specimens deformed at stresses near the transition between deformation mechanisms from diffusion creep to dislocation creep reveal marker deformation and formation of surface creases and subgrain boundaries, which indicate intragranular dislocation processes. Overall, the surface microstructures reflect the deformation state of the materials well.
A model for human ventricular tissue

[PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , January 1, 2008; 77 (1): 98-106. Cardiovasc Res Ostrer, C. T. Basson, W. Chung and G. W. Abbott E. Gordon, G. Panaghie, L. Deng, K. J. Bee, T. K. Roepke, T. Krogh-Madsen, D. J. Christini, H. serum electrolyte imbalance A KCNE2 mutation in a patient with cardiac arrhythmia induced by auditory stimuli and [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , February 1, 2008; 294 (2): H764-H774. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol R. H. Keldermann, K. H. W. J. ten Tusscher, M. P. Nash, R. Hren, P. Taggart and A. V. Panfilov ventricles Effect of heterogeneous APD restitution on VF organization in a model of the human [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , February 19, 2008; 117 (7): 866-875. Circulation Marquart, B. Vogel, C. A. Karle, G. Seemann, M. C. Fishman, H. A. Katus and W. Rottbauer D. Hassel, E. P. Scholz, N. Trano, O. Friedrich, S. Just, B. Meder, D. L. Weiss, E. Zitron, S. Syndrome in Zebrafish Reggae Mutants Deficient Zebrafish Ether-a-Go-Go-Related Gene Channel Gating Causes Short-QT [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , April 1, 2008; 23 (4): 1378-1386. Nephrol. Dial. Transplant. S. Severi, E. Grandi, C. Pes, F. Badiali, F. Grandi and A. Santoro duration: in vivo and in silico analysis Calcium and potassium changes during haemodialysis alter ventricular repolarization [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , February 1, 2009; 296 (2): H370-H379. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol A. V. Panfilov R. H. Keldermann, K. H. W. J. ten Tusscher, M. P. Nash, C. P. Bradley, R. Hren, P. Taggart and A computational study of mother rotor VF in the human ventricles
Analysis of a district energy system containing thermal energy storage and heat pumps

In the context of meeting the targets set by 2050 for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, District Energy (DE) systems are considered to be a proven solution. This is essentially due to their ability to re-use energy that would otherwise be wasted, and its compatibility with a variety of other technologies, such as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) and renewable energy sources. When available, thermal energy storage provides greater flexibility, reliability, as well as energy security and it can be used to optimize equipment responsible for thermal energy production, as for instance, heat pumps. The main objective of this project is to study the influence of the introduction of short-term thermal storage in a DE, where heat and cold requirements are supplied by a combination of seasonal TES and heat pumps. To be specific, the focus is to analyze to what extent can short-term TES be used to shift the heat pumps electrical heating loads, from peak to off-peak periods, and quantify the influence of this strategy on energy production and electricity consumption. In order to do this, space heating and cooling demand data regarding a group of buildings is determined in Dymola/Modelica, and the energy systems performance is evaluated by using an analytical MATLAB model. The results obtained show that the introduction of short-term storage allowed to shift some of the thermal load from peak to off-peak periods. This operation led to a significant reduction in the individual electricity costs for the heat consumers (11.5% to 37.5%), which were determined based on electricity prices from the Dutch EPEX day-ahead spot market. Regarding electricity consumption and total heat production, it was noticed that the introduction of short-term storage led to an increase in the total heat output from heat pumps (~7%), mainly due to higher thermal losses. However, the global heat pumps coefficient of performance (COP) also increased (~14%), which resulted in less electricity consumption (~-13%), despite of the higher heat production.
Free-Field Virtual Psychoacoustics and Hearing Impairment : Paper ICA 2016-493 Impact of spatial audiovisual coherence on source unmasking

The influence of the spatial audiovisual coherence is evaluated in the context of a video recording of live music. In this context, audio engineers currently balance the audio spectrum to unmask each music instrument getting it intelligible inside the stereo mix. In contrast, sound engineers using spatial audio technologies have reported that sound source equalization is unnecessary in live music mixing when the sound sources are played at the same location of the physical instruments. The effects of spatial audiovisual coherence and sound spatialization have been assessed : expert subjects were asked to compare two mixes in audio only and in audiovisual mode. For this aim, music concerts were visually projected and audio rendered using WFS. Three sound engineers did the audio mixing for all pieces of music in the same room were the test have been carried out.
Constraining pollen-based estimates of forest cover in the Amazon: A simulation approach

Pollen dispersal and deposition (PDD) modelling has been instrumental in reconstructing historical vegetation in temperate regions, but its application has been limited in the tropics where there is greatest uncertainty in past land cover change. Here, we apply PDD modelling to Amazonian savanna and forested ecosystems. Empirical pollen data from lakes situated in southwestern Amazonia were used to calibrate the PDD model for a two-component landscape of forest and non-forest. The PDD model was then used to simulate pollen assemblages for different combinations of landscape arrangements (the multiple scenario approach) that reflect possible anthropogenic and climate-driven forest cover change in the late-Holocene. We show that pollen records from large Amazonian lakes vary greatly in their sensitivity to forest loss depending on the baseline forest cover. Lakes in landscapes containing >80% forest will detect small reductions (5% of total cover), but this sensitivity degrades rapidly with forest cover loss. There are a wide range of uncertainties in pollen reconstructions from mosaic and ecotonal landscapes. In forest-savanna mosaics, large reductions of forest cover could be undetectable through the pollen record. In ecotonal landscapes, the relationship between forest cover and its representation in the pollen record rapidly weakens with increasing distance from the forest boundary. Further application of PDD modelling in combination with the multiple scenario approach can address the uncertainties in pollen-based reconstructions of past land cover in the tropics, but require further investment and development.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY: APPLIED Relationship Between Organizational Commitment Dimensions and Job Satisfaction: The Case of Employees of Sorsogon State College Bulan Campus

This study assessed the level of organizational commitment in terms of affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment as well as the job satisfaction of employees of Sorsogon State College Bulan Campus (SSC-BC) to test if there is significant relationship among these variables. Descriptive correlational method of research was used. For this purpose, survey questionnaires were used to facilitate the survey. Out of the total 49 workforce, only 40 employees of SSC-BC were considered as the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Weighted mean was used for the purpose of summarizing, interpreting and identifying the trends and patterns of the data gathered from the survey. Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation was emp loyed to establish the relationship between the organizational commitment of the respondents and their job satisfaction while linear regression was utilized to determine the magnitude of the relationship of the organizational commitment dimensions and the job satisfaction of the employees. Results of the survey revealed that employees of Sorsogon State College Bulan Campus were highly committed to their institution which emanates from the level of their affective and normative commitment and less from their continuance commitment. It was concluded that that faculty members and non-teaching personnel of the College have high level of job satisfaction which appeared to derive from the kind of relationship they have with their co-workers and supervisors, from College and from the work itself. Finally, the extent of employees’ affective, continuance and normative commitment have a significant and positive relationship to the level of their job satisfaction and that the level of normative commitment was found to be a predictor of level of job satisfaction of SSC-BC employees.
A Large-Scale Database of Images and Captions for Automatic Face Naming

Learning from images and text. Several previous works learn visual classifiers from images and accompanying text captions downloaded from the Internet. Many works focused on associating names in the captions to the faces of people in news images [1, 2, 4], and use this correspondence to train visual face classifiers. This task is challenging due to the correspondence ambiguity problem: multiple persons might appear in an image, and multiple names in a caption. Moreover, persons in the image are not always mentioned in the caption, and vice-versa.