Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Magnetic Fields and Induced Power in the Induction Heating of Aluminium Billets

The magnetic field produced in the air-gap by any particular 'short coil' at a fixed current, is affected by a highly complex interaction of the coil and work piece geometries and changes in frequency. A frequency modified semi-empirical short coil correction factor, based upon the formula published by Vaughan and Williamson in 1945, is presented and experimentally verified. This new equation is shown to predict the total system reactive power and the average magnetic flux at the surface of the work piece with typical differences of less than 2% at 50 Hz AC and to accurately predict work piece heating rates typically within 5% for aluminum billets at 50 Hz to 500 kHz AC. The work piece real and reactive powers, and total system reactive power are compared with both analytic and 2D axial symmetric FEM model solutions, as a function of operating frequencies from 50 Hz to 500 kHz. Measured flux density is compared to FEM and analytical predictions at 50 Hz.
BASELINE

Background: The role and implementation of tau PET imaging for predicting subsequent cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains uncertain. This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between baseline [F] GTP1 tau PET and subsequent longitudinal change across multiple cognitive measures over 18 months. Methods: Our analyses incorporated data from 67 participants, including cognitively normal controls (n = 10) and β-amyloid (Aβ)-positive individuals ([F] florbetapir Aβ PET) with prodromal (n = 26), mild (n = 16), or moderate (n = 15) AD. Baseline measurements included cortical volume (MRI), tau burden ([F]GTP1 tau PET), and cognitive assessments [Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), 13-item version of the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog13), and Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS)]. Cognitive assessments were repeated at 6-month intervals over an 18-month period. Associations between baseline [F]GTP1 tau PET indices and longitudinal cognitive performance were assessed via univariate (Spearman correlations) and multivariate (linear mixed effects models) approaches. The utility of potential prognostic tau PET cut points was assessed with ROC curves. Results: Univariate analyses indicated that greater baseline [F]GTP1 tau PET signal was associated with faster rates of subsequent decline on the MMSE, CDR, and ADAS-Cog13 across regions of interest (ROIs). In multivariate analyses adjusted for baseline age, cognitive performance, cortical volume, and Aβ PET SUVR, the prognostic performance of [F]GTP1 SUVR was most robust in the whole cortical gray ROI. When AD participants were dichotomized into low versus high tau subgroups based on baseline [F]GTP1 PET standardized uptake value ratios (SUVR) in the temporal (cutoff = 1.325) or whole cortical gray (cutoff = 1.245) ROIs, high tau subgroups demonstrated significantly more decline on the MMSE, CDR, and ADAS-Cog13. Conclusions: Our results suggest that [F]GTP1 tau PET represents a prognostic biomarker in AD and are consistent with data from other tau PET tracers. Tau PET imaging may have utility for identifying AD patients at risk for more rapid cognitive decline and for stratification and/or enrichment of participant selection in AD clinical trials.
Teaching Interaction Designers How to Design for Vulnerable Generations

In this paper, we present the DEVICE project, aiming to investigate methods and established practices for how to design for vulnerable generations, children and elderly, and especially how to teach interaction designers how to design for this user group. The project intends to modernize and develop educational design programs with a specific focus on vulnerable generations. In this paper we summarize initial findings, present some relevant examples and future aims.
The Effects of Commercial Video Game Playing: A Comparison of Skills and Abilities for the Predator UAV

Abstract : Currently, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are operated by pilots and navigators experienced with manned combat aircraft. With a projected increase in UAVs, more combat pilots will be needed to operate these aircraft. Yet, if the current operational tempo continues, the supply of combat pilots may not be able to meet the demand. Perhaps alternative pools of Air Force personnel could be considered for UAV duty to meet operational requirements. Because the Predator UAV is a software-driven aircraft, video game players (VGPs) already possess and use many skills that may be similar to those of Predator UAV pilots. A variety of games can add situational awareness skills that a player/airman can bring to a new situation. This research examines the applicability of video-games-based skills to the operation of the Predator UAV. Nine people were interviewed to determine the overlap between piloting skills, UAV-specific skills, and skills gained and developed from gaming. The results indicate that frequent VGPs have the confidence and the consistent ability to obtain and retain new skills, many of which are related to operating the Predator UAV in a 2-D environment while not relying on the visual and nonvisual cues of the manned aircraft pilot.
Longitudinal Microglial Activation in Tau Transgenic P301S Mice Predicts Increased Tau Accumulation and Deteriorated Spatial Learning

Background: P301S tau transgenic mice show age-dependent accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles in brainstem, hippocampus, and neocortex, leading to neuronal loss and cognitive deterioration. However, there is hitherto only sparse documentation of the role of neuroinflammation in tau mouse models. Thus, we analyzed longitudinal microglial activation by small animal 18kDa translocator protein positron-emission-tomography (TSPO µPET) imaging in vivo , in conjunction with terminal assessment of tau pathology, spatial learning, and cerebral glucose metabolism. Methods: Transgenic P301S (n=33) and wild-type (n=18) female mice were imaged by 18 F-GE-180 TSPO µPET at the ages of 1.9, 3.9 and 6.4 months. We conducted behavioral testing in the Morris water maze, 18 F-fluordesoxyglucose ( 18 F-FDG) µPET and AT8 tau immunohistochemistry at 6.3-6.7 months. Terminal microglial immunohistochemistry served for validation of TSPO µPET results in vivo, applying target regions in brainstem, cortex, cerebellum and hippocampus. We compared the results with our historical data in amyloid -β mouse models. Results: TSPO expression in all target regions of P301S mice increased exponentially from 1.9 to 6.4 months, leading to significant differences in the contrasts with wild-type mice at 6.4 months (+11-23%, all p<0.001), but the apparent microgliosis proceeded more slowly than in our experience in amyloid-β mouse models. Spatial learning and glucose metabolism of AT8-positive P301S mice were significantly impaired at 6.3/6.5 months compared to the wild-type group. Longitudinal increases in TSPO expression predicted greater tau accumulation and lesser spatial learning performance at 6.7/6.3 months. Conclusions: Monitoring of microglial activation in P301S tau transgenic mice by TSPO µPET indicates a delayed time course when compared to amyloid-β mouse models. Detrimental associations of microglial activation with outcome parameters are opposite to earlier data in amyloid-β mouse models. The contribution of microglial response to pathology accompanying amyloid-β and tau over-expression merits further investigation.
CEO Succession, Audit Pricing, and Firm Value: The Role of Supply Chain Knowledge.

This paper examines whether new CEOs with supply chain knowledge influence audit pricing and firm value. Through repeated personal and professional contacts in the business community, CEOs establish networking across individuals and organizations, which enhances the acquisition of supply chain knowledge. Relative to those without supply chain knowledge, firms with new outsider CEOs who previously served for a partner (i.e., supplier, customer, or competitor firm) within the supply chain or those with new insider CEOs demand more audit efforts, which leads to higher audit fees. We also find that agency costs (incurred by shareholders due to the separation of ownership and control) lead to an increase in audit fees to compensate for the additional audit effort, and that new CEOs appointed from a company within the supply chain (i.e., external recruitment or internal promotion) partially mediate the positive relationship between agency costs and audit fees. The combined evidence is consistent with agency theory’s argument that management will demand a high-quality audit when agency problems are high. We further document that appointing a new CEO who previously worked for a partner within the supply chain or promoting a new CEO from inside an organization adds greater value to firms than their counterparts outside the supply chain, suggesting that new CEOs with supply chain knowledge are valued at a premium. These results are robust to alternative samples and analyses.
Spatiotemporal variations of the δ(O2/N2), CO2 and δ(APO) in the troposphere over the Western North Pacific

Abstract. We analyzed air samples collected onboard a cargo aircraft C-130 over the western North Pacific from May 2012 to March 2020 for atmospheric δ(O2/N2) and CO2 amount fraction. We corrected for significant artificial fractionation of O2 and N2 caused by thermal diffusion during the air sample collection by using the simultaneously-measured δ(Ar/N2). The observed seasonal cycles of the δ(O2/N2) and atmospheric potential oxygen (δ(APO)) varied nearly in opposite phase to that of the CO2 amount fraction at all latitudes and altitudes. Seasonal amplitudes of δ(APO) decreased with latitude from 34 to 25° N, as well as with increasing altitude from the surface to 6 km by 50–70 %, while those of CO2 amount fraction decreased by less than 20 %. By comparing the observed values with the simulated δ(APO) and CO2 amount fraction values generated by an atmospheric transport model, we found that the seasonal δ(APO) cycle in the middle troposphere was modified significantly by a superposition of the northern and southern hemispheric seasonal cycles due to the inter-hemispheric mixing of air. The simulated δ(APO) underestimated the observed interannual variation in δ(APO) significantly, probably due to the interannual variation in the annual mean air-sea O2 flux. Interannual variation in δ(APO) driven by the net marine biological activities, obtained by subtracting the assumed solubility-driven component of δ(APO) from the total variation, indicated a clear evidence of influence on annual sea-to-air (air-to-sea) marine biological O2 flux during El Niño (La Niña). By analyzing the observed secular trends of δ(O2/N2) and CO2 amount fraction, global average terrestrial biospheric and oceanic CO2 uptakes for the period 2012–2019 were estimated to be (1.8 ± 0.9) and (2.8 ± 0.6) Pg a−1 (C equivalents), respectively.
MOTIVATION AND ETHICS: CRITICAL FACTORS FOR SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY IN NIGERIA

The primary function of any government is to ensure an equitable distribution of public goods and services to its citizens. Despite the material and human resource in Nigeria, Nigerians have been short-changed by the quality of public service delivery in the country. Against this backdrop, this paper: examined the issues affecting public service delivery and demonstrated how motivation can enhance ethical behaviours among public servants. Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from year 2000 to 2016 was used to argue the position of the paper. The study discovered, among other things that certain Human Resource (HR), political and institutional factors have led to the erosion of moral conduct by public servants. While measures such as reforms and campaigns have been taken to curb political and institutional issues, limited remedial actions have been proffered to tackle that of HR. These have negatively affected public service delivery in Nigeria. Therefore, apart from putting some ethical principles in place, there is need to motivate public servants to get at their best. In addition to this, good behaviour is to be rewarded and bad behaviour is to be punished across all public services in the country, by a truly independent and incorruptible statutory body. By doing this, sanity and equitable service delivery will be achieved.
The man-made world

THE here and now are defined by astronomy and geology. Astronomy takes care of the here: a planet orbiting a yellow star embedded in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, a galaxy that is itself part of the Virgo supercluster, one of millions of similarly vast entities dotted through the sky. Geology deals with the now: the 10,000-year-old Holocene epoch, a peculiarly stable and clement part of the Quaternary period, a time distinguished by regular shifts into and out of ice ages. The Quaternary forms part of the 65m-year Cenozoic era, distinguished by the opening of the North Atlantic, the rise of the Himalayas, and the widespread presence of mammals and flowering plants. This era in turn marks the most recent part of the Phanerozoic aeon, the 540m-year chunk of the Earth’s history wherein rocks with fossils of complex organisms can be found. The regularity of celestial clockwork and the solid probity of rock give these co-ordinates a reassuring constancy.
The prediction of ice formation on motorways in Britain

Each winter, Britain spends up to £120 million spreading approximately 2 million tonnes of rock salt on our roads to keep them free of ice and snow. This thesis shows that it would be possible to significantly reduce the amount of salt spread, by improving the accuracy of the Road Danger Warnings issued to Highway Authorities. Each day in winter, the maintenance engineer receives a Road Danger Warning from his local weather centre. Unfortunately these Warnings are not very accurate because they are based on forecasts of minimum air temperature alone, rather than using road surface temperatures. During the winter of 1982/83, of 102 Road Danger Warnings issued to Hereford and Worcester County Council, only 32 were correct in predicting icy conditions on the MS motorway. This thesis presents a computer model to predict ice formation on roads up to 24 hours ahead. During the winter of 1978/79 instruments were installed in the M4 motorway to measure road surface temperature and wetness. The computer model has been tested retrospectively for 30 nights when the road surface temperature fell below 5°C. The predicted minimum road surface temperature has a root mean square error of 0.9°C. During the winters of 1982/83 and 1983/84, the model was tested in 'real time' against road surface temperatures measured automatically on the M5 and M6 motorways, giving a root mean square error of 1.5°C for 80 nights during 1.982/83, and 1.3°c for 120 nights during 1983/84. The form of the issued Road Danger Warnings has been changed from a simple sentence issued over the telephone or using telex, to a graph of predicted road surface temperature and wetness. An optimistic and a pessimistic graph is issued to give the maintenance engineer an idea of the certainty of the forecast. The thesis proposes a national network of automatic road surface monitoring sites. Each site would be linked to microcomputers in local weather centres, which would then run the prediction model and issue Road Danger Warnings accordingly. The information could then be sent to maintenance engineers using Prestel.
Effects of Refactoring on Productivity in Relation to Code Understandability

Depending on the context, the benefits of clean code with respect to understandability might be less plain in the short term than is often claimed. This work has studied a system with legacy code in an industrial environment to evaluate if giving ‘clean code’ to developers would immediately lead to increases in productivity. They were given refactored components and were assigned small coding tasks to complete. Contrary to our expectations, we observed both increases as well as decreases in understandability, showing that immediate increases in understandability are not always obvious. This study suggests that negative effects could have been caused by the fact that the test subjects were used to long methods rather than a decomposed design. Another finding is that unit tests, accompanying refactorings, can lead to more substantial increases in productivity. Secondly, developers tend to implement higher quality solutions when working with clean code. A recommendation to improve the net return on refactoring is to not just refactor to improve its understandability, unless one has additional motives, such as easing maintenance or increasing testability.
EFFECT OF TIRE PRESSURE AND TYPE ON RESPONSE OF FLEXIBLE PAVEMENT

Radial, bias, and wide-base radial single tires were tested in the laboratory under three levels of inflation pressures and axle loads. The measured characteristics of the tires were gross contact area, net contact area, tire deflection, and contact pressures. Distributions of the contact pressures were used in a mechanistic solution to predict various flexible pavement response parameters. A modified version of the BISAR computer program, which takes concentric circles of various pressures, was used to predict the response parameters. The response of various flexible pavement structures was investigated in terms of the tensile strains at the bottom of the asphalt layer, the compressive stress at the asphalt layer interface, and the surface deflection. The effects of tire inflation pressures and axle loads on the response parameters were evaluated for all tires and asphalt thickness combinations. The three tire types were also compared for underloaded, loaded, and overloaded cases.
Design and development of a three-point hitch dynamometer.

Tractor is used as a main source of power in developing countries. In order to reduce the cost of production, knowledge of today’s complicated tools is essential. In this research, a threepoint hitch dynamometer system was fabricated for the category 0 & I tractors with the weight of 49 kg and the chassis is in a reversed U-shaped frame which allows the use of PTO at the same time. With the strain gages installed on the three sensing pins and developed five Wheatstone bridges in such a manner that, the draft forces in each link in addition to vertical forces on the lower links are measured. The dynamometer system consists of three parts including: the chassis, sensing components, and recording system. The recording system consisted of a Campbell data logger (CR10X) with a notebook computer. The dynamometer system was calibrated and several field tests were conducted to measure the force required to pull the different mounted plows. The field tests showed that the dynamometer worked well without malfunction and the system was able to provide on-line graph and save the data in the memory.
A STUDY OF THE EFFICIENCY OF SPANISH PORT AUTHORITIES USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

This paper presents the results of a study of the relative efficiency of all Spanish Port Authorities during the 1993-1997 period, using the Data Envelopment Analysis technique. The ports are divided into 3 groups according to their complexity. A database was also built with the information coming from the 26 ports using 5 observations for each port; this permitted the comparison among ports in each group as well as their evolution during the period. Results obtained show a different evolution of every group in terms of relative efficiency. Thus, the ports of high complexity offered higher comparative efficiency levels, having gone closer to the frontier over time. The same cannot be said of the medium complexity group where the growth of the efficiency levels during the 5 years was smaller. Ports of low complexity showed a negative evolution in global efficiency levels.
Essays on Service Improvisation Competence: Empirical Evidence from The Hospitality Industry

This dissertation explores the service design antecedents and the performance outcomes of Service Improvisation Competence (Serv–IC)—the ability of service employees to deviate from established processes and routines in order to timely respond to unexpected events, using available resources. Service operations and strategy research have strongly highlighted the importance of possessing flexibility in order to face the uncertainty derived from the interaction with the external environment (Tansik and Chase 1988, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995, Brown and Eisenhardt 1998, Frei et al. 1999, Menor et al. 2001, Frei 2006). An important component of the ability of service firms to adapt to customer requests, expectations, and needs rests in the systemic ability of frontline employees to creatively adapt to the challenges posed by the constant struggle to satisfy customers. This dissertation is composed of three essays. In Essay 1, we build the theoretical framework necessary to advance a theory of Service Improvisation Competence, and we propose a nomological network that links service delivery design choices— facility design, managerial practices, information distribution, and the procedures that regulate customer–contact—to the development of a Service Improvisation Competence (Serv–IC). Furthermore, Essay 1 offers a causal theory of the effects of Serv-IC on service outcomes.
Role of HDI For the Effect of Urbanisation on Food Security: The Case of Asian Developing Economies

Food Insecurity is a global issue which is having many determinants including urbanisation. The present study examines the impact of urbanisation on food security through the human development of Asian developing economies. For this purpose, the data of selected Asian developing economies is collected from 1990 to 2016. The panel estimation technique, Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) is applied to analyse the relationship between urbanisation and food security along with some other control variables. Food security is measured through its indicators given by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which includes Average dietary energy supply adequacy (Availability), Prevalence of undernourishment (Access), access to improved water resources (Utilisation) and food imports over total merchandise exports (Stability) have been used as food security indicators. The results support the view that urbanisation holds both opportunities and challenges for a country's development level, which in turn affects food security. The results also claimed that Trade and Foreign Direct Investment have a mixed relationship with food security indicators. The number of disasters increases while Good Governance decreases food insecurity, respectively.
The Technology and Treatment of an Embossed, Chromolithographic 'Mechanical' Victorian Valentine Card

The Smithsonian Institution houses the National Valentine Collection. One Valentine, a stand-up "mechanical" card, required removal of adhesive on its base and verve (Figs. 1, 11, and 12). the card is composed of embossed, die-cut chromolithograph prints or "scraps" on glazed, coated papers. in combining these various characteristics, which will be discussed further in this article, this Valentine is in essence the product of two parallel innovations in the mid-19th century: the increase in mass communication through the exchange of greeting cards, and the development of mass color printing, through chromolithography, called the democratic art by Marzio (30). Unfortunately, the literature on greeting cards (1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 33, 38, 39, 41), and chromolithography (4, 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45, 46) provides little information of use to conservators on the manufacture, composition, or deterioration of chromolithographic cards. Virtually no literature exists on the analysis or conservation treatment of chromolithographs, although there are some relevant references on the conservation of pigment-coated papers (3, 12, 18, 47, 48). the following brief history of Valentine cards, and the technology used to produce them, represents a review of the available Literature.