Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study of LTPP laboratory resilient modulus test data and response characteristics: final report

The resilient modulus of every unbound structural layer of the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Specific Pavement and General Pavement Studies Test Sections is being measured in the laboratory using LTPP test protocol P46. A total of 2,014 resilient modulus tests have passed all quality control checks and are included in the LTPP database with a Level E data status. As of October 2000, there were 1,639 resilient modulus tests yet to be performed. In some cases, these missing tests may have been performed, but did not achieve a Level E status (did not pass all quality control checks) in the LTPP database. However, these test results have not been evaluated in detail. This report documents the first comprehensive review and evaluation of the resilient modulus test data measured on pavement materials and soils recovered from the LTPP test sections. The resilient modulus data were reviewed in detail to identify anomalies or potential errors in the database. From this review, a total of 185 resilient modulus tests were identified with possible problems or data entry errors. These tests were reported to the Federal Highway Administration for further review and/or retesting. The resilient modulus test data were found generally to be in excellent condition with less than 10% of the tests exhibiting potential anomalies or discrepancies in the data. The resilient modulus test data were then studied for the effect of test variables, such as the test and sampling procedures, on the resulting resilient moduli. These data were analyzed by material code for the base and subbase aggregate layers and by soil type for the subgrade. Sampling technique (auger versus test pit) was found to have the most effect on the crushed stone aggregate and uncrushed gravel base materials. For the subgrade soils, sampling technique (Shelby tubes versus auger samples) had the most effect on the clay soils. Sampling technique was found to have little to no effect on the sand base/subbase materials and sand soils. The resilient modulus data were further investigated to evaluate relationships between resilient modulus and the physical properties of the unbound materials and soils. Using nonlinear regression optimization techniques, equations for each base and soil type were developed to calculate the resilient modulus at a specific stress state from physical properties of the base materials and soils. The primary result from these studies is that the resilient modulus can be reasonably predicted from the physical properties included in the LTPP database, but there is a bias present in the calculated values. Thus, until additional test results become available to improve or confirm these relationships, it is recommended that at least some laboratory tests be performed to measure the resilient modulus for unbound pavement materials and soils.
Fabrication, development and analysis of film bulk acoustic resonators on flexible polymer substrates

xiii 1 Thesis outline 1 1.1 Structure of Thesis . 1 1.2 Scope, aims and objectives . 3
Assessment on Vulnerable Youths Integration to Dar es Salaam Solid Waste Management for Improvement: Kinondoni Municipality Case

The present study assessed the possibility of integrating vulnerable youths to complement government and community based efforts in improving the existing municipal solid waste management crisis facing Dar es Salaam City using a case study of Kinondoni Municipality. The study was motivated by the fact that, many literature and mass media have extensively commented on uncollected decomposing heaps of solid waste rendering Dar es Salaam City to be ranked the 12th dirtiest city in Africa. This reported crisis of unmanged solid waste in Dar es slaam city, prompted the present study to conduct a problem-solving oriented research by looking at “solid waste collection” as one of the employment opportunities that could liberate the unprecedented growing numbers of unemployed youths frequently found on “vijiwe” (A Kiswahili word meaning “jobless corners”) sitting idle or contemplating to commit crimes for survival. To this direction, it was necessary to start by conducting a baseline survey in order to bench mark the magnitude of solid waste collection and challenges in the study area. Then the study assessed the potentiality of involving neighbourhood-based waste management groups and other partners with a view of seeking the possibility of integrating youths into community-based initiatives (CBI), community based organizations (CBOs) and self-employing individuals. Furthermore, where such community groups exist - but failed to attract youths to join in, the study used in-depth study to unearth the underlying causes so that they could be uprooted to facilitate an enabling environment of turning rampant solid waste collection a commercial and potential employer of vulnerable groups of youths in community areas. Research methodology involved the use of quantitative method to collect information from 6 youth camps randomly selected in informal settlements which required labour for effective collection of MSW. Thus, questionnaires and in-depth study were interchangeably employed to probe different stakeholder institutions involved in decentralized MSWM system on general performance in solid waste collection. They included CBOs, individuals and small scale private agents. Qualitative method based on in-depth study was equally employed in order to extract views of respondents from focused group discussions (FGDs). It was intended to obtain respondents particularly youth’s awareness, readiness and challenges in undertaking solid waste collection employment. Finally, the study drew conclusions and recommendations on the way forward to reducing Dar es Salaam city solid waste management crisis while sustaining employment to disadvantaged groups of youths. Key words : Solid waste, Community based Organizations (CBOs), Employment, waste collection.
Rab25 Acts as a Promising Novel Bio-Marker in the Prognosis of Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: Rab25 was indicated to be involved in several human tumors. However, the clinical significance of Rab25 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was still unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the expression and prognostic value of Rab25 in HCC.Methods: The relative mRNA expression levels of Rab25 in HCC tissues and adjacent normal tissues were detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Chi-square test was used to analyze the relationship between Rab25 expression and clinical characteristics of patients. The prognostic value of Rab25 in HCC was estimated through Kaplan-Meier method and cox regression analysis.Results: Rab25 gene expression level was significantly higher in HCC tissues than that in normal tissues (P<0.001). Importantly, the increased Rab25 expression was closely associated with TNM stage (P=0.024), metastasis (P=0.022) and invasion classification (P=0.039). Moreover, patients with high Rab25 expression tended to have obviously shorter overall survival than those with low expression of Rab25 (log rank test, P<0.001) via Kaplan-Meier analysis. Univariate and multivariate cox regression analyses revealed that Rab25 was an independent prognostic factor of HCC.Conclusions: Rab25 is up-regulated in HCC and contributes to the progression of this tumor. What’s more, Rab25 may be a potential bio-marker for the prognosis of HCC.
The labour market of science and engineering PhDs

This paper examines the labour market of science and engineering PhDs. Drawing on a survey of science and engineering PhDs from a UK research-based university, this study employs job mobility histories to explore the labour market of science and engineering PhDs, including their knowledge and skill development. The results show that organisational careers are still an important feature of the labour market of science and engineering PhDs. Moreover, the paper derives distinctive features of the different segments of the labour market of science and engineering PhDs. We find that those employed in academic/public research experience internal labour markets but with a sharp contrast between core and periphery workers. Those employed outside the conventional technical occupations experience a highly hybrid labour market (strong occupational labour market features but promotions within organisations). Finally, those in technical positions in private sector manufacturing experience relatively more structured internal labour market features. Implications are drawn for the flow of knowledge and skills from science and engineering PhDs.
Knowledge and attitudes toward cervical cancer, human papillomavirus (HPV), and HPV vaccination among women in Taizhou area, China

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been licensed in mainland China since 2016; however, the acceptability of HPV vaccination is unclear. This study aimed to evaluates women’s knowledge and attitudes toward cervical cancer, HPV infection and its vaccination in Taizhou area, southeast of China. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among women who visited the gynaecological clinic of Taizhou Hospital using a questionnaire-based interview. The process was divided into two periods, period I was May to August 2017, and period II was January to March 2019. Results: A total of 819 women were conducted, and 736 were included in the final analysis. Most women (92.4%) had ever heard of cervical cancer. Almost half of women had ever heard of HPV (57.5%) and HPV vaccines (53.1%). Knowledge level of cervical cancer, HPV infection and its vaccines was inadequate; only 12.2% achieved 21-30 scores (at a 30-point scale). Logistic regression analysis showed that marital status, education, occupation, and family annual income were statistically significantly related to the knowledge level ( P <0.05). Additionally, 64.8% of women knew that HPV vaccines are now available in mainland China; however, only 4.3% have been vaccinated. 37.8% of women knew about the preventable effect of HPV vaccines on cervical cancer (period I vs. period II, 31.0% vs. 48.9%, P <0.05). Although women with the low awareness of HPV, the willingness to receive HPV vaccination was high (94.1%) in the present study. Conclusion: Our survey indicated that there is an urgent need for the persistent public health education to ensure successful implementation of HPV vaccination program in Taizhou area, China. Emphasis should be directed to educate the knowledge on HPV infection and its association with cervical cancer, thereby helping to increase HPV vaccination and reduce incidence of cervical cancer.
Group interaction in the ‘outdoor classroom’: the process of learning in outdoor education (A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy)

This research is concerned with the educational process within an outdoor centre involving groups of primary school children. It studies group interaction between the participants in a natural setting by taking a holistic approach, giving an account of their outdoor learning experience in the context of a group. It appears that there is little focus on groups in the outdoors, even though most outdoor programmes involve groups. Most of the research done on groups is quantitative and laboratory based. Such traditional approaches have been challenged, as empirical limitations and theoretical problems have been identified. It is argued that a study of group interactions within a natural environment, such as the outdoor classroom, would allow for a more insightful understanding of the phenomena involved, and it could also shed light on the outdoor educational process, which has been neglected by research in outdoor education. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews were used as part of an ethnographic approach. This enabled the collection of varied data, which resulted in a thick description of the phenomena explored. The findings show that the concept of team building is central to the philosophy of the outdoor centre and of its staff. The activities, which are used as learning tools, are group orientated. Teamwork is seen as essential for the learning experience at the outdoor centre. The study also revealed that the different approaches of the participants influenced the way learning was constructed. The two main themes that have emerged were empowerment and control. The empowering approaches offered support and encouragement to the participants, allowing for collaboration and cooperation to exist between them, which enabled learning to be more effective. The controlling approaches were characterised by a lack of dialogue between the participants, which interfered with the learning experience, by not creating an environment where the participants could work together as a group. A social aspect of learning was thus identified, which emphasised the importance of viewing learning as a joint process. The research shows that a well-designed process does not always result in the participants achieving the ‘desired learning outcomes’. The teachers/facilitators need to be aware of the impact that their approach may have on the learning experience of the participants.
Neural contributions to maximal muscle performance

Neural activation is thought to be essential for the expression of maximal muscle performance, but the exact contribution of neural mechanisms such as the level of agonist, antagonist and stabiliser muscle activation to muscle strength is not fully understood. Explosive neuromuscular performance, including the ability to initiate (the electromechanical delay, EMD) and develop force rapidly (termed, rate of force development, RFD) are considered essential for the performance of explosive sporting tasks and joint stabilisation and thus injury avoidance. The thesis aimed to improve our understanding of the contribution of neural factors to muscle performance, with a specific focus on explosive neuromuscular performance. The work in this thesis utilised a range of approaches to achieve this aim. Initially, the association between muscle activation and rate of force development and EMD was established. Comparison of unilateral and bilateral actions was then undertaken. Finally interventions with the aim to both negatively affect and improve muscle strength, which included fatigue and resistance training (RT), respectively was undertaken and the neural contributions to changes in performance established. Agonist activation during the early phase of voluntary force production was shown to be an important determinant of voluntary EMD, explaining 41% of its inter-individual variability. Agonist activation was an important determinant of early, but not late phase RFD. Use of bilateral actions resulted in a reduction in explosive strength, which was thought to be due to differences in postural stability between unilateral and bilateral strength tasks. The level of stabiliser activation was strongly related to the level of agonist activation during the early phase of explosive force development and had a high association with explosive force production. Task-specific adaptations following isoinertial RT, specifically, the greater increase in isoinertial lifting strength than maximal isometric strength were due to training-specific changes in the level of agonist activation. High-intensity fatigue achieved a more substantial decline in explosive than maximal isometric strength, and this was postulated to be due to neural mechanisms, specifically decreased agonist activation. This work provides an in depth analysis of the neural contributions to maximal muscle performance.
Simplified reduced-scale modelling of vehicle interior noise

The present paper gives a review of the recent research into simplified reducedscale models of automotive structures that can be used for prediction of structure-borne vehicle interior noise. The models under consideration evolve from the simplest ones to more sophisticated developments and take into account different structural dynamic and acoustic features of real vehicles. Analytical and numerical approaches to the theoretical description of such models are discussed. The comparison of the theory with the measurements on some physical reduced-scale models demonstrates that such models can be used successfully for studying interior noise in real road vehicles. One of the most important issues in this technique is to find a compromise between the minimum degree of complexity of a model and the required accuracy of description of frequency contents and noise levels in a real vehicle. It is expected that the proposed methodology will lead to the development of efficient analytical and experimental tools that could be used for prediction of vehicle interior noise on a design stage.
Lessons Learned from Bluetooth/Wifi Scanning Deployment in University Campus

This paper presents the detailed design and implementation of the joint Bluetooth/Wifi scanning framework called UIM 1 , which collects both location information and ad hoc contact of the human movement at the University of Illinois campus using Google Android phones. In particular, we present the architecture of UIM and how its sub components interact to obtain the performance reliability as well as conserve phone battery for the prolonged experiment period. With the movement trace collected by UIM, we first present the findings about number of scanned devices, types of collected devices, and instant cluster size distribution. Then, we study the two graphs formed by the ad hoc trace including connectivity graph and contact graph. We find that the former exhibits a small-world network in structure while the node degree distribution of the latter exhibits an ExponentialZipf distribution. Finally, we present a novel and efficient algorithm called UIM Clustering to cluster collected wifi access points into clusters and use these clusters to represent locations. Our analysis shows that the distribution of number of locations visited by experiment participants can be fitted by an exponential function.
Global Giving

Why do citizens in some countries take more responsibility for the well-being of others than in other countries? This project seeks to understand the genesis of prosociality, investigating its biological foundations, the influence of cultural traditions, and effects of political, economic and legal structure. The dominant theory in economics views philanthropy as a solution to social illnesses that the market and the state are not solving, a view complementary to political science theory on preferences for government provision. Sociologists focus on social norms emerging from religious traditions. Cultural evolutionary theory highlights the instrumental value of trust. Still other theories have suggested a role for natural selection of genes. However, these theories have not been tested stringently nor simultaneously. Also the project includes a very important factor largely ignored thus far: political, legal and economic institutions also affect the level of giving as well as who gives to which causes. Therefore, the objectives of Global Giving are (1) to map country differences in the size and nature of philanthropy across the world; (2) to develop and test multidisciplinary theories explaining these differences; (3) to facilitate international collaboration across disciplinary boundaries in research on philanthropy. The research draws upon 200 surveys recently harmonized by the PI and on new data on philanthropy to be collected among large samples in 145 countries across all continents. Collaboration with international networks of academics safeguards the validity of the questionnaires and experiments. Appropriate multilevel regression models will be used, the lack of which caused biases in previous research. An integrated understanding of philanthropy is useful not only for theory development, but also for government policy makers and practitioners in nonprofit organizations seeking to mobilize philanthropic contributions and make them more effective. The application in practice is ensured through collaboration with a large network of practitioners.
Comparison of weak and strong theories of environmental sustainability in the conceptual context of sustainable development

Ever since the idea of sustainable development was proposed, how to achieve it has always been the focus of researchers and policymakers. At the same time, in the letters of sustainable development, two approaches of weak sustainability and strong sustainability have been mentioned; Two approaches with different assumptions suggest different policies and will have different consequences. On the other hand, with the increase of environmental concerns in recent decades, the concept of natural capital and physical, human, and social capital has been added to the common literature of economics. Recently, with the collection of data related to the natural capital of nations by the World Bank, the possibility of statistical studies in this field has been provided. In the form of several regression models and at the international level, the present study will analyze the most fundamental difference between the two approaches of weak sustainability and strong sustainability, i.e., the possibility or impossibility of replacing physical capital instead of natural capital. The study results show that natural capital has a direct, positive, and independent role in explaining sustainable development indicators. Even the addition of physical, human, and social capital indicators does not threaten the significant coefficient of natural capital. Therefore, it can be concluded that under the assumption of a strong sustainability model, other types of capital can not replace
An Experimental Evaluation of Bayesian Optimization on Bipedal Locomotion

The design of gaits and corresponding control policies for bipedal walkers is a key challenge in robot locomotion. Even when a viable controller parametrization already exists, finding near-optimal parameters can be daunting. The use of automatic gait optimization methods greatly reduces the need for human expertise and time-consuming design processes. In this paper, we experimentally evaluate Bayesian optimization for gait optimization of a real bipedal walker. By performing more than 1800 experimental evaluations, we compare Bayesian optimization with various acquisition functions. Additionally, we study the effects of using fixed hyperparameters instead of automatically optimize them.
The Institutional Factors Affecting the Achievement in Physics in Tripoli, Libya

This study primarily attempts to investigate if there is any relationship between selected factors namely gender, school and student factors and academic achievement in physics of high school students in Tripoli, Libya.The sample consisted of 100 science students, 50 males and 50 females from two randomly chosen high schools in Tripoli, Libya. Two instruments were used in the study. The physics achievement test (PAT), was designed to assess student performance in physics. The second was a student questionnaire (SQ), designed to obtain information on personal characteristics of the students, school factors and student factors. The main findings of the study indicae that gender was found to be significantly associated with achievement in physics. Specifically, female students were found to perform better than male students. Among the school factors, the factor which emerged as influencing students' achievement in physics was the teacher factor.