Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fragility analysis of low‐rise masonry in‐filled reinforced concrete buildings by a coefficient‐based spectral acceleration method

This study presents a seismic fragility analysis of low‐rise masonry in‐filled (MI) reinforced concrete (RC) buildings using a proposed coefficient‐based spectral acceleration method. The coefficient‐based method, without requiring any complicated finite element analysis, is a simplified procedure for assessing the spectral acceleration demand (or capacity) of buildings subjected to earthquakes. This paper begins with a calibration of the proposed coefficient‐based method for low‐rise MI RC buildings using published experimental results obtained from shaking table tests. Spectral acceleration‐based fragility curves for low‐rise MI RC buildings under various inter‐story drift limits are then constructed using the calibrated coefficient‐based method. A comparison of the experimental and estimated results indicates that the simplified coefficient‐based method can provide good approximations of the spectral accelerations at peak loads of low‐rise MI RC buildings, if a proper set of drift‐related factors and initial fundamental periods of structures are used. Moreover, the fragility curves constructed using the coefficient‐based method can provide a satisfactory vulnerability evaluation for low‐rise MI RC buildings under a given performance level. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Distribution and Fishery of the Blue Crab ( Callinectes sapidus Rathbun , 1896 ) in Turkey Based on Local Ecological Knowledge of Fishers

This study provides information on the distribution and ecology of Callinectes sapidus in Turkey, as well as its maximum daily catch in set nets (trammel nets and gillnets), and its commercial fishery in lagoons. Data were collected in 2020 by utilizing a telephone based questionnaire survey. Responses were gathered from fishermen (n = 6) who fish in the lagoons and the head or members of fishery cooperatives (n = 104) in 28 cities, including the coastal regions of the Mediterranean Sea (Levantine), Aegean Sea, Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea in Turkey. The results showed that C. sapidus is commonly distributed along the Levantine and the southern Aegean coasts of Turkey, whilst it is rarely observed in the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Fishermen stated that C. sapidus has been seen in the Black Sea for the last decade. The maximum daily catch of blue crab in set nets showed a significant difference in the Levantine and Aegean coasts. The results indicated that the species was mainly produced in the lagoons, whereas many coastal fishermen returned it as discard and 79% of fishermen emphasized that C. sapidus shred the nets and caused an economic loss. Ovigerous females have been observed between March and October and we have discussed related management issues including current fishery season.
How much of High School mathematics do Brazilian future mathematics teachers master?

Our article aims at better understanding the meaning of future mathematics teachers’ scores on the Brazilian National Higher Education Exam (ENADE). Our approach is based on the proportion of right answers on the multiple choice questions about mathematical knowledge applied to future mathematics teachers at ENADE 2017. First, we considered the proportion of right answers to questions whose content were identified by the creators of the exam as part of the curriculum of High School. Second, we complemented the analysis by comparing the knowledge required by a few questions in ENADE with the content of questions of the National Exam for High School (ENEM). The conclusions show that most of future mathematics teachers conclude their initial education without developing knowledge on topics taught in High School.
Adaptive Adversarial Network for Source-free Domain Adaptation

Unsupervised Domain Adaptation solves knowledge transfer along with the coexistence of well-annotated source domain and unlabeled target instances. However, the source domain in many practical applications is not always accessible due to data privacy or the insufficient memory storage for small devices. This scenario defined as Source-free Domain Adaptation only allows accessing the well-trained source model for target learning. To address the challenge of source data unavailability, we develop an Adaptive Adversarial Network (A2Net) including three components. Specifically, the first one named Adaptive Adversarial Inference seeks a target-specific classifier to advance the recognition of samples which the provided source-specific classifier difficultly identifies. Then, the Contrastive Category-wise Matching module exploits the positive relation of every two target images to enforce the compactness of subspace for each category. Thirdly, Self-Supervised Rotation facilitates the model to learn additional semantics from target images by themselves. Extensive experiments on the popular cross-domain benchmarks verify the effectiveness of our proposed model on solving adaptation task without any source data.
Relational capital and strategic orientations as antecedents of innovation: evidence from Mexican SMEs

Questions "Where does innovation initiate in a company? " and "How can a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) leverage its different resources to enhance its innovation capabilities to outperform its competitors? " remain unanswered to date. Accordingly, this study examined the relationship between the firm's relational capital and fundamental strategic orientations that a firm can adopt and how these different orientations affect innovation and organizational performance. The target sample included 360 Mexican SMEs who completed a pen-and-pencil questionnaire conducted at the four main cities of this country. Structural equation modeling was performed, and results revealed a strong positive effect of relational capital over all four strategic orientations considered in this study. However, mixed findings of strategic orientations and innovation were obtained. Although market and entrepreneurial orientation positively influenced innovation, a negative relationship was found between learning orientation and innovation and a nonsignificant relationship between technology orientation and innovation. As expected, innovation positively influenced the performance of SMEs. This study offers essential academic contributions and interesting managerial insights to improve performance using relational capital through innovation and strategic orientations. Therefore, we propose relational capital as an underexploited resource and a source of innovation for SMEs.
Feeding Behaviour and Lifestyle of Children and Adolescents One Year after Lockdown by the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile

Lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have influenced feeding behaviour and lifestyle in children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to analyse feeding behaviour and lifestyle in children and adolescents one year after lockdown by the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. In this cross-sectional study an online survey was implemented in 1083 parents and caregivers regarding their children’s feeding behaviour and lifestyle and sociodemographic background. The results showed that “eat breakfast daily” (89.2%), “not overnight food intake” (69.9%) and “not fast-food intake” (66.0%) were the most frequent reported feeding behaviours, particularly in pre-school children. Respondents declaring healthy feeding behaviours and lifestyle were 23.4 and 23.7%, respectively, with no significant differences by sex. In pre-school children, families with three or fewer members and parents or caregivers with an undergraduate or postgraduate degree reported a significantly better feeding behaviour and lifestyle compared to families with more than three members and parents or caregivers without an undergraduate or postgraduate degree. In conclusion, the pandemic lockdown had a negative impact in lifestyle in children and particularly in adolescents. Healthier feeding behaviour was associated with fewer family members and parents or caregivers with at least an undergraduate degree.
Technology Usage to Manage Client Growth: Understanding Robo-Advisor Adoption Among Registered Investment Firms

Technology Usage to Manage Client Growth: Understanding Robo-Advisor Adoption Among Registered Investment Firms by Kevin B. Chalk April 2021 Chair: Vikas Agarwal Major Academic Unit: Executive Doctorate in Business The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of fee discounts offered by Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) on the adoption of a robo-advisor solution by their clients within a hybrid investment services model. The analysis of fee discounts within the RIA model is based on assets under management, those less than $250 million and those above $250 million. In addition to analyzing fee discounts offered by an RIA, this study looks at the characteristics of clients using an RIA that has adopted a robo-solution. The findings suggest that RIA firms over $250 million, that offer a fee discount on a robo-solution, are likely to have higher adoption rates than smaller RIA firms. This study also finds that younger clients and clients with lesser investment knowledge have higher adoption of robo-solution offered by the RIA. INDEX WORDS: Robo-Advisor, Robo-Advising, Registered Investment Advisor, Registered Investment Advisors, Fintech, Wealth Management Technology
Outdoor air pollution and respiratory health in patients with COPD

Objectives Time series studies have shown adverse effects of outdoor air pollution on mortality and hospital admissions in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but panel studies have been inconsistent. This study investigates short-term effects of outdoor nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (PM 10 ) and black smoke on exacerbations, respiratory symptoms and lung function in 94 patients with COPD in east London. Methods Patients were recruited from an outpatient clinic and were asked to complete daily diary cards (median follow-up 518 days) recording exacerbations, symptoms and lung function, and the amount of time spent outdoors. Outdoor air pollution exposure (lag 1 day) was obtained from local background monitoring stations. on symptoms and exacerbations, particularly for PM 10 , black smoke and NO 2 . Why Ecological have shown links between outdoor air pollution and increased COPD mortality/morbidity and this study shows similar effects in individual patients, supporting the case for causality. the administration of AcSDKP to wild-type mice reduced bleomycin-induced lung ﬁ brosis, as assessed by lung hydroxyproline content (7.7 m g/mg in mice given AcSDKP compared with 12.47 m g/mg in mice given saline, p < 10 -4 ). These results show that the inactivation of the N-terminal of ACE signi ﬁ cantly reduces bleomycin-induced lung ﬁ brosis and implicates AcSDKP as a mediator of this protection. A novel means to increase tolerance to bleomycin and to treat ﬁ brosing lung diseases is thus proposed.
RE-Mind: a First Look Inside the Mind of a Reverse Engineer

When a human activity requires a lot of expertise and very specialized cognitive skills that are poorly understood by the general population, it is often considered ‘an art.’ Different activities in the security domain have fallen in this category, such as exploitation, hacking, and the main focus of this paper: binary reverse engineering (RE). However, while experts in many areas (ranging from chess players to computer programmers) have been studied by scientists to understand their mental models and capture what is special about their behavior, the ‘art’ of understanding binary code and solving reverse engineering puzzles remains to date a black box. In this paper, we present a measurement of the different strategies adopted by expert and beginner reverse engineers while approaching the analysis of x86 (dis)assembly code, a typical static RE task. We do that by performing an exploratory analysis of data collected over 16,325 minutes of RE activity of two unknown binaries from 72 participants with different experience levels: 39 novices and 33 experts.
DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

We propose a new way of testing the mean-variance efficiency of well-diversified portfo­ lios that exploits the cross-sectional size of typical financial datasets. The methodology consists of a sequence of simple tests, the results of which are aggregated in a statis­ tic. This statistic is shown to be asymptotically standard normally distributed, despite dependence, in cross-section and over time, of the idiosyncratic risk. We investigate theoretically the asymptotic power of our test against the alternative that the well­ diversified portfolio is not mean-variance efficient. By construction, our procedure is more powerful than standard tests of mean-variance efficiency that combine the assets in the cross-section into a limited set of (arguably) arbitrary portfolios. Even in cases where the latter has zero power, it can have unit asymptotic power. The incremental power is evidenced in tests of the mean-variance efficiency of the value weighted portfolio of common stock listed on the NYSE and AMEX. Unlike previously thought, however, the selection bias caused by including only continuously traded securities in the test is found to be important. By running the test in a case where it is known to have zero power, we are able to empirically confirm the correctness of the theoretical asymptotic properties of our statistic.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TORSIONAL GROUND MOTIONS

Due to the inherent difficulty in directly recording the rotational ground motions, torsional ground motions have to be estimated from the recorded spatially varying translational motions. In this paper, an empirical coherency function, which is based on the recorded motions at the SMART-1 array, is suggested to model the spatial variation of translational motions. Then, the torsional ground motion power spectral density function is derived. It depends on the translational motion power spectral density function and the coherency function. Both the empirical coherency function and the torsional motion power spectral density function are verified by the recorded motions at the SMART-1 array. The response spectra of the torsional motions are also estimated. Discussion on the relations between the torsional motion response spectrum and the corresponding translational motion response spectrum is made. Numerical results presented can be used to estimate the torsional ground motion power spectral density function and response spectrum.
Effect of bundle orientation on transmission line audible and radio noise

A bundle of four conductors may be used for the next generation of 500-kV lines at the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Among the many questions that needed answers were: (a) the optimal orientation of the bundle to minimize the audible (AN) and radio noise (RFI); and (b) whether trapezoidal conductors behaved differently than conventional stranded conductors. This paper shows the results of comparative tests conducted in BPA's high voltage laboratory comparing the RI and AN from 4 Bunting (conventional round rod) and 4 Hood (trapezoidal) conductors oriented either in a square or a diamond configuration. To make the results more useful, similar tests were conducted on 2 Bunting and 2 Hood conductors oriented either horizontally or vertically and on 3 Bunting and 3 Hood conductors oriented in a vee or an inverted vee configuration. Tests on single Bunting and Hood conductors were also conducted. The tests showed that within the accuracy of noise measurements bundle orientation has little effect on the AN or RFI and that the conventional Bunting and the trapezoidal Hood conductors have essentially the same noise performance. >
Initial Phylotranscriptomic Confirmation of Homoplastic Evolution of the Conspicuous Coloration and Bufoniform Morphology of Pumpkin-Toadlets in the Genus Brachycephalus

The genus Brachycephalus is a fascinating group of miniaturized anurans from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, comprising the conspicuous, brightly colored pumpkin-toadlets and the cryptic flea-toads. Pumpkin-toadlets are known to contain tetrodotoxins and therefore, their bright colors may perform an aposematic function. Previous studies based on a limited number of mitochondrial and nuclear-encoded markers supported the existence of two clades containing species of pumpkin-toadlet phenotype, but deep nodes remained largely unresolved or conflicting between data sets. We use new RNAseq data of 17 individuals from nine Brachycephalus species to infer their evolutionary relationships from a phylogenomic perspective. Analyses of almost 5300 nuclear-encoded ortholog protein-coding genes and full mitochondrial genomes confirmed the existence of two separate pumpkin-toadlet clades, suggesting the convergent evolution (or multiple reversals) of the bufoniform morphology, conspicuous coloration, and probably toxicity. In addition, the study of the mitochondrial gene order revealed that three species (B. hermogenesi, B. pitanga, and B. rotenbergae) display translocations of different tRNAs (NCY and CYA) from the WANCY tRNA cluster to a position between the genes ATP6 and COIII, showing a new mitochondrial gene order arrangement for vertebrates. The newly clarified phylogeny suggests that Brachycephalus has the potential to become a promising model taxon to understand the evolution of coloration, body plan and toxicity. Given that toxicity information is available for only few species of Brachycephalus, without data for any flea-toad species, we also emphasize the need for a wider screening of toxicity across species, together with more in-depth functional and ecological study of their phenotypes.
Developing strategic quality management: A research agenda

This paper critiques the development of TQM and corporate strategy and seeks to encourage further research into the relationship between these two fields of study by developing the concept of Strategic Quality Management (SQM). First, TQM and corporate strategy are discussed from a historical perspective, delineating the development of the two areas. Second, there is a challenge to the concept of quasi-strategic stability and, furthermore, the need to take a Strategic Quality Management (SQM) approach in many organizational situations is emphasized. Finally, key research questions for developing the practice of SQM are discussed for research agendas.
How does capital structure affect firm’s market competitiveness?

Abstract Effective capital decisions not only increase the operational efficiency of businesses but also is strategic to bring the enterprise’s competitive advantages to the market. Using an appropriate debt ratio helps businesses to strike a balance between internal and external resources to compete with other enterprises in the industry. This study aims to find out the effects of capital structure through debt ratio (DR) on the competitiveness of enterprises (HHI) in Vietnam. A sample of 574 companies listed on Vietnam’s stock exchange from 2010–2018 is studied with STATA software. The results show that capital structure affects the competitiveness of enterprises in reverse U-shape. At the same time, DR affects HHI in the form of the U-shaped function in industrial products, information and telecommunication, and consumer goods. Meanwhile, DR affects HHI in reverse U-shape in the sectors of consumer services, raw materials, and community utilities. With the results of this analysis, the research also provides discussion as well as policy implications for businesses to make optimal use of capital structure to provide competitive advantage in the market.
Development of the Midwest Guardrail System

A revised guardrail system has been developed that should provide greatly improved performance for high-center-of-gravity light truck vehicles. The barrier incorporates W-beam guardrail and standard W6×9 steel posts. Primary changes to the design include raising the standard rail height to 635 mm, moving rail splices to midspan between posts, increasing blockout size, and increasing the size of post bolt slots. All of these changes were designed to improve the barrier’s performance with high-center-of-gravity vehicles. One full-scale crash test was conducted to verify that the guardrail would perform adequately with mini-sized automobiles when raised to 660 mm to the center of the rail. This test proved that the barrier can provide satisfactory performance when mounted at heights ranging from 550 mm (standard guardrail height) up to 660 mm. Hence, the new guardrail design provides approximately 110 mm (4.4 in.) of mounting height tolerance. When installed at the nominal mounting height of 635 mm, a 75-mm pavement overlay could be applied to the roadway without requiring adjustments to the barrier’s height.
Application of Data Mining Techniques to Audiometric Data among Professionals in India

Aims: Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is among the principal occupational health hazard. To illustrate that, in order to enrich the database on audiometric status and fast dissemination of knowledgebase, data mining techniques are imperative tools. Study Design: A cross sectional study design was used. Place and Duration of Study: Pure tone audiometric data of both ears of drivers that have 10 years working experience and office workers from Kolkata City, India were recorded.
Employing double external light injection techniques to improve radio-on-DWDM system performance

A radio-on-dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) transport system employing double external light injection techniques to improve the systems' overall performance is proposed and demonstrated. Simultaneously using the external light injection technique to enhance the bandwidth of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser and increase the saturation output power of the semiconductor optical amplifier, resulting in a system with better transmission performance.
REVISTA DE GEOCIÊNCIAS DO NORDESTE

The present work aims to identify the islands of heat present in the urban area of Crato-CE, measuring data of temperature and humidity of the air correlated such data with the geoecological and geourban characteristics of that city. Therefore, the Thermodynamic human perception channel is adopted. For structuring the research, the fixed point methodology was adopted, analyzing the temperature of 9 am, 3 pm and 9 pm. Bibliographic surveys and cartography of the studied area were carried out. The results indicate the existence of heat islands ranging from very high to moderate intensity and the possible solutions for mitigating heat islands are indicated.
A FRAMEWORK FOR MEASURING GEOSPATIAL AMENITY ACCESSIBILITY IN THE PHILIPPINES

With rapid urbanization, Philippine urban planners and the government face concerns on attaining economic growth and development amidst the growing spatial inequality to social infrastructures, housing imbalances, and inadequate services to urban dwellers. A necessary step to mitigate these issues is to study spatial characteristics with adequate and robust data, which is hardly available in developing countries. In line with this, the paper introduces a framework for measuring geospatial amenity accessibility, using Hansen’s gravitation model with the acquired amenities data from OpenStreetMap implemented as Project OHANA (Open-source Heatmap and Analytics for Nationwide Amenities Accessibility in the Philippines). Amenity accessibility findings are discussed for the Philippine regions and disaggregated analysis for the National Capital Region. Validations are made through observations and related literature. To further highlight the applicability of incorporating amenity accessibility data, two use cases were made: (1) on the local government revenue and amenity accessibility relationship, and (2) on concerns to equity of health amenity accessibility across the elderly population. While the findings match with country observations and related literature, the researchers suggest further enhancement of the framework through incorporation of demand and weight factors, and refinements to data inputs and processing to improve the accuracy of analyses.