Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NON-LINEAR MODELLING IN BRAZILIAN MARKET: EVALUATING THE FORECASTING PERFORMANCE OF NN (UNIVARIATE NEAREST NEIGHBOR) AND SNN (SIMULTANEOUS NEAREST NEIGHBOR) FORECASTING ALGORITHM

The predictability of stock market’s behavior is a topic studied by different academic circles for long time. A popular tool to make predictions about the stock market behavior on short term is the technical analysis. Such tool is based on the analysis of quantitative indicators and also chart patterns in order to identify the time to entry (buy) or exit the market (sell). A quantitative approach that is related to charting is the use of the non-parametric approach of nearest neighbor algorithm in order to produce forecasts of the time series on t+1 . The main objective of this paper is to study the forecasting performance of the nearest neighbor method for the Brazilian Equity data in two versions, the univariate and also the multivariate case, which is also called simultaneous nearest neighbor. The main conclusion of the paper is that the ability of the algorithm in forecasting the values of the stock prices is mixed. A comparative analysis with the random walk model showed that this naive approach has more explicative power in numerical accuracy. For the case of directional forecasts, the NN presented better results, resulting in correct directional forecasts moderately higher than 50% for most of the assets and with a maximum of approximately 60% correct market direction forecasts, which indicates that the method may add value in quantitative trading strategies. Comparing the results for both versions of the algorithm, its clear that both presented very similar results, but the univariate case was slightly better.
Development of Mixed Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (MVAWT) for Low Wind Condition

Small-scaled renewable energy generation such as micro-hydro and domestic solar panel has become the recent trend of research in order to achieve sustainable energy generation and to eliminate the reliance of geographical selection and large farm area. As for the case of wind energy, a wind turbine that can operate at low wind condition are desirable. This paper presents a mixed design for Vertical Axis Wind Turbine comprises of Savonius and Darrieus rotors, being assembled together as a single rotor turbine. The mixed wind turbine model (MVAWT) was fabricated and tested in our lab as prove of concept. Experiments conducted on 5 MVAWT’s configurations and being compared to a standalone Darrieus turbine with +3 degree pitch angle, showed promising result in lowering the self-start speed of the Darrieus turbine. It was observed that all the positive pitch angle MVAWTs has started to rotate at lower wind speed (about 1.8 m/s) while the standalone Darrieus turbine was only started to rotate at wind speeds more than 3.0 m/s. However, the lower self-start were also being compensated by lower turbine rotational speed. With the low self-start speed in the MVAWT, it will enable the wind energy capture for a longer period of time at a low wind condition site. This development should lead to an interesting research on optimizing the mixture of Savonius and Darrieus turbine for a localized low wind speed conditions in the future.
Soft Skills: The Neglected Factor in Workplace Participation?

Abstract The rhetoric proposes that transitions from ‘Fordist’ to ‘post-Fordist’ structures will result in a flexible, multi-skilled workforce operating in a decentralised, participative environment. Whilst employee participation and a consensual management style have frequently been espoused as prerequisites for cultural change and improved organisational performance, the importance of soft skills in the process is seldom mentioned. This paper attempts to redress the balance by examining participation and soft skills against a framework of management style and organisational culture. Two different companies were studied, one which had undergone a culture change program in an attempt to move from a Fordist to a post-Fordist structure and one which had not. The results indicate that ‘intention to empower for participation’ is not enough, as without enhanced soft skills the process is unlikely to prove successful.
Susceptibilidade de ambientes campestres a invasao de acacia-negra (Acacia mearnsii de Wild.) no Rio Grande do Sul

This paper aimed to evaluate the frequency, the intensity and the pattern of black wattle invasion on field environment, and to propose methodologies for its monitoring and control. Seven environments located less than 30 m from young (1 year) and mature (5 years) plantations were evaluated. Black wattle invasions depended on the degree of soil disturbance. A Permanent Preservation Area (APP) in a recuperation phase, the most disturbed environment studied, presented 152 plants/0.1 ha, the highest number of invasive plants observed. Less than 11 plants/ha were observed on environments with low disturbance rates, such as native grassland, swamp areas and undisturbed APP’s. Environments near young black wattle plantations were more susceptible to invasions (50 plants/0.1 ha) than environments near mature plantations (10 plants/0.1 ha), suggesting that the disturbance was caused by machineries used in harvesting and reforestation operations. New invasions during the following growth cycle were not significant ( 4.0 of height, respectively, showing that the populations of invasive plants were significantly reduced during the following years. Thus, black wattle invasion to neighbouring plantations was conditioned to soil disturbance rates, and as such, it was concluded that the black wattle is a causal invasive species in a field environment
Testing the Existence of Natural Resource Curse in Indonesia: The Role of Financial Development

Natural resources may become a blessing that can contribute to societies’ welfare increases. Yet natural resource abundance could also become a curse for countries’ economic development. Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between natural resources and economic performance. However, the results remain ambiguous and have no consensus in the literature. In specific, most literature focused only on testing the curse’s existence, while studies that involve the role of financial development in mediating the nexus remain scarce. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneer study in a developing country endowed by natural resources. Using panel data of 33 provinces from 2012 to 2018, this study implements the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique to examine the existence of the natural resource curse and scrutinize the role of financial development in mitigating the curse. Results show that Indonesia potentially experiences a natural resource curse. Nonetheless, the negative effect of natural resources on economic growth could be mitigated by enhancing the role of financial development to reach a certain threshold over economic output. This study recommends policymakers to not only increase financial development across the provinces but also pay more serious attention to other factors causing the natural resource curse in Indonesia.
Design and Integration of ITER Divertor Components

The ITER Divertor is aimed at exhausting the major part of the plasma thermal power including alpha power and at minimizing the helium and impurity content in the plasma. It consists of assembly of 54 divertor cassettes. Each divertor cassette has three plasma-facing components (PFCs) and one cassette body that accommodates these PFCs. The PFCs consist of the Inner and Outer Vertical targets and the Dome. The Vertical Targets directly intercept the magnetic field lines and are designed to withstand heat fluxes as high as 20 MW/m2. After the successful completion of the qualification phase, three Parties (Japan, Europe and Russia) are qualified and they are in charge of procurement of the first Divertor set. In the paper, the detail component design and the manufacturing as well as the integration of the system are reported.
Numerical and Experimental Studies of Simple Geometries in Slamming

The aim of this paper is to present a numerical and experimental study of slamming phenomena experienced by ships in service when their bottoms hit the water with a high velocity. Ship-bottom slamming is more often to the rapid ships, but large ocean-going vessels with big block coefficients may also be affected, especially in the ballast condition. The research work covers the finite element modeling of the impact between a rigid body and a free water surface, using 3 numerical approaches based on the finite element code ABAQUS, as well as the experimental slamming tests for validation.
A systematic review of the agreement of recall, home-based records, facility records, BCG scar, and serology for ascertaining vaccination status in low and middle-income countries

Background: Household survey data are frequently used to estimate vaccination coverage - a key indicator for monitoring and guiding immunization programs - in low and middle-income countries. Surveys typically rely on documented evidence from home-based records (HBR) and/or maternal recall to determine a child’s vaccination history, and may also include health facility sources, BCG scars, and/or serological data. However, there is no gold standard source for vaccination history and the accuracy of existing sources has been called into question. Methods and Findings: We conducted a systematic review of literature published January 1, 1975 through December 11, 2017 that compared vaccination status at the child-level from at least two sources of vaccination history. 27 articles met inclusion criteria. The percentage point difference in coverage estimates varied substantially when comparing caregiver recall to HBRs (median: +1, range: -43 to +17), to health facility records (median: +5, range: -29 to +34) and to serology (median: -20, range: -32 to +2). Ranges were also wide comparing HBRs to facility-based records (median: +17, range: -61 to +21) and to serology (median: +2, range: -38 to +36). Across 10 studies comparing recall to HBRs, Kappa values exceeded 0.60 in 45% of comparisons; across 7 studies comparing recall to facility-based records, Kappa never reached 0.60. Agreement varied depending on study setting, coverage level, antigen type, number of doses, and child age. Conclusions: Recall and HBR provide relatively concordant vaccination histories in some settings, but both have poor agreement with facility-based records and serology. Long-term, improving clinical decision making and vaccination coverage estimates will depend on strengthening administrative systems and record keeping practices. Short-term, there must be greater recognition of imperfections across available vaccination history sources and explicit clarity regarding survey goals and the level of precision, potential biases, and associated resources needed to achieve these goals.
Fast bender actuators for fish-like aquatic robots

Small, highly-mobile "swimming" robots are desired for underwater monitoring operations, including pollution detection, video mapping and other tasks. Actuator materials of all types are of interest for any application where space is limited. This constraint certainly applies to the small-scale swimming robot, where multiple small actuators are needed for forward/backward propulsion, steering and diving/surfacing. A number of previous studies have demonstrated propulsion of floating objects using IPMC type polymer actuators [1-3] or piezoceramic actuators [4, 5]. Here, we show how propulsion is also possible using a multi-layer polypyrrole bimorph actuator. The actuator is based on our previously published work showing very fast resonance actuation in polypyrrole bending-type actuators [6]. The bending actuator is a tri-layer structure, in which the gold-PVDF (porous poly(vinylidene fluoride) membrane) substrate was coated on both sides with polypyrrole layers to form an electrochemical cell. Polypyrrole films on gold coated PVDF were grown galvanostatically at a current density of 0.10 mA/cm2 for 12 hours from propylene carbonate (PC) solution containing 0.1 M Li+TFSI-, 0.1 M pyrrole and 1% (w/w) water. The polypyrrole deposited PVDF was thoroughly rinsed with acetone and stored in 0.1 M Li+TFSI- / PC solution. The edges of the bulk film were trimmed off and the bending actuators were prepared as rectangular strips typically 2mm wide and 25 mm long. These actuators gave fast operation in air (to 90 Hz), and were utilised as active flexural joints on the tail fin of a fishshaped floating "boat". The actuators were attached to a simple truncated shaped fin and the deflection angle was analysed in both air and liquid for excitation with +/- 1V square wave at a range of frequencies. The mechanical resonance of the fin was seen to be 4.5 Hz in air and 0.45 Hz in PC, which gave deflection angles of approximately 60° and 55° respectively. The boat contained a battery, receiver unit and electronic circuit attached to the actuator fin assembly. Thus, the boat could be operated by remote control, and by varying the frequency and duty cycle applied to the actuator, the speed and direction of the boat could be controlled. The boat had a turning circle as small as 15 cm in radius and a maximum speed of 2m/min when operating with a tail frequency of approximately 0.7 Hz. The efficiency of the flapping tail fin was analysed and it was seen that operation at this frequency corresponded with a Strouhal number in the optimal range.
Chip Formation Model of Cutting Fiber-Reinforced Plastics Perpendicular to Fiber Axis

The anisotropy of fiber-reinforced plastics heavily influences the chip formation and cut quality during machining. Fiber arrangement is found more dominant than the often stressed cutting conditions. The present paper studies the chip formation and constructs an original model for the case of cutting perpendicular to the unidirectional fiber axis. Bending failure controls the chip formation in this process. Beam theory and laminate mechanics are used to establish the correlation between cutting force, chip length and thickness. The proposed model can explain the major trend of the experimental results. Chip separation in thickness due to intrinsic bonding defects and overbent chips due to inhomogeneous local material strength are also found. They are understood based on the current model.
Model Building on Selectivity of Gas Antisolvent Fractionation Method Using the Solubility Parameter

Solubility parameters are widely used in the polymer industry and are often applied in the high pressure field as well as they give the possibility of combining the effects of all operational parameters on solubility in a single term. We demonstrate a statistical methodology to apply solubility parameters in constructing a model to describe antisolvent fractionation based chiral resolution, which is a complex process including a chemical equilibrium, precipitation and extraction as well. The solubility parameter used in this article, is the Hansen parameter. The evaluation of experimental results of resolution and crystallization of ibuprofen with (R)-phenylethylamine based on diastereomeric salt formation by gas antisolvent fractionation method was carried out. Two sets of experiments were performed, one with methanol as organic solvent in an undesigned experiment and one with ethanol in a designed experiment. The utilization of D-optimal design in order to decrease the necessary number of experiments and to overcome the problem of constrained design space was demonstrated. Linear models including dependence of pressure, temperature and the solubility parameter were appropriate to describe the selectivity of the GASF optical resolution method in both sets of experiments.
Simplified Load Distribution Factors for Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composite Bridge Decks

In recent years, researchers have investigated the load distribution factors due to vehicle wheel loads. Several load distribution factors for fiber reinforced polymer deck-steel stringer bridge systems have been proposed. Unfortunately, these load distribution factors are only used for each particular fiber reinforced polymer bridge deck system. Therefore, the objective of the research effort is to present the load distribution results of a parametric study using finite element analysis. The simplified load distribution factors were developed herein. The bridge parameters for this study were stringer spacing, bridge span, width of bridge models, types of fiber reinforced polymer bridge decks and numbers of traffic lanes. The bridge responses under various wheel loading conditions were investigated. The simplified distribution factors based on “S-over-factor” formula were proposed and compared with the load distribution factors obtained from specifications, analytical and field data. The load distribution results for this present study were correlated to the previous research data. The upper and lower bound limit of the load distribution factors were presented to purpose of preliminary guidelines.
Risk control in transmission system expansion planning with wind generators

SUMMARY With the advent of large-scale wind farms and their integration into electrical grids, more uncertainties, constraints and objectives must be considered in power system development. It is therefore necessary to introduce risk-control strategies into the planning of transmission systems connected with wind power generators. This paper presents a probability-based multi-objective model equipped with three risk-control strategies. The model is developed to evaluate and enhance the ability of the transmission system to protect against overload risks when wind power is integrated into the power system. The model involves: (i) defining the uncertainties associated with wind power generators with probability measures and calculating the probabilistic power flow with the combined use of cumulants and Gram-Charlier series; (ii) developing three risk-control strategies by specifying the smallest acceptable non-overload probability for each branch and the whole system, and specifying the non-overload margin for all branches in the whole system; (iii) formulating an overload risk index based on the non-overload probability and the non-overload margin defined; and (iv) developing a multi-objective transmission system expansion planning (TSEP) model with the objective functions composed of transmission investment and the overload risk index. The presented work represents a superior risk-control model for TSEP in terms of security, reliability and economy. The transmission expansion planning model with the three risk-control strategies demonstrates its feasibility in the case study using two typical power systems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Optimization of Vehicle Crash Pulses in Relative Displacement Domain

Abstract A method of optimizing vehicle crash pulse with respect to the occupant restraint is presented. The method is derived from an impact pulse-restraint energy relationship, which states: The energy the restraint system has to manage is the work done by the crash pulse on the occupant. Therefore, to optimize the crash pulse is to minimize this pulse-input energy. The relationship between the crash pulse and the occupant response is expressed in the relative displacement domain, which offers a procedure to examine the crash pulse energy and a method to minimize it. The method treats the linear restraint and nonlinear restraint systems alike, and it is used to derive both theoretical optimal crash pulses and ways to improve existing crash pulses for a given restrain system.
Measurement of Rotation of Polarization Plane of Laser Radiation Propagating through Impulse Discharge in Air

Linearly polarized light propagating through an ionized region, with a nonzero component of the magnetic field parallel to the direction of propagation, experiences a rotation of the polarization plane due to the Faraday effect. Measurement of the rotation angle of the polarization plane can provide information regarding the electron density and discharge current of discharges in air. In this experiment, the rotation of the polarization plane of linearly polarized laser light propagating through an ionized region created by a spark discharge in air was examined. The rotation angle of the polarization plane was estimated from the change in the intensities of the mutually perpendicular polarization components. In the experiment using an air gap of length 1 m, the rotation angle was detected only when the laser beam intersected or passed through the immediate vicinity of the path of the spark discharge, and the measured rotation angle was 0.54 degrees. In another experiment using an air gap of length 0.77 m, the polarization rotation was confirmed to exhibit a temporal variation similar to the discharge current waveform. Furthermore, the effects due to the neutral density variation accompanying the discharge were shown to have no effect on the polarization rotation measurement. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Oil Pipeline Vandalization and the Socio-Economic Effects in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region

With the discovery of crude oil and natural gas (ONG) in the Niger Delta in 1956, it was expected that it will usher in the much needed sustainable development in the region. Whereas this did not happen, the activities of the multinational oil companies (MNOCs) operating in the region continued to pollute and degrade the environment so much that it disarticulated the local economy of the people. The unmet expectations coupled with the environmental degradation created frustration that consequently led the people, particularly the youths to vandalize oil pipelines. This paper examined the effects, as well as the causes and manifestations of oil pipeline vandalization in the region and country. The paper went further to discuss three celebrated cases on pipeline vandalization to show its consequences on the local people, and national economy and security. It also points out several lessons and recommends the involvement of the host communities into the oil economy for them to guarantee the safety of oil installations in the country.
Biomechanical properties of Miscanthus stems.

Miscanthus × giganteus is emerging as one of the most promising crops suitable for biomass production, as it requires low inputs and produces high yields. Miscanthus harvesting using forage and hay equipment presents a challenge because of the thickness and hardness of miscanthus stems. Biomechanical properties of the miscanthus stems were investigated for use in designing better harvesting and size reduction equipment. Material testing equipment was used to study cutting force, shearing strength, tensile strength, and bending strength. The cutting force was determined at the first internode, whereas other properties were determined at internodes one through seven. The shear strength of miscanthus stems at the first or second internode was about double that at internodes three through seven. Tensile strength of the cortex in the cross-sectional direction was about 0.4% of tensile strength in the longitudinal direction. Shearing strength of the cortex was 7.0 and 65.0 MPa and tensile strength was 288.1 and 1.1 MPa in the longitudinal and cross-sectional directions, respectively. The modulus of elasticity of miscanthus stems increased from 4,600 to 11,300 MPa as the internode number increased from first to seventh. The maximum cutting force to cut miscanthus stems was 83.0 N mm-1 for a flat blade and 54.6 N mm-1 for a serrated blade. The specific cutting energy was 87.5 mJ mm-2 for the flat blade and 66.1 mJ mm-2 for the serrated blade. Analysis revealed that the serrated blade employed less energy-demanding modes of failure than the flat blade, resulting in lower cutting energy and reduced cutting force. The results of this study may be useful in designing harvesting and size reduction equipment employing optimum failure modes to minimize the energy or to achieve desired quality of cut.