Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust solution of mixed complementary problems

This thesis is concerned with algorithms and software for the solution of the Mixed Complementarity Problem, or MCP. The MCP formulation is useful for expressing systems of nonlinear inequalities and equations; the complementarity allows boundary conditions to be specified in a succinct manner. Problems of this type occur in many branches of the sciences, including mathematics, engineering, economics, operations research, and computer science. The algorithm we propose for the solution of MCP is a Newton based method containing a novel application of a nonmonotone stabilization technique previously applied to methods for solving smooth systems of equalities and for unconstrained minimization. In order to apply this technique, we have adapted and extended the path construction technique of Ralph (1994), resulting in the PATH algorithm. We present a global convergence result for the PATH algorithm that generalizes similar results obtained in the smooth case. The PATH solver is a sophisticated implementation of this algorithm that makes use of the sparse basis updating package of MINOS 5.4. Due to the widespread use of algebraic modeling languages in the practice of operations research, economics, and other fields from which complementarity problems are drawn, we have developed a complementarity facility for both the GAMS and AMPL modeling languages, as well as software interface libraries to be used in hooking up a complementarity solver as a solution subsystem. These interface libraries provide the algorithm developer with a convenient and efficient means of developing and testing an algorithm, while also benefiting the modeling community by providing ready access to the latest advances in algorithmic development. The library interface routines are used to read a number of complementarity models formulated in the GAMS and AMPL modeling languages. We define the syntax required for these models and describe their derivation. These models have been collected to form a library and have been made publicly available so that others may benefit from this work. We present extensive computational results for the PATH solver and other solution techniques, many of which are obtained by using the interface library and the library of complementarity models developed for this purpose.
Smart Dairy Cattle Farming and In-Heat Detection through the Internet of Things (IoT)

Smart farming is the practice of intelligent agricultural management based on technological data gathered from farm practice for the purpose of increased levels of quality, production and environmental protection. The Internet of Things (IoT) technology is revolutionized in various aspects of agriculture around the world and its application found success in some countries. In this paper, a non-invasive and non-contact estrus detection system integrated IoT technology to improve the detection efficiency of standing-heat behaviors of cows is proposed. The outcome of this study will improve the farm’s management practices through the integration of IoT technology that can remotely monitor the activities of the cows and provide data for analysis and evaluation, will increase the likelihood of future estrus instances for every correct prediction, and will improve the fertility and milk production rates of the cows. Such benefits can contribute to the growth and development of the dairy cattle industry in the Philippines. This study also shows the application of IoT in improving the detection efficiency of standing-heat behaviors of cows through automated detection using Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras and a Python-driven Web Application. The dimensions of the barn are measured, and the Cameras' Field of Views (FOVs) is pre-calculated for the strategic positions of the cameras atop of the cowshed. The program detects the cows and any estrus events through the surveillance cameras. The result is sent to the cloud server to display on the web application for analysis. The web app allows updates on cow information, inseminations, pregnancy, and calving records, estimate travel time from the user's geolocation to the farm, provide live monitoring and remote camera accessibility and control through the cameras and deliver reliable cross-platform push-notification and call alerts on the user's device(s) whenever an estrus event is detected. The system initially and correctly detected 4 standing-heat signs, but with 2 false predictions and identifications leading to 2 “True Positive” and 2 “False Positive” results, attaining a 50% detection efficiency. Based on the results, the program performed satisfactorily at 50% detection efficiency.
Synergetic Effect of Mo, Mg-Modified Sn-β Over Moderate-Temperature Conversion of Hexose to Alkyl Lactate

The thermocatalytic conversion of hexose into valuable chemicals such as methyl lactate under mild conditions is very appealing. Here, we report that Mo, Mg co-modified Sn-β catalyst can effectively catalyze the transformation of glucose and fructose into alkyl lactate at moderate temperatures. A maximum yield of around 35% of methyl lactate was achieved from the conversion of glucose in methanol at 100°C over Sn-β catalyst modified with 3 wt% Mo and 0.5 wt% Mg. However, up to 82.8% yield of ethyl lactate was obtained in the case of fructose in ethanol upon the same catalytic condition, suggesting a significant solvent effect. The Mo species plays a key role to enable the retro-aldol condensation of fructose, in which the competing side reactions are significantly suppressed with the assistance of neighboring Mg species probably through a synergetic effect of Lewis acid-base.
A numerical investigation on grouted connections for offshore wind turbines under combined loads

ABSTRACT Grouted connections have been widely used in offshore wind support structures to connect upper structures and lower foundations. Their mechanical behaviour is critical to the integrity of the entire support structure. In this study, numerical models were established and verified to investigate the stress distributions of grouted connections under combined compression and bending loads. It was found that the locations of shear keys had a significant influence on the maximum Mises stress in the steel tubes and Tresca stresses in the grout. The following parametric study of geometric configurations indicated that the thickness of a tube had a reverse relationship to the maximum stress. Meanwhile, the maximum Tresca stress was not sensitive to any geometric configurations, except grout thickness. Considering the gap between the detailed solid modelling and design process, based on beam modelling, a nominal average stress was computed over the compressed side of the steel tube within grouted connections. Consequently, stress correlation factors were obtained between the maximum Mises stress in a steel tube and the nominal average stress of a grouted connection. This method can be used in the preliminary design to evaluate the general behaviour of grouted connections under combined actions.
Students’ perspectives on religious moderation: A qualitative study into religious literacy processes

religious moderation from the verses of the Qur’an. The participants involved were three students with an excellent ability to read the Qur’an and who had a great interest in the study of the Qur’an. The data were collected through the process of reading the verses of the Qur’an and its textual and contextual translation. The results of this study indicate that students with high translation amendments (adding, removing and replacing words and phrases) tend to have more ability to interpret the verses of the Qur’an widely as a form of verbalisation of thoughts. Contribution: This study provides clarification on student interactions, the interpretation process and the construction of the meaning of the verses of the Qur’an. Furthermore, the results of this study encourage lecturers to reconstruct the process of learning to read the Qur’an at the university level.
Alginate Oligosaccharides Ameliorate DSS-Induced Colitis through Modulation of AMPK/NF-κB Pathway and Intestinal Microbiota

Alginate oligosaccharides (AOS) are shown to have various biological activities of great value to medicine, food, and agriculture. However, little information is available about their beneficial effects and mechanisms on ulcerative colitis. In this study, AOS with a polymerization degree between 2 and 4 were found to possess anti-inflammatory effects in vitro and in vivo. AOS could decrease the levels of nitric oxide (NO), IL-1β, IL-6, and TNFα, and upregulate the levels of IL-10 in both RAW 264.7 and bone-marrow-derived macrophage (BMDM) cells under lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. Additionally, oral AOS administration could significantly prevent bodyweight loss, colonic shortening, and rectal bleeding in dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis mice. AOS pretreatment could also reduce disease activity index scores and histopathologic scores and downregulate proinflammatory cytokine levels. Importantly, AOS administration could reverse DSS-induced AMPK deactivation and NF-κB activation in colonic tissues, as evidenced by enhanced AMPK phosphorylation and p65 phosphorylation inhibition. AOS could also upregulate AMPK phosphorylation and inhibit NF-κB activation in vitro. Moreover, 16S rRNA gene sequencing of gut microbiota indicated that supplemental doses of AOS could affect overall gut microbiota structure to a varying extent and specifically change the abundance of some bacteria. Medium-dose AOS could be superior to low- or high-dose AOS in maintaining remission in DSS-induced colitis mice. In conclusion, AOS can play a protective role in colitis through modulation of gut microbiota and the AMPK/NF-kB pathway.
Tenecteplase and Alteplase for Thrombolysis of Acute Ischemic Stroke within 4.5 Hours: An Efficacy and Safety Study

Objective: To compare the efficacy and safety of thrombolysis using Tenecteplase (TNK) versus alteplase in acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) patients within 4.5-hour window period. Methods: This retrospective study involved the collection of data from consecutive AIS patients who underwent thrombolysis in the Department of Neurology at a tertiary care university hospital, between May 2018 to January 2021. Data including clinical history, neurological assessment using modified Rankin score (mRS), National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), brain neuroimaging, treatment, and outcome details were collected. The primary efficacy outcome was the proportion of patients with good functional recovery (mRS of 0–2) at 90 days of follow-up. Results: Total of 42 patients with AIS underwent thrombolysis, of which 19 received alteplase and 23 got TNK. The median (range) onset to door time [120 (20-210) versus 120 (30-210) minutes; P = 0.823] and median (range) onset to needle time [150 (60-255) versus 160 (50-240) minutes; P = 0.779] were comparable in both alteplase and TNK groups, respectively. The primary outcome of good functional recovery (mRS ≤2) at 3 months was observed in more than half the patients in each group and was comparable (P = 0.701). Post-thrombolysis complications including cerebral haemorrhage (symptomatic or asymptomatic) were comparable between the two groups (31.6% vs 30.4%; P = 0.936), except a significantly higher proportion of patients on TNK required mechanical ventilation (10.5% v/s 43.5%; P = 0.019). Conclusions: This study showed a comparable efficacy and safety profile of alteplase and TNK in thrombolysis of AIS throughout the 4.5 hours window period. Moreover, the ease of administration and better pharmacodynamic properties favors tenecteplase.
The Effect of Deceptive Brand Image on Consumer Purchase Intention: Empirical Evidence from Iraqi Market

In recent years, the Iraqi market witnessed a large opening that resulted from the entry of many different products with an absence of government regulations. As a result, marketing deception practices have emerged as a new phenomenon. This study examines the effect of deceptive brand image on consumer purchase intention, with consumer attitude as a mediator. A quantitative method was applied in the form of a questionnaire distributed to shoppers at Carrefour Supermarket in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. A random sampling technique was conducted. Subsequently, 200 questionnaires were distributed, and 175 valid questionnaires were analyzed, indicating an 87% response rate. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) has been utilized to test the hypothesis. The result showed that brand image deception has a negative impact on consumer purchasing intention. Also, attitude mediates the relationship between deceptive brand image and consumer purchase intention. The empirical finding confirms that deceptive marketing practices such as brand deception can change the attitude of consumers negatively toward brands and, therefore, affect the consumer purchase intentions. The findings suggest that honest brand marketing is beneficial in increasing the attitude toward the brand. This strategy will increase consumer purchase intentions.
Determinants of Improving the Financial Security of Retired Women in Malaysia*

The perspectives on aging women’s financial security during their retirement years are based on their behavior, planning, and decision-making processes during their working years. Elderly women are considered vulnerable and have a longer life expectancy, lower-income, and limited financial understanding compared to males; therefore, drastic steps need to be taken to improve their financial stability and quality of life. The current study sought to determine the most important contributors to retired women’s financial health by measuring the value of four factors/variables: capability, opportunity, willingness, and biopsychosocial. This study used a mixed model approach, with qualitative analysis in the first phase involving a focus group discussion session, a pilot analysis, and quantitative analysis for phase two involving the distribution and collection of questionnaires completed by retired women. The surveys were distributed across Malaysia in five distinct zones and yielded 339 usable replies to support the theory. The outcomes of the Multiple Regression Analysis in Malaysia revealed that capability, opportunity, and biopsychosocial factors are significant predictors of retired women’s financial security, whereas the willingness indicator lacked statistical significance.
Estimating the Probability of Visiting a Protected Natural Space and Its Conditioning Factors: The Case of the Monfragüe Biosphere Reserve (Spain)

: Spain is the European country with the highest percentage of protected areas (27.4% of its total surface area) and the country with the highest number of Biosphere Reserves, with 53. Extremadura, the region that we analyze in our study, has a total of 89 Special Conservation Areas and 71 Special Protection Areas, Monfragüe being one of them. In this context, the aim of this paper is to determine which factors have an inﬂuence on the decision to visit Monfragüe. We perform a regression analysis using a logit model, which shows that the only four factors that inﬂuence the decision to visit Monfragüe are gender, travelling with one’s partner or family, the type of accommodation, and the importance given to nature conservation. We also analyze the structural change using the Chow test, which shows that there are no structural changes, i.e., that the probability of visiting Monfragüe in the high or low season is not signiﬁcantly different. In the case of Monfragüe, ecotourism is not currently practiced en masse; only 3 out of 10 tourists practice ecotourism in Monfragüe, which is important for the sustainable management of the park because the number of tourists it receives each year is within its carrying capacity.
Capital Expenditure Behavior of Overconfident Managers of Japanese Firms: Empirical Evidence During the Financial Crisis in Japan*

Malmendier and Tate (2005) and Aktas et al. (2019) suggested that overconfident managers will invest if they have sufficient internal funds. Still, they will save internal funds instead of reducing investment if they have insufficient internal funds because they perceive more substantial financial constraints than other managers. This study examines whether overconfident managers will not invest when the financial crisis makes it difficult to raise external funds. In particular, during the financial crisis in Japan, banks simultaneously provided active monitoring and financing to firms with strong relationships with banks. Therefore, this study can also examine the relationship between overconfident managers and bank behavior by focusing on Japanese firms. This study examines whether overconfident managers increase their investment in firms with strong relationships with banks during the financial crisis. The results of this study showed that overconfident managers, especially their firms with strong relationships with banks, reduce investments more than other managers during the financial crisis. This study suggests that Japanese banks reduced financial constraints and exerted strong corporate governance on Japanese firms during the financial crisis.
The State-Dependent Eﬀects of Monetary Policy: Calvo versus Rotemberg

This paper evaluates state-dependence in monetary policy transmission mechanism under Calvo and Rotemberg price adjustment schemes. Although the two models are equivalent to ﬁrst order, they produce very di ﬀ erent results once considered at a higher order. In particular, the Rotemberg model produces more state-dependence compared to the Calvo model. The result is reversed once the macroeconomic wedges are eliminated from the models.
Zinc Sulfide-Based Hybrid Exosome-Coated Autophagic flux-Mediated Hydrogen Sulfide-sensitized PDT/Chemotherapeutic Synergistic Nanoplatform for Targeted Treatment of Glioblastoma Stem-Like Cells in Orthotopic Mouse Glioblastoma Model

To eliminate glioblastoma stem-like cells, fine core-shell nanoparticles, consisting of hollow ZnS nanoparticles covered by hybrid exosome shell containing exosome and dual responsive iRGD derived phosphatidylserine, and incorporated with autophagic inhibitor hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), denoted as HCQ@ZnS@exo@iRGD were synthesized, characterized and evaluated in vitro and in vivo . The highest release performance of HCQ from HCQ@ZnS@exo@iRGD was attained under low pH and high glutathione conditions. Hybrid exosomes enabled the glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs) targeting properties along with excellent permeated ability across BBB were observed both in 3D cells spheroids and in orthotopic mouse glioblastoma model. Visible light source is used to trigger the ROS induction of hollow ZnS nanopartilces. Meanwhile ZnS could produce H 2 S gas and release its cargo of HCQ as well in situ . Consequently, significant targeted damage to GSCs is achieved due to the combined cytotoxic effects and autophagy-deactivation enabled by HCQ@ZnS@exo@iRGD nanocomposites, indicating its considerable potential for effective GBM treatment.
Fast Point Transformer —Supplementary Material—

In this section, we clarify the experimental settings for training models, latency evaluation, and model architectures in detail. Each experiment has been conducted with a fixed random seed for the reproducibility. Training details. For 3D semantic segmentation, we use the same training configuration except the batch size and training iterations for both ScanNet [3] and S3DIS [1]. We use the SGD optimizer with momentum and weight decay as 0.9 and 0.0001, respectively. The learning rate is scheduled by the linear warm-up and cosine annealing policy from the initial learning rate 0.1 to the final learning rate 0. We train models with batch size 8 both for ScanNet and S3DIS. We train models with 100k and 40k iterations for ScanNet and S3DIS, respectively. Latency evaluation. We describe the detailed setups that have been used during the inference time evaluation on Table 2 of the main paper. We measure the latency of each model with batch size 1 under the following environments:
Multi-Level Representation Learning with Semantic Alignment for Referring Video Object Segmentation

Referring video object segmentation (RVOS) is a challenging language-guided video grounding task, which requires comprehensively understanding the semantic information of both video content and language queries for object prediction. However, existing methods adopt multi-modal fusion at a frame-based spatial granularity. The limitation of visual representation is prone to causing vision-language mismatching and producing poor segmentation results. To address this, we propose a novel multi-level representation learning approach, which explores the inherent structure of the video content to provide a set of discriminative visual embedding, enabling more effective vision-language semantic alignment. Specifically, we embed different visual cues in terms of visual granularity, including multi-frame long-temporal information at video level, intra-frame spatial semantics at frame level, and enhanced object-aware feature prior at object level. With the powerful multi-level visual embedding and carefully-designed dynamic alignment, our model can generate a robust representation for accurate video object segmentation. Extensive experiments on Refer-DAVIS17 and Refer-YouTube-VOS demonstrate that our model achieves superior performance both in segmentation accuracy and inference speed.
A lattice theoretic approach to computation based on a calculus of partially ordered type structures (property inheritance, semantic nets, graph unification)

The purpose of this thesis is twofold: (1) to define a formal lattice-theoretic calculus of partially ordered type structures where the ordering is meant to reflect subtyping; (2) to propose a model of computation which amounts to solving systems of simultaneous equations in a lattice of types. The specific contributions which I believe to be original of the research presented here are: (1) An extrapolation of the syntactic properties of first-order terms to provide insight in formalizing record-like type structures; (2) A simple "type-as-set" semantics and a motivational discussion of what this entails for the operational use of partially ordered types in programming; (3) A lattice-theoretic calculus of type subsumption and a formal universal construction extending this calculus in the light of the foregoing discussion; (4) An efficient algorithm to compute greatest lower bounds of type structures; (5) The definition of a particular language (KBL) based on solving recursive equations in the lattice of types, and a fixed-point semantics study of its model of computation.