Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sulaiman Ainin ERP Implementation Success in Iran : Examining the Role of System Environment Factors

The aim of this paper is to examine factors related to system environment (namely, system quality and vendor support) that influences ERP implementation success in Iranian companies. Implementation success is identified using user satisfaction and organizational impact perspective. The study adopts the survey questionnaire approach to collect empirical data. The questionnaire was distributed to ERP users and a total of 384 responses were used for analysis. The results illustrated that both system quality and vendor support have significant effect on ERP implementation success. This implies that companies must ensure they source for the best available system and a vendor that is dependable, reliable and trustworthy. Keywords—Enterprise resource planning (ERP), Iran, System quality, Vendor support.
Cognitive maps for mobile robots — an object based approach

Robots are rapidly evolving from factory work-horses to robot-companions. The future of robots, as our companions, is highly dependent on their abilities to understand, interpret and represent the environment in an efficient and consistent fashion, in a way that is comprehensible to humans. The work presented here is oriented in this direction. It suggests a hierarchical probabilistic representation of space that is based on objects. A global topological representation of places with object graphs serving as local maps is proposed. The work also details the first efforts towards conceptualizing space on the basis of the human compatible representation so formed. Such a representation and the resulting conceptualization would be useful for enabling robots to be cognizant of their surroundings. Experiments on place classification and place recognition are reported in order to demonstrate the applicability of such a representation towards understanding space and thereby performing spatial cognition. Further, relevant results from user studies validating the proposed representation are also reported. Thus, the theme of the work is — representation for spatial cognition. c © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Leveraging File-System Crash Consistency to Provide ACID Transactions

Youngjin Kwon is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Professors Emmett Witchel and Simon Peter. His research interests lie in operating systems, including file systems, emerging storage and memory technologies, system support for security, and virtualization. His research has been recognized by VMware, and he contributed an initial version of his research work to VMware commercial hypervisor. yjkwon@cs.utexas. edu We introduce TxFS, a novel transactional file system that builds upon a file system’s atomic-update mechanism such as journaling. Although prior work has explored a number of transactional file systems, TxFS has a unique set of properties: a simple API, portability across different hardware, high performance, low complexity (by building on the journal), and full ACID transactions. We port SQLite and Git to use TxFS, and experimentally show that TxFS provides strong crash consistency while providing equal or better performance.
Spectroscopic Diagnostic of Halos and Elves Detected From Space‐Based Photometers

In this work, we develop two spectroscopic diagnostic methods to derive the peak reduced electric field in transient luminous events (TLEs) from their optical signals. These methods could be used to analyze the optical signature of TLEs reported by spacecraft such as Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (European Space Agency) and the future Tool for the Analysis of RAdiations from lightNIngs and Sprites (Centre National d'Études Spatiales). As a first validation of these methods, we apply them to the predicted (synthetic) optical signatures of halos and elves, two types of TLEs, obtained from electrodynamical models. This procedure allows us to compare the inferred value of the peak reduced electric field with the value computed by halo and elve models. Afterward, we apply both methods to the analysis of optical signatures of elves and halos reported by Global LIghtning and sprite MeasurementS (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (National Space Organization) spacecraft, respectively. We conclude that the best emission ratios to estimate the maximum reduced electric field in halos and elves are the ratio of the second positive system of N2 to first negative system (FNS) of N 2+ , the first positive system of N2 to FNS of N 2+ and the Lyman‐Birge‐Hopfield band of N2 to FNS of N 2+ . In the case of reduced electric fields below 150 Td, we found that the ratio of the second positive system of N2 to first positive system of N2 can also be used to reasonably estimate the value of the field. Finally, we show that the reported optical signals from elves can be treated following an inversion method in order to estimate some of the characteristics of the parent lightning.
AIS Electronic

:Abstract:Abstract:Abstract: Along with the prevalence of microblogging technology, many companies have been creating microblog accounts to promote their products/brands and communicate with customers. However, it is still unclear regarding what factors are critical and can drive users to follow companies’ microblogs. To fill this gap, the present research develops a research model through the perspective of elaboration likelihood model. According to the elaboration level of information processing, we explicate users’ following behavior through three levels of participation: reading messages, forwarding messages, and commenting on messages of companies’ microblogs. We propose that information quality (the central route variable) and source credibility (the peripheral route variable) are two important antecedents in the research model. In addition, we extend the model by considering the role of similarity and examining its impacts on users’ following behavior. We empirically test our research model by collecting data from an existing microblogging site in China. The results show that most of the proposed hypotheses are supported. We thereafter discuss these findings, point out limitations and opportunities for future research, and summarize this study with implications for both theory and practice.
Iterative Digital Photo-based Assessment for Rural Landscape Perception: A Small Experiment from County Wicklow, Ireland

Photography – a simulation of the landscape – is often used to assess visual qualities of landscapes, silently implying there is consensus around what remains the best representation of a given landscape. In this study we examine if such a consensus in visually experiencing a landscape truly exists and what the main differences in visual perceptions of landscape are. To gather participant’s visual experiences, a participant generated image (PGI) method was used. Each participant took a photo, which he/she believed best represented the surrounding landscape and provided reasoning for their choice. With a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis three distinct perceptions were found. Each places different emphasis on land uses, locality and the concept of nature. The study shows the plurality of visual experiences of a landscape, suggesting caution when using surrogates for representing a landscape and offers alternative possible applications of the PGI method for evoking and understanding people’s views of landscape.
Florida Land Use and Land Cover Change in the Past 100 Years

This chapter provides an overview of land use and land cover change in Florida over the past 100 years and a summary of how it may change in the future. We begin by providing a baseline description of Florida’s pre-1900 land cover, natural resource distribution, and biodiversity. This is followed by a description of major land use changes and trends related to transportation, agriculture, mining, urbanization, tourism, disruption of natural processes, and conservation from 1900 to the present. We also describe changes in land use and land cover caused by climate change. The chapter concludes with a discussion of current land use and land cover patterns, and the potential impacts of climate change and continued human population growth on the remaining natural and rural landscapes in Florida. Much has changed in Florida over the last century due to a combination of wetland draining, agriculture conversion, urban development, and establishment of several dominant exotic plant species, as well as accelerating sea level rise and shifting climate zones due to climate change.
Intra-operative Assessment of Breast Tumor Margins Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy

Intra-operative Assessment of Breast Tumor Margins Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy by Torre Michelle Bydlon Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Nirmala Ramanujam, Supervisor ___________________________ William T. Barry ___________________________ Joseph Geradts ___________________________ Kathryn Nightingale ___________________________ Lee G. Wilke ___________________________ Tuan Vo-Dinh An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Torre Michelle Bydlon 2012
Modelling of RC walls with ductile detailing subjected to high axial loads

Abstract Observations following the 2010/2011 Canterbury Earthquakes revealed unexpected damage to reinforced concrete walls, characterized by undesirable failure modes such as crushing of concrete and buckling of longitudinal reinforcement in the web and end regions. In an effort to address these failures, a number of changes have been made to the New Zealand Concrete Structures Standard (NZS3101:2006) that will be published in the next amendment. Major changes include an introduction of an axial load limit (P ≤ 0.3Agf’c) and changes to confinement detailing of the wall web and end regions. Four large-scale walls (C10-A30) are currently being tested to assess the effects that variation of these parameters will have on wall response. Prior to commencing experimental testing, blind predictions have been made using nonlinear finite element models developed in VecTor2. The models were calibrated against test results for five walls with similar detailing and loading conditions to C10-A30. The calibrated models successfully matched strength capacity, failure mode (flexural crushing). Drift at failure observed in experiments was simulated with an average accuracy of 5-30%. Using the modelling approach, C10-A30 were predicted to exhibit generally poor performance characterized by low ductility. Specifically, C10 and A10, with axial load ratios of 0.1Agf’c, were predicted to reach 1.6% and 1.8% drift, respectively, before failure with an average ductility of 3. A longer confinement length in A10 compared to C10 had only a minor effect on the deformation capacity. Specimen A20 (axial load of 0.2Agf’c) and A30 (axial load of 0.3Agf’c) were predicted to reach 1.2% drift and 1.05% drift, respectively, with no ductility due to compression-controlled flexural failure resulting from the large axial loads. Failure was characterized by a rapid loss of strength in a brittle compression failure.
Glare Effects of Camera Lenses

Glare arises due to multiple scattering of light inside the camera’s body and lens optics and reduces image contrast. While previous approaches have analyzed glare in 2D image space, we show that glare is inherently a 4D ray-space phenomenon. By statistically analyzing the ray-space inside a camera, we can classify and remove glare artifacts. In ray-space, glare behaves as high frequency noise and can be reduced by outlier rejection. While such analysis can be performed by capturing the light field inside the camera, it results in the loss of spatial resolution. Unlike light field cameras, we do not need to reversibly encode the spatial structure of the rayspace, leading to simpler designs. We explore masks for uniform and non-uniform ray sampling and show a practical solution to analyze the 4D statistics without significantly compromising image resolution. Although diffuse scattering of the lens introduces 4D low-frequency glare, we can produce useful solutions in a variety of common scenarios. Our approach handles photography looking into the sun and photos taken without a hood, removes the effect of lens smudges and reduces loss of contrast due to camera body reflections. We show various applications in contrast enhancement and glare manipulation. CR Categories: I.4. 1 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Digitization and Image Capture—Radiometry
Vegetation at the Time of the African Humid Period

An orbitally induced increase in summer insolation during the last glacial-interglacial transition enhanced the thermal contrast between land and sea, with land masses heating up compared to the adjacent ocean surface. In North Africa, warmer land surfaces created a low-pressure zone, driving the northward penetration of monsoonal rains originating from the Atlantic Ocean. As a consequence, regions today among the driest of the world were covered by permanent and deep freshwater lakes, some of them being exceptionally large, such as the “Mega” Lake Chad, which covered some 400 000 square kilometers. A dense network of rivers developed. What were the consequences of this climate change on plant distribution and biodiversity? Pollen grains that accumulated over time in lake sediments are useful tools to reconstruct past vegetation assemblages since they are extremely resistant to decay and are produced in great quantities. In addition, their morphological character allows the determination of most plant families and genera. In response to the postglacial humidity increase, tropical taxa that survived as strongly reduced populations during the last glacial period spread widely, shifting latitudes or elevations, expanding population size, or both. In the Saharan desert, pollen of tropical trees (e.g., Celtis) were found in sites located at up to 25°N in southern Libya. In the Equatorial mountains, trees (e.g., Olea and Podocarpus) migrated to higher elevations to form the present-day Afro-montane forests. Patterns of migration were individualistic, with the entire range of some taxa displaced to higher latitudes or shifted from one elevation belt to another. New combinations of climate/environmental conditions allowed the cooccurrences of taxa growing today in separate regions. Such migrational processes and species-overlapping ranges led to a tremendous increase in biodiversity, particularly in the Saharan desert, where more humid-adapted taxa expanded along water courses, lakes, and wetlands, whereas xerophytic populations persisted in drier areas. At the end of the Holocene era, some 2,500 to 4,500 years ago, the majority of sites in tropical Africa recorded a shift to drier conditions, with many lakes and wetlands drying out. The vegetation response to this shift was the overall disruption of the forests and the wide expansion of open landscapes (wooded grasslands, grasslands, and steppes). This environmental crisis created favorable conditions for further plant exploitation and cereal cultivation in the Congo Basin.
Alzheimer's: Advancements through research

This literary review examines some genes and proteins such as presenilin 1 presenilin 2, amyloid precursor protein, and apolipoprotein E, and Tau that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. It also delves into four causal hypotheses for Alzheimer’s disease: the oxidative stress-induced AD cascade hypothesis, the copper-2 hypothesis, the amyloid cascade hypothesis, and the type II diabetes mellitus hypothesis. It further explains some of the current ways of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease and its different forms; symptoms that have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease; and the different demographics of Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, different treatments, preventions, risks, and current research for Alzheimer’s disease is reviewed. Overall, Alzheimer’s has been shown to affect non-Hispanic white populations between the ages of 75-85 years old the most (Herbert et al. 2003, Plassman et al. 2007, Herbert et al 2013). Significant contributors to the disease included type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and diets high in saturated and trans-unsaturated fats (Luchsinger et al. 2001, Morris et al. 2003, & Elias et al. 2004). A number of studies have found that a healthy diet that includes a moderate amount of fish, continued physical exercise, and continued mental exercise may help decrease the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (Wang et al. 2006, Feart et al. 2010, &Kivipelto & Håkansson 2017).
Accounting outsourcing and audit lag

Purpose This paper examines the relationship between accounting outsourcing and audit lag. Accounting outsourcing may reduce misstatement risk, reducing the amount of audit effort necessary and thereby decrease audit lag. Alternatively, outsourcing may increase the amount of coordination necessary between the auditor, client management and the outside accounting service provider and thereby increase audit lag. Design/methodology/approach The accounting outsourcing/audit lag relationship is examined among closed-end mutual funds. These funds often outsource their accounting functions and disclose the names and services provided by any company providing services to the fund. These disclosures permit a consistent measurement of whether the fund outsources their accounting functions or performs them in-house. Findings This paper finds a positive relationship between accounting outsourcing and audit lag; outsourcing funds have audit lags that are two to three days longer than those not outsourcing their accounting. The results are robust to different specifications, controls for the distinctive characteristics of closed-end funds and consideration of endogeneity. Practical implications Closed-end funds could consider the increased time necessary to complete the audit when deciding whether to outsource their accounting functions. Originality/value By identifying a unique setting in which outsourcing data can be consistently obtained and analyzed (i.e. closed-end funds), this is the first study to empirically evaluate the relationship between accounting outsourcing and audit lag.
A Design for a Security-typed Language with Certi cate-based Declassi cation

This paper presents a calculus that supports informationow security policies and certi cate-based declassi cation. The decentralized label model and its downgrading mechanisms are concisely expressed in the polymorphic lambda calculus with subtyping (System F ). We prove a conditioned version of the noninterference theorem such that authorization for declassi cation is justi ed by digital certi cates from public-key infrastructures. Note to the reviewers: An earlier version of this paper appears in European Symposium on Programming (ESOP), 2005. The main di erence is that the present version (1) contains detailed inference rules and proofs, and (2) formalizes noninterference with xpoints and divergence, (3) implements and typechecks a distributed bank example in the monadic style. Stephen Tse (stse@cis.upenn.edu) and Steve Zdancewic (stevez@cis.upenn.edu). Address: 3330 Walnut Street, CIS Graduate Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, US. Phone: 215-898-8560, Fax: 215-898-0587.
Communications of the IIMA Communications

The DIKW hierarchy has long been a standard framework with which researchers can differentiate between levels of what they see and know. However much of the research conducted explores the nuances and precise divisions between each hierarchy level and assumes that the user will know how to use them. We plan to restrict our study to textual Web documents and propose a framework extension to the DIKW hierarchy that encompasses acquisition, delivery and prediction elements. We feel that such an extension can help better define each level of the DIKW hierarchy into discrete units that can be applied to the content contained within the Internet
Appears in Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Applying Machine Learning

Information extraction is a form of shallow text processing which locates a speci ed set of relevant items in natural language documents. Such systems can be useful, but require domain-speci c knowledge and rules, and are time-consuming and di cult to build by hand, making infomation extraction a good testbed for the application of machine learning techniques to natural language processing. This paper presents a system, Rapier, that takes pairs of documents and lled templates and induces pattern-match rules that directly extract llers for the slots in the template. The learning algorithm incorporates techniques from several inductive logic programming systems and learns unbounded patterns that include constraints on the words and part-of-speech tags surrounding the ller. Encouraging results are presented on learning to extract information from computer job postings from the newsgroup misc.jobs. offered.
L EARNING D EEP L ATENT S UBSPACES FOR C AMERA ISP

Heterogeneity exists in most camera images. This heterogeneity manifests itself across the image space as varied Moire ringing, motion-blur, color-bleaching or lens based projection distortions. Moreover, combinations of these image artifacts can be present in small or large pixel neighborhoods, within an acquired image. Current camera image processing pipelines, including deep trained versions, tend to rectify the issue applying a single ﬁlter that is homogeneously applied to the entire image. This is also particularly true when an encoder-decoder type deep architecture is trained for the task. In this paper, we present a structured deep learning model that solves the heterogeneous image artifact ﬁltering problem. We call our deep trained model the Patch Subspace Variational Autoencoder (PS-VAE) for Camera ISP. PS-VAE does not necessarily assume uniform image distortion levels nor similar artifact types within the image. Rather, our model attempts to learn to cluster different patches extracted from images into artifact type and distortion levels, within multiple latent subspaces (e
SurfelMeshing: Online Surfel-Based Mesh Reconstruction

We address the problem of mesh reconstruction from live RGB-D video, assuming a calibrated camera and poses provided externally (e.g., by a SLAM system). In contrast to most existing approaches, we do not fuse depth measurements in a volume but in a dense surfel cloud. We asynchronously (re)triangulate the smoothed surfels to reconstruct a surface mesh. This novel approach enables to maintain a dense surface representation of the scene during SLAM which can quickly adapt to loop closures. This is possible by deforming the surfel cloud and asynchronously remeshing the surface where necessary. The surfel-based representation also naturally supports strongly varying scan resolution. In particular, it reconstructs colors at the input camera’s resolution. Moreover, in contrast to many volumetric approaches, ours can reconstruct thin objects since objects do not need to enclose a volume. We demonstrate our approach in a number of experiments, showing that it produces reconstructions that are competitive with the state-of-the-art, and we discuss its advantages and limitations. The algorithm (excluding loop closure functionality) is available as open source at https://github.com/puzzlepaint/surfelmeshing.