Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRAFFIC CALMING - AN ASSESSMENT OF SELECTED ON-ROAD CHICANE SCHEMES

Various types of horizontal deflections have been used in traffic calming to reduce the speed of traffic. The results in terms of effectiveness and public acceptability have not always been successful. Chicane trials on the TRL test track (1994), confirmed the potential of chicanes as traffic calming measures and established relationships between mean speed and chicane dimensions. Further work was commissioned by the Driver Information and Traffic Management (DITM) Division of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) to study chicane installations on the public roads. This report describes a variety of on-road chicane schemes in terms of design and location, speed reduction and accident reduction. The speed reductions at these schemes were compared with those from the TRL trials and relationships between mean speed and 'path angle' have been developed. Local authority experience was used in compiling advice and raising issues relating to good and bad practice in the design and installation of chicanes. (A)
An Introduction to Defected Ground Structures in Microstrip Circuits

In recent years, there have been several new concepts applied to distributed microwave circuits. One such technique is defected ground structure or DGS, where the ground plane metal of a microstrip (or stripline, or coplanar waveguide) circuit is intentionally modified to enhance performance. The name for this technique simply means that a “defect” has been placed in the ground plane, which is typically considered to be an approximation of an infinite, perfectly-conducting current sink. Of course, a ground plane at microwave frequencies is far removed from the idealized behavior of perfect ground. Although the additional perturbations of DGS alter the uniformity of the ground plane, they do not render it defective.
Knowledge management capabilities in social enterprises

Many studies have researched how organisations can benefit from Knowledge Management (KM). Critical factors, models and frameworks for successful implementations of KM have informed practitioners in different industries and countries. However, there is still a need for exploring other dimensions of KM as well as its application in different contexts. Further empirical evidence and operationalisation, which assure successful implementations, is also needed to improve not only companies but also society in general. Building on that observation, this study presents conceptual and empirical evidence to support the view that KM, understood as an organisational capability, improves organisational performance of the under-researched and increasingly important Social Enterprises (SEs). These, normally micro and small organisations, are gaining worldwide attention and importance as they address, following business principles, crucial social and environmental problems and provide more sustainable solutions. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of empirical evidence of how these organisations operate, perform and scale up. The study supports this view by developing and empirically testing a model named Knowledge Management Capabilities in Social Enterprises (KMC-SE), which is the main contribution to knowledge of this study. The model describes the organisational pre-conditions and the knowledge activities that can develop Knowledge Management Capabilities (KMCs), which then have an impact on SEs’ performance. A sequential, explanatory, mixed methods’ research design was followed to test the model with empirical evidence from 432 SEs in the UK. The evidence suggests that current KMCs account for up to 20% of overall improvements in SEs’ performance, based on a year-to-year comparison. Moreover, the KMC-SE Model proposes new insights in the traditional way of approaching KM and KMC development, highlighting (a) the important role of human and cultural factors, giving less emphasis to extrinsic motivations and technology, (b) the importance of studying informal KM practices, and (c) the essential inclusion of external dimensions into the equation. Because of the limited research in organisational characteristics of SEs, and more specifically, their KM practices, the KMC-SE Model may have omitted other important elements that were particular to these organisations in their development of KMCs, as well as their performance measures. Therefore, the obtained KMC-SE Model needs to be considered as only a starting point in the study of KM in SEs.
TRAFFIC OPERATIONS AS RELATED TO HIGHWAY ILLUMINATION AND DELINEATION

INCREASING CONSTRUCTION OF FREEWAYS HAS STIMULATED MUCH DISCUSSION OF HIGHWAY ILLUMINATION AND ITS POSSIBLE VALUE IN PROVIDING MORE COMFORTABLE NIGHT DRIVING, IN THE POSSIBILITY OF INCREASING NIGHT USAGE OF THE HIGHWAY, AND IN REDUCING TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS. BECAUSE OF LACK OF FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE ON THE SUBJECT, THE CONNECTICUT STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT IN COOPERATION WITH THE U.S. BUREAU OF PUBLIC ROADS UNDERTOOK A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF ILLUMINATION AND DELINEATION ON THE CONNECTICUT TURNPIKE. DRIVER BEHAVIOR DATA WERE RECORDED UNDER NINE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS OF HIGHWAY ILLUMINATION AND DELINEATION AT ONE ONRAMP AND ONE OFFRAMP ON A MERCURY- ILLUMINATED SECTION OF THE CONNECTICUT TURNPIKE. ACCIDENT DATA WERE OBTAINED ON THE 53-MI CONTINUOUS ILLUMINATED SECTION AND ON THE 76-MI NONILLUMINATED SECTION. FOR THE VARIOUS CONDITIONS OF ILLUMINATION AND DELINEATION, THE RESULTS SHOWED NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES WITH RESPECT TO AVERAGE VEHICLE SPEEDS, LATERAL PLACEMENTS, AND CLEARANCES BETWEEN VEHICLES. THE MANNER OF NIGHT USE OF SPEED CHANGE LANES, PARTICULARLY THE ACCELERATION LANE, IMPROVED WITH INCREASED ILLUMINATION. IN GENERAL, IT APPEARS THAT SOME BENEFICIAL RESULTS OF ILLUMINATION IN THE DECELERATION AREA ARE DERIVED WHEN IT IS USED AT THE FULL LEVEL AND THAT EVEN GREATER SERVICE IS PROVIDED WHEN ILLUMINATION IS COMBINED WITH ROADSIDE DELINEATION, AND THAT ILLUMINATION OF THE INTERCHANGE AREA ONLY, DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE ADVANTAGEOUS INSOFAR AS THE ONRAMP SITE IS CONCERNED. THE IMPORTANCE OF DELINEATION, WITH OR WITHOUT ILLUMINATION, IS DEMONSTRATED. ANALYSIS OF THE ACCIDENT DATA FOR THE LIGHTED AND UNLIGHTED SECTIONS OF THE CONNECTICUT TURNPIKE DID NOT PROVIDE CONCLUSIVE RESULTS BECAUSE OF THE EXTREME VARIANCE IN TRAFFIC VOLUMES AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS. /AUTHOR/
ROADSIDE SAFETY DESIGN FOR SMALL VEHICLES

This report documents and presents the results of a study to evaluate the impact performance of widely used roadside safety elements for a 1,500 lb vehicle and to identify potential modifications that would enable existing roadside safety elements to accommodate a design vehicle weighing as little as 1,250 lb. A full-scale crash test program coupled with an extensive computer analysis study were used to evaluate impact performance. Elements evaluated included the concrete safety shaped barrier (CSSB), the G4(1S) roadside barrier, breakaway luminaire and sign supports, a base-bending sign support, the eccentric-loader guardrail terminal, crash cushions, and roadside safety features including slopes, ditches, driveways, and curbs. It was concluded that: (a) modifications to the CSSB may be needed to mitigate overturn problems; (b) performance of the G4(1S) is satisfactory; (c) performance of most slip-base, breakaway supports is satisfactory but the frangible transformer base is not acceptable; (d) a single 4 lb/ft steel U-post sign support is marginally acceptable; (e) the eccentric-loader guardrail terminal is not acceptable but with modifications, it could possibly be made acceptable; (f) the sand-filled plastic drum crash cushion can be easily designed to accommodate a 1,300 lb vehicle; (g) although no apparent modifications are needed for slope, ditch, and driveway designs, more overturns can be expected with the small vehicle if these features are not constructed and maintained so as to avoid poorly compacted, eroded, and irregular terrain; and (h) to minimize small car overturn, AASHTO curb types C, E, and G, or similar designs are preferred.
PREDICTING MARKET PIG WEIGHTS AND FAT IODINE VALUE AND EFFECT OF ZINC ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND IMMUNE FUNCTION OF FINISHING PIGS

The optimum sampling method swine producers should use to estimate the mean and SD of pig BW within a barn was determined based upon both the time required to conduct and the precision and accuracy of each sampling method. Weighing 5 pigs from 15 pens was determined to be the optimal sampling method. This should require approximately 55 min to complete. Weighing 5 pigs from 15 pens had a CI range of 7.2 to 8.0 kg for estimating the mean BW and 5.6 kg for estimating SD. Next, a meta-analysis was conducted using data from existing literature to generate equations to predict finishing pig back, belly, and jowl fat iodine value. While numerous factors were evaluated, dietary essential fatty acids, dietary net energy content, and backfat thickness had the greatest influence on predicting iodine value of the 3 distinct fat depots. Lastly, 6 experiments were conducted to determine the effects of added Zn on growth performance, pork quality, plasma Zn, and ileal mucosal inflammation mRNA expression of finishing pigs fed diets containing ractopamine-HCl (RAC; Elanco Animal Health, Greenfield, IN). Additional Zn increased plasma Zn and reduced relative expression of IL-1β, but did not improve growth performance of pigs fed diets containing RAC in 5 of the experiments. However, in 1 of the experiments, adding Zn to diets containing RAC resulted in a trend for improved growth performance of pigs. Supplementing the RAC diets with dietary Zn decreased the percentage of type IIA fibers and tended to increase the percentage of type IIX fibers compared to pigs fed the RAC diet without added Zn. Ractopamine-HCl produced chops that were lighter and less red, but possessed reduced metmyoglobin reducing ability at the end of the display period. However, adding Zn to RAC diets increased metmyoglobin reducing ability levels at the end of the display period. PREDICTING MARKET PIG WEIGHTS AND FAT IODINE VALUE AND EFFECT OF ZINC ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND IMMUNE FUNCTION OF FINISHING PIGS
Capacity and design of traffic circles in Germany

Capacity and traffic safety of traffic circles in Germany have been investigated in comprehensive research projects carried out at the Ruhr University Bochum. On the basis of observations of real traffic conditions, formulas for predicting traffic circle capacity under conditions in Germany have been developed. These formulas have been specified in terms of the number of lanes in the circle and in the entry. The capacities of traffic circles measured in Germany appear to be considerably less than the values predicted by English formulas. For German traffic circles, capacity has been measured at between 0.7 and 0.8 of English values. However, there is good agreement between calculations for French and German capacity. The influence of geometric parameters was also investigated. In addition to the number of lanes in the circle and in the entry, geometric parameters turned out to be significant for estimating the capacity of traffic circles. These parameters are inscribed circle diameter, number of traffic circle arms, and distance between exit and entry of the observed arm. Traffic circles in Germany also provide a considerable increase in traffic safety when compared with normal signalized or unsignalized junctions. Before and after investigations at small, single-lane traffic circles showed that traffic circles have a lower severity of accidents, whereas the number of accidents stayed almost the same. Experience with existing traffic circles resulted in some significant recommendations for the design of traffic circles. Using the suggested design criteria, good experience has been shown in several cases and has led to a rapid increase in the number of new single-lane traffic circles. Public opinion also favors traffic circles.
Scheduling of Container Handling Equipment in Marine Container Terminals

This study addresses the quay crane scheduling problem (QCSP), which has been shown to be NP-complete (Lee et al. 2008). For this reason, a number of studies have proposed the use of genetic algorithm (GA) as the means to obtain the solution in reasonable time. This study extends the research in this area by utilizing the GA that is available in the latest version of Global Optimization Toolbox in MATLAB 7.13 to facilitate development. It aims to improve the efficiency of the GA search by (1) using an initial solution based on the S-LOAD rule developed by Sammarra at al. (2007), (2) using a new approach for defining the chromosomes (i.e. solution representation) to reduce the number of decision variables, and (3) using new procedures for calculating tighter lower and upper bounds for the decision variables. The effectiveness of the developed GA is tested using several benchmark instances proposed by Meisel and Bierwirth (2011). Compared to the current best known solutions, experimental results show that the proposed GA is capable of finding the optimal or near-optimal solution in significantly shorter time for larger problems. 1 Kaveshgar N. , N. Huynh and S. Khaleghi Rahimian. 2012. Expert Systems with Applications. 39:13108– 13117. Reprinted here with permission of publisher.
WindPACT Turbine Rotor Design Study: June 2000--June 2002 (Revised)

This report presents the results of the turbine rotor study completed by Global Energy Concepts (GEC) as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's WindPACT (Wind Partnership for Advanced Component Technologies) project. The purpose of the WindPACT project is to identify technology improvements that will enable the cost of energy from wind turbines to fall to a target of 3.0 cents/kilowatt-hour in low wind speed sites. The study focused on different rotor configurations and the effect of scale on those rotors.
Predicting mechanical instability of a cylindrical plate under axial flow conditions

approved: ________________________________________________ Brian G. Woods Five U.S. high performance research reactors (HPRRs) are currently part of an international nonproliferation program with the objective of ultimately converting their highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to a new high density, low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel while still maintaining their reactor kinetic and thermal hydraulic performance. A uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) alloy is under development as the proposed LEU fuel. This prototypic fuel must be qualified through the relevant regulator (either the Department of Energy (DoE) or Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)) prior to its implementation in the HPRRs. One particular aspect of this qualification being investigated is the hydro-mechanical integrity of the fuel elements during typical operation conditions; with emphasis on coolant-clad reactions. Due to the highly turbulent flow conditions which produce extreme viscous forces over the plate type fuel elements found in the HPRRs, interfacial reactions regarding the prototypic fuel are of concern for the fuel’s qualification. One issue associated with coolant-clad interactions is the onset mechanical fuel plate instability induced by the flow field. This phenomenon has the potential to induce sufficient plate membrane stresses to challenge the hydroand thermo-mechanical integrity of the elements. In this study, a flow induced vibration model is developed to characterize elastic plate motion of a single HPRR fuel plate in an attempt to address plate instability concerns associated with HPRR elements. Copyright by Wade R. Marcum December 3, 2010 All Rights Reserved Predicting Mechanical Instability of a Cylindrical Plate under Axial Flow Conditions by Wade R. Marcum A DISSERTATION submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Presented December 3, 2010 Commencement June 2011 Doctor of Philosophy dissertation of Wade R. Marcum presented on December 3, 2010.
Multimodel Image Segmentation and Classification by MAP based graph cut and Improved VGG16

Diagnosing brain diseases possess various inbuilt complexities to the nature of the diagnostic process. Brain tumor, Stroke, and Hemorrhage are the commonly prevailing disease and comprise more complexity in diagnosing where there arises the confusion in case of high grade or low-grade tumor and acute or sub-acute stroke. In general most of the prevailing algorithms is suited for the predicted of the image only employing the MRI or CT image. The paper mainly focused on the employment of a suitable proposed algorithm to adopt both the CT and MRI images for precise segmentation and classification. The segmentation algorithm is a map (map a posterior) based graph cut method The segmentation results are compared with the existing methods like (FCM) Fuzzy C Means and KFCM Kernel Fuzzy C Means and it is proved that our proposed system outperformed to the performance metrics. An improved VGG 16architecture is proposed for efficient classification. The overall classification results proved to be more efficient when compared with the existing R-CNN and NS-CNN methods. The paper focused on overcoming the difficulty and make a clear understanding of segmenting and classification irrespective of the nature of the diagnostic process.
A mesoscopic model for passenger evacuation in a virtual ship-sea environment and performance-based evaluation

Is the behaviour of a crowd in an emergency situation predictable? Are the different patterns occurring in pedestrian flow based on common rules? How does panic change human reactions? These and other questions have been the scope of the international conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics. This book contains elaborate manuscripts written by scientists as well as practitioners from various disciplines: architecture, civil, naval and fire safety engineering, physics, computer science and mathematics. There has been considerable progress over the last decade and the central topic of human motion and behaviour has come more and more into the centre of interest, mainly due to increasing computer power and the development of new simulation models. This is the first conference dealing with modelling and simulation of pedestrian and crowd movement as well as the dynamical aspects of evacuation processes.
Wave Climate and Wave Response, Kawaihae Deep Draft Harbor, Island of Hawaii, Hawaii

Abstract : Present and projected commercial activities in Kawaihae Deep Draft Harbor, Island of Hawaii, HI, indicate that a deeper basin and entrance channel and better protected berthing areas will be needed. The U.S. Army Engineer District, Honolulu, in coordination with the Harbors Division, Department of Transportation, State of Hawaii, requested numerical (computer) model studies in support of harbor planning. Wave climate incident to Kawaihae Deep Draft Harbor was developed from National Data Buoy Center directional buoy data. Numerical model STWAVE was used to modify the buoy data to account for significant differences in exposure between Kawaihae and the buoy locations. Numerical model CGWAVE, validated with field measurements for short waves (wind waves and swell), was used to: 1) evaluate the impact of deepening the existing harbor, which was found to be minimal; 2) determine optimum length for a proposed stub extending seaward parallel to the existing entrance channel from the tip of the existing breakwater; and 3) evaluate the technical feasibility of six alternative modifications to the harbor. Model results were compared to experience in the existing harbor and to general criteria for operational acceptability.
Behavioral and neural signatures of visual imagery vividness extremes: Aphantasia vs. Hyperphantasia

Although Galton recognised in 1880 that some individuals lack visual imagery, this phenomenon was largely neglected over the following century. We recently coined the terms ‘aphantasia’ and ‘hyperphantasia’ to describe visual imagery vividness extremes, unlocking a sustained surge of public interest. Aphantasia is associated with subjective impairment of face recognition and autobiographical memory. Here we report the first systematic, wide-ranging neuropsychological and brain imaging study of people with aphantasia (n=24), hyperphantasia (n=25) and mid-range imagery vividness (n=20). Despite equivalent performance on standard memory tests, there were marked group differences on measures of autobiographical memory and imagination, participants with hyperphantasia outperforming controls who outperformed participants with aphantasia. Face recognition difficulties were reported more commonly in aphantasia. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory highlighted reduced extroversion in the aphantasia group and increased openness in the hyperphantasia group. Resting-state fMRI revealed stronger connectivity between prefrontal cortices and the visual network among hyperphantasic than aphantasic participants. In an active fMRI paradigm, there was greater anterior parietal activation among hyperphantasic and control than aphantasic participants when comparing visualisation of famous faces and places with perception. These behavioral and neural signatures of visual imagery vividness extremes validate and illuminate this significant but neglected dimension of individual difference.
An Analytical and Experimental Study of High Velocity Flow in Curved Sections of Open Channels

In the theory of flow in open channels two stages of flow with principally different characteristics have to be considered, streaming flow and shooting flow. The velocity of flow in the first case is smaller than the velocity of propagation of translatory waves, in the latter case it is larger. The phenomena occurring in streaming flow are well known and theoretically solved, if we neglect the influence of friction. This latter simplification means that the velocity has a constant value for each point of the cross-section. For this assumption also the theory of the hydraulic jump has been successfully attacked, where the stage of flow changes from the shooting to the streaming condition. The present paper, however, deals with problems of flow of the shooting stage only and extends the theory of hydraulics to all cases of supercritical flow, where the variation of depths and velocities due to changes in the direction of flow is desired. An outstanding example of such a type of flow is the case of curved sections in a rectangular open channel. This case has been investigated in the following analytically by the principles developed, and its solution was then compared to an extensive experimental investigation. It is shown that an adequate solution of the case of high velocity flow in curved sections of open channels has been found.