Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toe Bearing Capacity of Piles from Cone Penetration Test ( CPT ) Data

SYNOPSIS A direct CPT method is proposed for determining the toe capacity of a single displacement pile. The method makes use of a simple mathematical rule for determining the average cone resistance, qc, adjusting it to the effective stress and relating it to the unit toe resistance of a pile, rt. Case histories comprising CPT data, soil characteristics, and results from full-scale pile loading tests are referenced to the methods. The case histories involve sites with soft clay and sand, sand interbedded with thin silt and clay layers, and medium to dense sand. The pile embedment lengths range from 9 m through 31 m. The pile capacities range from 300 KN through 5,800 KN with measured toe resistances ranging from 62 KN through 4,050 KN. Pile toe capacities calculated by the proposed method are compared to toe capacities calculated by four other direct methods currently employed in North American practice. The proposed method gives values that are more consistent and closer to the measured than the current methods.
EFFECTS OF CORE STRENGTH TRAININGON KARATESPINNING WHEEL KICK AND CERTAIN PHYSICAL VARIABLES FOR YOUNG FEMALE

Purpose.The term core strength refers to the strength of these core muscles. Either core muscle strength is usually operationally defined by a measurement of the strength of core muscles, in terms of how much weight/resistance a muscle can lift, how many repetitions a muscle can perform, or how long a muscle can hold a neutral stable position.The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of core strength training on spinning wheel kick and certain physical variables for young female athletes. Methods.Participants were 20karate young female athletes (M age = 12.54 years, SD = 1.23) who all regularly participated in Karate training in Egypt. Divided into two groups. The experimental group (n = 10) performed core strength exercisestraining and control group (n = 10) performed traditional exercise. All participants completed the spinning wheel kick test and certain physical variables (balancecore strengthpower-reaction speed). Subjects were required to read and complete a health questionnaire and informed consent document; there was no history of injuries, diabetes or recent surgery. Results.The results revealed that a Significant difference between the experimental group and control group in spinning wheel kick test and certain physical variables (balancecore strength-power-reaction speed). Conclusion.The findings indicated that the implication of this research for coaches working with core strength exercises (10) weeks is that to match athlete preferences.
Enabling QM-accurate simulation of dislocation motion in 
γ−Ni
 and 
α−Fe
 using a hybrid multiscale approach

We present an extension of the ‘learn on the fly’ method to the study of the motion of dislocations in metallic systems, developed with the aim of producing information-efficient force models that can be systematically validated against reference QM calculations. Nye tensor analysis is used to dynamically track the quantum region centered at the core of a dislocation, thus enabling quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations. The technique is used to study the motion of screw dislocations in Ni-Al systems, relevant to plastic deformation in Ni-based alloys, at a variety of temperature/strain conditions. These simulations reveal only a moderate spacing ( ∼ 5 A ) between Shockley partial dislocations, at variance with the predictions of traditional molecular dynamics (MD) simulation using interatomic potentials, which yields a much larger spacing in the high stress regime. The discrepancy can be rationalized in terms of the elastic properties of an hcp crystal, which influence the behavior of the stacking fault region between Shockley partial dislocations. The transferability of this technique to more challenging systems is addressed, focusing on the expected accuracy of such calculations. The bcc α − Fe phase is a prime example, as its magnetic properties at the open surfaces make it particularly challenging for embedding-based QM/MM techniques. Our tests reveal that high accuracy can still be obtained at the core of a dislocation, albeit at a significant computational cost for fully converged results. However, we find this cost can be reduced by using a machine learning approach to progressively reduce the rate of expensive QM calculations required during the dynamical simulations, as the size of the QM database increases.
A Two-Mode Portable Atmospheric Pressure Air Plasma Jet Device for Biomedical Applications

In this paper, a low-cost and portable plasma device is developed to generate atmospheric pressure nonthermal air plasma jet for safe and effective biomedical applications. The device mainly consists of a pen electrode, a high-frequency ac power supply, an ac/dc module, and a dc air pump, and it totally costs only U.S. $63 and has a small size of 280 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times190$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times180$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm. The appearance of two-mode discharge of half-wave and full-wave breakdown with the changing of applied voltage is identified, and the length of the plasma jet is optimized through studying on the influences of distance between two electrodes, gas flow rates, and hole diameters of the gas outflow in ground electrode. Stronger plasma with a longer jet length of 12 mm can be obtained in the full-wave breakdown discharge mode, while moderate plasma with a length of 8 mm can be obtained in the half-wave breakdown discharge mode. The discharge characteristics of the device such as the main generated active particle, voltage and current, discharge power, and operation temperature are obtained. It is shown that rich active species for biomedical application can be generated at low power of approximate 2 W and low operation temperature of approximate 40 °C. The developed device is tested for biomedical application, and the results of effective sterilization of <italic>C. albicans</italic> and blood coagulation are obtained.
Methods Determination of aflatoxin M 1 in milk samples by means of an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry-based immunoassay

An inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)-based immunoassay has been developed to quantify aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) at ultratrace levels in milk samples. AFM1 detection is carried out by means of a competitive immunoassay using secondary biotinylated antibodies and streptavidin-conjugated Au nanoparticles. After acid addition, nanoparticles are decomposed and Au signal is registered by means of ICP-MS. Results demonstrate that, under optimum conditions, the limit of detection of the immunoassay (0.005 μg kg) is low enough to quantify AFM1 according to current international policies (including the more restrictive European one). Method accuracy and precision was checked by analyzing an AFM1 certified reference material and different milk samples spiked with known amounts of AFM1. AFM1 recovery values range from 80% to 102% whereas inter-assay and intra-assay precision are lower than 15%. Finally, this immunoassay methodology affords a higher dynamic working range (0.012-2.5 μg kg) than other immunoassay methodologies described in the literature.
Performance Based Design and Fire Safety Engineering in Australia

Developments in Australia, summarized for a New Zealand conference [2], included:  The Warren Centre project (1989), which suggested a risk and engineering based approach to fire safety design should be adopted to allow more cost effective design  The creation of a draft National Building Fire Safety Systems Code (NBFSSC) using a risk assessment based methodology (1991)  The establishment of the not-for-profit Fire Code Reform Centre (FCRC) in 1994, co-ordinating fire research in support of a performance based BCA and use of risk assessment for fire engineering analysis  The creation of the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) to develop the first performance based BCA which was published in 1996  The adoption of BCA 96 into legislation in all states and territories in Australia in 1997  The parallel introduction of private certification for building approvals in the building regulations of some states of Australia, also in 1997.
Parallel evaluation strategies for lazy data structures in Haskell

Conventional parallel programming is complex and error prone. To improve programmer productivity, we need to raise the level of abstraction with a higher-level programming model that hides many parallel coordination aspects. Evaluation strategies use non-strictness to separate the coordination and computation aspects of a Glasgow parallel Haskell (GpH) program. This allows the specification of high level parallel programs, eliminating the low-level complexity of synchronisation and communication associated with parallel programming. This thesis employs a data-structure-driven approach for parallelism derived through generic parallel traversal and evaluation of sub-components of data structures. We focus on evaluation strategies over list, tree and graph data structures, allowing re-use across applications with minimal changes to the sequential algorithm. In particular, we develop novel evaluation strategies for tree data structures, using core functional programming techniques for coordination control, achieving more flexible parallelism. We use non-strictness to control parallelism more flexibly. We apply the notion of fuel as a resource that dictates parallelism generation, in particular, the bi-directional flow of fuel, implemented using a circular program definition, in a tree structure as a novel way of controlling parallel evaluation. This is the first use of circular programming in evaluation strategies and is complemented by a lazy function for bounding the size of sub-trees. We extend these control mechanisms to graph structures and demonstrate performance improvements on several parallel graph traversals. We combine circularity for control for improved performance of strategies with circularity for computation using circular data structures. In particular, we develop a hybrid traversal strategy for graphs, exploiting breadth-first order for exposing parallelism initially, and then proceeding with a depth-first order to minimise overhead associated with a full parallel breadth-first traversal. The efficiency of the tree strategies is evaluated on a benchmark program, and two non-trivial case studies: a Barnes-Hut algorithm for the n-body problem and sparse matrix multiplication, both using quad-trees. We also evaluate a graph search algorithm implemented using the various traversal strategies. We demonstrate improved performance on a server-class multicore machine with up to 48 cores, with the advanced fuel splitting mechanisms proving to be more flexible in throttling parallelism. To guide the behaviour of the strategies, we develop heuristics-based parameter selection to select their specific control parameters.
Trends in dietary quality among adults in the United States, 1999 through 2010.

IMPORTANCE Many changes in the economy, policies related to nutrition, and food processing have occurred within the United States since 2000, and the net effect on dietary quality is not clear. These changes may have affected various socioeconomic groups differentially. OBJECTIVE To investigate trends in dietary quality from 1999 to 2010 in the US adult population and within socioeconomic subgroups. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Nationally representative sample of 29 124 adults aged 20 to 85 years from the US 1999 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010), an 11-dimension score (range, 0-10 for each component score and 0-110 for the total score), was used to measure dietary quality. A higher AHEI-2010 score indicated a more healthful diet. RESULTS The energy-adjusted mean of the AHEI-2010 increased from 39.9 in 1999 to 2000 to 46.8 in 2009 to 2010 (linear trend P < .001). Reduction in trans fat intake accounted for more than half of this improvement. The AHEI-2010 component score increased by 0.9 points for sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice (reflecting decreased consumption), 0.7 points for whole fruit, 0.5 points for whole grains, 0.5 points for polyunsaturated fatty acids, and 0.4 points for nuts and legumes over the 12-year period (all linear trend P < .001). Family income and education level were positively associated with total AHEI-2010, and the gap between low and high socioeconomic status widened over time, from 3.9 points in 1999 to 2000 to 7.8 points in 2009 to 2010 (interaction P = .01). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Although a steady improvement in AHEI-2010 was observed across the 12-year period, the overall dietary quality remains poor. Better dietary quality was associated with higher socioeconomic status, and the gap widened with time. Future efforts to improve nutrition should address these disparities.
Online Learning with Non-Convex Losses and Non-Stationary Regret

In this paper, we consider online learning with non-convex loss functions. Similar to Besbes et al. [2015] we apply non-stationary regret as the performance metric. In particular, we study the regret bounds under different assumptions on the information available regarding the loss functions. When the gradient of the loss function at the decision point is available, we pro-pose an online normalized gradient descent algo-rithm (ONGD) to solve the online learning problem. In another situation, when only the value of the loss function is available, we propose a ban-dit online normalized gradient descent algorithm (BONGD). Under a condition to be called weak pseudo-convexity (WPC), we show that both algorithms achieve a cumulative regret bound of O ( √ T + V T T ) , where V T is the total temporal variations of the loss functions, thus establishing a sublinear regret bound for online learning with non-convex loss functions and non-stationary regret measure.
Comparison of Two Forced Alignment Systems for Aligning Bribri Speech

Forced alignment provides drastic savings in time when aligning speech recordings and is particularly useful for the study of Indigenous languages, which are severely under-resourced in corpora and models. Here we compare two forced alignment systems, FAVE-align and EasyAlign, to determine which one provides more precision when processing running speech in the Chibchan language Bribri. We aligned a segment of a story narrated in Bribri and compared the errors in finding the center of the words and the edges of phonemes when compared with the manual correction. FAVE-align showed better performance: It has an error of 7% compared to 24% with EasyAlign when finding the center of words, and errors of 22~24 ms when finding the edges of phonemes, compared to errors of 86~130 ms with EasyAlign. In addition to this, EasyAlign failed to detect 7% of phonemes, while also inserting 58 spurious phones into the transcription. Future research includes verifying these results for other genres and other Chibchan languages. Finally, these results provide additional evidence for the applicability of natural language processing methods to Chibchan languages and point to future work such as the construction of corpora and the training of automated speech recognition systems.
Motion Control of Robotic Fish Under Dynamic Environmental Conditions Using Adaptive Control Approach

In this paper, we propose a novel robust adaptive control technique to steer the direction of attack of the robotic fish swimming under influence from varying environmental conditions. Due to complex nature of robot motion hydrodynamics, it is difficult to predict the true dynamics of the system with good accuracy. Hence, a discrete-time adaptive control technique is proposed, which can effectively track a reference even if the robot system's model parameters might vary over time due to physical variations in the system. Rigorous theoretical convergence analysis on the closed-loop system confirms that the reference tracking error will asymptotically be bounded within a prescribed limit. Furthermore, the adaptive control approach is experimentally verified to produce desirable performance under significant variations in payload and drag force on the robotic fish. The latest results, thus, signify that the proposed control algorithm can efficiently control the robotic fish motion in complex underwater environments.
A Fuzzy Cognitive Map Supported Product Development Process for Virtual Enterprises

number: 002-0607. Second World Conference on POM, Cancun, Mexico, 2004 A Fuzzy Cognitive Map Supported Product Development Process for Virtual Enterprises Julio Macedo Institut Stratégies Industrielles 229 Forest, Pincourt, P.Q. , J7V8E8, Canada E-mail: k26400@er.uqam. ca Abstract. A virtual enterprise designs short-lived products and forms temporary coalitions with other enterprises to manufacture and distribute these products. This paper presents a generic process for developing new products in virtual enterprises and two procedures supported by fuzzy cognitive maps. The first one allows for industrial design of the products when the manufacturing subcontractor is not known. The second one allows for remote evaluation and selection of the virtual enterprise partners: manufacturing subcontractors, suppliers of materials and distributors. These procedures are applied to an enterprise that designs garments. A virtual enterprise designs short-lived products and forms temporary coalitions with other enterprises to manufacture and distribute these products. This paper presents a generic process for developing new products in virtual enterprises and two procedures supported by fuzzy cognitive maps. The first one allows for industrial design of the products when the manufacturing subcontractor is not known. The second one allows for remote evaluation and selection of the virtual enterprise partners: manufacturing subcontractors, suppliers of materials and distributors. These procedures are applied to an enterprise that designs garments.
THE IMPACT OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ON WEBSITE AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCES OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES

Search engines have become an important channel for increasing SMEs’ global reach as well as competing with larger companies. Therefore, SMEs are enhancing their business visibility through search engine optimization (SEO). With effective SEO techniques, small companies can appear ahead of large, well-known companies on search results. In this study, we use multiple firms as cases to empirically illustrate how SEO initiatives by SMEs impact their’ website performances. The concern of this study has been to gain insight into the use of SEO by SMEs and the factors that enable SMEs to be successful in adopting SEO in business.
Learning Disability Identification Consistency: The Impact of Methodology and Student Evaluation Data

Learning disability (LD) identification has long been controversial and has undergone substantive reform. This study examined the consistency of school psychologists’ LD identification decisions across three identification methods and across student evaluation data conclusiveness levels. Data were collected from 376 practicing school psychologists from 22 states. Eighty-three percent (n = 313) of participants were female. Ninety-one percent (n = 342) of participants identified as Caucasian, 4% (n = 15) Latino, 1.3% (n = 5) African American, . 8% (n = 3) Asian/Pacific Islander, . 3% (n = 1) Native American/Alaskan Native, and 1.3% (n = 5) 2 or more races. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 9 conditions and used 1 type of identification method and examined 1 type of student evaluation data to determine if a student should be identified with LD. Results showed that overall identification consistency was somewhat low (73.7%, &kgr; = .45) There were no differences in identification consistency across identification methods &khgr;2(2, N = 376) = 3.78, p = . 151, but there were differences in identification consistency across conclusiveness levels of student evaluation data &khgr;2(2, N = 376) = 50.40, p = . 0001. Implications for practice, training, and research are also discussed, including the need of school psychologists to consider psychometric issues in LD identification as well as the need to further research the impact of student data conclusiveness in LD identification.
Model for assessing organizational culture in intercollegiate athletic departments.

Beyer and Hannah (2000) have suggested that a major barrier to the reform of intercollegiate athletics is its cultural significance in higher education. Even leaders within the National Collegiate Athletic Association have acknowledged the need for culture change in intercollegiate athletics (Brand, 2001; Dempsey, 2000). Yet major culture change has not occurred and few studies have examined culture within intercollegiate athletic departments (Ridpath, 2008). This gap may be due, in part, to the lack of a framework with which to analyze athletic departments as organizational cultures. Schein’s (2004) model of organizational culture is the most frequently cited perspective in the literature, but it applies primarily to corporate cultures (Hatch, 2000). Several frameworks have been developed to assess college and university cultures, but intercollegiate athletics occupies a unique space between sport and education (Beyer & Hannah, 2000). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to offer a model for assessing the cultures of intercollegiate athletic departments. The four elements of the model— institutional culture, external environment, internal environment, and leadership/power—are presented and followed by an explanation of their interaction. The paper concludes with a case study demonstrating the use of the model to define one athletic department’s culture.
On the Generation of Synthetic Fingerprint Alterations

In this paper we propose some techniques to generate synthetic altered fingerprints and prove the utility of the generated datasets for developing, tuning and evaluating algorithms for altered fingerprint detection/matching. Due to the lack of public databases of altered fingerprints the generation tool proposed (and made freely available) can be a valid instrument to boost research on these challenging problems.
Combining Word Embedding and Knowledge-Based Topic Modeling for Entity Summarization

Word embedding is becoming more popular in the Semantic Web community as an effective approach for capturing semantics in various contexts. In this paper, we combine word embedding and topic modeling to model RDF data for the entity summarization task. In our model, ES-LDAext, which is the extended version of our previous model, we utilize the word embedding to supplement the RDF data before applying entity summarization. In addition, in the model presented here, we use RDF literals as a very good source of information to create more reliable and representative summaries for entities. To do that, we use the Named Entity Recognition approach to extract entities within literals before feeding them into the word embedding model to enrich the RDF data. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.