Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Total Quality Management and Balanced Scorecard-A Comparative Analysis

Recent years have witnessed rising interest towards integrated performance measurement and control systems. Total Quality Management (TQM) and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) are management philosophies that have been widely discussed not only in academic world, but also in business world. The aim of this paper is to compare the contents of TQM and BSC and to build a hierarchy of concepts between these managerial terms. The goals and objectives of TQM and BSC are supposed to be quite similar. Most of the research effort will be concentrated on having a vision of possibilities to use BSC as a tool for implementing TQM. TQM is a philosophy to offer value-adding services to customers effectively and profitably. The basis for this Japanese born philosophy was created in the 1960’s. It integrates quality development in personnel motivation to promote customer satisfaction. Deming, Juran and other well-known quality authorities have published a number of articles and books concerning the implementation of these quality philosophies. BSC, introduced by Norton and Kaplan in 1992, is a performance measurement method and also a strategic management tool having four different perspectives to the success of a company. Traditionally, financial business indicators have failed to explain the good or poor situation of a company. BSC, however, also includes nonfinancial performance measures and objectives driving towards better performance. The main conclusion of the study is that both concepts can be seen as philosophies. TQM is a collection of tools surrounded by the philosophy of quality thinking. BSC is a strategic tool for strategic planning and implementation, and it is also surrounded by the philosophy of cause-and-effect –relationships. It depends on the point of view, and the extent of implementation of these concepts, which one is used to implement the other one.
Extended Active Learning Method

Active Learning Method (ALM) is a soft computing method which is used for modeling and control, based on fuzzy logic. Although ALM has shown that it acts well in dynamic environments, its operators cannot support it very well in complex situations due to losing data. Thus ALM can find better membership functions if more appropriate operators be chosen for it. This paper substituted two new operators instead of ALM original ones; which consequently renewed finding membership functions in a way superior to conventional ALM. This new method is called Extended Active Learning Method (EALM).
On secrecy capacity per unit cost

The concept of channel capacity per unit cost was introduced by Verdú in 1990 to study the limits of wideband communication. It was shown that an orthogonal coding scheme achieves the channel capacity per unit cost of memoryless stationary channels with a zero-cost input letter. This paper introduces the concept of secrecy capacity per unit cost to study wideband secrecy communications. For degraded memoryless stationary wiretap channels, it is shown that an orthogonal coding scheme achieves the secrecy capacity per unit cost with a zero-cost input letter. For general memoryless stationary wiretap channels, the performance of orthogonal codes is studied and lower and upper bounds on the secrecy capacity per unit cost are provided.
Germination Responses to Vegetation in Maternal and Progeny Environments

The conditions in which a seed germinates is crucial to the survival and fitness of the plant. The ability to regulate germination given certain conditions is thus extremely important. This research examines the plastic germination responses to neighbor-associated light cues in Arabidopsis thaliana within a natural population. Our results show that light-induced germination responses of seeds from different maternal lineages within a natural population are largely uniform in direction. Although seeds exhibited dormancy loss with after-ripening, seeds imbibed under a canopy had lower germination proportions than those imbibed under white light. With respect to maternal environment, our results associate higher germination proportions with denser, more crowded maternal canopies. The effect of these maternal light cues on germination were most apparent during periods of high dormancy, suggesting that seeds become less selective over time as they after-ripen. Interestingly, the maternal and progeny cues are diametric to each other, with maternal cues seeming to encourage germination among neighbors while progeny cues respond negatively to canopies.
Epidemiologic features of pet evacuation failure in a rapid-onset disaster.

OBJECTIVE To describe epidemiologic features of pet evacuation failure after a hazardous chemical spill in which residents had no warning and only a few hours notice to evacuate. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SAMPLE POPULATION Pet-owning households that evacuated from a hazardous chemical spill with (n = 119) or without (122) their pets. Procedures-Evacuees were surveyed by mail. RESULTS 261 of 433 (60.3%) dogs and cats in 241 households were not evacuated. Of the 241 households, 119 (49.4%) evacuated with their pets, 98 (40.7%) evacuated without them but later attempted to rescue them, and 24 (10.0%) neither evacuated their pets nor attempted to rescue them. Pet evacuation failure was most common in households that thought the evacuated area was safe for pets. Risk of pet evacuation failure increased in households with many animals, low pet attachment and commitment scores, and low levels of preparedness. Cat evacuation failure was associated with not having cat carriers. Nearly 80% of households that evacuated with their pets found accommodation with friends and family. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Pet evacuation failure was common and jeopardized pets' health and well-being. Logistical challenges to transporting pets were substantial contributors to pet evacuation failure, whereas not knowing where to house a pet was only a minor concern. Most pet owners seemed self-reliant and acted appropriately towards their pets. Such self-reliant behavior by pet owners should be encouraged prior to disasters as part of an evacuation plan for households.
Unsupervised Learning of Spatio-Temporal Features for Tactile Data

Tactile feedback obtained during grasping of an object is crucial for a number of tasks in robotics. It allows to identify object properties and recognize its class, or to localize an object in a robot hand and assess quality and stability of the applied grasp [1]–[3]. The accomplishment of these tasks greatly depends on the choice of data representation, i.e. features that are used to capture signal properties, as it was was shown for visual data [4]–[7]. The representation of tactile data should not only provide robustness to real-world conditions, but also serve a wide variety of applications and be flexible to adapt to their specific requirements. In previous works tactile signal have been typically represented using a manually crafted set of features based on prior knowledge about the properties of the inputs. Early works aimed at identifying simple primitive shapes in object imprints in the tactile matrices (points and lines [8], [9]). Recent works use higher level geometric properties of pressure patterns, such as their position, area or higherorder moments [1], [3], [10], [11]. Other approaches build on features developed at Computer Vision, such as SIFT [12]. A very limited amount of work have aimed at unsupervised extraction of features by applying to tactile data the K-means algorithm or covariance analysis [13]–[15].
Organisational Culture in IT Projects: A Case Study Analysis

The aim of this research in progress paper is to explore the organisational culture in the context of information technology (IT) projects. Two case study projects are presented and analysed via the Johnson and Scholes (1999) Cultural Web. Data collection was undertaken using the qualitative methods of reflective observation and informal discussion with project team members which was made possible as one of the researchers had worked on both projects. The results show that both projects were quite dissimilar in all but the Rituals component of the Cultural Web. This research has also developed and pilot tested a questionnaire in relation to organisational culture in the context of IT projects, however this is not the focus of this paper.
Elevated Glutathione Biosynthetic Capacity in the Chloroplasts of Transgenic Tobacco Plants Paradoxically Causes Increased Oxidative Stress

Glutathione (GSH), a major antioxidant in most aerobic organisms, is perceived to be particularly important in plant chloroplasts because it helps to protect the photosynthetic apparatus from oxidative damage. In transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing a chloroplast-targeted γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-ECS), foliar levels of GSH were raised threefold. Paradoxically, increased GSH biosynthetic capacity in the chloroplast resulted in greatly enhanced oxidative stress, which was manifested as light intensity–dependent chlorosis or necrosis. This phenotype was associated with foliar pools of both GSH and γ-glutamylcysteine (the immediate precursor to GSH) being in a more oxidized state. Further manipulations of both the content and redox state of the foliar thiol pools were achieved using hybrid transgenic plants with enhanced glutathione synthetase or glutathione reductase activity in addition to elevated levels of γ-ECS. Given the results of these experiments, we suggest that γ-ECS–transformed plants suffered continuous oxidative damage caused by a failure of the redox-sensing process in the chloroplast.
Are indoor positioning systems mature for cartographic tasks

ABSTRACT: Better indoor mapping are linked together with better indoor positioning. This paper gives a brief overview over existing methods for indoor positioning. To get an impression of how well a WiFi based commercial indoor positioning system works as an input to indoor real time visualization, a network of control points were established. Accurate coordinates for existing access points were also measured to see if these could improve the WiFi measured coordinates. Our experiment indicates that the geometry of the access points/mobile platform, the nearness to the access points and obstacles, as for example walls, are the dominating limitations when it comes to measure more accurate positions.
Is the symbiotic binary EG And an eclipsing system

WepresentallavailableUBVphotometryofthesym- biotic binary EG And obtained during the last 10 years. The light curves display a double wave through one orbital cycle. It is shown that this behaviour cannot be explained by eclipses of the two detached sources of the continuum radiation. The presentmodelsofEG Andarenotabletosimulatesatisfactorily variation in both the far ultraviolet and the optical continuum.
FANCJ is essential to maintain microsatellite structure genome-wide during replication stress

Microsatellite DNAs that form non-B structures are implicated in replication fork stalling, DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) and human disease. Fanconi anemia (FA) is an inherited disorder in which mutations in at least nineteen genes are responsible for the phenotypes of genome instability and cancer predisposition. FA pathway proteins are active in the resolution of non-B DNA structures including interstrand crosslinks, G quadruplexes and DNA triplexes. In FANCJ helicase depleted cells, we show that hydroxyurea or aphidicolin treatment leads to loss of microsatellite polymerase chain reaction signals and to chromosome recombination at an ectopic hairpin forming CTG/CAG repeat in the HeLa genome. Moreover, diverse endogenous microsatellite signals were also lost upon replication stress after FANCJ depletion, and in FANCJ null patient cells. The phenotype of microsatellite signal instability is specific for FANCJ apart from the intact FA pathway, and is consistent with DSBs at microsatellites genome-wide in FANCJ depleted cells following replication stress.
BHNN: A memory-efficient accelerator for compressing deep neural networks with blocked hashing techniques

In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for compressing neural networks to reduce the memory requirements by using blocked hashing techniques. By adding blocked constraints on top of the conventional hashing technique, the test error rate is maintained while the spatial locality for the computations is preserved. Using this scheme, the synaptic connections are compressed by at least an order (10×) compared with the plain neural network with virtually no prediction accuracy loss. Compared with other compression techniques, the proposed algorithm achieves the best performance in the heavy compression regions. The blocked hashing techniques are also hardware friendly, of which the memory hierarchy of the hardware architecture can be efficiently implemented. To demonstrate the hardware efficiency, we implement the hardware architecture of the deep neural networks using the proposed blocked hashing techniques on a Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA board. With a hardware parallelism of 32, the accelerator achieves a speed-up of 22× over the CPU, and 3∼5× over the GPU in the inference phase.
Possibilistic C-Spherical Shell clustering algorithm based on conformai geometric algebra

In this paper, a new Possibilistic C-Spherical Shell clustering (PCSS) algorithm based on conformai geometric algebra is proposed. The probability and simplicity of using the conformai geometric algebra to analyse spherical shell clustering algorithm is discussed firstly. By the conformai geometric algebra theory, patterns and prototypes in spherical shell clustering can be represented as vectors, then the objective function for clustering analysis can be expressed effectively, and a new solution to minimize the objective function is deduced. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can cluster the spherical shell data effectively, and is robust for noise.
Three-Class Markovian Segmentation of High-Resolution Sonar Images

This paper presents an original method for analyzing, in an unsupervised way, images supplied by high resolution sonar. We aim at segmenting the sonar image into three kinds of regions: echo areas (due to the reflection of the acoustic wave on the object), shadow areas (corresponding to a lack of acoustic reverberation behind an object lying on the sea-bed), and sea-bottom reverberation areas. This unsupervised method estimates the parameters of noise distributions, modeled by a Weibull probability density function (PDF), and the label field parameters, modeled by a Markov random field (MRF). For the estimation step, we adopt a maximum likelihood technique for the noise model parameters and a least-squares method to estimate the MRF prior model. Then, in order to obtain an accurate segmentation map, we have designed a two-step process that finds the shadow and the echo regions separately, using the previously estimated parameters. First, we introduce a scale-causal and spatial model called SCM (scale causal multigrid), based on a multigrid energy minimization strategy, to find the shadow class. Second, we propose a MRF monoscale model using a priori information (at different level of knowledge) based on physical properties of each region, which allows us to distinguish echo areas from sea-bottom reverberation. This technique has been successfully applied to real sonar images and is compatible with automatic processing of massive amounts of data.
New Approach to Scalable Parallel and Pipelined Realization of Repetitive Multiple Accumulations

In this brief, a new approach is presented for parallel and pipelined implementation of repetitive multiple accumulations; and used that further to derive two modular structures for high-throughput realization. A set of N input operands (to be accumulated) are converted into a set of L operands of M=log2(N+1) -bit size by using L number of M-bit ripple counters in parallel on the input bit streams. In proposed structure-1, the outputs of the counters are added directly by a shift-add tree. In proposed structure-2, a new set of M number of L-bit operands are derived from the counter outputs, and shift-accumulated to derive the output sum. Both of the proposed structures are fully pipelined to process successive multiple accumulations without intermediate delay. It is shown further that both the structures can be used in multiple pipelined stages of successive accumulations, so that they could be conveniently scaled for implementation of multiple accumulation of large number of input words. The proposed structures are found to have much higher throughput and less area-delay complexity compared with serial-accumulator and pipelined adder based on carry-save addition as well.
The association of fat patterning with blood pressure in rural South African children: the Ellisras Longitudinal Growth and Health Study.

BACKGROUND Hypertension is one of the major causes of death in developed and underdeveloped nations. Essential hypertension and obesity may have their inception in childhood, with little data in African children to support these findings. Objectives were to determine the prevalence of overweight and hypertension in rural children in South Africa. Additionally, the association between fat-patterning ratios and blood pressure (BP) was investigated. METHODS Data were collected from 1884 subjects (967 boys and 917 girls), aged 6-13 years, participating in the Ellisras Longitudinal Study. Height; weight; and triceps, biceps, subscapular, and suprailiac skinfolds were measured according to the protocol of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry. Skinfold ratio was used as an indicator of the central pattern of body fat. Internationally recommended cut-off points for body mass index (BMI) were used. Hypertension, defined as the average of three separate BP readings where the systolic BP or diastolic BP is >or=95th percentile for age and sex, was determined. RESULTS The prevalence of hypertension ranged from 1 to 5.8% for boys and 3.1 to 11.4% for girls, and that of overweight from 1.1 to 2.9% for boys and 0.6 to 4.6% for girls. The association between high systolic BP and high BMI was -3.0, while that for high diastolic BP and high BMI was -0.68. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of hypertension is evident from the age 6 years for girls, while that of overweight was low. Overweight became evident from the age 10 to 13 years for both sexes. A significant association between high diastolic BP and high BMI was noted, while children with low BMIs were less likely to be hypertensive. Investigating habitual physical activity, fitness and dietary patterns will shed more light on the association of fat patterning and BP in this population.
Clinical diagnosis for discogenic low back pain

Discogenic lower back pain (DLBP) is the most common type of chronic lower back pain (LBP), accounting for 39% of cases, compared to 30% of cases due to disc herniation, and even lower prevalence rates for other causes, such as zygapophysial joint pain. Only a small proportion (approximately 20%) of LBP cases can be attributed with reasonable certainty to a pathologic or anatomical entity. Thus, diagnosing the cause of LBP represents the biggest challenge for doctors in this field. In this review, we summarize the process of obtaining a clinical diagnosis of DLBP and discuss the potential for serum-based diagnosis in the near future. The use of serum biomarkers to diagnose DLBP is likely to increase the ease of diagnosis as well as produce more accurate and reproducible results.
RRT-based 3D path planning for formation landing of quadrotor UAVs

This paper discusses the formation landing problem of quadrotor UAVs, which is considered as a UAV leader-follower problem, avoiding static obstacles. Rapidly-exploring random tree algorithm is used to generate the path for the leader UAV firstly. In particular, specifics of tree-grow including nodes selection, parent node connection, feasible and optimal path generation are explained. Given the leader UAV position, path finding for the follower UAV is conducted to avoid both static obstacles and the leader quadrotor. Based on the intensive simulations, which are conducted in ROS-Gazebo environment, the proposed framework is considered to be applicable in real-time formation landing of quadrotor UAVs.
Performance analysis of multiuser power control algorithms for VDSL

In modern digital subscriber line (DSL) systems where multiple users coexist in the same frequency band, multiuser power control is an effective technique for reducing crosstalk interference and improving total system throughput. This paper considers the rate and power control problem in a frequency selective interference channel. The objective of the rate and power control is to maximize the achievable rate region, given an average power constraint for each user. We analyse the performance of both the distributed and centralized multiuser power control algorithms for very high bit rate digital subscriber lines (VDSL) and suggest a multiuser centralized power control algorithm which when applied to the VDSL upstream transmission enlarges the data rate region
Record linkage: making maximum use of the discriminating power of identifying information

Special difficulties are encountered in devising reliable systems for searching and updating any large files of documents that must be identified primarily on the basis of names and other personal particulars. The underlying problem is that of making nearly maximum use of items of identifying information that are individually unreliable but that may collectively be of considerable discriminating power. Rules that can be applied generally to name retrieval systems have been developed In a methodological study of the linkage of vital and health records into family groupings for demographic research purposes. These rules are described, and the ways in which information utilization for matching may be optimized are discussed.
Thermal aware FPRM based AND-XOR network synthesis of logic circuits

With the advent of incorporating increased number of complex logic blocks within a VLSI chip, power-density is increasing. Power-density directly converges into temperature which reduces the yield of the circuit. Adverse affect of power-density reduction is increase in area. So, there is a trade-off between area and power-density. Previous works has been done on the Fixed Polarity Reed-Muller (FPRM) AND-XOR realization for its reduced area or low power realization. In this paper, we present a Genetic Algorithm(GA) based non-exhaustive heuristic to increase the sharing of product terms by selecting the proper polarity of input variables in FPRM expansion and a suitable area and power-density trade-off has been enumerated. Incorporation of the power-density as a fitness constraint in FPRM based optimization for temperature analysis is the first ever effort. The proposed algorithm has been validated with the LGSynth93 benchmark circuit.
Discovering Related Clinical Concepts Using Large Amounts of Clinical Notes

The ability to find highly related clinical concepts is essential for many applications such as for hypothesis generation, query expansion for medical literature search, search results filtering, ICD-10 code filtering and many other applications. While manually constructed medical terminologies such as SNOMED CT can surface certain related concepts, these terminologies are inadequate as they depend on expertise of several subject matter experts making the terminology curation process open to geographic and language bias. In addition, these terminologies also provide no quantifiable evidence on how related the concepts are. In this work, we explore an unsupervised graphical approach to mine related concepts by leveraging the volume within large amounts of clinical notes. Our evaluation shows that we are able to use a data driven approach to discovering highly related concepts for various search terms including medications, symptoms and diseases.