Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A NEW APPROACH TO THE INVENTORY PROBLEM IN LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT

Environmental life cycle inventory and assessment is a method which is used to quantify the environmental load and effects associated with a product, process, or service. The scientific literature offers a significant number of case studies in which the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is applied. However, the computational structure of LCA, despite being of paramount importance for a deep comprehension of the validity and reliability of the results obtained in the inventory analysis phase, is rarely taken into account. LCA practitioners are generally interested in guidelines on which data to collect, which choices to make, and how to report assumptions and results and thus scientific publications generally try to answer to those needs. Practitioners generally limit themselves to commercial LCA software used to accomplish the study and rarely delve into the mathematical details. The most widely used approach for the solution of the inventory problem is the matrix method. It determines the inventory vector related to a specific single or multifunctional unit process by solving a system of linear equations through the simple inversion of the so-called technology matrix A [1]. The first step for the calculation of the inventory vector of the studied process is represented by the determination of a scaling vector s, through the resolution of the system of equations As = f . The matrix A represents the flows within the economic system, and the vector f , called final demand vector or external demand vector, is an exogenously defined set of economic flows the operator requires that the system produce. After computing the scaling vector, it is possible to determine the inventory vector g (i.e. the vector containing all environmental flows associated with the reference process) by simply applying the equation g = Bs, where B (which is called intervention matrix ) represents the environmental interventions of the system of unit processes. The computation of the inventory vector related to the studied process is the goal of the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) phase. When the technology matrix is square and invertible the solution of the problem is straightforward; however, when it is rectangular (with more rows than columns) the system is over-determined and a direct solution cannot be found. A rectangular data matrix is very common in LCI problems in different cases, such as: • Cut-off of economic flows • Multifunctional unit processes (processes delivering more than one valuable output)
Reconceptualizing System Use For Contemporary Information Systems

System use is a centrally important construct in a plethora of research. Yet for all its importance, and still consistent with observations of DeLone and McLean (1992), system use suffers from a “too simplistic definition”. Much of prior conceptualizations of use have been idiosyncratic and unsystematic. This study examines contemporary systems use and thereafter, introduces a framework for selecting system use constructs and measures based on three critical considerations: typology of the system-in-use, level of process automation, and system lifecycle. Measures are then recommended for system typologies under three types of system use: frequency, depth and explorative use. Our empirical investigation validates the framework using data from operational users of an archetype of contemporary systems- Enterprise System. Analysis of six PLS models: identify system use as an antecedent of individual-impacts, confirm the importance of depth of use, role of explorative use at early stages of a lifecycle, and alludes to issues in employing popular frequency based use measures. The study advocates several insights towards a deeper understanding of contemporary systems use. Nonetheless, future research can be directed towards a larger quantitative study to facilitate a broader theoretical and empirical treatment, and a consolidated set of prescriptive actions for practitioners.
No . 00 / 7 Aid and Growth Regressions

This paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and growth in real GDP per capita as it emerges from simple augmentations of popular cross-country growth specifications. It is shown that aid in all likelihood increases the growth rate, and this result is not conditional on ‘good’ policy. There are, however, decreasing returns to aid, and the estimated effectiveness of aid is highly sensitive to the choice of estimator and the set of control variables. When investment and human capital are controlled for, no positive effect of aid is found. Yet, aid continues to impact on growth via investment. We conclude by stressing the need for more theoretical work before this kind of cross-country regressions are used for policy purposes. Outline
Kinematics of Molecular Gas in the Nucleus of NGC1068, from H2 line emission observed with VLT

We present results about the distribution and kinematics of the molecular environment of the AGN in NGC1068, over a 1.5'' x 3.5'' region around the central engine in NGC1068, derived from H2 line emission detected with ISAAC at VLT/ANTU on ESO/Paranal. The H2 emitting molecular gas is found to be distributed along the East-West direction and with two main peak emission (knots) located at a distance of about 70 pc from the central engine. The eastern H2 knot is more intense than the western one. The line profiles mapped across the entire 1.5'' x 3.5'' region, at a spatial resolution of 0.3'' x 0.45'', appear to be quite complex with either a blue or red wing. At first order, we find a velocity difference of 140 km/s between the two knots; if interpreted as quasi-keplerian velocity, this implies a central enclosed mass of 10^8 solar masses.
A Study on Total Quality Management and Lean Manufacturing: Through Lean Thinking Approach

3 Abstract: Lean Manufacturing arose from the Toyota Production System. The variants of Lean Manufacturing, such as TQM, were originally founded in the Japanese automotive industry, buttheir evolution was mostly carried out in the West. The aim of this paper is to produce a comparative study between Total Quality Management and Lean Manufacturing with an emphasis on the Lean Thinking approach. The paper systematically categorizes the related literature of various studies, analyzes the literature and finally reviews it methodologically. The results of this research reveal that Total Quality Management and Lean Manufacturing have much in common. Based on Lean strategies, Total Quality Management, similar to numerous improvement approaches, can be a tool to support and create synergy for inducing a more competitive market among companies.
MHIP: Effective Key Management for Mobile Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Security for mobile wireless sensor networks has many unique challenges. Existing security protocols have serious drawbacks revoking compromised nodes from the network, replenishing the network with new nodes in secure manner, and performing in network processing if nodes migrate from one cluster to another. In this work, we propose a new energy-efficient protocol that provides security for a heterogeneous mobile WSN. The protocol is based on Identity Based Encryption (IBE) which facilitates communication-efficient key establishment among the nodes in a WSN as well as revocation of compromised nodes from or addition of new nodes to the network. It also has a mechanism to recover the nodes of a compromised cluster and bind them to other neighboring clusters. The proposed protocol is scalable as the protocol's storage, communication, and computation overheads remain constant regardless of the size of the network. Our analysis of the protocol shows that it can provide security against various threats and attacks including the Sybil attack.
A comparative study of dual half-bridge inverter topologies used in induction cooking

An induction heating appliance used for cooking includes more than one inductor, each one being controlled by a separate inverter system. In this paper a comparison is performed between recently introduced two inverter topologies used in induction cookers. The topologies considered are the capacitor voltage clamped dual half-bridge series-resonant inverter (CVCDHB-SRI), and dual half-bridge series-resonant inverter (DHB-SRI). The advantage of these techniques is eliminating one switching device. Both of them are designed for same specifications. The comparison is based on criteria such as maximum rates of voltage and current values that device must withstand, and the power drawn from the source, and the electromagnetic emissions.
Not Always Black and White: The Effect of Race and Emotional Expression on Implicit Attitudes

© 2018 Guilford Publications, Inc. This research was supported by SSHRC-SRG and CFI-LOF grants awarded to the first author, an SSHRC doctoral fellowship awarded to the second author, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship awarded to the third author. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Jennifer R. Steele, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3; E-mail: steeleje@yorku.ca. STEELE ET AL.
Genomewide scan identifies susceptibility locus for dyslexia on Xq27 in an extended Dutch family

Context: Dyslexia is a common disorder with a strong genetic component, but despite significant research effort, the aetiology is still largely unknown. Objective: To identify loci contributing to dyslexia risk. Methods: This was a genomewide linkage analysis in a single large family. Dutch families with at least two first degree relatives suffering from dyslexia participated in the study. Participants were recruited through an advertisement campaign in papers and magazines. The main outcome measure was linkage between genetic markers and dyslexia phenotype. Results: Using parametric linkage analysis, we found strong evidence for a locus influencing dyslexia on Xq27.3 (multipoint lod = 3.68). Recombinations in two family members flanked an 8 cM region, comprising 11 currently confirmed genes. All four males carrying the risk haplotype had very low scores on the reading tests. The presentation in females was more variable, but 8/9 females carrying the risk haplotype were diagnosed dyslexic by our composite score, so we considered the putative risk allele to be dominant with reduced penetrance. Linkage was not found in an additional collection of affected sibling pairs. Conclusions: A locus influencing dyslexia risk is probably located between markers DXS1227 and DXS8091 on the X chromosome, closely situated to a locus indicated by a published genome scan of English sibling pairs. Although the locus may not be a common cause for dyslexia, the relatively small and gene poor region offers hope to identify the responsible gene.
Free-form Deformation for Implicit Surfaces Free-form Deformation for Implicit Surfaces

Implicit surfaces offer many advantages for sketch-based modeling systems, such as blending, CSG, and a procedural object hierarchy. Free-form deformation (FFD) is also extremely useful in this context, however existing FFD approaches do not support implicit surface representations, and FFD lattice manipulation is time-consuming compared to sketch-based techniques. In this thesis, an FFD technique suitable for implicit surface representations is described. To enhance real-time feedback, the problem is split into an approximate formulation used during interactive deformation, and a more robust variational technique which preserves desirable scalar field properties. As an interface to manipulate the deformation, a sketch-based volumetric peeling interface is introduced. The user’s task is to draw a curve on the surface, and pull or push the surface to the desirable position via the curve. Subsequently, the deformation is automatically defined. This technique has been implemented in a prototype implicit FFD system called Taco. Results created in Taco show that a desirable deformation can be easily achieved while preserving implicit properties.
Uniqueness of Non-Gaussianity-Based Dimension Reduction

Dimension reduction is a key step in preprocessing large-scale data sets. A recently proposed method named non-Gaussian component analysis searches for a projection onto the non-Gaussian part of a given multivariate recording, which is a generalization of the deflationary projection pursuit model. In this contribution, we discuss the uniqueness of the subspaces of such a projection. We prove that a necessary and sufficient condition for uniqueness is that the non-Gaussian signal subspace is of minimal dimension. Furthermore, we propose a measure for estimating this minimal dimension and illustrate it by numerical simulations. Our result guarantees that projection algorithms uniquely recover the underlying lower dimensional data signals.
The moral imperative of race for rhetorical studies: on civility and walking-in-white in academe

Flores’s article on the imperative of race for rhetorical studies is as much an indictment of the field’s possessive investment in whiteness as it is a reminder of the changing same of institutional racism. Her attention to how rhetoric scholars “live their own racism” and to how the disciplinary interventions made by racial rhetorical critics has been marginalized, spurred our reflections on the invisible labor expelled by rhetoric scholars who at once do racial rhetorical criticism and at the same time experience what George Yancy calls the “lived density of race. ” Flores’s article prompted us to ask: How do black and nonblack scholars of color doing racial rhetorical criticism cope with the imposition and expectation of catering to white fragility? More specifically, how does the expectation to be “civil” in ways that protect whiteness and antiblack norms, compound the work of racial rhetorical criticism? Our interest in the rhetorical construction of civility is driven by our shared and individual experiences with the civilizing strategies of the academy. Civilizing discourse is understood here as a call to insulate white fragility through appeals to language and scholarship that protects whites from racial discomfort. This includes calls for more gracious and less “angry” speech around race as well as calls for more “civil” and “courteous” exchanges that don’t offend white sensibilities. Civility as a discursive ideal imposed by institutions of higher education denotes care and investment, courteousness and considerateness. “Civil” dialogue is valued most amid instances of difference and disagreement because it expresses that despite difference and differences, diverse perspectives—the voices of “others”—are valued. In this way, civility is conceived as a democratic good, a proper civic posture, and an ethical practice of egalitarianism. The rhetorical construction of civility as a “democratic good” is based on the presumption that the expectation to be “civil” will be imposed and regulated in an objective, neutral, and fair way. This, however, is the ideal of civility. As we know, there is always tension between the ideal of a thing and the actuality of its practice. Civility as a democratic good and social ideal cannot be divorced from its historical usage and meaning. Its etymological and ideological ties to “civilization” and “civil society,” its demarcation of the white “civil citizen” from the nonwhite “savage” and “slave,” and its tie to citizenship and belonging render civility and civilizing discourses racialized technologies of the flesh. As Alexander Weheliye explains, the circulation of
The questioning lens as research tool: the social shaping of network visualisation boundaries in the case of the UK junior doctors’ contract dispute

ABSTRACT Social media and the data it produces lend itself to being visualised as a network. Individual Twitter users can be represented as nodes and retweeted by another Twitter user, thereby forming a relationship, an edge, between users. However, an unbounded network is a sprawling mass of nodes and edges. Boundary settings are typically applied, for example, a time period, a hashtag, a keyword search or a network substructure of a phenomenon of interest. Thus, the particular visualisation created is dependent upon the boundaries applied, enabling productive visual consumption, but concealing its social shaping. To explore this question of boundary setting and its associated issues, we draw on an example from the Twitter discussions about the UK Minister for Health, Jeremy Hunt, and the media debate surrounding the contractual hours of junior doctors during 2015–2016. We discuss the role and impact differing stakeholders have in setting these boundaries. We seek to provide a set of ‘questioning lenses’ in which we ask why these boundary settings were selected, what effect they have, and what are the potential implications of these boundary setting techniques on the visualisation consumer.
When hawks attack: animal-borne video studies of goshawk pursuit and prey-evasion strategies

Video filmed by a camera mounted on the head of a Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) was used to study how the raptor used visual guidance to pursue prey and land on perches. A combination of novel image analysis methods and numerical simulations of mathematical pursuit models was used to determine the goshawk's pursuit strategy. The goshawk flew to intercept targets by fixing the prey at a constant visual angle, using classical pursuit for stationary prey, lures or perches, and usually using constant absolute target direction (CATD) for moving prey. Visual fixation was better maintained along the horizontal than vertical direction. In some cases, we observed oscillations in the visual fix on the prey, suggesting that the goshawk used finite-feedback steering. Video filmed from the ground gave similar results. In most cases, it showed goshawks intercepting prey using a trajectory consistent with CATD, then turning rapidly to attack by classical pursuit; in a few cases, it showed them using curving non-CATD trajectories. Analysis of the prey's evasive tactics indicated that only sharp sideways turns caused the goshawk to lose visual fixation on the prey, supporting a sensory basis for the surprising frequency and effectiveness of this tactic found by previous studies. The dynamics of the prey's looming image also suggested that the goshawk used a tau-based interception strategy. We interpret these results in the context of a concise review of pursuit–evasion in biology, and conjecture that some prey deimatic ‘startle’ displays may exploit tau-based interception.
Towards Detecting Changes in Underwater Image Sequences

Detecting changes between images of the same scene taken at different times is of great interest for monitoring and understanding the environment. It is widely used for on-land application but suffers from different constraints. Unfortunately, Change detection algorithms require highly accurate geometric and photometric registration. This requirement has precluded their use in underwater imagery in the past. In this paper, the change detection techniques available nowadays for on-land application were analyzed and a method to automatically detect the changes in sequences of underwater images is proposed. Target application scenarios are habitat restoration sites, or area monitoring after sudden impacts from hurricanes or ship groundings. The method is based on the creation of a 3D terrain model from one image sequence over an area of interest. This model allows for synthesizing textured views that correspond to the same viewpoints of a second image sequence. The generated views are photometrically matched and corrected against the corresponding frames from the second sequence. Standard change detection techniques are then applied to find areas of difference. Additionally, the paper shows that it is possible to detect false positives, resulting from non-rigid objects, by applying the same change detection method to the first sequence exclusively. The developed method was able to correctly find the changes between two challenging sequences of images from a coral reef taken one year apart and acquired with two different cameras.
ElGamal Digital Signature Algorithm of Adding a Random Number

As f or the problem that ElGamal digital signature scheme’s security is constantly being challenged and increasingly becomes increasingly serious , an improved ElGamal digital signature algorithm is proposed. As the original ElGamal algorithm has its own security disadvantages that only one random number is used, in order to improve its security, the scheme presented in this paper improved this demerit by adding a random number to the orig i nal one and increasing difficulty of deciphering key. The security of the improved signature scheme is the same with the ElGamal signature scheme which is based on the difficult computable nature of discrete logarithm over finite fields. Then issues about how to increase the complexity between the random number and the key by adding a random number is discussed. Last, we analyzed the improved signature scheme from the following two aspects: security complexity and time complexity. The analysis showed that the safety of the improved signature scheme was higher than that of the original one, and the improved one has a smaller time complexity.
Nurses’ happiness and awareness of their influence on work in governmental and private hospitals

Nurses passed through many stressful experiences during nursing work. Emotional support and considering their emotional needs can alleviate such work-associated tension and contribute to the quality of their performance. Nurses’ happiness and awareness of their influence on work are necessary blocks to build the nurses’ emotional steadiness, and thus their work retention and turnover rates would be maintained. This study establishes to attain two aims: First: to identify the levels of nurses’ happiness and the awareness of their influence on work, in governmental and private hospitals, in Jeddah, Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA). Second: to determine the correlation between those perceived variables. Thus, a descriptive, correlative and comparative research design was employed with 300 registered nurses in King Abd El Aziz governmental hospital and 200 registered nurses in private International Medical Center, Jeddah, KSA. A survey method was applied for data collection, and the study questionnaire involved three parts. Part one is about nurses’ personal profile. The second part included happiness subscale, which was developed by Warr et al., in 1979 and the third one is the individual influence on the work scale that was developed by Toode et al., in 2015. The study findings reveal that the majority of both study groups reported a fair level of happiness, with a moderate awareness level of their influence on work. Additionally, nurses who are working in private hospital have a higher awareness level of their influence on work and happiness, more than the nurses who are working in the governmental hospital. Study subjects who experience a high level of happiness have a high level of awareness of their influence on the work. Therefore, the correlation coefficient among both research variables in both hospitals indicated a noteworthy stronger positive correlation. Conclusion and recommendations: nurse’s happiness and awareness of their influence on work are essential emotional aspects to be considered in nursing management. Fitting plan for nurses’ psychological stability at work should be designed and implemented, particularly in governmental hospitals in Jeddah. Also, Nurse Manager should assess and maintain a high nurses’ happiness level and awareness of their influence on the work; consequently, nurses work product will be improved. Further studies are needed to investigate the study variables by different measurement tools for behaviors or skills. A study about an assessment of the relation between the nurse’s emotional status and their performance is suggested.