Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge, interaction, and project work : from instrumental rationality to practical wisdom

This thesis is, broadly, an analytical project, a pragmatically governed interpretation of the experiences that practitioners have with work and life in project-labelled arrangements. It has aspired to generate insights into what goes on in such arrangements in local situations from the practitioner point of view, to examine the conditions under which useful knowledge can be created to support social action in project settings, and to suggest an alternative framework for understanding project working, organising and management to the mainstream perspectives. The study refocuses attention to some key problems with the extant body of thought and contributes to developing a practical-wisdom centred sociology of project work and project management. It uncovers, and reaches above, instrumental rationality, functionalism, and mostly normative approaches, which reproduce and are reproduced by, a large body of dominant epistemic project management theory and its application in practice. The study does so by emphasising the importance of the concern for praxis in project management knowledge system, education and research, and by including the awareness and considerations of intuition, judgement, and ethical deliberations about the present and the future, as part of managerial competence in the context. Utilising a combination of practical philosophical considerations, literature review, documentary evidence, and concrete empirical analysis, the thesis has provided: An evaluation of the relevance of the value-rational intellectual virtues or practical rationality (Aristotle's notion of phronesis interpreted by Flyvbjerg, 2001) embracing judgement, intuition, and considerations of value and power in context, for practical action in project environments; Guidance in terms of how the intellectual foundations, including the formal body of knowledge of the discipline, can be broadened to include these virtues; and Some constructive trajectories for action and change in project management education, practice and research. The empirical part of the study was designed as a participative cooperative inquiry to generate insights into project related experiences of practitioners on the basis of their accounts, reflections, and thoughts obtained mainly through the method known as active interviewing (Silverman, 2001; Holstein and Gubrium, 1995). The concept of complex responsive processes of relating in organisations (Stacey, 1996, 2001, 2003) was used as an appropriate practical interpretative framework. Insights from the analysis and interpretation of the empirical material draw attention to those aspects of the organisational arrangements labelled 'project' which are excluded from the mainstream project management concerns. These are related to participation
Fire alarm or false alarm?!: Situation awareness and decision‐making “bias” of firefighters in training exercises

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess whether firefighters display different decision‐making biases: either a liberal bias to accepting information as true or a conservative bias to rejecting information, with the former carrying risk of “false alarm” errors and the latter of “misses”. Design/methodology/approach – Situation awareness (SA) and decision‐making biases were examined in Fire and Rescue (FRS) “table‐top” and Breathing Apparatus (BA) training exercises. The former involved showing 50 operational FRS personnel a powerpoint presentation representing the drive‐to, views and information related to the incident. The BA study involved 16 operational FRS personnel entering a smoke‐filled training building in a search‐and‐rescue exercise. True/False answers to statements about the incidents were analysed by a signal‐detection‐type tool (QASA) to give measures of SA and bias.Findings – In both studies, there were two groups showing different bias patterns (either conservative with risk of “mis.
Evaluating Accessible Adaptable e-Learning

Two different approaches can increase the accessibility of digital educational materials: content that has been built with the widest possible set of users in mind (universal design), or content that has been designed in such a way that it can be personalised to individual user needs and preferences (personalised design). This paper outlines a number of approaches that could be used to evaluate the provision of learning materials that have been adapted to or chosen for individual learners. A number of different perspectives are considered in this paper: a learner's perspective, the perspective of the tutor or teacher, and an institutional perspective. A number of complementary methodologies are presented. It is argued that the evaluation of a system that provides personalised learning content is a challenging activity that necessitates the application of multiple methods to effectively understand the underlying costs and benefits of providing personalised learning materials.
A Humanoid Robot Carrying a Heavy Object

This paper studies the balance of a humanoid robot carrying a heavy object. Without knowing the mass and the position of the center of gravity of the object, the humanoid robot carries a heavy object stably by using the force sensor information attached at the wrists and the ankles. We first show how to generate the motion of a humamoid robot by taking the force sensor information into consideration. We also show the method for generating the gait pattern by taking the dynamics of the carried object. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by experiments.
Multisensory Origin of the Subjective First-Person Perspective: Visual, Tactile, and Vestibular Mechanisms

In three experiments we investigated the effects of visuo-tactile and visuo-vestibular conflict about the direction of gravity on three aspects of bodily self-consciousness: self-identification, self-location, and the experienced direction of the first-person perspective. Robotic visuo-tactile stimulation was administered to 78 participants in three experiments. Additionally, we presented participants with a virtual body as seen from an elevated and downward-directed perspective while they were lying supine and were therefore receiving vestibular and postural cues about an upward-directed perspective. Under these conditions, we studied the effects of different degrees of visuo-vestibular conflict, repeated measurements during illusion induction, and the relationship to a classical measure of visuo-vestibular integration. Extending earlier findings on experimentally induced changes in bodily self-consciousness, we show that self-identification does not depend on the experienced direction of the first-person perspective, whereas self-location does. Changes in bodily self-consciousness depend on visual gravitational signals. Individual differences in the experienced direction of first-person perspective correlated with individual differences in visuo-vestibular integration. Our data reveal important contributions of visuo-vestibular gravitational cues to bodily self-consciousness. In particular we show that the experienced direction of the first-person perspective depends on the integration of visual, vestibular, and tactile signals, as well as on individual differences in idiosyncratic visuo-vestibular strategies.
Adaptive Behavior in Autonomous Agents

This paper provides an overview of the bottom-up approach to artificial intelligence (AI), commonly referred to as behavior-oriented AI. The behavior-oriented approach, with its focus on the interaction between autonomous agents and their environments, is introduced by contrasting it with the traditional approach of knowledge-based AI. Different notions of autonomy are discussed, and key problems of generating adaptive and complex behavior are identified. A number of techniques for the generation of behavior are introduced and evaluated regarding their potential for realizing different aspects of autonomy as well as adaptivity and complexity of behavior. It is concluded that, in order to realize truly autonomous and intelligent agents, the behavior-oriented approach will have to focus even more on lifelike qualities in both agents and environments.
Exogenous Hormonal Regulation in Breast Cancer Cells by Phytoestrogens and Endocrine Disruptors

Observations on the role of ovarian hormones in breast cancer growth, as well as interest in contraception, stimulated research into the biology of estrogens. The identification of the classical receptors ERα and ERβ and the transmembrane receptor GPER and the resolution of the structure of the ligand bound to its receptor established the principal molecular mechanisms of estrogen action. The presence of estrogen-like compounds in many plants used in traditional medicine or ingested as food ingredients, phytoestrogens, as well as the estrogenic activities of many industrial pollutants and pesticides, xenoestrogens, have prompted investigations into their role in human health. Phyto- and xenoestrogens bind to the estrogen receptors with a lower affinity than the endogenous estrogens and can compete or substitute the hormone. Xenoestrogens, which accumulate in the body throughout life, are believed to increase breast cancer risk, especially in cases of prenatal and prepuberal exposure whereas the role of phytoestrogens is still a matter of debate. At present, the application of phytoestrogens appears to be limited to the treatment of post-menopausal symptoms in women where the production of endogenous estrogens has ceased. In this review we discuss chemistry, structure and classification, estrogen signaling and the consequences of the interactions of estrogens, phytoestrogens and xenoestrogens with their receptors, the complex interactions of endogenous and exogenous ligands, the evaluation of the health risks related to xenoestrogens, and the perspectives toward the synthesis of potent third generation selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs).
Effect of Rooftop Exposure in Direct Sunlight on Conduit Ambient Temperatures

The interiors of electrical conduits located on rooftops in full sunlight become considerably hotter than those located in shaded areas. Differentials between these conduit interior temperatures and outside air temperatures (the latter always measured in the shade) can easily reach 39degC (70degF) for conduits lying directly on a dark roof. As the height of the conduit above the roof increases, this temperature differential decreases, to perhaps 15degC (27degF) at a height of 0.9 m (36 in) above the roof. Lighter-colored roofs, although they keep the interior of the buildings cooler, actually reflect more heat onto conduits located more than a few centimeters above the roof. This makes these conduit interiors hotter as compared to conduits located above dark-colored roofs. In practice, the actual temperatures inside conduits are seldom taken into account when electrical ampacity calculations are made. This can lead to serious overheating and even failure of electrical cables inside the conduits.
Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Model of Rifapentine and 25-Desacetyl Rifapentine Disposition in Humans

ABSTRACT Rifapentine (RPT) is a rifamycin antimycobacterial and, as part of a combination therapy, is indicated for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Although the results from a number of studies indicate that rifapentine has the potential to shorten treatment duration and enhance completion rates compared to other rifamycin agents utilized in antituberculosis drug regimens (i.e., regimens 1 to 4), its optimal dose and exposure in humans are unknown. To help inform such an optimization, a physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model was developed to predict time course, tissue-specific concentrations of RPT and its active metabolite, 25-desacetyl rifapentine (dRPT), in humans after specified administration schedules for RPT. Starting with the development and verification of a PBPK model for rats, the model was extrapolated and then tested using human pharmacokinetic data. Testing and verification of the models included comparisons of predictions to experimental data in several rat tissues and time course RPT and dRPT plasma concentrations in humans from several single- and repeated-dosing studies. Finally, the model was used to predict RPT concentrations in the lung during the intensive and continuation phases of a current recommended TB treatment regimen. Based on these results, it is anticipated that the PBPK model developed in this study will be useful in evaluating dosing regimens for RPT and for characterizing tissue-level doses that could be predictors of problems related to efficacy or safety.
Efficient rendering of optical effects within water using graphics hardware

The display of realistic natural scenes is one of the most important research areas in computer graphics. The rendering of water is one of the essential components. The paper proposes an efficient method for rendering images of scenes within water. For underwater scenery, the shafts of light and caustics are attractive and important elements. However, computing these effects is difficult and time-consuming, since light refracts when passing through waves. To address the problem, our method makes use of graphics hardware to accelerate the computation. Our method displays the shafts of light by accumulating the intensities of streaks of light by using hardware color blending functions. The rendering of caustics is accelerated by making use of a Z-buffer and a stencil buffer. Moreover, by using a shadow mapping technique, our method can display shafts of light and caustics, taking account of shadows due to objects.
Combined subthreshold and gate-oxide leakage power reduction in deep-submicron CMOS Circuits

In this work we present a methodologVfor minimizing simultaneously the subthreshold and the gate-tunneling currents in CMOS combinatorial circuits. We use a simple method for estimating the total leakage in a circuit based on the knowledge of primary input signal probabilities in conjunction with statedependent leakage tables. We take advantage of the statedependence exhibited by the leakage currents to reduce the total leakage in a circuit through pin reordering and the application of low-leakage standby input vectors. Pin reordering is done on a per-vector basis for known input probabilities, and on a statistical basis for unknown input probabilities. Results are given for a number of ISCAS-85 benchmark circuits for dgerent gate-oxide thicknesses.
Improved LMI representations for the analysis and the design of continuous-time systems with polytopic type uncertainty

Simple modifications to the representation of the bounded real lemma (BRL) in the linear continuous time-invariant case are introduced. These modifications reduce the overdesign that occurs in the analysis and the design of systems with polytopic-type uncertainties. A different Lyapunov function accompanies each of the vertices of the uncertainty polytope, thus eliminating the need for quadratic stability or stabilizability. The advantages of these new representations are demonstrated by way of two examples.
Real-time Planning of Mobile Manipulation in Dynamic Environments of Unknown Changes

This paper presents an approach to plan in realtime trajectories of a mobile manipulator in an environment of dynamic obstacles of unknown motions. It exploits loosecoupling of locomotion and manipulation, taking advantage of the redundancy, to best achieve avoidance of dynamic obstacles and various optimization objectives such as minimizing energy and time, and maximizing manipulability. The approach has been implemented and tested in simulation, and the results demonstrate its effectiveness.
A Learning Approach Towards Detection and Tracking of Lane Markings

Road scene analysis is a challenging problem that has applications in autonomous navigation of vehicles. An integral component of this system is the robust detection and tracking of lane markings. It is a hard problem primarily due to large appearance variations in lane markings caused by factors such as occlusion (traffic on the road), shadows (from objects like trees), and changing lighting conditions of the scene (transition from day to night). In this paper, we address these issues through a learning-based approach using visual inputs from a camera mounted in front of a vehicle. We propose the following: 1) a pixel-hierarchy feature descriptor to model the contextual information shared by lane markings with the surrounding road region; 2) a robust boosting algorithm to select relevant contextual features for detecting lane markings; and 3) particle filters to track the lane markings, without knowledge of vehicle speed, by assuming the lane markings to be static through the video sequence and then learning the possible road scene variations from the statistics of tracked model parameters. We investigate the effectiveness of our algorithm on challenging daylight and night-time road video sequences.
Restoration of RUNX3 enhances transforming growth factor‐β‐dependent p21 expression in a biliary tract cancer cell line

RUNX3 is a candidate tumor suppressor gene localized in 1p36, a region commonly inactivated by deletion and methylation in various human tumors. To elucidate the role of RUNX3 in transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β signaling in biliary tract cancer, we transfected Mz‐ChA‐2 cells, which do not express RUNX3 but have intact TGF‐β type II receptor and SMAD4 genes, with the RUNX3 expression plasmid pcDNA3.1/RUNX3 or with the vector pcDNA3.1 as a control. Four Mz‐ChA‐2/RUNX3 clones and one control clone were obtained. Although TGF‐β1 only slightly inhibited growth of the control cells, growth inhibition and TGF‐β‐dependent G1 arrest were significantly enhanced in the RUNX3‐transfected clones. None of the clones, however, exhibited apoptosis. The slightly increased TGF‐β1‐induced p21 expression in the control clone was strongly enhanced in the RUNX3‐transfected clones, and was accompanied by augmented decreases in the expression of cyclins D1 and E. When RUNX3 small interfering RNA was added, TGF‐β‐dependent induction of p21 was reduced in the RUNX3‐transfected clones. Xenografts of the clones in nude mice demonstrated that tumorigenicity was significantly decreased in the RUNX3‐transfected clones in inverse proportion to the expression levels of RUNX3. Based on these results, RUNX3 is involved in TGF‐β‐induced expression of p21 and the resulting induction of TGF‐β‐dependent G1 arrest. (Cancer Sci 2007; 98: 838–843)
Biomimetics: its practice and theory

Biomimetics, a name coined by Otto Schmitt in the 1950s for the transfer of ideas and analogues from biology to technology, has produced some significant and successful devices and concepts in the past 50 years, but is still empirical. We show that TRIZ, the Russian system of problem solving, can be adapted to illuminate and manipulate this process of transfer. Analysis using TRIZ shows that there is only 12% similarity between biology and technology in the principles which solutions to problems illustrate, and while technology solves problems largely by manipulating usage of energy, biology uses information and structure, two factors largely ignored by technology.
Lightweight visualization for high-quality materials on WebGL

We propose an architecture for lightweight visualization of high-quality 3D objects based on data compression, data streaming, virtual texturing and WebGL. Our method retains visual fidelity of the original scene, improves loading time and maintains real-time rendering speed. We assume that the user is restricted to low-performance GPUs and slow Internet connections (1 megabit per second or lower). For geometry compression, we use entropy-encoding techniques that achieve up to 95% storage savings. Textures are stored as sets of tiles which feeds the virtual texturing engine. With use of the Crunch library, tiles are compressed with results similar to JPEG but with much faster transcoding to DXT on the GPU. The initial 27.7MB dataset takes an average of 5 minutes to load. Our approach, takes less than 5 seconds on average. A wide range of applications benefit from our architecture such as e-commerce, cultural heritage, virtual worlds, videogames, and scientific visualization, among others.
Blind channel estimation without eigendecomposition

We address the problem of blind estimation of finite-impulse response (FIR) channels without eigendecomposition in CDMA systems. The blind channel estimation problem arises in the presence of frequency selective fading, when the training data is unavailable. The blind channel estimation techniques in the literature often rely on the eigendecomposition of the received signals. The blind channel estimation can also be coupled with the multiuser receiver design in the context of minimum output energy (MOE) criterion. While MOE receiver avoids eigendecomposition, the inverse of data covariance matrix of received signals is needed [Z. Xu et al., Nov. 2002]. In this paper we propose a blind channel estimation method that avoids eigendecomposition. At the same time, the proposed method directly uses the data covariance matrix without requiring its inversion. Analytical and simulation results are provided to show that the channel estimates converge to the eigendecomposition based channel estimates at the medium to high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
Sustaining the Army Training Mission by Re-Thinking Decision Support Systems: Shifting from Decision-Making Individuals to Sense-Making Agents

Abstract : Decision Support Systems (DSS), as computerized systems that implement and support complex decision processes, have evolved significantly during the last four decades. However, this evolution has been dominantly bottom-up and technology-driven, with new emerging technologies supporting the traditional concept of decision making as a basically rational process. In an effort to reconceptualize decision making, this paper follows a top-down approach, starting with a new conceptual framework and then exploring the technologies and tools that can support it. To this end, the paper proposes four major conceptual shifts: a pragmatic shift from problems in the mind to problematic situations in the world, a constructive shift from passive decision making to active sense making, a normative shift from accuracy and certainty to plausibility and transparency, and a technical shift in our understanding of technology as enabler to technology as transformer of human activity. These shifts are in harmony with current theoretical trends in DSS and related disciplines, e.g., the growing emphasis on multiple perspectives in DSS, on multi-agent systems in Artificial Intelligence, on distributed cognition in psychology, and on sense making in organization science. By focusing our attention on the collective, distributed, and constructive character of cognition, the framework that results from these shifts provides a useful way of thinking about DSS. Furthermore, ideas from science and technology studies portray a tightly interwoven picture of technologies and their social and organizational context, which is very different from the traditional view of technologies as mere tools. Brought to the realm of DSS, this calls for a fresh look at the relationship between information technologies and decision-making processes.