Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Target Capacity-Utilization Model of OPEC and the Dynamics of the World Oil Market

Modeling the world oil market became a widespread concern after the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and the resulting four-fold increase in the price of crude oil. By the late seventies, when the Energy Modeling Forum began its study of world oil models, at least thirty publicly available models were in existence. The pace of development of new models has slowed somewhat in the eighties, a result of reduced funding for energy studies and probably a better appreciation within the modeling community of the difficulties inherent in the activity.
Microarray gene expression data classification using modified differential evolution based algorithm

The invention of micro-array technology helps to keep the records containing expression values of multiple genes over different experimental conditions. Clustering is an unsupervised classification technique which is considered as an important tool for inspecting micro-array data. The characteristics of such micro-array data include uncertainty, noise and imprecision. Therefore fuzzy clustering techniques have some great importance in examining such micro-array gene expression data sets. In this paper, a fuzzy modified differential evolution based clustering technique has been evolved which utilizes a newly proposed distance measure which posses the symmetry based property. The incorporation of symmetry based distance enables to recognize clusters having varieties of shapes and sizes and possessing some symmetric characteristics. Moreover introduction of search capability of differential evolution technique enables faster convergence rate as well as it is able to generate high quality results. Here symmetry based cluster validity measure, FCM-measure, is optimized by the proposed clustering technique to obtain the relevant partitioning. This proposed method shows that symmetry based distance is useful for detecting clusters from gene expression data sets. Finally, the inclusion of fuzziness properties helps the proposed method in handling overlapping clusters well. The effectiveness of the fuzzy point symmetry based modified differential evolution based clustering technique is compared with other clustering algorithms utilizing the properties of symmetry and genetic algorithms, over three publicly available benchmark micro-array datasets.
A robust composite nonlinear control scheme for servomotor speed regulation

A parameterised design of robust composite nonlinear controller is proposed for typical second-order servo systems subject to unknown constant disturbance and control input saturation. The control law consists of a linear feedback part for achieving fast response, a nonlinear feedback part for suppressing the overshoot, and a disturbance-compensation mechanism for erasing the steady-state error. An extended state observer is adopted to estimate the unknown disturbance. The closed-loop stability is analysed theoretically. The control scheme is applied to the speed regulation of permanent magnet synchronous motor, and numerical simulations are carried out. The results confirm that the proposed control scheme can achieve fast, smooth, and accurate speed regulation, and has a certain degree of robustness with respect to the amplitude of disturbances and the perturbations of system parameters.
Load balancing and voltage regulation for two leg VSC based islanded DG set supply system

This paper discusses the unit template control strategy for load balancing and voltage regulation of induction generator based DG (Diesel generator) set for islanded system. The proposed system consists of DG set along with DSTATCOM (Distributed Static Compensator) and BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) is used for load balancing along with harmonics elimination and reactive power compensation. An isolated T-T Connected transformer is used to reduce size of two-leg VSC and also neutral current compensation. The battery on two-leg VSC (Voltage Source Converter) of DSTATCOM with BESS is able to supply active power when the load requirement is more than rating of DG set and battery can store energy when load requirement is less than DG set rating. The reference sources for two-leg VSC are estimated using unit template control strategy and this algorithm has quick dynamic response. The proposed DG set system with DSTATCOM is modeled in MATLAB R2009a along with Simulink and results are verified under three phase linear/non-linear loads.
State of arts in ultra wideband (UWB) wireless technology and global harmonization

As a center of mobile multimedia of the 21st century, it is very much looking forward to explosion of R&D and business of various wireless communication systems. In order to maintain advancement of communications and its related industries in Japan, there is a demand to keep creating new high technologies and theories and to educate a high level of experts who can cover multiple fields. To satisfy this demand, National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (NICT: former Communications Research Laboratory: CRL) and Yokohama National University COE program have objectives for a top level of research and education to create a vision and its supporting technologies for future social infrastructure based on telecommunication technology. In particular, this program focuses on technologies and theories in a joint field of optical and radio communications. This invited talk will introduce Japanese activities on R&D and regulation in latest core communication technology; Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) wireless communications based on impulse radio. I hope that this invited talk will stimulate much active discussion on UWB and its related issues to carry out the core technologies with System on a Chip (SoC). In this paper, we propose a Soft-Spectrum (SS) UWB transferring scheme with free-verse and geometric pulse waveform adaptation and shaping [5] [6], which is suitable for co-existence, interference avoidance, matching with regulatory spectral mask including FCC Spectrum Mask, and high data rate. In Section 2, this Soft-Spectrum Adaptation proposal will he described in detail. Different kinds of multi-hands pulse waveforms with various shapes, envelopes, as well as spectral features are investigated. BER (hit-error-rate) performance simulations corresponding to these pulse waveforms are also carried out in Section 3, under AWGN environment. Conclusions are given in the last Section.
The Effect of Parental Transfers and Borrowing Constraints On Educational Attainment

A strong positive association between one's school attainment and that of one's parents has been consistently documented in numerous empirical studies. The underlying cause of this intergenerational correlation has been the subject of contentious debate in the social sciences for many years. Two competing types of explanations are prominent. The first is based on the heritability of traits, that is, that children of more educated parents may inherit the abilities, personalities and preferences that led to the higher educational achievement of their parents. The second type of explanation is based on human capital production, namely that more educated parents, due to their own preferences for more educated children and/or due to their higher wealth, may invest more heavily in their children's human capital.
Generalized Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedastic Modeling of the Volatility of Stock Returns in the Nairobi Securities Exchange

The most important characteristic of a stock or bond is its return or profit. This return is volatile and tomorrow’s price is uncertain and must be described by a probability distribution. The purpose of this study was to develop a model of stock returns in the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) using the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model. Closing prices of Safaricom and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) were obtained from the NSE for the period January 2011 to October 2014 which formed 1000 observations excluding weekends and holidays. Test for normality and stationarity was done using the Shapiro–Wilk test and Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) respectively. All the return series exhibited, leptokurtosis, volatility clustering and negative skewness. The estimation results reveal that GARCH (1, 1) best fits both return series over the period of study. Keywords: Heteroscedasticity. Stock Returns, Volatility
Tidal Volumes Required to Maintain Isocapnia at Frequencies from 3 to 30 Hz in the Dog

We ventilated seven mongrel dogs with high frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFO) at frequencies from 3 to 30 Hz. At each frequency, the tidal volume required to achieve isocapnia (VTiso, was measured by plethysmography. In an individual dog, VTiso could be related to frequency by an equation of the form VTiso, = KfA. A was similar for the seven dogs, A = −0.54 ± 0.03. K varied from 179 to 325 cc-Hz A, reflecting differences between the dogs in dead space, CO2 production and gradient for gas transport. This relation is consistent with that predicted from the data of previous investigators who used different ventilators, circuits and methodology. From 3 to 30 Hz, VTiso, decreased from 1.2 to 0.4 times anatomic plus equipment dead space, but minute volumes required to maintain isocapnia increased from 6 to 18 times those required during conventional ventilation. We conclude that low tidal volume ventilation is also high minute volume ventilation
Continuous learning of HPC infrastructure models using big data analytics and in-memory processing tools

Exascale computing represents the next leap in the HPC race. Reaching this level of performance is subject to several engineering challenges such as energy consumption, equipment-cooling, reliability and massive parallelism. Model-based optimization is an essential tool in the design process and control of energy efficient, reliable and thermally constrained systems. However, in the Exascale domain, model learning techniques tailored to the specific supercomputer require real measurements and must therefore handle and analyze a massive amount of data coming from the HPC monitoring infrastructure. This becomes rapidly a “big data” scale problem. The common approach where measurements are first stored in large databases and then processed is no more affordable due to the increasingly storage costs and lack of real-time support. Nowadays instead, cloud-based machine learning techniques aim to build on-line models using real-time approaches such as “stream processing” and “in-memory” computing, that avoid storage costs and enable fastdata processing. Moreover, the fast delivery and adaptation of the models to the quick data variations, make the decision stage of the optimization loop more effective and reliable. In this paper we leverage scalable, lightweight and flexible IoT technologies, such as the MQTT protocol, to build a highly scalable HPC monitoring infrastructure able to handle the massive sensor data produced by next-gen HPC components. We then show how state-of-the art tools for big data computing and analysis, such as Apache Spark, can be used to manage the huge amount of data delivered by the monitoring layer and to build adaptive models in real-time using on-line machine learning techniques.
Evaluation of a novel inhalation exposure system to determine acute respiratory responses to tobacco and polymer pyrolysate mixtures in Swiss-Webster mice

Modern cigarette production processes are highly automated and yield millions of cigarettes per day. The forming cigarette and its components contact many different materials in the production process, some of which may leave minute residues. The potential for small inclusions of non-cigarette materials such as wood, plastic, cardboard and other materials exists from the bulk handling and processing of tobacco, in spite of vigilant workers and numerous online systems designed to keep the tobacco stream clean. Currently, there are no published methods that describe an approach to evaluate the potential toxicological impact of these non-tobacco residues and inclusions on the biological activity from exposure to the complex mixture of tobacco smoke. There are, however, many methods which describe toxicological evaluation approaches for pure materials, particularly synthetic polymers. We used the Deutsche Institute fur Normung (DIN) 53-436 tube furnace and nose-only exposure chamber in combination to conduct pilot studies in Swiss-Webster mice in order to develop a standardized methodology for the evaluation of sensory irritation and other potentially useful biological endpoints for predicting any potential hazards. Sensory and/or pulmonary irritation was assessed based on respiratory function parameters using the ASTM E981-84 method described by in mice, exposed to test atmospheres of 100% tobacco pyrolysate or tobacco/polymer pyrolysate mixtures. Other biological evaluations included respiratory function parameters, clinical signs, body weights, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid analysis, carboxyhemoglobin, blood cyanide concentrations and histopathology of the respiratory tract. These pilot studies have demonstrated that such an approach can detect biological changes resulting from exposure to unique tobacco/polymer pyrolysates. Small differences were detected in the sensory irritation responses (respiratory function), activation state of pulmonary macrophages, and histopathological findings in the nose of mice exposed to 100% tobacco or tobacco/polymer pyrolysates. Analytical measurements were also performed in order to characterize the test atmospheric changes that could occur from inclusion of the polymer into the tobacco. These included DIN-generated wet total particulate matter (TPM) DIN-Generated wet TPM (DWTPM), nicotine, cyanide, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. We attempted to correlate analyte differences in the test atmospheres with the resulting biological findings in the mice. The results demonstrated that this approach could detect minimal toxicological effects in mice exposed to test atmospheres of 100% tobacco or 70%/30% tobacco/polymer pyrolysates.
Innovation-Oriented Environmental Regulations: Direct versus Indirect Regulations; an Empirical Analysis of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Chile

It is often suggested that innovation is one of the most desirable environmental policy aims, in that it promises to solve the conflict between environmental regulation and economic growth. Contrary to what is frequently advocated—that in order to foster innovation through regulation, most of the attention should be put on the regulation-setting process, I argue that a cooperative stance in the implementation of regulations also has a crucial impact, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This argument is assessed looking at innovation effects that both direct regulations (command-and-control) and indirect regulations (negotiated voluntary agreements, called cleaner production agreements) have in this sector. A face-to-face survey questionnaire, with a non-probabilistic matching sampling strategy, was conducted in 322 firms representing four industrial sectors in Chile. The propensity-scores analysis demonstrates that SMEs involved in voluntary agreements innovate significantly more, as expressed through environmental management systems and techniques. In terms of technological innovations, voluntary agreements promoted incremental (rather than radical) multimedia innovations. Nevertheless, they had a significant effect on triggering at least one radical process change in the SMEs engaged in the programme. I conclude by emphasising that a cooperative style in the design and implementation of regulations has a key role to play in environmental capacity building in SMEs, and that this approach can create the appropriate conditions for innovation. However, this potential cannot be fully realised if there are not strong market and regulatory stimuli towards the development of more radical environmental innovations.
Electric Power Interruption Cost Estimates for Individual Industries, Sectors, and the U.S. Economy

Distributed energy resources (DER) have been promoted as the least-cost approach to meeting steadily increasing energy demand. However, it is unclear whether DER deployment can maintain or improve the electric power supply reliability and quality currently available to consumers. This report addresses two key factors relating to this question: 1) characteristics of existing power supply reliability, and 2) costs resulting from supply interruptions characteristic of the existing power grid. Interruption cost data collected by the University of Saskatchewan was used in conjunction with data generated by the United States Department of Energy’s Annual Survey of Manufacturers, along with industry shares of gross domestic product (GDP) and gross output to derive interruption cost estimates for U.S. industries at the 2-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) level. Interruption cost estimates are presented as a function of outage duration (e.g., 20 minutes, 1-hour, 3-hour), and are normalized in terms of dollars per peak kW.
The Urban-Rural Gap in Governance: Evidence from Vietnam

The relationship between development and governance is a central question in the public administration literature on developing countries. Yet, we still understand little about the gap between urban and rural governance in these nations. Our paper tackles this issue using the novel Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI). PAPI is Vietnam’s largest nationwide survey, and it is considers six dimensions of local public administration, including participation, transparency, accountability, corruption control, administrative procedures, and public service delivery. Using a small area estimation approach we present three new findings. First, urban citizens report better local governance and public administration than rural citizens do. Second, districts with better reported governance tend to have a smaller urban-rural public administration gap. Third, this gap follows a U-shaped pattern, decreasing initially and then increasing slightly as local living standards rise. These findings have implications for priorities in public administration reforms.
Phospholipase cβ4 expression reveals the continuity of cerebellar topography through development

Mediolateral boundaries divide the mouse cerebellar cortex into four transverse zones, and within each zone the cortex is further subdivided into a symmetrical array of parasagittal stripes. Various expression markers reveal this complexity, and detailed maps have been constructed based on the differential expression of zebrin II/aldolase C in a Purkinje cell subset. Recently, phospholipase (PL) Cβ4 expression in adult mice was shown to be restricted to, and coextensive with, the zebrin II‐immunonegative Purkinje cell subset. The Purkinje cell expression of PLCβ4 during embryogenesis and postnatal development begins just before birth in a subset of Purkinje cells that are clustered to form a reproducible array of parasagittal stripes. Double label and serial section immunocytochemistry revealed that the early PLCβ4‐immunoreactive clusters in the neonate are complementary to those previously identified by neurogranin expression. The PLCβ4 expression pattern can be traced continuously from embryo to adult, revealing the continuity of the topographical map from perinatal to adult cerebella. The only exception, as has been seen for other antigenic markers, is that transient PLCβ4 expression (which subsequently disappears) is seen in some Purkinje cell stripes during the second postnatal week. Furthermore, the data confirm that some adult Purkinje cell stripes are composite in origin, being derived from two or more distinct embryonic clusters. Thus, the zone and stripe topography of the cerebellum is conserved from embryo to adult, confirming that the early‐ and late‐antigenic markers share a common cerebellar topography. J. Comp. Neurol. 502:857–871, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Is Adam Smith liberal

Smith's theory of authority is nonliberal both in the classical liberal sense of Locke and Buchanan and in the social liberal sense of Bentham and Marx. Smith distinguishes civil contract from political contract: While the state protects rights a la civil contract, its differentia specifica is the political contract, which involves authority and allegiance. Allegiance is neither an involuntary act nor the product of choice a la civil contract. Allegiance characterizes the enlistment of low-rank agents in the service of high-rank agents whose station is desired. For Smith, admiration of the powerful is the origin of political order which is a nonliberal view.
The experience of young people in higher education: factors influencing withdrawal

A key element of English government policy regarding Higher Education (HE) is its focus on widening participation and the closely related issue of retention. This is an important issue for the individual student, for whom withdrawal from a chosen course of action may have profound social and psychological implications. Measures from Health Psychology (HP) as well as a range of demographic variables and individual narratives are used to develop a formal approach to understanding the process of integration into HE, with a view to developing informed participant-led strategies for assisting culturally diverse young people through university. Initial results indicate significant differences between students who successfully complete their university education and those who withdraw. The quantitative findings are explored further in relation to student narratives and discussed with particular reference to retention and outcomes.
Improving local PCA in pseudo phase space for fetal heart rate estimation from single lead abdominal ECG

Abstract This paper proposes an improved local principal component analysis (LPCA) in pseudo phase space for fetal heart rate estimation from a single lead abdominal ECG signal. The improved LPCA process can extract both the maternal ECG component and the fetal ECG component in an abdominal signal. The instantaneous fetal heart rate can then be estimated from the extracted fetal ECG waveform. Compared with the classical LPCA procedure and another single lead based fetal heart rate estimation method, our improved LPCA method has shown better robustness and efficiency in fetal heart estimation, testing with synthetic ECG signals and a real fetal ECG database from PhysioBank. For the real fetal ECG validating dataset of six long-duration recordings (obtained between the 22nd and 40th week of gestation), the average accuracy of the improved LPCA method is 84.1%.