Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A dual decomposition approach to complete energy management for a heavy-duty vehicle

In this paper, we will propose a scalable and systematic procedure to solve the complete vehicle energy management problem, which requires solving a large-scale optimization problem subject to a large number of constraints. We consider a case study of a hybrid heavy-duty vehicle, equipped with an electric machine, a high-voltage battery pack and a refrigerated semi-trailer. The procedure is based on the application of the dual decomposition to the energy management problem. This dual decomposition allows the large-scale optimization problem to be solved by solving several smaller optimization problems, which gives favourable scalability properties. To efficiently decompose the problem, we will decompose the objective function of the optimization problem, being the fuel consumption, into a sum of functions each representing `energy losses'. Using the case study, we will compare the novel methodology based on the dual decomposition with dynamic programming, showing the benefits in terms of computational efficiency of the novel solution strategy. Moreover, we will show the benefits in terms of fuel consumption of complete vehicle energy management.
High skill immigration: some lessons from Israel

Summary This paper draws some lessons from recent mass immigration of highly skilled immigrants from the USSR to Israel. One important lesson is that the adjustment process for highly skilled immigrants can be quite long and extend throughout their lifetime. This implies a substantial loss of skills, in present value terms. The expected present value of the difference between actual earnings and potential earnings is approximately 250,000 US Dollars, which constitutes about 57 per cent of the present value of potential earnings over the remaining working life (about 25 years). Another important lesson is that even a large wave of immigrants can be absorbed in the labour market without a marked effect on wages or employment of natives. This is a consequence of two related trends, entry of additional capital and gradual entry into high skill occupations, that together kept the aggregate capital labour ratio constant, if labour is correctly measured.
A Study of the Critical Success Factors Influencing Data Quality in Nigerian Higher Institutions

Institutions constantly process accumulated and stored data into information. One of the most desired features of organizational data is that it should possess high quality. Data quality is usually perceived in relation to how it meets user requirements. The implication is that an acceptable level of quality is achieved if the data conforms to a specification that correctly reflects the intended use. This paper investigates the factors affecting the quality of data in information systems databases with focus on Nigerian tertiary institutions. The objective is to assess critical success factors to ensure high quality data in information system and to understand stakeholders’ views regarding the factors that are critical to the improvement of the quality of data in Nigerian Higher institution database. Our findings will serve as input into the design of a general framework for data quality improvement which can be adapted by the various tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
A Joint Timing Recovery and SNR Estimation Algorithm for LDPC-Coded Systems

The effects of both symbol synchronization error and SNR estimation on the LDPC decoding performance have been investigated. Based on the statistical properties of the LDPC decoding output value, a joint timing recovery and SNR estimation algorithm is given, which puts the symbol synchronization, SNR estimation and iterative decoding together by two cooperative loops. After several iterative steps, the estimated values of symbol synchronization error and SNR convergent rapidly, and little performance degradation has been observed than the system with foregone SNR and accurate symbol timing
Scalable Bayesian Matrix Factorization

Matrix factorization (MF) is the simplest and most well studied factor based model and has been applied successfully in several domains. One of the standard ways to solve MF is by finding maximum a posteriori estimate of the model parameters, which is equivalent to minimizing the regularized objective function. Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a common choice to minimize the regularized objective function. However, SGD suffers from the problem of overfitting and entails tedious job of finding the learning rate and regularization parameters. A fully Bayesian treatment of MF avoids these problems. However, the existing Bayesian matrix factorization method based on the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique has cubic time complexity with respect to the target rank, which makes it less scalable. In this paper, we propose the Scalable Bayesian Matrix Factorization (SBMF), which is a MCMC Gibbs sampling algorithm for MF and has linear time complexity with respect to the target rank and linear space complexity with respect to the number of non-zero observations. Also, we show through extensive experiments on three sufficiently large real word datasets that SBMF incurs only a small loss in the performance and takes much less time as compared to the baseline method for higher latent dimension.
STATUS OF THE FRENCH RESEARCH PROGRAMME FOR ACTINIDES AND FISSION PRODUCTS PARTITIONING AND TRANSMUTATION

The global energy context pleads in favour of a sustainable development of nuclear energy. It is a technology with a future since the demand for energy will likely increase, whereas resources will tend to get scarcer and the prospect of global warming will drive down the consumption of fossil fuel sources. How we deal with radioactive waste is crucial in this context. From the start, the CEA has devoted considerable effort to management of the back end of the cycle. It furnished the process and techniques used in the La Hague facility to extract the re-usable materials, uranium and plutonium, and condition the resulting waste. Towards the end of the 1960s, it developed the process of vitrification for highly active waste that has become the world reference. French industry was responsible for the introduction of standard international practices with respect to waste conditioned during the processing of spent fuels. The specifications for the packages are approved by more than ten countries across the world. The law of 1991 specifically gave new momentum to the research into waste by requesting exploration not only into deep geological storage repositories, but also into reducing the quantity and toxicity of the long-life radioactive elements present in the waste by separation and transmutation and studying their conditioning for long-term disposal. Over the past ten years, all of the above-mentioned research has been conducted by CEA and ANDRA in close collaboration with partners from industry (EDF, COGEMA, FRAMATOME-ANP), with the CNRS and various universities. A review of the situation ten years on indicates a number of significant results that have changed the prospects for nuclear waste management. The paper focus on separation and transmutation R&D programme and main results over these ten last years. The massive research programme on enhanced separation, conducted by CEA and supported by broad international co-operation, has recently achieved some vital progress. Based on real solutions derived from the La Hague process, the CEA demonstrated the lab-scale feasibility of extracting minor actinides and some fission products (I, Cs and Tc) using an hydrometallurgical process that can be extrapolated on the industrial scale. The CEA also conducted programmes proving the technical feasibility of the elimination of minor actinides and fission products by transmutation: fabrication of
Ecological divergence promotes the evolution of cryptic reproductive isolation

Speciation can involve the evolution of ‘cryptic’ reproductive isolation that occurs after copulation but before hybrid offspring are produced. Because such cryptic barriers to gene exchange involve post-mating sexual interactions, analyses of their evolution have focused on sexual conflict or traditional sexual selection. Here, we show that ecological divergence between populations of herbivorous walking sticks is integral to the evolution of cryptic reproductive isolation. Low female fitness following between-population mating can reduce gene exchange between populations, thus acting as a form of cryptic isolation. Female walking sticks show reduced oviposition rate and lower lifetime fecundity following between-population versus within-population mating, but only for mating between populations using different host-plant species. Our results indicate that even inherently sexual forms of reproductive isolation can evolve as a by-product of ecological divergence and that post-mating sexual interactions do not necessarily evolve independently of the ecological environment.
An empirical study of clone density evolution and developer cloning tendency

Code clones commonly occur during software evolution. They impact the effort of software development and maintenance, and therefore they need to be monitored. We present a large-scale empirical study (237 open-source Java projects maintained by 500 individuals) that investigates how the number of clones changes throughout software evolution, as well as the tendency of individual developers to introduce clones. Our results will set a point-of-reference against which development teams can compare and, if needed, adjust.
Diagnostic signs of induction motor broken rotor bars in electromotive force signal

A diagnostic coefficient, being the function of the average value of wavelet-decomposition coefficients sum for medium-frequency domain is proposed. A method for its decomposition with the use of the theory of reverse z-transform is worked out. The proposed method made it possible to specify diagnostic signs of IM broken rotor bars in the motor self-running-out mode and determine the degree of the rotor breakage.
Automatic identification of magnetic clouds and cloud-like regions at 1 AU: occurrence rate and other properties

Abstract. A scheme is presented whose purpose is twofold: (1) to enable the automatic identification of an interplanetary magnetic cloud (MC) passing Earth from real-time measurements of solar wind magnetic field and plasma quantities or (2) for on-ground post-data collection MC identification ("detection" mode). In the real-time ("prediction") mode the scheme should be applicable to data from a spacecraft upstream of Earth, such as ACE, or to that of any near real-time field and plasma monitoring platform in the solar wind at/near 1AU. The initial identification of a candidate MC-complex is carried out by examining proton plasma beta, degree of small-scale smoothness of the magnetic field's directional change, duration of a candidate structure, thermal speed, and field strength. In a final stage, there is a test for large-scale B-field smoothness within the candidate regions that were identified in the first stage. The scheme was applied to WIND data over the period 1995 through mid-August of 2003 (i.e. over 8.6 years), in order to determine its effectiveness in identifying MC passages of any type (i.e. N S, S N, all S, all N, etc. types). (N S refers to the B component of the magnetic field going from north (+) to south (-) in GSE coordinates. ) The distribution of these MC types for WIND is provided. The results of the scheme are compared to WIND MCs previously identified by visual inspection (called MFI MCs) with relatively good agreement, in the sense of capturing a large percentage of MFI MCs, but at the expense of finding a large percentage of "false positives". The scheme is shown to be able to find some previously ignored MCs among the false positives. It should be effective in helping to identify in real time most N S MCs for magnetic storm forecasting. The N S type of MC is expected to be most prevalent in solar cycle 24, which should start around 2007. The scheme is likely to be applicable to solar wind measurements taken well within 1 AU to well beyond it. Keywords. Interplanetary physics (Interplanetary magnetic fields; Solar wind plasma) – Magnetospheric physics (Solar wind-magnetosphere interactions)
Scrubbing away transients and jiggling around the permanent: long survival of FPGA systems through evolutionary self-repair

The jiggling architecture extending TMR+scrubbing is shown to mitigate FPGA transient and permanent faults using low overhead. Mission operation is never interrupted. The repair circuitry is sufficiently small that a pair could mutually repair each other. A minimal evolutionary algorithm is used during permanent fault self-repair. Reliability analysis of the studied case shows the system has a 0.99 probability of surviving 17 times the mean time to local permanent fault arrival. Such a system would be 0.99 probable to survive 100 years with one fault every 6 years.
Pareto Optimal Scheduling for Synchronous Data Flow Graphs on Heterogeneous Multiprocessor

Streaming applications usually run on heterogeneous multiprocessor platforms and are required to have a high throughput, which in turn may increase the energy consumption. A trade-off between these two criteria is important for a system. Synchronous data flow graphs (SDFGs) are widely used to model streaming applications. In this paper, we propose a paralleled Pareto optimal scheduling method (PPOS) for SDFGs on heterogeneous multiprocessors. It deals with both time arrangement and processor allocation of computations. PPOS is an exact method to chart the Pareto space of energy consumption and throughput, and to find all Pareto optimal schedules of a system model. An approximation technique is presented to further increase the scalability of our methods. Our experiments are carried out on a practical multimedia application with different configurations and hundreds of synthesis graphs. The results show that the proposed methods are capable of dealing with large-scale models.
Fuzzy simulation of pedestrian walking path considering local environmental stimuli

Pedestrian steering activity is a perception-based decision making process that involves interaction with the surrounding environment and insight into environmental stimuli. There are many stimuli within the environment that influence pedestrian wayfinding behaviour during walking activities. However, compelling factors such as individual physical and psychological characteristics and trip intention cause the behaviour become a very fuzzy concept. In this paper pedestrian steering behaviour is modelled using a fuzzy logic approach. The objective of this research is to simulate pedestrian walking paths in indoor public environments during normal and non-panic situations. The proposed algorithm introduces a fuzzy logic framework to predict the impact of perceived attractive and repulsive stimuli, within the pedestrian's field of view, on movement direction. Environmental stimuli are quantified using the social force method. The algorithm is implemented in a simulated area of an office corridor consist of a printer and exit door. Stochastic simulation using the proposed fuzzy algorithm generated realistic walking trajectories, contour map of dynamic change of environmental effects in each step of movement and high flow areas in the corridor.
Transient effects in high-Q whispering gallery mode resonators: Modelling and applications

We analyse the transient transmission response of a high quality (Q) factor whispering gallery mode resonator when the probe laser frequency is rapidly swept across the resonance. The detailed comparison with a simple numerical linear model allows the coupling regime and the strength of the intracavity Rayleigh scattering to be measured. By including thermal nonlinearities in the model we show here that it can be possible to deduce the power launched in the high-Q mode by using this simple cavity ring-down spectroscopy technique.
PAC - Personality and Cognition: An Interactive System for Modelling Agent Scenarios

PAC is an interactive system for experimenting with scenarios of agents, where the agents are modelled as having both cognition and personality, as well as a physical realisation. The aim of the system is to provide an environment where scenarios can quickly and easily be built up, varying aspects of agent personality (or emotions) and agent cognition (plans and beliefs). This will allow us to experiment with different combinations of agents in different worlds. We can then investigate the effect of various parameters on emergent behaviour of the agent system.
Quantitative myocardial perfusion and coronary reserve in rats with 13N-ammonia and small animal PET: impact of anesthesia and pharmacologic stress agents.

UNLABELLED The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of 2 anesthetic agents on myocardial perfusion and coronary reserve in rats under resting and stress conditions with small animal PET. METHODS Twenty-four rest/stress studies were performed in 6 rats. Each animal received all 4 possible combinations of anesthetic agents (propofol, isoflurane) and pharmacologic stress agents (dobutamine, adenosine) to increase myocardial perfusion. For each stress or rest study, a 10-min dynamic acquisition was performed in list mode with 185 MBq of (13)N-NH(3). Data analysis was performed according to a 3-compartment myocardial blood flow model. Pharmacologic stimulation by either dobutamine or adenosine was performed to increase myocardial perfusion. RESULTS The perfusion values (mean +/- SD) for the various experimental conditions were as follows: propofol/dobutamine, 7.8 +/- 2.4 mL/g/min (rest, 3.7 +/- 0.8 mL/g/min; mean +/- SD); isoflurane/dobutamine, 9.3 +/- 3.1 mL/g/min (rest, 4.3 +/- 1.0 mL/g/min); propofol/adenosine, 6.8 +/- 1.7 mL/g/min (rest, 3.2 +/- 0.4 mL/g/min); and isoflurane/adenosine, 5.2 +/- 1.3 mL/g/min (rest, 3.7 +/- 0.7 mL/g/min). All perfusion data showed a significant increase after pharmacologic stimulation relative to baseline (P < 0.05). The coronary reserve (mean +/- SD) measured by PET was slightly lower with the combination of isoflurane and adenosine (1.4 +/- 0.5) than with propofol and adenosine (2.1 +/- 0.5). CONCLUSION Noninvasive quantitative measurements of myocardial perfusion in small animals at rest and during stress are feasible using PET. Evaluation of the coronary reserve must take into account the initial state of the anesthetized animal. The coronary reserve could be measured with both anesthetic agents using either dobutamine or adenosine stimulation.
Fault kinematics in northern Central America and coupling along the subduction interface of the Cocos Plate, from GPS data in Chiapas (Mexico), Guatemala and El Salvador

New GPS measurements in Chiapas (Mexico), Guatemala and El Salvador are used to constrain the fault kinematics in the North America (NA), Caribbean (CA) and Cocos (CO) plates triple junction area. The regional GPS velocity field is first analysed in terms of strain partitioning across the major volcano-tectonic structures, using elastic half-space modelling, then inverted through a block model. We show the dominant role of the Motagua Fault with respect to the Polochic Fault in the accommodation of the present-day deformation associated with the NA and CA relative motion. The NA/CA motion decreases from 18-22 mm yr−1 in eastern Guatemala to 14-20 mm yr−1 in central Guatemala (assuming a uniform locking depth of 14-28 km), down to a few millimetres per year in western Guatemala. As a consequence, the western tip of the CA Plate deforms internally, with ≃9 mm yr−1 of east-west extension (≃5 mm yr−1 across the Guatemala city graben alone). Up to 15 mm yr−1 of dextral motion can be accommodated across the volcanic arc in El Salvador and southeastern Guatemala. The arc seems to mark the northern boundary of an independent forearc sliver (AR), pinned to the NA plate. The inversion of the velocity field shows that a four-block (NA, CA, CO and AR) model, that combines relative block rotations with elastic deformation at the block boundaries, can account for most of the GPS observations and constrain the overall kinematics of the active structures. This regional modelling also evidences lateral variations of coupling at the CO subduction interface, with a fairly high-coupling (≃0.6) offshore Chiapas and low-coupling (≃0.25) offshore Guatemala and El Salvador.
ENSO and Pacific Decadal Variability in the Community Climate System Model Version 4

AbstractThis study presents an overview of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and Pacific decadal variability (PDV) simulated in a multicentury preindustrial control integration of the NCAR Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4) at nominal 1° latitude–longitude resolution. Several aspects of ENSO are improved in CCSM4 compared to its predecessor CCSM3, including the lengthened period (3–6 yr), the larger range of amplitude and frequency of events, and the longer duration of La Nina compared to El Nino. However, the overall magnitude of ENSO in CCSM4 is overestimated by ~30%. The simulated ENSO exhibits characteristics consistent with the delayed/recharge oscillator paradigm, including correspondence between the lengthened period and increased latitudinal width of the anomalous equatorial zonal wind stress. Global seasonal atmospheric teleconnections with accompanying impacts on precipitation and temperature are generally well simulated, although the wintertime deepening of the Al.
Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management

SYSTEMS. Our Changing Concept of the World. Reflections on Systems and Their Models. Growth versus Development. Toward a System of Systems Concepts. Beating the System. PLANNING. The Nature of Planning. Alternative Types of Planning. Problem Treatments. Mess Management. Ends Planning. @aMission Statements. Creativity and Constraints. APPLICATIONS. Consumer Design. Education. @aNever Let Your Schooling Interfere with Your Education. Crime. The Effect of Advertising on Sales: A Study of Relations. On Pairs and Trios: The Smallest Social Systems. Why People Drink: Toward Understanding Objectives. Corporate Perestroika: The Internal Market Economy. Design of Management Systems. SCIENCE. The Nature of Science and Methodology. Objectivity. Rationality. The Future of Operational Research Is Past. Epilogue: The Role of Business in a Democratic Society. Index.
Evaluating the Impact of Distance Learning Support Systems on the Learning Experience of MBA Students in a Global Context.

This paper reports the findings from an investigation into the distance learning support systems of a UK University’s overseas MBA programme. This programme is provided to several countries around the world in alliance with the overseas’ local higher educational institutions (HEIs), and is delivered primarily via online courses, but also with periods of face-to-face teaching by both UK and local staff. The aim of the research was to evaluate the learning support mechanisms that are used to deliver this programme overseas, and to determine their impact on the learning experience of the MBA students. The primary research method was questionnaire surveys which were conducted over two periods: April July 2008, and January March 2009. The first survey showed a high level of satisfaction with the MBA programme as delivered, but also indicated areas that could see further improvement. The impacts of programme changes were examined in the second survey which revealed students’ improved satisfaction with the programme after the implementation of the changes in the programme support systems. The outcomes of this research have not only helped improve the learning support systems and enhanced the quality of this particular programme, but could also help provide guidelines for other HEIs that offer, or intend to offer, blended learning courses globally.