Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE ROLE OF APPEARANCE IN SORORITY MEMBERSHIP SELECTION by JENNIFER

by JENNIFER REBECCA MILLER (Under the Direction of Soyoung Kim) ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to determine the significance that clothing and appearance has on impression formation and hence, membership selection during the sorority recruitment process. Personal characteristics such as self-monitoring, materialism, fashion clothing involvement, proximity of clothing to self, and self-esteem behaviors were studied and tested as predictors and influences of impression formation. A total of 140 surveys were completed by sorority members. Pearson Correlation analyses were used to test the relationships among the variables. Results indicated significant relationships between the individual independent variables (self-monitoring, materialism, fashion clothing involvement, and proximity of clothing to self) and impression formation as they relate to clothing and appearance. Self-esteem characteristics had no considerable impact on impression formation. Regression analyses were used to determine which variables had significant influence on membership selection. Fashion clothing involvement, materialism, proximity of clothing to self, and impression formation were found to most significantly impact sorority membership selection.
Unstable Slip Pulses and Earthquake Nucleation as a Nonequilibrium First-Order Phase Transition.

The onset of rapid slip along initially quiescent frictional interfaces, the process of "earthquake nucleation," and dissipative spatiotemporal slippage dynamics play important roles in a broad range of physical systems. Here we first show that interfaces described by generic friction laws feature stress-dependent steady-state slip pulse solutions, which are unstable in the quasi-1D approximation of thin elastic bodies. We propose that such unstable slip pulses of linear size L^{*} and characteristic amplitude are "critical nuclei" for rapid slip in a nonequilibrium analogy to equilibrium first-order phase transitions and quantitatively support this idea by dynamical calculations. We then perform 2D numerical calculations that indicate that the nucleation length L^{*} exists also in 2D and that the existence of a fracture mechanics Griffith-like length L_{G}
Atomic Charges, Molecular Orbital Analysis and Effect of Metal Electrodes on 1, 2-di (biphenyl-4-yl) Ethyne Molecular Nanowire by Quantum Chemical Calculations

The atomic charges and molecular orbital analysis of 1, 2-di (biphenyl-4-yl)ethyne molecule has been studied by using quantum chemical calculations. The entire study has been carried out with density functional theory (DFT) coupled with Bader’s theory of atoms in molecules using Gaussian09 program package. The molecule has been analyzed by substituting thiol, Au and Pt atoms with both ends of the free molecule, in which thiol atoms acts as linker whereas Au and Pt atoms act as electrodes. Atomic charges of the free molecule as well as all the substituted molecules have been compared with MPA and NPA charges. The HOMO-LUMO gap (HLG) of the free molecule, S, Au and Pt substituted molecules are found to be 3.92, 3.73, 2.20 and 0.08 eV respectively. The existence of small HLG of Au or Pt substituted molecules enhances the conductivity.
A study on the correlation between dissipated hysteretic energy and seismic performance

The hysteretic energy dissipated by systems undergoing quasi-static or dynamic loading is often thought to represent a useful measure of their performance when subjected to earthquake excitation. In general, fuller hysteresis loops mean higher seismic energy removal from the structure, which is logically taken to imply better performance when comparing systems with similar strength. However, such observations are typically based on quasi-static loading tests. Dynamic loading conditions differ as energy input and energy dissipation are intimately related with the details of the system’s hysteresis, in ways that often defy current intuition. Using incremental dynamic analysis on story-level oscillators with varying hysteresis characteristics, we can map this connection in detail. Structural response, as measured in terms of maximum or residual deformation, is shown to have little connection to the energy absorption. Therefore, hysteretic energy dissipation cannot quantitatively measure seismic performance but perhaps only serve as a general indicator.
INFLUENCE OF THE REINFORCEMENT VOLUME FRACTION ON IMPACT ENERGY VALUES OF THE CAST Al-SiCp COMPOSITES

The effect of Mg content in matrix and volume entail of SiC particles in metal matrix composite on impact toughness is analysed. Cast AlMg alloy, with 3%, 5% and 7% Mg content is used as metal matrix. Reinforcement content of 2%, 5% and 10%, with an average particle size of 30 μm, had been applied. Composite is obtained by whirlpool casting method. The impact energy of metal matrix composite with AlMg matrix decreases with increasing SiC content and with decreasing Mg content. The highest total energy is found in MMC AlMg7 with 2% Si C (14,7-17,5 J), and the lowest one in MMC AlMg3 with 10% SiC (3,7-4,1 J). The values obtained for metal matrix composite are significantly less than the values for corresponding alloy, up to 40 to 50%
Optical response of small magnesium clusters

We predict strong enhancement in the photoabsorption of small Mg clusters in the region of 4–5 eV due to the resonant excitation of the plasmon oscillations of cluster electrons. Photoabsorption spectra for neutral Mg clusters consisting of up to N = 11 atoms have been calculated using an ab initio framework based on the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). The nature of predicted resonances has been elucidated by comparison of the results of the an ab initio calculations with the results of the classical Mie theory. The splitting of the plasmon resonances caused by the cluster deformation is analysed. The reliability of the calculation scheme used has been proved by performing the test calculation for a number of sodium clusters and the comparison of the results obtained with the results of other methods and experiment.
Analysis of Land Surface Deformation Gradient by Dinsar

The progressive development of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems diversify the exploitation of the generated images by these systems in different applications of geoscience. Detection and monitoring surface deformations, procreated by various phenomena had benefited from this evolution and had been realized by interferometry (InSAR) and differential interferometry (DInSAR) techniques. Nevertheless, spatial and temporal decorrelations of the interferometric couples used, limit strongly the precision of analysis results by these techniques. In this context, we propose, in this work, a methodological approach of surface deformation detection and analysis by differential interferograms to show the limits of this technique according to noise quality and level. The detectability model is generated from the deformation signatures, by simulating a linear fault merged to the images couples of ERS1 / ERS2 sensors acquired in a region of the Algerian south.
INNOVATION, FIRM SIZE AND MARKET STRUCTURE: SCHUMPETERIAN HYPOTHESES AND SOME NEW THEMES

Innovation. firm size and market structure . 37 Innovation and firm size . 37 Innovation and market structure . 39 Summary and an assessment . 41
Long-Term Effect of Prescribed Burning Regimes and Logging on Coarse Woody Debris in South-Eastern Australia

Coarse woody debris (CWD) is vital within forest ecosystems for an array of fauna. Forest management practices, such as prescribed burning and logging, influence the creation or loss of CWD. We examined the effect of long-term prescribed burning and logging on (i) the abundance of hollow-bearing CWD, (ii) the volume of CWD in different decay classes, (iii) the probability of hollow presence, and (iv) the size of hollows at a long-term (28 years) experimental site. Volume of CWD in moderate and advanced stages of decomposition decreased with increasing fire frequency while moderately decomposed material was higher in logged plots. The likelihood of a hollow being present increased with diameter and decreased when CWD was extensively charred. Hollow size was smaller when material was externally charred but larger when charring affected a pre-existing hollow. Increases in moderately decayed CWD reflect a pulse input of unmerchantable timber following the one-off logging event 28 years ago, though future loss of mature trees may lead to reduced input rates of woody debris in the future. Charring effects on hollow formation, increasing hollow size but decreasing overall presence, demonstrate the complex effect of fire on this resource. Our research highlights the need to develop a fundamental understanding of CWD input and loss dynamics in response to fire and logging in order to predict changes to this resource under a broad range of management scenarios.
Word-embeddings Italian semantic spaces: A semantic model for psycholinguistic research

Distributional semantics has been for long a source of successful models in psycholinguistics, permitting to obtain semantic estimates for a large number of words in an automatic and fast way. However, resources in this respect remain scarce or limitedly accessible for languages different from English. The present paper describes WEISS (Word-Embeddings Italian Semantic Space), a distributional semantic model based on Italian. WEISS includes models of semantic representations that are trained adopting state-of-the-art word-embeddings methods, applying neural networks to induce distributed representations for lexical meanings. The resource is evaluated against two test sets, demonstrating that WEISS obtains a better performance with respect to a baseline encoding word associations. Moreover, an extensive qualitative analysis of the WEISS output provides examples of the model potentialities in capturing several semantic phenomena. Two variants of WEISS are released and made easily accessible via web through the SNAUT graphic interface.
Ultrasonics in the Field of Conducting Polymers : A Review

A critical review on the important role of ultrasonic in the field of conducting polymers is presented in this paper. The literature survey gives many positive reports regarding the effect of ultrasonic on the polymerization of conducting polymers. The use of ultrasonic irradiation while polymerization gives enhanced electrical conductivity, morphology and (crystallinity) structure of conducting polymers. During the last thirty years, many workers have studied aqueous and non-aqueous polymer solutions by ultrasonic methods and have tried to get information on the behavior of polymeric chains in an ultrasonic field. Some reports give the detailed account of the study of ultrasonic velocity and attenuation in polypyrrole solutions, and the variation of these quantities with concentration and temperature. Also the ultrasonic velocity and attenuation in conducting polypyrrole in the form of pellets of fine powder have been investigated. Chuang Peng et al have reported that due to the low dispersibility of CNTs in water, ultrasound has been applied to achieve a better dispersion of CNTs in aqueous solution before and during chemical polymerization. Their results have shown that the crystallinity of polyaniline synthesized using the ultrasonic method is much higher than that synthesized by stirring. However, polyaniline with higher crystallinity does not possess higher conductivity. It has also been reported that the polymerization of 3,4ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) by Iron(III) chloride in 1 M sulfuric acid is accelerated by the irradiation of ultrasound, and thus results in higher yield; without changing the molecular bonding patterns of PEDOT, the ultrasound caused emulsification by the rapid motion of the molecules which resulted in efficient mixing. The effects of the ultrasound on the polymerization causes rapid mixing in multiphase systems, the formation of free radicals, and mechanical shocks. The ultrasonic irradiation has considerable effect on the morphology and conductivity of blends obtained. The conductive blends that were synthesized under ultrasonic irradiation showed higher conductivity as compared to the blends synthesized via magnetic stirring. Maximiano V. Ramos et al have reported the preparation of conducting polymers with carbon black filler by ultrasonic mixing for gas sensor application. The composite sensors were exposed to different types of gases and the resulting changes in the resistivity were recorded. The effects of ultrasonic mixing and sensitivity of the composite sensor to various organic gases have been examined at length.
Dictionary Learning for Audio Inpainting

Recordings of audio often show undesirable alterations, mostly the presence of noise or the corruption of short parts. Clipping, or saturation, is one of such alterations. Several techniques have been developed in order to attempt the reversal of this corruption, achieving good but perfectible results. One of these techniques, developed in the METISS project-team, involves the use of sparse representations, a popular model in signal processing. The principle of sparse representations is to describe a high-dimensional data vector as a linear combination of a few prototype vectors, called atoms, selected from a large corpus called the dictionary. Building upon this technique, the aim of this internship is to define if and how can machine learning be applied on the dictionary in order to further enhance the results: what to learn on, with what learning algorithm, and with what kind of signals does it work?
On the instrumental value of hypothetical and counterfactual thought

People often engage in “offline simulation”, considering what would happen if they performed certain actions in the future, or had performed different actions in the past. Prior research shows that these simulations are biased towards actions a person considers to be good—i.e., likely to pay off. We ask whether, and why, this bias might be adaptive. Through computational experiments we compare five agents who differ only in the way they engage in offline simulation, across a variety of different environment types. Broadly speaking, our experiments reveal that simulating actions one already regards as good does in fact confer an advantage in downstream decision making, although this general pattern interacts with features of the environment in important ways. We contrast this bias with alternatives such as simulating actions whose outcomes are instead uncertain.
Networked Control Systems Toolbox: Robust Stability Analysis Made Easy*

This paper presents the first prototype of a toolbox developed to automate stability analysis for networked control systems. Specifically, the toolbox can be employed to efficiently verify if a linear time-invariant (LTI) plant and an LTI controller interconnected with a shared network is robust to certain network imperfections. The purpose is to make the theory available in the literature readily accessible to and applicable for the general control community. Additionally, the software is structured in such a way that it is possible to incorporate custom models or use custom stability/performance analysis conditions, enabling the control community to contribute to the toolbox.
Navigation Query Security through Privacy Preservation and Cryptography in VANETs

: Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is an autonomous network with dynamic topology where moving vehicles exchange information regarding their position with other vehicles. Depending on the position information of other nodes, nodes can determine their actions like change in route or change in speed and so on. Many navigation methods are provided in order to guide drivers to reach destination. Providing safety to the drivers is a crucial aspect of this paper. In this paper, VANET security is provided by making sure that the nodes are authenticated through a key exchange with server using intermediate road side units (RSU). Instead of sending the complete query at a time, navigation queries are protected by breaking them down into fragments. The identity of the sender is hidden by encrypting it with the symmetric key. The overhead into the communication framework is not added in the system, this can be shown through the simulation results and nodes can manage a good packet delivery ratio with low latency. The system also helps the nodes to maintain their speed by correctly adjusting speed relative to navigation queries.
smoke plume size , shape , reflectance , and age based on 2001-2009 MISR imagery of Borneo Permalink

Land clearing for crops, plantations and grazing results in anthropogenic burning of tropical forests and peatlands in Indonesia, where images of fire-generated aerosol plumes have been captured by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) since 2001. Here we analyze the size, shape, optical properties, and age of distinct fire-generated plumes in Borneo from 2001–2009. The local MISR overpass at 10:30 a.m. misses the afternoon peak of Borneo fire emissions, and may preferentially sample longer plumes from persistent fires burning overnight. Typically the smoke flows with the prevailing southeasterly surface winds at 3– 4 m s−1, and forms ovoid plumes whose mean length, height, and cross-plume width are 41 km, 708 m, and 27 % of the plume length, respectively. 50 % of these plumes have length between 24 and 50 km, height between 523 and 993 m and width between 18 % and 30 % of plume length. Length and cross-plume width are lognormally distributed, while height follows a normal distribution. Borneo smoke plume heights are similar to previously reported plume heights, yet Borneo plumes are on average nearly three times longer than previously studied plumes. This could be due to sampling or to more persistent fires and greater fuel loads in peatlands than in other tropical forests. Plume area (median 169 km 2, with 25th and 75th percentiles at 99 km 2 and 304 km2, respectively) varies exponentially with length, though for most plumes a linear relation provides a good approximation. The MISR-estimated plume optical properties involve greater uncertainties than the geometric properties, and show patterns consistent with smoke aging. Optical depth increases by 15–25 % in the down-plume direction, consistent with hygroscopic growth and nucleation overwhelming the effects of particle dispersion. Both particle single-scattering albedo and top-of-atmosphere reflectance peak about halfway downplume, at values about 3 % and 10 % greater than at the origin, respectively. The initially oblong plumes become brighter and more circular with time, increasingly resembling smoke clouds. Wind speed does not explain a significant fraction of the variation in plume geometry. We provide a parameterization of plume shape that can help atmospheric models estimate the effects of plumes on weather, climate, and air quality. Plume age, the age of smoke furthest down-plume, is lognormally distributed with a median of 2.8 h (25th and 75th percentiles at 1.3 h and 4.0 h), different from the median ages reported in other studies. Intercomparison of our results with previous studies shows that the shape, height, optical depth, and lifetime characteristics reported for tropical biomass burning plumes on three continents are dissimilar and distinct from the same characteristics of non-tropical wildfire plumes.
UNITIZED, NONSELECTIVE CUTTING OF IN VITRO WATERMELON

Unitized, nonselective mass cutting of Stage II Citrullus lanatus cv. Charlee (watermelon) plant tissue cultures has been achieved with various configurations and sizes of wire cutter devices. Time studies revealed that the wire cutters increased the productivity of the cutting function over conventional scalpel and forceps by a factor of 14. Total transfer productivity, including the manual functions of removing tissue from an initial culture vessel and filling (sorting and placing cut tissue segments) new vessels, was increased by a factor of 1.8. The square grid-type cutting devices yielded from 48 to 59% as many viable bud clusters per culture vessel as hand cutting and from 65 to 95% as much tissue fresh weight. An oriented-cell configuration of wire cutter actually increased tissue fresh weight about 20% over hand cutting. The simplicity of construction and quality of material of the wire cutter render it readily autoclavable and highly flexible to function both as an aid to small operations and as an element in more sophisticated mechanical devices for larger operations.
INSIGHTS INTO ASTROPHYLLITE-GROUP MINERALS. II. CRYSTAL CHEMISTRY

The crystal chemistry of 20 specimens of astrophyllite-group minerals from seven localities has been studied using a combination of single-crystal X-ray analysis of the structure and electron-microprobe analyses. Members of the astrophyllite group are triclinic ( P 1) and monoclinic ( C2/c or A 2) heterophyllosilicates with the general formula A 2 BC 7 D 2 T 8O26(OH)4 X 0–1, where A = [10]–[13]K, Rb, Cs, Na, H3O+, H2O, or □; B = [10]Na or Ca; C = [6]Mn, Fe2+, Fe3+, Na, Mg, or Zn; D = [6]Ti, Nb, or Zr; T = Si and Al, and X = F, OH, O, or □. The structure consists of two composite sheets, a heterogeneous ( H ) sheet and a sheet of octahedra ( O ), stacked along [001] in a 2:1 ratio. These 2:1 composite layers are bonded via a shared apical D ϕ6 anion through an interlayer containing an ordered array of K and Na, resulting in a layered HOH structure reminiscent of the TOT structure in 2:1 phyllosilicates. There are four crystallographically distinct M O6 octahedra in the O sheet; they host Mn, Fe2+, Fe3+, Na, Mg and Zn. The M (1) octahedron, the largest and least distorted within the O sheet, is host predominantly to Mn and Fe2+, with significant Na (up to 0.274 apfu ). The M (2) octahedron is highly distorted and contains predominantly Mn and Fe2+, whereas the M (3) and M (4) octahedra are the smallest and are occupied by Mn, Fe2+, Fe3+, Mg and Zn. The H sheet consists of open-branched zweier [100] single [Si4O12]8− chains cross-linked by corner-sharing D ϕ6 octahedra in triclinic species and kupletskite- Ma 2 b 2 c , and D O5 polyhedra in magnesium astrophyllite. Distortion of the D ϕ6 octahedron is minimized by (Nb,Zr) ⇔ Ti substitution, resulting in displacement of the cation toward the center of the octahedron. The composition of the [Si4O12]8− chains does not vary; there is essentially no Al, and Mossbauer spectroscopy did not indicate the presence of [4]Fe3+. Lateral fit of the O and H sheets is accomplished primarily by: (1) flattening of O -sheet octahedra, (2) tilting of the H -sheet tetrahedra out of the (001) plane, and (3) elongation or thickening of the tetrahedra along [001].