Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of heavy metal immobilisation using geopolymerization techniques-A review

Every year, substantial amount of waste materials containing toxic substances is produced throughout the world, which causes serious damage to the environment and poses threat to human health. Among available techniques of immobilisation of toxic elements in harmful by-products, geopolymerisation is considered as an effective approach to deal with many environmental issues. Geopolymer binders have long been recognised to have great potential in immobilisation of hazardous wastes due to its advantages over Portland cement based binders. A profound knowledge of how hazardous elements are immobilised by geopolymer binders is necessary for achieving effective waste management strategies. This paper provides some important aspects of geopolymer materials regarding the immobilisation mechanisms and factors influencing the immobilisation efficiency, which are necessary to carry out further research on addressing the hazardous waste immobilisation.
Philosophical Roots in Relation to Nurturing Physical Literacy

This study considers the implications for teachers of physical education of adopting physical literacy as the focus of their work. These implications arise from the philosophical underpinning of the concept, from the definition of physical literacy and are in line with the mission of the International Physical Literacy Association. In the first section of this study, recommendations stemming from the philosophical roots of the concept will be outlined in brief. The other three sections will demonstrate how this philosophical basis and the definition of physical literacy should inform, first, lesson and unit content; second, teaching approaches; and, finally, curriculum planning. Unpacking the implications and what physical literacy looks like in practice is essential if teachers are to begin to incorporate physical literacy within their practice.
Prediction of tailings beach slopes and tailings flow profiles

Thickened and paste tailings disposal can provide a viable means to conserve water and reduce the risks associated with large volumes of water stored on the surface of tailings storage facilities. Thickened tailings deposition is a fast growing technology in the mining industry for both environmental and long term economical considerations. For surface deposition, the required beach slope and the tailings rheological properties often dictate the thickening process. The tailings beach slope is a key parameter in deposition requirements, which governs the storage capacity and the footprint of tailings management facilities. Prediction of the beach slope is fundamental for the design of non-segregating tailings stacks. But the existing tailings beach predictive models are not sufficiently developed as industrial standard applications. This paper presents a tailings deposition model and development of an analytical tool for prediction of tailings beach slopes. Dynamic profiles of tailings flows are also discussed. The mechanisms of tailings deposition and evolution of tailings beach slopes are investigated from both geotechnical and hydraulic engineering perspectives. The model is developed based on solid mechanics and fluid mechanics principles satisfying limit equilibrium conditions and energy conservation. The governing differential equations can be solved using a numerical technique and the solution scheme can readily be implemented in Fortran or other computer language. A design tool is developed using a Fortran code (BSLOPE), which takes into account rheological properties of tailings, operation parameters and site topographic conditions. The required properties of the tailings for beach slope predictions can be determined through laboratory testing and refined during operation. Case studies demonstrate that the modelling results are in agreement with field measurements. A sensitivity study was carried out to investigate the effects of the yield stress and discharge rate on the beach slope.
DEVELOPMENT OF A ROCKET ENGINE IGNITER USING THE CATALYTIC DECOMPOSITION OF HYDROGEN PEROXIDE

TNO has defined a new concept for a restartable rocket engine igniter which facilitates the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide monopropellant to generate hot, oxygen-rich gas. Such an igniter can offer advantages over existing igniter concepts: the reactivity of the hot oxygen aids in the ignition while the use of a monopropellant and catalyst allow a simple design. To demonstrate the concept, a propellant feed system and an igniter prototype were constructed, based on requirements derived from the new European Vinci rocket engine. Test results indicated complete decomposition of 87.5% concentrated hydrogen peroxide at a mass flow of 45 g/s, corresponding to a power output of 105 kW, one quarter of that of the Vinci igniter. It was demonstrated that it is possible for a full-scale igniter to meet realistic requirements for restartability and starting transient, while thermal analysis shows losses remain acceptable. This paper presents the design of the igniter prototype and the feed system, and the results of testing and analysis. The work was executed at TNO as part of a student Masters Graduation assignment from Delft University of Technology.
TITLE : Supply Chain Quality Relationship Management : managing triadic relationships towards improved performance outcomes AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE :

Purpose: Managers and academics are conscientious that companies compete as a larger network. They need to understand the role of network relationships towards improved supply chain performance; however, clear conceptual backgrounds are needed. For this purpose, this review focuses Relationship Management (relationship types and classifications, collaboration, triads) and Supply Chain Quality Management (SCQM) Performance, suggesting Supply Chain Quality Relationship Management (SCQRM) as a concept to guide future research on the management of relationships established within triads towards the achievement of improved quality performance. Methodology: A literature review paper is proposed to identify theoretical gaps and further research needs. Findings: Further Operations Management research in relationship management is needed to explore the effects of triads, relationship types and SCQM on operational performance. Future studies need to provide clear conceptualizations of relationship types. The role of collaboration in SC performance needs to be demonstrated, particularly when it comes to quality implementation. Empirical research is needed in SCQRM to understand the role of the different relationships established within networks and its SC performance consequences. Value of paper: To answer both managers and academics concerns, this paper combined operations and marketing literature, providing a clear theoretical conceptualization towards the understanding of network relationship management and clarifying the distinction between cooperation and collaboration. It also contributes to the literature by suggesting a new concept (SCQRM) to guide further research that attempts to clarify the nature of buyer-supplier-supplier relationships and its suggested performance links.
EFFECT OF TRINEXAPAC-ETHYL ON SUGARCANE VARIETIES EFEITO DO TRINEXAPAC-ETHYL EM VARIEDADES DE CANA-DE-AÇÚCAR

Growth regulators have been widely employed as maturation inducers in the sugarcane crop, as an agricultural strategy. However, the response of varieties to the use of these compounds has been poorly studied, mainly in cerrado (savannah-like biome) areas occupied by the crop. This study was carried out to examine the effects of trinexapac-ethyl on important morphological characteristics of sugarcane varieties. The experiment was set up as a randomized block design with a 4 × 2 factorial arrangement consisting of four varieties (RB83-5054, SP80-1816, RB96-6928, and RB85-5156) associated or unassociated with application of trinexapac-ethyl (375 g L of the a.i. ha), with four replicates. The ripener was applied at 126, 178, and 228 days after planting (DAP) the first-cycle sugarcane, using the dose of 125 g L a.i. ha per application. Upon harvest, which occurred at 243 DAP, we determined the number of stalks per meter, weight of 30 stalks without top, internode length, number of internodes per stalk, and yield of sugarcane stalks. Ripener application increased the number of stalks in varieties RB96-6928 and RB83-5054 and the weight of 30 stalks in varieties RB96-6928 and RB83-5054 and SP80-1816; reduced internode length in varieties RB85-5156 and RB83-5054; and increased stalk yield per hectare in varieties RB96-6928 and RB83-5054, but did not increase the number of internodes per stalk in any of the tested varieties. The variables number of stalks, stalk weight, internode length, and stalk yield responded in a genotype-dependent manner to the application of trinexapac-ethyl.
The Impact of Selected Parameters on the Performance of Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract The aim of the article was to compare the effectiveness of the selected routing protocols for wireless sensor networks taking into account a number of specific parameters as network troughput, packet error rate and message buffer capacity for different network topologies. The simulation research was conducted in open source OMNeT++ environment. In order to achieve the assumed requirements, four different-sized network topologies were established and AODV and DYMO routing protocols were adapted.
Meeting Transcription Using Asynchronous Distant Microphones

We describe a system that generates speaker-annotated transcripts of meetings by using multiple asynchronous distant microphones. The system is composed of continuous audio stream alignment, blind beamforming, speech recognition, speaker diarization, and system combination. While the idea of improving the meeting transcription accuracy by leveraging multiple recordings has been investigated in certain specific technology areas such as beamforming, our objective is to assess the feasibility of a complete system with a set of mobile devices and conduct a detailed analysis. With seven input audio streams, our system achieves a word error rate (WER) of 22.3% and a speaker-attributed WER (SAWER) of 26.7%, and comes within 3% of the close-talking microphone WER on non-overlapping speech. The relative gains in SAWER over a single-device system are 14.8%, 20.3%, and 22.4% for three, five, and seven microphones, respectively. The full system achieves a 13.6% diarization error rate, 10% of which are due to overlapped speech.
First-Person Vision Based Prediction of Information Seeking and Use Behavior in Library

We propose an automated method for predicting subject behaviors based on first-person vision in an area surrounding bookshelves. The proposal classifies each frame within a movie recorded using a head-mounted camera to the six primitive behaviors according to naive Bayes nearest-neighbor method (NBNN). A prediction experiment is conducted using two image sequences recorded by a head-mounted camera. The experimental results confirm that the average classification rates for NBNN with random sampling (including principal components analysis) are improved from 0.09 to 0.13 for one data set and from 0.03 to 0.08 for the other data set compared with the bag-of-features and support vector machine combination results.
Nährstofflimitierung in Calluna-Heiden Nordwestdeutschlands

Heathland management is an important tool with which to modify ecosystem impacts caused by atmospheric nutrient deposition. Since changes in nutrient availability as a result of management measures affect the outcomes of heathland succession and species competition, studies on this issue are important from both a nature conservation and management point of view. This study reports the effects of prescribed burning on nutrient availability in dry heathland soils and the nutrient content of the two competing heathland species Calluna vulgaris and Deschampsia flexuosa, with particular reference to N and P. We hypothesise that winter prescribed burning leads to additional N availability, which enhances the importance of P in the context of nutrient limitation in heathland ecosystems. In the nature reserve ‘‘Lueneburg Heath’’ (NW Germany) we examined the availability of nutrients in the humus horizons and in the leachate as well as the relevant C:element ratios in Calluna and Deschampsia before and after a burning experiment. Our results show that prescribed burning resulted in drastically increased NH4 + availability in the O-horizon. We observed only short-term effects (for NO3 , PO4 , Mg) and insignificant effects on the availability of other nutrients (K, Ca). As a consequence of an increased nutrient availability in the humus horizons and a limited nutrient uptake by plants after burning, leaching increased significantly for N, Ca, K, and Mg after burning treatment. No significant changes were found in the foliar C:N ratios for either species after prescribed burning, although Deschampsia showed an increased deficiency for all the other nutrients, particularly for P, as expressed by increased foliar C:P and N:P ratios. By contrast, the nutrient content of Calluna did not change significantly, suggesting that prescribed burning favours the competitive capacity of Calluna as against Deschampsia. We assume that water shortage as a result of changes in the microclimate was mainly responsible for the deterioration of the nutrient content of Deschampsia. This gives Calluna a competitive advantage, enabling it to out-compete Deschampsia on burned heathlands, with respect to the key factor P-limitation.
Ocean acidification and high irradiance stimulate the photo-physiological fitness, growth and carbon production of the Antarctic cryptophyte Geminigera cryophila

Abstract. Ecophysiological studies on Antarctic cryptophytes to assess whether climatic changes such as ocean acidification and enhanced stratification affect their growth in Antarctic coastal waters in the future are lacking so far. This is the first study that investigates the combined effects of the increasing availability of pCO2 (400 and 1000 µatm) and irradiance (20, 200 and 500 µmol photons m−2 s−1) on growth, elemental composition and photophysiology of the Antarctic cryptophyte Geminigera cryophila. Under ambient pCO2, this species was characterized by a pronounced sensitivity to increasing irradiance with complete growth inhibition at the highest light intensity. Interestingly, when grown under high pCO2 this negative light effect vanished, and it reached the highest rates of growth and particulate organic carbon production at the highest irradiance compared to the other tested experimental conditions. Our results for G. cryophila reveal beneficial effects of ocean acidification in conjunction with enhanced irradiance on growth and photosynthesis. Hence, cryptophytes such as G. cryophila may be potential winners of climate change, potentially thriving better in more stratified and acidic coastal waters and contributing in higher abundance to future phytoplankton assemblages of coastal Antarctic waters.
Solutions for Driving 2 DW / 1 FW Mobile Robots using Sliding-Mode Control

In this paper the behaviour of one mobile robot 2DW/1FW using sliding-mode control is analysed. An algorithm developed in Stage to achieve this result was used. Mapper3 is used for map design and the MobileSim environment is used for simulation. The robot used in this paper is Pioneer P3-DX, produced by Adept Mobile Robots. The analyses are focused on the behaviours of the robot according to certain parameters.
Compression of Very Sparse Column Oriented Data

Column oriented databases store columns contiguously on disk. The adjacency of values from the same domain leads to a reduced information entropy. Consequently, compression algorithms are able to achieve better results. Columns whose values have a high cardinality are usually compressed using variations of the LZ method. In this paper, we consider the usage of simpler methods based on run-length and symbols probability in scenarios where datasets are very sparse. Our experiments show in which cases the simple methods evaluated provide promising results.
ΔΟΣH ΜΑΣΤΟΥ ΣΤΗΝ ΨΗΦΙΑΚΗ ΜΑΣΤΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer in women, with almost 1.000. 000 cases, annually. In Greece, 4.500 new cases every year are reported, while it is estimated that 1 out of 8 women worldwide will develop breast cancer some time in her life. Due to the accelerating rate of the technological evolution and the need for the phenomenon, the mammography has evolved into the most common diagnostic tool for the early detection of breast cancer. However, the patient dose must be kept as low as reasonably achievable and it is inspected by the Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRLs). The purpose of this study is to obtain patient dose data from screening mammography examinations conducted at the University Hospital of Patras, in order to establish institutional DRLs and to compare them with the corresponding national and European values. Particularly, three hundred women, 40-80 years old, participated in the study. All mammographic examinations were performed with a Hologic Selenia Dimensions digital mammography unit. The patient characteristics (age, weight, height), exposure and technical parameters (tube voltage, tube load, target/filter material, projections, compressed breast thickness (CBT), compression force), entrance surface dose (ESD) and average glandular dose (AGD) were recorded. Moreover, data analysis and study were conducted relating the dose with the other parameters and then the DRLs were estimated for CBT 55-65 mm for all projections, craniocaudal (CC) and oblique (MLO), as the 75 percentile of dose distributions. The local dose levels proved to be lower than the corresponding national and European values. The DRLs reported, could contribute in the performance evaluation of the local practice and in the effort for further optimization and radiation protection in screening mammography. ‘’Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare. ’’ Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
Towards Automatic Suicide Risk Assessment

Background: Suicide has been considered as an important public health issue for years, and is one of the main causes of death worldwide. Despite prevention strategies being applied, the rate of suicide has not changed substantially over the past decades. Suicide risk has proven extremely difficult to assess for medical specialists, and traditional methodologies deployed have been ineffective. Advances in machine learning make it possible to attempt to predict suicide with the analysis of relevant data aiming to inform clinical practice. Aims: (a) test our artificial intelligence based, referral-centric methodology in the context of the NHS, (b) determine whether statistically relevant results can be derived from data related to previous suicides, and (c) develop ideas for various exploitation strategies. Method: The analysis used data of patients who died by suicide in the period 2013-2016 including both structured data and free-text medical notes, necessitating the deployment of state of the art machine learning and text mining methods. Results and Conclusions: The results of this pilot study indicate that machine learning shows promise to predict within a specified period which people are most at risk of taking their own life at the time of referral to a mental health service.
Seeking variety across temporary clusters : The effect of conference attendance diversity on firm-level innovation

This paper builds on the recent notion that scientific and professional conferences act as temporary clusters. We seek to identify the effects of knowledge-related and geographic diversity across the temporary clusters attended by a firm on its innovation performance, and how this relationship is moderated by the firm? s absorptive capacity. Our findings show that, overall, both knowledge-related and geographic diversity across temporary clusters have an inverted U-shape effect on a firm? s innovation performance. However, the extent to which a firm experiences the benefits and costs associated with both types of diversity depends on its level of absorptive capacity. Our findings contribute to the literature on temporary clusters by highlighting their contingent value as channels through which firms access knowledge.
EasyChair Preprint No 684 Quasi-Monte Carlo Flows

Normalizing flows provide a general approach to construct flexible variational posteriors. The parameters are learned by stochastic optimization of the variational bound, but inference can be slow due to high variance of the gradient estimator. We propose Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) flows which reduce the variance of the gradient estimator by one order of magnitude. First results show that QMC flows lead to faster inference and samples from the variational posterior cover the target space more evenly.
Spatial Agglomeration and Superstar Firms: Firm-level Patterns from Europe and U.S

We characterize the agglomeration patterns of industries and plants in Europe, distinguishing Eurozone countries and the U.S. Using a micro-level index, we quantify the degree of geographic concentration in industrial activities and explore how firm heterogeneity, industry attributes, and location fundamentals jointly explain the observed patterns. Our analysis shows that there is a clear hub-and-spoke structure in the geographic distribution. Larger and more productive plants, especially the superstars of each industry, are more centred than their smaller, less productive counterparts. The greater agglomeration surrounding superstars is particularly pronounced in the Eurozone but not present in the rest of Europe. Location fundamentals also play an important role and can sometimes mitigate the importance of agglomeration economies around large firms. Regions with different levels of economic development, including in education and technology, exhibit distinct agglomeration patterns. The findings suggest heterogeneity in the ability of regional policies to build superstar-centred industry clusters.