Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Money supply, inflation and output: an empirically comparative analysis for Vietnam and China

PurposeThis study focuses on analyzing the relation between money supply, inflation and output in Vietnam and China.Design/methodology/approachUsing the error correction model and the vector autoregression model (ECM and VAR) and the canonical cointegration regression (CCR), the study shows similar patterns of these variable relations between the two economies.FindingsThe study points out the difference in the estimated coefficients between the two countries with different economic scales. While inflation in Vietnam is strongly influenced by expected inflation and output growth, inflation in China is strongly influenced by money supply growth and output growth.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical and comparative research on the relation between money supply, inflation and output for Vietnam and China. The study demonstrates that the relationship between money supply, inflation and output is still true in case of transition economies.
Comparative study : health research on traffic noise pollution vs. Technical research on traffic noise mitigation

Community awareness and the perception on the traffic noise related health impacts have increased significantly over the last decade resulting in a large volume of public inquiries flowing to Road Authorities for planning advice. Traffic noise management in the urban environment is therefore becoming a “social obligation”, essentially due to noise related health concerns. Although various aspects of urban noise pollution and mitigation have been researched independently, an integrated approach by stakeholders has not been attempted. Although the current treatment and mitigation strategies are predominantly handled by the Road Agencies, a concerted effort by all stakeholders is becoming mandatory for effective and tangible outcomes in the future. A research project is underway a RMIT University, Australia, led by the second author to consider the use of “hedonic pricing” for alternative noise amelioration treatments within the road reserve and outside the road reserve. The project aims to foster a full range noise abatement strategy encompassing source, path and noise receiver. The benefit of such a study would be to mitigate the problem where it is most effective and would defuse traditional “authority” boundaries to produce the optimum outcome. The project is conducted in collaboration with the Department of Main Roads Queensland, Australia and funded by the CRC for Construction Innovation. As part of this study, a comprehensive literature search is currently underway to investigate the advancements in community health research, related to environmental noise pollution, and the advancements in technical and engineering research in mitigating the issue. This paper presents the outcomes of this work outlining state of the art, national and international good practices and gap analysis to identify major anomalies and developments.
THE ABET CAC ACCREDITATION: IS ACCREDITATION RIGHT FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS?

This paper addresses issues associated with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Computing Accreditation Commission (ABET CAC) accreditation process for information systems (IS) programs. The issues addressed will include ABET’s approach to standards and evaluation, the implications of IS as a social as well as natural science, the various target groups for which IS programs are designed, the dynamic nature of any IS curriculum, and the difference between IS and computer science. To approach these issues, we will discuss the ABET accreditation standards and process and conclude with some of our observations and recommendations for prospective programs. Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA was among the first group of programs accredited by ABET CAC. This paper is based on Robert Morris University experience with the accreditation process and visit conducted in the Fall of 2002, resulting in accreditation of the B.S. in Information Sciences and B.S. in Information Systems Management programs in July, 2003.
An Assessment of Flywheel High Power Energy Storage Technology for Hybrid Vehicles

An assessment has been conducted for the DOE Vehicle Technologies Program to determine the state of the art of advanced flywheel high power energy storage systems to meet hybrid vehicle needs for high power energy storage and energy/power management. Flywheel systems can be implemented with either an electrical or a mechanical powertrain. The assessment elaborates upon flywheel rotor design issues of stress, materials and aspect ratio. Twelve organizations that produce flywheel systems submitted specifications for flywheel energy storage systems to meet minimum energy and power requirements for both light-duty and heavy-duty hybrid applications of interest to DOE. The most extensive experience operating flywheel high power energy storage systems in heavy-duty and light-duty hybrid vehicles is in Europe. Recent advances in Europe in a number of vehicle racing venues and also in road car advanced evaluations are discussed. As a frame of reference, nominal weight and specific power for non-energy storage components of Toyota hybrid electric vehicles are summarized. The most effective utilization of flywheels is in providing high power while providing just enough energy storage to accomplish the power assist mission effectively. Flywheels are shown to meet or exceed the USABC power related goals (discharge power, regenerative power, specific power,more » power density, weight and volume) for HEV and EV batteries and ultracapacitors. The greatest technical challenge facing the developer of vehicular flywheel systems remains the issue of safety and containment. Flywheel safety issues must be addressed during the design and testing phases to ensure that production flywheel systems can be operated with adequately low risk. « less
The modelling of nematic liquid crystal phase devices

The implementation of nematic liquid crystal optical devices, which exploit the voltage dependent, optical path length modification of the electrical Freedrichsz transition, is presented. By combining refractive elements in a diffractive zone structure, efficient and flexible devices with relatively high refractive powers can be constructed. Continuously variable optical properties can be achieved by scaling the optical profile of the refractive elements and applying a phase correction to ensure that the transition between adjacent zones is an integral number of wavelength, hence a continuous optical profile is constructed. Two such devices are postulated; a variable deflection angle prism and a variable focal length lens, though the approach may be extended to other devices. The zones are addressed through combed electrode structures. The required voltage profile is produced by dropping the applied voltages across a shaped conductive strip. A sampling of the profile is transported along the length of the zone via discrete electrodes. In order to produce the required scalability and independent phase correction of the optical profile, it is necessary to restrict the design and operation of the electrodes to the approximately linear region of the response curve. Two-dimensional optical structures can either be achieved through the use of planar earth plates, to mask connections to the centre of the device, or by cascading devices with electrode structures open to connection at the edges. In order to predict the optical profiles of these and other devices, a model was constructed which describes the director orientation through a two-dimensioned electrode structure. The variational finite element method was employed to minimize the electrical Gibbs free energy of a liquid crystal cell, in order to find the equilibrium director orientation. A preliminary version of this model is presented which is restricted to rotation of the liquid crystal to within the plane of the solution.
System Analysis and Test Bed for an Air-Breathing Electric Propulsion System

An air-breathing electric propulsion system (RAM-EP) ingests the air of the residual atmosphere through a mechanical intake and uses it as propellant for an electric thruster. A system analysis is shown within this work to derive the main design drivers for a RAM-EP mission application. The small-scale inductive plasma generator IPG6-S of the University of Stuttgart is continually improved, and is used as a test bed for a RAM-EP system using an IPG source.
Proceedings of the 19th Australasian conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Entertaining User Interfaces

Welcome OZCHI 2007 - Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference Delegates: OZCHI is Australia and New Zealand's leading forum for collaboration in all areas of human-computer interaction. This is the annual conference for the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia (HFESA). Every paper has been reviewed by a minimum of three experts in the field computer-human interactions.
Channel tracking in SDMA-based multi-user MIMO-OFDM communications systems

Capacity of current and future high data rate wireless communications depend significantly on how well changes in the wireless channel are predicted and tracked. Generally, this can be estimated by transmitting known symbols. However, this increases overheads if the channel varies over time. Given today’s bandwidth demand and the increased necessity for mobile wireless devices, the contributions of this research are very significant. This study has developed a novel and efficient channel tracking algorithm that can recursively update the channel estimation for wireless broadband communications reducing overheads, therefore increasing the speed of wireless communication systems.
Ground Vehicle Acoustic Signal Processing Based on Biological Hearing Models

Abstract : This thesis presents a prototype vehicle acoustic signal classification system with low classification error and short processing delay. To analyze the spectrum of the vehicle acoustic signal, we adopt biologically motivated feature extraction models - cochlear filter and A1-cortical wavelet transform. The multi-resolution representation obtained from these two models is used in the later classification system. Different VQ based clustering algorithms are implemented and tested for real world vehicle acoustic signals. Among them, Learning VQ achieves the optimal Bayes classification performance, but its long search and training time make it not suitable for real time implementation. TSVQ needs a logarithmic search time and its tree structure naturally imitates the aggressive hearing in biological hearing systems, but it has a higher classification error. Finally, a high performance parallel TSVQ (PTSVQ) is introduced, which has classification performance close to the optimal LVQ, while maintains logarithmic search time. Experiments on ACIDS database show that both PTSVQ and LVQ achieve high classification rate. PTSVQ has additional advantages such as easy online training and insensitivity to initial conditions. All these features make PTSVQ the most promising candidate for practical system implementation.
Simulation of Shock-Induced Bubble Collapse with Application to Vascular Injury in Shockwave Lithotripsy

Shockwave lithotripsy is a noninvasive medical procedure wherein shockwaves are repeatedly focused at the location of kidney stones in order to pulverize them. Stone comminution is thought to be the product of two mechanisms: the propagation of stress waves within the stone and cavitation erosion. However, the latter mechanism has also been implicated in vascular injury. In the present work, shock-induced bubble collapse is studied in order to understand the role that it might play in inducing vascular injury. A high-order accurate, shock- and interface-capturing numerical scheme is developed to simulate the three-dimensional collapse of the bubble in both the free-field and inside a vessel phantom. The primary contributions of the numerical study are the characterization of the shock-bubble and shock-bubble-vessel interactions across a large parameter space that includes clinical shockwave lithotripsy pressure amplitudes, problem geometry and tissue viscoelasticity, and the subsequent correlation of these interactions to vascular injury. Specifically, measurements of the vessel wall pressures and displacements, as well as the finite strains in the fluid surrounding the bubble, are utilized with available experiments in tissue to evaluate damage potential. Estimates are made of the smallest injurious bubbles in the microvasculature during both the collapse and jetting phases of the bubble's life cycle. The present results suggest that bubbles larger than 1 μm in diameter could rupture blood vessels under clinical SWL conditions.
Recovery of reflexes at the elbow after surgery on severe brachial plexus injuries

The goal of this study is to quantify the recovery of spinal reflexes at the elbow after neurosurgical intervention in patients with brachial plexus injuries. So far, main focus was on the recovery of muscle force and little on sensory- and reflex system. As reflexes play an important role during normal movement, it is of interest to determine to what extend reflexes have been restored after surgery. Arm admittance (dynamic relationship between displacements in a response to forces) at endpoint level (hand) was estimated using force perturbations in two directions (horizontal) applied by a two-joint robotic manipulator. Three different task instructions were used to provoke different intrinsic and reflexive behavior, being a position task (PT), a relax task (RT) and a force task (FT) where the subject was required to minimize hand displacements, not react to the perturbations and minimize force deviations (being compliant) respectively. Ten patients with brachial plexus lesions participated in this experiment and were suffering from varying degrees of arm dysfunction. All had successful recovery for the biceps (MRC grade 3 and higher) after surgical nerve repair of the n. musculocutaneous. Estimated intrinsic and reflexive parameters were compared to those of a control group (n = 10, age and sex matched). The task instructions had great influence on the admittance, especially between the PT and RT. In all patients, reflexive activity was found corresponding to assumed muscle spindles (velocity- and position feedback) and Golgi tendon organ (force feedback) function. For the PT, the difference in parameters between patients and control subjects was largest. Overall, patients exhibit more intrinsic stiffness at the shoulder and elbow than the control subjects, an indication of co-contraction, and less reflexive feedback at the elbow. There are two possible explanations for this: 1) The intrinsic and reflexive properties did not recover to the combination as before the injury and are not cooperating correctly, and 2) The patients are relying more on intrinsic control than on reflexive control (different control strategy). Whereas the control group uses an energy efficient approach, i.e. less intrinsic and more reflex activity, the patients appear to use a more maximal activation approach resulting in co-contraction. It is possible that the exercises performed during rehabilitation which focus on muscle force do not provoke enough reflexive behavior. More research, e.g. experiments that are designed to disable co-contraction, is needed to verify if the use of co-contraction is learnt or a necessity. Conclusion: reflexes do recover after surgery to severe Brachial plexus injuries, the amount of reflex function is less or less effective than for the control group.
The Self-Managing Organization : How Leading Companies Are Transforming the Work of Teams for Real Impact

The disappointing results achieved by reengineering, total quality management, and team-based empowerment programs dictate that a quantum change is needed in the way organizations are designed and managed. This groundbreaking book by organizational change experts Ronald Purser and Steven Cabana reveals how innovative companies are unleashing huge productivity gains by transforming the work of teams, designing them into a fully self-managing organization. Purser and Cabana show how authorizing employees to design, control, and coordinate their own work and workplace has enabled some firms to reduce manufacturing cycle times by 50 percent, cut costs in half, and most important, share knowledge more widely in the organization. The authors demonstrate through in-depth case studies how democratic decision-making works today in such pioneering companies as Microsoft, Motorola, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Charles Schwab, Sequa Chemicals, Syncrude Canada, and Celgard. They provide detailed instruction in the core principles and methods of self-management, showing why employee participation is key to strategy creation and corporate redesign, and how relocating the responsibility for value-added work into the hands of the people who actually touch the product or provide the service eradicates the need for external supervision and costly bureaucratic overhead. Self-management is the wave of the future not only because it improves economic performance, but also because it puts dignity, care, and meaning back into work. A step-by-step blueprint for designing and developing a self-managing organization, Purser and Cabana's findings are required reading for every forward-thinkingmanager.
Executive information systems: emergence, development, impact

The Emergence of EIS Making Executive Information Systems More Effective User Expectations - The CEO's Perspective Implementing an Executive Information System - Seven Steps for Success Is Your ESS Meeting the Need? A Path Framework for Executive Information Systems Selecting Information for an EIS - Experiences at Lockheed-Georgia Selecting EIS Software - The Western Mining Corporation Experience What Users Want Today Avoiding Hidden EIS Pitfalls How Rockwell Launched its EIS The People Factor in EIS Success The Impact of EIS Power Computing at the Top EIS and the Collapse of the Information Pyramid Executive Information Streamlines Greyhound Dial's Operations Putting Hertz Executives in the Driver's Seat.
The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge: The Great Robot Race

The DARPA Grand Challenge was a landmark in the field of robotics: a race by autonomous vehicles through 132 miles of rough, cross-country Nevada terrain that showcased exciting and unprecedented capabilities in robotic perception, navigation, and control. The event took place in October 2005, and drew teams of competitors from academia and industry, and many garage hobbyists. This book presents fifteen technical papers that are written at a level that makes them easily accessible to a broad technical audience, describing the technology behind most of the robotic vehicles that participated in this famous race. The papers describe each team's driverless vehicle, race strategy, and insights. As a whole, they present the state of the art in autonomous vehicle technology, and offer a glimpse of future technology for tomorrows driverless cars. This book will serve as an authoritative, archival source for the DARPA Grand Challenge and a must have for robotics students and researchers, since it describes the state of the art in perception, planning and control.
Optimal Design of a Barrel Stave Flextensional Transducer

The performance of a barrel stave flextensional transducer is determined by the properties of its constituent materials and the effects of many structural parameters. In most cases, the influences of these variables are not linearly independent of each other. In order to achieve optimal performance of an acoustic transducer, we have to consider the cross-coupled effects of its structural variables. The structure of a barrel stave flextensional transducer was optimized by considering all the cross-coupled effects of its structural variables in order to achieve the widest bandwidth while satisfying the requirements regarding transmitting voltage response and center frequency. The optimization process consists of finite element analysis (FEA) of the transducer performance in regard to its structural variables, statistical multiple regression analysis of the FEA results, and constrained maximization of a target function (i.e., the bandwidth) in sequence.
Supporting Workplace Learning for High Performance Working

In this book, written by David Ashton and Johnny Sung, the ILO is responding to the widespread interest in learning and training in high performance work organizations (HPWOs) and has taken up the challenge of identifying and documenting these innovative practices. The book looks at many aspects of workplace learning and training and considers these aspects from the perspective of workers as well as employers, including the prospective benefits for the different parties. It also examines the role governments can play in fostering high performance work practices and, in particular, encouraging enterprises to make better use of their employees’ skills. This book contributes to the ILO’s strategic objective of creating greater opportunities for women and men to secure decent work. The HPWOs create the scenario for a win-win outcome: the companies benefit through increased productivity, and the employees gain through improved quality of working life – decent employment – and increased remuneration compared to more traditional enterprises. The recent research, for the first time, shows how high performance work practices increase productivity. The book also shows that employees in HPWOs often have more stable employment and that equity issues are dealt with in a more open and fair manner due to the commitment of managers and workers alike. Mutual trust is an essential element of high performance work practices.
InGaAs/InGaAsP/InP strained-layer quantum well lasers at approximately 2 mu m

The first successful operation of InGaAs strained layer quantum well (SL-QW) injection lasers at approximately 2 mu m is reported. The threshold current density and the external differential quantum efficiency of 5 mu m wide and 800 mu m long ridge waveguide lasers were 2.5kA/cm/sup 2/ and 6%, respectively. The devices had a reverse leakage current of less than 20 mu A at -1 V indicating epitaxial layers with low defect density.
Comparing Online vs. In-Person Outcomes of a Hands-On, Lab-Based, Teacher Professional Development Program: Research Experiences for Teachers in the Time of COVID-19

In 2012, engineering was adopted as a content area in K-12 science education. Yet few science teachers have engineering content or pedagogical content knowledge. Teachers learn how to teach engineering through professional development experiences, for which Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) outline seven characteristics of effectiveness. This mixed-methods study compared three cohorts of the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) participants at one university. Two cohorts of in-service teachers experienced RET on-site, and one (summer 2020) experienced the program 100% remotely, due to COVID-19. Research questions explore 1) the extent to which the RET program delivered in-person and remotely reflected the seven characteristics of effective PD;and 2) whether program outcomes of the hands-on, lab-based program could be achieved remotely. This study found that six of the seven characteristics of effective PD were fully evidenced in all three RET cohorts, and one was partially evidenced. Program outcomes were achieved at high and comparable levels for all cohorts, though the nature of the experience varied by mode of delivery. This research contributes to existing literature that finds no inherent differences in the quality of teacher professional development delivered in-person or remotely.