Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NEURAL NETWORK ADAPTIVE SEMI-EMPIRICAL MODELS FOR AIRCRAFT CONTROLLED MOTION

A simulation and system identification problem is discussed for aircraft as nonlinear controlled dynamical system. The main goal is to demonstrate capabilities for semi-empirical models combining theoretical domain-specific knowledge with training tools of artificial neural network field as applied to the aircraft motion simulation problem. The obtained results confirm efficiency of the proposed simulation approach.
A Simulation Study Comparing Procedures for Assessing Individual Educational Growth. Report No. 182.

A computer simulation procedure was developed to reproduce the overall pattern of results obtained in the ETS Growth Study. Then simulated data for seven sets of 10,000 to 15,000 cases were analysed with several techniques for assessing growth, or change, and these techniques were compared on the basis of correlations between estimated and true growth scores. Growth Is estimated most accurately by procedures that involve the difference between the pretest and the posttest, and all estimates that involve this difference have approximately equal correlations with true growth. When one wishes to order persons on growth, there is little point in using complicated procedures to estimate growth. The simple difference between pretest and posttest scores is about as accurate as any other estimate, is much easier to compute, and should be meaningful to non-researchers. It is concluded that advocates of complex procedures should demonstrate practical, not just theoretical, advantages for their techniques before researchers should be expected to take them seriously.
An Investigation of Skills Programmes as Training Interventions : A Case Study of the Department of Higher Education and Training By

Low levels of education, poor educational background, and skills shortages, are the main subjects on the social agenda and economic debates today. South Africans lack the qualifications that are required to participate actively in the economy in the form of either employment or self-employment. The literature reviewed revealed that countries are embarking on a number of strategies to develop and train unemployed, low-income and low-skilled people who did not have access to either TVET, university or on-the-job training. As such, the SA government through the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) funds various skills development interventions targeting unemployed adults and youth with different educational levels to prepare them for labour markets or sustainable livelihoods through self-employment and establishment of small businesses. The current study focused only on a portion of the DHET outcomes and its purpose was to examine the effectiveness of skills programmes as training interventions funded by DHET through its entities and partners in the public sector. The findings revealed that skills programmes are beneficial when planned and selected prudently over a period of time, and could improve the educational and skills levels of beneficiaries. However, the skills programmes that are implemented in government interventions have yielded marginal results in improving education levels and providing employable skills.
Biochemical and Genetic Characterization of 12 S ilybum marianum Accessions Collected from Borg El-Arab , an Egyptian Habitat

Silybum marianum, known as milk thistle (MT), a plant that grows throughout the Mediterranean, southern Europe and parts of the US, has been used for some 2000 years as both food and medicine. The aims of this study were to determine the morphological, biochemical (protein profile and isozyme) and molecular (RAPDand ISSR-PCR) characteristics of MT and to identify and quantify its active ingredients. Twelve accessions of MT collected from Borg El-Arab, an Egyptian habitat located at the north/west coast, were tested. SDSPAGE electrophoresis indicated that two accessions cultivated in location 3 had specific bands. Data analysis of isozyme banding patterns showed different migration rates for four isozymes ( and -esterase, peroxidase and acid phosphatase). These isozymes, belonging to different Silybum accessions found in the locations, may represent a degree of genetic variation. RAPD-PCR fingerprinting resulted in 83 amplicons (DNA bands), 33 of which were polymorphic. Furthermore, 10 accessions proved to have specific molecular markers. ISSRPCR fingerprinting resulted in 40 amplicons, 16 of which were polymorphic. Six accessions-specific markers were found for MT accessions. The estimation of genetic distance based on SDS-PAGE, isozymes, RAPD-PCR and ISSR-PCR ranged from 85 to 95%. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Run-time fault diagnosis in wireless sensor systems

Software failures in wireless sensor systems are notoriously difficult to debug. Resource constraints in wireless deployments substantially restrict visibility into the root causes of system and application level faults. At the same time, the high deployment cost of wireless sensor systems often far exceeds the cumulative cost of all other sensor hardware, such that software failures that completely disable a node are prohibitively expensive to repair in real-world applications, e.g. by on-site visits to replace or reset nodes. This thesis describes NodeMD, a fault management system designed to improve node debugging capabilities prior to deployment, and enable remote debugging on in-situ sensor nodes that fail. This system successfully implements lightweight run-time detection, logging, and notification of software faults on wireless mote-class devices. NodeMD introduces a debug mode that catches a failure beforeit completely disables a node and drops the node into a state that enables further diagnosis and correction, thus avoiding on-site redeployment. We present a detailed analysis of NodeMD on real world applications of wireless sensor systems.
Initial assessment of well-being in South African armed services personnel

As professionals in law enforcement and defence (armed services) function under high pressure, the maintenance of overall health should be emphasized and closely monitored in training facilities. The aim of this research was to assess current health status and risk factors of the members of three armed service training facilities. This represents the first step in an integrated approach toward health maintenance in this important sector. The sample consisted of 323 members from three different armed service training facilities in South Africa. The subjects completed a questionnaire on health history and coping with stress. Heart health, body composition, general fitness and co-ordination were then examined. The mean age of the sample was 38.08 years (SD=8.81). The mean blood pressure readings were pre-hypertensive (Systolic 127.4mmHg, SD=16.67; Diastolic 82.74mmHg, SD=10.94) and the mean BMI was in the overweight category (27.97kg/m 2 , SD=8.81). The percentage (more than 40 %) of subjects that require physical fitness intervention reflects an urgent need for effective implementation of wellness programmes in this sector.
GRAPHICAL FRONT-END AND OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN FOR IONEX , AN ION EXTRACTION MODELING CODE *

IonEx is a new hybrid, meshless, cross-platform, 2D code which can model the extraction of ions from a plasma device. The application includes a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI), which will contain a geometry editor for specifying the domain. The design of IonEx utilizes the object-oriented functionality of C++, which provides an efficient means of incorporating magnetic fields, an arbitrary geometry, and multiple ion species into a simulation. Visualization of the resulting trajectories and emittances is accomplished through the GUI; openGL is used to accelerate the graphics. In this paper we will briefly review the physics and computational methods used, highlight important aspects of the object-oriented design, discuss the primary features of the GUI, describe the current status of IonEx, and present some simulation results. ION EXTRACTION MODELING The IonEx code was designed to model the extraction of ions from the plasma in an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS). This section provides a brief review of the physical model and computational methods used; for more details see [1,4].
Computer-aided identification and description of CITES protected trade timbers

The recognition of CITES protected wood species is of prime importance for controlling trade and enforcing regulations pertaining to protected species. A valuable support for computer-assisted wood identification based on macroscopic features is now available from a database developed in the DELTA-INTKEY-System. CITESwoodID contains descriptions and an interactive identification system for 8 CITES-listed trade timbers (7 hardwoods, 1 softwood) and 1 proposed timber currently under CITES observation, all known for their potential for the production of lumber and downstream processing into products. For comparison, 43 trade timbers are also included, which can be easily mistaken for CITES-listed timbers due to a very similar appearance and/or wood anatomical structure. The database is primarily designed for institutions and persons involved in controlling imports as well as exports of wood and wood products covered by CITES regulations. It also serves as a useful tool for all primary and secondary educational facilities teaching wood anatomy and wood identification. Introduction
Potato Tuber Quality as Affected by Nitrogen Form and Rate

Field experiments were conducted to investigate the performance of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cv. ‘Valor’ in relation to three different nitrogen (N) fertilizer forms (ammonium sulphate, (NH4)2SO4, urea, CO(NH2)2 and ammonium nitrate, NH4NO3) and four N fertilizer rates (130, 180, 230 and 280 Kg N/feddan; 1 feddan (fed) = 4200 m) on the growth, yield and tuber quality of potato plants. Increasing N fertilizer rates up to 230 Kg N/fed enhanced vegetative growth as expressed by plant length, leaf number and area, plant fresh and dry weights, and leaf chlorophyll content. The same increase in N fertilizer rates significantly increased tuber number/plant, tuber yield (g)/plant, total tuber yield (ton/fed), marketable tubers (%) and tuber N content (%). On the other hand, the highest N rate (280 Kg N/fed) decreased all of the above-mentioned plant growth characters and yield. Furthermore, % protein content of tubers tended to increase with increasing N fertilizer rates while tuber dry matter (%), P (%), K (%), specific gravity and starch contents decreased with increasing N fertilizer rates. Using NH4NO3 significantly increased vegetative growth characters, leaf chlorophyll content, tuber yield/plant, total tuber yield (ton/fed), specific gravity and tuber starch content followed by (CO(NH2)2 then (NH4)2SO4. There was no significant effect of N source on the tuber number/plant, N, P and K and protein content. It could be recommended that using N fertilizers in the form of NH4NO3 at a rate of 230 Kg N/fed gave the best growth characters, yield and % marketable tubers while using 130 Kg N/fed of the same source of N fertilizer gave the highest of tuber quality characters as expressed by specific gravity and % starch content. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cloud Computing Services Potential Analysis An integrated model for evaluating Software as a Service

This paper address, in a practical and integrated model, a possible solution of issues concerning the Software as a Service (SaaS) introduction and evaluation. A selective topdown analysis is proposed to guide the overall assessment. The construction of the Potential Adoption Index (PAI), in the last stage of the process, aims to facilitate the evaluation and comparison process of the acceptance of this technology by evaluating: the functional requirements, the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the related concerns and benefits from technical and business perspective. Keywords-Cloud Computing; SaaS; adoption; evaluation
Using Content Information for Finding Neighbors in the Collaborative Filtering Framework

In electronic commerce it is important for customers to find the best goods among large information overload with saving time and efforts. Therefore, if we can recommend the best goods accurately, we will be able to give a great satisfaction to an individual customer. Collaborative filtering is one of the means to recommend the best goods. It recommends items through building a customer profile from preferences for each item itself, and comparing preferences against other customers’ preferences for the same item. But collaborative filtering does not exploit the information on attributes of items that can be often easily identified. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for movie recommendation that uses preferences for the genres of movies with the K-means clustering method in selecting neighbors within a collaborative filtering framework. We find customer preferences for the genres of movies implicitly and reflect these preferences on collaborative filtering. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we made experiments with the EachMovie dataset. Experimental results indicate that our approach outperforms pure collaborative filtering with better prediction accuracy.
Morphometric relations of fractal-skeletal based channel network model

A fractal-skeletal based channel network (F-SCN) model is proposed. Four regular sided initiator-basins are transformed as second order fractal basins by following a specific generating mechanism with non-random rule. The morphological skeletons, hereafter referred to as channel networks, are extracted from these fractal basins. The morphometric and fractal relationships ofthese F-SCNs are shown. The fractal dimensions ofthese fractal basins, channel networks, and main channel lengths (computed through box counting method) are compared with those of estimated length-area measures. Certain morphometric order ratios to show fractal relations are also highlighted.
Omni-directional Feature Learning for Person Re-identification

Person re-identification (PReID) has received increasing attention due to it is an important part in intelligent surveillance. Recently, many state-of-the-art methods on PReID are part-based deep models. Most of them focus on learning the part feature representation of person body in horizontal direction. However, the feature representation of body in vertical direction is usually ignored. Besides, the spatial information between these part features and the different feature channels is not considered. In this study, we introduce a multi-branches deep model for PReID. Specifically, the model consists of five branches. Among the five branches, two of them learn the local feature with spatial information from horizontal or vertical orientations, respectively. The other one aims to learn interdependencies knowledge between different feature channels generated by the last convolution layer. The remains of two other branches are identification and triplet sub-networks, in which the discriminative global feature and a corresponding measurement can be learned simultaneously. All the five branches can improve the representation learning. We conduct extensive comparative experiments on three PReID benchmarks including CUHK03, Market-1501 and DukeMTMC-reID. The proposed deep framework outperforms many state-of-the-art in most cases.
Shadow Inducers: Inconspicuous Highlights for Casting Virtual Shadows on OST-HMOs

Virtual shadows provide important cues to determine the positional relationship between virtual objects and a real scene. However, it’ s difficult to render shadows in the real scene on optical see-through head-mounted displays without occlusion-capability. In the previous work, we cast virtual shadows not with physical light attenuation but with brightness induction caused by virtual objects, referred to as shadow inducers, which surround the shadow area to gradually amplify the intensity of the real scene pattern [4]. However, because the shadow inducer was prepared beforehand, the shape of the shadow is constant, the real scene shadowing is limited to a flat surface, and a large of viewpoint change is impossible. In this demonstration, we propose a method to generate shadow inducers in real time that can change the shape of virtual objects and the viewpoint of users. In this method, depending on the appearance of shadows, the surrounding luminance is gradually amplified with the difference of gaussian (DOG) representing characteristics of human vision. Users can observe shadows of moving and deforming virtual objects on a real tabletop and other non-planar objects.
Toward a closed loop from seismic imaging to earth-model building

Abstract Velocity-model building is the first task of seismic inversion and the foundation of the subsequent data-processing workflow. When the earth velocity becomes multivalued with respect to the propagating direction of the waves, velocity-model building becomes severely underdetermined and nonunique. The traditional workflow separates velocity-model building from lithologic inversion, which hampers both processing steps. An integrated model-building scheme is demonstrated to simultaneously consider prestack seismic data and its structural and lithologic inversion results from a previous iteration. The prestack seismic inversion is performed using wave-equation migration velocity analysis (WEMVA) for vertical transverse isotropic (VTI) models. To constrain the seismic inversion, the geologic information is integrated as spatial-model correlations, and the rock-physics information as lithologic-model correlations. This feedback step completes the loop from seismic imaging to lithologic-model building, .
Towards coherence : fitting together opportunities and capabilities. Research units and acquisition of funds

The priority-setting by the State, the introduction of market-based mechanisms (Gioia and Thomas 1996) for research funding and the drive towards “useful” science, seem to go over an old paradigm where performance and, thus, reward, were directly related to intangible assets such as credibility (Latour and Woolgar 1979), quality (Cole and Cole 1973) and reputation (Arora et al. 1998) of individual researchers and groups. In the “academic capitalism”, research activities are recognized as driven by market potential rather than by curiosity (Slaughter and Leslie 1997), and incentives may depend on positional features (Laudel 2006) such as membership in the peer review cadre, departmental standing, power in the distribution process (Viner et al. 2004), but also on cumulative advantage (Merton 1968; 1988) and past performances (Bornmann et al. 2009).
The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG VI: The Curious Case of TrES-4b

We revisit the TrES-4 system parameters based on high-precision HARPS-N radial-velocity measurements and new photometric light curves. A combined spectroscopic and photometric analysis allows us to determine a spectroscopic orbit with an amplitude $K=51\pm3$ m s$^{-1}$. The derived mass of TrES-4b is found to be $M_{\rm p} = 0.49\pm0.04 \rm M_{Jup}$, significantly lower than previously reported. Combined with the large radius ($R_{\rm p} = 1.84_{-0.09}^{+0.08} \rm R_{Jup}$) inferred from our analysis, TrES-4b becomes the second-lowest density transiting hot Jupiter known. We discuss several scenarios to explain the puzzling discrepancy in the mass of TrES-4b in the context of the exotic class of highly inflated transiting giant planets.
EFFECTS OF THE INTRINSIC THREE-DIMENSIONALIZATION OF LAMINAR SEPARATION BUBBLES ON THE AMPLIFICATION OF EXTERNAL DISTURBANCES

The size and behavior of laminar separation bubbles is strongly related to the laminar-to-turbulent transition process that takes place downstream of the separation of the laminar boundary layer. Wind-tunnel experiments and numerical simulations in which external fluctuations are imposed show a clear dominance of instability waves of convective nature in the transition process. On the other hand, stability analysis demonstrate the existence of a self-excited mechanism that introduces a three-dimensionalization of the recirculation region. This paper studies the co-existence of both mechanisms, i.e. how the spanwise modulation of the bubbles can alter the properties of instability waves. It is found that a large convective amplification is induced by the spanwise velocity gradients.
Petri Nets Model Based on Matrix Operation

In view of the issue of the single membership grade that exists in the fuzzy Petri nets(FPN), with the combination of the matrix computation and Petri nets theory, the Matrix Operation Petri Nets (MOPN) model is constructed and applied for the representation and reasoning of the knowledge. Firstly the MOPN model is constructed, and applied to the representation of the knowledge, and through the introduction of the inhibition transition arc in the model, the issue of the representation of the negative proposition is solved. Secondly, the MOPN reasoning algorithm is put forward, and by the modification of the transfer rules of the token value after the transitioning and triggering, it has solved the issue of the retention of the fact in the process of reasoning. Finally, the reasoning algorithm is analyzed, and examples are provided to validate the feasibility of the proposed MOPN model and its inference algorithm, the results show that the MOPN is an effective expansion and development of FPN, and its description of the reasoning result is more delicate and comprehensive.
Enhancement of oral bioavailability of puerarin by polybutylcyanoacrylate nanoparticles

The interest using novel drug delivery systems to improve oral bioavailability of drug with poor solubility is increasing. In this study, a new oral delivery system, polybutylcyanoacrylate nanoparticles (PBCNs), was introduced to improve the oral bioavailability of puerarin (PUE). PUE-loaded PBCN was successfully prepared by anionic polymerization method. Characterization of PUE-loaded PBCN was evaluated with morphology, size, zeta potential, and in vitro release study. The PBCN loading PUE exhibited a spherical shape under transmission electron microscopy with an average size of 159.4 nm, and the zeta potential was -15.0mV. The in vitro release of PUE-loaded PBCN showed an initial burst release followed by a sustained release. Physicochemical state of PUE in PBCN was investigated by differential scanning colorimetry, X-ray diffraction, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results indicated that PUE in PBCN was in a noncrystalline state. The oral pharmacokinetic study in rats showed that the relative bioavailability of PUE-encapsulated PBCN to the crude PUE was more than 550%. It can be concluded that PBCN as an oral drug carrier can significantly improve the oral bioavailability of PUE.