Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fast performance uncertainty estimation via pushover and approximate IDA

Approximate methods based on the static pushover are introduced to estimate the seismic performance uncertainty of structures having non‐deterministic modeling parameters. At their basis lies the use of static pushover analysis to approximate Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) and estimate the demand and capacity epistemic uncertainty. As a testbed we use a nine‐storey steel frame having beam hinges with uncertain moment–rotation relationships. Their properties are fully described by six, randomly distributed, parameters. Using Monte Carlo simulation with Latin hypercube sampling, a characteristic ensemble of structures is created. The Static Pushover to IDA (SPO2IDA) software is used to approximate the IDA capacity curve from the appropriately post‐processed results of the static pushover. The approximate IDAs allow the evaluation of the seismic demand and capacity for the full range of limit‐states, even close to global dynamic instability. Moment‐estimating techniques such as Rosenblueth's point estimating method and the first‐order, second‐moment (FOSM) method are adopted as simple alternatives to obtain performance statistics with only a few simulations. The pushover is shown to be a tool that combined with SPO2IDA and moment‐estimating techniques can supply the uncertainty in the seismic performance of first‐mode‐dominated buildings for the full range of limit‐states, thus replacing semi‐empirical or code‐tabulated values (e.g. FEMA‐350), often adopted in performance‐based earthquake engineering. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Pathogenicity and Reproduction of Isolates of Reniform Nematode, Rotylenchulus Reniformis, From Louisiana on Soybean and Utility of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms to Evaluate Genetic Variability

The reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) is one of the major pests on both soybean and cotton in the southern United States. Although resistant soybean cultivars are available, this resistance may not be uniform across geographical isolates of the pathogen. Experiments were conducted to evaluate responses of indigenous isolates of reniform nematode in Louisiana on commercial soybean cultivars and resistant germplasm lines. Experiments in greenhouse and microplot environments were conducted during 2016 and 2017 to evaluate the comparative reproduction and pathogenicity of populations of R. reniformis isolated from West Carroll (WC), Rapides (RAP), Tensas (TEN), and Morehouse (MOR) parishes of Louisiana. Data from full-season microplot studies, averaged over 2 trials, showed differences in reproduction and pathogenicity of the nematode on REV 56R63, Pioneer P54T94R, and Dyna-Gro 39RY57 soybean cultivars (P<0.01). Reproduction by the MOR isolate was 46.8% lower than that by the WC isolate. However, the MOR isolate was the most pathogenic isolate with 20.8% lower plant and 44.6% lower pod weight compared to the non-inoculated control. Data from 60-day duration greenhouse experiments reflected a similar trend. In greenhouse trials, the susceptible cultivar Progeny P4930LL and the resistant PI lines 90763 and 548316 were included with the cultivars employed in the microplots. Reproduction by the MOR isolate was 33% less than that by WC isolate. Reduced reproduction by the MOR isolate relative to the WC isolate was accounted for by a 50% reduction in the numbers of eggs per root system. In both microplot and greenhouse environments, REV 56R63 was a significantly less suitable host for reniform nematode than was Pioneer P54T94R, Dyna-Gro 39RY57, and PI 548316.
PREVALENCE OF HYDATIDOSIS IN NOMADIC TRIBES OF SOUTHERN IRAN

In order to assess the prevalence of Echinococcus granulosus (EO) infection (hydatidosis) in nomadic tribes of southern Iran, 1000 individuals from a total population of 11 2,519 were selected by randomized single blind cluster sampling method and studied from 1994- 1995. The study included: (l) a physical examination by a gastroenterologis t, (2) abdominal ultrasonography (US), and (3) detection of anti- EO-antibodies (EOA) by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and counterimmunoele ctrophoresis (eIE). The statistically significant prevalences were: US: 1.8%, eIE: 6.8%, and ELISA, 13.7%. The rate of infect ion varied with age, sex, education, occupation, life style, geographical location of tribal subgroups and the frequency of contact with dogs and cattle. The power of agreement between a combination of each two methods were significant as determined by kappa statistics method. The results obtained indicated that a combination of ELISA and eIE was the most reliable method with a high sensitivity and specificity. MJIRI, Vol. 12, No.2, 113-118,1998.
Study of SPH simulation on tunnel face collapse

Maintenance measures for tunnel portal zones have attracted increasing interest owing to the increased collapse risk of slopes by severe torrential rain and inland earthquakes in Japan in recent years. However, these large-scale collapse behaviours cannot be simulated by finite difference method (FDM) analysis. In this study, we applied the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method to analyse the collapse behaviour of the tunnel face under construction and the effect of the stabilization method. First, we simulated the collapse behaviour at the tunnel portal zone by two-dimensional SPH simulation and compared it with an aluminium-bar experiment, and we showed that the SPH method is effective to model the overall tendency of the large deformation and the collapse behaviour in the experiments. Second, we simulated the collapse behaviour using the SPH method in the real tunnel portal zone collapse and provided a restraint result for collapse using facebolts. Therefore, we demonstrated that the SPH method is an effective technique to evaluate reinforcement measures.
A Kinect-Based Somatosensory Game by Integrated Unity and Motion Builder

In this study, a somatosensory game system is proposed by using Kinect, Unity and Motion Builder. Kinect is a somatosensory device that is our primary interactive device and manipulation functions can plugin on Unity software. Unity is a good and friendly open source and is useful for a game development platform. We use this platform to construct the virtual characters, weapons and scenarios. The motion builder is applied to record the basic tricks and monster attacks. The purpose of this study was to create a sport and have fun with the monster fighting game system. We use Kinect to detect the depth of the human skeleton and apply the information of skeleton to the virtual character of Unity in order to control martial arts that are performed by hose virtual characters. The detection methods of Kinect sensing the position of the player’s hands and virtual weapons to fight with the monster are proposed. Kinect also provides a wide variety of weapons with specific effects, which enhancing the likelihood for the player to defeat monsters. Thus players take corresponding actions in order to survive. The results of the integration of Unity and the motion builder software with Kinectbased somatosensory game support the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.
A Median Voter Model of Social Security

This paper presents a theoretical median voter analysis of the determination of the level of social security. The framework for the analysis is a continuous-time, overlapping-generations model with nonaltruistic households facing borrowing constraints in the capital market. A majority voting equilibrium is shown to exist in which the median voter is liquidity-constrained. The desired level of social security for each voter is a declining function of the preexisting level of social security. As a consequence, in a sequence of votes on social security beginning with a zero level, the program initially overshoots its steady state value. Copyright 1989 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.
Determinants of Poverty : The Case of Cambodia 1 by

Despite much progress was made regarding poverty reduction during the past, poverty remain pervasive in Cambodia. This paper attempts to examine the determinants of poverty for a panel of 827 households surveyed in 2001, 2004 and 2008. Panel data analysis with fixed effect estimation is applied to investigate factors influencing household’s consumption and food consumption. Multinomial logistic regression will be utilized to explore the factors that affect chronic and transient poverty. The primary result suggests assets, agricultural land size, irrigated land and access to microfinance institutions yield positive and significant impact on consumption while shock would exert a negative one. Further, it suggests that an increase in agricultural land size would decrease the possibility of being transient poor while an increase in irrigated land ratio would decrease the possibility of being chronic poor.
Has income inequality or media fragmentation increased political polarization

The increasing polarization of Congressional voting patterns has been attributed to factors including generational shifts, economic conditions, increased media fragmentation, and greater income inequality. The first of these factors is difficult to test with time series data owing to the low frequency of generational shifts, while the tendency of business cycles to reverse suggests that economic cycles are unable to account for long-term shifts in polarization. This leaves two main possible long-run drivers: the increasingly fragmented state of American media as stressed by Prior (2005, 2007) and Duca and Saving (2012a), and increased income inequality, as emphasized by McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal (2006, forthcoming) and Stiglitz (2012). ; Using statistical techniques suitable for analyzing variables with shifting long-run averages we find evidence indicating that media fragmentation has played a more important role than inequality, at least as tracked by available data and measures. Periods when the share of Americans with access to cable or satellite TV has risen are followed by upward shifts in polarization. Furthermore, our results suggest that the polarization arising from media fragmentation or inequality may make it more difficult to achieve the political consensus needed to address major challenges, such as the long-run fiscal imbalances facing the United States.
Application of Biofilter System for Domestic Wastewater Treatment

Nowadays, clean water resources are reduced due to water pollution problems. Pollution carried by the domestic wastewater is considered as one of the contributors to water pollution problems. One of the ways to treat wastewater is by constructing a biofilter system at the point sources to treat the polluted water before being discharged into rivers. This study emphasizes on the utilization of a filtering system using natural occurring materials such as empty fruit bunch (EFB) from oil palm fibre, mudball from effective microorganism (EM), activated carbon from coconut shell, charcoal, sand, and gravel as the filtering materials. Experiment was conducted at Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), where a site scale filtering system was set up to observe the potential of the system in removing pollutants. The results were analyzed by evaluating the water quality parameters such as pH, SS, BOD, COD, and AN in term of their percentages of removal and comparison to Standard A and Standard B of Environmental Quality Act (1974). For overall, the biofilter system was found to be capable in removing pollutants in domestic wastewater where the maximum percentages of removal for parameters SS, COD, BOD, and AN are as high as 83.08%, 51.60%, 72.42%, and 85.71% respectively. The study also indicated that the performance of the biofilter system in improving parameters SS, COD, BOD, and AN increased as the quantity of filtering materials applied increased.
Measures of User Interactions, Conversations, and Attacks in a Crowdsourced Platform Offering Emotional Support.

Samir, Yelne. M.S.C.E. , Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Wright State University, 2016. Measures of User Interactions, Conversations, and Attacks in a Crowdsourced Platform Offering Emotional Support . Online social systems have emerged as a popular medium for people in society to communicate with each other. Among the most important reasons why people communicate is to share emotional problems, but most online social systems are uncomfortable or unsafe spaces for this purpose. This has led to the rise of online emotional support systems, where users needing to speak to someone can anonymously connect to a crowd of trained listeners for a one-on-one conversation. To better understand who, how and when users utilize these systems, and to evaluate their safety, this thesis offers a comprehensive examination of the characteristics of users and their interactions from a massive, leading emotional support platform. From a big data set of millions of conversations across hundreds of thousands of users, the study employs statistical measurement techniques and predictive analytics to shed light about the ways these platforms are utilized, and the extent to which users behave in un-wanting ways. The analysis leads to recommendations on promoting positive system utilization and an understanding of the effectiveness of protections in place to thwart emotional attacks. This work is likely the first to measure the activities and interactions in an online social system for emotional support.
Influence of EMAP II, IFN-α2b and its medicinal preparations on the MGMT protein amount in human cells in vitro

Aim. To study the effect of EMAP II, IFN2b and its medicinal preparations on the amount of O 6 -methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) protein in human cells in vitro. Methods. The human cells of 4BL and Hep-2 lines were treated with the purified recombinant proteins EMAP II, IFN2b and its commercial me dicinal preparations. Changes in the MGMT gene expression were studied at a protein level by Western blot analysis. Results. Treatment of Hep-2 and 4BL cells with EMAP II at the concentrations of 0.02 g/ml and 2 g/ml respectively led to induction of the MGMT gene expression. EMAP II at the concentrations of 0.2–20 g/ml caused decrease of the MGMT protein amount in Hep-2 cells. The regulating activity of EMAP II was also observed for MARP (anti-Methyltransferase Antibody Recognizable Protein). IFN2b and Laferon-PharmBiotek with the activity of 200 and 2000 IU/ml were shown to cause an increase of the MGMT protein amount in Hep-2 cells. Conclusions. The purified recombinant proteins EMAP II and IFN2b which are substrates for the medicinal preparations influenced on the amount of MGMT protein in the human cell cultures in a concentration-dependent manner. At the same time the effect of medicinal preparations differs from that of the purified protein IFN2b. Possibly it depends on the presence of stabilizing components in their compositions.
Ethics in engineering: Student perceptions and their professional identity development

Professional ethics instruction in engineering is commonly conducted by examining case studies in light of the code of conduct of a suitable professional body. Although graphical presentations of spectacular failures, sobering stories of the repercussions and the solid framework provided by the tenets of a code of ethics may leave a lasting impression, students generally gain their professional identity from relatives and colleagues. Their professional ethics tend to be mostly an extension of their personal ethics. Instruction on ethics generally serves only to reinforce students' inclination to act ethically and provides encouragement to act on these beliefs. In this study a survey based on previous investigations was conducted (n = 1136) to examine the personal ethical perceptions of engineering students. The survey measured how engineering students perceive their own ethical beliefs and how they perceive the ethical beliefs and actions of their peers. As a learning exercise, students were then challenged by examining their personal ethical beliefs in light of the professional ethics requirements of the Institute of Engineers Australia (IEAust) code of conduct. After familiarisation with the Engineers Australia code of ethics, students were also invited to comment regarding their beliefs regarding adherence to this code.
Mandova, Hana and Gale, William F. and Williams, Alan and Heyes, Andrew L. and Hodgson, Peter and Miah, Kamal H. (2018) Global assessment of biomass suitability for ironmaking – opportunities for co- location of sustainable biomass, iron and steel

Iron and steel production processes are amongst the biggest industrial contributors to the global carbon emissions, and national as well as international obligations are set to drive their significant emission reductions. One of the possible strategies is to partially substitute fossil fuels used during the iron ore reduction process by sustainably-sourced biomass. The extent of the opportunities for such fuel switching, however, varies for each country. Theoretically, biomass into ironmaking should be only supported for countries which present co-location of sustainably domestically sourced biomass in sufficient quantity, a substantial iron and steel industry and supportive national policies. Using a multi-criteria global suitability assessment approach developed in this research, the status of countries’ steel industry, sustainable biomass resources and supportive policies were examined for top 40 steel production countries via the blast furnace ironmaking route. The results highlight those countries with significant potential to use domestically sourced biomass for such application and advance the efficient use of the limited biomass resources from the global perspective. Specifically countries such as Canada, Sweden, China, USA and France were identified as the most suitable, but other countries present opportunities that could be overcome if the corresponding barriers are identified.
Biomethanation of palm oil mill effluent (pome) by ultrasonic membrane anaerobic system (umas) using pome as substrate

The direct discharge of the Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) wastewater causes serious environmental pollution due to its high chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solid (TSS) and biological oxygen demand (BOD). The conventional ways for POME wastewater treatment have both economical and environmental disadvantages. In this study, the potential of ultrasonic-assisted membrane anaerobic system (UMAS) was evaluated as alternative and cost effective method for treating POME wastewater to avoid fouling. The UMAS treatment efficiency was greatly improved by UMAS introduction. The membrane fouling and polarization at the membrane surface was significantly reduced. This research had proved that UMAS is the effective way to treat POME. The removal efficiency of COD was 95% with HRT of 6 days. The BOD removal efficiency was 71.59% while TSS removal rate was from 91 to 99.5%. The methane gas production efficiency was 94.14%. The UMAS treatment efficiency was greatly improved by UMAS introduction. The membrane fouling and polarization at the membrane surface was significantly reduced. This research had achieved the objectives by resolve the problem statement
Adaptive Learning in Stochastic Nonlinear Models When Shocks Follow a Markov Chain

Local convergence results for adaptive learning of stochastic steady states in nonlinear models are extended to the case where the exogenous observable variables follow a ? nite Markov chain. The stability conditions for the corresponding nonstochastic model and its steady states yield convergence for the stochastic model when shocks are suf? ciently small. The results are applied to asset pricing and to an overlapping generations model. Large shocks can destabilize learning even if the steady state is stable with small shocks.
Private and Public Control of Management

This paper investigates the design of a leniency policy to fight corporate crime. The manager may breach the law and report evidence to the authority. The shareholder writes the manager's incentive scheme and possibly reports evidence to the authority. The authority designs a leniency policy to deter fraud by both (i) exacerbating agency problems within non-compliant firms and (ii) alleviating them within compliant firms. Depending on the authority's ability to sanction the manager, it may be socially desirable to instigate a "within-firm race to the courthouse".
Grazing and iron limitation in the control of phytoplankton stock and nutrient concentration: a chemostat analogue of the Pacific equatorial upwelling zone

Grazing control and iron limitation have been portrayed as mutually exclusive alternative explanations of the high nutrientflow phytoplankton stock condition in the nutnent-rich areas of the open sea. To contrast clearly the underlying assumptions and speciflc consequences of the 2 mechanisms, a simple mathematical model of a chemostat contaming a pelagic food c h a ~ n with 1 to 4 trophic levels is used as an analogue of the equatorial upwelling zone in the eastern Pacific. It shows that grazing control is essential to reproduce 3 conditions observed In the equatorial upwelling zone: low phytoplankton stocks, high concentrations of macronutrients, and phytoplankton specific growth rates that greatly exceed advective throughput rate in the mixed layer at the equator. Nevertheless, simultaneous grazing control and limitation by a trace nutrient such as iron could feas~bly account for observed phytoplankton specific growth rates that are less than the maximum rate possible under optimal growth conditions. In addition, release of an inefficiently grazed component of the phytoplankton assemblage from iron limitation seems to explain why escape from grazing control occurs under both experimental and natural iron ennchments.
A cytological and histological comparative study of salivary gland lesions at tertiary health care centre

Aim/Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of FNAC in various salivary gland lesion and its correlation with histopathology, which helps in the appropriate management of the patient.Materials and Methods: A total of 120 FNA were performed on salivary gland lesion from September 2013 to October 2014 at department of pathology in tertiary health care centre. Surgically resected, formalin fixed specimen were received, they were processed and slides were prepared. The cytological and histopathological stained slides were studied, analysed and correlated clinically.Results: The cytological features of 120 cases were studied and following lesions were observed in FNAC study of 120 cases: Pleomorphic adenoma were in 76, chronic sialadenitis in 16, Warthins tumour in 4, Cystic lesion in 5, Mucoepidermoid carcinoma in 6, Acinic cell carcinoma in 3, Carcinoma EX pleomorphic adenoma in 3, metastatic deposits in 2, benign parotid tumour in 2 and malignant tumour (unspecified) in 2, Neuroblastoma in 1. Out of 120 cases histopathology of 87 cases were available and out of which 75 cases were correlated in both cytology and histology. The sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy, positive predictive value, negative predictive value of present study is 89.29%, 91.67%, 86.21%, 96.15% and 78.57% respectively.Conclusion: FNAC of the salivary gland is a safe and reliable technique in the primary diagnosis of salivary gland lesions. FNAC of the salivary gland tumours has a high diagnostic accuracy, though rate of characterization of specific type of tumor is lower, due to variable cytomorphology. In such cases, histopathological examination may prove to be accurate for diagnosis. This study documents that FNAC of the salivary gland tumours is accurate, simple, rapid and cost-effective for the patient.