Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sound Absorption of Baffle Systems

Baffle systems are applied to ensure an acceptable acoustical climate and to reduce the noise levels in rooms with noisy machinery and work places. While in offices, salesrooms and administrations in most cases closed suspended ceilings are used, baffle systems are often used in machine halls, at production lines and in other technically complex environments. The absorption coefficient of such baffle systems is not a fixed number – or a spectrum – as it is the case for a flat absorbing plate, but depends on the spacing of the baffle elements. This spacing influences the absorption as well as the costs of such a system, therefore it is important to know the dependence of the absorption coefficient from the detailed and cost relevant construction. These relations have been developed and are presented in the following. The resulting tables and diagrams can be used to calculate the absorption coefficient of a baffle construction from the absorption coefficient of the plate material. They can also be used to determine from the absorption coefficient of a given baffle system, that may have been measured in a laboratory according to DIN EN ISO 354, the absorption coefficients of the system in a different arrangement. The derivation is based on the assumption that the transmission of a baffle structure between the elements is geometrically determined – this assumption has proven to be a good approximation in many cases where baffle heights are comparable to the distance between the rows. It is not applicable for baffled silencers where the spacing between the baffles is small and the wave character of sound determines the attenuation.
Bayesian joint inversion of controlled source electromagnetic and magnetotelluric data to infer presence of a freshwater aquifer offshore New Jersey

Summary To evaluate the extent of a low salinity aquifer within the continental shelf offshore New Jersey, USA, we adapt a Bayesian trans-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo (McMC) algorithm for jointly inverting surface towed controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM) and seafloor magnetotelluric (MT) data. Owing to the relatively flat seafloor topography and layered underlying geology, our inversion is parametrized to produce an ensemble of 1D models at each site along the tow line. The results identify a high probability region of high resistivity of varying depth and thickness in the upper 500 m of the continental shelf, corroborating results from a previous study that used a regularized, gradient-based 2D inversion method. Using a combination of synthetic studies and real data we also evaluate the joint model parameter uncertainty in comparison to the uncertainty obtained from the individual data sets and demonstrate quantitatively that joint inversion offers reduced uncertainty. In addition, we show with a Monte Carlo scheme, how the Bayesian model ensemble can subsequently be used to derive quantitative uncertainty estimates of pore water salinity within the low salinity aquifer. The ability to produce meaningful non-linear uncertainty estimates on both conductivity as well as related parameters is a strong motivator for the use of Bayesian inversion methods when computationally feasible.
Measuring Judicial Independence in the American States : A Latent Variable Approach

Judicial independence and judicial accountability are commonly understood to exist in tension with one another, and nowhere is this tension more acutely felt than in U.S. state courts. Many scholars and professionals, among them the American Bar Association, believe that the judiciary should be entirely independent from any outside influence, be it electoral, executive, or legislative. A contrary view is that judges have become too independent, and need to be reigned in by those who can affect control over them, primarily through judicial elections. The core of this disagreement lies with differing understanding of what constitutes independence and accountability. Absent clear conceptualization and measurement of these concepts, much of the normative debate over judicial independence reduces to disagreement over terms. Scholars of judicial politics commonly recognize two types of judicial independence, de jure which describes the institutional arrangements and structures of courts and constitutions, and de facto which describes what actually happens in those institutions in practice. Despite its manifest importance, there is not currently a comprehensive measure of de jure judicial independence in American or Comparative politics. In this paper I develop a measure of de jure judicial independence across jurisdictions. I use a latent-variable model to score states relative to their de jure judicial independence. This measure will be useful in future studies of judicial independence which focus on de facto judicial independence. The American judicial system utilizes of a large variety of selection methods, term lengths, retention methods, and docket control procedures. The fifty states, as well as the federal government, each administer their judiciary in a different way. It is the stated position of the American Bar Association (ABA) that “the escalating partisanship and corrosive effects of excessive money in judicial campaigns, coupled with changes in society at large and the courts themselves, have served to create an environment that places our system of justice, administered by independent and impartial judges, at risk” (American Bar Association, 2003). This is in direct contrast with surveys that show that 75% of Americans prefer elections over appointments for judges (Shepherd, 2013). Justice Paul E. Pfeifer of the Ohio Supreme Court characterizes running for election as: “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station in any race I’ve ever been in as I did in a judicial race. Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests” (Liptak and Roberts, October 6, 2006). With this disparity between the practitioners of the law and the public at large, it is important to establish just how independent or accountable our institutions are designed to be.
PHYSICAL EDUCATORS ' PERCEPTIONS ABOUT PHYSICAL EDUCATION : AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROSPECTIVE AND PRACTISING TEACHER

Prospective teachers enter teacher training with a broad range of experiences affecting attitudes and beliefs about methods of teaching and the value of different subjects. The existence of quality physical education (PE) programs depends largely on the way PE is perceived and valued by those with responsibility for its teaching. This paper reports on the use of four constructs to measure both specialist (n=196) and non-specialist (n=485) teachers' attitudes and beliefs about the teaching of primary school PE. Data were collected from 570 preservice teachers in 2nd, 3rd and 4th year at the University of Newcastle and 111 inservice teachers from state and private schools within New South Wales. The interaction between gender, year level and specialisation was investigated for each attitudinal measure. As hypothesised, non-specialist teachers had significantly lower scores on all measures than specialists. However, post-hoc examination revealed a contrasting pattern of attitudinal development from preservice to inservice. Although non-specialist scores for all constructs were higher for more advanced cohorts in preservice education, their scores were consistently lower at the inservice level. Conversely, specialist scores were higher through preservice to inservice. Gender differences also emerged. The relevance of these findings to teacher educators and the importance of continuing professional development for inservice teachers will be discussed.
The pilgrimage economy of Early Roman Jerusalem ( 1 st century BCE e 70 CE ) reconstructed from the d 15 N and d 13 C values of goat and sheep remains

Religious and historical sources suggest that pilgrimage formed a major source of Jerusalem’s economy during the Early Roman period due to the Temple’s role as a religious and judicial center for the Jewish diaspora. Until now, this assertion has been supported by little material evidence. In this study, the carbon and nitrogen isotope values of local arcahaeological and, modern wild herbivores from known environments were used to determine the environmental origins of domesticated sheep and goat that were traded and consumed in Early Roman Jerusalem. Pinpointing the environmental origins of these herd animals can determine if they were raised in specialized farms in the vicinity of Jerusalem, brought to the city by local pilgrims, or were part of organized importation of sacrifice animals from desert regions that lie beyond the boundaries of the province of Judea. The results indicate that at minimum 37% of the goat and sheep consumed in Jerusalem during the Early Roman period were brought from desert regions. The inter-provincial importation of animals to Jerusalem to meet high demands for sacrifice by pilgrims is the first material evidence for large scale economic specialization in the city. Furthermore, the results imply that desert animals were further marketed for domestic use in contemporaneous farm sites
The Future of Nanotechnology in Plant Pathology

Engineered nanoparticles are materials between 1 and 100 nm and exist as metalloids, metallic oxides, nonmetals, and carbon nanomaterials and as functionalized dendrimers, liposomes, and quantum dots. Their small size, large surface area, and high reactivity have enabled their use as bactericides/ fungicides and nanofertilizers. Nanoparticles can be designed as biosensors for plant disease diagnostics and as delivery vehicles for genetic material, probes, and agrichemicals. In the past decade, reports of nanotechnology in phytopathology have grown exponentially. Nanomaterials have been integrated into disease management strategies and diagnostics and as molecular tools. Most reports summarized herein are directed toward pathogen inhibition using metalloid/metallic oxide nanoparticles as bactericides/fungicides and as nanofertilizers to enhance health. The use of nanoparticles as biosensors in plant disease diagnostics is also reviewed. As global demand for food production escalates against a changing climate, nanotechnology could sustainably mitigate many challenges in disease management by reducing chemical inputs and promoting rapid detection of pathogens. 111 A nn u. R ev . P hy to pa th ol . 2 01 8. 56 :1 11 -1 33 . D ow nl oa de d fr om w w w . a nn ua lr ev ie w s. or g A cc es s pr ov id ed b y Y al e U ni ve rs ity L ib ra ri es o n 08 /2 9/ 18 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. PY56CH06-Elmer ARI 23 July 2018 14:49
ON THE INDUSTRIAL FITNESS OF WCET ANALYSIS

The process requirements that govern the development of high-integrity real-time systems make timing analysis an ineludible concern. Conceptually, the problem space of timing analysis includes the determination of the best, average and worst-case bounds for the execution time of the program parts of interest. As the problem space is vast, as often is the program to analyse, industry seeks tools and methods that can address its need effectively, that is to say, with a decent cost-benefit ratio. Static analysis is widely acknowledged as the most authoritative means to derive safe bounds on the worst-case execution time (WCET). The WCET in turn is the prerequisite input to feasibility analysis. Without WCET, feasibility analysis is just pointless. In terms of cost-benefit ratio, the value of feasibility analysis must be not inferior to the joint cost of obtaining the WCET values, ensuring the compliance of the system (at least in the worst case) to the analysis model, and running the analysis itself. It is not a given that this equation always holds in practice. When it does not, it is important to understand what are the impediments and how they can be slashed. Static WCET analysis is exposed to known fragilities in terms of cost efficiency and value tightness. Yet, the important progress achieved in the research around it suggests that the “WCET problem” is virtually solved, and quite satisfactorily so for simple single-processor architectures. The industrial ground, however, is the sole terrain where the truth of that claim can be ascertained. In this paper we discuss lessons learned from an experiment, massive for size, duration and effort, aimed to the timing analysis of a significant component of the software application embedded onboard a commercial satellite system. We discuss the limitations which we incurred in our application of static WCET analysis, highlighting those which we consider intrinsic to the method itself when confronted with the challenges of industrialscale systems.
Column Attention in SQLNet Spider-Task Architecture

The recently-released Spider task was the first large-scale, complex, cross-domain dataset for semantic parsing in the form of text-to-SQL question answering. I experiment with a baseline SQLNet model applied to Spider. While the column attention mechanism was a crucial feature of SQLNet when it achieved state-ofthe-art performance on the WikiSQL task, boosting it by an additional 3 points, no similar improvement is gained on the Spider task. The attention mechanism is helpful at the meta-level insofar as intuitive attention is learned and can help visualize the model. However, the failure of the attention mechanism on bottom line results suggests future areas of improvement for the model.
Modelling of Multilayer Perforated Electrodes for Dielectric Elastomer Actuator Applications

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), which are inherently complaint capacitors, are emerging as pseudo-muscular actuators with a wide range of applications. In order to achieve high stretchability for large DEA actuation, carbon nanotube (CNT) and other 1D materials-based electrodes are used to maintain conductance at large strains. These electrodes are typically fabricated using spray coating or filter transfer method and resemble a perforated electrode under high magnification. Hence, there can be a loss of field and stray capacitance when multiple layers of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-based electrodes are used. This study investigates the effect of microscopic perforations on the nature of electric fields and on the capacitance of multi-layered CNT-based DEA structures with various dimensions and geometric properties of the electrodes. It has been found that the capacitance decreases with increase in the perforations however its effect is limited for a reasonable coverage. The change in normalized is found to be negligible (~5%) for an electrode coverage area of over 90%, however, the maximum output work reduces by 18.2%. This analysis is important to develop robust and reliable CNT-based DEA structures, without using excessive CNTs which can lead to increased mechanical stiffness of the electrodes.
BIM Technology Application in the Project Construction Cost Control Research

With the continuous development of the construction industry, BIM technology has also been vigorously promoted in the construction field of China. Based on this, the concept of BIM technology is studied, and the research status of BIM technology in China is introduced. The application of BIM technology in cost management has been studied from the aspects of improving cost efficiency, coordinating cooperation among various professions, and dynamic control of cost. Finally, through an actual case, the application of BIM technology in the whole project is analyzed. Practice has proved that the application of BIM technology can effectively solve the problems in traditional engineering cost management.
User-Driven Innovation : Towards a New Innovation Paradigm

The holistic approach to innovation includes establishing a wide range of interactions among different actors which implies development and expansion of methods, approaches and tools for improving the innovation. This paper analyzes the impact of customers and users on promoting innovation of companies. In this context, the authors advocate different methods and approaches for establishing interactions between the customer and the company and for providing the customer involvement in the process of innovation. Therefore, the paper aims at presenting an analytical overview of the methods and tools by which users influence companies’ process of innovation. It will also propose a conceptual framework as regards the user involvement in different stages of the innovation process.
Politicking Behaviour of Indian Firms

This paper examines the effect of political connections against the backdrop of low business freedom and weak market institutions in the world’s largest democracy. We study the potential effects of a market friction, particularly political connection for India’s mixed economic set-up. This study proposes a broad definition to examine the nature and consequences of these connections through different channels including Members of Parliament (MPs) and contributions to the national political parties. Using Standard & Poor’s Bombay Stock Exchange (S & P BSE) Index for 500 firms, we find that political connections have a positive effect on firms profitability and access to credit which varies with the strength of connection. Further, we find that this strength effect differs with the firm’s size as large-cap firms do not indicate this effect and are benefitted significantly from all channels of connections. Mid-cap and small-cap firms showed significant strength effect and are not benefitted substantially from MPs. JEL Classification: H7; K0; P2; P3
Tech Report # 2019-05 : Performance Interference of Big Data Frameworks in Resource Constrained Clouds

Correspondence: stratos@cs.ucsb. edu Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Abstract In this paper, we investigate and characterize the behavior of “big” and “fast” data analysis frameworks, in multi-tenant, shared settings for which computing resources (CPU and memory) are limited. Such settings and frameworks are frequently employed in both public and private cloud deployments. Resource constraints stem from both physical limitations (private clouds) and what the user is willing to pay (public clouds). Because of these constraints, users increasingly attempt to maximize resource utilization and sharing in these settings. To understand how popular analytics frameworks behave and interfere with each other under such constraints, we investigate the use of Mesos to provide fair resource sharing for resource constrained private cloud systems. We empirically evaluate such systems using Hadoop, Spark, and Storm multi-tenant workloads. Our results show that in constrained environments, there is significant performance interference that manifests in multiple ways. First, Mesos is unable to achieve fair resource sharing for many configurations. Moreover, application performance over competing frameworks depends on Mesos offer order and is highly variable. Finally, we find that resource allocation among tenants that employ coarse-grained and fine-grained framework scheduling, can lead to a form of deadlock for fine-grained frameworks and underutilization of system resources.
A NEW TEST IN THE LONGEST INCREASING SUBSEQUENCE FAMILY OF INDEPENDENCE TESTS

In this paper we introduce a new discrete one-tailed hypothesis test of independence, dn, a member from the family of the Longest Increasing Subsequence Hypothesis Tests. dn allows to incorporate an alternative hypothesis which represents a decreasing (increasing) trend, according to the necessity. Through a simulation study, focusing in situations of small and moderate sample sizes and mixture of distributions, we compare the behavior of dn with those procedures which allow one-tailed options. We introduce a correction in the p-value of dn, in order to control the type I error and to improve the power of dn. dn shows outstanding performance in all the simulations, being indicated for use in mixtures, dn shows adequate control of the level of significance and high power when compared to other tests. We use dn to inspect data from stroke rehabilitation, dn detects the tendency between scores taken through conventional methods and robotic devices.
Red Blood Cell Classification using Convolutional Networks Exploring Machine Learning Applications in Pathology

This project investigates the application of machine learning techniques to problems in pathology. Using a dataset compiled by pathologists at the Yale School of Medicine, I develop a model to classify red blood cells into different groups of pathological significance. A number of convolutional network architectures are explored and tested on the original dataset of 750 images. Using a deep convolutional neural network, I am able to achieve up to 97% accuracy, a significant improvement over previous approaches.
Photometric Investigations of Peculiar spiral galaxy NGC 2608 Using Multiband CCD Camera

The structural of peculiar spiral galaxy NGC 2608 have been studied using multiband CCD surface photometry of the observations that have been obtained by the 1.88 m optical telescope of Kottamia Astronomical Observatory (Egypt). We studied the structure and radial brightness distribution of the galaxy. The surface brightness distribution indicate that the center of the galaxy consist of two nucleus. The photometric parameters of its components and the color distribution over the galactic are estimated and stellar populations in different regions of the galaxy are analyzed using color diagram. The distributions of the color indices show that the observed photometric symmetry in the inner part of the galaxy, including the bar, is due to a symmetric distribution of absorbing material. The bluest regions of star formation are located in Eastern side of the bar. From the observations, the surface brightness, Ellipticity of the isophotes, Major axes position angle and color indices are discussed.
Theoretical Study of the Electronic and Magnetic Properties and Phase Stability of the Full Heusler Compound Pd 2 CoAl

Based on first principles calculation, a systematical investigation has been performed to study the electronic, magnetic, dynamic, and mechanical properties of the full Heusler compound Pd2CoAl. It is found that the L21-type structure is energetically more stable than the XA-type due to the lower total energy. The obtained lattice constant in cubic ground state is 6.057 Å, which matches well with previous study. The calculated electronic band structure reveals the metallic nature of Pd2CoAl and its total magnetic moment of 1.78 μB is mainly contributed by Co atom from strong spin splitting effect, as indicated with the distinctive distributions of the density of states in two spin directions. Under uniform strains from −5% to +5%, the variation of total magnetic moment has been obtained and it is still caused by the much larger change from Co atom, compared with Pd and Al atoms. The tetragonal structure has further been analyzed and we found that there is possible martensitic phase transformation because the total energy can be further reduced when the cubic structure is varied into the tetragonal one. The large energy difference of 0.165 eV between the tetragonal and cubic phases is found at the c/a ratio of 1.30. The total density of states has been compared between the cubic and tetragonal phases for Pd2CoAl and results show tetragonal phase transformation could reduce the states at the Fermi energy level in both directions. In addition, the dynamic and mechanical stabilities have also been evaluated for Pd2CoAl in both cubic and tetragonal structures and results confirm that the tetragonal phase shows good stability against the cubic phase, which further verifies that the tetragonal phase transformation is highly expected. In the end, the strong elastic anisotropy in the tetragonal structure has been clearly shown with the calculated directional dependence of the Young’s modulus and shear modulus.