Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Equivalent explosion simulation model for studying the laser-induced damage process of KDP crystal

When Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate (KDP) crystal is irradiated by nanosecond laser with fluences exceeding its damage threshold, laser-induced damage occurs in the bulk or on the surfaces of crystal components. Such damage process is a multi-physical coupling process which is composed of energy deposition stage, temperature/pressure rising stage and subsequent micro explosion stage. So far, great efforts have been made in modeling the energy deposition and temperature/pressure rising stages of the damage process, but little attention has been paid on the subsequent micro explosion event. As a result, it is still impossible to reproduce the laser damage phenomena such as damage crater formation and shockwave propagation with the existing damage models. To address this concern, equivalent explosion simulation model for studying the laser-induced damage process of KDP crystals has been constructed by finite element method (FEM). According to the model, explosion energy leading to damage, formation of damage craters and propagation of shockwave can be obtained. Moreover, laser damage experiments combined with time-resolved techniques have been utilized to investigate the impact of laser fluences on the shockwave speed. Experiment results agree well with the simulated phenomenon, which has proved the validity of the simulation model.
Heuristic Search Techniques for Real-Time Strategy Games

Real-time strategy (RTS) video games are known for being one of the most complex and strategic games for humans to play. With a unique combination of strategic thinking and dextrous mouse movements, RTS games make for a very intense and exciting game-play experience. In recent years the games AI research community has been increasingly drawn to the field of RTS AI research due to its challenging sub-problems and harsh real-time computing constraints. With the rise of e-Sports and professional human RTS gaming, the games industry has become very interested in AI techniques for helping design, balance, and test such complex games. In this thesis we will introduce and motivate the main topics of RTS AI research, and identify which areas need the most improvement. We then describe the RTS AI research we have conducted, which consists of five major contributions. First, our depth-first branch and bound build-order search algorithm, which is capable of producing professional human-quality build-orders in real-time, and was the first heuristic search algorithm to be used on-line in a starcraft AI competition setting. Second, our RTS combat simulation system: SparCraft, which contains three new algorithms for unit micromanagement (Alpha-Beta Considering Durations (ABCD), UCT Considering Durations (UCT-CD) and Portfolio Greedy Search), each outperforming the previous state-of-the-art. Third, Hierarchical Portfolio Search for games with large search spaces, which was implemented as the AI system for the online strategy game Prismata by Lunarch Studios. Fourth, UAlbertaBot: our starcraft AI bot which won the 2013 AIIDE starcraft AI competition. And fifth: our tournament managing software which is currently used in all three major starcraft AI competitions.
Effectiveness of MOOCs for teachers in safe ICT use training

Despite the efforts made, there is still an alarming difference between the digital competence that teachers have and the one they should have in order to develop their students' digital competence. The lack of teacher training in safe and responsible use of ICT is a special cause for concern. Online courses in MOOC format meet all the required conditions to offer a possible solution to the unavoidable and urgent need for initial and in-service teacher training in this area of digital competence. However, there is currently no evidence in the literature on the effectiveness of these courses for this purpose. This study examines the instructional effectiveness of courses in MOOC format for teacher training in the safe and responsible use of ICT by analysing three different official courses. The courses were analysed using three different methods: a questionnaire to measure participants’ perceptions, pre-tests and post-tests to measure the knowledge acquired, and LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) to measure the quality of digital educational resources created by the participants. The results suggest that online courses in MOOC format are an effective way to train teachers in the safe and responsible use of ICT, and that these courses can enable the development of digital competence in the area of content creation. A pesar de los esfuerzos realizados, aún existe una alarmante diferencia entre la competencia digital que tienen los profesores y la que deberían tener para desarrollar la competencia digital en sus alumnos. De especial preocupación es la carencia de formación del profesorado en uso seguro y responsable de las TIC. Los cursos en línea con formato MOOC reúnen todas las condiciones necesarias para ofrecer una posible solución a la ineludible y apremiante necesidad de formación inicial y continua del profesorado en esta área de la competencia digital. Sin embargo, no existe actualmente evidencia en la literatura sobre la efectividad de estos cursos para tal cometido. Este estudio examina la efectividad instruccional de los cursos con formato MOOC para la formación del profesorado en el uso seguro y responsable de las TIC mediante el análisis de tres cursos oficiales diferentes. Estos se analizaron empleando tres instrumentos diferentes: un cuestionario para medir la percepción de los participantes, pre-tests y pos-tests para medir los conocimientos adquiridos y el instrumento LORI (Learning Object Review Instrument) para medir la calidad de recursos educativos digitales creados por los participantes. Los resultados sugieren que los cursos en línea con formato MOOC constituyen una forma efectiva de formar al profesorado en el uso seguro y responsable de las TIC, y que estos cursos pueden ayudar al desarrollo de la competencia digital en el área de creación de contenidos.
An exact analytical solution for stress concentrations within layered hollow spheres under compression

Abstract The paper presents the exact analytical solution for the stress concentrations within a layered hollow sphere under diametral compression. Numerical results show that the stress distribution within a layered hollow sphere changes drastically along the axis of loading, and the maximum tensile hoop stress may appear at the interface as well as at the internal surface. In general, a harder outer layer leads to a maximum tensile hoop stress in the outer layer near the interface; whereas a softer outer layer leads to a compressive hoop stress at the same location. A thinner outer layer usually results in a higher tensile hoop stress, regardless of the relative stiffness between the layer and the hollow sphere. The hoop stress at the interface also increases with the internal pressure but decreases with the contact size of loading. By changing the relative thickness and mechanical properties of the layered hollow sphere, the present solution not only provides the basis for the design and the fabrication of suitable layered hollow spheres with multiple functions against delamination at the interfaces or tensile cracking at the internal surfaces, but also provides a useful benchmark for the numerical simulations for various advanced multilayered hollow spheres.
Electrospinning process optimization for Nylon 6,6/Epoxy hybrid nanofibers by using Taguchi method

In this study, Taguchi method has been exploited to optimize the electrospinning process to produce hybrid nanofibers composed from Nylon 6, 6 (NY) and Epoxy (EP) polymers. Both polymers has been dissolved, with a sequence technique, in 80:20 mixture of Formic acid (FA)/Dichloromethane (DCM) solvent to form a homogenous electrospinnable (NY/EP/solvent) polymer solutions. Naylon 6, 6 was added to epoxy with weight ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. NY/EP/solvent solutions were prepared and design of experiment was utilized to determine the optimal factors which affect the average electrospun hybrid nanofibers diameter of Nylon 6, 6/epoxy. The effect of two main factors (NY/EP ratios and Nylon 6, 6/solvent concentration) on the electrospun hybrid fiber diameter and its morphology was investigated. An extensive study for the effect of Berry’s number on the formation of hybrid fibers has been conducted too. Taguchi method and ANOVA results indicate that the Nylon 6, 6/solvent concentration is the most significant factor exhibiting best morphology and optimum diameter for the electrospun hybrid nanofibers. The minimum hybrid nanofiber diameter and its standard deviation was found to be 180 ± 35 nm corresponds to 8 wt% Nylon 6, 6/solvent and NY/EP ratio of 5:1. Infrared spectra and Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy were used to confirm the coexistence of both epoxy and Nylon 6, 6 polymers in the electrospun hybrid nanofibers. Glass transition temperature of hybrid nanofibers was measured by differential scanning calorimeter. Incorporation of the epoxy in the fibers resulted in 5% increase in glass transition temperature indicating that the addition of epoxy has confined the mobility of the polymer chains. Also, an improvement in both tensile strength and modulus of elasticity of the electrospun NY/EP hybrid nanofibers has been notified and reported.
Exploring the Acquisition of Information on Entrepreneurial Knowledge of Women: Niger Delta

Exploring the Acquisition of Information on Entrepreneurial Knowledge of Women: Niger Delta by Ebierede Osemi MSc, Delta State University, Abraka, 2009 PGD, Delta State University, Abraka, 2008 HND, Federal Polytechnic, Kaduna, 1999 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Management
A cross-sectional study of stigma and quality of life in patients with mental illness

A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY OF STIGMA AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH MENTAL ILLNESS, p Despite the scientific advances stigma still continues to be an important barrier in the management of mental illness (MI). In this study we assessed the stigma and quality of life in patients with MI. Method: 30patients with mental illness were a
A Tree Locality-Sensitive Hash for Secure Software Testing

Bugs in software that make it through testing can cost tens of millions of dollars each year, and in some cases can even result in the loss of human life. In order to eliminate bugs, developers may use symbolic execution to search through possible program states looking for anomalous states. Most of the computational effort to search through these states is spent solving path constraints in order to determine the feasibility of entering each state. State merging can make this search more efficient by combining program states, allowing multiple execution paths to be analyzed at the same time. However, a merge with dissimilar path constraints dramatically increases the time necessary to solve the path constraint. Currently, there are no distance measures for path constraints, and pairwise comparison of program states is not scalable. A hashing method is presented that clusters constraints in such a way that similar constraints are placed in the same cluster without requiring pairwise comparisons between queries. When combined with other state-of-the-art state merging techniques, the hashing method allows the symbolic executor to execute more instructions per second and find more terminal execution states than the other techniques alone, without decreasing the high path coverage achieved by merging many states together.
Privacy Management Among Social Media Natives: An Exploratory Study of Facebook and Snapchat

Guided by communication privacy management theory, this study tested network size, network diversity, privacy concerns, and privacy management practices in and between Facebook and Snapchat for social media natives. A cross-sectional survey of 273 college students (predominately Caucasian, female, 18- to 20 years old) showed that audiences were larger and more diverse in Facebook than Snapchat. Snapchat users with larger friend lists and lower privacy concerns reported more shared boundary ownership, whereas those with more diverse networks reportedly used more open friending practices to expand their connections. Higher privacy concerns were related to more restrictive privacy management practices in both mediums, and participants were overall more open on Snapchat than on Facebook. Theoretical and practical implications were presented in efforts to inform future research.
Improving instance search performance in video collections

This thesis presents methods to improve instance search and enhance user performance while browsing unstructured video collections. Through the use of computer vision and information retrieval techniques, we propose novel solutions to analyse visual content and build a search algorithm to address the challenges of visual instance search, while considering the constraints for practical applications. Firstly, we investigate methods to improve the effectiveness of instance search systems for finding object instances which occurred in unstructured video content. Using the bag of feature framework, we propose a novel algorithm to use the geometric correlation information between local features to improve the accuracy of local feature matching, thus improve the performance of instance search systems without introducing much computation cost. Secondly, we consider the scenario that the performance of instance search systems may drop due to the volume of visual content in large video collections. We introduce a search algorithm based on embedded coding to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of instance search systems. And we participate in the international video evaluation campaign, TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation, to comparatively evaluate the performance of our proposed methods. Finally, the exploration and navigation of visual content when browsing large unstructured video collections is considered. We propose methods to address such challenges and build an interactive video browsing tool to improve user performance while seeking interesting content over video collections. We construct a structured content representation with similarity graph using our proposed instance search technologies. Considering the constraints related to real world usability, we present a flexible interface based on faceted navigation to enhance user performance when completing video browsing tasks. This thesis shows that user performance can be enhanced by improving the effectiveness of instance search approaches, when seeking information in unstructured video collection. While covering many different aspects of improving instance search in this work, we outline three potential directions for future work: advanced feature representation, data driven rank and cloud-based search algorithms.
How Does Variation in the State’s Choice Over Higher Education Governance Affect University Restructuring? A Time-Series-Cross-Sectional Analysis

This study examined the effects of governance in higher education on the changing structures of universities, focusing on three major aspects: the marketization of higher education, new circuits of academic capitalist knowledge, and the quality of higher education. To do so, the study employed time-series-cross-sectional (TSCS) data analysis with random effects models. The primary focus was to conduct empirical research utilizing comparative indicators and analytical tools for cross-national analysis, and to complement existing qualitative studies on the changing nature of universities. The results suggest the following: First, reductions in public subsidies for higher education may encourage higher education institutions to enter into market activities. Second, the results provide evidence that new circuits of knowledge, namely, academic capitalist knowledge regimes, are more highly associated with market activities such as university–industry collaboration and R&D performance compared to public good knowledge regime. Third, the results suggest that quality of higher education institutions is positively correlated with both public subsidies in higher education and university-industry collaboration.
Creating “Opportunity-Rooms” for Inclusion through Popular Education

In this paper, we take a closer look at five Norwegian initiatives from the Nordic project Folkbildning Norden, which is intended to contribute to a better reception of immigrants. Our question is in what way these initiatives provide “opportunity-rooms” for inclusion. The initiatives underline the recognition of lifelong and life-wide learning by linking informal and formal elements of learning—where the “free and voluntary” are tightly coupled with the “useful and necessary”. All the initiatives create inclusion through involvement, networking, trust, belonging, and language learning. The initiatives tell us that different “opportunity rooms” might be important gateways for inclusion in various social contexts. The initiatives also allow for a further discussion about possible advantages and potential of the voluntary sector regarding increasing immigrants’ opportunities for inclusion into the society.
Insider perspectives on catalysing the development and use of individualised education plans

ABSTRACT Individual Education Plans (IEPs) are ever-present in inclusive education and frequently used in settings where students with disabilities are included. This phenomenological qualitative study investigated the IEP development and implementation process in two independent schools in the South-Eastern metropolitan region of Victoria, Australia. Primary and secondary school leaders and teachers shared their professional experiences with respect to IEPs by emphasising that collaboration, parental involvement and strong leadership through effective communication supported the development and implementation of IEPs that meet individual student’s learning needs. The authors suggest that research in Australia should continue to provide a distinct understanding of the voices of parents and students with special education needs and/or disabilities in the IEP process, as well as their preferences for culturally sensitive support within schools.
Who flourishes in college? Using positive psychology and student involvement theory to explore mental health among traditionally aged undergraduates

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between undergraduate students’ mental health and their engagement in the educational experience. The researcher identified traditionally-aged college students (18-23) who were flourishing and distinguished them from students who were moderately mentally healthy and/or languishing according to Keyes’ (2002) continuum of mental health model. Mental health was the dependent variable. Student involvement was defined as the extent to which students engage in empirically derived good educational practices as measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement’s College Student Report (2005). The five benchmark measures of student engagement were independent variables: (a) level of academic challenge, (b) student/faculty interactions, (c) active/collaborative learning, (d) enriching educational experiences, and (e) supportive campus environment. Analyses also considered students’ academic achievement (GPA), gender, and parents’ highest level of education (SES) as variables. Chi square analyses showed that mental health category was independent of gender and parents’ highest level of education. ANOVA results also showed that student GPA also did not differ significantly by mental health category. However ANOVA results did show that mean scores for all five engagement variables did differ significantly by mental health category (p < .001) with flourishing students scoring highest and languishing students scoring lowest. A series of stepwise multiple regressions were conducted using mental health score as a continuous variable based on confirmatory factor analysis of Keyes’ model. Results showed that “supportive campus environment” was the engagement variable most significantly predictive of mental health for both males and females. VIRGINIA MILLER AMBLER EDUCATIONAL POLICY, PLANNING, AND LEADERSHIP PROGRAM THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY IN VIRGINIA
Enhancement of dyeing cotton fabrics using nanocomposite

Actually, the present current work addresses an innovative approach for benign enhancement of dyeing of cotton fabrics assisted with nanocomposite based on chitosan (Cs), silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) and clay. The Cs/Ag NPs and Cs/Ag NPs/clay nanocomposites were prepared using UV irradiation and applied on the cotton fabrics by pad-dry-curing method. The blank and treated cotton fabrics were dyed with C.I. Acid Orange 74. The Dye exhaustion, colorimetric analysis as well as fastness properties of the treated fabrics was evaluated. The obtained data proves that the nanocomposite of Cs/Ag NPs/clay is a promising mixture for durable dyeing for cotton fabrics.
SCORING MODEL FOR FIBER LASER CUTTING OF MILD STEEL SHEETS

Laser cutting is one of the most important non-conventional manufacturing processes due to its unique properties and advantages. It is a multi-parameter technology. This fact has resulted in some gaps in available information, and a few of contradictory reports about the exact effect of each process parameter on the surfaces produced, and makes quick parameters selection for obtaining a desired cut quality problematic, especially for new laser types. Fiber lasers have only very recently come into prominence, and the literature is still very sparsely populated with data on their performance. This paper outlines the use of a scoring model of Projection to Latent Structure (PLS) technique and applies it to study the effects of fiber laser cutting process parameters and their interactions on the quality achieved during cutting mild steel sheets. The effects of the interaction of the main process parameters on the quality output variables such as top kerf width, surface roughness and the striation depth are studied. Scoring models are proposed to relate the quality and the laser cutting parameters.
Performance of a spectral beam combining grating with YAG substrate

In a previous study, the temperature-rise of a spectral beam combining grating was analyzed theoretically and experimentally. It was concluded that the temperature of a grating can be effectively reduced by increasing the substrate thickness or by using a substrate material with higher thermal conductivity. In this study, yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) was used as the substrate material to fabricate a spectral beam combining grating. The temperature, distortion, and far-field beam quality of the YAG-substrate-grating were analyzed theoretically and experimentally. It is concluded that, compared with the traditional quartz-substrate-grating, not only can the YAG-substrate-MDG withstand higher power, but the beam quality of the diffraction laser is also better.