Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
APPLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL STREAMFLOW AND MUSKINGUM CUNGE MODELS IN THE YALA RIVER BASIN, KENYA

The nature of surface runoff and its effects in the watershed can be represented by the application of hydrologic and hydraulic models. In this study, the Geological Streamflow Model (GeoSFM) and the Muskingum Cunge (M-C) model were used to model the hydrologic processes of the Yala river network. The objective was to develop a flood early warning system to mitigate potential flood hazard risk exposed to the downstream inhabitants. Historical hydro]metric datasets of 1975] 2005 were used for calibration, verification and streamflow routing based on a split record analysis. For the runoff generation, rainfall and evaporation datasets were provided by the Kenya Meteorological Department while for model calibration and verification, streamflow was obtained from Water Resources Management Authority. To determine the hydrologic connectivity, the 30 meters by 30 meters Digital Elevation Model was obtained from the International Centre for Research in Agro]forestry. The Digital Soil Map of the World developed by Food and Agricultural Organisation and the Global Land Cover data of the United States Geological Survey were used for model parameterisation. The soil moisture accounting and routing method transferred water through the subsurface, overland and river phases. The percentage of the correlation coefficient (R2% value) was used to determine model performance. The GeoSFM modeled streamflow at the Bondo streamflow gauging station, coded 1FG02 where during the calibration and verification phases, streamflow was modeled at R2 value of 80.6% and 87.3% respectively. The M-C model routed streamflow from 1FG02 to the Kadenge streamflow gauging station, coded 1FG03 at R2 value of 90.8%, Muskingum K value of 2.76 hours and Muskingum X value of 0.4609. The extreme value analysis done on the modeled streamflow portrayed a unique behaviour of the system when compared to the ideal system model that should mimic the real world. It was concluded that the GeoSFM and M-C models were hence useful tools for flood mitigation by issuing flood early warning messages defined by peak streamflow and flood wave travel time. Key words : Flood, Yala River, geological streamflow model, muskingum cunge model.
Inquiry-Based Learning for a Virtual Learning Community to Enhance Problem-Solving Ability of Applied Thai Traditional Medicine Students.

The recent growth in collaborative and interactive virtual learning communities integrating innovative digital technologies and contemporary learning frameworks is contributing enormously to the use of e-learning in higher education in the twenty-first century. The purpose of this study was to describe the development of a virtual learning community system within the Applied Thai Traditional Medicine (ATTM) instruction context. This started with collecting data from ATTM students (n=303) from eight universities in Thailand. In addition, experts (n=30) in various areas of ATTM, educational technology, and assessment participated in semistructured interviews. Using the information obtained, an online learning community system guided by the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework which incorporated advanced virtual innovations such as inquiry-based learning (IBL) activities was consequently developed. Test score results of students obtained before studying via the ATTM VCOI system showed that the sample group of 39 ATTM students had an average score of ability in problem-solving at 16.87 with standard deviation at 3.25. After studying with the system, they achieved an average score of 18.41 with standard deviation at 3.05. The results indicate that average test scores were statistically different at a 0.05 level of significance (t = -2.140, p = 0.03). Furthermore, the results also point to efficacy in regards to teaching, social and cognitive presences. The data collected indicates that use of the ATTM VCOI system can lead to a more collaborative community learning environment that can enhance ATTM students’ problem-solving ability and improve the effectiveness of online learning in higher education in general and in ATTM instruction in particular.
Heavy Metals Extraction Potential of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and Canola (Brassica napus)

Phytoextraction is a remediation technology that uses plants to remove heavy metals from soil. The success of a phytoextraction process depends on adequate plant yield (aerial parts) and high metal concentrations in plant shoots. A pot experiment was conducted to investigate the combination effects of plants [sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and canola (Brassica napus)] with soil treatments (manure, sulfuric acid and DTPA). Treatments, included two plants and seven soil treatments, which were applied baeed on a completely randomized factorial design. Three replicates were used for each treatment. The largest shoot dry weight biomass production occurred in manure treatments for both plants. The maximum shoot concentrations of Pb and Zn were 234.6 and 1364.4 mg kg-1 respectively in three mmoles DTPA kg-1 treatment of sunflower. Furthermore the results showed that sunflower had a higher extracting potential for removal of Pb and Zn from polluted soil.
In vitro Antioxidant Activity of a Metabolite from Streptomyces species KSRO-04

Antioxidants have gained importance as pharmacological agents and have been consumed in various forms mainly as fruits, vegetables and dietary supplements. These antioxidants are majorly obtained from plant source or have been synthesized chemically. This study concentrated on the in vitro evaluation of antioxidant property of a water soluble metabolite from Streptomyces species KSRO-04. The antioxidant activity was evaluated by Total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, total antioxidant activity, DPPH assay, lipid peroxidation inhibition assay, nitric oxide scavenging activity, Super oxide anion scavenging activity, Metal ion chelating activity and total reductive capability. The metabolite was characterised using TLC and purity was assessed by HPLC. The UV absorption indicated absorption maximum of 360nm suggesting a polyene nature of the metabolite. The metabolites showed a moderate antioxidant activity with good nitric oxide scavenging activity and also hinted that the anti oxidant activity is not solely due to the phenolic compounds. The metabolite from the Streptomyces species KSRO-04 is a potent antioxidant agent which suggests its beneficiary role as a pharmacological agent.
Problems Affecting Managers Job Performance In Government Parastatals: Cross River State Water Board

The study focused on problems affecting manager’s job performance in government parastatals: Cross River State Water Board. The study aimed at determining relationship between manager’s job performance and job stress. Secondly,to access the significant relationship between manager’s job performance and training. Also, to ascertain the relationship between manager’s job performance and Job security. To evaluate the relationship between manager’s job performance and work environment and to significant relationship between manager’s job performance and organizational cultural. The study adopted exploratory research design (cross-sectional) and descriptive research design (in-depth interview). Data were analysed using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. The study revealed thatJob stress had effect on manager’s job performance. Training had impact on manager’s job performance. There is significant relationship between manager’s job performance and Job security. There is significant relationship between manager’s job performance and Work environment. Organizational cultural had effect on manager’s job performance. The paper concluded that Job stress does have effect on manager’s job performance in Cross River State Water board. Training has effect on manager’s job performance in Cross River State Water Board. Key words : Job performance, job stress, training, job security, Work environment, organizational culture
An inclusion of willingness to pay as an independent variable in the individual travel cost model

The economic value of the resources available at a site can be shown in terms of the benefits gained by the visitors in a quantitative or monetary value. The benefits gained by the visitors could be estimated by using the demand of visitors to the site using the concept of consumer surplus. Travel cost method (TCM) is an alternative technique that can be used to determine the value of environmental resources based on the demand curve. There have been various modifications made to the basic TCM developed by Hotelling 1947. Modification of the basic TCM will take into account those factors that may shift the demand of visitors. The objectives of this article are to review the basic TCM, to modify the basic TCM through the incorporation of willingness to pay (WTP) as one of the independent variables in the ITCM model and finally discuss the role of WTP as an independent variable in the ITCM model. Structured interview or face to face data collection method was employed to obtain the primary data on the WTP of visitors for an entrance fee to the study site using a well developed questionnaire. ITCM model will be estimated with the Poisson regression and Negative Binomial analysis using the LIMDEP software. The modification of the basic TCM is crucial to improve and enhance the environmental valuation techniques. The incorporation of WTP in the ITCM is expected to enhance the fit of the model in turn improving the consumer surplus estimation.
The Importance of Field-Margin Location for Maintenance of Food Niches for Pollinators

Abstract Understanding the factors that have an impact on the diversity of forage flora in the agricultural landscape is a key issue in the maintenance and control of food niches for pollinators. Field margins are common linear structures in the agricultural landscape. In the present study, we evaluated the factors that exert an impact on the forage flora composition and on the diversity in field margins. The study was conducted in the 2010 - 2011 time period across the agricultural landscape on the Lublin Upland of SE Poland. Data on the forage flora were obtained while making floristic charts along 45 transect plots x 300 m; the total length being 13500 m. Multivariate ordination techniques (PCA and RDA) were employed to analyse forage-flora characteristics. Field margins represent valuable refuge areas for forage-species richness, but not for the abundance of forage species. On field margins, forage-species diversity benefits from the location of natural habitats (forests or meadows), primarily if the distance from these habitats is <1000 m or the field acreage is <10 ha. The shift from heterogeneous habitats to a more homogeneous landscape causes a reduction of forage floral diversity. Due to lack of dense forage-species patches, the promotion of sowing nectariferous and/or polleniferous species seems to be a reasonable management method to enhance the quantitative food niche on field margins and to support the conservation of pollinators in the areas surrounding farms.
Influence of knowledge management critical success factors on organizational performance in Nigeria construction industry

Knowledge management (KM) is a rising interest in today’s business, great number of construction industry turning to knowledge management is gradually increasing because of its definite benefit realize. In project-based industry such as construction, KM is being viewed as a critical success factor in the everyday business of the society. Two hundred and fifteen designated project managers in the Nigerian construction industry were selected using stratified random sampling. A hypothesized model of critical success factors (CSF) of KM, and organizational performance (OP) was tested using structural equation modeling approach (observed variable), and a proposed model was therefore developed. Nine constructs of CSF with their reliability and Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.87, 0.82, 0.74, 0.92, 0.87, 0.82, 0.90, 0.71 and 0.70 were tested. All the CSF loadings demonstrated a significant level of 0.94 on the OP. The study serves as a guide to the construction industry on the effect of each CSF outline and deepened reflectiveness of the surpassing role of effective knowledge management in the construction industry. Key Words: Organizational performance, Knowledge management and Critical success factors
Extraction of lignin from lignocellulose at atmospheric pressure using alkylbenzenesulfonate ionic liquid

Lignocellulosic materials are a potentially valuable source of both aromatic compoundsvia the lignin component and sugars from the cellulose and hemicellulose components. However, efficient means of separating and depolymerising the components are required. An ionic liquid mixture containing the 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium cation and a mixture of alkylbenzenesulfonates with xylenesulfonate as the main anion was used to extract lignin from sugarcane plant waste at atmospheric pressure and elevated temperatures (170–190 °C). The lignin was recovered from the ionic liquid by precipitation, allowing the ionic liquid to be recycled. An extraction yield exceeding 93% was attained. The lignin produced had a molecular weight of 2220 g/mol after acetylation. The regenerated ionic liquid showed good retention of structure and properties. The other product of the extraction was a cellulose pulp, which can be used in further processing.
A Planar Reconfigurable Radiation Pattern Dipole Antenna with Reflectors and Directors for Wireless Communication Applications

A planar printed dipole antenna with reflectors and directors, able to steer its radiation pattern in different directions, is proposed for telecommunication applications. Starting from a dual-beam printed dipole antenna achieved by combining two elementary dipoles back to back, and by loading four PIN diodes, three modes of reconfigurable radiation patterns are achieved at the frequency 2.56 GHz thanks to switches states. A prototype of the structure was realized and characterized; an efficiency of 75% is obtained. Simulation and measured results of the results are presented and discussed.
Control of Indirect Matrix Converter by Using Improved SVM Method

A novel space vector modulation (SVM) method for an indirect matrix converter (IMC) is used to reduce the common -mode voltage (CMV) in the output. The process of selecting required active vectors and to describe the switching sequence in the inverter stage of the IMC is explained in this paper. This novel SVM method used to decrease the peak -to-peak amplitude voltage of CMV without using any external hardware. The other advantage of this SVM method is to reduce the total harmonic distortion of line-to-line output voltage. This new modulation technique is easily implemented through simulation and its results are used to demonstrate the improved performance of the input/output waveforms.
Toward An Improved Model Of Auditory Saliency

While visual saliency models are approaching maturity, their auditory counterparts remain in their infancy. This is mainly due to the difficulties of gathering basic data, and oversimplifications such as an assumption of monaural signals. Moreover, conventional testing approaches for evaluating auditory saliency models tend to be overly simplistic. To address these shortcomings, we developed an experimental procedure for testing auditory saliency along with more formalized stimulus-selection criteria to support more versatile and ecologically relevant saliency models. This work is described, along with an analysis of some relevant acoustical correlates that emerge from the experiments. The results motivate the formulation of a measure of sound complexity and appear to favor time-domain, rather than frequency-domain analysis to describe saliency. Finally, some conclusions are drawn regarding the definition of an expanded feature set to be used for auditory saliency modeling and prediction in the context of natural, everyday sounds.
CrystFEL: a software suite for snapshot serial crystallography

In order to address the specific needs of the emerging technique of `serial femtosecond crystallography', in which structural information is obtained from small crystals illuminated by an X-ray free-electron laser, a new software suite has been created. The constituent programs deal with viewing, indexing, integrating, merging and evaluating the quality of the data, and also simulating patterns. The specific challenges addressed chiefly concern the indexing and integration of large numbers of diffraction patterns in an automated manner, and so the software is designed to be fast and to make use of multi-core hardware. Other constituent programs deal with the merging and scaling of large numbers of intensities from randomly oriented snapshot diffraction patterns. The suite uses a generalized representation of a detector to ease the use of more complicated geometries than those familiar in conventional crystallography. The suite is written in C with supporting Perl and shell scripts, and is available as source code under version 3 or later of the GNU General Public License.
The Relation between Shift Lengths and Occupational Fatigue Dimensions in Filling Station Operators

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Shift work is a common work schedule that has several inappropriate consequences, the most important of which is fatigue. The aim of this study was to invest gate the impact of the shift length on the occupatio al fatigue of operators in filling stations. This cross-sectional study was carried out on operators of the filling station in National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, Hamadan region, western Iran. Participants were chosen using the random sampling. In order to assess occupational fatigue, the Persian version of Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (P-SOFI) was used in 8, 12 and 24-hour shift schedules. The total score of fatigue (P=0.05), functional fatigue (P=0.001) and conceptual fatigue (P=0.013) had significant difference in various shifts length, but physical dimension score had not significant differences. Among all aforementioned shift works, the 24-h shift had higher fatigue score in P-SOFI. It seems that shift length has a significant impact on occupational fatigue among filling tation workers. The result of the study can help to work scheduling and rest-work regime planning for health promotion of workers and accident risk reduction.
DETERMINATION OF CONTROLLER GAINS FOR FREQUENCY CONTROL BASED ON MODIFIED BIG BANG-BIG CRUNCH TECHNIQUE ACCOUNTING THE EFFECT OF AVR

This paper presents a methodology for determining optimized controllers gains for frequency control of two area system. The optimized gains have been obtained using a fitness function which depends on peak overshoot, steady state error, settling time and undershoot. The AVR loop has been included in optimization and its effect on optimized PID controller has been investigated. The optimization has been achieved using Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) optimization. The performance of controllers as obtained by BB-BC technique have been compared on two area system with that obtained using modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evaluation (DE) technique.
Characterization and evaluation of carbendazim-resistance response of Colletotrichum species.

Isolates of Colletotrichum associated with mild and severe symptoms of anthracnose on long cayenne peppers (Capsicum annuum var. acuminatum) were collected from Chiang Mai, Nakorn Pathom and Pichit provinces. A total of fifteen Colletotrichum spp. isolates were obtained as pure cultures by using single-spored isolation. Based on morphological characteristics, eight isolates were identified as C. gloeosporioides and seven isolates were C. capsici. Each isolate was tested for resistance to the carbendazim fungicides by measuring radial growth on the series of PDA plates amended with 0, 0.1, 1, 10, 100, 500 and 1000 μg/ml of carbendazim. On the basis of their fungicide resistant response, the fifteen fungal isolates obtained in this study could be divided into 4 groups as follow; nine isolates were highly resistant (Car HR ), one isolate was moderately resistant (Car MR ), two isolates were weakly resistant (Car WR ) and three isolates were sensitive (Car S ). The Colletotrichum spp. isolates which expressed Car HR , Car WR , Car MR and Car S phenotype were proved and confirmed for pathogenicity on fruits of long cayenne pepper. In order to gain further information on pathogenicity test, the C. gloeosporioides isolate TPCMCg60 (Car HR ) was exhibit very high virulence on pepper fruit.
THE USE OF TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING FOR MEASUREMENTS IN SHALLOW-WATER : CORRECTION OF THE 3 D COORDINATES OF THE POINT CLOUD Prof

Although acoustic measurements are a wide-spread technique in the field of bathymetry, most systems require a water depth of at least 2 m. Furthermore, mapping shallow-water depths with acoustic techniques is expensive and complicated. Over the last decades, the use of laser scanning for mapping riverbeds has increased. However, the level of accuracy and the point density which can be obtained by Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS), and Airborne Laser Bathymetry (ALB) in particular, are not as high as those of terrain measurements originating from ALS. Moreover, ALS and ALB are not yet suited for mapping shallow-water beds. Therefore, more recent research focuses on the use of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) from either a fixed or static position (STLS) or from a mobile platform (MTLS). An obvious advantage of using STLS and MTLS is that both the river beds and the river banks can be modelled by means of the same data acquisition system. This ensures a seamless integration of data sets describing both dry and wet surfaces, and thus of topography and bathymetry. However, although STLS and MTLS have the potential to produce high resolution point clouds of shallow-water riverbeds and -banks, the 15 th International SGEM GeoConference on. resulting point clouds have to be corrected for the systematic errors in depth and distance that are caused by the refraction of the laser beam at its transition through the boundary of air and water. In this research a procedure was implemented to adjust the coordinates of every point situated beneath the water surface, based on the refractive index. The refractive index depends on the wavelength of the laser beam and the properties of the media the beam travels through. The refractive index for a laser beam with a wavelength of 532 nm varies by less than 1% for a wide range of temperature and salinity conditions. Nevertheless, during the case studies, it became clear that it is important to use an estimate of the refractive index which approaches the actual value as closely as possible in order to obtain accuracies of less than 1 to 2 cm. Therefore, the refractive index was determined for each specific case by using water samples.
A Millimeter Wave Antenna using Slots for Defense Applications

In this paper, a rectangular dual band millimeter wave (MMW) microstrip antenna using U and circular slot is designed for defense applications. The antenna operates in the (57-64) GHz unlicensed frequency band. The proposed antenna is designed using RT/duroid substrate having dielectric constant 2.3, thickness 0.04mm and strip line feeding technique. The proposed antenna results are simulated and optimized using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) simulation software. The maximum return loss achieved is -15dB and -25.45 dB respectively for both U and circular slot. Simulation results show that the antenna having circular slot gave better results. The antenna simulation results such as return loss, gain and directivity are presented in this paper.