Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on reduction of hexavalent chromium elution from cement-improved soil

Hexavalent chromium may elute from a part of cement-improved soils when cement solidifications are used for the purpose of ground improvement. Particularly, the likelihood of elution increases when the type of soil is volcanic cohesive soil. Hexavalent cohesive chromium is extremely toxic to the human body. Therefore, in the above-mentioned cement solidifications, it is recommended to consider its elution when volcanic soil is used. In this study, strength and dissolution tests of hexavalent chromium are conducted on cement-improved soils in which cement solidifications and andosols are mixed. Three different waste materials (sugar syrup, burned fish bone, and rice husk ash) are used to verify their reduction properties for hexavalent chromium. According to the results of the test, the strengths of the specimens with the three different materials do not change significantly, and the improved soils maintain the required strengths. In addition, the elution amount of hexavalent chromium from the specimen mixed with a sugar syrup is lower than that from an unmixed specimen. This fact suggests that the waste syrup can reduce the elution of hexavalent chromium.
Members versus Experts: The Perceptions of Party Leadership Styles in New Democracies

Party leaders are highly relevant for contemporary political arenas. Their leadership styles have been often investigated relative to their behaviour and attitudes, but rarely through the lenses of those who observe them closely. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature and compares the ways in which party members and experts evaluate leaders on the transactional–transformational continuum. It uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in 2018 with a modified version of the MLQ. The analysis focuses on eight parliamentary parties in Romania and Bulgaria, covering 19 party leaders and 33 terms over a period of 15 years (2004–2018). The results indicate important differences in the assessment of party leaders, with members having more heterogeneous opinions and seeing them more transformational in comparison to experts.
Overview of Flux-Modulation Machines Based on Flux-Modulation Principle: Topology, Theory, and Development Prospects

With the development of electrical machines, traditional machine theory can no longer explain the operation principles of some new type machines, such as vernier machine and stator PM machine. The principle of flux modulation (FM) provides an important direction for the development of machine theory. This article overviews the development of the FM machine regarding its principle and topology. According to the studies on the FM effect of different types of electrical machines, it can be found that the FM principle is universal in electrical machines. However, the studies on the FM principle are still limited to some specific machines at present, and it leads to the fragmentation of theory. A new general air-gap FM theory is introduced, and it can be expected to be the unified theory for electrical machines. To verify the correctness of the new theory, some electrical machines, including induction machine and nonsalient pole machine, are analyzed by the general air-gap FM theory. In addition, the design and engineering application of the FM machine and theory are analyzed. To verify the inherent unity of the electrical machine, the topology evolutions of the FM machine are also discussed. Based on the new general air-gap FM theory, the innovative methods of topology can be summarized, while the development prospects of the FM machine are subsequently discussed.
Immigration Policy Levers for Us Innovation and Startups

Immigrants account for about a quarter of US invention and entrepreneurship despite a policy environment that is not well suited for these purposes. This chapter reviews the US immigration policy environment that governs how skilled migrants move to America for employment-based purposes. We discuss points of strain in the current system and potential policy reforms that would likely increase the rate of innovation and the number of startups due to immigrants in the country. Key areas include adjustments to the allocation of permanent residency visas, adjustments to the H-1B visa program, and the creation of an immigrant startup visa.
Dyadic adjustment and sexual function in postmenopausal women

Aim: To examine the dyadic adjustment and sexual function of postmenopausal women and the affecting individual factors. Material and Methods: This descriptive-correlational study was conducted with one-hundred thirty-nine postmenopausal women from October 2018 to May 2019 in Turkey. The data of the study was collected using an information form to determine the sociodemographic and gynecological characteristics of postmenopausal women, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) and the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Results: The 139 women completed the study. The mean score of DAS and FSFI were found 104.60±32.98 (0-151) and 12.71±9.48 (2-36), respectively, and a statistically significant positive relationship was found DAS and FSFI (p=0.000). There was a significant difference between income levels of women and the DAS scores (p=0.040). Additionally, it was found that the FSFI scores of the women having chronic disease were at lower levels (p=0.000). Conclusion: There was a significant positive correlation between dyadic adjustment and sexual function. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to test the effect of dyadic adjustment on sexual function in postmenopausal women.
An assessment of refined hierarchical kinematic models for the bending and free vibration analyses of laminated and functionally graded sandwich cylindrical panels

An effort is made in this study to systematically develop and evaluate two-dimensional (2D) displacement-based higher order theories for stress and vibration analyses of moderately thick laminated and functionally graded (FG) sandwich cylindrical shell panels. Comparison of various displacement models is presented in order to assess the contribution of thickness stretching effects in laminated and sandwich shells. The equivalent single layer (ESL) approach is followed and a refined thickness criterion is adopted to enhance the accuracy of present formulation for moderately thick to thick cylindrical shell panels. Contribution of membrane and bending deformations is examined using the hierarchical kinematic models. Governing set of equations is obtained using energy minimization based on a variational approach and solution is obtained subsequently with Navier’s method for cylindrical shells with all edges on diaphragm (simple) supports. Effective FG material properties are obtained using Voigt’s rule of mixture with power law gradation. Solutions are compared with the available three dimensional (3D) solutions and a comparative assessment is done for different higher order theories. The present study accentuates the necessity of including transverse normal strain in the theory for FG sandwich panels.
Biological Observations on a Neotropical Parasocial Bee, Eulaema nigrita, with a Review on the Biology of Euglossinae (Hymenoptera, Apidae). : A Comparative Study (With 21 Text-figures, 2 Plates and 9 Tables)

Title Biological Observations on a Neotropical Parasocial Bee, Eulaema nigrita, with a Review on the Biology of Euglossinae (Hymenoptera, Apidae). : A Comparative Study (With 21 Text-figures, 2 Plates and 9 Tables) Author(s) ZUCCHI, Ronaldo; SAKAGAMI, Shôichi F. ; CAMARGO, João M. F. de Citation 北海道大學理學部紀要 = JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF SCIENCE HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY Series VI. ZOOLOGY, 17(2): 271-380 Issue Date 1969-12 Doc URL http://hdl.handle. net/2115/27489 Type bulletin File Information 17(2)_P271-380.pdf
Numerical Investigation on the Impact of Membrane Thickness on Transport Phenomena in PEM Fuel Cells

A two-dimensional mathematical model is used to investigate the performance and transport characteristics of PEM fuel cells with different membrane thicknesses. The overall cell performance of three cases are presented and compared. In addition, the local temperature, liquid water saturation, water content and current density distributions are analyzed and compared. Results show that performance increases with decreasing membrane thickness and the local transport characteristics is also significantly affected. The ohmic loss is mainly caused by the proton transport process inside fuel cell. And a thinner membrane can enhance water back diffusion process in the membrane which is beneficial to the water management at the anode side.
Post-event survey of locally concentrated disaster due to 2019 Typhoon Faxai along the western shore of Tokyo Bay, Japan

ABSTRACT Typhoon Faxai caused severe damages along the western shore of Tokyo Bay, Japan in September 2019. Retaining a relatively small radius of maximum wind, Faxai passed across the center of Tokyo Bay and caused intensive wind and waves. While the sea level anomaly recorded at several tide gauge stations along Tokyo Bay were at most 1 m, and no significant surge-induced inundation was found, locally concentrated damages and wave-induced hazards were observed around Yokohama, on the middle-western shore of Tokyo Bay. The observed inundation height around Yokohama was TP (Tokyo Peil) 4.2 m on average, and the highest runup, TP 10.8 m, was observed at a small hill directly behind the seawall in Fukuura, Yokohama. The estimated wave overtopping directions at each location varied from the northeast to southeast, and no clear correlation was found between the wave overtopping directions and the extent of observed coastal hazards. Based on these findings and investigations of recorded data such as wind and waves, it was deduced that locally concentrated damages and hazards around the middle western shore of Tokyo Bay may be explained by the unique features of a relatively compact Faxai and the topographical characteristics of Tokyo Bay.
Effect of Plant Height on Fusarium Head Blight in Spring Wheat

Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), caused by the fungal species Fusarium graminearum, is a disease affecting wheat cultivars across Canada. Recent and severe outbreaks have spurred research in developing FHB-resistant cultivars and evaluating the underlying causes of FHB susceptibility. In this study, the effect of plant height on Fusarium Head Blight in Canadian spring wheat was evaluated over a two-year period. Cultivars of spring wheat varying in origin, height, and disease susceptibility were artificially inoculated with FHB, and the subsequent disease symptoms and height data was collected. It was found that plant height is negatively correlated with FHB incidence and severity. However, varieties originating from Eastern Canada had a much stronger negative correlation between plant height and FHB, whereas the trials with Western Canada origins had a weaker correlation.
Revanchist Behaviors in an Academic Style: A Qualitative Study to Analyze Academics’ Revenge

This study focuses on examining the counterproductive behaviors of academics, who have a lesser likelihood to show revanchist acts on account of the characteristics of their professional group, defining the purposes, means, and reasons of revenge, and determining the results of revanchist behaviors. To this end, we conducted a qualitative study on the academics who were working at Turkish state universities. In the end, the reasons, purposes, and means of revenge have been defined, and the results of revanchist behaviors have been determined through processing and analyzing interpretively collected data. Accordingly, there are numerous rationales for revenge among academics as they define it personally and closely related to their personal character on one hand, and on the other hand, they tend to use various tools during revenge process, mostly a combination of semi-legal and legal ones since there are some obstacles (i.e. administrative sanction mechanisms) to use illegal tools. In addition, they aim to re-balance the situation and look for justice after any harmful action or activity stemmed from other parties. As a different result, revenge is defined as a tool for protecting self and self-interest(s).
Survival, reproduction, and movements of moose in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Moose were extirpated from the Lower Peninsula of Michigan by the late 1800s. Although it is not clear if moose were extirpated from the Upper Peninsula (UP), the population was at the very least, reduced to a low level by ca 1900. Attempts to re-establish a population of moose in the UP during the mid-1930s failed. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources made a second attempt to reestablish moose by translocating animals from Canada to the western UP in 1985 and 1987. Based on optimistic estimates of survival and reproductive rates and habitat surveys, a population of 1,000 moose was expected by the year 2000. However, aerial surveys conducted in the winters of 1996 and 1997 produced population size estimates that were well below 1,000. To determine possible reasons for the slower than expected population growth, 84 moose were outfitted with radio-collars in the winters of 1999-2001. The survival, reproduction, and movements of these moose and 12 others radio-collared in 1995 were monitored from January 1999-June 2001. Overall, 1999-2001 pregnancy rates averaged 75%. Annual adult survival rate (0.88) was higher than yearling survival rate (0.82). First-year calf survival rate (0.71) was high, relative to highly preyed on populations. Annually, approximately 6% of radio-collared moose, primarily yearlings, dispersed out of the study area. The size of moose home ranges was typical of those found in the deciduous/coniferous ecotone of the upper Great Lakes region. Migratory adult moose had larger annual home ranges than did non-migratory adult moose. Low productivity appears to be the likely cause of the slower than predicted population growth. Data from this study can be utilized to facilitate management of moose in the upper Great Lakes region. ALCES VOL. 40: 71-85 (2004)
The Effect of Copper Price Shock on the Relationship between Government Revenue and Expenditure: Testing the Fiscal Stability Law of Mongolia

Aвstract: This study empirically investigates the relationship between government revenue, government expenditure and the copper price in Mongolia, a resource abundant country. Using quarterly data of government revenue, expenditure and international copper price from 2000 to 2015, the results of auto regression (VAR) show that there is a strong causality from revenue to expenditure, while increase in expenditure, most likely, is not accompanied by rises in revenue. This result is consistent with the revenue-spent hypothesis. Moreover, the result also indicates that copper price shock increases revenue, but decreases expenditure. This finding supports the assumption that the Mongolian government follows its Fiscal Stability Law, a strategy that intends to maintain the stability and sustainability of the government budget.
PulseNetOne: Fast Unsupervised Pruning of Convolutional Neural Networks for Remote Sensing

Scene classification is an important aspect of image/video understanding and segmentation. However, remote-sensing scene classification is a challenging image recognition task, partly due to the limited training data, which causes deep-learning Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to overfit. Another difficulty is that images often have very different scales and orientation (viewing angle). Yet another is that the resulting networks may be very large, again making them prone to overfitting and unsuitable for deployment on memory- and energy-limited devices. We propose an efficient deep-learning approach to tackle these problems. We use transfer learning to compensate for the lack of data, and data augmentation to tackle varying scale and orientation. To reduce network size, we use a novel unsupervised learning approach based on k-means clustering, applied to all parts of the network: most network reduction methods use computationally expensive supervised learning methods, and apply only to the convolutional or fully connected layers, but not both. In experiments, we set new standards in classification accuracy on four remote-sensing and two scene-recognition image datasets.
Using remote sensing to detect, validate, and quantify methane emissions from California solid waste operations

Solid waste management represents one of the largest anthropogenic methane emission sources. However, precise quantification of landfill and composting emissions remains difficult due to variety of site-specific factors that contribute to landfill gas generation and effective capture. Remote sensing is an avenue to quantify process-level emissions from waste management facilities. The California Methane Survey flew the Next Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG) over 270 landfills and 166 organic waste facilities repeatedly during 2016–2018 to quantify their contribution to the statewide methane budget. We use representative methane retrievals from this campaign to present three specific findings where remote sensing enabled better landfill and composting methane monitoring: (1) Quantification of strong point source emissions from the active face landfills that are difficult to capture by in situ monitoring or landfill models, (2) emissions that result from changes in landfill infrastructure (design, construction, and operations), and (3) unexpected large emissions from two organic waste management methods (composting and digesting) that were originally intended to help mitigate solid waste emissions. Our results show that remotely-sensed emission estimates reveal processes that are difficult to capture in biogas generation models. Furthermore, we find that airborne remote sensing provides an effective avenue to study the temporally changing dynamics of landfills. This capability will be further improved with future spaceborne imaging spectrometers set to launch in the 2020s.
RETRACTED: Detection of anomalies in cloud services using network flowdata analysis

Cloud computing has paved an excellent platform for the emergence of cost-effective technological solutions. However, security and privacy issues still remain as a stringent challenge during service catering. Explicitly, the service utility anomalies are liable to cause severe privacy and security issues in cloud service delivery. So, the overall performance of cloud service consumption and end-user applications’ service levels utility is degraded. The open access and distributed nature of the cloud computing is the major reason for its vulnerability to intruders. The security and privacy in cloud services have many challenges and problems still open for research. This paper proposes an intrusion detection method capable of detecting nine categories of attacks in two stages. This paper focuses on establishing a network-based intrusion detection mechanism using machine learning techniques. A model will be constructed with a supervised learning methodology using historical network flowdata and flowdata collected from the Internet.
Wettability of Wood Surface Layer Examined From Chemical Change Perspective

The effect of artificial ageing on spruce (Picea abies), beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), birch (Betula pendula), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea) wood surfaces were investigated using qualitative (total phenolic and total soluble carbohydrate content) chemical examination methods. During ageing (∑240h), the influence of surface chemistry modifications was monitored by contact angle measurements of polar, dispersive (distilled water), and dispersive (diiodomethane) liquids. The results clearly show the relation between the ratio of main chemical components of the wood surface layer and surface wettability during artificial radiation. The identified surface chemistry modifications cause more significant change in the contact angle of polar and dispersive liquid, relative to the change of dispersive liquid contact angle. Chemical changes of the wood surface layer are due to the degradation of the main wood components (cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin) which can be properly monitored by total phenolic (TPC) and total soluble carbohydrate content (TSCC) measurements.
Myocardial Strain Analysis using CMR Feature Tracking – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Accurate assessment of cardiac function is the cornerstone of cardiac disease detection and treatment. Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), often used as a marker for overall cardiac function, is limited by its inability to assess regional function and has lower sensitivity in detecting early cardiac impairments (1–3). Strain is a parameter that can be used to assess myocardial regional deformation. By measuring strain in the longitudinal, circumferential, and radial orientations, we can study cardiac function both regionally and globally (4). Myocardial strain imaging thus serves as a valuable diagnostic and prognostic tool for evaluating cardiac abnormalities (5). Currently, cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) serves as the gold standard for the quantification of biventricular strain (6). Over the years, there have been a number of different CMR methods used for assessing strain, including myocardial tagging (MT), displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE), and most recently, feature tracking (FT) (4). Specifically, CMR FT has emerged as a simple post-processing method for quantifying strain (7). It is becoming the preferred technique in many research and clinical settings for its relative ease in analyzing a large amount of cine data. However, despite its relative popularity, CMR FT has disadvantages including inter-vendor differences, potentially low spatial Myocardial strain analysis has emerged as a valuable diagnostic and prognostic tool for cardiac disease detection and treatment. Currently, the gold standard for the non-invasive measurement of strain is using cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR). While there are multiple ways to assess strain, including myocardial tagging (MT) and displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE), CMR feature-tracking (FT) has emerged as a simple post-pro-
Performance evaluation of high mobility OFDM channel estimation techniques

In wireless communication, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted due to its robustness to multipath fading and high data rate transmissions. At the other hand, the performance of OFDM systems severely degraded due to multi-path fading and Doppler frequency shifts in mobile systems, which causes inter-carrier-interference (ICI). Thus, Estimation of channel parameters is required at the receiver using a pre designed estimator where pilot tones are inserted in each OFDM symbol. In this paper, a random pilot data are generated and inserted in each OFDM symbol at equally spaced locations. The performance test of Least Square (LS) and Linear Minimum Mean Square (LMMSE) estimation methods are proposed with Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) based on both LS and LMMSE, where different ITU channel models are considered in order to compare their performance for data transmission in high mobile systems with different Doppler frequencies exceeds 200 Hz and minimal number of pilots.