Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surrogate Safety Assessment Model and Validation: Final Report

Safety of traffic facilities is most often measured by counting the number (and severity) of crashes that occur. It is not possible to apply such a measurement technique to traffic facility designs that have not yet been built or deployed in the real world. This project has resulted in the development of a software tool for deriving surrogate safety measures for traffic facilities from data output by traffic simulation models. This software is referred to as SSAM—an acronym for the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model. The surrogate measures developed in this project are based on the identification, classification, and evaluation of traffic conflicts that occur in the simulation model. By comparing one simulated design case with another, this software allows an analyst to make statistical judgments about the relative safety of the two designs. An open-standard vehicle trajectory data format was designed, and support for this format has been added as an output option by four simulation model vendors/developers— PTV (VISSIM), TSS (AIMSUN), Quadstone (Paramics), and Rioux Engineering (TEXAS). Eleven “theoretical” validation tests were performed to compare the surrogate safety assessment results of pairs of simulated design alternatives. In addition, a field validation exercise was completed to compare the output from SSAM with real-world crash records. Eighty-three intersections from British Columbia, Canada were modeled in VISSIM and simulated under AM-peak traffic conditions. The processed conflict results were then compared with the crash records in a number of different statistical validation tests. Last, sensitivity analysis was performed to identify differences between the SSAM-related outputs of each simulation model vendor’s system on the same traffic facility designs. These comparative analyses provide some guidance to the relative use of surrogate measures data from each simulation system. The SSAM software tool and user manual (FHWA-HRT-08-050) are available to the public at no cost from FHWA.
The Role Of Student Voice And Choice In Learner-Centered Competency Reform

Progressive reforms, pervasive throughout American education, are once again beginning to reshape the established traditional system to provide our students with an educational experience and learning opportunities that will better prepare them with twenty-first century skills. These reforms, rooted in constructivism and social learning, are characterized by an updated progressive vision of competency education that places students in the center of their education. Giving students authentic voice and choice has potential to engage these most important stakeholders in educational reform. This qualitative case study set in eleven upper elementary classrooms in one school, explores the opportunities for voice and choice as learners engage with educators to co-create a more personalized educational pathway through standards of competency. Insights gained from interviews with teachers, student focus groups, observations and artifacts describe how students experience voice and choice, and provide an understanding of how voice and choice contribute to reshaping the learning environment and the experience of the learner. The results of this study help educators understand how voice and choice support a collaborative classroom culture, increase engagement with learning standards, and further considers the perspective of young learners who gained insights about themselves as learners and who connected voice and choice with core values of respect, pride and freedom. Examining competency reform at one school provides practical insights into the structural supports, roles of the teacher and students, use of tools, and specific factors that
Analysis of the Ship Ops Model's Accuracy in Predicting U.S. Naval Ship Operating Cost

Abstract : The purpose of this MBA Project was to investigate and provide a comprehensive analysis of the accuracy of the Ship Ops model used by the U.S. Navy to budget for ship-operating costs. This project was conducted with the sponsorship and assistance of the OPNAV N82 office, also known as Office of Budget (FMB). The goal of this project was to improve FMB's ability to predict ship-operating costs through the use of an improved Ship Ops model. This project provides an in depth introduction to the Ship Ops model currently in use and an analysis of the model's performance in predicting accurate operating costs. The project also provides suggestions for improvements to the model and tools that can be used to predict costs on an individual ship level that is not possible with the current model. This project observed only limited improvements in predicting Repair Parts and OPTAR cost through the use of regressions based on operational data such as days underway. Significant improvement was observed when the current moving average methodology for predicting Repair Parts cost was replaced with a regression-based prediction based on a sequential independent variable, Fiscal Year.
Trajectory Reconstruction Techniques for Evaluation of ATC Systems

This paper is focused on trajectory reconstruction techniques for evaluating ATC systems, using real data of recorded opportunity traffic. We analyze different alternatives for this problem, from traditional interpolation approaches based on curve fitting to our proposed schemes based on modeling regular motion patterns with optimal smoothers. The extraction of trajectory features such as motion type (or mode of flight), maneuvers profile, geometric parameters, etc., allows a more accurate computation of the curve and the detailed evaluation of the data processors used in the ATC centre. Different alternatives will be compared with some performance results obtained with simulated and real data sets.
Clearance pricing optimization at Zara

In almost thirty-four years after opening the doors to its first store, the Inditex Group has grown to be one of the largest fashion distributors in the world. Today the group operates more than four thousand retail stores in seventy-three different countries and under eight different brand concepts. Inditex’s Zara brand division is renown for its high degree of vertical integration that allows it to maintain a tight control over the different stages of its supply chain and endows it with the flexibility to quickly react to current fashion trends. With a yearly average of 173 new store openings, Zara’s accelerated growth rate has forced it to seek innovation and continuous improvement in its operations in order to maintain the competitive advantages that characterize it. One of its biggest challenges deals with the management of its clearance sales where the remaining inventory at the end of its sales campaign must be sold at a discounted price. These clearance sales are fast-paced and pricing decisions must be made for more than 11,000 different fashion designs that Zara introduces each year, and considering the different market conditions that exist in the more than 70 countries where Zara operates. The proposed project consists in the development of a pricing mathematical model based on a sales forecasting model that estimates consumer’s reactions to price discounts and a linear optimization model that makes profit-maximizing optimal price assignments. The current thesis details the design, implementation, and live test of the proposed model based pricing methodology that resulted in an approximate increase of six percent to Zara’s clearance sales profits. Thesis Supervisors: Jérémie Gallien Associate Professor of Operations Management MIT Sloan School of Management Felipe Caro Assistant Professor UCLA Anderson School of Management 1 Inditex. (2009). FY2008 RESULTS, 1 February 2008 to 31 January 2009 . 4 This page has been intentionally left blank.
Gap acceptance for vehicles turning left across on-coming traffic: Implications for Intersection Decision Support design

A left-turning vehicle (Subject Vehicle, SV) attempting to cross the path of an oncoming vehicle (Principal Other Vehicle, POV) at an intersection typically does not have the right of way. The main task of the SV driver is to find an adequate opportunity in opposing traffic to initiate the left-turn maneuver. To reduce the probability of a conflict, warning systems, such as Intersection Decision Support (IDS) systems, are being developed. These systems alert drivers of SV vehicles attempting to negotiate a left turn about traffic approaching from the opposite direction. The current paper (i) describes a video system that was used to assess gap length, gap acceptance and gap rejection in a Left Turn Across Path/Opposite Direction (LTAP-OD) scenario, (ii) describes a way to characterize gap distribution (log-normal) presented to the SV driver, and (iii) illustrates how a logistic model often used to describe dose-response curves can be used to characterize gap acceptance by the SV driver. These results are used as the basis for a discussion of implications for IDS systems for alerting left-turning drivers about oncoming vehicles.
Reproduction of Tactual Textures: Transducers, Mechanics and Signal Encoding

Texture accounts for an important part of the realism of simulated experiences, and it is most certainly true during tactile interaction. We usually experience roughness by running our fingers onto the explored surface. The perception of this fine texture is mediated by the vibrations generated by the encounters of the skin and the asperities of the surfaces. Reproduction of Tactual Textures presents factors that contribute to the mechanics of the interaction between a bare finger and a surface with a view to their artificial reproduction. It discusses the recording and reproduction of tactual textures, and analyses a case study of the development of a device able to record the vibratory signal from a fingertip sliding over a textured surface. The same device is then used in a reverse way to render those previously measured signals to the users fingertip. These developments open new questions about the biomechanical properties of the skin and their relation to perception. The second half of Reproduction of Tactual Textures focuses on the implication of the dynamic parameters of the skin onto rendering performance, and it concludes with a study on the important features that are present in the vibratory signal and their relation to texture perception. This state-of-the-art volume highlights the importance of the mechanics and biomechanics during the haptic exploration of surfaces and their possible contribution to perception. Collectively, the findings reported are pertinent to many applications, including robotic perception and the design of effective virtual reality systems.
VESSEL DAMAGE SEVERITY OF TANKER ACCIDENTS.

Are there effective policies, other than vessel design (which is addressed by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990) for reducing the vessel damage severity (and the subsequent oil spillage) of tanker accidents? This paper addresses this question by investigating determinants of accident severity. The results suggest that effective policies, other than vessel design, may not exist for tanker collision accidents, but do exist for accidents which involve grounding and/or materials/equipment failure. For grounding accidents, these policies are to: increase the regulation and/or regulation enforcement of foreign flag tankers, and increase the regulation enforcement of tankers when vessel repair prices and oil prices are relatively low. For material/equipment failure accidents, these policies are to: increase the regulation and/or regulation enforcement of older tankers, and require greater use of licensed manned operators.
Spectrofluorometric determination of L-tryptophan in canary (Canarium indicum L.) seed protein hydrolysate

Canary (Canarium indicum L.) is an indigenous plant of Indonesia, which mainly grows in the eastern part of Indonesia, especially in the Maluku, North Sulawesi, and Seram islands. We believe that no scientific reports have been conducted about L-tryptophan content in Canarium indicum. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the presence and quantitate the aromatic amino acid (L-tryptophan) in the canary protein hydrolysate by the spectrofluorometric method. The protein hydrolysate was prepared by two hydrolysis methods, enzymatic and alkaline hydrolysis. L-tryptophan can be differentiated from tyrosine directly without using any reagent by excitation of the sample at 295 nm in order to avoid tyrosine emission. The equation of calibration curve correlation using standard in the range 0.5-5 ppm was y = 6632.3x - 845.42 and correlation coefficient of 0.9997, while the coefficient of variance in linear regression was 1.29%. The detection limit and quantification limit obtained were 0.116 ppm and 0.35 ppm respectively. The recoveries of the accuracy test were obtained in the range of 95-96%. The relative standard deviation of intra-assay precision tests were obtained in the range of 0.5-1.8%, while the intermediate precision in the range of 2.18-3.74%. L-tryptophan was detected in all samples (papain, pepsin, and alkaline hydrolysate), with concentrations 5.6, 5 and 1.53 mg/100mg of protein respectively. The used fluorometric method complied with the validation requirements and can be used to analyze L-tryptophan in samples containing tyrosine without overlapping of spectra and without the use of any specific reagent.
Minimizing electromagnetic interference problems with chaos

All power electronic circuits with state feedback controlled switching can be described as nonlinear time-varying dynamical systems. The occurrence of chaos-where the ripple waveforms become aperiodic-is common in such systems. It is shown here that this natural phenomenon may be effectively used in minimizing electromagnetic interference problems in power electronic circuits. This is because converters operating chaotically tend to spread the spectrum, thereby reducing the interference power at any target frequency. We also present the ways of calculating the average values of state variables and the power spectrum under chaotic operation.
Astronaut Exposures to Ionizing Radiation in a Lightly-Shielded Spacesuit

The normal working and living areas of the astronauts are designed to provide an acceptable level of protection against the hazards of ionizing radiation of the space environment. Still there are occasions when they must don a spacesuit designed mainly for environmental control and mobility and leave the confines of their better-protected domain. This is especially true for deep space exploration. The impact of spacesuit construction on the exposure of critical astronaut organs will be examined in the ionizing radiation environments of free space, the lunar surface and the Martian surface. The computerized anatomical male model is used to evaluate astronaut self-shielding factors and to determine space radiation exposures to critical radiosensitive human organs.
AN OPEN-SOURCE, HARDWARE ACCELERATED INDUSTRY PROTOTYPE FOR MULTIDIMENSIONAL GLYPHS

Data-glyphs are a common, useful metaphor for visualizing multidimensional data. However, to represent a larger number of glyphs requires an increasing amount of computational power to derive the data-dependent geometry of each glyph. We present a novel visualization implementation for computing and rendering customized data-glyphs for an industry application. Our software utilizes the parallel processing power of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to enable interactive exploration of thousands of multidimensional data-glyphs. This is achieved by passing normalized data values to the OpenGL geometry shader to construct the geometry of each glyph reflecting the data values. The technique is applicable to a variety of glyph designs and supports fast selection between different designs. We demonstrate this technique to render more than 100,000 glyphs at interactive frame rates. To address the challenge of reproducing the technique, we provide a simplified open-source code example implementation that can be used by anyone, including our industry partner.
Military Expenditure and Economic Growth Empirical Evidence from Malaysia

The relationship between military expenditure and economic growth has attract ample interest among economists as well as policy makers. The importance of expanding defence expenditure is substantially to coincide with national security and defence. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of military expenditure on economic growth in Malaysia. An econometrics time series analysis is employed using ARDL estimates spanning from the year 1979 to 2017. The empirical findings reveal a negative relationship between military expenditure and Gross Domestic Products (GDP). Despite the inverse relationship between defence expenditure and economic growth, Malaysia should not neglect the investment on efficient military expenditure, as it has proven that in some countries, defence expenditure promotes a long run economic growth by promoting more job opportunities, protecting the nation and thus, achieving sustainable development. It is recommended to add more variables in future study that can relate security and defence for the country like numbers of crime, and numbers of migrants and refugees. Conclusively defence and security are the important factors for the country in generating the world and public’s confidence and to captivate foreign direct investment. Hence, adequate policy making on military expenditure are utmost important to promote economic growth
Mechanical Robustness and Hermeticity Monitoring for MEMS Thin Film Encapsulation

Many Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) require encapsulation, to prevent delicate sensor structures being exposed to external perturbations such as dust, humidity, touching, and gas pressure. An upcoming and cost-effective way of encapsulation is zero-level packaging or thin-film encapsulation. With this method, MEMS are already sealed during wafer processing. Thin-film encapsulation poses a number of challenges, in particular to hermeticity, mechanical robustness, and compatibility with the other fabrication steps. In this thesis, we have worked out the following aspects. 1) An analytical model for the strength of pillar-based thin-film encapsulations. The model provides guidelines for design. It is supported by experiments with high pressures and a commercial overmoulding process. 2) A tube-shaped Pirani gauge for measuring vacuum levels with a low detection limit and a very small footprint. It consists of a tube-shaped resistor that is buried in the silicon substrate. It can be used to monitor the hermeticity of a thin-film encapsulation in situ. Alternatively, it could be employed as a cost-effective stand-alone sensor in vacuum equipment. 3) A new analytical model for micromachined Pirani gauges. This model expresses the pressure range as a closed-form analytical function of the design variables like geometry and biasing. Furthermore it yields simplified expressions for performance parameters such as the sensitivity, output swing and power consumption. The model will be very useful to designers who need to trade off performance against the costs of chip area and biasing power. 4) The integration of the tube-shaped Pirani gauge inside micro-packages to test the hermeticity of the presented thin film approach. Packages containing Pirani tubes have been sealed by PECVD SiN. The vacuum level achieved is about 0.7 kPa and it slightly changes over time. PECVD SiN showed good sealing property for thin-film packaging. 5) A new sealing technique for MEMS thin-film encapsulation employing the bimorph effect. It allows to perform the encapsulation step under arbitrary pressure conditions without unwanted deposition inside the micro-package. 6) A thin-film encapsulation process, employing LPCVD SiN as the structural layer. Two examples of application of the presented thin-film encapsulation approach were shown. A MEMS electron source and an infrared detector were chosen to illustrate the capability of the packaging method introduced in this thesis.
WirelessHART® Minimizes Cost of New Energy Measurements

ABSTRACTLord Kelvin's “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” is familiar advice to the industrial energy manager. For this reason, a key challenge for any energy management program is obtaining the greatest number of quality measurements at the lowest life cycle cost. Wireless HART® is being used today in thousands of operating plants to achieve that goal.
Stability Analysis of EKF - based Attitude Determination and Control

This thesis is a part of the SSETI (Student Space Exploration Technology Initiative) project, where students from several universities around Europe work together with the European Space Agency (ESA) with designing, building, testing and launching an Earth-Moon satellite orbiter (European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO). A satellite model with reaction wheels placed in tetrahedron was deduced in a preliminary study together with an extended Kalman filter to estimate the attitude from star measurements. The stability and convergence properties of this system are studied in this thesis. Previous studies on the convergence of extended Kalman filter are presented and a proof of exponentially convergence of a system with extended Kalman filter is given and used to prove that ESMO with the extended Kalman filter converges exponentially. The most recent work and different methods to apply a nonlinear separation principle is presented. Three feedback controllers with proof of global asymptotic stability (GAS) is then introduced and implemented on ESMO. Based upon the global asymptotic stability of the feedback controllers, and the proof that the extended Kalman filter works as an exponentially observer, a nonlinear separation principle is deduced. The closed loop system can then be stated globally asymptotically stable based upon the deduced separation principle. The closed loop with the three different controllers is then simulated in Simulink for varying gains and different reference steps. The three controllers show stable characteristic as the theory implies. The robust controller shows best tracking and estimation properties, it is very accurate, simple, robust and adaptable to environmentally changes, and is therefore proposed as the most suitable controller for ESMO.
Analisis Kriteria Penting Berjenjang untuk Seleksi Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) pada Industri Otomotif

Abstract: The selection of ERP is the first important phase in lifecycle of ERP adoption. Itinfluences the implementation and considers as one of critical success factors. There are sixhierarchical important criteria for the selection of ERP in which were developed in thisresearch, covering: quality standard of software product (ISO25010), quality of use(ISO25010), vendor & consultant, fit strategy with delta model theory, the change of managementand cost. Expert surveys and one-way ANOVA test were conducted in order to testthe validity of the criteria. The result shows that all six criteria above are the importantcriteria to be considered in ERP selection for automotive industry and have the same importancebetween each other. Keywords: ERP selection, hierarchical important criteria, quality standard of ISO25010, delta model
ALINEA: A LOCAL FEEDBACK CONTROL LAW FOR ON-RAMP METERING

ALINEA, a new local traffic-responsive strategy for ramp metering, is presented. The new control strategy is based on a feedback structure and is derived by use of classical automatic control methods. ALINEA is a simple, robust, flexible, and effective local strategy for ramp metering. Real-life results from application of the new strategy to a single on-ramp of the Boulevard Peripherique in Paris are provided.