Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Free-Throw Shooting Performance Under Pressure

Pressure situations in sport can be a source of anxiety for athletes (Craft, Magyar, Becker, & Feltz, 2003). Research indicates that a brief mindfulness training can improve math performance under pressure (Brunye et al., 2013); however, no known studies have examined the effects of mindfulness practice on an athletic performance under pressure. Therefore, this experiment investigated the effects of a brief mindfulness training on basketball free-throw shooting under pressure. Participants were 32 college-aged (Mage = 21.29), male competitive basketball players. Participants shot 20 free-throws in a low-pressure phase, then were pairmatched by free-throws made and randomly assigned to mindfulness (n = 16) or control (n = 16) conditions. Pressure was induced before participants listened to a 15-minute mindfulness or history of basketball recording. Next, free-throws made and free-throw shot quality were recorded for 20 free-throws. A mixed ANOVA revealed that during the high-pressure phase, the experimental groups’ free-throw shooting average (M = 70.6%) was not statistically significantly different from the control groups’ (M = 61.6%). Results of an ANCOVA revealed that the mindfulness group’s shot quality was higher than the control group’s during the high-pressure phase and approached a statistically significant difference when controlling for trait mindfulness (F = 2.33, p = .051, Ƞp = .13). During the high-pressure phase, the mindfulness group reported statistically significantly lower levels of cognitive anxiety (t = 2.06, p = .048) and somatic anxiety (t = 2.67, p = .014) than the control group. Although the brief mindfulness intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on performance, the findings are discussed in terms of practical significance. The mindfulness group’s significantly lower anxiety indicates that mindfulness training may improve athletes’ subjective experience during pressure situations.
Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bias in Individuals Expressing Anxious Symptoms

Background Social anxiety is characterized by a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes and consequences before, during, and after interpersonal interactions with social partners. Recent evidence suggests that a network of brain regions critical for perspective-taking, threat appraisal, and uncertainty resolution may function atypically in those prone to social anxiety. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural activity in specific regions of interest in a sample of young adults who endorsed high or low levels of social anxiety. Methods We recruited 31 college student volunteers (age: 18–28 years), categorized as having high or low anxiety based on their Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self Report scores. These participants were each scanned while playing the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game with three computerized confederates, two of whom they were deceived to believe were human co-players. This study focuses on data collected during play with the presumed humans. Regions of interest were defined for the temporoparietal junction, anterior midcingulate, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Average weighted mean blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals for each subject were extracted and analyzed using mixed design analyses of variance to detect group differences in activation during decision-making, anticipation, and appraisal of round outcomes during the game. Results Behavior analysis revealed that the high-anxiety group was more likely to defect than the low-anxiety group. Neuroimaging analysis showed that the high-anxiety group exhibited elevated blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity relative to the low-anxiety group in all three regions during the social feedback appraisal phase but not during decision-making or the anticipation of interaction outcomes. Conclusions These findings provide evidence that some behaviors linked to cognitive biases associated with social anxiety may be mediated by a network of regions involved in recognizing and processing directed social information. Future investigation of the neural basis of cognition and bias in social anxiety using the prisoner’s dilemma and other economic-exchange tasks is warranted. These tasks appear to be highly effective, functional magnetic resonance imaging-compatible methods of probing altered cognition and behavior associated with anxiety and related conditions.
Dressing your soul: The role of brand engagement in self-concept

The current study aims to contribute to the literature on brand engagement in self-concept (BESC). Supported by self-determination theory, a comprehensive model that explains the psychological drivers and consequences of BESC is tested. Based on a sample of 600 international highly engaged cosplayers, the results contribute to the literature on BESC by showing that extrinsic personal aspirations positively influence individuals' propensity to include brands in their definition of themselves. The findings show that higher levels of extrinsic personal aspirations lead to higher BESC manifestations that in turn lead to greater brand loyalty and brand advocacy. Furthermore, the findings indicate that personal aspirations have an indirect effect on brand loyalty and brand advocacy through BESC. The managerial implications for fashion brands are discussed.
Advancement of a smart fibrous capillary irrigation management system with an Internet of Things integration

This paper presents the development work for integrating an Internet of Things (IoT) with a fibrous capillary irrigation system based on the climatic demand estimated by the weather condition. The monitoring and control using an IoT system is critical for such application that is targeted for precision irrigation. The fibrous capillary irrigation system is managed by manipulating a water supply depth using the potential evapotranspiration (ETo). A soil mositure sensor was used to monitor the progress of the root water uptake and input the fuzzy logic system, to determine the water requirements for the crop medium. Experiment was conducted by using a Choy sum plant as the test crop grown in a greenhouse. The monitoring of the demand and management of the watering system was successful. The ETo data was able to approximate the crop water requirement in near real time.
SEISMIC SAFETY EVALUATION OF ABDUL MANNAN OVERPASS IN CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH

A number of multi-span overpasses in major cities of Bangladesh, such as Dhaka (the capital city) and Chittagong (the principal seaport city) have been constructed for the last few years with a view to reducing the traffic congestion at critical junctions. Abdul Mannan overpass is one of these, which is located in Chittagong city. It has been launched in the year of 2012 with a prime objective of reducing the traffic congestion within Chittagong city. This study is devoted towards assessing seismic safety of this overpass, which comprises in two phases: the first phase is dedicated towards the evaluation of seismic lateral strength and ductility whereas the second phase is aimed at assessing seismic fragility and retrofit of the overpass. In this regard, the first phase utilizes the ductility method as suggested by Japan Road Association (JRA) to evaluate lateral strength and ductility of piers of the overpass considering their different modes of failure. The lateral strengths of pier sections in bending are obtained based on their nonlinear sectional analyses results, while the shear strengths are estimated using JRA suggested method. The fiber models with conventional constitutive models for concrete and steel are used to obtain the moment-curvature relationships at critical sections of the overpass pier. The pushover analysis method is employed to derive the force-displacement relationships of piers using the results of the moment-curvature relationships. Subsequently, the lateral seismic demand, allowable lateral force, yield displacement, ultimate displacement and displacement ductility are obtained using the standard methods. In the second phase, the nonlinear dynamic analysis of a typical pier of the overpass is carried out for seismic fragility assessment followed by an assessment of seismic retrofit strategy suitable for the overpass. The numerical results of the study indicate that most of the piers of the overpass do not comply seismic safety requirements for design earthquake ground motion rerecords, which warrants the retrofit of piers of the overpass.
Creating Killer Facts and Graphics

‘Killer facts’ are those punchy, memorable, headline-grabbing statistics that make reports special. They cut through the technicalities to fire people up about changing the world. They are picked up and repeated endlessly by the media and politicians. They are known as ‘killer’ facts because if they are really effective, they ‘kill off’ the opposition’s arguments. The right killer fact can have more impact than the whole of a well-researched report. This paper was originally written in 2012 by Duncan Green and was updated in 2019 by Martin Walsh.
Analytical customer relationship management untuk restoran

Bisnis restoran merupakan suatu bisnis yang cukup kompetitif. Dewasa ini, persaingan dalam bisnis ini bukan hanya berdasarkan rasa dan tampilan dari produk (makanan atau minuman) yang ditawarkan, tetapi juga berdasarkan keunikan konsep yang membangun keunggulan tersendiri dari restoran tersebut di mata konsumen. Dengan keunggulan tersebut, restoran berharap untuk dapat menarik konsumen untuk menjadi pelanggan. Untuk mencapai tujuan ini, salah satu pendekatan yang sering digunakan adalah Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Tantangan yang muncul adalah bagaimana menyusun suatu CRM yang dapat membantu restoran untuk menganalisa proses bisnisnya, termasuk menganalisa bagaimana perilaku pelanggan. Dengan hasil analisa yang mendalam, pramusaji dan kasir dari restoran dapat mempunyai peluang yang lebih besar dalam menciptakan hubungan emosional yang positifdengan pelangan. Analisa seperti ini tidak dihasilkan oleh operational CRM yang sudah umum diimplementasikan dalam bisnis restoran. Pertanyaan yang muncul adalah bagaimana membangun suatu analytical CRM yang mampu menjawab kebutuhan para pelaku di bisnis restoran.Penelitian ini bersifat eksploratif dengan menggunakan kombinasi data kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Studi kasus terhadap tiga restoran menjadi dasar dari penelitian ini. Dengan menggunakan kombinasi pendekatan wawancara, studi dokumen, observasi, dan kuesioner, formula CRM yang sesuai dengan karakteristik restoran dan konsumen di Indonesia diharapkan dapat dihasilkan. Penelitian ini mengusulkan konsep analytical CRM untuk diterapkan di ketiga restoran tersebut. Adapun tujuan penerapan analytical CRM adalah agar pebisnis dapat mendapatkan hasil yang lebih optimal dalam menerapkan CRM.
Type IIA flux vacua with mobile D6-branes and α '-corrections

Type IIA flux compactifications have proven to be a rich framework to construct phenomenologically appealing string vacua. However, a better understanding of such a flux landscape in the presence of D-branes is required if one wants to find realistic vacuum solutions. In this thesis, we study perturbative Type IIA flux vacua with an underlying Calabi-Yau geometry, by mean of the flux-axion polynomial formalism. In a first stage we consider type IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds with background fluxes and rewrite the classical flux potential as a bilinear of flux-axion polynomials invariant under the discrete shift symmetries of the compactification. We perform a systematic search of purely closed string vacua, showing that one can easily rewrite the conditions for N = 0 Minkowski and N = 1 AdS in terms of simple algebraic equations on the axion polynomials. Then we turn to the search of vacua in compactifications with fluxes and mobile D6-branes. The presence of D6-brane moduli redefines the four-dimensional dilaton and complex structure moduli and simultaneously destroys the nice factorisation between Kahler and complex structure moduli in the Kahler potential, complicating the search of vacua in terms of the effective Kahler potential and superpotential. Nevertheless, one may still express the F-term scalar potential as a bilinear of such polynomials, which allows us to find a new and more general class of N = 0 Minkowski vacua, which present a quite simple structure of contravariant F-terms. We compute the set of soft supersymmetry breaking terms for chiral models of intersecting D6- branes in such vacua, finding a quite universal pattern. As an explicit application of this kind of vacua, we compute the flux-induced soft supersymmetry breaking terms for the Higgs-axion sector of a consistent DFSZ axion model constructed on D6-branes on the T^6/ (Z_2 × Z_2 × O) orientifold. In a second stage we further study type IIA Calabi-Yau flux compactifications with perturbative α′-corrections. It is a well-known fact that the inclusion of such α′-corrections allows to construct the mirror duals of type IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications, in which the effect of flux backreaction is under control. We compute the α′-corrected scalar potential generated by RR and NS fluxes, and reformulate it as a bilinear of the flux-axion polynomials. The use of such invariants allows to express in a compact and simple way the conditions for N = 0 Minkowski and N = 1 AdS flux vacua, and to extract the effect of α′-corrections on them.
Characteristics of Aerosol Particles: Concentration, Particle Size and Formation Mechanisms in Urban-Marine Environments

Atmospheric particle properties were measured in the South Eastern coastal city of Wollongong, Australia, during an intensive field campaign known as Measurement of Urban, Marine and Biogenic Air (MUMBA), between 15 January and 16 February 2013. A scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) was operated to measure particle number size distributions ranging from 14 nm to 660 nm in diameter. Principal component analysis was applied to the entire data measured by SMPS and, based on strong component loadings (value ≥ 0.75), three size fractions (i) Small (NS) :15 nm < Dp < 50 nm, (ii) Medium (NM) :60 nm < Dp < 150 nm and (iii) Large (NL) :210 nm < Dp < 450 nm were revealed. The three size fractions described 89% of the dataset cumulative variance. The daily pattern of particle number size distribution revealed morning, afternoon and night peaks. Traffic emissions and marine aerosols were the major contributors of particles observed in the morning, when the NS fraction dominated. A mixture of marine aerosols and secondary aerosols from photochemical oxidation was the main contributor during the afternoon. The Port Kembla Steel Works and the urban areas were the major contributors of particles at night. Secondary organic aerosols were identified by a mass ratio of organic carbon to elemental carbon (OC/EC) of greater than 1, and this was commonly observed. A weak correlation (R = 0.3) between OC and EC indicated that there were multiple sources of both OC and EC. Particle formation and growth events were observed from particle number size distribution data in the range of 14 nm to 660 nm. Eight particle formation and growth event days were observed (four Class I and four Class II), which is equivalent to 25% of the total observation days (15 January to 16 February, 2013). The events occurred during the day, starting after 8:00 Australian Eastern Standard time with an average duration of five hours. The events also appeared to be positively linked to the prevailing easterly to north easterly sea breezes that carry pollutants from sources in and around Sydney. This suggests that photochemical reactions and a combination of oceanic and anthropogenic air masses are among the factors that influenced these events. However, no single factor could be identified that directly influenced these particle formation and growth events. Differential Slant Column Densities (DSCDs) and aerosol extinction were suc-
Anomalous rejection ratios in nanofiltration experiments

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A new successive approximation architecture for low-power low-cost CMOS A/D converter

A new 6-bit 250 MS/s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed for low-power low-cost CMOS integrated systems. This design is based on an improved successive approximation ADC with a mixed-mode subtracter that minimizes the overall power consumption and system complexity. The experimental results indicate that this ADC works up to 250 MS/s with power consumption less than 30 mW at 3.3 V. Moreover, the operating voltage is scaled down to 0.8 V using a slight adjustment. The ADC occupies only 0.1 mm/sup 2/ with the TSMC 0.35-/spl mu/m single poly quadruple metal (SPQM) CMOS technology. This design is suitable for standard CMOS technology with low-power low-cost VLSI implementation. It is well applied when embedded into system-on-chip (SoC) circuit designs.
Tree Species Classification in a Highly Diverse Subtropical Forest Integrating UAV-Based Photogrammetric Point Cloud and Hyperspectral Data

The use of remote sensing data for tree species classification in tropical forests is still a challenging task, due to their high floristic and spectral diversity. In this sense, novel sensors on board of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms are a rapidly evolving technology that provides new possibilities for tropical tree species mapping. Besides the acquisition of high spatial and spectral resolution images, UAV-hyperspectral cameras operating in frame format enable to produce 3D hyperspectral point clouds. This study investigated the use of UAV-acquired hyperspectral images and UAV-photogrammetric point cloud (PPC) for classification of 12 major tree species in a subtropical forest fragment in Southern Brazil. Different datasets containing hyperspectral visible/near-infrared (VNIR) bands, PPC features, canopy height model (CHM), and other features extracted from hyperspectral data (i.e., texture, vegetation indices-VIs, and minimum noise fraction-MNF) were tested using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The results showed that the use of VNIR hyperspectral bands alone reached an overall accuracy (OA) of 57% (Kappa index of 0.53). Adding PPC features to the VNIR hyperspectral bands increased the OA by 11%. The best result was achieved combining VNIR bands, PPC features, CHM, and VIs (OA of 72.4% and Kappa index of 0.70). When only the CHM was added to VNIR bands, the OA increased by 4.2%. Among the hyperspectral features, besides all the VNIR bands and the two VIs (NDVI and PSSR), the first four MNF features and the textural mean of 565 and 679 nm spectral bands were pointed out as more important to discriminate the tree species according to Jeffries–Matusita (JM) distance. The SVM method proved to be a good classifier for the tree species recognition task, even in the presence of a high number of classes and a small dataset.
Gender, sexuality and lifestyle migration: Exploring the impact of cosmopolitan place-marketing discourses on the post-migratory experiences of British women in Spain

This article responds to a recent call to problematise the theoretical underpinnings of lifestyle migration and in particular, to critically examine the construction of lifestyle migrants as an ideal-type of individualised subject, freed from the constraints of normative social structures. Recent research has begun to do so, by demonstrating how class, race and gender can intersect to delimit the post-migratory experiences of lifestyle migrants, as they negotiate multiple social hierarchies. This article adds a new dimension to these studies by showing how class, gender and sexuality interconnect through the prism of ‘cosmopolitanism’ to structure the lives of British women in the affluent Catalan town of Sitges. Although British lesbians have more social autonomy than other British female lifestyle migrants in the town, they are simultaneously rendered subordinate in relation to Sitges’ cosmopolitan discourse, which privileges a stereotypical male homosexuality instead.
Design and implementation of a PowerPC backend with optimizations for the AltiVec SIMD processor

Advances in microproccessor design have resulted in both improvements in speed as well as new architecture features. These features add complexity to the processor design, along with complexity to the compiler tool chain. We examined the effects of a modern microprocessor on the compiler tool chain. By implementing a backend for a processor that has a modern central processing unit and multimedia unit, we analyze some specific processor features that effect the tool chain. To achieve this goal we implemented a compiler backend for the G4 PowerPC and AltiVec architecture. The PowerPC instruction set architecture has modern features, and the AltiVec implementation Some of the modern microprocessor features impacts, which are explored in this thesis, are: modified conditional branch instructions resulted in inefficient code generation; limitations on immediate values introduced several complexities to generate correct code; the limited memory access functions of the multimedia unit required significant overhead in the backend. These examples of modern architecture features and their effects on our compiler backend show how modern architectures affect the compiler tool chain. With our backend implementation, we show that though architecture complexities may increase the complexity of a backend, it is still possible to take advantage of these features with a compiler backend. This is achieved through additional compiler analysis and transformations. Thesis Supervisor: Saman Amarasinghe Title: Assistant Professor