Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How strategies are learned

I propose that both individuals and organizations can learn strategies in complex or ill-defined situations more effectively, using the process of inductive versus deductive reasoning. To support this proposition, a theory of strategy learning is developed, where a strategy consists of a set of moves which can be combined many ways to respond to business situations. Strategy learning is captured by three basic processes: variation, adaptation, and selection. My theory is implemented using a computer-simulated game among artificial agents, with each agent represented by a computer program capable of intelligent learning. This game can make more significant predictions for a reputation game than traditional game theory. Computer simulation results are then compared with results from corresponding economic experiments. They indicate that sophisticated strategies such as reputation building can be learned inductively. Using computer simulation of the genetic algorithm, Part II explores different hierarchical levels of organizational evolution. In the case presented, selection at the population level of analysis influenced learning capabilities at the organizational level, while the learning capabilities influenced the selection process. Thus, it is crucial to understand how strategy learning at these different organizational levels interact with each other. Part III discusses the importance of long chains of strategy moves. A mathematical model demonstrates that specific strategic instances can be identified effectively with a "bottom-up" hierarchical search, which first looks for the smallest, stable parts of an action chain and then combines them into larger and larger sub-strategies until the final strategy is identified. This model can predict how humans learn specific strategic instances when provided with intermediate feedback. Empirical evidence from a pilot experiment indicates that humans use hierarchical search to discover action chains. This work provides a theoretical foundation for the evolution of intelligent organizations. If individuals can learn sophisticated strategies inductively, then so can organizations. Organizations should be able to function like large, parallel-distributed information systems, capable of learning strategies more effectively and able to leverage their strategic decision-making capabilities through the contribution of many intelligent individuals.
FAILURE CRITERIA AND LATERAL STRESSES IN TRACK FOUNDATIONS

In conventional track systems the ties are supported by an unbound ballast layer underlain by subballast or the subgrade, or both. Analytical models used to estimate stresses and deflections of these multilayer systems predict that the lower portions of the unbound layer will develop significant incremental tensile stresses. Their magnitude is such that, when combined with the normally expected geostatic stresses, failure of the ballast is predicted. Some analytical models have incorporated failure criteria for the unbound layer as a means of limiting these stresses to permissible values. A discussion of these approaches is presented along with the implications that predicted failure would have for permanent deformation prediction methodologies. An alternative method based on residual lateral stresses in the ballast is presented. A description is given of a laboratory box testing device used to measure residual lateral stresses. Experimental results are shown that indicate that relatively large residual stresses, due to repeated applications of loading, can develop in ballast. The effects of combining the initial stresses in the unbound layer with the incremental tensile stresses predicted by continuum or finite element models are discussed. Particular attention is given to the effects that these residual stresses have on prediction of permanent deformation.
Power Generation with IMPATT Diodes, TUNNETT Diodes and Gunn Devices at Millimeter and Submillimeter Wave Frequencies

Recent experimental results have shown that GaAs IMPATT diodes can operate up to D-band frequencies. RF output power levels of up to 20 mW at 120 GHz and 15 mW at 135 GHz were obtained. Corresponding dc to RF conversion efficiencies were between 0.9 % and 1.5 %. Device simulations and preliminary experimental results indicate that the fundamental mode operation of InP Gunn devices can be extended to the upper end of the D-band. RF output power levels of 21 mW were measured at 120 GHz, 17 mW at 133 GHz and 8 mW at 155 GHz. The most promising candidate for power generation at submillimeter wave frequencies, the TUNNETT diode, has yielded RF power levels of up to 35 mW around 103 GHz with corresponding dc to RF conversion efficiencies up to 3.5 %.
Kartläggning av energianvändning under byggfasen vid nyproduktion av flerbostadshus

The energy consumption in the sectors of residential and public buildings is 40 % of the total energy consumption in Sweden. The main part, 85 %, of the energy use in these sectors is for operation of the buildings. The rest is used in the building process. When energy-efficiency measures are taken the energy use during the operation time decreases and the fraction of energy consumption during the building time increases. This project is carried out in cooperation with JM AB and concerns the energy use during the building time of production of blocks of flats at the building site. The main part of the electricity that is used during the production of apartment buildings goes into the heating of portacabins and illumination of the building during the construction phase. These together use about 70 % of the total energy during the building phase. The rest is used by cranes, containers, fan heaters, tools etc. The dominant part of the energy, 98 %, used only for production (portacabins excluded) is used during the frame construction, fit out and finishing work. The simulations performed in this study show that the amount of energy needed to heat the cabins can be reduced by 54 % in the short term by insulating the cabins towards the ground and between the cabins. Increasing the insulation in the construction of the cabins combined with better regulating systems for inside temperature would reduce the energy use by 70 %. The most profitable measure is the use of low-energy lamps instead of bulbs which decreases energy consumption for lighting by 82 %. In the long term it is expected that the suggested measures could decrease the use of electicity for construction of buildings by 44 %. Tryckt av:
ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS USING GSP

The energy consumption rate for sensors in a wireless sensor network varies greatly based on the protocols the sensors use for communications. The Gossip-Based Sleep Protocol (GSP) implements routing and some MAC functions in an energy conserving manner. The effectiveness of GSP has already been demonstrated via simulation. However, no prototype system has been previously developed. GSP was implemented on the Mica2 platform and measurements were conducted to determine the improvement in network lifetime. Results for energy consumption, transmitted and received power, minimum voltage supply required for operation, effect of transmission power on energy consumption, and different methods for measuring lifetime of a sensor node are presented. The behaviour of sensor nodes when they are close to their end of lifetime is described and analyzed. A comparison with other models for energy consumption is made and suggestions for future work are presented.
The Misuse of Information Systems: The Impact of Security Countermeasures

D Arcy reports on an empirical investigation of the impact of four security countermeasures (security policies, security awareness program, computer monitoring, preventive security software) on IS misuse. Using the framework of general deterrence theory, he develops and tests a conceptual model using survey responses from 507 professionals. He finds support for the effectiveness of security policies, security awareness programs, and computer monitoring in deterring IS misuse. Preventive security software appears only moderately effective. The results also suggest that the deterrent effectiveness of security countermeasures vary based on computer self-efficacy and the amount of time spent telecommuting. D Arcy s findings help explain the relationships between security countermeasures and IS misuse, while reaffirming the applicability of general deterrence theory to the IS security domain.
MIRO : Methods for the legible and Interactive Rendering Of 3D complex data

For a long time, computer graphics has privileged photo-realistic rendering where the challenge lies in producing an image which can not be distinguished from a photograph. However, the realism of the rendering does not provide any guarantee of legibility, that is, the images are not always easy-to-understand. An alternative approach, named Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR) has emerging these recent years [SS02]. Most NPR techniques consists in the proposal of novel algorithms based on traditional artistic techniques (watercolor, pen and ink illustration, sketching, .). An important issue in NPR is depiction, that is, the extraction of characteristic features from 3D complex data. In this project, w are interested in using NPR for the interactive and legible rendering of complex 3D scenes . The complexity is related to the massive amount of data and to the intrinsic nature of information (images, texts, illustrations.). Many examples in scientific visualization prove that photorealism does not always offer meaningful images. For example in medical books, the representation of organs is more frequently based on sketches and annotations than on photographs. Some various illustration examples are shown Figure 1.
Final report on test of STEP, Shenandoah parabolic dish solar collector quadrant facility

Four 7-meter prototype solar collectors with pumps, valves, piping, insulation, controls, and other components to simulate a portion of the collector field planned for the Shenandoah Solar Total Energy system were installed and tested in a quadrant of Sandia Laboratories' Mid-temperature Solar System Test Facility located at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Operating conditions for the quadrant test loop duplicated those that are to be experienced at Shenandoah. These tests provided useful information relative to the adequacy of the mechanical and structural design of the collector, the insulating quality of the various materials investigated, the pipefield design, the receiver design, the tracking system, and the reflector surface. The results confirmed that some design areas were satisfactory and emphasized the need for alternatives in others. Alternatives were instituted where time permitted, and tests were repeated. Results confirmed efficiency numbers derived from analysis of the design.
Pulling Punches: A Non-parameteric Approach to Punch Force Estimation and the Development of Novel Boxing Metrics

Boxing has seen limited advancements in way of quantification of the sport during live professional fights. The PunchR system is an automated measurement system to collect information about a fight in realtime with fine-grained temporal resolution. The system employs nonintrusive accelerometers placed on the insides of boxers' wrists beneath their gloves to wirelessly relay acceleration data to a ringside laptop. Statistical models process the data for realtime estimates of fight metrics to quantify the action taking place in the ring including punch count, punch speed, punch force, and punch type. There are no new risks provided to the boxers during the fight nor do these accelerometers affect either of the boxers' physical performances. The statistical methods used to construct these statistical models are non-parametric in a sense that the data is really driving the modeling procedure without any notion of a structure prior to model construction. Data for the models is collected in a controlled experimental boxing setting or through video review of live fights. Model features are derived from the acceleration profiles of punches combined with boxer physical measurements to create a complete feature set to train the models.Primarily, the boxing metrics are largely tangible quantities that already are commonplace in boxing discussions (count, speed, force, and type) but have no prior method of measure. Methods are also developed to measure number of counterpunches and flurries using the timing of certain punches. Newly proposed metrics not in typical boxing terminology are either combinations of the common punch metrics or other measures taken from the acceleration data. These metrics attempt to measure a boxer's aggression and different measures of overall punch quality. The groundwork for these new contributions to boxing metrics and resulting visualizations for these metrics arise through the study of 65 professional boxing matches. Two complete fight summaries illustrate how a fight narrative can be told through use of the new metrics and visualizations. The PunchR system has been developed to begin the higher level quantification of boxing.
PGR Project: The Portuguese Attorney General Decisions on the Web

In this paper we describe a web based information retrieval system Portuguese for a database with the Portuguese Attorney General documents. The text search engine is specialized for the Portuguese language, and it takes into account lexical, syntactic, and (some) semantic information: equivalent, related, more specific or more general relations between juridical expressions. These relations between juridical terms are used to manipulate the user queries and the system answers. Basically we try to expand the queries in order to take into account related and specific concepts and, then, we try to collapse the answers in order to obtain more general results. The system also tries to keep an interaction context joining, whenever is possible, the new user query with the previous one, allowing the refinement of queries in a very friendly way. Moreover, the system allows the representation of legal knowledge using a logic programming language and it allows us to check the rules against specific documents.
Absorption Bandwidth-Enhanced Metamaterial Absorber Using In-planed ELC Resonator and Cut-Wire

In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of a broadband metamaterial (MM) absorber, which consists of a lumped-resistor-loaded electric-inductive-capacitive (ELC) resonator and a cut-wire strip on the same side of the dielectric substrate. A metallic pattern layer of the proposed absorber is designed in parallel to the incident wave propagation direction. In contrast to a common ELC resonator, the lumped-resistor-loaded ELC resonator exhibits a switchable resonant mode behavior, thereby exhibiting a negative effective permeability (μeff < 0). In addition, this resonator exhibits a low quality (Q)-factor owing to the loaded lumped resistors, which enhances the absorption bandwidth of an MM resonator. Our experiments showed that the proposed absorber exhibits a peak absorption rate of 91% at 8.87 GHz, and 2.8 GHz of a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) bandwidth is achieved.
The Relationship between Principals’ Involvement in Developing Teachers and Students’ Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Machakos County, Kenya

Leadership has small but educationally significant indirect influence on students learning outcomes. Conversely, teachers account for significant variance of students’ academic performance. Principals’ leadership styles can increase teachers’ capacities and commitments and thus increase their output which can be reflected in improved students’ academic performance. Transformational leadership practices have been shown to increase employee capacities and commitments. The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between principals’ involvement in developing teachers and students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Machakos County, Kenya. This study adopted a descriptive survey design. The study targeted all the 331 principals and 3,006 teachers in public secondary schools in Machakos County. Using simple random sampling, a total of 100 principals were selected and five teachers equally selected from the schools with the sampled principals making a total of 500 teachers. Data collection instruments included questionnaires for principals, questionnaires for teachers and document analysis checklists. Quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistical tools used were frequencies, percentages, Mean and Standard Deviation while inferential statistical tools such as ANOVA and regression analysis were used to analyze the quantitative Qualitative data was analyzed thematically through content analysis and the responses were presented in narratives. Tables and figures were used to present the analyzed data. The results revealed that there was statistical relationship (p<0.05) between principals involvement in teacher development and students’ academic performance which was positive but moderate (R= .671). Based on the results, it was concluded that transformational leadership practices influence students’ academic performance. The study recommends principals to increase transformational leadership practice of developing teachers since it influences students’ academic performance.
On-Chip Integrated Label-Free Optical Biosensing

This thesis investigates the design and implementation of a label-free optical biosensing system utilizing a robust on-chip integrated platform. The goal has been to transition optical micro-resonator based label-free biosensing from a laborious and delicate laboratory demonstration to a tool for the analytical life scientist. This has been pursued along four avenues: (1) the design and fabrication of high-$Q$ integrated planar microdisk optical resonators in silicon nitride on silica, (2) the demonstration of a high speed optoelectronic swept frequency laser source, (3) the development and integration of a microfluidic analyte delivery system, and (4) the introduction of a novel differential measurement technique for the reduction of environmental noise. The optical part of this system combines the results of two major recent developments in the field of optical and laser physics: the high-$Q$ optical resonator and the phase-locked electronically controlled swept-frequency semiconductor laser. The laser operates at a wavelength relevant for aqueous sensing, and replaces expensive and fragile mechanically-tuned laser sources whose frequency sweeps have limited speed, accuracy and reliability. The high-$Q$ optical resonator is part of a monolithic unit with an integrated optical waveguide, and is fabricated using standard semiconductor lithography methods. Monolithic integration makes the system significantly more robust and flexible compared to current, fragile embodiments that rely on the precarious coupling of fragile optical fibers to resonators. The silicon nitride on silica material system allows for future manifestations at shorter wavelengths. The sensor also includes an integrated microfluidic flow cell for precise and low volume delivery of analytes to the resonator surface. We demonstrate the refractive index sensing action of the system as well as the specific and nonspecific adsorption of proteins onto the resonator surface with high sensitivity. Measurement challenges due to environmental noise that hamper system performance are discussed and a differential sensing measurement is proposed, implemented, and demonstrated resulting in the restoration of a high performance sensing measurement. The instrument developed in this work represents an adaptable and cost-effective platform capable of various sensitive, label-free measurements relevant to the study of biophysics, biomolecular interactions, cell signaling, and a wide range of other life science fields. Further development is necessary for it to be capable of binding assays, or thermodynamic and kinetics measurements; however, this work has laid the foundation for the demonstration of these applications.
The city, that collective work of art. Tools for graphic expression and participatory creation in urban spaces

Una transformación urbana sostenible, democrática, resiliente e inclusiva significa trabajar con la comunidad local, dándole la oportunidad de colaborar en la creación de la ciudad. Esta investigación estudia la relación que existe entre creatividad gráfica y participación ciudadana para su aplicación en arquitectura y universidades, tanto en los procesos arquitectónicos para construir la ciudad como en los procesos de estrategias y medios para operar. En las Escuelas, se permite entrever nuevas maneras de aprendizaje alternativo. Como método de análisis, nos centramos en ejemplos, incluyendo disciplinas gráficas y de implementación tecnológica, pero también prácticas de arte urbano que surgieron de las luchas ciudadanas. Los resultados enseñan que se puede enseñar el proyecto urbano incorporando el diseño colaborativo, con herramientas como el arte callejero, el dibujo, los mapas colectivos o el urbanismo táctico, como medio de enriquecimiento de los procesos creativos y artísticos para la construcción de la ciudad.
State of Health Estimation and Prediction of Fuel Cell Stacks in Backup Power Systems

Fuel cell based backup systems are used as telecommunication power supplies, where availability of power is crucial for a reliable service. State of health (SOH) is a useful metric in aiding predictive maintenance actions, that aim to reduce the system down time as well as the operating cost. In this paper, voltage, current, and temperature data from numerous stacks installed in the field to estimate an SOH metric. A long short term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN) is trained to predict SOH values six months into the future. Finally, the RNN performance is evaluated on prediction horizons of six months, as well as longer horizons of twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months.
Cancer and productivity loss in the Irish economy: an employer’s perspective

Abstract The extant literature suggests that cancer-related premature mortality costs have increased over time and are projected to increase further. Previous studies have generally employed a societal rather than an employer-based costing framework. A question therefore remains over the magnitude of productivity costs associated with premature death from cancer from an employer perspective. The objective of this study was to measure the productivity costs associated with cancer-related premature mortality in Ireland using the employer-focussed friction-cost approach (FCA). This entailed the application of an involuntary turnover costing framework rarely used in the management literature and represents the first estimate of its kind in Ireland. The all-cancer premature mortality cost was valued at €14.3 million in 2009. We modelled the sensitivity of our costs to changes in underlying labour market conditions and to ‘multiplier effects’ which represent recent advances in the FCA. We advocate that future studies should concentrate on combining elements of direct turnover cost according to accounting costing frameworks with the indirect costs measured by the FCA. Implications for current guidelines for the economic evaluation of health technologies in Ireland are also discussed.