Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Workplane Illuminance Estimation for Robust Daylight Harvesting Lighting Control

Daylight harvesting lighting controls can provide significant energysavings in daylit spaces. However, their performance is affected bythe changing lighting distribution in the space due to window treatments and the sun. Such impacts reduce the field performance of daylight harvesting dimming systems, hindering their wide deployment. Current algorithms and configurations are not robust enough to handlethe impact of daylight, window blinds / shades, and changing interior conditions. This paper proposes a strategy to control lighting based on workplane illuminance estimation, i.e., the system attempts topredict the amount of light on the workplane based on environmentalconditions such as daylight at the window, blind slat angle, blind/ shades height, and interior light sensors. This forms the basis for a more user acceptable and robust light control system. The proposed system can be an integral part of an integrated daylight and electric light control system, further improving daylight harvesting lighting control systems.
Implied Correlations: Smiles or Smirks?

Developing a pricing model for CDOs that can actually be implemented is a very challenging problem. In a credit portfolio with N obligors, there are N individual default probabilities, (N2 - N)/2 correlations, and N recovery rates, all of which are important determinants of the portfolio loss distribution. Fitting the default probabilities alone typically requires specifying probability distributions for the shared and idiosyncratic underlying factors. In light of all this complexity, the Gaussian copula model applied to a homogeneous portfolio has become the industry standard approach. But the shortcomings of this model in explaining market prices for CDO tranches are very visible in the strange, but consistent, v-shaped implied correlation skew. Agca, Agrawal, and Islam consider the many simplifying assumptions of the Gaussian copula model and explore the importance of each by weakening one at a time and studying how the correlation skew changes. Does allowing the common factor or the idiosyncratic factors to come from a fat-tailed distribution, rather than the normal, make a big difference? For the shared factor, yes, but for the idiosyncratic factor, no. How important is the assumption that all correlations are equal versus being distributed over a wide range as is the case when the correlations are estimated from the data? Neither seems to make much difference to the implied correlation skew. In the end, we learn which assumptions make the most difference in CDO pricing—even though the true source of the correlation skew remains elusive.
The Relationship Between Import Penetration and Operation of the U.S. Textile and Apparel Industries From 2002 to 2008

The U.S. textile and apparel (T&A) industries have respectively adopted various restructuring strategies in recent years which fundamentally changed the way the two industries operate and the shifting relationship of each sector with imports. This study empirically tests the relationship between import penetration and the operation of the U.S. T&A industries based on data at 4-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code level from 2002-2008. Results from the panel data model show that overall the U.S. textile industry formed a weak cooperative relationship with import penetration level in the U.S. market and a neutral relationship was suggested for the U.S. apparel industry with imports. These findings contribute to understanding the global nature of today's U.S. T&A industries and suggest useful perspectives for the U.S. textile trade policies.
A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR ALTERNATIVE PROJECT CHOICE BASED ON FUZZY NEURAL NETWORKS

Received: 19 September 2010 Abstract Accepted: 10 November 2010 The paper aims to present possibilities of management support by more precise estimates of critical tasks in projects through the use of intelligent techniques. In this paper a case is considered in which the client is forced to change the project specification after commencement of investment. To minimize the loss, the client may attempt to find other alternative solutions to complete the project. In view of expenditure and investment in progress, a group of alternative projects that fulfill the assumed constraints (e.g. financial and temporal) is sought. To support the choice of alternative projects, estimates of critical tasks within the project are calculated, using intelligent techniques as well as traditional statistical methods. The results are determined using the database of past projects that are found in the information systems of the enterprise.
Reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the foot function index in patients with calcaneal heel spur

Amac: Ayak Fonksiyon Indeksi (Foot Function Index: FFI) klinik uygulamalar ve arastirmalarda yaygin kullanilan olceklerden biridir. Bu arastirmanin amaci FFI’in, topuk dikeni tanisi olan hastalarda Turkce gecerlik ve guvenirligini calismaktir. Yontemler: Verilerin Istatistiksel analizleri SPSS 20.0 paket programi kullanilarak analiz edilmistir. Test-tekrar test guvenirligini ve FFI ic tutarliligini belirlemek icin sinif ici korelasyon katsayilari (ICC) ve Cronbach alfa katsayilari kullanilmistir. Yapi gecerligi, vizuel analog skalasi (VAS-agri), ayak ve ayak bilegi sonuc skoru (FAOS) ve Kisa Form-36 (SF-36) ile FFI arasindaki iliski Pearson korelasyon katsayisi ile test edilmistir. Bulgular: Calismamiza 125’i kadin 21’i erkek olmak uzere 146 hasta dahil edilmistir. Hastalarin yas ortalamasi 46,4± 10,3 yil idi. Toplam FFI ve uc alt olcek olan VAS, FAOS ve SF-36 icin rastgele ICC, 0,74 ile 0,99 arasinda bulunmustur. Cronbach'in alfa guvenirlik katsayisi en dusuk 0,78 ve en buyuk 0,83 olarak hesaplanmistir. Gecerlik acisindan ise FFI ile VAS, FAOS ve SF-36 puanlarinin bazi alt olcekleri arasinda anlamli iliski bulunmustur (p<0.05). Sonuc: Bu calismada, topuk dikeni tanisi olan hastalari degerlendirmek icin kullandigimiz FFI'nin Turkce versiyonun gecerli ve guvenilir oldugu gosterilmistir. Bu olcegin, klinik ve arastirmalarda ayak agrilari, yetersizlik ve ayak fonksiyonlarini degerlendirmek icin hastalara uygulanabilecegini dusunmekteyiz.
Using Google Street View to validate interviewer observations and predict nonresponse : a Belgian case study

Researchers have been looking for easily accessible and easily useable paradata and auxiliary data to improve survey data. Recently, attention has also been paid to the evaluation and validation of this external data, such as the assessment of the quality of interviewer-generated paradata. For these purposes, we investigated how useful Google Street ViewTM can be with regard to providing auxiliary data, and whether it allows us to assess the quality of interviewer observations on the homes and neighbourhoods of sample units. Although it is relatively simple to use Google Street View in daily life, using it to code auxiliary data for surveys proves to be more challenging than expected. Hence, this paper also offers a thorough discussion of the pitfalls of coding this auxiliary data, as well as the currently available solutions to these problems.
Abundance of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus (Cetacea: Delphinidae), inhabiting the Patos Lagoon estuary, southern Brazil: implications for conservation

A new mark-recapture abundance estimate and a photographic census were carried out to investigate the possible decline in the abundance of the bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus (Montagu, 1821), in the Patos Lagoon estuary due to the high levels of bycatch mortality which occurred between 2002 and 2006 in oceanic coastal areas close to the estuary. Fourteen systematic boat surveys were conducted between August and early December 2005 to photo-identify the bottlenose dolphins. The estimated number of animals, with long-lasting marks, in the population obtained from Chapman's and Mth models were 51 (95% CI = 49-53) and 52 (95% CI = 51-60), respectively. Taking into account the proportion of dolphins with long-lasting marks in the population, the total estimated population size ranged between 84 (95% CI = 76-93) and 86 (95% CI = 78-95) individuals, respectively, which was very similar to the 84 individuals revealed by the population census. Our results did not differ from the abundance estimate carried out in 1998, prior to the high fishing-related mortality event, suggesting that the population is stable. Plausible argument to explain the stability of the population is that some carcasses found on the oceanic coastal beaches near Patos Lagoon estuary come from animals that do not belong to the estuary community. Future studies should investigate fine-scale habitat partition between estuarine and adjacent coastal dolphins. If the existence of different communities living in close proximity (estuarine and coastal areas near to the estuary) is confirmed, a new abundance estimate is needed to access the conservation status of bottlenose dolphins in this region.
Collagen Sources and Areas of Use

Fibrillar collagen type I undenatured represent the major structural component of all organs and connective tissues, which due to low antigenicity and outstanding biocompatibility the possibility of controlling the time of biodegradation by crosslinking, the ease of forming composites with other natural polymers and synthetic, represents one of the most used natural biomaterials . Collagen biomaterials are successfully used in gene therapy for artificial implants. They are used as medical devices, scaffolds for tissue regeneration, supports for drug release. Collagen can be extracted from various sources considering that it is one of the most abundant proteins on earth. It can be extracted from almost every living animal, even including alligators and kangaroos. Nonetheless, common sources of collagen for tissue engineering applications include bovine skin and tendons, porcine skin and rat tail among others. Marine life forms are also a considerable source of collagen, which can be extracted from sponges, fish and jellyfish. These collagens are widely used in the industry, but less for research and clinical usage. All these collagen sources are worth investigating considering that collagen properties differ from one animal to another. Collagen can also be used in biomedical applications as a decellularized ECM serving as a scaffolding material for tissue regeneration. Although extractible from many different sources, the diversity of acellular. Due to these features and the possibility to be isolated in pure collagen, they are essential in areas such as medicine, cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical applications.
Synthesis and characterization of a porous amorphous Ni–B catalyst on titania by silver-catalyzed electroless plating

An amorphous Ni–B/TiO2 catalyst has been synthesized by silver-catalyzed electroless nickel plating. The amorphous structure of Ni–B nanoparticles was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED). A transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of the Ni–B/TiO2 showed particles with size ranging from 30 to 50 nm were homogeneously dispersed over TiO2 support. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) indicated that the Ni–B nanoparticles presented a porous and flower-like morphology, which was different from the solid sphere of conventional Ni–B particles prepared by impregnation–reduction method. To investigate the formation process of the porous Ni–B particles, the diffusion of nickel nuclei and the growth of Ni–B particles were characterized. The as-prepared porous Ni–B/TiO2 catalyst exhibited superior catalytic activities in the hydrogenation reactions to those of catalysts prepared by conventional methods.
Stability analysis of multimachine thermal power systems using the nature-inspired modified cuckoo search algorithm

The stability of modern interconnected thermal power systems is greatly affected by the presence of low-frequency inertial oscillations in the system, due to various forms of disturbances experienced. This paper provides an efficient damping solution to these oscillations based on nature-inspired modified cuckoo search algorithm-based controller design. The proposed controller design is formulated as a parameter optimization problem based on damping ratio and time-domain error deviations. The effectiveness of the proposed damping controller design is illustrated by performing the nonlinear time domain simulations of the test multimachine power systems under various operating conditions and disturbances. Moreover, an exhaustive comparative stability analysis is performed based on the damping performance of the modified cuckoo search controller design over the genetic algorithm-based and cuckoo search algorithm-based controller designs.
Automatic Highly Accurate Estimation of Gaussian Noise Level in Digital Images Using Filtration and Edges Detection Methods

In this paper we propose a highly accurate method of automatically estimation of the Gaussian noise level in digital images, which is based on image filtering and analysis of the region of interest. Noise level is an important parameter to many digital image processing applications, for example, when removing noise. As the noise level its standard deviation is calculated. The selection of the noise component in an image is performed by high-pass filtration, where the Laplacian difference is used as the filter kernel. Based on the noise component of the image, regions of interest with homogeneous areas of the image are calculated. Region of interest are selected by the iterative method using lowpass filtration, where Gaussian two-dimensional function is used as the filter kernel. The noise level is calculated only in the regions of interest that contain almost no edges and textures, because edges and textures cause errors during the noise level estimation. In order to improve the accuracy of the method, edges of images are detected and out of region of interest. The high accuracy of the proposed method provides the use of high-pass and low-pass filtrations, iterative selection of region of interest and analysis of image edges. The accuracy of the developed method has been tested on the processing of 100 test images with different levels of software added Gaussian noise, as well as the processing of real photos with noise. The proposed method for the noise level estimation can be used for optimal automatic image filtering and for assessing the quality of photosensitive sensors.
On the Assessment of Information Quality in Spanish Wikipedia

Featured Articles (FA) are considered to be the best articles that Wikipedia has to offer and in the last years, researchers have found interesting to analyze whether and how they can be distinguished from “ordinary” articles. Likewise, identifying what issues have to be enhanced or fixed in ordinary articles in order to improve their quality is a recent key research trend. Most of the approaches developed in these research trends have been proposed for the English Wikipedia. However, few efforts have been accomplished in Spanish Wikipedia, despite being Spanish, one of the most spoken languages in the world by native speakers. In this respect, we present a first breakdown of Spanish Wikipedia’s quality flaw structure. Besides, we carry out a study to automatically assess information quality in Spanish Wikipedia, where FA identification is evaluated as a binary classification task. The results obtained show that FA identification can be performed with an F1 score of 0.81, using a document model consisting of only twenty six features and AdaBoosted C4.5 decision trees as classification algorithm.
A new approach to cold extrusion process: Dimples indentation on sliding contact surface and palm oil as an alternative lubricant

Surface texturing is one of the economic solutions to die modification if compared with tool change and hot works. In extrusion die design, it has become increasingly common to add dimples to maintain lubricant flow along the metal forming process. For that reason, this research was done by embedding dimples in a tapered die sliding contact surface to explore its effectiveness in a finished product of cold extrusion process. Besides, an alternative lubricant from palm oil was also tested, and mineral oil was used for comparison purposes. As a result, dimpled tapered die may help decrease the extrusion load of cold extrusion process, leading to ner surface roughness of extruded product. Palm oil-based lubricant also presents similar results to those of mineral oil, meaning that palm oil has a potential to be considered as a new metal forming lubricant in the future.
Efficient, Accurate, and Non-Gaussian Error Propagation Through Nonlinear, Closed-Form, Analytical System Models

Efficient, Accurate, and Non-Gaussian Statistical Error Propagation Through Nonlinear, Closed-Form, Analytical System Models Travis V. Anderson Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science Uncertainty analysis is an important part of system design. The formula for error propagation through a system model that is most-often cited in literature is based on a first-order Taylor series. This formula makes several important assumptions and has several important limitations that are often ignored. This thesis explores these assumptions and addresses two of the major limitations. First, the results obtained from propagating error through nonlinear systems can be wrong by one or more orders of magnitude, due to the linearization inherent in a first-order Taylor series. This thesis presents a method for overcoming that inaccuracy that is capable of achieving fourth-order accuracy without significant additional computational cost. Second, system designers using a Taylor series to propagate error typically only propagate a mean and variance and ignore all higher-order statistics. Consequently, a Gaussian output distribution must be assumed, which often does not reflect reality. This thesis presents a proof that nonlinear systems do not produce Gaussian output distributions, even when inputs are Gaussian. A second-order Taylor series is then used to propagate both skewness and kurtosis through a system model. This allows the system designer to obtain a fully-described non-Gaussian output distribution. The benefits of having a fully-described output distribution are demonstrated using the examples of both a flat rolling metalworking process and the propeller component of a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle.
Effect of Salt Stress on the Performance of Six Soybean Genotypes

The effect of salinity on growth and chlorophyll content of six soybean genotypes was investigated. Plants were grown in nutrient solution in a greenhouse experiment to determine the effect of salinity on growth and Chl. a and b content of soybean leaves. Salinity was induced by natural drainage water of salted field to the nutrient solution. Electrical conductivities of the nutrient solution were 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 ds/m. Salinity induced marked decrease in plant growth and chlorophyll content of soybean genotypes. Increasing salinity level to 10 ds/m decreased plant height, shoot and root dry weight and Chlorophyll a and Chlorophyll b contents. Soybean genotypes responded differently to increasing salt concentrations. There was a consistent in the percentages reduction of shoot dry weight and Chorophyll a and Chlorophyll b contents. It seems that Lee, coniquitt and Clark 36k are more tolerant than other genotypes. Chlorophyll a and b content of soybean leaves with or without shoot dry weight can be use as a parameter in screening for salt tolerant in soybeans.
Constraining the parameter space of the one-zone synchrotron-self-Compton model for GeV-TeV detected BL Lacertae objects

Context. The one-zone synchrotron-self-Compton (SSC) model aims to describe the spectral energy distribution (SED) of BL Lac objects via synchrotron emission by a non-thermal population of electrons and positrons in a single homogeneous emission region, partially upscattered to γ-rays by the particles themselves. Aims. The model is usually considered as degenerate, given that the number of free parameters is higher than the number of observables. It is thus common to model the SED by choosing a single set of values for the SSC-model parameters that provide a good description of the data, without studying the entire parameter space. We present here a new numerical algorithm which permits us to find the complete set of solutions, using the information coming from the detection in the GeV and TeV energy bands. Methods. The algorithm is composed of three separate steps: we first prepare a grid of simulated SEDs and extract from each SED the values of the observables; we then parametrize each observable as a function of the SSC parameters; we finally solve the system for a given set of observables. We iteratively solve the system to take into account uncertainties in the values of the observables, producing a family of solutions. Results. We present a first application of our algorithm to the typical high-frequency-peaked BL Lac object 1RXS J101015.9 311909, provide constraints on the SSC parameters, and discuss the result in terms of our understanding of the blazar emitting region.
Sediment dynamics in a sand bed stream with riparian vegetation

The characteristic bed morphology of streams results from the action of various sediment fluxes. Sediment fluxes are difficult to quantify, and as a result, few studies have been able to characterize the relative importance of different transport mechanisms in shaping a river's bed at the reach scale. Even fewer studies have been able to address the impacts of introduced riparian vegetation on those fluxes. This study provides the first comprehensive set of flow and sediment measurements required to compute the fluxes in a sand bed stream with riparian vegetation. Data were collected in a reduced‐scale laboratory model of a reach of a sand bed stream in southeastern Australia that is undergoing rehabilitation using in‐stream riparian vegetation. The reach has a large‐radius meander and a variable width. Laboratory measurements included streamwise and transverse velocities, bed shear stresses, bed load transport, suspended sediment concentrations, and bed topography with and without riparian vegetation placed along the outer bank of the bend. The results unveiled the importance of secondary circulation as well as converging and diverging flow patterns in shaping the bed topography. Modifications due to the vegetation included a shift of the main flow away from the vegetated outer bank and an overall straightening of the flow in the reach, resulting in an increased deposition near the vegetated bank and a reduced deposition near the inner bank. This highlights the need for overall reach assessment of flow and sediment dynamics before revegetation, as its effects go beyond local bank protection.