Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Natural Cellulosic Fiber from Coccinia Indica Stem for Polymer Composites: Extraction and Characterization

ABSTRACT This study mainly focuses on the possibility of using Coccinia Indica (CI) fiber as reinforcement in structural polymer composite materials because of its lightweight and eco-friendly nature. Fibers were extracted from the dried stems by combing process using metal teeth brush. The thermo-physico-mechanical properties, chemical compositions, and morphological structures of CI fiber were analyzed in detail. A higher percentage of cellulose content in CI fiber and the lesser amount of skimpy lignin, hemicellulose, ash, and wax content were confirmed through chemical analysis. The functional groups with their corresponding peaks were depicted through FTIR analysis. XRD studies divulge that the CI fiber contains crystallinity index (CrI) of 53.03% and crystallite size (L) of 5.81 nm. SEM revealed that the fiber possesses cylindrical morphology with multi-cellular structure. The presence of parenchyma and chlorenchyma tissues in the cell wall of CI fiber was also confirmed, which helps for better adhesion and mechanical properties to the composite. TGA study reveals that the major degradation of CI fiber occurs at a temperature range of 204.16°C to 376.3°C. The tensile strength of cellulose-based CI fiber is comparable with the other conventional fibers and it is well enough for its usage as reinforcing material in composite manufacturing.
Digital input class d audio amplifier

Receives digital input audio signal (2), an audio amplifier for generating an output audio signal (65) for driving a speaker (8), to receive the digital input audio signal, and to produce an output audio signal configured including digital input class-D amplifier (50). Digital Input Class D amplifiers, to receive the digital input audio signal, and sub n-bit digital signal (56) a first modulator configured to generate a (54), the n-bit quasi-digital signal as receive, and includes a class D modulator configured to generate an output audio signal (60), class D modulator to implement analog feedback loop. In some embodiments, the class D modulator is implemented using a PWM modulator. In another embodiment, PWM modulator includes enhanced features to improve the output noise characteristics.
Analisis Faktor Penghargaan Indonesia Sustainability Reporting Awards Terhadap Pengungkapan Sosial

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah menguji factor-faktor penentu dalam pengungkapan tanggungjawab social perusahaan dan pengaruhnya terhadap kinerja keuangan perusahaan. Penelitian ini menggunakan data sekunder laporan tahunan perusahaan go-public yang tercatat di Bursa Efek Indonesia dan data Sustainability Reporting Awards (ISRA) tahun 2012-2016. Sampel penelitian ini terdiri dari 90 perusahaan dari berbagai Industri yang menerima maupun tidak menerima ISRA. Pengujian hipotesis pertama hingga kelima dalam penelitian ini menggunakan regresi logistic dan menunjukkan bahwa saham, ROA, ukuran perusahaan berpengaruh positif terhadap pengungkapan tanggung jawab sosial. Sementara financial leverage dan umur perusahaan tidak berpengaruh terhadap pengungkapan tanggungjawab sosial perusahaan.
A citation analysis of theoretical concept reviews

In this article, we identify the concept of a theoretical concept review, a literature review that presents the theoretical concepts extracted from each primary study. We clarify what theoretical concepts are in the context of literature reviews and explain why theoretical contributions are valuable in literature reviews. We conduct a citation analysis that shows that, in general, theoretical concept reviews have been cited approximately 60% more than other kinds of reviews. Based on our findings, we recommend that literature review authors should routinely present the elements of theory in their reviews since this is demonstrably valuable to readers.
Paradoxes of technology and human behaviour in Japanese higher education

Over the past decades digital technology has become ubiquitous in Japanese society in general, but its use in education has not matched the use in other areas. Students and teachers use digital technology for communication, entertainment and research, but it’s use in classrooms in Japan is still very limited. This doctoral thesis is an investigation into the paradox between the ubiquity of digital technology in Japanese society in general, and the limited usage in Japanese higher education. Using Grounded Theory, it examines the perceptions of teachers and students to technology in order to investigate the potential for educational technology to improve learning. The results showed that fear of loss of control was a major factor in the decision of whether or not to use digital technology by teaching faculty. In addition, it clearly shows that the widespread perception that younger generations are more enthusiastic about educational technology is incorrect. In many ways the students were less enthusiastic about using digital technology and wanted more traditional styles of teaching, while the teachers were eager to learn how to use new technology in their practice. The research adds to the field of educational technology by showing that it is not a lack of technological expertise on behalf of the teachers preventing technology use. The main factors in deciding whether or not to incorporate digital technology in the classroom by teachers were based on retaining control and reliability of the technology. Teachers were encouraged to use technology by its ease of use and technological support in the case of problems. This thesis offers recommendations as to how institutions can improve trust between teaching staff and university administration to maximise the effectiveness of digital technology within the university. The paradox of technology might be explained by teachers’ reluctance to give up control of the classroom to technology and a lack of knowledge of the potential of educational technology by teachers and students.
Parenting Styles and Family Demographic Factors as Predictors of Abusive Parenting Among Adolescents

The present research was aimed to identify the abusive family environment in disciplinary context for adolescents through analyzing the link between parenting styles, risk family factors, and experiences of abusive parenting in adolescent girls and boys. Study involved a sample of 300 school going adolescents with age range from 14-17 years. Physical Abuse Scale (Rizvi & Najam, 2014), Psychological Maltreatment Experience Scale (Petretic-Jackson, Betz, & Pitman, 1995), and Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) were used to measure physical abuse, psychological abuse, and parenting styles (respectively) perceived by adolescents. Findings of study revealed that authoritarian parents were perceived more abusive, physically as well as psychologically as compared to permissive parents; while authoritative parents were perceived as non abusive parents. Findings of regression analysis showed that authoritarian parenting predicted abuse potential; while, authoritative parenting predicted non abusive parenting. Moreover among family demographic factors, larger families and joint family system were appeared as significant predictors of abusive parenting. The present research might be an effort to spark the recognition of an issue that parents are perceived abusive by their children though they are practicing different styles of parenting to control their children. Future implications of the study were also discussed.
Toward a Better Measure of Bank Corporate Governance

Directors help determine the strategic direction of a corporation and are responsible for ensuring the institution has a good system of internal control. Banking institutions without a strategic direction emphasizing sound lending practices that promote the long-run financial health and viability of the institution will be sued more frequently than peer institutions. Institutions that do not have a good system of internal control will also be sued more frequently. Hence, legal expense is a bank corporate governance measure. We compare the performance of bank legal expense and a widely cited corporate governance index in a regression framework to determine which better predicts bank performance. The regressions indicate legal expense is a much better predictor, hence a better measure of bank corporate governance. Regulators should require legal expense reporting and rank institutions by the ratio of legal expense to assets to help identify institutions with weak governance. Seven case studies illustrate the role of legal expense in corporate governance.
Investigation of Pleasantness in the Manipulation of Deformable Interfaces for Musical Expression

Currently, deformable user interfaces are a popular topic in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community. These interfaces enable intuitive manipulation for users. Deformable interfaces are also reported in the field of musical expression, such as sound controllers. However, the user experience of the manipulation of these interfaces is not well studied so far. This paper therefore focuses on the clarification of pleasantness in the manipulation of deformable interfaces for musical expression. First, evaluation experiments were conducted to investigate the pleasantness and user impressions of deformable interface manipulation using 36 dissimilar interface mockups. The evaluation results explained that the impressions related to the activity factor particularly correlate with pleasantness. Also, Hayashi’s quantification theory type I revealed the relationship between the physical features of the interfaces and pleasantness. Based on the findings, the ideal deformable interface design for pleasant musical expression was finally proposed. The design was with medium deformation and squashing manipulation.
Applying Model View View-Model and Layered Architecture for Mobile Applications

The paper applies the Model View View-Model for mobile applications. The exponentially increasing user of mobile devices is leading to a next generation of applications that exploit user contextual information to provide a richer experience. The activities to perform during the development of application may vary on their context. The paper lays emphasis on the layered architecture of mobile applications. The methodological process followed during the ontology development as well as the ontology platform obtained from this process. Besides, we provide an example of how to extend the ontology for a particular use case in a concrete domain.
Machine Learning Based Botnet Detection in Software Defined Networks

This paper proposed a flow-based approach to detect botnet by applying machine learning algorithms to software defined networks without reading packet payload. The proposed work uses network flows as input and process it in two windows based modules to extract a statistical feature set to be used for classification. The first module process network flow stream to extract flow traces. The window size of this module is 10 which means a flow trace with 10 flows is considered as a trace of interest and forwarded to the next module for further processing. The second module processes the selected trace and fetches historical flows in last 60-minute window for the source and destination IPs of the trace. The feature set is extracted from selected trace and relevant historical flows. The approach applies supervised decision tree based machine learning algorithm to create a model during a training phase using extracted feature set. This model is then used to classify flow traces during the testing phase. The dataset for experimentation is extracted from publicly available real botnet and normal traces. The experimental findings show that the method is capable to detect unknown botnet. The results show detection rate of 97% for known botnets and 90% for unknown botnets.
Social capital – a topsoil for democracy

Political theorists are familiar with the proposition that social capital in the form of trust, membership in voluntary organizations, and community engagement, is conducive to democracy. Corroborating empirical evidence exists but it is patchy and inconclusive because it is usually based on aggregate, often country-level data or isolated case studies, and the identified relationship is associative rather than causal. In this paper, I use some of the most recent large-scale micro-level datasets to establish that the relationship between social capital and democracy is indeed strong and causal as predicted by theory. I find that citizens who have more trust in others, attend community meetings, and belong to voluntary organizations tend to prefer democracy to any other kind of governance.
Long Run Implications of U.S. Biofuels Policies: A Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis

Biofuels have continued to gain momentum over the last decade due to growing worldwide interest in achieving energy security and climate change mitigation. The first generation biofuels produced mainly from agricultural sources have experienced unprecedented growth in recent years. The U.S. has emerged as the leading producer of biofuels, with 13.2 billion gallons of corn-ethanol and more than one billion gallons of biodiesel in 2012. The U.S. Congress has established a renewable fuel standard (RFS) rule that mandates annual production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 (USEPA, 2010), which includes 16 billion gallons of second generation cellulosic biofuels. Currently, only 100 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels production capacity is under construction in the U.S. which mainly uses energy grasses and crop residue as their feedstock. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports, around 52 countries together produced more than 28 billion gallons of different types of biofuels for transportation in 2010. The mandates implemented in these countries would require a total production of 60 billion gallons by 2022. Large scale production of biofuels results in far-reaching intended and unintended consequences on the economy and environment. Previous studies on examining the economywide impact of biofuels have focused mainly on first generation biofuels. In this study, we examine the longer-term global implications of complete execution of U.S. RFS2 policy which includes both first and second generation biofuels. We develop a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) data base and a suite of models. The key data base used in this study is the GTAP data base version 7.1 (Narayanan and Walmsley, Ed., 2008) which comprises 57 sectors and 112 regions, corresponding to the global economy in 2004. Since there are no explicit sectors for biofuels and their respective feeds.
Temporal single cell transcriptome atlas of zebrafish anterior segment development reveals high degree of conservation between the trabecular meshwork and the annular ligament

Anterior segment dysgenesis (ASD), resulting in vision impairment, stems from maldevelopment of anterior segment (AS) tissues. Incidence of ASD has been linked to malfunction of periocular mesenchyme cells (POM). POM cells specify into anterior segment mesenchyme (ASM) cells which colonize and produce AS tissues. In this study we uncover ASM developmental trajectories associated with formation of the AS. Using a transgenic line of zebrafish that fluorescently labels the ASM throughout development, Tg[foxc1b:GFP], we isolated GFP+ ASM cells at several developmental timepoints (48-144hpf) and performed single cell RNA sequencing. Clustering analysis indicates subdifferentiation of ASM as early as 48hpf and subsequent diversification into corneal, epithelium/endothelium/stroma, or annular ligament (AL) lineages. Tracking individual clusters reveals common developmental pathways, up to 72hpf, for the AL and corneal endothelium/stroma, and distinct pathways for corneal epithelium starting at 48hpf. Spatiotemporal validation of over 80 genes found associated AS development demonstrates high degree of conservation with mammalian trabecular meshwork and corneal tissues. In addition, we characterize thirteen novel genes associated with AL and seven with corneal development. Overall, the data provide a molecular verification of the long-standing hypothesis that POM derived ASM give rise to AS tissues and highlight the high degree of conservation between zebrafish and mammals.
THE INFLUENCE OF TEXTURE ON THE MOISTURE CHARACTERISTICS OF SOIL. V. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PARTICLE SIZE COMPOSITION AND MOISTURE CONTENTS AT THE UPPER AND LOWER LIMITS OF AVAILABLE-WATER

A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT WAS MADE OF THE PROPORTION EFFECT OF SAND, SILT, CLAY, AND ORGANIC MATTER IN TWENTY-SIX SOILS ON THE MOISTURE AT THE UPPER AND LOWER LIMITS OF AVAILABLE-WATER OF THE SOILS. REGRESSION EQUATIONS WERE OBTAINED WHICH ENABLED THE MOISTURE TO BE ESTIMATED ON A WEIGHT OR VOLUME BASIS FROM MECHANICAL ANALYSIS DATA USING EITHER INTERNATIONAL OR AMERICAN SIZE GRADES. THE ACCURACY OF ESTIMATING THE UPPER LIMIT OF AVAILABLE-WATER FROM THE VARIOUS EQUATIONS RANGED FROM PLUS MINUS 9 TO 22 PER CENT: FOR THE LOWER LIMIT FROM PLUS MINUS 8 TO 16 PER CENT OF THE MEASURED VALUES. MEAN VALUES OF THE MOISTURE CONTENTS AT THE UPPER AND LOWER LIMITS OF AVAILABLE-WATER FOR EACH TEXTURAL CLASS WERE CALCULATED FROM THE AVERAGE PARTICLE-SIZE COMPOSITION FOR EACH CLASS AND FROM THE REGRESSIONS OBTAINED. /RRL/A/
The Zinc Oxide-Copper Catalyst for Carbon Monoxide-Shift Conversion. I. The Dependency of the Catalytic Activity on the Chemical Composition of the Catalyst

The zinc oxide-copper catalysts under investigation included a series of catalysts of different copper contents prepared by kneading zinc oxide powder with copper hydroxide cake (the “kneaded series”), and two other catalysts prepared by the impregnation and the coprecipitation methods. Only the catalysts of the kneaded series show a high activity in the carbon monoxide-shift conversion, provided the catalysts contain appropriate amounts of copper. The observed dependency of the catalytic activity on the copper content can be interpreted in view of the catalyst scheme in which the copper forms its own fine particles among the original zinc oxide particles. On the basis of this picture, the study was then extended to other copper-containing catalysts; an active alumina-copper catalyst could be produced by kneading the cake with alumina powder with a high specific surface area.
Syntactic representation is independent of semantics in Mandarin: evidence from syntactic priming

ABSTRACT Theories of language processing generally assume that speakers construct independent representations for syntactic and semantic information, based largely on evidence from English and related languages. But it is not clear whether the assumption of autonomous syntactic representations extends to other languages with different typological characteristics. We therefore conducted two structural priming studies investigating production of dative sentences in Mandarin, a language whose interpretation appears to be more reliant on non-relational (intrinsic) semantics (e.g. animacy features). We examined whether participants’ tendency to repeat syntax was affected by whether the theme and recipient arguments matched or mismatched in animacy across prime and target. Participants repeated syntax to the same extent irrespective of whether prime and target arguments had matched or mismatched animacy. These findings provide evidence that the separation of syntactic and semantic representations occurs in Mandarin and therefore may occur across languages.
Inferring final plans : expanding on a generative and logic-based approach

When humans work together to form a plan, they often make mistakes: they misspeak, say things out of order, and negate things they had previously said. We aim to read human team planning conversations and extract the final agreed-upon plan so that a robotic agent may assist in design or execution. Previous work shows that a generative model with logic-based priors is effective when the plan being formed is relatively simple. We present an algorithm that expands on the model by incorporating dialogue acts, which give an indication of how proposed actions are said. We compare our model’s performance to humans on the same task. We also validate the model on a toy problem, achieving the desired output 8 times out of 10 (compared to a baseline of 3/10), and run the baseline and our expanded model on a more complex input dialogue. To the best of our knowledge, this is this first work that incorporates dialogue acts into a generative model to perform plan inference. Thesis Supervisor: Julie A. Shah Title: Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS CONSTRUCTIVE ALIGNMENT FOR TEACHING DELIVERY AND ASSESSMENT CONDUCTED IN SCIENCE COURSE

The educational approach practiced in institutions of higher learning (IHL) in Malaysia has to emphasize more on the learning outcomes that focus on the broadening of knowledge, skills, manners and attitude as outlined in Malaysian Qualification Framework (MQF) Learning Outcome Domain. To ensure that students are able to gain the educational outcome, constructive alignment was applied for designing the curriculum. Constructive alignment (CA) is a principle used to design teaching and learning activities (TLA), as well as the assessment tasks, relate directly to desired learning outcomes achieved. The CA of course learning outcomes, assessment, and TLA is a critical aspect of course, major and program design and a key indicator of the quality of a program. Ineffectiveness in CA designing implies that students do not have enough opportunities to engage in achieving competency as desired in the statement of learning outcome. Thus, this study aims to determine the effectiveness of CA for Teaching Delivery and Assessment Conducted in Science Courses. The objectives of this study are to: (1) investigate the student achievement towards the program learning outcomes (2) to identify student perspective on learning, teaching and assessment methods towards the learning outcomes. The survey was conducted in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Perak Branch, Tapah Campus, Malaysia. A structured questionnaire in Likert-scale type questions was administrated and collected from 280 students. The questionnaire survey has been analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics involving frequency and percentage distribution analysis by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results indicated that average of the students achieves their pointer 2.27 on Learning Objective 1 (knowledge), 3.57 on Learning Objective 2 (practical skills) and 3.66 on Learning Objective 5 (communication skills). The student perspective on CA Learning Objective 1 is incoherent with the student achievement and the student perspective for CA on Learning Objective 2 and Learning Objective 5 are coherent with the student achievement for Learning Objective 2 and Learning Objective 5. These findings will provide a significant guideline on the lecturer, Higher Education Institutions, Ministry of Education, and other stakeholders for effective CA.
A comparative study of linearization methods for Ordered Weighted Average

We consider a fair version of combinatorial optimization, which aims for both Pareto-efficiency and fairness of a solution. A possible approach to achieve the objectives simultaneously is to use the Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) aggregating function, which can be formulated into mix-integer programming (MIP) formulations. In this paper, we study two MIP formulations proposed in the literature for the OWA in the context of fair combinatorial optimization. On the one hand, we prove that both MIP formulations are equivalent in terms of linear relaxations. On the other hand, we estimate the quality with regard to the OWA value of an optimal solution of original combinatorial optimization. An experimental evaluation of the MIP formulations in tackling OWA Traveling Salesman Problem is also presented.