Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information technologies and field-level chemical use for corn production

We investigate the effectiveness of soil testing and pest scouting by focusing on field-level chemical use for corn production. Based on the ARMS phase II and phase III data, we estimate equations for technology adoptions and chemical use. For estimation, we incorporate nonlinear endogenous switching regression to account for the nonnegative chemical use and endogeneity problems regarding adoptions of conservation practices. We find that: 1) adopting information technologies are positively correlated with farmers’ human capital, field characteristics, and corn prices. 2) the effects of information technologies on farmers’ nitrogen use depends on crop rotation. To be specific, farmers who adopt soil testing and crop rotation use nitrogen less than farmers who use crop rotation but do not adopt soil testing by about 8 lb/acre, but soil testing has insignificant effects on the rate of nitrogen application by farmers who grew corn continuously. 3) farmers’ management practices such as the use of manure and GM corns have significant effects on their nitrogen and herbicide use, but the directions and sizes of them depends on adoption of information technologies and previous field use.
An Evolutionary Adaptive Learning Model with Fundamentalists and Moving Average Traders

In this paper a financial market model with heterogeneous adaptively learning agents is developed. The agents can choose between a fundamental forecasting rule and a technical trading rule. The fundamental forecasting rule predicts that the price returns back to the fundamental value with a certain speed, whereas the technical trading rule is based on moving averages. The model in this paper extends the Brock and Hommes (1998) heterogeneous agents model by adding a moving-average technical trading strategy to the set of beliefs the agents can choose from, but deviates by assuming constant relative risk aversion, so that agents choosing the same forecasting rule invest the same fraction of their wealth in the risky asset. The local dynamical behavior of the model around the fundamental steady state is studied by varying the values of the model parameters. A mixture of theoretical and numerical methods is used to analyze the dynamics. In particular we show that the fundamental steady state may become unstable due to a Hopf bifurcation. The interaction between fundamentalists and technical traders may thus cause prices to deviate from their fundamental value. In this heterogeneous world the fundamental traders are not able to drive the moving average traders out of the market, but fundamentalists and technical analysts coexist forever with the irrelative importance changing over time.
Durability of Flax FRPs Exposed to Accelerated Environmental Conditions

It is well known that synthetic fiber reinforcements, such as glass fibers, elevate the mechanical properties of polymer materials. Considering the synthetic material’s renewability challenges, natural fibers, such as flax can provide promising mechanical behavior as a more renewable resource. However, the durability of natural fibers against moisture and other environmental conditions is not well-known. In this paper, aggressive accelerated tests were conducted in order to investigate the durability of flax fiberreinforced polymer (FRP) composites in comparison to glass FRPs. The initial process was making FRP sheets out of two layers of fabrics and vinyl-ester resin; and then cutting them into dumbbell-shaped specimens for tensile test. The specimens were put under three different environmental conditions namely water, salt water, and alkaline solutions. Some specimens were kept in an air dry condition as control specimens. The temperature of the solutions was controlled at 20, 50, and 60 C. The durability testing was conducted at 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 hours exposure. The results show that flax FRPs have similar and even slightly better durability performance in terms of tensile strength retention percentage in comparison to glass FRPs.
Developing Critical Collaboration Skills in Engineering Students: Results from an Empirical Study

In highly technical organizations, work is becoming increasingly distributed; requiring practicing engineers to master virtual collaboration skills while acquiring expertise in a range of collaboration technologies. Although there has been great emphasis on developing collaboration competencies in the engineering curriculum, empirical evidence of successful strategies for distributed team settings is scarce. As an attempt to fill this gap this study investigates the impact of a scalable intervention in developing virtual collaboration skills. The intervention, based on instructional scaffolds embedded with collaboration technologies, is aimed at supporting specific processes including planning, goal setting, clarifying goals and expectations, communication, coordination and progress monitoring. A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the impact of the intervention on student teamwork skills. Data from 278 graduate and undergraduate engineering students participating in virtual team projects was used in the analysis. Results from the analysis are presented suggesting a statistically significant impact of the intervention on self-management skills when comparing randomly assigned teams with and without the intervention. The intervention is designed to be scalable so that it can be embedded into existing project-based courses. Our findings have important implications for the development of teamwork skills in engineering courses and provide evidence of a successful strategy that can be integrated into the existing engineering curriculum.
The effects of strategic orientations and perceived environment on firm performance

Among micro, small, and medium-sized firms located in Hungary, I conducted a survey examining the effects of entrepreneurial and learning orientations, and that of perceived environment on firm performance. I studied the perceptions of environmental turbulence and environmental hostility. Three dimensions were examined both in the case of entrepreneurial orientation (i.e., innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking) and in the case of learning orientation (i.e., commitment to learning, shared visions, and open-mindedness). The effects of such dimensions on firm performance were analyzed with the path analysis (PLS-SEM) method. In the course of the research, firm performance was divided into three dimensions: efficiency, growth, and profit. The possible effect of available financial resources was also taken into consideration. Results show that the availability of financial resources is relatively important, although it is connected only to the growth dimension of performance. Strategic orientations should be interpreted as multi-dimensional, and they have an effect on different performance dimensions. The research was cross-sectional and has implications for long-term strategic decisions.
Distributed Regularized Dual Gradient Algorithm for Constrained Convex Optimization over Time-Varying Directed Graphs

We investigate a distributed optimization problem over a cooperative multi-agent time-varying network, where each agent has its own decision variables that should be set so as to minimize its individual objective subject to local constraints and global coupling constraints. Based on push-sum protocol and dual decomposition, we design a distributed regularized dual gradient algorithm to solve this problem, in which the algorithm is implemented in time-varying directed graphs only requiring the column stochasticity of communication matrices. By augmenting the corresponding Lagrangian function with a quadratic regularization term, we first obtain the bound of the Lagrangian multipliers which does not require constructing a compact set containing the dual optimal set when compared with most of primal-dual based methods. Then, we obtain that the convergence rate of the proposed method can achieve the order of $\mathcal{O}(\ln T/T)$ for strongly convex objective functions, where $T$ is the iterations. Moreover, the explicit bound of constraint violations is also given. Finally, numerical results on the network utility maximum problem are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Improving Target Orientation Discrimination Performance in Air-to-Air Flight Simulation

Abstract : When performing air-to-air combat within visual range of the target aircraft, pilots are in an extremely high workload environment where they are pushing their own limits, as well as that of their aircraft. Nearly all attention is focused visually on trying to acquire, track and assess the adversary's orientation and range. If a pilot detects the enemy just a second or two later than the enemy detects them, or misjudges the orientation of the enemy aircraft and falsely concludes how he is maneuvering - the enemy will likely shoot him down first.
1 RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EMPLOYEES ’ PERCEPTION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY , PERSONALITY , JOB SATISFACTION , AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is regarded as voluntary corporate commitment to exceed the explicit and implicit obligations imposed on a company by society's expectations of conventional corporate behaviour. However, very little attention had ever been paid to the impact of CSR strategies on employees and their particular work attitudes. This study primarily involved a survey, comprised of a questionnaire concerning the perception of CSR, job satisfaction, personality, and organizational commitment. Questionnaire was used to collect data from employees of manufacturing companies in Taiwan. The results of this research indicate that CSR contributes to increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees. Companies should emphasize the CSR activities and confirm that employees know these actions and focus on ethics and culture of the organization with ethics codes, and CSR activity. The factors of CSR having significant influences on employees but also the factors with latent benefit should be laid great stress on. Besides, personality is a predictor of work outcomes and plays an important role in receiving information of CSR. Keyword: Corporate Social Responsibility, Personality, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment
Assessing Managerial Power Theory

Although studies about the determinants of CEO compensation are ubiquitous, the balance of evidence for one of the more controversial theoretical approaches, managerial power theory, remains inconclusive. The authors provide a meta-analysis of 219 U.S.-based studies, focusing on the relationships between indicators of managerial power and levels of CEO compensation and CEO pay-performance sensitivities. The results indicate that managerial power theory is well equipped for predicting core compensation variables such as total cash and total compensation but less so for predicting the sensitivity of pay to performance. In most situations where CEOs are expected to have power over the pay setting process, they receive significantly higher levels of total cash and total compensation. In contrast, where boards are expected to have more power, CEOs receive lower total cash and total compensation. In addition, powerful directors also appear to be able to establish tighter links between CEO compensation and firm performance and can accomplish this even in the face of powerful CEOs. The authors discuss the implications for theory and research regarding the determinants of executive compensation.
Gangnam style again? The origins of South Korean urban modernity

This study views architecture and cities as part of larger urban process that cannot be detached from the larger socio-cultural milieu, and this understanding begs us to delve with broader historical knowledge and deeper geographical understanding. Against conventional framework that espouses abstract economic mapping and hierarchical global city listings to address the locality, stories of Gangnam, a new city south of the Han River in Seoul, will represent emblematic unfolding of urban modernity in South Korea since early 1960s. The city is a showcase where, in Lefebvre’s expression, “the industrial” and “the urban” did not proceed in a sequential order of historical development, but progressed simultaneously and complimented one another under the austere form of national ideology. Here the city illustrates more than its macro-economic spatial narration, and represents the distinctive sociocultural and political conditions of its formation. Today, epitomizing upper- middle class lifestyle, Gangnam became a synonym for the new urban order where the new exchange value of space was expressed in the soaring price of once government-sponsored mass housings. Representing gradually territorializing urban consciousness, the culture and the symbolism of the new city strongly supported the consolidation of the fledgling middle class identity. Deeply immersed in both militarist and capitalist urban ideology, the city’s emerging middle class embraced the segregated spatiality engendered by the Han River and projected its newly gained social status and citizenship on the identity of a particular urban space, Gangnam. Beyond dominant framing of a city in economic structuralism, what is emphasized here is the construction of place through finding confluence of variant conditions in particular time and space. From the urbanization story of Gangnam, reflected were the complex thread of social and political influences that realized the culture of capitalist spatiality, where the illegitimate turned into the legitimate, the irrational to rational, and the abnormal to normal.
Effects of drought stress on quantitative and qualitative yield and antioxidative activity of Bunium persicum

Drought stress is one of the growing concerns in agriculture management around the world. Adopting tolerant plants to drought conditions could be an appropriate approach to this problem. Bunium persicum is one of the most important medicinal plants of Iran and Turkey as well as neighbouring countries and has been forced into endangered plant status due to mismanagement of its wild habitats. An experiment was conducted in order to evaluate drought tolerance of Bunium persicum and the effects of drought on its essential oil qualitative properties. Two separate plans based on randomised complete block design were performed with 4 drought levels (irrigation after 60, 90, 120, and 150 mm of evaporation from an evaporation basin) and 3 replications. Drought treatments were applied after the stem elongation and flowering stages. Results indicated that applied drought treatments reduced yield and yield components of plants in both growth stages. Some differences were observed in yield components when plants were exposed to drought stress at different growth stages. The essential oil percentage of Bunium persicum was affected by drought conditions, and it was elevated along with increasing drought levels. Due to reduced seed yield, essential oil yield was significantly decreased. Antioxidative activity assessment of seed extracts revealed that drought had positive effects on antioxidant parameters, including 2'-diphenyl 1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging activity, hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity, and Fe-reducing power. Phenol content was also improved through applied drought treatments. In general, these results showed the high tolerance of Bunium persicum to drought and also revealed positive effects of drought on the antioxidative activities of plant seeds.
Exploring Individual Change Readiness in a Chinese Context

The current research tests the structure of individual change readiness (CR) and explores the relationships between employees’ collective identities and individual CR, in the context of Chinese military enterprises which have been implementing The Policy of Military-Civilian Integration. The results of the study 1 gives strong support to the argument that individual CR has two distinct components in terms of cognitive CR and affective CR. In research 2, the survey data were collected from 297 employees. The results of correlation analyses and hierarchical linear model show that civilian identity has positive effect on affective CR, but not on cognitive CR. Higher-hierarchy identity has significant positive effect on both cognitive CR and affective CR.
Blood Brain Barrier and Anti-NR2 Antibody in SLE Patients with Cognitive Dysfunction

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 2: METHODS . 4 2.1 Patient Selection . 4 2.2 Biomarker Assays . 5 2.3 Statistical Analysis . 6 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS . 8 3.1 Patient Characteristics . 8 3.2 Serum Anti NR2 antibody, S100B Protein, Anti S100B Antibody levels . 9 CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION . 10 CHAPTER 5: REFERENCES / BIBLIOGRAPHY . 14 APPENDICES: TABLES AND FIGURES . 20 TABLE 1: Patient Demographics and Biomarkers Values: Dichotomized By CD . 20 TABLE 2: Correlation Analysis Between Biomarkers and TTS . 22 TABLE 3: MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS . 23 FIGURE 1: Tertiles Of S100B Protein Levels: anti NR2 Antibody versus TTS . 24 FIGURE 2: Tertiles Of anti-­‐S100B Ab Levels: anti NR2 Antibody versus TTS . 25
A PID-like ANFIS Controller Trained by PSO Technique to Control Nonlinear MIMO Systems

This paper presents a PID-like adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) controller that can be trained by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique to control nonlinear multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. Instead of the hybrid learning methods that are widely used in the literature, the PSO is used to adjust all of the ANFIS parameters along with the input and output scaling factors for this controller. Two nonlinear MIMO plants have been selected to be controlled by this controller. The simulation results show the notable control accuracy and generalization ability of this MIMO ANFIS controller. In addition, the controller robustness to output disturbances has been also tested and the results clearly indicate the effectiveness of this controller. Finally, a comparative study with a real-coded genetic algorithm (GA) and a recently developed optimization technique, namely the global-best harmony search (GHS), shows the superiority of the PSO over these two optimization methods in terms of control accuracy and processing time.
Mitigation and Control of the Overcuring Effect in Mask Projection Micro-Stereolithography

Mask Projection micro-Stereolithography (MPμSL) is an additive manufacturing technique capable of producing solid parts with micron-scale resolution from a vat of photocurable liquid polymer resin. Although the physical mechanism remains the same, the process differs from traditional laser-galvanometer based stereolithography (SL) in its use of a dynamic mask UV projector, or digital light processor (DLP), which cures each location within each 3D layer at the same time. One area where MPµSL has garnered considerable attention is in the field of microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip, where complex multistep microfabrication techniques adopted from the semiconductor industry are still widely used, and where MPµSL offers the ability to fabricate completely encapsulated fluidic channels in a single step and at low cost [1–3]. However, a significant obstacle exists in the prevention of channel blockage due to overcuring of the polymer resin [4, 5]. Overcuring can be attributed to the so-called ‘back side effect’ [2] which occurs during the build process as light from successive layers penetrates into the resin to a depth greater than the layer thickness. This effect is most prevalent in channels or features oriented horizontally (in a parallel plane to that of the build platform). Currently there are two main approaches in controlling the cure depth; 1. the chemical approach, which involves doping the resin material with a chemical light absorber [6–8]; and 2. by improving the system's hardware and optical elements to improve the homogeneity of the light dosage and control the cure depth [9]. Here we investigate a third approach through modification of the 3D CAD file prior to printing to mitigate for UV light leakage from successive build layers. Although used here in conjunction with the MPμSL technique, this approach can be applied to a range of SL techniques to improve printer resolution and enable production of internal features with higher dimensional accuracy.
Market Sentiment: A Key Factor of Investors’ Imitative Behaviour

The aim of this paper is to explore herding behaviour among investors to determine its rational and emotional component factors and identify relationships among them. We apply causality tests to evaluate the impact of return and market sentiment on herding intensity. The herding intensity is quantified using the measure developed by Patterson and Sharma (2006). The research was conducted during the period 1997–2003 in the Spanish stock market, where the presence of herding has been confirmed. The results reveal that the herding intensity depends on past returns and sentiment or subjective assessments and confirm the presence of both a rational and an emotional factor.
Evaluation of the relationship between circadian blood pressure profile and natriuresis in patients with chronic kidney disease and renal transplant recipients

Introduction. The disturbed circadian rhythm of blood pressure (BP) is more prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Diminished renal capacity to excrete sodium may result in nocturnal BP elevation in order to enhance pressure natriuresis to compensate for impaired daytime natriuresis. We hypothesized that kidney transplantation (KTx) that restores glomerular filtration should normalize circadian BP profile. The aim of the study was to assess and compare natriuresis and circadian BP profiles of patients at different stages of CKD and KTx recipients. Material and methods. Blood pressure was monitored noninvasively for 24 hours and urinary samples were collected during the daytime and night-time to measure natriuresis among 55 patients with stable graft or kidney function: 41 with CKD and 14 patients after KTx. Results. Mean awake systolic blood pressure (SBP) was lower in KTx recipients than in CKD at all stages. Night-time mean BP was lowest in CKD patients with eGFR > 45 ml/min (126/68 mmHg vs. KTx 130/75 mmHg; p = 0.005). The prevalence of dipper status was also highest in CKD patients with eGFR > 45 ml/min. 50% vs. 8.3% (CKD 3b), 0% (CKD 4–5) and 7.1% (KTx) (p 60 ml/min, whereas reverse dipping profile only in those with eGFR Conclusions. Kidney transplantation improves blood pressure control and reduces a number of antihypertensive drugs used. Normal circadian rhythm could be restored only in the transplant patients with well-functioning renal graft.