Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Classification and quantification of pore shapes in sandstone reservoir rocks with 3-D X-ray micro-computed tomography

Abstract. Recent years have seen a growing interest in the characterization of the pore morphologies of reservoir rocks and how the spatial organization of pore traits affects the macro behavior of rock–fluid systems. With the availability of 3-D high-resolution imaging, such as x-ray micro-computed tomography (µ-CT), the detailed quantification of particle shapes has been facilitated by progress in computer science. Here, we show how the shapes of irregular rock particles (pores) can be classified and quantified based on binary 3-D images. The methodology requires the measurement of basic 3-D particle descriptors (length, width, and thickness) and a shape classification that involves the similarity of artificial objects, which is based on main pore network detachments and 3-D sample sizes. Two main pore components were identified from the analyzed volumes: pore networks and residual pore ganglia. A watershed algorithm was applied to preserve the pore morphology after separating the main pore networks, which is essential for the pore shape characterization. The results were validated for three sandstones (S1, S2, and S3) from distinct reservoirs, and most of the pore shapes were found to be plate- and cube-like, ranging from 39.49 to 50.94 % and from 58.80 to 45.18 % when the Feret caliper descriptor was investigated in a 10003 voxel volume. Furthermore, this study generalizes a practical way to correlate specific particle shapes, such as rods, blades, cuboids, plates, and cubes to characterize asymmetric particles of any material type with 3-D image analysis.
Modeled and Observed Multidecadal Variability in the North Atlantic Jet Stream and Its Connection to Sea Surface Temperatures

Multidecadalvariabilityin theNorthAtlantic jetstreamin general circulation models(GCMs)is compared with that in reanalysis products of the twentieth century. It is found that almost all models exhibit multi-decadal jet stream variability that is entirely consistent with the sampling of white noise year-to-year atmospheric ﬂuctuations. In the observed record, the variability displays a pronounced seasonality within the winter months, with greatly enhanced variability toward the late winter. This late winter variability exceeds that found in any GCM and greatly exceeds expectations from the sampling of atmospheric noise, motivating the need for an underlying explanation. The potential roles of both external forcings and internal coupled ocean–atmosphere processes are considered. While the late winter variability is not found to be closely connected with external forcing, it is found to be strongly related to the internally generated component of Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). In fact, consideration of the seasonality of the jet stream variability within the winter months reveals that the AMV is far more strongly connected to jet streamvariabilityduringMarch than the early winter monthsor the winter seasonas a whole. Reasoningis put forward for whythis connection likely represents a drivingof the jet streamvariabilityby the SSTs,althoughthedynamicsinvolvedremaintobeunderstood.Thisanalysisrevealsa fundamentalmismatch between late winter jet stream variability in observations and GCMs and a potential source of long-term predictability of the late winter Atlantic atmospheric circulation.
Peer-teaching in the food chemistry laboratory: student-produced experiments, peer and audio feedback, and integration of employability skills

This paper describes the author’s experience over the last several years of implementing an alternative Food Chemistry laboratory practical model for a group of third-year BSc Nutraceuticals students. The initial main objectives were to prepare students for the more independent final-year research project; to incorporate innovative approaches to feedback; and to integrate key employability skills into the curriculum. These were achieved through building the skills required to ultimately allow students working in groups to research, design and run a laboratory for their class. The first year of the project involved innovative approaches to feedback, including weekly feedback sessions, report checklists and audio feedback podcasts. Student evaluation after one year suggested the case group felt more prepared for final-year research projects and work placement owing to the redesign of the laboratory assessment. This, together with general positive feedback across several indicators, was proof of concept, and was a foundation for an improved model. The improvements related to the organisation and management of the project, but the same pedagogical approach has been retained. The second year saw the introduction of a more rigorous and easier to manage peer evaluation though use of the online Comprehensive Assessment for Team-Member Effectiveness (CATME) tool. The most recent revision has included a Project Wiki hosted on Blackboard to facilitate the organisation, communication, assessment and feedback of student-generated resources. More recently, the final-year students who had participated in the peer-teaching Food Chemistry labs when in third year have been evaluated. This evaluation took place following their research projects, and suggests that the peer-teaching model better prepared them for these activities, compared to traditional laboratories.
Genetic Control of Fiber Yield and Quality in Kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.)

The study was conducted to investigate the genetic basis of kenaf fiber yield and quality In two sets of generations derived from 1X51 x Ghana07 and Gregg x Ghana07 crosses. Analysis of generation means using weighted least squares procedure was performed on stalk dry weight, bast percentage, days to flowering, plant height, and basal stalk diameter . Analysis of generation means revealed that bast percentage was mainly controlled by dominance effects whereas stalk dry weight was mainly controlled by additive effects. Estimates of heterosis based on midparental values were generally high and ranged from 10 to 55% for stalk dry weight and bast percentage. Estimates of inbreeding depression, calculated from F1 and F2 generation means, were 55% for stalk dry weight in Population 1 and 43% in Population 2. Estimates of inbreeding depression for bast percentage were 5% in Population 1 and 15% in Population 2. The results of this study indicated that the portion of phenotypicvariations,which is controlled by additive gene effects, was generally high for stalk dry weight. Thus,
The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey - I. System configuration and initial discoveries

We have embarked on a survey for pulsars and fast transients using the 13-beam multibeam receiver on the Parkes Radio Telescope. Installation of a digital backend allows us to record 400 MHz of bandwidth for each beam, split into 1024 channels and sampled every 64 μs. Limits of the receiver package restrict us to a 340 MHz observing band centred at 1352 MHz. The factor of 8 improvement in frequency resolution over previous multibeam surveys allows us to probe deeper into the Galactic plane for short-duration signals such as the pulses from millisecond pulsars. We plan to survey the entire southern sky in 42 641 pointings, split into low, mid and high Galactic latitude regions, with integration times of 4200, 540 and 270 s, respectively. Simulations suggest that we will discover 400 pulsars, of which 75 will be millisecond pulsars. With ∼30 per cent of the mid-latitude survey complete, we have redetected 223 previously known pulsars and discovered 27 pulsars, five of which are millisecond pulsars. The newly discovered millisecond pulsars tend to have larger dispersion measures than those discovered in previous surveys, as expected from the improved time and frequency resolution of our instrument.
Loughborough University Institutional Repository Visualizing the hotspots and emerging trends of 3 D printing through scientometrics

Purpose 3D printing is believed to be driving the third industrial revolution. A comprehensive understanding of the hotspots and trends of 3D printing may promote the theory development of 3D printing, help researchers to determine the research direction, and provide a reference for enterprises and government to plan the development of 3D printing industry. However, a scientometric visualizing of 3D printing research and an exploration its hotspots and emerging trends are lacking. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out this relevant research. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the theory of scientometrics, 2769 literatures on the 3D printing theme were found in the Web of Science Core Collection’ SCI indexes between 1995-2016. These were analyzed to explore the research hotspots and emerging trends of 3D printing with the software CiteSpaceIII. Findings – (1) hotspots appeared first in 1993, grow rapidly from 2005, and peaked in 2013; (2) hotspots in the "medical field" appeared earliest and have remained extremely active; (3) hotspots have evolved from “drug”, "printer", "rapid prototyping" and "3D printing" in the 1990s, through "laser-induced consolidation", "scaffolds", "sintering" and "metal matrix composites" in the 2000s, to the current hotspots of "stereolithography", "laser additive manufacturing", "medical images", etc.; (4) "3D bioprinting",“titanium”, “stem cell” and "chemical reaction" were the emerging hotspots in recent years; (5) "commercial operation" and "fusion with emerging technology such as big data" may create future hotspots. Research limitations/implications It is hard to avoid the possibility of missing important research results on 3D printing. The relevant records could be missing if the query phrases for topic search do not appear in records. Besides, in order to improve the quality of data, this study selected articles and reviews as the research objects, which may also omit some records. Originality/value First, this is the first paper visualizing the hotspots and emerging trends of 3D printing using scientometric tools. Second, not only "burst reference" and "burst keywords", but also "cluster" and "landmark article" are also selected as the evaluation factors to judge the hotspots and trends of a domain comprehensively. Third, overall perspective of hotspots and trends of 3D printing is put forward for the first time.
UKnowledge UKnowledge

Kenwick, Vasquez, and Powers question whether empirical evidence supports the claim that defense pacts deter con ﬂ ict as our prior research has concluded. We review the theoretical argument for why defense pacts should deter con ﬂ ict and consider the challenges inherent in evaluating deterrence using observational data. We then consider whether the research design choices of Kenwick et al. improve upon our research design. We demonstrate that claims that defense pacts deter con ﬂ ict are robust to many of these changes in research design, and we argue that the consequential difference, while perhaps appropriate for testing the Steps-to-War argument, is not appropriate for testing the deterrent effect of defense pacts. We conclude by noting that a deterrence effect of defense pacts is not necessarily incompatible with aspects of the Steps-to-War argument, and we suggest pro ﬁ table new directions for testing the Steps-to-War approach.
The Political Economy of Meritocracy: A Post-Kaleckian, Post-Olsonian Approach to Unemployment and Income Inequality in Modern Varieties of Capitalism

The “big trade-off,” described by Arthur Okun some thirty years ago, is back again: equality or efficiency, or to put it differently, modern highly developed economies and societies have to choose between the Scylla of income inequality and the Charybdis of unemployment. Furthermore, it looks like the continental European economies—foremost Germany and France—sided with more egalitarian ends accepting higher unemployment while the liberal economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom chose higher inequality for lower unemployment. In this paper it is argued that the trade-off is not a supply-side necessity to maintain work effort in a situation of incomplete contracts, but is a politico-economic issue of particular interest groups seeking rents. However, unlike in Mancur Olson's seminal approach, it is not the trade unions that are forming distributional coalitions on the labor market, but rather the meritocracy which is happy to use Keynesian-type demand management to advance their material interests by pursuing a “meritocratically optimal rate of unemployment” (MORU).
An Evacuation Model For Use In Fire Safety Design Of Buildings

An evacuation model was developed in a research project of the Ministry of Construction: "Development of Fire Safety Design Method of Buildings". The model is to be used as a tool for an evacuation design. It is to predict and evaluate evacuation time of people in a fire. The scope of application of the model is restricted only to the evacuation of low level hazard. This is a kind of network model and assumes that evacuees move like a fluid. The predicted results using the model is compared with the observed egress time by field measurements of Tsukuba Int'l Expo'85. The comparison showed that they were in good agreement. Consequently, this evacuation model can be used as a reasonable tool for design purposes. Also, a method was developed for visual presentation of the predicted evacuation behavior by personal computer graphics.
A Flexible Class of Purchase Incidence Models

Purchase incidence models estimated on household scanner panel data typically assume the household's decision interval to be one week. However, it is well known in the econometrics literature that discrete-time models are highly sensitive to the assumed time interval of decision-making. In this study we investigate the consequences of endogenizing the household's decision interval, instead of restricting it to be one week. We characterize the household's random utility maximization problem, and therefore its purchase likelihood function, as a function of the household's decision interval. Such a flexible purchase incidence model is then used to explicitly estimate households' decision intervals in addition to their response to marketing activity and their baseline hazard functions. The proposed model of purchase incidence not only nests traditionally used choice models (such as the binary logit model) and hazard models (such as the discrete hazard model), but also allows for a gamut of more flexible parametric specifications. We estimate the proposed model across four category-level scanner panel datasets and find that the traditional assumption of restricting the household's decision interval to be one week may be too restrictive. We find that households are not only quite heterogeneous in their decision intervals but often have decision intervals longer than a week. From a managerial perspective, we show that estimated price elasticities are systematically understated if one does not allow for the effects of decision intervals. We demonstrate, using a fourth product category, that the results obtained from the category-level analyses generalize to the context of a full model of purchase incidence and brand choice.
Multi-Vehicle Crashes Involving Large Trucks: A Random Parameter Discrete Outcome Modeling Approach

A growing concern on large-truck crashes increased over the years due to the potential economic impacts and level of injury severity. This study aims to analyze the injury severities of multivehicle large-trucks crashes on national highways. To capture and understand the complexities of contributing factors, two random parameter discrete outcome models – random parameter ordered probit and mixed logit – were estimated to predict the likelihood of five injury severity outcomes: fatal, incapacitating, non-incapacitating, possible injury, and no-injury. Estimation findings indicate that the level of injury severity is highly influenced by a number of complex interactions of factors, namely, human, vehicular, road-environmental, and crash dynamics that can vary across the observations.
Field assessment of neonicotinoids against three aphid species and their natural enemies on wheat crop in Ismailia, egypt

Aphids are the most important pests on wheat in Egypt and worldwide. Field trials were conducted to assess the efficacy of the neonicotinoid insecticides imidacloprid (Nufidor 60% FS; at the doses of 2.1, 1.05 and 0.525 g a.i./kg of seeds) and thiamethoxam (Cruiser 70% WS; at the rates of 14.4, 7.2 and 3.6 g a.i./kg of seeds) as seed treatments, and thiamethoxam (Actara 25% WG; at the rates of 0.1, 0.05 and 0.025 g a.i./l) as foliar application, against three wheat aphids: bird cherry oat aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi (L.), greenbug, Schizaphis graminum (Rondani), and corn leaf aphid, Rhopalosiphum maidis (Fitch). Their effects on the aphids’ natural enemies: lacewings, Chrysoperla carnea Stephens, ladybird beetles, Coccinella spp. , and syrphid flies Syrphus spp. were assessed as well. The trials were conducted on the farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia Governorate, during 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons. Our results showed significant differences between the tested insecticides at all concentrations and clearly indicated that the recommended doses of all insecticides were more efficient against aphids on wheat plants than halfand quarter-doses. Also, the data revealed significant differences between the two seed treatments at all doses before and after foliar application, as compared to the control at all time intervals of inspection regarding the mean number of aphids on wheat plants, from the 3rd until 13th week after sowing, except in the 8th week after seed treatment before foliar application. The results clearly indicated that the weekly reduction of infestation and the general efficacy was higher at the recommended doses of Nufidor, Cruiser and Actara than the half and quarter doses in both seasons. Also, reduction in infestation decreased over the following weeks until the 8th week, when Actara insecticide was sprayed. Data revealed that there were no significant differences between treatments and control in the mean number of Chrysoperla carnea and Syrphus spp. , while a significant difference in the mean number of coccinellids was observed on wheat plants treated with imidacloprid seed treatment before foliar application 6 and 7 weeks after sowing, and also after foliar application with thiamethoxam 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 weeks after sowing. Regarding thiamethoxam seed treatment, significant differences were revealed in the ladybird population on wheat plants 3, 4, 7 and 8 weeks before foliar application, and only in the 10th week after spraying with thiamethoxam.
A Passenger Flow Control Method for Subway Network Based on Network Controllability

The volume of passenger flow in urban rail transit network operation continues to increase. Effective measures of passenger flow control can greatly alleviate the pressure of transportation and ensure the safe operation of urban rail transit systems. The controllability of an urban rail transit passenger flow network determines the equilibrium state of passenger flow density in time and space. First, a passenger flow network model of urban rail transit and an evaluation index of the alternative set of flow control stations are proposed. Then, the controllable determination model of the urban rail transit passenger flow network is formed by converting the passenger flow distribution into a system state equation based on system control theory. The optimization method of passenger flow control stations is established via driver node matching to realize the optimized control of network stations. Finally, a real-world case study of the Beijing subway network is presented to demonstrate that the passenger flow network is controllable when driver nodes compose 25.3% of the entire network. The optimization of the flow control station, set during the morning peak, proves the efficiency and validity of the proposed model and algorithm.
AUTOMATICALLY DETERMINING SCALE WITHIN UNSTRUCTURED POINT CLOUDS

Abstract. Three dimensional models obtained from imagery have an arbitrary scale and therefore have to be scaled. Automatically scaling these models requires the detection of objects in these models which can be computationally intensive. Real-time object detection may pose problems for applications such as indoor navigation. This investigation poses the idea that relational cues, specifically height ratios, within indoor environments may offer an easier means to obtain scales for models created using imagery. The investigation aimed to show two things, (a) that the size of objects, especially the height off ground is consistent within an environment, and (b) that based on this consistency, objects can be identified and their general size used to scale a model. To test the idea a hypothesis is first tested on a terrestrial lidar scan of an indoor environment. Later as a proof of concept the same test is applied to a model created using imagery. The most notable finding was that the detection of objects can be more readily done by studying the ratio between the dimensions of objects that have their dimensions defined by human physiology. For example the dimensions of desks and chairs are related to the height of an average person. In the test, the difference between generalised and actual dimensions of objects were assessed. A maximum difference of 3.96% (2.93cm) was observed from automated scaling. By analysing the ratio between the heights (distance from the floor) of the tops of objects in a room, identification was also achieved.
RESOURCE BASED VIEW OF AN ORGANIZATION AND PEASTEL ANALYTICAL TOOL; AN ANALYSIS OF HOTEL CORALLO, RIMINI

In this article the resource based view of an organization and the PESTLE analysis are investigated to provide an insight on their effectiveness during the organizational strategic planning. The organizational internal and external aspects have to be analyzed equally to show a clear picture during the strategy planning and implementation. A literature review of these two fundamental analytical tools is paired with a case study to better explain the importance of the inhouse resources and the possible environmental changes that may contribute to modify companies‟ abilities to maintain their competitive advantage or their market position.
Comparison of Nested-PCR technique and culture method in detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from patients suspected to genitourinary tuberculosis

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of nested PCR in genitourinary tuberculosis (GUTB) compared with acid fast staining and culture method. In total 200 urine samples from suspected cases of GUTB were collected during the period of study. Urine pellets were used for smear preparation, culture and DNA extraction by ether-chloroform method. Nested PCR was performed according to standard protocol using primers based on IS6110 gene fragment. The results obtained by PCR were compared with those obtained by standard acid-fast bacilli stain and culture method. Based on obtained results, the positivity rate of urine samples in this study was 5.0% by using culture and PCR methods and 2.5% for acid fast staining. Four out of total samples showed positive results in all three methods (2%). The sensitivity of PCR in this study was estimated as high as culture equal to 100%, while the sensitivity for direct smear staining was 41.6%. In conclusion, the obtained rate of GUTB in our study was 5.0%. Since the detection rate of culture and nested PCR was identical, we could suggest PCR as a rapid alternative to culture especially for confirmed cases of GUTB.