Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of the Effects of the Cross-Head Speed and Temperature on the Mechanical Strength of Kenaf Bast Fibers Using Weibull and Monte-Carlo Statistics

Methods used by different researchers to evaluate plant fibers’ (PFs) mechanical performance, show great variance in results. In this work, 320 single kenaf fibers of gage lengths 10 and 20 mm were tensile-tested using four speed levels (0.05; 0.5; 1 and 5 mm·min−1). Sixty-three other specimens were also tested under three temperature levels (50, 100, and 150 °C). Mechanical characteristics, namely Young’s modulus, tensile strength, and failure strain were determined. Estimation of the dispersion on the data was performed using Weibull and Monte-Carlo statistics. Results showed a low scatter for cross-head speeds of 0.05, 0.5, and 1 mm·min−1, compared to 5 mm·min−1 for the two gage lengths used. Monte-Carlo average failure strength values were found to be close to the experimental values. A drastic drop in the tensile strength was observed for the temperature of 150 °C for varying hold times. The reported findings are likely to be used in the elaboration of a tensile test standard on PFs.
Neural Speech Translation using Lattice Transformations and Graph Networks

Speech translation systems usually follow a pipeline approach, using word lattices as an intermediate representation. However, previous work assume access to the original transcriptions used to train the ASR system, which can limit applicability in real scenarios. In this work we propose an approach for speech translation through lattice transformations and neural models based on graph networks. Experimental results show that our approach reaches competitive performance without relying on transcriptions, while also being orders of magnitude faster than previous work.
USERS READINESS TOWARDS MOBILE APPLICATION: A PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

The existence of technology, especially in using the mobile application among users in promoting wireless communications has become essential as part of our life. Mobile application has penetrated in various fields including commerce, services, healthcare, marketing, transportation, finance and entertainment. However, the level of acceptance toward this new technology and the features or taxonomy of the application varies depending on the accessibility, users’ behavioral intention and ease of use towards their satisfaction. The study explores the readiness of the users in term of the intention and the features or the taxonomy of the application in assisting the users to use ARUS, a mobile application which has been developed to furnish essential information on the ferry and boat service in two of the most highly travelled route in Southern Sarawak. The questionnaire focusing the readiness of the users in using the application and the features or taxonomy of the application was distributed online through a goggle form by applying a snowball sampling technique through WhatsApp groups. The results positively revealed that the respondents are ready to use the application and also agreed that the ease of use features or taxonomy of the application can influence them to engage themselves in using the application. In addition, they also agree that the availability of the application would assist them in planning their journey more efficiently. Further Volume: 2 Issues: 6 [December, 2017] pp.55-61] Journal of Information System and Technology Management
An Adversarial Approach to Discriminative Modality Distillation for Remote Sensing Image Classification

We deal with the problem of modality distillation for the purpose of remote sensing (RS) image classification by exploring the deep generative models. From the remote sensing perspective, this problem can also be considered in line with the missing bands problem frequently encountered due to sensor abnormality. It is expected that different modalities provide useful complementary information regarding a given task, thus leading to the training of a robust prediction model. Although training data may be collected from different sensor modalities, it is many a time possible that not all the information are readily available during the model inference phase. This paper tackles the problem by proposing a novel adversarial training driven hallucination architecture which is capable of learning discriminative feature representations corresponding to the missing modalities from the available ones during the test time. To this end, we follow a teacher-student model where the teacher is trained on the multimodal data (learning with privileged information) and the student model learns to subsequently distill the feature descriptors corresponding to the missing modality. Experimental results obtained on the benchmark hyperspectral (HSI) datasets and another dataset of multispectral (MS)-panchromatic (PAN) image pairs confirm the efficacy of the proposed approach. In particular, we find that the student model is consistently able to surpass the performance of the teacher model for HSI datasets.
ANTIBACTERIAL PROPERTIES OF PSIDIUM GUAJAVA LEAVES, FRUITS AND STEMS AGAINST VARIOUS PATHOGENS

The present study was designated to evaluate the antibacterial activities of ethanolic, methanolic, ethyl acetate and hot water extract from leaves, fruits and stems of Psidium guajava. Compare to all parts, the stems were showing best result and the zone of inhibition was obtained 28.5 mm. The antibacterial activities of the extracts against bacteria were tested by using agar well diffusion assay and the MIC values were determined by broth dilution assay. The ethanol and hot water extracts showed least antibacterial activity as compared to methanolic and ethyl acetate extracts. The least concentration were obtained 0.33mg/ml in ethanolic extract of stems, 1.98 mg/ml in ethyl acetate extract of stems and 0.05 mg/ml in methanolic extract of stems against P. aeruginosa. The antibacterial compound mainly found in Psidium guajava were reducing sugar, tannins, phlobatannins, saponins, terpenoids, alkaloids and poly phenols.
Optimization of arranging of repair works at oil and gas enterprises through use of simulation modeling tools

There is substantiated the expediency of using the methods of the queuing theory for making managerial decisions in the face of uncertainty and risk. The model of organizing repair works at oil and gas companies has been improved, and its implementation ensures the optimization of the costs of maintaining repair crews and the reduction of losses from well downtime. Well repair by repair crews is considered as a multichannel queuing system in which the flow of service requests is the flow of repair applications, and the maintenance procedure consists of providing a repair crew according to applications in the order they are received. The maintenance procedure consists in the use of a repair crew according to the application, which is considered completed after the completion of the work of this crew at the facility, and the order of satisfying applications is carried out in the order they are received. Testing the proposed model of organizing repair works on the example of the fields of the three largest oil and gas companies in the Western region of Ukraine made it possible to establish that an increase in the failure rate requires an increase in the number of repair crews. However, such an increase is not always advisable, since the costs of maintaining the crews begin to exceed the losses from the downtime of the wells. The problem has been solved by the simulation method to optimize the elimination of failures of tubing (breaks) in the fields of the studied oil and gas producing enterprises, the process of which includes operations associated with the formation, transformation and implementation of random events, variables and processes that cause random changes in the state of such a system. Keywords—expenses, oil and gas companies, queuing theory, repair crews, repairs, simulation, wells
Training away over-exhaustive errors with distributive quantifiers in children with a single training session

Children between the ages of 5 to 9 years often make language errors called ”overex haustive errors”. If we show them an image with 3 boys each playing with a cat, they reject a statement like ”Every boy plays with a cat”, if there is an extra cat in the image which no boy is playing with. There is a clear polarization between the responses that children at this age give; they will either always make the mistake, or never make the mistake. This suggests that a full understanding of distributive quantifiers is not learned gradually, rather that there is a trigger effect after which they learn the correct understanding quickly. We wanted to find out whether exposing children to informative examples, in a single training session, will trigger children to learn the correct understanding of distributive quantifiers. We designed a study to test this using the Dutch quantifier ”elke”. Results of picture verification tasks before training, after training, and 5 weeks after training, show that 10 out of 24 children improved to correctly use the quantifier most of the time. This suggests that a single session of informative examples is not enough for most children to trigger a correct understanding.
An Efficient and Secure Weighted Threshold Signcryption Scheme

Threshold cryptosystems are well suited for the application of group-oriented collaborations which is of such a nature that specific cooperation should be established in connection with a number of organizational tasks, such as multigroup computation, threshold signature, and electronic information transfer. Over the years many researchers have made salient contributions to the concept of allowing group members to sign or encrypt digital messages on behalf of the entire group. Yet almost all the group-oriented signature or encryption cryptosystems have been developed on the premise that members of the party have the same weights (fixed-size thresholds) and the tasks (shared secrets), cannot be adjusted. This study proposes a new weighted threshold signcryption scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) with a dynamic knapsack-type technique and the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) to customize its weight values of group members in such a way that they are appropriately arranged to perform a more flexible group-oriented signcryption task on behalf of a group.
Assessing the impact of alkaline dust pollution on the genetic variation of populations of a widespread epiphytic lichen, Usnea subfloridana (Parmeliaceae, Ascomycota)

17 18 Very little is known whether and how air pollution impacts genetic diversity of 19 lichenized fungi that are well-known indicators of environmental quality. We studied 20 the genetic variation of eight Usnea subfloridana populations in Pinus sylvestris21 dominated boreal forest stands in southern Estonia, Northern Europe; four of these 22 populations were exposed to long-term dust pollutio n released from unpaved road. 23 The mean bark pH of lichen-phorophyte differed cons iderably between polluted and 24 unpolluted forest stands. We genotyped 274 Usnea thalli using nine specific fungal 25 microsatellite markers. Genetic variation measures w re calculated and compared 26 between populations from different habitats. Alleli c richness, Shannon's information 27 index, and genetic diversity of lichen populations were significantly higher in 28 unpolluted forest sites than in polluted forest sit es. We conclude that environmental 29 disturbances caused by alkaline dust pollution had negative impact on the genetic 30 variation of U. subfloridana, a common species of lichenized fungi. 31 32
LJMU Research Online BENEFITS OF LIFELONG EXERCISE TRAINING ON LEFT VENTRICULAR FUNCTION AFTER MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION

LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain.
Laboratory-Observed Faulting in Intrinsically and Apparently Weak Materials

Under some circumstances, subduction thrust faulting produces the Earth’s largest and most hazardous earthquakes and earthquake-induced tsunamis, but in other localities, large-scale aseismic slip is common and portions of some subduction zones are nearly completely aseismic. Understanding the particular conditions that lead to seismic rather than aseismic fault slip is critical for improving earthquake and tsunami hazard estimates in subduction zones and is a major objective of the NSF-MARGINS initiative. This paper reviews laboratory rock mechanics observations of rock fracture and fault slip relevant to seismic shallow crustal faulting, emphasizing differences between behavior of intrinsically weak and strong faults and identifying the underlying physical processes and conditions that influence fault strength. These laboratory rock friction and rock failure observations, made primarily on strong faults and intact rock, largely suggest that earthquake occurrence is a result of dilatancy. As many subduction zones appear to be profoundly weak, the conditions for seismicity are considered in the context of intrinsic fault weakness, and under circumstances of apparent weakness owing to high pore pressure. The principal conclusion of this review is that in the absence of chemical effects of fluids on fault strength, both intrinsic weakness and apparent weakness resulting from high pore pressure tend to encourage aseismic over seismic slip. However, the sliding stability of intrinsically and apparently weak rocks and minerals is not well studied. The effect of high pore pressure on sliding stability has only been considered for an intrinsically strong, highly dilatant, apparently weak fault. Since many weak phases found in subduction zones have low dilatancy, the effect of high pore pressure on sliding stability is presently unknown. In addition, chemical effects on fault strength are not well studied to date. Many weak phases have strengths that are sensitive to the chemical environment; in Laboratory-Observed Faulting in Intrinsically and Apparently Weak Materials S, S C, D,  P-F P
LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY TRENDS FOR THE UK CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

Labour productivity remains the most widely used measure of economic efficiency yet it has serious theoretical and practical difficulties particularly in the case of construction. This paper will address these problems and suggest approaches to overcome them. The model is illustrated by a case study of the UK construction sector over the period 1948 to 1995. The paper commences with a brief discussion of construction productivity. From this the theoretical problems are identified and analyzed. This is set in the context of the UK construction sector and the practical difficulties detailed. The first set of difficulties are concerned with the operation of subcontracting and specifically labour-only subcontracting. The incidence of selfemployment in construction creates major problems for data collection. Labour productivity requires an estimate of the numbers employed in construction; identification of those notionally 'self-employed' gives some problems. The second set of practical difficulties relates to the issue of off-site prefabrication. This involves activities being shifted from the site to the factory. Given the way that official statistics are collected, these activities shift from construction to manufacturing. As more tasks are carried out off-site, construction productivity risks being trivialized out of existence. Solutions are proposed for these problems. The approach rests on considering the construction 'product' rather than the 'process'. Thus all labour involved with construction including off-site prefabrication and materials manufacture will be estimated. The Leontief 'input-output' approach is used to synthesize the direct inputs and outputs to and from construction to give total inputs and outputs. The model is applied to the UK construction sector over the post war period. The main results are analyzed.
Why Local Context Matters: Property Rights and Debt Trading in Colonial South Africa

For economic transactions, including debt transactions, to occur in a market system, property rights are essential. The literature has focussed on finding empirical proof of the effect of property right regimes, noting differences between de jure and de facto property rights. We use a novel combination of data on wealth and demographics to investigate the effects of property right regimes on economic outcomes at the individual level. At the Cape, de jure property rights between freehold and loan farms differed. Historians, however, suggest that de facto property rights between these two property types were the same. We exploit the random variation of the birth order, specifically being the eldest son, to estimate whether the type of farm and therefore the type of property rights, mattered for economic activity, in our case, debt transactions. Our results suggest that historians were correct: loan farms were as secure in their de facto property rights, despite differences in de jure property rights. Our results confirm that the local context in which property right regimes are embedded is at least as important as the property right regime itself.
Emergence Happens! Œ Emergence: Complexity and Organization

In our history many studies have been conducted on the nature of change, many pronouncements made, many interesting viewpoints proffered. Our struggle to understand how we should reflect on change and respond to it continues to this day. In recent years, more attention than ever has been directed to it, particularly in the business world. In a recent article (Falconer, 2001) I decry as misguided the “change management” discipline from its most superficial manifestation down to its very fundamentals. In particular, I challenge the assumptions that change is linear and that it is discrete, and allude to the emergent nature of change and the potential applicability of patterns in understanding, abstracting, and contextualizing emergent properties. The intent of this article is to expand the scope of that one, challenging “change management” on more fronts and giving more attention to the complex nature of change. While the solution offered is essentially the same as in the earlier article, here the concept of business patterns and the use of patterns in this regard are deployed as more cogent means of addressing change as a complex system.
Mechanisms underlying limited soil carbon gains in perennial and cover‐cropped bioenergy systems revealed by stable isotopes

Removal of biomass for bioenergy production may decrease soil organic carbon. While perennials or cover‐cropped grains often have greater root production than annual grain crops, they variably impact soil carbon and underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We used high‐frequency measurements of soil respiration and natural abundance carbon stable isotopes to differentiate respiration sources, pool sizes, and decomposition rate constants during a 10 month incubation of soils collected to 1 m depth from a 10 year old field experiment in Iowa, United States. Conversion of corn–soybean rotations to reconstructed prairies or addition of a rye cover crop to continuous corn significantly altered respiration sources and dynamics of fast‐ and slow‐cycling carbon (turnover times of weeks to months–years, respectively), but had little effect on bulk soil carbon and several extractable pools (except in fertilized prairie). Both unfertilized and fertilized prairies increased slow‐cycling carbon pools relative to annual crops, but only in 0–25 cm soil. Compared with fertilized prairie, the unfertilized prairie significantly increased decomposition rates of fast‐ and slow‐cycling carbon pools in 0–25 cm soil, likely explaining the lack of significant bulk soil carbon accrual despite twofold greater root production. Carbon derived from C4 plants decomposed faster than C3‐derived carbon across all depths and cropping systems and contributions of C3‐carbon to respiration increased with depth. Respiration of cover crop‐derived carbon was greatest in 0–25 cm soil but comprised >25% of respiration below 25 cm, implying a disproportionate impact of the cover crop on deep soil metabolism. However, the cover crop also increased the decomposition rates of fast‐ and slow‐cycling carbon pools and decreased their pool sizes across all depths relative to corn without a cover crop. Despite their notable environmental benefits, neither unfertilized perennials nor cover crops necessarily promote rapid soil carbon sequestration relative to conventional annual bioenergy systems because of concomitant increases in decomposition.
An Extension of Generalized Linear Models for dependent frequency and severity

In non-life insurance pricing, Generalized Linear models are used to estimate the pure premium through the product of the claim frequency and the claim severity. Traditionally, the methods in the Generalized Linear models imply an independence between claim count and claim amount. In practice the claim counts and amounts are often dependent. In this thesis, the two models where the claim counts and amounts are classically independent and a new approach where they are dependent will be analyzed and compared. The underlying data for the models considered is derived from a Swedish motorcycle insurance. ∗Postal address: Mathematical Statistics, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Sweden. E-mail: masar@kth.se. Supervisor: Filip Lindskog. For my father Muhsin Al-Mosawi and my mother Suhaila Al-Fahad
Microsoft Word-COMPUMAG2013_voxel_5.1

The Boundary Element Method is applied to the computation of induced electric field and specific absorption rate (SAR) in voxel-based human models undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Due to the very large size of the algebraic system, the procedure uses an iterative GMRES solver recalculating the element matrix at each iteration. A suitable processing of the Green integrals and a massively parallelized algorithm leads to a strong reduction of the computational time.
Buying water for the environment: A hydro-economic analysis of Salton Sea inflows

As societies confront greater levels of water scarcity, conflict follows. Water transfers are increasing with irrigation water regularly considered in such discussions given it often comprises the bulk of water rights within a particular region, especially in water scarce environments. Here we analyze the impacts of three widely considered and implemented strategies to purchase water from irrigated agriculture—land fallowing, improvements in irrigation efficiency, and direct leasing. Our empirical application involves water transfers from Colorado River water rights holders to the Salton Sea, a critical ecological resource that has been in decline for many decades, with environmental damages estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. We develop a regional hydroeconomic model that accounts for essential field-level agro-hydrologic processes related to crop production, irrigation, and salinity to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these three programs. Results indicate that both fallow and direct water lease programs are capable of generating significant environmental water flows with relatively small decreases in agricultural production and no appreciable decrease in grower profits. Because these policies focus on a single input (applied water) rather than overall inflows to the Sea, the direct lease program—which is the most cost-effective approach for generating water conservation— may result in less inflows into the Sea than a land fallowing program.