Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lean manufacturing as a high-performance work system: the case of Cochlear

This paper addresses the Special Issue call for Australian examples of innovative management systems that enable the production of successful products by drawing on a single case study: medical device manufacturer Cochlear. Through qualitative case study methodology, we examine the human resource management practices that complemented the implementation of lean manufacturing principles. We argue that in their implementation, Cochlear’s management team enriched the traditional understanding of lean and its focus on waste reduction, low cost and quality assurance by adopting people management practices as an integrated component of the overall management capability which allowed their people to grow and develop. The combination of lean and HR practices transformed Cochlear to a high-performance work system and positively impacted production processes and output. By examining a medical device manufacturer, an under-researched sector, our paper expands existing literature on lean manufacturing and provides implications for practitioners.
General health questionnaire-28: Psychometric evaluation of the Slovak version

The EUropean Research on Incapacitating Diseases and Social Support (EURIDISS) is an international longitudinal study focused on patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It elaborates on the impact of the chronic disease on patients' daily lives. Rheumatoid arthritis, social support and quality of life are the central concepts within the project. Goldberg and Hillier's 28-item scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) was used to measure the psychological aspect of quality of life. The scale is frequently used in Western Europe, but rarely in Central and Eastern Europe. Slovakia, a Central European country, joined the EURIDISS project in 1994. Therefore, the question emerged whether the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the GHQ-28 are adequate to measure the psychological component of quality of life. In the current study the reliability and validity of the GHQ-28 in Slovak RA-patients are evaluated and the outcomes are discussed in the light of Western European (WE) results. The study examines the internal consistency and the factor structure of the instrument. In general, as far as the reliability figures and the intercorrelations of the scales are concerned, the results indicate that the psychometric qualities of the GHQ-28 in Slovakia are satisfactory. However, when taking into consideration the factor structure of the scale, as pointed out by the Principal Component Analysis, this reveals several differences. At least six out of the twenty-eight items appear to fit better to a different subscale from the original one. Especially, general health ratings, such as 'felt recently ill', initially attributed to subscale somatic symptoms, appear to he more closely associated with subscale anxiety/insomnia. More research on GHQ-28 in CEE countries is therefore recommended.
Analysis and Comparison of Data Visualization using two Popular Tools : Many Eyes and Swivel

We analyze and compare visualization capabilities provided by two freely available popular social information visualization tools, Many Eyes and Swivel. Both tools are easily accessible on the World Wide Web and are designed for a wide range of people to upload data sets and create visualizations in collaborative environment. Both Many Eyes and Swivel are designed for ordinary people and does not require any extensive training or prior knowledge to take a full advantage of functionalities offered. In this paper we provide a detailed analysis of both and make a clear distinction among them in terms of functionality, data handling, graphing techniques, user experience and web techniques used and collaboration approaches. We also suggest future improvements that will improve the user experience based on our own experiences with both visualization
Navigating without vision: principles of blind spatial cognition

This chapter considers what it means to learn and navigate the world with limited or no vision. It investigates limitations of blindness research, discusses traditional theories of blind spatial abilities, and provides an alternative perspective of many of the oft-cited issues and challenges underlying spatial cognition of blind people. Several provocative assertions pertaining to visual impairment and spatial abilities are advanced that help to better understand navigation without vision, provide greater explanatory power relevant to many of the current debates, and offer some needed guidance on the development of new spatial learning strategies and technological solutions that will ultimately have a significant positive impact on the independence and quality of life of this demographic. An underlying and related theme of the chapter emphasizes the importance of ‘space’ in spatial cognition research, rather than vision as its princip al mechanism. There is no debate that vision is an amazing conduit of spatial information, but it is also important to remember that it does not have a monopoly on space. Indeed, all of our senses encode spatial information to one degree or another, and as we will discuss, this commonality allows for equivalent performance on many of the same spatial behaviors, independent of whether they originate from visual or nonvisual perception.
VIETNAMESE INDIVIDUAL INVESTORS’ BEHAVIOR IN THE STOCK MARKET: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Employing Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study aims to explore factors influencing investment behavior made by individual investors in Vietnamese stock market. A qualitative approach is thoroughly applied through in-depth interviewing individual investors who have experienced Vietnamese stock market. The analysis and generalization of data collected from interviews with 20 key informants show supporting evidence for the existence of four psychological factors - overconfidence; excessive optimism; psychology of risk and herd- behavior. The study, based on TPB, proposes a suitable conceptual framework to be applied in further research to explain investors’ behavior in Vietnamese stock market.
Effect of corrosion on the buckling of steel angle members - experimental study

The aim of this work is to study the effect of corrosion on the buckling behaviour and resistance of corroded steel angle section members. The influences of the corrosion location and the loss of cross-section are studied by experimental investigations, where the corrosion is modelled by artificial thickness reduction. Compressive buckling tests are carried out on twenty-four specimens. Different corrosion damages are modelled, like uniform, pitting and local corrosion in the specimens. The buckling behaviour and the relationship of the corrosion reduction and the resistance decrease are determined.
A theory for the emergence of coherent structures in beta-plane turbulence

Abstract Planetary turbulent flows are observed to self-organize into large-scale structures such as zonal jets and coherent vortices. One of the simplest models of planetary turbulence is obtained by considering a barotropic flow on a beta-plane channel with turbulence sustained by random stirring. Nonlinear integrations of this model show that as the energy input rate of the forcing is increased, the homogeneity of the flow is broken with the emergence of non-zonal, coherent, westward propagating structures and at larger energy input rates by the emergence of zonal jets. We study the emergence of non-zonal coherent structures using a non-equilibrium statistical theory, stochastic structural stability theory (S3T, previously referred to as SSST). S3T directly models a second-order approximation to the statistical mean turbulent state and allows the identification of statistical turbulent equilibria and study of their stability. Using S3T, the bifurcation properties of the homogeneous state in barotropic beta-plane turbulence are determined. Analytic expressions for the zonal and non-zonal large-scale coherent flows that emerge as a result of structural instability are obtained. Through numerical integrations of the S3T dynamical system, it is found that the unstable structures equilibrate at finite amplitude. Numerical simulations of the nonlinear equations confirm the characteristics (scale, amplitude and phase speed) of the structures predicted by S3T.
Smartvote.lu: usage and impact of the first VAA in Luxembourg

This paper analyses the electoral usage and impact of smartvote.lu, the first Voting Advice Application (VAA) introduced in Luxembourg at the occasion of the 2009 national elections. We devise a series of expectations regarding the use and impact of the instrument and provide both descriptive and multivariate analyses on data drawn from a 'classical' post–electoral survey representative of all voters. Despite the need for studies using this type of empirical material and multivariate methods to draw valid lessons on the determinants of VAA use and the potential electoral impact of these devices, such a combination is still rare in the nascent literature on VAAs, and arguably allows us to make a valuable contribution to it. Our main finding is that the most educated are more likely to use the VAAs but less likely to be influenced by it.
Mathematical modeling of diesel fuel hydrotreating

Hydrotreating of the diesel fraction with the high initial sulfur content of 1,4 mass% is carried out in the flow-through laboratory setup with the industrial GKD-202 catalyst at various process temperature. On the basis of the experimental data the regularities of the hydrogenation reactions are revealed, and the formalized scheme of sulfur-containing components (sulfides, benzothiophenes, and dibenzothiophenes) transformations is made. The mathematical model of hydrotreating process is developed, the constant values for the reaction rate of hydrodesulfurization of the specified components are calculated.
Working Papers in Trade and Development Unbundled Institutions , Human Capital and Growth

We investigate the partial effects of institutions and human capital on growth. We find that crosscountry regressions of the log-level of per capita GDP on instrumented measures of institutions and schooling are uninformative about the relative importance of institutions and human capital in the long run because of multicollinearity problems. Using dynamic panel regressions we show that both institutions and human capital have significant effects on growth. Using Rodrik’s (2005) four-way partition of institutions, we also unbundle institutions. We show that strong market creating institutions and market stabilising institutions are growth enhancing. Market regulating institutions matter up to a certain extent and market legitimising institutions does not seem to matter. JEL classification: O11; O30; O43; O57
Intermittent pneumatic compression in patients with postmastectomy lymphedema

Background. Postmastectomy lymphedema frequently affecting young patients constitutes a personal, family and social problem. For this reason, primary care physicians often consult both patients and their families. Objectives. the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of intermittent pneumatic compression (iPC) alone or in combination with exercises on upper limbs circumference and hand function. Material and methods. the study population consisted of 21 patients with breast cancer-related lymphedema. in group a, the treatment consisted of 20 IPc sessions (45 minutes a day at 60 mm Hg, 5 times weekly) and physical exercises (combination therapy). group B only received 20 iPC sessions. Prior to and after intermittent pneumatic compression, all patients had arm circumference measurements at 6 sites on the mastectomy side. hand function was assessed with the Carpal tunnel syndrome Functional status scale. Results. Both groups exhibited a reduction in upper limb circumferences after the therapy in comparison to the initial values. However, a comparison of percentage circumference changes did not show any advantage of the combination therapy on the magnitude of the edema and hand function. Conclusions. Pneumatic compression is an effective method of reducing upper limb edema in postmastectomy patients. the exercises did not have a significant effect on function of hand.
The Role of Randomness in Darwinian Evolution*

Historically, one of the most controversial aspects of Darwinian evolution has been the prominent role that randomness and random change play in it. Most biologists agree that mutations in DNA have random effects on fitness. However, fitness is a highly simplified scalar representation of an enormously complex phenotype. Challenges to Darwinian thinking have focused on such complex phenotypes. Whether mutations affect such complex phenotypes randomly is ill understood. Here I discuss three very different classes of well-studied molecular phenotypes in which mutations cause nonrandom changes, based on our current knowledge. What is more, this nonrandomness facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Thus, living beings may translate DNA change into nonrandom phenotypic change that facilitates Darwinian evolution.
BNN+: Improved Binary Network Training

The deployment of Deep neural networks (DNN) on edge devices has been difficult because they are resource hungry. Binary neural networks (BNN) help to alleviate the prohibitive resource requirements of DNN, where both activations and weights are limited to $1$-bit. There is however a significant performance gap between BNNs and floating point DNNs. To reduce this gap, We propose an improved binary training method, by introducing a new regularization function that encourages training weights around binary values. In addition, we add trainable scaling factors to our regularization functions. We also introduce an improved approximation of the derivative of the $sign$ activation function in the backward computation. These modifications are based on linear operations that are easily implementable into the binary training framework. We show experimental results on CIFAR-10 obtaining an accuracy of $87.4\%$, on AlexNet and $83.9\%$ with DoReFa network. On ImageNet, our method also outperforms the traditional BNN method and XNOR-net, using AlexNet by a margin of $4\%$ and $2\%$ top-$1$ accuracy respectively. In other words, we significantly reduce the gap between BNNs and floating point DNNs.
Performance Analysis in Bigdata Pankaj Deep

Big data technologies like Hadoop, NoSQL, Messaging Queues etc. helps in BigData analytics, drive business growth and to take right decisions in time. These Big Data environments are very dynamic and complex; they require performance validation, root cause analysis, and tuning to ensure success. In this paper we talk about how we can analyse and test the performance of these systems. We present the important factors in a big data that are primary candidates for performance testing like data ingestion capacity and throughput, data processing capacity, simulation of expected usage, map reduce jobs and so on and suggest measures to improve performance of bigdata
GRANULAR JAMMING WITH HYDRAULIC CONTROL

In the field of soft robotics, granular jamming is a newly adopted variable stiffness mechanism involving the use of vacuum pressure to control soft, particulate matter to become a unified, solid-like structure. However, granular jamming is conventionally controlled with air, which reduces the mobility of the robot. This is because the compressibility of air requires large vacuum pumps or chambers. Instead, we propose the use of an incompressible fluid, such as water, to control the stiffness of the mechanism. This paper presents comparative studies that shows that a hydraulic granular jammed joint using deaired water can both achieve the same stiffness level with just one twentieth of the volume extraction and maintain the same hysteresis level of an air-based system.
Standardizing IoT Network Security Policy Enforcement

This paper discusses the design of a standardized network security policy enforcement architecture for IoT devices. We show that the network behavior of many consumer IoT devices tends to be predictable, and thus simple to profile and constrain. We propose an automated approach to derive network security policies for devices without requiring vendor cooperation or changes to devices or cloud infrastructure. We also describe a scalable and effective multi-layered policy enforcement architecture that limits the impact of IoT device compromise.
Sharded Parallel Mapreduce in Mongodb for Online Aggregation

The Online Aggregation framework proposed to obtain the approximate results for the complex queries more quickly when compared to exact results using the aggregation. The Map Reduce context has evolved as one of the most commonly used parallel computing platforms for processing of large databases. It is one of the widespread programming model for handling of large datasets in parallel with a cluster of machines. This Paradigm permits for easy parallelization on several machines of data computations. The Online Aggregation combined with Map Reduce jobs to improve the performance of Query processing in large databases and to obtain the approximate Results. Sharding is the method of storing data records across multiple machines and is one of the MongoDB's methodology to encounter the demands of increased data set gradually. To minimize the time taken to execute very large database using map and reduce functions shards used for the implementation. This paper proposes a new methodology to improve performance of the online aggregation known as Sharded parallel MapReduce in MongoDB for Online Aggregation to obtain the approximate results in less time compared to the traditional MapReduce paradigm.
Characterization of organic residues of size‐resolved fog droplets and their atmospheric implications

Size‐resolved fog water samples were collected in two consecutive winters at Kanpur, a heavily polluted urban area of India. Samples were analyzed by an aerosol mass spectrometer after drying and directly in other instruments. Residues of fine fog droplets (diameter: 4–16 µm) are found to be more enriched with oxidized (oxygen to carbon ratio, O/C = 0.88) and low volatility organics than residues of coarse (diameter > 22 µm) and medium size (diameter: 16–22 µm) droplets with O/C of 0.68 and 0.74, respectively. These O/C ratios are much higher than those observed for background ambient organic aerosols, indicating efficient oxidation in fog water. Accompanying box model simulations reveal that longer residence times, together with high aqueous OH concentrations in fine droplets, can explain these trends. High aqueous OH concentrations in smaller droplets are caused by their highest surface‐volume ratio and high Fe and Cu concentrations, allowing more uptake of gas phase OH and enhanced Fenton reaction rates, respectively. Although some volatile organic species may have escaped during droplet evaporation, these findings indicate that aqueous processing of dissolved organics varies with droplet size. Therefore, large (regional, global)‐scale models need to consider the variable reaction rates, together with metal‐catalyzed radical formation throughout droplet populations for accurately predicting aqueous secondary organic aerosol formation.
Effect of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) supplementation on serum glucose, serum lipids and glycosylated hemoglobin in type 2 diabetics.

The present study was conducted to show the long term effect of low glycemic index (GI) foxtail millet (setaria italica) biscuits (GI = 50.8) and burfi, a sweet product (GI = 37.5), on diabetics. This case control clinical trial was conducted on 30 type 2 diabetic subjects who were equally divided into 3 groups: experimental group 1 (EG-1), experimental group 2 (EG-2) and control group (CG). The EG-1 patients were supplemented with 100 g foxtail millet biscuits and EG-2 patients with 100 g foxtail millet burfi for 30 days. The study was further carried on for the next 30 days with EG-1 and EG-2 with cross over randomized clinical trial, during which EG-1 and EG-2 acted as their own control. The metabolic parameters studied were serum glucose, serum cholesterol, serum LDL, serum HDL, serum triglycerides, serum VLDL and glycosylated hemoglobin (GHb). Significant reduction was recorded in serum glucose (23%), serum cholesterol (6%), serum LDL (20%) and GHb (16.5%), and a slight decrease in serum triglycerides and VLDL. Serum HDL increased significantly by 23 per cent. Almost similar results were observed for foxtail millet burfi as for foxtail millet biscuits. During the cross over randomized clinical trial, all metabolic parameters except for HDL increased upon stopping the supplementation. Thus, it is concluded that foxtail millet as a low GI food product leads to modest improvement in long-term glycemic and lipidemic control in type 2 diabetics.
Masslessness in n-dimensions 1

We determine the representations of the “conformal” group SO0(2, n), the restriction of which on the “Poincaré” subgroup SO0(1, n− 1). Tn are unitary irreducible. We study their restrictions to the “De Sitter” subgroups SO0(1, n) and SO0(2, n−1) (they remain irreducible or decompose into a sum of two) and the contraction of the latter to “Poincaré”. Then we discuss the notion of masslessness in n dimensions and compare the situation for general n with the well-known case of 4-dimensional space-time, showing the specificity of the latter. To be published in Reviews in Mathematical Physics, vol.10 (1998) 2 E. Angelopoulos and M. Laoues
Techno-economic analysis of fast pyrolysis and upgrading facilities 1 employing two depolymerization pathways 2 3

We evaluate the economic feasibility of fast pyrolysis and upgrading facilities 11 employing either of two depolymerization pathways: two-stage hydrotreating 12 followed by a FCC (fluid catalytic cracking) stage or single-stage hydrotreating 13 followed by a hydrocracking stage. In the hydrotreating/FCC pathway, two options 14 are available as the hydrogen source for hydrotreating: merchant hydrogen or 15 hydrogen from natural gas reforming. The primary products of the hydrotreating/FCC 16 pathway are commodity chemicals whereas the primary products for the 17 hydrotreating/hydrocracking pathway are transportation fuels and hydrogen. The two 18 pathways are modeled using Aspen Plus® for a 2000 metric tons/day facility. 19 Equipment sizing and cost calculations are based on Aspen Economic Evaluation® 20 software. 21 The fast pyrolysis bio-oil yield is assumed to be 65% of biomass. We calculate the 22 internal rate of return (IRR) for each pathway as a function of feedstock cost, fixed 23 capital investment (FCI), hydrogen and catalyst costs, and facility revenues. The 24 results show that a facility employing the hydrotreating/FCC pathway with hydrogen 25 production via natural gas reforming option generates the highest IRR of 13.3%. 26 Sensitivity analysis demonstrates that product yield, FCI, and biomass cost have the 27 greatest impacts on facility IRR. Monte-Carlo analysis shows that two-stage hydrotreating and FCC of the aqueous phase bio-oil with hydrogen produced via 1 natural gas reforming has a relatively low risk for project investment.
The Excess of Modernity: Garbage Politics in Oaxaca, Mexico

In the last several decades, garbage strikes have taken place around the world. In this article, I examine the case of garbage strikes in Oaxaca, Mexico, a rapidly growing city. Here, garbage, which is normally considered a hazard, is revealed also to be an effective political tool for people demanding “rights to the city. ” Processes of modernization that have produced an expectation of cleanliness in modern cities have, at the same time, relied on production and consumption patterns that create more and more garbage. It is this inherent contradiction that provides a space for marginalized people to use garbage as a political tool.