Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychophysiological Techniques for Measuring Emotion in Social Science

This article briefly presents 6 techniques of measuring emotion: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), galvanic skin response (GSR), Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and infrared thermography (IRT). A note on each technique points out the dimension of emotion (valence or arousal) that is measured with a given technique, and informs on its previous use in sociology, as well as its major advantages and disadvantages. Limitations common to all techniques are discussed in the concluding section.
Analysis of Shallow Seismic Waves to Determine Geo-technical Characterization of Major Earthquake Affected Sites of Kathmandu Valley

The Gorkha earthquake of April 25, 2015 and others have generated intense interest with in the engineering and geological community due to reports of massive inhomogeneous pattern of ground failures and structural collapse in Kathmandu Valley. MASW is used in different sites of Kathmandu Valley to determine geotechnical characterization of near surface materials. Tabulated values of compressional wave velocity (V p ) and shear wave velocity (V s ) can be extracted from inverse modeling are employed in established empirical expressions to determine allowable bearing capacity (q a ) and elastic modulus (E) of soil. The result shows the presence of silty-sand, clay and loose gravel soil with low bearing capacity and elastic modulus in most of the sites are responsible for devastation. Some structural defects or use of low quality construction materials during manufacturing might be the cause of destruction in soil with comparative high allowable bearing capacity and elastic modulus.
16th International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes

The Czech Republic has implemented a smog alert and regulation system for PM 10, SO2, NO2, and tropospheric ozone O3. During last years the concentrations of PM10 and O3 have been playing the most important role during winter season and summer season respectively. Remaining pollutants reach mostly concentrations far below relevant thresholds. With respect to PM10, the area of the Czech Republic is divided into 15 zones. PM10 smog situation is announced when 24-hour moving average of hourly concentration in one representative station exceeds the informative threshold value 100 μg. m over 25 consecutive hours and the trend of 12-hour moving average increases at the same time over the past 6 hours in at least half of the representative stations. Using 24-hour moving average for data smoothing and condition of exceedance over 25 consecutive hours in combination with trends brings some difficulties for decision making authorities. The main problem is, that smog situation is usually announced too late, when the threshold value has been already exceeded for up to two days or even more. On the other hand the smog situation often lasts even when PM10 concentrations have dropped under the threshold value. In order to solve the problem, new rules were proposed (shortening required length of exceedance, inclusion of the forecast of dispersion conditions or air quality) and also new smoothing method were examined, namely exponential filters Exponential Moving Average (EMA), Kaufmann Adaptive Moving Average (KAMA) and Triple Exponential Moving Average (TEMA). None of the methods used additional information on trend behaviour. The results obtained with exponential filters and the results from the current system were compared with measured daily averages for the years 2010–2013. KAMA shows the best response to hourly data behaviour, but smoothing is insufficient. KAMA filter also causes higher number of false smog alert announcements. The best results for our purpose were obtained with TEMA filter, which seems to be a good compromise among smoothing, quick response and a good applicability to the legislation.
Working Paper Series Idiosyncratic Sentiments and Coordination Failures *

Coordination models have been used in macroeconomics to study a variety of crises phenomena. It is well understood that, in these models, aggregate fluctuations can be purely selffulfilling. In this paper I highlight that cross-sectional heterogeneity in expectations regarding the endogenous prospects of the economy can also emerge as a purely self-fulfilling equilibrium property. This in turn leads to some intriguing positive and normative implications: (i) It can rationalize idiosyncratic investor sentiment, (ii) It can be the source of significant heterogeneity in real and financial investment choices, even in the absence of any heterogeneity in individual characteristics or information about all economic fundamentals, and despite the presence of a strong incentive to coordinate on the same course of action, (iii) It can sustain rich fluctuations in aggregate investment and asset prices, including fluctuations that are smoother than those often associated with multiple-equilibria models of crises, (iv) It can capture the idea that investors learn slowly how to coordinate on a certain course of action, (v) It can boost welfare. (vi) It can render apparent coordination failures evidence of improved efficiency. JEL codes: D82, D84, E32, Gil.
DESIGNING INTEGRATED LASER-DRIVEN ION ACCELERATOR SYSTEMS FOR HADRON THERAPY AT PMRC (PHOTO MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER

The concept of a compact ion particle accelerator has become attractive in view of recent progress in laserdriven hadrons acceleration. The Photo Medical Research Center (PMRC) of JAEA was recently established to address the challenge of laser-driven ion accelerator development for hadron beam cancer therapy. PMRC considers conceptual designs of such a therapeutic instrument based on the current state in the laser-driven acceleration. We describe a conceptual gantry device that is designed by the general-purpose ion accelerator design code, PARMILA.
Preparation and properties of aligned MWCNT-reinforced thermoplastic polyimide composites

Horizontally aligned 100-ply multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) sheets were produced from vertically aligned MWCNT arrays using drawing and press-winding techniques. Composites based on thermoplastic polyimide (TPI) resin and the aligned MWCNT sheets have been fabricated using hotmelt processing method. Effects of processing temperature and hot stretching on the mechanical properties of the aligned MWCNT/TPI composites were examined. The heating temperature of 410 C can be regarded as a reasonable temperature for the aligned MWCNT/TPI composite fabrication in this study. Hot-stretched MWCNT/TPI composite showed greater tensile strength and elastic modulus than those of the non-stretched one. The enhancement in the tensile strength and elastic modulus of the aligned MWCNT/TPI composites caused by hot stretching is attributable to the increase of the MWCNT alignment and enhancing the MWCNT volume fraction. The experimental results suggest that the aligned MWCNT/TPI composites with high CNT volume fraction can be used as lightweight and high heat resistance materials for aerospace applications.
SURROGATE-BASED OPTIMIZATION METHOD APPLIED TO MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN OPTIMZIATION ARCHITECTURES

During the past three decades, various multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) architectures have been developed, using different ways of dealing with interactions between disciplines, which can be solved by optimization algorithms. In the field of aircraft design optimization, as the complexity of system increases, conventional optimization algorithms applied in MDO architecture exhibit many drawbacks, such as low efficiency, poor robustness or easily getting trapped in a local extra. In this paper, a newly developed surrogate-based optimization (SBO) method is applied to replace traditional optimization algorithms in the MDO architectures so that the efficiency of solving MDO problems can be dramatically improved. To demonstrate its effectiveness, a benchmark MDO test case and Speed Reducer MDO case are employed. It shows that the efficiency of SBO is two-order higher than that of genetic algorithm and the optimization results are better than that obtained by gradient-based algorithm. Besides, SBO is applied to the aerodynamic/structural integrated design of a transport wing in MDF architecture. The weight of the wing is reduced by 30.32% while its aerodynamic performance is retained at a cruise condition.
Climate change in Canada’s North: An analysis of narratives and the representation of Inuit within the Canadian climate change discourse

While the issue of climate change is known to be a global environmental problem, the impacts of climate change are disproportionately burdening a small group of people, especially indigenous people living in vulnerable regions such as the Arctic. Nevertheless, in the prevalent climate change communication indigenous people and their precarious situations are barely included. This study investigates how the NGO Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) represents the topic and Inuit through narratives in their communication while comparing it to the representation of Canadian news media. Here, a strategic content analysis of speeches and press releases from the NGO compares articles covering the COP1 summit from CBC. The hereby used methodology is based on Fløttum’s approach to narrative theory and Hall’s representation theory. The study shows that the ICC is presenting climate change through different narratives, therefore uses two different communicational strategies and either presents Inuit as victims or as holders of valuable knowledge, depending on the aim and the context of its communication. The CBC focuses mainly on climate change issues in the context of Canada, but fails here to include and present the case of its indigenous Arctic people meaningfully, instead simply depicts them in the one-sided way of climate change victims. Although both parties contribute to the Canadian climate change discourse by presenting their narratives, the analysis shows that only few parallels occur between the two. While the ICC’s objective is to get governments and policy-makers to listen and therefore changes its mode of speaking according to its objectives, the CBC communicates to the public and is obliged to provide a wide range of information to reflect Canada holistically.
Poverty in Ukraine

The low purchasing power of the Ukrainian population has always been a major concern for policy makers and particularly in 2003 when as a result of expectations of a poor grain harvest prices for staple food products jumped in the late spring. The initial reaction of the government, among others, was to control prices by imposing profitability restrictions on producers and mark-up restrictions on retail traders. As grain prices continued to rise, fixed price levels became ever more difficult to defend, why in some oblasts direct government intervention was replaced by money transfers to vulnerable groups. Politicians had learned that directly transferring money can play an important role in providing food relief to the poor. However, given the budget constraints Ukraine faces, policy makers should ensure that the transfer program yields as large benefits to the poor as possible. What usually makes transfer programs ineffective and inefficient is the wrong identification of the target group. Thus, in implementing the program to provide food relief to the poor, the government should have a clear idea about who are the poor and what should be done in the first place to alleviate poverty. This paper is an attempt to identify causal factors for poverty by examining characteristics of those living below the poverty line.
Limb-Based Shape Modeling: A Demonstration on Itokawa

The need for computationally efficient shape modeling techniques is required for the autonomy of small body exploration missions. This limb-based method focuses on extracting edge information from images on approach and building a low-to-medium resolution shape model from multiple viewing angles about the body. This approach was developed with shape from silhouette concepts and was previously tested on virtual shapes and viewing geometries. In this paper, we aim to use the same approach on simulated images captured with Blender to replicate a mapping orbit. By choosing the asteroid Itokawa, this study tests the proposed method’s response to concavity about the surface, a variety of viewing angles and resolutions, and camera geometry. It has been observed that the density of the final solution depends on the selection of images used in the mapping algorithm, and that the capability to resolve the whole body to an acceptable threshold for navigation requires analysis along several axes of rotation.
Protocol for assessing bird abundance and richness in vineyards. A case study in Penedès area

Bird abundance and richness were evaluate during the breeding period of 2011 in Penedès wine appellation of origin area, Barcelona (Spain) using an adapted point counts method in different vineyard landscapes matrix with different habitat composition and complexity. It was found that bird communities were mainly affected by habitat composition. Species richness was higher in vineyards with a more complex structure landscape.
Synthesis of nanocrystalline diamond thin films from an Ar-CH4 microwave plasma

Nanocrystalline diamond thin films have been synthesized in an Ar–CH 4 microwave discharge, without the addition of molecular hydrogen. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and electron energy loss spectroscopy characterizations show that the films consist of a pure crystalline diamond phase with very small grain sizes ranging from 3 to 20 nm. Atomic force microscopy analysis demonstrates that the surfaces of the nanocrystalline diamond films remain smooth independent of the film thicknesses. Furthermore, the reactant gas pressure, which strongly affects the concentration of C 2 dimer in the Ar–CH4 plasma as well as the growth rate of the films, has been found to be a key parameter for the nanocrystalline diamond thin film depositions. © 1998 American Institute of Physics. @S0021-8979 ~98! 04501-0#
Utilizing color data in VoteNet for 3D Object Detection in Point Clouds

RGB-D object detection has become a popular research topic due to the demand from application such as automated car and LIDAR data processing. Recent progress of deep learning techniques has greatly improved model precision and processing time. In this project, We study the state-ofthe-art approaches of object detection techniques and compare them in terms of approaches they are using as well as performance. One of the recent approach VoteNet is studied in detail as baseline method. Based on the idea that RGB and depth information can be fused to improve performance of the method, We propose a method that uses 2D bounding box frustum class score as feature of point cloud. Evaluation is performed on SUN RGB v1 dataset.
Teacher Educators' Understanding of Diversity Painting a Picture through Narrative Portraits.

Vera L Stenhouse is an independent researcher working in Georgia. of their backgrounds and experiences is needed to further understand the viability of teacher education institutions to support their missions. Additionally, teacher educators expect teachers to attend to the opportunities afforded by working with students from a variety of geographic, ability, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, economic, gendered, and racial backgrounds/experiences (Adams, Blumenfeld, Castañada, Hackman, Peters, & Zuñiga, 2010; Hollins, 2008; Ball & Tyson, 2011; Irizarry, 2011). Consequently, teacher educators’ content knowledge necessarily is expected to include their particular subject matter in conjunction with an understanding of diversity and multicultural education. The narrative portraits offered here are framed to address teacher educators’ significant role in preparing teachers to teach with, to and for diversity and must therefore have requisite skills and knowledge to do so.
Antecedents and consequences of brand equity-a research to determine the role of brand affect

Despite the fact that there is an immense level of research related with the impact of product quality and service quality on brand equity, the role of brand affect as the mediator between brand equity and brand loyalty (attitudinal and behavioral loyalty) has not been cross-examined in previous literature. To understand how this mediating mechanism brand affect which ultimate leads increase the behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty of the customers, we advanced a conceptual theory using TRA , and examined the data from a sample of 360 Marriot hotel customers, results from multivariate analysis shows that the relationship between brand equity and attitudinal loyalty is partially mediated by brand affect. The results also provide a wide range of implications for managers and researchers in improving the brand equity and customer’s loyalty. The study is one of the exceptional efforts to provide evidence regarding the antecedents and consequences of brand equity the mediating role of brand effect between brand equity and loyalty.
Asking more than, «How did that make you feel?»: The Insight approach to feeling and valuing in conflict

This article addresses how a practitioner can help to dissipate interpersonal conflict by recognizing and responding to feelings. Using conceptual resources from the Insight approach, the article proposes that reflexive inquiry into feelings as indicative of valuing can generate more expansive possibilities in transforming conflict. A case study of an intervention into workplace conflict explores how asking about feelings can elicit reflexive curiosity, rather than defensiveness, when a practitioner’s questions focus on discerning significance registered in a party’s felt response. The article’s autoethographic method indicates practical strategies as well as theoretical supports to analyze and respond to interpersonal conflict. Resumen: Este artículo trata cómo puede ayudar un profesional a disipar un conflicto interpersonal reconociendo y respondiendo a los sentimientos. Basándose en las fuentes conceptuales del enfoque insight, el artículo propone que la investigación reflexiva de los sentimientos como indicativo de la valoración puede generar mayores posibilidades para la transformación del conflicto. El caso práctico que se presenta de una intervención explora cómo preguntar por los sentimientos puede dar lugar a la curiosidad reflexiva cuando las preguntas del profesional se centran en discernir la importancia dada a la respuesta sentida por una de las partes. El método autoetnográfico del artículo presenta las estrategias prácticas así como los soportes teóricos para analizar y responder ante un conflicto interpersonal.
Taylor-SPH method for shock wave propagating in vis coplastic continua

In this article, a new time integration algorithm u sing a corrected SPH spatial discretization is pres ented. The equations are written in terms of stress and veloci ty. To avoid numerical instabilities, two different sets of particles are used for time integration and a corre cted Lagrangian kernel has been used for the spatia l approximation. This new algorithm is applied to sol ve the propagation of shock waves in viscoplastic m edia. The results are compared with those obtained with the F inite Element Method. The proposed method is shown to be stable, robust and it provides solutions of good ac curacy.
OP-CBIO180560 908..916

Motivation: International consortia such as the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) or the International Human Epigenetics Consortium (IHEC) have produced a wealth of genomic datasets with the goal of advancing our understanding of cell differentiation and disease mechanisms. However, utilizing all of these data effectively through integrative analysis is hampered by batch effects, large cell type heterogeneity and low replicate numbers. To study if batch effects across datasets can be observed and adjusted for, we analyze RNA-seq data of 215 samples from ENCODE, Roadmap, BLUEPRINT and DEEP as well as 1336 samples from GTEx and TCGA. While batch effects are a considerable issue, it is non-trivial to determine if batch adjustment leads to an improvement in data quality, especially in cases of low replicate numbers. Results: We present a novel method for assessing the performance of batch effect adjustment methods on heterogeneous data. Our method borrows information from the Cell Ontology to establish if batch adjustment leads to a better agreement between observed pairwise similarity and similarity of cell types inferred from the ontology. A comparison of state-of-the art batch effect adjustment methods suggests that batch effects in heterogeneous datasets with low replicate numbers cannot be adequately adjusted. Better methods need to be developed, which can be assessed objectively in the framework presented here. Availability and implementation: Our method is available online at https://github.com/SchulzLab/ OntologyEval. Contact: mschulz@mmci.uni-saarland.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Effect of Plunge Depth on Weld Integrity of Friction Stir Welds of Dissimilar Aluminium and Copper

This paper presents the effects of plunge depth on the weld integrities of Friction Stir lap welds of aluminium and copper. 3 mm sheets of aluminium and copper were joined using the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) technique. The study focuses on understanding the relationship between the defects and the process parameters. The produced welds were characterized using visual inspection, microstructural evaluation and microhardness profiling. It was found that while all the typical FSW microstructural zones were present in the welds, the sizes of the voids observed in the welds were dependent on the plunge depth employed. Optimization of the processing parameters is in view.
SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC ITEMS IN ALGEBRA TESTS – A CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL VIEW

In this paper, we draw a distinction between syntactic and semantic aspects of algebraic thinking. We examine the hypothesis that these two aspects can be distinguished empirically using test items. We present exploratory analysis of a test of algebra based on a large sample of students aged 11-14 in England and contrast this to a previous analysis of older German students (Oldenburg, 2009). This analysis indicates that there are considerable difficulties in operationalizing the distinction using test items, but suggests a potentially fruitful line of analysis may be to treat the semantic aspect as consisting of two sub-dimensions, based on whether one or many meanings or interpretations appear to be required.