Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Virtual reality technologies for future telecommunications systems

Preface Overview of Computer-based Virtual Reality (Eunjoo Lee and Algirdas PakUtas) Towards Person-to-person Virtual Reality Telecommunication System (Ryoichi Komiya) Computer-based Virtual Worlds (David Boyer, Allen Ginsberg, Anjum Khan, Mauricio Cortes and Graeme Balfour) Presence Awareness for Future Telecommunications Systems (David Boyer, Allen Ginsberg,Venkat Goud and Mark Handel) Hyperspace Link Method for Virtual Reality Telecommunication System (Kanji Kato and Kazunori Shimamura) Towards Agent-based Collaborative and Interactive Virtual Environments (Lei Guo and Nicolas D. Georganas) Collaborative Virtual Environments for Industrial Training and e-Commerce (J.C. Oliveira, X. Shen and N.D. Georganas) Virtual Reality Application for Networked Dictionary (H. Dujmic, N. Rozic, D. Begusic, J. Ursic and M. Vojnovic) Definition of VRTS (Ryoichi Komiya) A Prototype Terminal Proposal for Virtual Reality Telecommunication System (Nor Azhar Mohd Arif, Mohd Nazri Ramliy and Ryoichi Komiya) A Multi-megavoxel Volumetric 3-D Display System for Distributed Collaboration (Gregg E. Favalora, Deirdre M. Hall, Michael G. Giovinco, Joshua Napoli, Rick K. Dorval and Won S. Chun) Cyber Action: Real-time Human Motion Instruction System using Life-sized Stereoscopic Avatars (Mayuki Ihara, Yoshihiro Shimada and Satoshi Ishibashi) Distributed Gait Measurements (Vladan Papic, Vlasta Zanchi and Ante Krstulovic) Realistic Telecommunications with Somatic Sensation (Tsutomu Miyasato and Ryohei Nakatsu) High-speed Networks and Virtual Reality Telecommunication System (Kanji Kato, Ryoichi Komiya and Kazunori Shimamura) Index.
General Counsels and Material Weaknesses in Internal Control.

This study examines the association between corporate general counsels (GCs) and internal control quality. GCs often manage the risk and compliance functions of their organizations, and it is an empirical question whether GCs influence the quality of internal controls. We find that the number of material weaknesses and the number of pervasive material weaknesses are negatively associated with the presence of a prominent GC (i.e., a GC who is a disclosed earner). Using a subsample of firms with a GC, we find that both the incidence and number of material weaknesses are negatively associated with the individual’s tenure as GC. For prominent GCs only, we also find that the incidence and number of material weaknesses are negatively associated with both tenure at the firm and the GC’s cumulative external work experience in law, government, and business. These findings suggest that GCs influence internal control quality within their firms.
Collaboration Patterns among Commercial Firms in Community-Based OSS Projects

Context: Open Source Software (OSS) development is a highly distributed and collaborative activity and was initially performed by developers volunteering their time and effort. During the recent years, OSS has transformed to become a more mainstream and commercially viable software development approach. This is reflected in the increasing involvement from commercial firms. Currently, there exist little or no research literature examining how commercial firms collaborate across organizational boundaries and how this may affect community-based OSS projects. Objective: This thesis aims to help fill the identified gap by investigating the influence of organizational boundary on team collaboration and project evolution in community-based OSS projects by answering the following research questions: RQ1: How do commercial firms collaborate across organizational boundaries in community-based OSS projects? RQ2: How influential is firm awareness in community-based OSS projects? Method: A two-phased case study approach was adopted, compromising exploratory and descriptive analysis. The cases, Wireshark and Samba, were examined in a quantitative and qualitative approach using found documents and conducting interviews with firm-paid developers. Social network and thematic content analysis were applied. Results: This thesis provides the following three contributions: C1: Empirical data from two OSS projects providing knowledge related to how commercial firms collaborate with each others across organizational boundaries in community-based OSS projects. C2: A conceptual model illustrating commercial firm? s collaboration patterns across organizational boundaries in community-based OSS projects, extending Crowston? s onion model. C3: A set of recommendations to commercial firms that want to participate and utilize community-based OSS projects. Conclusion: Commercial firms participate and collaborate heavily in community-based OSS projects and are present in all the roles identified in Crowston? s onion model. Furthermore, independently of firm size and degree of involvement, the firms commonly have one person acting as a gatekeeper between the community and firm managing code, communication and/or bug issues. The findings indicate that firm awareness is a vital part of the firm cross-collaboration and mainly influence the development in a positive manner.
Materials Engineering and Automatic Control III

This is a collection of selected, peer reviewed papers from the 3rd International Conference on Materials Engineering and Automatic Control (ICMEAC 2014), May 17-18, 2014, Tianjin, China. The 182 papers are grouped as follows: Chapter 1: Advanced Materials Engineering and Materials Processing Technologies, Chapter 2: Mechanical Engineering and Dynamics, Liquids and Gases Mechanics, Applied Mechanics in Technological Processes, Structural Design, Chapter 3: Instrumentation, Measurement and Testing Technologies, Analysis and Calculations Methodology, Chapter 4: Technologies of Power Systems, Energy and Thermal Engineering, Its Applications, Chapter 5: Mechatronics and Robotics, Chapter 6: Control Technologies, Automation and Simulation of Manufacturing, Chapter 7: Data Mining, Detection, Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis Technologies, Chapter 8: Networks and Information Technologies, Systems Design, and, Chapter 9: Product Design, Planning, Projects Management and Industrial Engineering.
Safety performance measurement

Safety and performance measurement - concepts and framework, introduction to the practical examples measuring plant and equipment - integral plant inspection, an integrated modular audit system, technical audit/inspection and qualitative safety rating, condition measurement, developing a safety performance measurement system measuring systems and procedures - monitoring the implementation of local procedures, measurement of safety performance within responsibility care, performance measurement of safety management systems, measurement through auditing and assurance measuring peole - the bahavioural approach to safe working, measurement of behaviour, safety culture, tripod incident analysis methodology, process safety management performance measurements measuring outputs - output measurements, can there be an economic return from a safety programme?
On the crashworthiness of foam-filled ultralight automotive structures

Recent developments in the manufacruring of economical closed-ce11 aluminium foam has led to increased interest in the use of that foarn as a filler in energy absorbing thinwalled ultraiight structures. Foarns are ideal energy absorbea because they can undergo large deformations at nearly constant stress. In addition to the energy that can be absorbed by the foam aione, its presence as a filler material leads to a modification of the mode of collapse of the composite structure, thereby increasing the energy absorption of that structure. In this thesis, a novel layered mode1 for simulating the quasi-static and dynarnic collapse of foam-filled ultraiight aluminium structures using three-dimensional elasto-plastic finite elernent analysis is pnsented. Specifically, the quasi-static and dynarnic axial collapse of foam-filled box columns is investigated. The column was modelled using shell elements, while the filler foam was modelled as a series of solid layers with a shear-stress failure criterion, which ties the layers together. This method enabled the simulation of the shear rupture of the foam, as observed in the extensive mechanical testing carried out in support of this study. The interface between the filler and the tube was modelled using an automatic contact algorithm, which incorporates the penalty method. The f ~ t e lement analysis consisteci of two investigations. In the fmt, aluminium columns of varying dimensions füled with aluminium foam of varying densities undergoing quasi-static axial cmshing were examined. The effect of foam density, w d thickness and width of the column on energy absorption was evaluated and discussed. In the second, the same geometry was explored under dynamic impact loading. The changes in coiiapse behaviour under different sniker masses and velocities were considered. The results nveal the influence of the presence of the ultralight aluminium foam upon the collapse mechanism and the energy absorbed during impact. The results of this work are valuable for enhancing the crashworthiness of a number of automotive cornponents and ultimately the car of the next century.
Comprehensive Safety Evaluation of Highly Automated Vehicles at the Roundabout Scenario

A highly automated vehicle (HAV) is a safety-critical system. Therefore, a verification and validation (V&V) process that rigorously evaluates the safety of HAVs is necessary before their release to the market. In this paper, we propose an interaction-aware safety evaluation framework for the HAV and apply it to the roundabout entering scenario. Instead of assuming that the primary other vehicles (POVs) take predetermined maneuvers, we model the POVs as game-theoretic agents. To capture a wide variety of interactions between the POVs and the vehicle under test (VUT), we use level- $k$ game theory and social value orientation (SVO) to characterize the interactive behaviors and train a diverse library of POVs using reinforcement learning. The game-theoretic library, together with initial conditions, form a rich testing space for the two-POV roundabout scenario. On the other hand, we propose an adaptive test case generation scheme based on adaptive sampling, stochastic optimization and upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithm to efficiently generate customized challenging cases for the VUT from the testing space. In simulations, the proposed testing space design captured a wide range of interactive patterns at the roundabout scenario. The proposed test case generation scheme was found to cover the failure modes of the VUT more effectively compared to other test case generation approaches.
ESTIMATING WORK CONTENT AND MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY

A method of calculating work content and productivity is presented which can be used in a variety of circumstances and which will produce quick estimates of the values required. The method is based on a simple statistical analysis of the times spent on various types of joint (fillet and butt welds in this case), and on the combination of data from each type of joint to produce a net time or cost for a structure made with the various joints of given lengths. Simple regression analysis is demonstrated, and an example is given to illustrate the application of the method. It is particularly suitable for shipbuilding where designs and combinations of joint types vary considerably. Order from BSRA as No. 51,014.
Tuning Random Forest Parameters using Simulated Annealing for Intrusion Detection

Intrusion detection system (IDS) security model is successfully utilized in static, distributed and dynamic network environments. Generally IDS needs a classification method for the decision of normal and abnormal events. This classification task is based on a set of features and massive amount of samples. However, all the features do not contribute the same level of prediction during classification. Hence feature selection (FS) has to be done before classification to select best features. Random forest (RF) does the dual role of FS and classification. Experiments have been done to prove that RF is the best classifier among other machine learning (ML) algorithms such as SVM classifier and C5.0 decision tree algorithm. However, the default parameter values of RF are not well suited for distributed environments such as cloud. It leads to poor accuracy and less efficiency in intrusion detection since enormous events have to be analyzed. So the parameters of RF have to be optimized by an efficient method. The important parameters of RF are number of trees, maximum depth of a tree, sample size, number of features considered to split a node (Mtry), node size and maximum leaf nodes. Among these parameters the hyper parameters are selected based on three decision factors, randomness; split rule; tree complexity. The issues to be considered during parameter tuning are to avoid over-fitting and under-fitting. Therefore Simulated Annealing (SA) is utilized for tuning these hyper parameters of RF which leads to improve detection accuracy and efficiency of IDS. The idea of using SA for parameter optimizing process is to avoid those issues since it never struck in local optimum. The proposed system significantly boosts the results of IDS. The efficiency of the proposed SA-RF is validated using CICIDS2017 dataset.
Better Products Faster: A Practical Guide to Knowledge-Based Systems for Manufacturers

Knowledge-based systems, including Artificial Intelligence, are both popular research topics and exciting computer technologies. They can also be powerful problem-solving tools in manufacturing and design environments. This book reveals--in layman's terms--the nature, benefits, and strategic opportunities presented by expert systems, fuzzy logic, and neural networks, three distinct but complimentary technologies.
CLUTTER SUPPRESSION CHARACTERISTICS OF STEPPED-FM RADAR WITH MUSIC ALGORITHM

This paper describes detecting targets in road clutter using millimeter-wave stepped-FM radars with discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and multiple signal classification (MUSIC). When the stepped-FM radar is combined with the MUSIC algorithm, range resolution and clutter suppression capability are improved. It first examines the decorrelation bandwidth for the road, followed by the PDF of road clutter. Computer simulation is used to study the performance of the stepped-FM radar including the MUSIC algorithm.
The µDose-system: determination of environmental dose rates by combined alpha and beta counting – performance tests and practical experiences

Abstract. The µDose-system is a recently developed analytical instrument applying a combined α- and β-sensitive scintillation technique for determining the radioactivity arising from the decay chains of 235U, 238U and 232Th as well as from the decay of 40K. The device was designed to meet the particular requirements of trapped charge dating methods and allows the assessment of environmental (i.e. low) levels of natural radionuclides. The µDose-system was developed as a low-cost laboratory equipment, but a systematic test of its performance is still pending. For the first time, we present results from a comprehensive performance test based on an inter-laboratory comparison. We compare the results gained with µDose-measurements with those from thick source alpha counting (TSAC), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and low-level high-resolution gamma spectrometry (HRGS) applied in ﬁve participating laboratories. In addition, the reproducibility and accuracy of µDose-measurements were tested on certified reference materials distributed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA; RGU-1, RGTh-1 and RGK-1) and on two loess standards (Nussy and Volkegem) frequently used in trapped charge dating studies. We compare µDose-based results for a total of 47 sediment samples with results previously obtained for these materials by well-established methods of dose rate determination. The investigated natural samples cover a great variety of environments, including ﬂuvial, aeolian, littoral, colluvial and (geo-)archaeological sites originating from high- and low-mountain regions as well as from lowlands in tropical areas, drylands and mid-latitude zones of Europe, Africa, Australia, Central Asia and the Americas. Our results suggest the µDose-system’s capability of assessing low-level radionuclide contents with very good accuracy and precision comparable to well-established dosimetry methods. Based on the results of our comparative study and with respect to the practical experiences gained so far, the µDose-system appears to be a promising tool for trapped charge dating studies.
The Psychopharmacological Management of Depression in Patients with Cancer

Introduction: The patient with a physical illness is affected emotionally and spiritually. The patient with an emotional illness is affected physically and spiritually. It is therefore important to view the patient in a holistic sense. Cancer and depression are responsible for enormous human suffering on a global scale. When cancer and depression are comorbid, symptom burden and mortality are each magnified, as one disease complicates the management of the other. Aim: This paper aimed to explore and summarize recent relevant data concerning the rates of depression and other psychiatric disorders in cancer patients and the use of antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs. Methods: PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of science and SCOPUS databases were searched for peer-reviewed publicationsondepression in cancer patients. Results: Depressive spectrum disorders, including major depression, persistent depression, minor and sub-syndromal depression, and other forms of depressive conditions, such as demoralization, are among the most common psychiatric consequences of cancer patients, affecting up to 60% of patients. The availability of new drugs, with less side-effects and safer pharmacological profiles, has been a major advance in clinical psychooncology. Conclusions: It is mandatory that health care professionals working in oncology receive training in the diagnosis and management of depression.
PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION ON A RIGID RETAINING WALL IN COHESIONLESS MATERIAL

A simple total normal stress measuring technique for model tests on rigid structures in cohesionless material is described. The technique involved the use of elementary pressure cells designed for use with rigid walls. Each cell consisted of a strain gauged elastic steel beam which was set flush with the face of the wall. Centrifugal model tests were conducted on a rigid retaining wall to demonstrate the viability of the proposed method. The results compared favourably with accepted theory and known behaviour of retaining walls when subjected to rotation and translation. This implied that the measuring technique used was reliable. It was found that the technique adopted requires further development but that it can be considered a relevant practical solution to the measurement of earth pressures in centrifugal modelling. The number of the covering abstract of the symposium is IRRD 286058. (TRRL)
Public financing in agricultural research development and rural poverty alleviation in West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) States

This paper analyzed the effects of public funding for agricultural research and development on rural poverty reduction through farm income in West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries. To conduct this analysis, an agricultural production function was developed that integrates public policies. In view of the scope of the analysis, a dynamic panel was developed to take into account the dynamics of agricultural income. The data used in this research were mainly taken from the databases of the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the FAO and cover the period from 2000 to 2016. The data were estimated using the Generalized Moment Method (GMM) in system. The results show that public spending on agricultural research and development contributes to reducing rural poverty through increased agricultural income. Thus, it is recommended that WAEMU states make efforts in the allocation of public resources in the area of agricultural research and development to boost the development of the agricultural sector and significantly reduce rural poverty.
Pavement Subgrade MR Design Values for Michigan’s Seasonal Changes - Table E5

The resilient modulus (MR) of roadbed soil plays an integral role in the design of pavement systems. Currently, the various regions of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) use different procedures to determine the MR values. Most of these procedures are applicable to the new Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (ME PDG) level 3 design only and the 1993 AASHTO design guide. Therefore, a consistent, uniform, and implementable procedure that meets the requirements of the M-E PDG for level 1, 2, and 3 designs and the 1993 AASHTO Design Guide was developed. In this study, the State of Michigan was divided into fifteen clusters where the physical and engineering characteristics of the soils were similar. The clusters were then divided into ninety nine areas to narrow down the ranges of the engineering and physical characteristics of the soils. Disturbed roadbed soil samples were collected from seventy five areas, and twelve undisturbed soil samples (Shelby tubes) were collected from areas with CL and SC roadbed soils. The soil samples were subjected to simple tests (moisture content, grain size distribution, and Atterberg limits when applicable), and cyclic load triaxial tests to determine the soils resilient modulus values. Predictive correlation equations were developed to estimate the MR values of the roadbed soil based on the results of the simple tests. Deflection data from Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) tests conducted throughout the state were obtained from MDOT. The deflection database consisted of hundreds of previous FWD tests that were conducted on various projects over the last 20+ years and eighty FWD tests conducted as part of this study. All FWD data files with sufficient data were analyzed to backcalculate the roadbed soil MR values. Comparison between the laboratory and the backcalculated MR values indicated that the two values are almost equal when the stress boundaries used in the laboratory tests matched those of the FWD tests. The report includes the recommended MR design values are provided on state map and in table format.
A 30.3 fA/√Hz Biosensing Current Front-End With 139 dB Cross-Scale Dynamic Range

This paper presents an 8-channel array of low-noise (30.3 fA/√Hz) current sensing front-ends with on-chip microelectrode electrochemical sensors. The analog front-end (AFE) consists of a 1st-order continuous-time delta-sigma (CT ΔΣ) modulator that achieves 123 fA sensitivity over a 10 Hz bandwidth and 139 dB cross-scale dynamic range with a 2-bit programmable current reference. A digital predictor and tri-level pulse width modulated (PWM) current-steering DAC realize the equivalent performance of a multi-bit ΔΣ in an area- and power-efficient manner. The AFE consumes 50.3 µW and 0.11 mm2 per readout channel. The proposed platform was used to observe protein-ligand interactions in real-time using transient induced molecular electronic spectroscopy (TIMES), a label- and immobilization-free biosensing technique.