Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient approximate analytical methods for nonlinear fuzzy boundary value problem

This paper aims to solve the nonlinear two-point fuzzy boundary value problem (TPFBVP) using approximate analytical methods. Most fuzzy boundary value problems cannot be solved exactly or analytically. Even if the analytical solutions exist, they may be challenging to evaluate. Therefore, approximate analytical methods may be necessary to consider the solution. Hence, there is a need to formulate new, efficient, more accurate techniques. This is the focus of this study: two approximate analytical methods-homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and the variational iteration method (VIM) is proposed. Fuzzy set theory properties are presented to formulate these methods from crisp domain to fuzzy domain to find approximate solutions of nonlinear TPFBVP. The presented algorithms can express the solution as a convergent series form. A numerical comparison of the mean errors is made between the HPM and VIM. The results show that these methods are reliable and robust. However, the comparison reveals that VIM convergence is quicker and offers a swifter approach over HPM. Hence, VIM is considered a more efficient approach for nonlinear TPFBVPs.
A Case of Overlap Syndrome of Systemic Sclerosis and Cryoglobulinemic Vasculitis With Central Nervous System Involvement

Mixed cryoglobulinemic vasculitis (CV) is occasionally caused by autoimmune diseases including systemic sclerosis. Multiorgan involvement such as skin, kidney, and peripheral nerve involvement is common in mixed CV. However, central nervous system (CNS) involvement is extremely rare. Here, we report a case of overlap syndrome of limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis and mixed cryoglobulinemic vasculitis with CNS involvement. The neurologic deficits and systemic symptoms improved promptly after steroid and cyclophosphamide therapy.
Progress in e-learning: toward the knowledge based society

In this paper the results of some experiences made by using the infrastructure already realized with the PROTEO project, financed by both the Italian Government and the EU, are reported. More specifically the e-learning activities promoted and developed at the University of Bari are described and some recent ideas for the development of future e-learning activities in the direction of the knowledge based society are introduced.
A new methodology for the stability analysis of large-scale power electronics systems

A new methodology is proposed to investigate the large-signal stability of interconnected power electronics systems. The approach consists of decoupling the system into a source subsystem and a load subsystem, and stability of the entire system can be analyzed based on investigating the feedback loop formed by the interconnected source/load system. The proposed methodology requires two stages: 1) since the source and the load are unknown nonlinear subsystems, system identification, which consists of isolating each subsystem into a series combination of a linear part and a nonlinear part, must be performed; and 2) stability analysis of the interconnected system is conducted thereafter based on a developed stability criterion suitable for the nonlinear interconnected source-load model. Applicability of the methodology is verified through the stability analysis of a typical power electronics system.
Examining the Validity and Reliability of Measures for Individual-Level Constructs Related to Implementation of School-Based Physical Activity Approaches

Valid and reliable measures are important to understanding the implementation of physical activity approaches in schools. The study purpose is to examine the psychometric properties of measures of individual-level constructs (knowledge, attitudes, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, innovativeness, and support) in the context of implementing school-based physical activity approaches. We collected data from a sample of elementary school employees (administrators, classroom teachers, physical educators, and support staff) from an urban school district in southeast Texas. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models were used to examine structural validity. We also examined correlations between constructs to assess discriminant and convergent validity. Last, we used a CFA-based approach to examine scale reliability. The analytic sample consisted of 205 employees. CFA results for each individual measure revealed good-fitting models for most measures (χ2 (df) >0.05, RMSEA <0.08, CFI >0.90, TLI >0.90, SRMR≤0.07). A combined model that included all the measures also indicated good fit across indices: χ2(306) = 485, p <0.001; RMSEA = 0.05, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, SRMR = 0.07. All correlations between constructs were <0.70, and all but one construct (innovativeness) demonstrated moderate correlations with support for classroom-based physical activity approaches (>0.30). In addition, reliability point estimates were all >0.70. The measures tested in this study were found to have good reliability, as well as good structural, discriminant, and convergent validity. These measures are useful in efforts to better understand how individual-level constructs relate to implementation behaviors for physical activity approaches in schools.
Assessing the Performance of Deep Learning Algorithms for Short-Term Surface Water Quality Prediction

This study aimed to investigate the applicability of deep learning algorithms to (monthly) surface water quality forecasting. A comparison was made between the performance of an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and four deep learning models. All prediction algorithms, except for the ARIMA model working on a single variable, were tested with univariate inputs consisting of one of two dependent variables as well as multivariate inputs containing both dependent and independent variables. We found that deep learning models (6.31–18.78%, in terms of the mean absolute percentage error) showed better performance than the ARIMA model (27.32–404.54%) in univariate data sets, regardless of dependent variables. However, the accuracy of prediction was not improved for all dependent variables in the presence of other associated water quality variables. In addition, changes in the number of input variables, sliding window size (i.e., input and output time steps), and relevant variables (e.g., meteorological and discharge parameters) resulted in wide variation of the predictive accuracy of deep learning models, reaching as high as 377.97%. Therefore, a refined search identifying the optimal values on such influencing factors is recommended to achieve the best performance of any deep learning model in given multivariate data sets.
Approximate Solutions, Thermodynamic Properties and Expectation Values With the Hua Plus Modified Eckart (HPME) Potential

The approximate solutions of Schrodinger equation for the Hua plus modified Eckart (HPME) potential is obtained via the Formula method. The vibrational partition function and other thermodynamic properties were investigated. Using the Hellmann-Feynman theorem, the expectation values of r -2, T and p2 and their numerical values are also presented. Some cases of this potential are also studied. The results of our study are consistent with those in literature.
HFES 51st Annual Meeting: Assessing Safety Climate and Organizational Risk

Research conducted at the Navy Postgraduate School, over the past 10 years, has focused on key organizational factors that may influence the likelihood of an accident or organizational failure. The concept of “high-reliability-organizations”, originated by Dr. Karlene Roberts and her colleagues at UC Berkeley, California, and was used as a point of departure for understanding how different organizations manage the risk of accidents and other organizational failures. High-reliability organizations are those that are very successful at reducing the risks of operational hazards that typically underlie accidents and organizational disasters, such as the Challenger and Columbia Shuttle accidents. Included in the concept of high-reliability organizations are factors related to the safety culture of the organization. The author and his colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School and UC Berkeley have developed and validated a web-based safety climate assessment and feedback system now in use in Naval Aviation and in other aviation, aerospace, and medical applications. This paper reviews recent findings in the application of safety climate and culture assessments conducted in naval aviation and US hospitals.
The Source of the Enterprise Competitiveness: Theoretical Review with Four Viewpoints

In the era of economic globalization and knowledge economy, how can enterprises gradually catch up with and even surpass powerful competitors? How can leading enterprises maintain their market position and create sustainable competitive advantage? These two issues have always been a hot topic in the field of strategic management. The success or failure of enterprise management is determined by many factors, and competitiveness is the most important and essential factor. In the new environment, grasping the formation and evolution law of enterprise competitiveness and promoting the sustainable and healthy growth of enterprises is an important topic to be solved in the research of strategic management. On the source of enterprise competitiveness, the academic circles mainly focus on four factors: Resource-based view (RBV), Knowledge-based view (KBV), Capability-based view (CBV) and Institution-based view (IBV).
Incentive mechanism design for citizen reporting application using Stackelberg game

The growing utilization of smartphones equipped with various sensors to collect and analyze information around us highlights a paradigm called mobile crowdsensing. To motivate citizens’ participation in crowdsensing and compensate them for their resources, it is necessary to incentivize the participants for their sensing service. There are several studies that used the Stackelberg game to model the incentive mechanism, however, those studies did not include a budget constraint for limited budget case. Another challenge is to optimize crowdsourcer (government) profit in conducting crowdsensing under the limited budget then allocates the budget to several regional working units that are responsible for the specific city problems. We propose an incentive mechanism for mobile crowdsensing based on several identified incentive parameters using the Stackelberg game model and applied the MOOP (multi-objective optimization problem) to the incentive model in which the participant reputation is taken into account. The evaluation of the proposed incentive model is performed through simulations. The simulation indicated that the result appropriately corresponds to the theoretical properties of the model.
A Proposal for Improving Organic Group Certification Quantification of Internal Control Systems' Performance and Sample Size Determination

Organic certification, especially for smallholders, often uses group certification procedures. An internal control system ( ICS ) visits all farmers, and then the external certification body (CB) inspects a sample to assess the ICS ' performance. Harmonised methods for measuring the ICS ' reliability are missing so far. Here, we define criteria of " ICS performance", propose a new procedure for quantifying this performance and, based on this procedure, suggest that the sample size can be determined using classical statistical methods for survey sampling, instead of using the square root or a percentage of group size as in current practice.
Respirator studies for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Progress report, July 1, 1973--June 30, 1974

Respirator studies carried out in FY 1975 for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were concentrated in two major areas: (1) the development of respirator test equipment and methods to improve the means of evaluating the performance of respirators, (2) the testing of respirators to obtain quantitative data to permit recommendations to be made to upgrade respirator performance criteria. Major accomplishments included obtaining man-test results on several different respirators using an anthropometrically selected test panel, determination of respirator exhalation valve leakages under static and dynamic conditions, and determination of the effects of respirator strap tension on facepiece leakage.
A heuristic algorithm to combat outliers and multicollinearity in regression model analysis

As known, outliers and multicollinearity in the data set are among the important difficulties in regression models which badly affect the least-squares estimators. Under multicollinearity and outliers existence in the data set, the prediction performance of the least-squares regression method is decreased dramatically. Here, proposing an approximation for the condition number, we suggest a nonlinear mixed-integer programming model to simultaneously control inappropriate effects of the mentioned problems. The model can be effectively solved by popular metaheuristic algorithms. To shed light on importance of our optimization approach, we make some numerical experiments on a classic real data set as well as a simulated data set.
Stabilization of magnetic fluid with polydimethylsiloxane kills three birds with one stone

ABSTRACT The stability of a stabilized with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) magnetic fluid to alcohols of a saturated homologous series was investigated. We used alcohols with a linear molecular structure and their possible isomers. It was found that the solubility of the PDMS stabilized particles strongly depends on the molecular weight of the coagulant and, quite unexpectedly, on the degree of isomerization. The first tested coagulants, ethanol and acetone, did not mix with PDMS stabilized magnetic fluid. The next member of the homologous series, linear propanol, is the most effective coagulant that causes a sharp precipitation of particles. Meanwhile, with isopropanol, coagulation occurs very smoothly. The butanol isomers differ even more. Normal butanol causes the liquid to coagulate at a higher concentration than propanol, whereas tret-butanol mixes with PDMS stabilized magnetic fluid in any proportion. The last linear alcohol in the homologous series that can serve as a coagulant is hexanol-1. The next members of the homologous series do not mix with the PDMS stabilized magnetic fluid. This is typical only for linear molecules. For example, 2-ethylhexanol (isooctanol) perfectly dissolves PDMS stabilized particles. This property can be used to separate mixtures of isomers and linear molecules.
Distinguishing Between Isobaric Ions Using Microdroplet Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry

Isobaric ions having the same mass-to-charge ratio cannot be separately identified by mass spectrometry (MS) alone, but this limitation can be overcome using hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDX) in microdroplets. Because isobaric ions may contain a varied number of exchangeable sites and different types of functional groups, each one produces a unique MS spectral pattern after droplet spray HDX without the need for MS/MS experiments or introduction of ion mobility measurements. As an example of the power of this approach, isobaric ions in urinary metabolic profiles are identified and used to distinguish between healthy individuals and those having bladder cancer.
Integration of Distributed Generation for network loss minimization and voltage support using Particle Swarm Optimization

In this paper, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is employed to size and locate Distributed Generation (DG) in a distribution network to provide a more effective loss reduction and voltage support. Unlike most previous studies, DG nodes are modelled as generator (PV) nodes in this study. Three network scenarios are considered: a network with no generation but with reactive power compensation capacitors, the same network with the inclusion of a DG and the network operating with DG but no capacitive VAr compensation. Scenario one network is considered as the base case. For scenario two and three network, two cases are considered. The first involves the integration of one generator of optimal size and at an optimal location to minimise network losses. The second case considers the optimisation of the size of a single generator connected at the minimum voltage bus. The study is carried out on a 16-bus radial distribution network. The results show that DG is effective in minimizing network power loss and providing ancillary service of voltage support when operated to inject real power and regulate the node voltage to which it is connected. Results of the optimization process show that the simultaneous application of shunt capacitors and DG produced the best loss reduction and network voltage profile. (4 pages)
SESAR and the european ATM Master plan - Cooperation with the US/NextGen

• SESAR is the technical component of the Single European Sky II legislation and the European ATM Master Plan is the collaboratively plan for both R&D and deployment managed by the SESAR JU PPP. • As stakeholders we need to “harmonise challenges” and work together to achieve timely and globally endorsed ICAO provisions and agreed industry standards ready for deployment planning • (SARPS, Standards (Services and technology) /Spectrum, Business case assessments - “Best Efficiency/Equipped Best Served” etc) • We need globally harmonised regional deployment planning, interoperable airborne equipage and commitment for seamless service provision. We however need to recognise the fact that it is “not- one-size-fits-all “ neither “not-one-time fits-all” • All subject to iterative and coordinated validation and verification activities
Performance Comparison of Two Wind Turbine Generator Systems Having Two Types of Control Methods

The purpose of this paper is to gain a greater understanding of the performance of practical wind turbine generating systems with differing output power controllers and controlling means for wind turbine speed. Subjected wind turbines, both equipped with an asynchronous power generator, are located at two sites and are defined as wind turbine A and wind turbine B in this study, respectively. Their performance differences are examined by measuring wind speed and electric parameters. The study suggests that both wind turbines have a clear linkage between current and output power fluctuations. Comparison of the fluctuations to wind speed fluctuation, although they are triggered primarily by wind speed fluctuation, clearly indicates the specific behaviors inherent to the respective turbine control mechanisms.
Nitrogen isotope enrichment associated with skull shape variation in the Dwarf little fruit bat Rhinophylla pumilio

Intraspeciﬁc variation in phenotype and ecology within a population is an important component of eco-evolutionary dynamics, that inﬂuence species longevity, community structure and ecosystem function. We studied nitrogen enrichment variability in a population of the dwarf little fruit bat Rhinophylla pumilio in association to its variation in skull shape. In the studied population (Atlantic Forest in northern Espírito Santo, Brazil), R. pumilio has been recorded to feed not only on fruits, as in most of its range, but also nectar. So far, this has not been recorded anywhere else for this species. Our results have shown support for phenotypic specialisation within this population that facilitates a nectarivorous diet in some individuals, contributing to intra-populational variation in this local- ity. Combining geometric morphometrics and stable isotope analysis, it was possible to show that skulls with longer rostra and more procumbent incisors were associated with nitrogen enrichment in the range of δ 15 N levels observed in other nectarivorous species at the same locality. Because nectar is a low-protein food item, nectarivorous bats often incorporate other protein sources into their diet (like pollen and/or insects). In the case of R. pumilio , the use of nectar is likely opportunistic for those individuals with favourable phenotypes. However, there is no evidence so far that R. pumilio is able to digest pollen or eventually incorporate insects in the diet. The nitrogen enrich- ment observed can be caused by physiological stress due to a protein poor diet, causing a mixed incorporation of nitrogen from internal and external sources (from diet). This scenario could be an intermediate step in the transition to a more nectarivorous diet, and the pattern of within-population phenotype-ecology association might shed light into the early stages of ecological specialization in phytophagous bats.
Evaluation of On-Site Fuel Use and Emissions over the Duration of a Commercial Building Project

AbstractCommercial construction operations are heavy users of nonroad equipment and diesel engines. These engines are large contributors of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other engine-based pollutants and consume large quantities of diesel fuel. This paper presents a case study to identify construction activities that cause the most emissions and fuel use on a construction project and to determine when and where these occur. The paper links emissions and fuel use of construction activities with a project schedule to establish a temporal relationship. RSMeans was used to obtain equipment productivity. Equipment emission rates and fuel use rates were obtained from the EPA’s NONROAD Model. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of changes in scheduling, equipment size, and EPA engine tier on emissions and fuel use. Site construction activities proved to be the heaviest polluters and caused a significant spike in emissions early in the project. Further study is recommended to validate the tr.
Inferring the impact of past climate changes and hunting on the South American sea lion

Many pinniped species have experienced drastic demographic changes due to their interaction with humans. Most studies, however, have failed to detect recent bottlenecks in otariids from genetic data. The South American Sea Lion Otaria flavescens have a long history of population changes associated with interglacial expansion and hunting to almost extinction. This study aimed at investigating these different demographic fluctuations integrating population genetics and phylogeographic approaches.