Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A TRANSLATIONAL AND ROTATIONAL INVARIANT DESCRIPTOR FOR AUTOMATIC FOOTWEAR RETRIEVAL OF REAL CASES SHOE

Shoe marks found on the crime scene are invaluable for the identification of the culprit when no other piece of evidence is available. Thus semi-automatic and automatic systems have been recently proposed to find the make and model of the footwear that left the shoe marks. The systems proposed up to now have two main drawbacks, as they (i) are generally not based on rotation and translation invariant descriptio ns, and (ii) are tested on synthetic shoe marks, i.e. on shoeprin ts with added synthetic noise. Here we show the results of a translation and rotation invariant description based on th e Fourier transform properties: the test is made on both synthetic and real shoe marks and a comparison with algorithms proposed by others is presented.
Inflation, Financial Developments, and Wealth Distribution; by Wai-Yip Alex Ho and Chun-Yu Ho; IMF Working Paper WP/16/132; July 2016

We find that from 1995 to 2002 in China, the dispersion of wealth decreased, the moneywealth ratio increased for all wealth levels and the aggregate money-output ratio increased. We develop a two-asset dynamic general equilibrium model in which households face a portfolio adjustment cost and a borrowing constraint. We find that financial development lowers the dispersion of wealth by reducing the precautionary motive of households. In addition, tight monetary policies increase the value of money and thus increase the moneywealth ratio for all wealth levels and the aggregate money-output ratio. JEL Classification Numbers: D3, O1, O2
Human fingerpad under indentation I: static and dynamic force response

Fingerpad mechanics plays an important role in both the perception of object properties and control of contact conditions during manual exploration and manipulation. During manipulation of objects, the anatomical feature and mechanical behavior of the fingerpad influence contact conditions such as contact area and occurrence of slip. Thus, for a deeper understanding of tactile perception and manual control, the biomechanical behavior of fingerpad, particularly its force response to indentation, has been characterized. Results show that the fingerpads exhibit nonlinear and viscoelastic mechanical behavior. Also, relative magnitudes of the force response to various indentations and the dependence on static and dynamic aspects of the stimuli are identified.
Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication record in King ' s Research Portal

The Blackbox project has been collecting programming activity data from users of BlueJ (a novice-targeted Java development environment) for nearly five years. The resulting dataset of more than two terabytes of data has been made available to interested researchers from the outset. In this paper, we assess the impact of the Blackbox project: we perform a mapping study to assess eighteen publications which have made use of the Blackbox data, and we report on the advantages and difficulties experienced by researchers working with this data, collected via a survey. We find that Blackbox has enabled pieces of research which otherwise would not have been possible, but there remain technical challenges in the analysis. Some of these – but not all – relate to the scale of the data. We provide suggestions for the future use of Blackbox, and reflections on the role of such data collection projects in programming research.
Image Registration and Optimization in the Virtual Slaughterhouse

This thesis presents the development and application of algorithms for the analysis of pig carcasses. Focus is on the simulation and quality estimation of meat products produced in a Danish slaughterhouse. Computed Tomography scans of pig carcasses provide the data used in the application. Image analysis is applied in order to imitate some of the cutting processes found in a slaughterhouse but also to give a quantitative measure of the composition of each carcass. The basis of the algorithms is non-linear image registration. This method finds the anatomical correspondence between a reference carcass and a template carcass. By iteratively comparing the transformed template with the reference a resulting dense deformation field is found. Propagating a set of landmarks from the reference coordinate system onto the template enables the simulation of slaughtering processes. Non-invasively estimating the quality of the slaughtering products provides a very valuable tool for use in the slaughterhouse in the future.
1 Sector Specific Foreign Direct Investment : A Database

Despite the growing importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the global economy, there remains a paucity of data that impedes the much needed research on FDI. There is a great need for this data, particularly as researchers and policy makers increase their focus on services. This paper provides a new database of bilateral FDI stocks and flows data for 57 sectors and 113 countries. Prior attempts have been made to construct a similar database, and this paper seeks to augment these results in several ways. Several country-specific and region specific datasets including the data from the U.S. BEA, ASEAN and the European Commission are brought to bear. Missing values are computed via coefficients obtained from the estimation of sector specific gravity based equations. Particular attention is paid to differences between developed and emerging countries that have not until now been treated in great detail; these will become increasingly important as those countries attract more FDI. Finally, an attempt is made to distinguish between drivers of services FDI and drivers of manufacturing FDI. 1 Correspondence: tani.fukui@usitc.gov. This paper is not meant to represent in any way the views of the U.S. International Trade Commission or any of its individual Commissioners.
Quasicrystal Alloy

Characterisation on a series of bulk Al65Cu20Fe15 quasicrystal alloy synthesised via in-situ induction casting under argon (Ar) enriched atmosphere and standard room ambient is the focal point of this research. The significance of atmospheric inertness in the course of induction casting process as well as the impacts of subsequent heat treatment at 650°C, 750°C and 850°C on the mechanical properties of Al65Cu20Fe15 quasicrystal alloy were investigated. The Al65Cu20Fe15 quasicrystal alloy samples produced by induction casting under critically controlled inert environment and standard room ambient as well as subjected to posterior annealing process were inspected in terms of their surface hardness as well as compressive strength. Vickers hardness test was performed in accordance to ISO 6507-1:1997, while compression test was conducted according to ISO 13314:2011 and ASTM E 9-89a (2000). Research findings inferred that the employment of argon (Ar) gas during on-site induction casting altered the pore size, composition, indentation hardness and the fracture mechanisms of Al65Cu20Fe15 quasicrystal alloy.
Martins CDK 5 RAP 2 function during Zebrafish neurogenesis

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade de Coimbra para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Farmacologia Aplicada. O trabalho foi realizado sob a orientação científica da Investigadora Doutora Paula Alexandre (Institue of Child Health – University College London) e supervisão da Professora Doutora Cláudia Margarida Gonçalves Cavadas (Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Coimbra). Setembro 2014
WP / 16 / 215 Tuning in RBC Growth Spectra by

For US postwar data, the paper explains central consumption, labor, investment and output correlations and volatilities along with output growth persistence by including a human capital investment sector and a variable physical capital utilization rate. Strong internal "amplication" results from an economy-wide productivity shock across goods and human capital investment sectors that has variances 10,000 fold smaller than in the standard RBC TFP shock. Simulated moments are compared to data moments for the business cycle, the low frequency and the Medium Cycle frequency, as well as the high frequency. A metric is provided to gauge that the results have an average of 46% deviation of simulated moments from data moments, for a broad array of targets across all windows. Within this array, key correlations have only a 15% deviation in the business cycle window, and growth persistence only an 8% deviation in the low frequency, which indicates good "propagation". Countercyclic human capital investment time and procyclic physical capital capacity utilization rates are also found as in data. JEL Classification Numbers: E13, E32, F10, 041.
The Impact of Quality Management Purchasing Practices on Purchasing Performance in Transitional Economies

This study examines the nature of relationships between quality management practices in purchasing and purchasing-related organisational performance within ISO 9001:2008 environment in transitional economies. The study was based on managers’ responses from 90 ISO 9001:2008 certified large organisations from Serbia. The findings show that quality management practices in purchasing positively affect purchasing performance. Further, purchasing performance is found to be a significant mediator between quality management practices and time-based performance. However, despite the overall good predictive model power, the explained variance on timebased performance is quite low. Thus, the effects on time-based performance are arguable. PLS-SEM Importance-performance analysis reveals that purchasing performance, cross-functional coordination and personnel management have relatively high performance, while benchmarking has the lowest value of the performance index. Consequently, the implementation of quality management practices in purchasing along with ISO 9001:2008 might be a part of a good strategic choice for transitional organisations to overcome troublesome transitional times. Still, the discrepancies between this study and the results from developed economies yield potential improvement areas on how organisations in transitional economies should manage purchasing practices.
Self-efficacy towards Career Satisfaction among Female Engineers

This conceptual paper reviews the influence of self-efficacy towards career satisfaction among female engineers. It reviews the basis from Bandura (1977)’s social cognitive theory – that, with self-efficacy, one can achieve what one sets out to do. Self-efficacy has the capability to influence an individual’s belief regarding his or her ability to successfully complete tasks necessary to making career decisions. In the case of female engineers, working in a male-dominated profession, self-efficacy plays an important role on female’s career satisfaction. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to understand the role of self-efficacy on female employees’ career satisfaction.
An inverse approach in obtaining shape functions for a superconvergent thin plate element

This article presents an inverse approach to provide shape functions associate with a superconvergent thin plate element formulation. In the proposed approach, candidates for shape functions of an element are selected using a series of functions such as, trigonometric series, simple and hierarchical polynomials or a combination of them. Next, one imposes all the physical, geometrical, compatibility and completeness constraints associated with the concerned element on these function. In the final stage, the unknown parameters of the shape functions are determined by minimizing the discrimination errors in the element formulation. The proposed method is employed to determine the shape functions associate with the superconvergent plate element formulation. The accuracy of the obtained formulation is examined against previously developed plate models using several numerical examples. These comparisons indicate the developed model provides more accurate results both in local and global coordinates system.
Loughborough University Institutional Repository Towards arresting reinforced concrete corrosion-a review

This work reviews developments in the understanding of chloride induced corrosion of steel in concrete from both a kinetic and thermodynamic perspective. Corrosion damage is at least in part attributed to the production of acid at sites of corrosion initiation. Solid phase inhibitors provide a reservoir of hydroxyl ions to inhibit damage. Pit re-alkalisation is identified as an important protective effect in electrochemical treatments used to arrest corrosion. A process like pit re-alkalisation is achieved more easily by impressing current from sacrificial anodes using a power supply which may then be followed by low maintenance galvanic protection to prevent local acidification. Methods for monitoring the steel corrosion rate in electrochemically treated reinforced concrete have been developed and used to assess corrosion risk. Some of these concepts have been adopted in the recent international standard on cathodic protection, ISO 12696:2016, some of the amendments of which are considered in the work presented here.
Masters Thesis: Model Predictive Control Architecture Comparison for a Power Scheduling Electric Vehicle Aggregator

Energy flexibility is the ability to change power production or consumption over time. It is required for a power system to function properly, to balance supply and demand. Currently, the largest providers of energy flexibility in the Netherlands can be found on the supply side and consist mainly out of fossil fueled power plants. As these are set to phase out in the near future and be replaced by mainly variable renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, the necessity for energy flexibility on the demand side is set to be increased. Therefore, a new role is expected to arise in the power system, namely that of the aggregator. Aggregators will combine small scale energy flexibility providers and provide this aggregated energy flexibility to the power system. In this MSc thesis, the focus lies with a power scheduling Electric Vehicle (EV) aggregator. Considering that the number of EVs will increase in the near future, the lack of control over charging a large fleet of EVs may result in an overloaded distribution grid. The charging behavior of a large fleet of EVs, connected in a Vehicle to Grid (V2G) setting, is formalized as a Model Predictive Control (MPC) optimization problem. Allowing power consumption to be shifted within a finite prediction horizon. To optimally valorize the energy flexibility of the fleet and respect the limits of the distribution grid, the control problem is extended to include spatial information and network constraints. The goal is to develop multiple control algorithms to solve this control problem using distributed optimization. The contributions of the work in this MSc thesis are threefold. First, the ability to optimally valorize the energy flexibility is increased by including spatial information in the distribution grid, represented as subsets of the fleet, such that congestion management services can be provided. Secondly, a parallel implementation of a coordinated distributed MPC is developed using resource allocation with feasible iterations for binary on/off input systems. Thirdly, a hierarchical MPC algorithm is developed using virtual batteries to represent the aggregated behavior of a fleet of EVs, for which new tight constraints are derived to better represent the EV fleet. To conclude, numerical experiments are performed in closed loop to study the behavior of the developed algorithms with respect to a centralized benchmark. The experiments show that for a growing EV fleet, the hierarchical algorithm remains at the same approximate error with respect to the benchmark. This, while the distributed algorithm approaches the benchmark very well, with limited communication and in relatively short computation times with respect to the benchmark. For a growing number of subsets using the same amount of EVs, the Master of Science Thesis B.M. Kaas
The 2 nd International Conference on Emerging Data and Industry 4 . 0 ( EDI 40 ) April 29-May 2 , 2019 , Leuven , Belgium Towards Distributed IoT / Cloud based Fault Detection and Maintenance in Industrial Automation 1

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) automation should be based on a framework that guarantees flexible and energy efficient monitoring and control, without the need for frequent human intervention. The ability to analyse and process machine faults in real time is vital, however it poses many technical difficulties and challenges, mainly for industrial application environments. In our paper, we propose a novel, energy efficient, IoT and Cloud based decentralised framework for real time machine condition monitoring (MCM) and fault prediction, where computational demanding tasks are distributed across fog nodes and decision fusion rules are set and controlled by the Cloud. In particular, data acquisition phase is done by sensors distributed across machines, feature extraction and health condition classification is done by fog nodes, after receiving data and instructions as processed by the Cloud node. Our framework is based on collaboration and information flow among IoT, Fog and Cloud layers. To this purpose, we formulate a global consensus cross layer optimisation problem, concerning industrial healthy status monitoring, and we solve it in a distributed manner by applying asynchronous altering direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm. c © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.
Effect of medium type, cytokinin kind and sodium chloride stress on in vitro callus, shoot formation and composition of volatile oil of three cultivars of rosemary plant

Three rosemary cultivars which grown under Egyptian conditions, Rosmarinus officinalis L. (CV.1), R. officinalis L. Pyramidalis "Upright Rosemary" (CV.2) and R. officinalis L. Angustifolius "Pine scented" (CV.3) were evaluated morphologically by measuring different attributes. It was found that the longest leaf and the highest no of axilary shoots were recorded for CV.2 then CV.1 followed by CV.3 while CV.3 had the highest number of leaves followed by CV.2 then CV.1. To study the effect of medium type and cytokine, sterilized leaf explants of each cultivar were planted on two types of medium Murashige and Skoog, 1962 (MS) including vitamins and McCown Woody plant medium 1980 (WPM), both media were supplemented with one kind of cytokinen (CPPU or TDZ) at concentration (1mg/l) to examine their effect on callus and shoot formation for each cultivar. It was found that, the highest mean of callus weight was 9.02g/explant followed by 8.02 g/explant for CV.2 and CV.1, respectively recoded with MS medium supplemented with 1mg/l CPPU while, The highest mean No. of shoot was 2.40 shoots/explant then 1.60 shoots/explant produced from WPM+1mg/l CPPU for CV.1 then CV2. Concerning CV.3 the highest mean of callus weight was 2.52g/explant resulted from WPM+1 mg/l CPPU while the highest mean No. of formed shoots was 11.00 shoots/explant resulted from the same combination of medium and PGR. To determine the effect sodium chloride NaCl stress on callus induction, shoot formation and volatile oil composition of callus for each rosemary cultivar sterilized leaves explants of each cultivar were planted on MS medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/l CPPU for all treatments and 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000,1200, 1400 μM/l of NaCl. The results indicated that, the highest mean of callus weight was detected at 1000 μM/l for both CV.1 and CV.2 as they gave 8.46 g/explant and 8.55g/explants, respectively, while CV.3 showed highest weight 1.04 g/explant at 200 μM/l. The highest mean No. of shoots formed under stress was obtained from CV.1 was (8.33 shoots/explant) at concentration of 400 μM/l, while CV.2 had 4.00 shoots/explant were obtained from addition of 200 and 800 μM/l of NaCl to the medium. However,CV.3 recorded the highest mean No. of formed shoots 21.76 shoots/explant at 600 μM/l of NaCl. The major component of volatile oil formed in callus was Bornyl acetate as 33.38%, 28.31% and 15.11% for CV.1, CV.3 and CV.2, respectively followed by . (-)-α-Pinene by 17.47% and16.55% for CV.1 and CV.3, respectively while CV.2 didn’t contained(-)-α-Pinene . Cineole also was formed in callus of each three cultivars as CV.1 had 13.72% then CV.3 had 14.16% followed by CV.2 which had it at 10.92%.
On resonances in the anomalous sector of quantum chromodynamics

The independent operator basis of the most important resonances in the so-called odd-intrinsic parity sector was formulated in [1]. Using these operators we can construct Lagrangians of corresponding Feynman diagrams, that allow us to describe and understand several interaction processes. In the mentioned article were studied Green functions for 〈V V P 〉 and 〈V AS〉 correlators including their phenomenological aspects. This thesis should establish the Feynman rules for not so much known Green functions corresponding to 〈AAP 〉, 〈V V A〉 and 〈AAA〉 correlators. Because not enough theoretical or experimental attention has been paid to these correlators, we will not be able to perform phenomenological study. But we can return to this point in the future during master degree studies.
2 The functions of MNPs in various biosensor types 2 . 1 Electrochemical nanobiosensors

The aim of this review is to cover advances in noble metal nanoparticle (MNP)-based biosensors and to outline the principles and main functions of MNPs in different classes of biosensors according to the transduction methods employed. The important biorecognition elements are enzymes, antibodies, aptamers, DNA sequences, and whole cells. The main readouts are electrochemical (amperometric and voltametric), optical (surface plasmon resonance, colorimetric, chemiluminescence, photoelectrochemical, etc.) and piezoelectric. MNPs have received attention for applications in biosensing due to their fascinating properties. These properties include a large surface area that enhances biorecognizers and receptor immobilization, good ability for reaction catalysis and electron transfer, and good biocompatibility. MNPs can be used alone and in combination with other classes of nanostructures. MNP-based sensors can lead to significant signal amplification, higher sensitivity, and great improvements in the detection and quantification of biomolecules and different ions. Some recent examples of biomolecular sensors using MNPs are given, and the effects of structure, shape, and other physical properties of noble MNPs and nanohybrids in biosensor performance are discussed.
Performance Enhancement of MIMO-MC-CDMA System by using Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes

Modern wireless communication systems with high data rates and high spectral efficiency has dramatically increased. In modern wireless communication systems CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is a multiple access scheme and one of the channelization protocol which is ideally suited for mobile network. MIMO is a promising technique beyond 3G and 4G technologies. OFDM is a new paradigm in wireless communications. The combination of CDMA with OFDM system provides better performance comparing to existing techniques.