Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE PRODUCTS:A REVIEW

With the dramatic increase in sales based on digital media, much conventional wisdom concerning supply chains and marketing seems to be under challenge. Terms arise and shift meaning, without a clear framework within which we can build theories and understanding. This paper uses the term digital experience product for the class of items in which we are interested. It justifies this by examining all three aspects of such items. They are digital because that is how they are realized. They are experience products because their value is in the experience they provide. They are products, since they can be exchanged as items which are then owned, or licensed, or used/ experienced by a different person(s). Having reviewed these underlying concepts, a full and unambiguous definition is achieved and it is possible to define a direction for future research. The paper concludes with a look forward to where this will take researchers.
Sticky Information:

This paper develops and analyzes a general-equilibrium model with sticky information. The only rigidity in goods, labor, and financial markets is that agents are inattentive, sporadically updating their information sets, when setting prices, wages, and consumption. After presenting the ingredients of such a model, the paper develops an algorithm to solve this class of models and uses it to study the model's dynamic properties. It then estimates the parameters of the model using U.S. data on five key macroeconomic time series. It finds that information stickiness is present in all markets, and is especially pronounced for consumers and workers. Variance decompositions show that monetary policy and aggregate demand shocks account for most of the variance of inflation, output, and hours. (JEL: E30, E10)
Creating Islamic art with interactive geometry software

The production of images, in particular figurative art is discouraged in Islam on the basis that it could lead to idolatry. For the Muslims there is no divinity other than the Almighty God and this means that no any form of creations can be projected to His attributes. In this way, muslim artists express their works in creating patterns of complex geometric designs as well as intricate patterns of vegetative ornament. These masterpieces have covered the surfaces of buildings especially mosques, palaces and other public places in replace to human figures as established in the non-Muslim culture. From the mathematical perspective, the distinctive Islamic art has cleverly combined the use of common geometric shapes such as circles, points and lines together with some geometric principles such as symmetry, similarity and transformation, namely translation, rotation, reflection and scaling. With the present software technology, the creation of this art can be made easier using interactive geometry software (IGS) which is also known as dynamic geometry software (DGS). IGS are computer programs which allow their users to interactively create, manipulate and explore geometric constructions using points, lines, circles and geometric principles. Activities involving students to create Islamic art with IGS will help them to appreciate mathematics as an art that is enjoyable and fun besides realizing that its development is greatly influenced by values and cultures. This paper will describe how some basic designs can be constructed using KDE interactive geometry (KIG) which is available as free open source software (FOSS). Some samples of creative students' work will also be shared.
Geohydrologic and Water-Quality Characterization of a Fractured-Bedrock Test Hole in an Area of Marcellus Shale Gas Development, Bradford County, Pennsylvania

9 Introduction 11 Study Site And Test Hole 11 Methods 11 Core 12 Geophysical Logs 13 Water-Quality Samples 17 Geohydrologic And Water-Quality Characterization Of The Gleason Test Hole 19 Spatial Trajectory Of The Test Hole 19 Stratigraphy And Lithology 19 Bedding 22 Fractures 22 Water-Bearing Zones 24 Water Quality 31 Specific Conductance, Dissolved Solids, And Major Ions 31 Trace Constituents And Radiochemicals 34 Organic Constituents And Nutrients 36 Gases And Stable Isotopes 37 Composition Of Gas Extracted From Core 37 Concentrations Of Dissolved Gas And Stable Isotopes In Water 39 Insights Into Active And Restricted Groundwater Flow 41 Summary 43 Acknowledgments 45
The use of innovative technologies to facilitate rapid repair of concrete pavements: a case study for South Africa

Increasing traffic volumes and a travelling public that is becoming more and more environmentally conscious but intolerant to traffic delays, are common issues facing the authorities in urban areas across the world. This results in great pressure on engineers to develop more innovative ideas for long lasting pavement repairs. The situation in South Africa is no different albeit on a smaller scale relative to countries like the United States. Repair on the urban roads in Gauteng is becoming increasing challenging especially when no capacity upgrade has been undertaken for a number of years. This is particularly true for the Ben Schoeman freeway which is the main link between Johannesburg and Pretoria. This paper discusses some of the latest progress made in concrete technology as a result of these challenges. It focuses on the implementation of these technologies on the Ben Schoeman freeway from design to construction. Many of the concrete pavements in South Africa are nearing the end of their design lives and implementing new repair methods as well as sharing the good and bad experiences amongst practitioners, contractors and the client is becoming increasingly important if not a must.
Store and Haul: Improving Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Connectivity through Repeated Controlled Flooding

This work investigates the benefits and drawbacks of repeating controlled flooding at different intervals in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) to overcome episodic connectivity. Specifically, the thesis examines the efficiencies in repeating transmissions by quantifying the packet delivery ratio (PDR) and recording the resulting delays in different types of MANET scenarios. These scenarios mainly focus on partitions within the simulated networks by varying node density and mobility. The nodes store transmitted data and haul it across the MANET in the hope that it will come in range of a node that leads to the destination. A customized version of the Network Simulator 2 (ns-2) is used to create the simulations. A qualitative analysis follows and shows the cost and benefits of increased transmissions at varied time intervals.
Behavioural Correlates of Neutering Male Dogs -a Question of Breed?

Castration of dogs is often conducted as a preventive measure against diseases and undesirable behaviour. While female dogs are preferably neutered for medical reasons, owners of male dogs hope for an improvement in behavior. Although there is a lack of scientific knowledge on this subject, neutering is often conducted to get a more trainable and less aggressive dog. The aim of this study is to examine castration from an ethological perspective and to reveal possible behavioural changes after castration related to breed. An online study was conducted consisting of two different questionnaires about the dog’s personality. A total of 242 dog owners participated in the study concerning specific behaviour problems (n = 130 intact and 112 neutered males). Another 211 owners of males (n = 115 intact, 96 neutered) completed the questionnaire about personality traits (dog sociability, trainability, emotional stability and extraversion) based on Turcsán et al. 2011. Four breed categories were formed following Parker et al. (2017): shepherds, retrievers, terriers, and hunting Dogs. Our study reveals that intact males are bolder than neutered males. Intact males have lower aggression scores than neutered ones. Castrated males show significantly more panic behavior (multinomial logistic Regression, p = 0.04). Intact shepherds are bolder than neutered ones (Mann-Whiney-U-Test: p = 0.03) and intact terriers are bolder than neutered terriers (Mann-Whitney-U = Test: p = 0.04). Intact terriers scored lower for aggression than neutered ones. With these results and the data of previous studies, we question castration to modify behavior, as a measure for reproductive control and as a preventive measure against diseases.
El papel de las TIC en el entorno organizacional de las Pymes (The Role of ICT in the SMEs Organizational Environment)

<b>Spanish Abstract:</b> Cada vez son más evidentes las ventajas al adoptar Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC) en las organizaciones, sin embargo las pequeñas empresas no están realizando una adopción comprometida de estas, debido a factores como la carencia de una cultura organizacional que incluya su uso, así como la escasez de recursos financieros, humanos y tecnológicos en las Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas (PYMES). Atendiendo esta necesidad, este artículo busca identificar la utilidad de las herramientas TIC como apoyo a los procesos organizacionales y productivos en el entorno empresarial de las PYMES. Como metodología se plantea una revisión y análisis de fuentes secundarias de literatura, que permitan la identificación de evidencias existentes y vacíos actuales de investigaciones relativas a la temática. <br><br>Entre los resultados obtenidos se encuentra la clasificación funcional de las TIC, los factores que influyen en la decisión de adopción, la descripción de las etapas de implementación, así como los beneficios operativos y estratégicos que brinda su uso. Se concluye, que la adopción de TIC en las PYMES permite mejorar la asignación de los recursos organizacionales, generar ventajas competitivas, liberar recursos orientados a labores operativas y fomentar ambientes colaborativos, condiciones que permiten responder con mayor rapidez a las dinámicas del mercado y del entorno. <br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> Each time are evident advantages in adopting Information Technology and Communication (ICT) in organizations, but small businesses are not making an adoption commitment from these, due to factors such as deficiency of an organizational culture that includes their use and limited financial, human and technological resources in SMEs. Considering this requirement, this article attempts to identify the utility of ICT tools to support organizational processes and productive in the business environment for SMEs. As methodology presents a review and analysis of secondary sources of literature that allow the identification of existing evidence and current research gaps related to the theme. <br><br>Among the results obtained is the functional classification of ICT, the factors influencing the adoption decision, the description of the stages of ICT implementation, and operational and strategic benefits provided by their use. It is concluded that the adoption of ICT by SMEs allows to optimize the allocation of organizational resources, competitive advantages, release resources oriented to operational tasks, promoting collaborative environments, conditions that allow respond more quickly to market dynamics and the environment.
The effectiveness of knowledge sharing and collaboration in creating high performance work teams

The purpose of this study is to analyze the feedback and data extracted from employees of the supply chain organization of an aerospace company, in developing a plan or model to encourage knowledge sharing among employees to create high performance work teams. This study also determines the level of influence the plan or model will have on employee behavior and morale. The company’s recent survey results indicated low employee morale. While various types of recognition are in place in the supply chain organization, as well as Employee Involvement/Engagement team based business initiatives to capture process improvements, the problem is that there is no formal implementation program to encourage knowledge sharing/transfer among the employees. A survey was given to 125 current employees of the supply chain organization. The participants were invited to respond to a validated survey instrument intended to answer four research questions. A total of 114 employees (107 individual contributors and 7 managers) responded and completed the survey. The four research questions measured the effectiveness of leaders in promoting knowledge sharing, what influence if any, would a specific company plan or model to promote knowledge sharing have on the morale and behavior of its employees, what do respondents perceive are the barriers to creating a culture of knowledge sharing, and how are those perceptions related to the demographics of the respondents. This was a quantitative study in nature, utilizing descriptive statistics to analyze the data derived from the knowledge sharing survey. Study findings revealed that participants perceived their leaders as being supportive in knowledge sharing and open to new ideas. The findings also indicated that a specific
LEARNING ANALYTICS TO EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT FAILURE PREVENTION

Open Online Courses can serve different purposes: in the case of Orient@mente at the University of Torino, they aim at facilitating the transition from secondary to tertiary education with automatic evaluation tests that students can try in order to understand their capabilities in - and their attitude towards - certain disciplines, and with remedial courses to fill the gaps in their knowledge. The university strategy of Orient@mente first started in 2014 and, after six years of deployment of the online platform, it has collected many data from students that were interested in starting a university course. The natural comparison and correlation analysis juxtapose the academic results of students who practice self-assessment in Orient@mente with the other university students. The measurable that we considered in this comparison is the average number of ECTS acquired during the first year, since this is a number that is considered for the university evaluation system - stakeholders in particular check the number of students who obtain more than 40 first-year ECTS. According to specific rules, we put together dataset from different origins, the platform logs, and users with the university record system. The results of this analysis, presented in this work, confirm the positive impact of Orient@mente on students, with statistical significance.
Design Issues of Reserved Delivery Subnetworks, Doctoral Dissertation, May 2006

The lack of per-flow bandwidth reservation in today's Internet limits the quality of service that an information service provider can provide. This dissertation introduces the reserved delivery subnetwork (RDS), a mechanism that provides consistent quality of service by implementing aggregate bandwidth reservation. A number of design and deployment issues of RDSs are studied. First, the configuration problem of a single-server RDS is formulated as a minimum concave cost network flow problem, which properly reflects the economy of bandwidth aggregation, but is also an NP-hard problem. To make the RDS configuration problem tractable, an efficient approximation heuristic, largest demands first (LDF), is presented and studied. In addition, performance improvements with local search heuristic is investigated. A traditional negative cycle reduction and a new negative bicycle reduction algorithms are applied and evaluated. The study of RDS configuration problems is then extended to multi-server RDSs. The configuration problem can be similarly formulated as the single-server RDS configuration problem; however, the major challenge of multi-server RDS configuration is the optimal server locations. A number of server placement algorithms are Type of Report: Other Department of Computer Science & Engineering Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1045 St. Louis, MO 63130 ph: (314) 935-6160 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY THE HENRY EDWIN SEVER GRADUATE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DESIGN ISSUES OF RESERVED DELIVERY SUBNETWORKS by Ruibiao Qiu Prepared under the direction of Professor Jonathan S. Turne r A dissertation presented to the Henry Edwin Sever Graduate S chool of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF SCIENCE May 2006 Saint Louis, Missouri WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY THE HENRY EDWIN SEVER GRADUATE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Stirling engine systems for small and micro combined heat and power (CHP) applications

Abstract: Stirling engines have for many years been considered as the most promising technology for micro-CHP applications. As external combustion engines permitting close control of the combustion process, their characteristics of low emissions, high efficiency, reliability, extended service intervals, low noise and vibration levels are all well suited to the demands of micro-CHP in individual homes. This chapter describes the fundamentals of the Stirling cycle and explains how the technology meets the needs of, primarily, existing homes with reference to leading Stirling engine products either commercially available or under development and provides a view on future developments.
Adaptive Digital Beam-Forming Algorithm for High-Resolution Wide-Swath Synthetic Aperture Radar

Intensive research is currently ongoing in the field of Smart Multi-Aperture Radar Techniques (SMART) for high-resolution wide-swath Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging. This work investigates the possibility of applying direction of arrival estimation methods to spaceborne SMART SAR systems, that employ receive beam steering. A novel algorithm based on the actual spatial distribution of the received signal power is analyzed by Monte Carlo simulation versus the main system parameters. Its performance is compared with that of the conventional Scan-On-Receive approach. The Cramer Rao Lower Bound is also reported as a benchmark on the achieved performance.
Capacitive sensor technology for polyethylene pipe fault detection

Capacitive Sensor Technology For Polyethylene Pipe Fault Detection Travis W. Kirby This work develops a Finite Element Analysis simulation to determine if capacitive sensors can be used to detect defects in polyethylene gas distribution pipes. Currently, there is no in ground detection system to find the defect. Catastrophic results can occur if gas leaks are present and ignite. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software will be used to simulate how different shapes and sizes of capacitive sensors affect the electric field, which affect capacitance when the dielectric of a material changes. An optimal electrode size and shape was chosen from these simulations, built, and tested at the Battelle Pipeline Safety Research & Development Program. The sensor was run through multiple tests on a thirteen foot long, six inch diameter polyethylene pipe with a half inch wall thickness where random defects were placed in the pipe. Upon completion of the test, the data was analyzed, and it determined that the capacitive sensor detected all known defects in the polyethylene pipe.
Tomography imaging based on plastic optical fibre

Abstract of thesis submitted by Nurgiyatna Nurgiyatna for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) entitled ? Tomography Imaging Based on Plastic Optical Fibre? , January 2013.Plastic optical fibres (POF) can be made sensitive to various parameters. Therefore, a successful implementation of tomographic imaging based on POF sensors will open the way to develop imagers for various parameters utilising this inexpensive sensor material. The work reported in this thesis is aiming to implement real time tomographic imaging based on the POF sensor. As the system uses light (photons) guided along the sensor to capture the information and deliver a signal at the periphery of the sensor, this technique is referred to as Photonic Guided Path Tomography (PGPT). As an initial stage of the work, we perform systematic testing of the sensitivity of POF transmission to bending. The results confirm that grooving can enhance this sensitivity of the POF sensor. They also provide an empirical proof of the anticipated changes in transmission loss by positive and negative bending for grooved POF (opening and closing of grooves respectively). We show that small positive bending increases the power loss, while for negative bending the power loss experiences a minimum, corresponding to the best achievable waveguiding recovery because of the closing of grooves. Beyond certain deformation, the sensitivity of the POF sensor is dominated by losses in the un-grooved regions. A bending test for the mechanical integrity of grooved POFs shows that repetitive bending to a small radius results in a quick deterioration depending on the depth of the groove. However for bending radii more than 20mm and groove depths up to 0.3mm, the lifetime of the POF sensor is still acceptable for many targeted sensor application.While it is clear that the grooved POF is more sensitive to small bending compared to the un-grooved POF, the latter offers uncompromised mechanical integrity and is more desirable when the highest possible sensitivity is not a priority. Therefore, in the final stage of the work, both grooved and un-grooved POF are considered as candidates for developing the tomographic imaging modality. Further detail is considered in view of the targeted deliverable, a real PGPT system for footstep imaging, based on POF sensors. This has been successfully achieved by designing, integrating and testing two different PGPT systems: one based on grooved POF with sensor head size of 0.9m x 0.9m incorporating a multiplexed photodetector and another based on un-grooved POF with sensor head size of 2m x 1m, incorporating independent POF sensors. Both are capable of performing the real time imaging task as well as storing the numerical data for alternative processing. The image reconstruction is by applying a median-filtered Landweber method to solve the inverse tomography problem. The frame rate achieved is 2Hz and 1Hz with spatial resolution estimated as 10cm and 3cm for the first and second system respectively
Development of a Far Infrared Vehicle Sensor

Our far infrared vehicle sensor system is a novel vehicle detector that detects vehicles based on temperature differences. Consuming less electrical power, it can be powered by a solar cell battery. It can detect vehicles from oblique directions, and therefore it can be mounted on a shorter mounting arm and is more aesthetically acceptable. Through a series of field tests at all weather, we have demonstrated that our far infrared vehicle sensor system is comparable with conventional vehicle detectors in terms of vehicle sensing performance and is powered without problem by a solar cell battery.
Adaptive Positive Position Feedback Control of Flexible Aircraft Structures Using Piezoelectric Actuators

Abstract : Buffet Adaptively Managed Fin (BAMF) focused on vibrations due to the interaction of aerodynamic forces with aircraft structure. Past failures of F-16 ventral ns due to vibrations provided grounds for control research. The n used had piezoelectric patches as collocated sensors/actuators. A custom ampli er and transformer were restructured into a system that could safely and reliably run, and adaptive software was created to address issues of system plant changes. Generating a PSD from the n sensors, the highest peaks were assumed to represent the low damped vibration modes. A PPF controller for each mode was designed and control signals were sent to the n actuators. Limited data were collected in a wind tunnel behind a custom system that caused bu et by varying vortex strength/shedding frequencies from pods upstream of the n. While minimal testing was accomplished to optimize gains, the system showed signi cant PSD peak reductions for the rst three modes of the n up to -14.9, -15.3, and -16.4 dB, respectively. The system maintained stability and e ective control even when both sensor input and controller output were saturated.