Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AHTD and MBTC

Alkali-silica reaction (ASR) is an expansive reaction between the alkalis in the cement and reactive silica in the aggregates. AHTD has witnessed the detrimental effects of ASR in the I-440 bridge substructure over the AR River in East Little Rock and is now witnessing the deterioration of the barrier wall along I-49 in Northwest Arkansas. The proposed research program identified reactive aggregates in AR, investigated measures to prevent ASR, and reviewed methods to mitigate ASR damage. Standard laboratory tests were conducted on local aggregates, cements, and fly ashes. The laboratory testing revealed that Arkansas River sand from Van Buren, Arkansas is potentially deleteriously reactive when used in combination with high alkali (>0.6% Na2Oe) cements. The test results confirm that Van Buren sand can cause ASR deterioration in concrete, and that care should be taken to use cements with lower alkalis. Alternatively, a cement replacement greater than 30% with Class C fly ash can prevent ASR. The Arkansas River sand is safe for use in concrete so long as these recommendations are followed. Sections of the barrier wall were treated with commercially available products, which reduce the relative humidity (RH) of the concrete and slow the ASR process. The barrier wall monitoring results indicate that silane treatments beneficially reduced expansion in sections of all deterioration levels. Finally, the Potential for Further Expansion (PFE) and field testing indicate that freezing and thawing were the cause of the moderate to severe deterioration in the wall. The PFE results indicate that the available alkalis within the pavement have been adsorbed into reaction products and there are not enough alkalis remaining for ASR gel to develop.
Design and Realization of Improved Image Restoration Method Based on Fuzzy Projection onto Convex Sets

Noise affects the recovery effect. So this paper proposed an improved method for image restoration. In this method, first of degraded images using wavelet transform to remove noise while fuzzy POCS algorithm to measure the reliability of the wavelet coefficients, so while eliminating noise can incorporate more reliable information. Experimental results show that the proposed approach in image restoration can effectively eliminate noise and improve image clarity. Keywords-wavelet transform; fuzzy POCS; image restoration; reliability
THE STATE OF MOBILE BANKING IN THE EGYPTIAN INDUSTRY

Banks have moved towards technology-based customer services such as mobile banking (mbanking); as an alternative to traditional inter-personal services. However, M-banking still faces resistance that may hamper customers’ adoption in Egypt. Following a mixed method approach, this study involves two main phases. First, a quantitative Consumer survey is conducted in the form of 350 structured questionnaires to identify the main barriers towards Mbanking. Then, decision makers in 5 different public and private banks are interviewed in order to find similarities and difference, and identify service providers’ roles regarding these barriers. Questionnaire data was statistically analysed using independent T-Test, frequencies and cross tabulations, while interview data was interpretively analysed. Results enabled the researchers to identify the risk, usage, and tradition as the most m-banking barriers that discourage m-banking adoption in Egypt as seen by the two main players.
Implementation of Iris Recognition System using FPGA

10 Abstract— Iris recognition is a standout amongst the most exact and high certainty for user verification technique that used today. The general purpose iris recognition sys tem are of low speed and not portable. Hence there is a need t o make use of dedicated hardware for this. Most of the algorithms of this system using MATLAB do not incorporate parallel processing instead comes under sequential processing. In the p roposed framework, image pre-processing, segmentation of ir is and normalization carried out using MATLAB R2016a software. Feature extraction using Ridge Energy Direction (RED) algorithm and feature matching using Hamming Distance(HD) is simulated using Xilinx ISE(14.7) design suit and synthesized on virtex-5 FPGA(XC5VLX110T) to achieve parallel processing and to improve the time delay. This methodology resu lted reduction in number of device utilization on board and simulation time delay of RED algorithm is 4.796 μs a nd synthesized time delay of HD is 5.22ns. Hence achie ved parallel processing using verilog modelling.
Chapter 0 Performance Analysis of a Compression Scheme for Highly Dense Cluster-Based Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of spatially distributed autonomous devices, called sensors, that communicate in a wireless manner. Sensors cooperate together to monitor physical or environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, vibration or pressure [1]. This technology has been originally developed for military applications such as battlefield surveillance [2]. Recently, WSNs have been deployed in many other civilian application areas. It includes environment applications such as fire detection in forest monitoring and health-care applications like monitoring the patient status.
The Features of Metal-Forming Processes Modeling

The article considers DEFORM software package as a useful tool to model metalforming processes on the example of the outer upset and the radial forging processes. The specific features of these processes simulation have been described. Results obtained by simulation that can be used to implement the developed processes in the existing working technologies are listed. Keywords—mathematical model, simulation, FEM, boundary conditions, outer upset, radial forging, pipe industry
An Approach to the Estimation of Chronic Air Pollution Effects Using Spatio-Temporal Information

There is substantial observational evidence that long-term exposure to particulate air pollution is associated with premature death in urban populations. Estimates of the magnitude of these effects derive largely from cross-sectional comparisons of adjusted mortality rates among cities with varying pollution levels. Such estimates are potentially confounded by other differences among the populations correlated with air pollution, for example, socioeconomic factors. An alternative approach is to study covariation of particulate matter and mortality across time within a city, as has been done in investigations of short-term exposures. In either event, observational studies like these are subject to confounding by unmeasured variables. Therefore the ability to detect such confounding and to derive estimates less affected by confounding are a high priority. In this article, we describe and apply a method of decomposing the exposure variable into components with variation at distinct temporal, spatial, and time by space scales, here focusing on the components involving time. Starting from a proportional hazard model, we derive a Poisson regression model and estimate two regression coefficients: the “global” coefficient that measures the association between national trends in pollution and mortality; and the “local” coefficient, derived from space by time variation, that measures the association between location-specific trends in pollution and mortality adjusted by the national trends. Absent unmeasured confounders and given valid model assumptions, the scale-specific coefficients should be similar; substantial differences in these coefficients constitute a basis for questioning the model. We derive a backfitting algorithm to fit our model to very large spatio-temporal datasets. We apply our methods to the Medicare Cohort Air Pollution Study (MCAPS), which includes individualSUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS Supplement: Web_appendix. pdf contains (1) illustrations of β1,β2 and potential confounders, (2) maps of yearly average PM2.5 concentrations and age-standardized mortality rates by location, (3) average empirical variograms as defined in Section 2.5, which illustrate the lack of correlation in the residuals over space, time or age for the MCAPS data, (4) sensitivity analyses using additional covariate information from the BRFSS-SMART survey, (5) a comparison of the current article with previous studies. Rcode.R provides an implementation of the methods in this article. PM_data. txt contains the yearly average PM2.5 data used to produce the MCAPS results. Supplemental material is provided as a web appendix in a single zip file. (Web_appendix.zip) HHS Public Access Author manuscript J Am Stat Assoc. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 July 25. Published in final edited form as: J Am Stat Assoc. 2011 ; 106(494): 396–406. doi:10.1198/jasa.2011. ap09392. A uhor M anscript
LRP 1 B Polymorphisms Are Associated with Multiple Myeloma Risk in a Chinese Han Population

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an extremely complex plasma cell malignancy that is genetically heterogeneous. A recent Genome-wide association study (GWAS) indicated that variation at 2q22 (rs61070260) influences MM risk. This association has not been validated to date in a Chinese Han population. In this study, we evaluated the association between rs61070260 in LRP1B and MM risk in a Chinese Han population involving 739 MM patients and 592 healthy controls. Our results indicated that rs61070260 in LRP1B was significantly associated with MM susceptibility (P=3.937×10). Furthermore, the linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis of rs61070260 revealed an LD block encompassing exons 26, 27 and 28 of the LRP1B gene, and a subsequent sequencing analysis identified three SNPs (rs762074421, rs756168629, rs113600691) in exons 26 and 28 of LRP1B. For the SNP rs756168629 in exon 26, a missense mutation which results in a transition from arginine to histidine at position 1661 of the LRP1B protein, has not been found in Chinese populations according to the Chinese Millionome Database and Genome Aggregation Database (EAS), and this mutation was predicted to be deleterious or damaging by SIFT and PolyPhen. These findings firmly establish the role of LRP1B in contributing to MM susceptibility. In addition, the identification of a rare coding mutation (p.R1661H) in LRP1B detected in MM individuals was suggested to be harmful to the encoded protein, which was characterized as a candidate tumour suppressor; thus, LRP1B is likely to be a disease-associated gene that is implicated in the development and progression of MM.
In fl uence of the doping level on the porosity of silicon nanowires prepared by metal-assisted chemical etching

A systematic method to control the porosity of silicon nanowires is presented. This method is based on metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) and takes advantage of an HF/H2O2 etching solution and a silver catalyst in the form of a thin patterned film deposited on a doped silicon wafer. It is found that the porosity of the etched nanowires can be controlled by the doping level of the wafer. For low doping concentrations, the wires are primarily crystalline and surrounded by only a very thin layer of porous silicon (pSi) layer, while for highly doped silicon, they are porous in their entire volume. We performed a series of controlled experiments to conclude that there exists a well-defined critical doping concentration separating the crystalline and porous regimes. Furthermore, transmission electron microscopy investigations showed that the pSi has also a crystalline morphology on a length scale smaller than the pore size, determined from positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy to be mesoscopic. Based on the experimental evidence, we devise a theoretical model of the pSi formation during MACE and apply it for better control of the nanowire morphology.
Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese : Design , Annotation and XML Representation

Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ) is a richly annotated speech and language database of spontaneous speech. It contains more than 650 hours of spontaneous Standard Japanese. In addition to digitized audio, CSJ contains two-way transcription of about 7.5 million words, two-way POS annotation, speaker information, and impressionistic rating of the way the talks are being spoken. Moreover, there is a true subset of the CSJ, called the Core to which further annotations are provided. The Core annotation contains segmental and prosodic labeling, clauseboundary labeling, dependency-structure analysis, and so forth. In order to facilitate verification and information retrieval of the complex data, the annotation data are represented by means of the XML format. Simple examples of data verification and information retrieval using XML are shown.
FACTORS AFFECTING SMALL TO MEDIUM MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES IN ADOPTING BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS ELECTRONIC COMMERCE IN THAILAND

The importance of Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce (B2BEC) is now widely acknowledged. However, while large organisations have been implementing and using the technology, Small to Medium Manufacturing Enterprises (SMMEs), have been slow adopters, despite its potential benefits. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and literature pertaining to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), this study identifies the factors that influence SMMEs’ adoption of Business-to-Business (B2B) techniques by investigating the effect of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, technological knowledge, the influence of trading partners and the number of adopting organisations. Thai and Australia SMMEs were used to compare developments in developed and comparatively undeveloped countries This paper is a work in progress. Material in the paper cannot be used without permission of the author. DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT WORKING PAPER SERIES I S S N 1 3 2 7 – 5 2 1 6
Study on On-line Monitoring of Mechanic Characteristics for Vacuum Breaker

In order to improve the maintenance level of vacuum breaker and implementation of condition maintenance for breaker, the principle of vacuum breaker online detection is studied. A vacuum breaker online monitoring system is designed, which is divided into the upper machine, lower machine and remote monitor host, a plurality of vacuum breaker can be detected simultaneously. The upper machine is PC, lower machine by using dsPIC30F5015 development board is constituted on-line monitoring module, the industrial field bus (CAN-bus) is adopted between the upper and lower machine implementation of real time transmission. Experiments show that, the on-line monitoring system for mechanic characteristics of vacuum breaker can be realized mechanic characteristic parameters on-line detected, the monitoring target of breaker is completed. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
ENERGY EFFICIENT ROUTING TECHNIQUES IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. Here we concentrate on routing protocols which might differ depending on the application and network architecture. In this module we comprehend the routing technique for energy efficiency. This paper surveys recent routing protocols for sensor networks and presents different approaches to conserve the energy.
Examination of Argon Ion Bombarded Ti-6 Al-4 V Samples Produced with DMLS Technology

Additive manufacturing (AM) indicated great technological increase in the last years. Primarily development of new methods, new computer softwares and more useable materials are responsible for this progression. AM has numerous advantages that cause the appearance of it in almost every field of industry. However this widely spread technology has many under examined properties, especially those, that uses metal as raw material. One of these less understood properties is the behavior of grains during the melting phase and the microstructure after production. The main aim of this study is to examine the microstructure of ion bombarded – using argon AM produced Ti-6Al-4V samples applying EBDS investigation, measuring the grain size, and the orientation of the grains.
Isogeometric methods for acoustic-structure interactions ( ASI )

The problem at hand is a coupled acoustic-structure interaction (ASI) on an unbounded domain. An object of elastic material is surrounded by fluid. Using physical assumptions, the fluid is described by the wave equation, which is transformed to the Helmholtz equation. That is, we consider the frequency domain instead of the time domain. Both the infinite element method (IEM) [1] and the boundary element method (BEM) have been investigated on the acoustic scattering problem using the isogeometric method [2]. As the computer aided design (CAD) files typically parameterizes the boundary of the scatterer, the IGABEM represents the ideal bridge between design and analysis. The BEM method result in a dense matrix, which is computationally expensive to build. The infinite element method resolves this issue, but introduces a volume domain to be discretised, which weakens the bridge between CAD and IGA. When combining IGA with these methods we again observe significant improvements over classical FEA. In the presentation, we will compare our numerical results with exact solutions to the problem of acoustic-structure interaction by elastic spherical symmetric scatterers consisting of many fluid and solid layers [3]. REFERENCES [1] F. Ihlenburg, Finite Element analysis of Acoustic Scattering, Springer Verlag, 1998. [2] J. Austin Cottrell, Thomas J.R. Hughes, and Yuri Bazilevs, Isogeometric analysis: Towards Integration of CAD and FEA, Wiley, 2009. [3] J. V. Venås and T. Jenserud, "Exact 3D scattering solutions for spherical symmetric scatterers", Journal of Sound and Vibration, Submitted 2017.
Proximity at a distance in infection and immunity research

This article explores the role of proximity in facilitating collaboration and innovation. I argue that multiple dimensions of proximity exist and analyse the influence of twogeographic and institutional proximity-for Vancouver, BC? s infection and immunity research network. In addition to addressing theoretical questions about the relative importance of different dimensions of proximity for collaboration, this article provides an empirical overview of Vancouver? s biomedical innovation system. Analysis is based on individual level co-authorship patterns. I found strong support for institutional proximity. Geographic proximity within the cluster of Vancouver also increases co-authorship rates. No support was found for the dual concepts that geographical proximity can compensate for a lack of institutional proximity and the reverse. In using the individual as the unit of analysis, this paper attempts to address a methodological shortcoming of previous studies that took organisations, rather than individuals, at the unit of analysis. In doing so, the role that multiple affiliations play within this network is highlighted. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the relative importance of geographic and institutional proximity in encouraging collaboration at the individual level. Beyond its theoretical contributions, this study has important implications for science policy by offering insight to policy makers interested in promoting national and cluster collaborations.
Identification and Fatty Acid Composition of Coccolithophore and Diatom Species Isolated from Aegean Sea

Diatoms are an important group of phytoplankton and widely distribute in the world seas. Diatoms have also attracted attention because of their siliceous cell walls. In this research, 6 pennates samples and 1 cocolithophore were collected from 4 different stations of Aegean Sea. Ochrosphaera sp. (JQ809711)Izmir Bay and Phaeodactylum tricornutum (JQ886461)-Seferihisar; Cylindrotheca closterium (JQ886456)Urla; Amphora cf. capitellata (JQ886459)-Izmir Bay; Nitzschia communis (JQ886460)-Urkmez; Nitzschia sp. (JQ886457)-Seferihisar; Nitzschia thermalis (JQ886458)-Seferihisar were isolated and identified by molecular and morphological methods. 18S rDNA sequences were amplified by PCR and sequence analyses were applied for molecular characterization of the species. These strains were cultured in F/2 mediumunder the temperature of 22±2 °C at the light intensities (40 μE m-2s-1) for 22 days. Growth rates of diatom cells existed from 0.05 to 0.249 day-1 and doubling time 13.86 and 2.78 day. Also, lipid content of C. closterium and Ochrosphaera sp. were highest concentration compared to that of the other diatoms. The dominant fatty acid of P. tricornutum and Nitzschia sp. were palmitoleicacid (C16:1) which constituted 38% and 30% of total fatty acids, respectively.
Vertical Slices of the Sphere ( WT )

We present a novel algorithm for the inversion of the vertical slice transform, i.e. the transform that associates to a function on the two-dimensional unit sphere all integrals along circles that are parallel to one fixed direction. Our approach makes use of the singular value decomposition and resembles the mollifier approach by applying numerical integration with a reconstruction kernel via a quadrature rule. Considering the inversion problem as a statistical inverse problem, we find a family of asymptotically optimal mollifiers that minimize the maximum risk of the mean integrated error for functions within a Sobolev ball. By using fast spherical Fourier transforms and the fast Legendre transform, our algorithm can be implemented with almost linear complexity. In numerical experiments, we compare our algorithm with other approaches and illustrate our theoretical findings.
Generating Model Based Subgroup Analysis Using SAS ® Procedures

Subgroup analysis is often carried out for clinical trials to further understand the treatment effect in some subgroups of patients. One approach is to repeat the analysis done for the whole population for the subgroup of patients of interest. Another is to generate the subgroup analysis based on a statistical model with an interaction term of subgroup and treatment. The reason the later approach is not commonly used is the complexity of interpretation of the interaction in the model. This article is an effort to provide a SAS tool to generate such an analysis with ease. Through an example, we will demonstrate the programs and results of the subgroup analysis with these two approaches.
ON THE PREDICTION OF EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FROM TWO PILE TESTS UNDER FORCED VIBRATIONS

Dynamic response of pile foundations has been the subject of numerous research since early 1970’s. A review of developments on this subject with extensive references is provided in Novak (1991). While most of the work in this area has focused on developing analytical solutions, some experimental work has been carried out in parallel to validate the theoretical results; e.g., see Novak et al. (1982), El-Sharnouby (1984), Novak et al. (1984) and El-Marsafawi et al. (1992). In general, the studies have shown that the pile-soil interaction is relatively complex and often requires the analytical methods to be validated against experimental data to provide reliable predictions.