Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Directed acyclic graph encoding for compressed shadow maps

Detailed shadows in large-scale environments are challenging. Our approach enables efficient detailed shadow computations for static environments at a low memory cost. It builds upon compressed precomputed multiresolution hierarchies but uses a directed acyclic graph to encode its tree structure. Further, depth values are compressed and stored separately and we use a bit-plane encoding for the lower tree levels entries in order to further reduce memory requirements and increase locality. We achieve between 20% to 50% improved compression rates, while retaining high performance.
Surface characteristics of KOH-treated commercial carbons applied for CO2 adsorption

The effect of an alkali treatment (potassium hydroxide) on the properties of a commercial activated carbon has been studied. The aim of the treatment was to improve the adsorption properties of the material toward carbon dioxide. In the result of the treatment, silica contained in the raw carbon was removed and the density of the material increased. The changes in the surface chemistry were observed as well. The treatment of the activated carbon with KOH resulted in a complete removal of carboxy and lactone groups and a decrease of the general content of the acidic groups (more significant than that of basic groups). Simultaneously, the surface concentration of hydroxyl groups increased. The alkali treatment of activated carbon resulted in an increase of carbon dioxide uptake of 14% (measured using a volumetric method at 0℃). The adsorption of carbon dioxide on activated carbon has a mixed (physicochemical) character and that two types of adsorption sites are present at the surface. The adsorption energy varies roughly from 25 to 60 kJ/mol.
Effects of training on bone metabolism in young athletes

Purpose. this study investigated the effects of two types of training on the bone formation marker of osteocalcin and the bone resorption marker of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase isoenzyme 5b (trAP5b) in young track and field boys and girls. Methods. the 14-year-old group (10 boys, 10 girls) performed first time an intensive and supervised 8-week plyometric training. In the 17-year-old group (13 athletic boys, 6 control boys, 12 athletic girls, 6 control girls), the normal many-sided track and field training lasted 6 months. Results. Significant increases were noticed in osteocalcin ( p < 0.01) both in younger boys and girls. the 20-m sprint performance improved in girls ( p < 0.01) and the countermovement jump height increased in boys ( p < 0.001). Significant increases in 17-year-old boys and girls were observed after training in osteocalcin ( p < 0.01), osteocalcin/trAP5b ratio ( p < 0.01 and p < 0.001), and the standing 5-jump ( p < 0.05 and p < 0.01). Serum trAP5b decreased both in boys ( p < 0.05) and in girls ( p < 0.01). the boys also improved the standing 5-jump ( p < 0.01) and the 12-minute running test results (p < 0.05). In the combined group of all subjects, the correlation coefficient between trAP5b and age was significant ( r = –0.63, p < 0.001, n = 57). Conclusions. In practice, it is important to add plyometrics and other strength training in the training plans of young athletes, regardless of their events, to increase their bone metabolism and muscle strength.
How does personality and sociodemographic characteristics affect attitudes towards cute products? The case of Turkey

The purposes of this study are to determine whether attitudes towards cute products depend on consumer personalities and to reveal the personality and demographic characteristics of individuals who are most sensitive towards cute stimuli and products. Descriptive research and face-to-face survey methods were used to collect primary data. According to the research conducted to identify the individuals with the most positive attitude towards cute products, it is possible to list these personality and sociodemographic characteristics: women; individuals in the 35 – 54 age range; individuals of non-neurotic personality types, particularly individuals with openness personality types; and individuals with hedonic structure. Moreover, although neurotic personality types don’t like cute products results show that if we support marketing efforts with hedonic factors, then neurotic consumers become positive towards cute products. yönelik tutumların tüketici kişiliklerine bağlı olup olmadığını belirlemek ve sevimli uyaranlara ve ürünlere en duyarlı olan bireylerin kişilik ve demografik özelliklerini ortaya çıkarmaktır. Çalışmada birincil verileri toplamak için tanımlayıcı araştırma ve yüz yüze anket yöntemleri kullanılmıştır. sonuçlarına sevimli ürünlere en olumlu tutuma sahip bireylerin demografik ve kişilik özellikleri; kadın, 35- 54 yaş aralığındaki bireyler; nevrotik olmayan kişilik tiplerine sahip bireyler, özellikle açık kişilik tiplerine sahip bireyler; ve hedonik tüketim şekline sahip bireyler olarak sıralanabilir. dışında, nevrotik kişilik tiplerinin sevimli ürünlere olumsuz tutum göstermelerine ragmen, faktörlerle durumunda, tüketicilerin sevimli ürünlere daha olumlu tutuma sahip olduğunu göstermektedir.
Bone Cement Formulation with Reduced Heating of Bone Cement Resin

Bone cement material is one of the key materials in bone surgery and orthopedic medicine. In this study, commercial polymethyl-methacrylate bone cement was mixed with boric acid and zinc borate to reduce the reaction temperature of the bone cement. The observation of temperature changes during the polymerization using laser thermometer and thermal camera showed that the use of boron compounds decreased the temperature of the bone cement at least 10°C which is very critical for the biomaterial uses as it affects the biocompatibility of the material. Besides temperature monitoring, microbiological tests showed that the materials have certain antibacterial effect. Water contact angle studies also supported the biocompatibility studies. In the last part, mechanical tests showed that there was not significant change in the tensile strength and tensile modulus values. Antibacterial tests exhibited thatzinc borate addition shows antimicrobial activity against S.epidermidis as well as boric acid addition over 5% concentration. According to the cell culture studies, boric acid can be interpreted as non-toxic up to 10%, while 10% and 20% zinc borate has toxic effect. This is the first study to use boron compounds in bone cement and it is proved that boric acid at low concentrations can be used for bone cement applications but zinc borate would not be suitable to use in medical applications due to toxic effects. BOR ISSN
Okul Dışı Öğrenme (ODÖ) Faaliyetlerine Yönelik Öğretmen Öz-Yeterlik İnançları Ölçeğinin Geliştirilmesi

Bu arastirmanin amaci “Okul Disi Ogrenme (ODO) Faaliyetlerine Yonelik Ogretmen Oz-yeterlik Inanclari Olcegi“ gelistirmektir. Arastirma 332 ogretmenden olusan calisma grubu uzerinde yurutulmustur. Olcegin kapsam ve gorunus gecerligi icin uzman gorusune basvurulmus, yapi gecerligi icin Acimlayici Faktor Analizi (AFA) ve Dogrulayici Faktor Analizi (DFA) uygulanmistir. AFA sonucunda toplam varyansin %61,01’ini aciklayan, 29 madde ve dort faktorden olusan bir yapi elde edilmistir. Ortaya cikan faktorler; “Hazirlik Yeterliligi”, “Uygulama ve Degerlendirme Yeterliligi”, “Ogrenmeyi Destekleme Yeterliligi” ve “Bilgi ve Deneyim Yeterliligi” olarak adlandirilmistir. DFA sonuclari olcegin “kabul edilebilir uyum” ve “mukemmel uyum” indekslerine sahip oldugunu gostermistir. Olcumlerin guvenirligi Cronbach Alpha ve bilesik guvenirlik yontemleriyle incelenmis ve hesaplanan guvenirlik katsayilarinin kabul edilebilir sinirlar icerisinde yer aldigi saptanmistir. Tukey Non-Additivity test sonuclari olcegin toplanabilir ozellikte oldugunu gostermektedir. Madde toplam korelasyonu ile %27’lik alt-ust grup karsilastirmalari olcekte yer alan maddelerin tamaminin ayirt edici oldugunu gostermistir. Sonuc olarak ogretmenlerin ODO faaliyetlerine yonelik oz-yeterlik inanclarini ortaya koyacak gecerli ve guvenilir olcumler veren bir olcme araci elde edilmistir.
Petroleum and Food Sectors Lost Stock Returns against Investments in PSX

The impact of exchange rate exposure and market return on stock returns of petroleum and food sectors PSX listed firms has been investigated empirically. Two econometric models formulated based on the Jorion approach of the two-factor model have been analyzed for petroleum and food sectors stock returns, market return and exchange rate (i.e., USD) for the study period 2005-2012, which represent an era of military regime proceeded by the democratic government of Pakistan Peoples Party. A sample of 37 petroleum and food sectors listed firms have been evaluated by applying the unit root test and OLS multiple regression. Further, the Quandt-Andrews test of unknown breakpoint has been applied, which showed an extended structural break during the period 2007 to 2010. Additionally, the results revealed that the coefficients of exchange rate and market return are negatively related to petroleum and food sectors stock returns. Therefore, investors must take precautions before investing funds in stocks of food and petroleum sector firms.
Improved FAIR Data Publication Quality in Specialized Environmental Data Portals

<p>Environmental research data from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, an Institute of the ETH Domain, is published through the environmental data portal EnviDat (https://www.envidat.ch). EnviDat actively implements the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles and offers guidance and support to researchers throughout the research data publication process. </p><p>WSL strives to increase the fraction of environmental data easily available for reuse in the public domain. At the same time, WSL facilitates the publication of high-quality environmental research datasets by providing an appropriate infrastructure, a formal publication process and by assigning Document Object Identifiers (DOIs) and appropriate citation information. </p><p>Within EnviDat, we conceptualize and implement data publishing workflows that include automatic validation, interactive quality checks, and iterative improvement of metadata quality. The data publication workflow encompasses a number of steps, starting from the request for a DOI, to an approval process with a double-checking principle, and the submission of the metadata-record to DataCite for the final data publication. This workflow can be viewed as a decentralized peer-review and quality improvement process for safeguarding the quality of published environmental datasets. The workflow is being further developed and refined together with partner institutions within the ETH Domain. </p><p>We have defined and implemented additional features in EnviDat, such as (i) in-depth tracing of data provenance through related datasets; (ii) the ability to augment published research data with additional resources which support open science such as model codes and software; and (iii) a DataCRediT mechanism designed for specifying data authorship (Collection, Validation, Curation, Software, Publication, Supervision). </p><p>We foresee that these developments will help to further improve approaches targeted at modern documentation and exchange of scientific information. This is timely given the increasing expectations that institutions and researchers have towards capabilities of research data portals and repositories in the environmental domain. </p>
Assessing green bond risk: an empirical investigation

Green bonds have gained a significant share in the bond market. However, dynamic risk and its spillover to other conventional bond investments plays an important role in its understanding. In this paper, we analyze the volatility and correlation dynamics between conventional bond and green bond assets under both loose and stringent eligibility green-labeled criteria. We build dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model specifications using alternative distributional assumptions. We also assess risk dynamics expressed by Value-at-Risk (VaR) and its corresponding loss function. We illustrate risk assessment in within and out-of-sample periods using conventional and green bond returns. The results show that there is significant spillover between conventional and green bond assets, triggering significant hedging strategies. However, these spillover effects are subjected to the type of green-labeled criteria. Finally, a risk assessment using VaR forecasting and its corresponding loss function estimation also demonstrates significant differentiation between green and conventional bonds.
Electro-Mechanical Characteristics Analysis and Experimental Study of PMSM According to Rotor Eccentricity

This study deals with the analysis of electro-mechanical characteristic analysis on permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) for electrically driven tools primarily used in industrial applications. This study compares the noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) characteristic results generated by fractional pole/slot combinations. The electromagnetic (EM) analysis results of the PMSMs are derived using the finite element method (FEM), and the NVH analysis is performed by applying the EM analysis results. The analysis results and the effects of EM characteristics on the vibration of the PMSMs were analyzed. The effects of EM excitation characteristics on the rotor vibrations in the PMSM were compared and analyzed.
Demystify Lindley’s paradox by connecting $p$-value and posterior probability

In the hypothesis testing framework, p-value is often computed to determine whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. On the other hand, Bayesian approaches typically compute the posterior probability of the null hypothesis to evaluate its plausibility. We revisit Lindley’s paradox and demystify the conflicting results between Bayesian and frequentist hypothesis testing procedures by casting a two-sided hypothesis as a combination of two one-sided hypotheses along the opposite directions. This formulation can naturally circumvent the ambiguities of assigning a point mass to the null and choices of using local or non-local prior distributions. As p-value solely depends on the observed data without incorporating any prior information, we consider non-informative prior distributions for fair comparisons with p-value. The equivalence of p-value and the Bayesian posterior probability of the null hypothesis can be established to reconcile Lindley’s paradox. More complicated settings, such as multivariate cases, random effects models and non-normal data, are also explored for generalization of our results to various hypothesis tests.
The impact of firms’ inflation perceptions on investment: Evidence from listed manufacturing enterprises in China

This article investigates the extent to which inflation perceptions affect firms’ innovation input and investment expenditure. We adopt dummy variables data to quantify the firm inflation perceptions of China’s listed manufacturing companies from corporate annual reports during the period from 2008–2018. Results reveal that inflation perceptions have a positive Tobin effect on investment spending decisions of the firms whose inflation perceive risen, vice versa. Besides, the investment expenditure of large manufacturing/ SOEs enterprises are more sensitive than small/non-SOEs firms when inflation perceptions have risen, and small/non-SOEs companies tend to reduce much more investment spending when inflation perceptions decline. Our results have significant implications for policymakers and firm managers.
Assessment of the Impact of Gas Flaring on the pH, Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe and Mn Concentrations in the Rainwaters of Jeddo Community, Delta State, Nigeria

This paper is focused on the possible impact of gas flaring on the pH, Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe, and Mn concentrations in the rainwaters of Jeddo community, Delta State, Nigeria. The Rainwater samples were collected from two locations in the community. The samples were then taken to the laboratory for analyses. The result for the pH for both samples of Rainwater 1 (R1) and Rainwater 2 (R2) (which are 6.20 and 6.00 respectively) showed that their pH did not comply with the acceptable limits of World Health Organization (WHO, 2003), National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA, 2011), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR, 2002) and Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality (NSDQW, 2007). The result also showed that Cd, Pb and Mn all complied with WHO (2003), NESREA (2011), DPR (2002) and NSDQW (2007) domestic/recreational water quality limits; while the values of Cu, Zn and Fe metals generally did not comply with the safety standards.
Library and Education: Panacea for Sustainable Development in Nigeria

One important resource for achieving the goals and objectives of education is the library. This paper discussed the role of library. It examined the relationship between the library and education; the relevance of the former to the latter; Importance of library and education for sustainable development in Nigeria. This paper also highlighted the challenges of library and education and made recommendations. Finally, this paper emphasized the need to reposition and revamp our libraries and the entire educational system in order to make much progress towards the attainment of vision 2020.
Modeling and control of a 3-DOF articulated robotic manipulator using self-tuning fuzzy sliding mode controller

Abstract Robotic manipulators are highly coupled multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with uncertainties and highly time-varying dynamic capabilities. These characteristics make the trajectory control of a robotic manipulator very challenging. This paper presents the modeling and trajectory tracking control of a 3-DOF robotic manipulator using self-tuning fuzzy sliding mode controller (ST-FSMC). The stability of the system was investigated using the Lyapunov direct method. The controller was implemented using MATLAB/Simulink and its performance was evaluated. The simulation results show that the proposed controller removed chattering phenomena from the control effort and reduced the tracking error (average steady-state error) to 0.0036 rad. However, in the case of the conventional controllers, the average steady-state e rror increased to 0.0413 rad, 0.0044 rad, and 0.0053 rad for the Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, Sliding mode controller (SMC), and Fuzzy sliding mode controller (FSMC), respectively. The conventional controllers (PID, SMC, and FSMC) were designed for the purpose of comparison with the proposed ST-FSMC. The simulation results show that the designed controller (ST-FSMC) has a superior tracking performance, is robust and is not sensitive to applied model parameter variations as compared to other conventional controllers.
Research on College English Teaching Model Based on Decision Trees

English teaching has always attracted much attention. However, the processes of its transmission and acquirement is often divided into two separate parts, which seriously hinders the effective implementation of its objectives. Teachers attach particular importance to the choice of the curriculum structure and teaching material. Students are busy comprehending the assignments their teachers deem important. Under such a scenario, the effective acquisition of knowledge and the development of sustainable comprehensive abilities are ignored. The random forest algorithm in machine learning applications could play important role improving on the current English teaching system. A random forest model is constructed using a decision trees selection method, which focuses on 19 attributes of the English teaching model. Results show, to begin with, that the indigenous teaching plan and environment fail to adapt to the pace of knowledge iteration in the era of big data. Moreover, interactions between teachers and students appear to be shallow with little constructive interaction, causing a decline in the relationship between teachers and students. Last, there is still no signs of any legitimate construction in terms of in-person English teaching, relativity attribute, corpus and platform. Therefore, this paper has proposed a new English teaching model to adapt to the current college English teaching environment. The experimental results show that the method is effective and feasible for the current college English teaching.
From Sugar to Flowers: A Transition of Shallow Cumulus Organization During ATOMIC

The Atlantic Tradewind Ocean‐Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) took place in January–February, 2020. It was designed to understand the relationship between shallow convection and the large‐scale environment in the trade‐wind regime. A Lagrangian large eddy simulation, following the trajectory of a boundary‐layer airmass, can reproduce a transition of trade cumulus organization from “sugar” to “flower” clouds with cold pools, observed on February 2–3. The simulation is driven with reanalysis large‐scale meteorology, and in‐situ aerosol data from ATOMIC and its joint field study EUREC4A. During the transition, large‐scale upward motion deepens the cloud layer. The total water path and optical depth increase, especially in the moist regions where flowers aggregate. This is due to mesoscale circulation that renders a net convergence of total water in the already moist and cloudy regions, strengthening the organization. An additional simulation shows that stronger large scale upward motion reinforces the mesoscale circulation and accelerates the organization process by strengthening the cloud‐layer mesoscale buoyant turbulence kinetic energy production.
A Clinical and Neurophysiological Analysis of Idiopathic Carpal Tunnel Syndrome with Respect to Gender and Occupation

Background: Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) predominantly affects women. Previous studies observed more intense symptoms among women without a corresponding increase in disease severity and attributed it to reporting bias. In this study, we examined whether women are inherently more vulnerable to work related median nerve dysfunction at wrist and whether reported CTS symptoms among women correspond to the degree of median neuropathy at wrist. Methods: A cross-sectional study was designed for outpatients (aged 25-59 years) diagnosed with CTS. Occupational categorisation was done based on the analysis of their individual job tasks. Symptom severity (Boston Symptom Severity Scale – SSS), functional disability (Boston Functional Status Scale - FSS), and clinical (Hi – Ob scale) and neurophysiological severity (NCS grade) were determined, compared among occupational groups and were statistically analysed. Results: A total of 454 patients (348 women and 106 men; F: M ratio 3.28:1) were included. Among them, 191 were housewives. Female manual workers and housewives reported significantly more intense symptoms with a corresponding increase in clinical and electrophysiological severity (p < 0.001) when compared to female non-manual workers. However, no significant difference in symptoms, clinical or neurophysiological severity was found between male non-manual and manual workers. Among manual workers, women were more symptomatic than men, but clinical and neurophysiological severities were significantly higher only in the older age groups. Conclusion: The differential vulnerability of the female population to hand-intensive work predisposes them to severe median nerve dysfunction at wrist with proportionately higher CTS symptoms. Therefore, working women need focussed attention for remedial measures.