Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Estimation and Equalization of Doubly-selective Fading Channels using Basis Expansion Models

Wireless channels, due to multipath propagation and Doppler spread, are characterized by frequencyand time-selectivity, so-called doubly-selective wireless channels. In this dissertation, we concentrate on adaptive channel estimation and equalization for communications systems over doubly selective channels, exploiting basis expansion models (BEM). Since the time-varying nature of the channel is well captured in the complex exponential basis expansion model (CE-BEM) by the known exponential basis functions, the time variations of the (unknown) BEM coefficients are likely much slower than those of the channel and thus more convenient to track. First, a subblock-wise channel estimation based on CE-BEM is considered, where we track the BEM coefficients using time-multiplexed (TM) periodic training symbols. Assuming the BEM coefficients follow a first-order AR model, Kalman filtering is used to track the BEM coefficients. This first-order AR assumption, however, is not necessarily true and possibly incurs significant modeling errors in estimation. We then seek adaptive channel estimation schemes with no a priori model for the BEM coefficients using recursive least-square (RLS) algorithm with finite memory. Next, taking the performance of BEM-based approach into account, we investigate an adaptive soft-in soft-out turbo equalization for coded communication systems, exploiting CEBEM for the overall channel variations and AR model for the BEM coefficients. We extend an existing turbo equalization approach based on symbol-wise AR modeling of channels to channels based on CE-BEM. Based on the subblock-wise approach, we also propose a decision-directed tracking based on BEM, where we track the BEM coefficients using the information symbol decisions of a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) as virtual training. The time gap between symbol decisions and required channel estimates, arising from the decision-directed tracking, is bridged by CE-BEM-based channel prediction using the estimated BEM coefficients. We also adopt an exponentially-weighted (EW) RLS algorithm for our BEM-based decision-directed tracking scheme. Decision-directed tracking requires fewer training symbols compared to the training-based tracking, for the same performance. The contribution of the proposed BEM-based channel estimation and equalization schemes is that we track the BEM coefficients in CE-BEM, not the channel taps directly, based on
Skills at work, 1986 to 2006

This report examines the skills used by British workers and highlights a significant increase in job skills over the last two decades, with computing and 'influencing' skills in particular growing in importance over the last five years. The report presents the initial findings from the 2006 Skills Survey of 4,800 working individuals in Britain aged 20-65 and compares them with those from similar surveys undertaken over the last two decades. The report covers a range of areas including: skills trends; qualification requirements; the value of skills; task discretion; and attitudes to work and skill development. It also provides an analysis of gender and regional differences in relation to skill use. Key findings include: the proportion of jobs requiring level 4 qualifications and above has risen from 20 per cent in 1986 to 30 per cent in 2006; the proportion of jobs not requiring any qualifications fell by 11 percentage points over the same period; more jobs are now associated with longer periods of training - 30 per cent of jobs in Britain now involve training which lasts for more than two years, compared to 22 per cent of jobs in 1986; continuous learning is also on the increase - 35 per cent of respondents agreed that 'my job requires that I keep learning new things', compared to 30 per cent in 2001 and 26 per cent in 1992; computing skills are essential to nearly half of all jobs in 2006, compared with less than one third in 1997; 'influencing skills', which include the ability to persuade people, write long reports, make speeches and teach people are also growing in importance. The report provides important evidence about skill use in the British workplace which is of particular relevance to the policy priorities outlined in the Leitch Review of Skills [report indexed at TD/TNC 88.118].
Influence of Curing Temperature on Shear Strength and Compressibility of Swelling Soil Stabilized with Hydrated Lime

The exposed cohesive soils to temperature can face considerable physical and mechanical characteristics changes. Therefore, understanding the environmental events influences on the soil geotechnical properties is essential, which is significant in the rainy and cold places such as in Sulaimani city, northern Iraq. This experimental study examines the temperature changes (10o C, and 50o C) impacts on the durability of stabilized cohesive soil using 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% hydrated-lime added as a replacement on the soils dry mass. Consistency, unconfined compression, and compressibility characteristics were evaluated. Under the applied circumstances, a decrease was noticed in the magnitudes of liquid limit and plasticity index, while plastic limit generally increased within hydrated-lime percent increase. The study yielded an appreciable improvement of the cohesive soil’s strength and compressibility properties with time progress, especially after the stabilization process is achieved.
Displacement damage effects in InGaAs detectors: experimental results and semi-empirical model prediction

Proton irradiation results are presented for InGaAs multiplexed detector arrays used on the SPOT 4 satellite. Mean and extreme dark current values and random telegraph signal are analyzed and extreme dark current values are fitted with semiempirical models. Prediction of orbital behavior is in good agreement with flight data.
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 VACCINATION POSTS ON FACEBOOK IN INDONESIA WITH CROWDTANGLE

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the virus's uncontrolled spread around the world, including in Indonesia. The Indonesian government has made a number of steps to stop COVID-19 from spreading, one of which is COVID-19 vaccinations. However, not everyone thinks the vaccination is a good idea. Just like in many other countries, Indonesian people responded in different ways to COVID-19 vaccination posts on social media, be it from government officials/agencies or news portals. Their responses can be used to help the government decide on a better vaccination strategy that will help minimize the virus spread and end the pandemic in Indonesia. Using the lexicon method in determining the content sentiment in COVID-19 vaccination posts on Facebook, this research found that unlike news portals that tend to post a more balanced content (36% positive, 20% negative, and 44% neutral out of 23,623 posts with min score = -19, max score = 24, mean score = 0.25, and SD = = 1.43), government accounts posted much more positive content, both in terms of quality (min score = -15, max score = 40, mean score = 4.16, SD = 6.76 ) and quantity (69% classified as positive) than they did the neutral (15%) and the negative content (16%) out of 723 posts. Subsequent analysis with Two-Way ANOVA tests discovered that COVID-19 vaccination posts by the news portal accounts can elicit more varied reactions from the public than government accounts that tended to elicit only positive reactions. It is also confirmed that both the content sentiment of COVID-19 vaccination posts in Indonesia and the account types making the posts as well as their interaction terms do have an impact on how the public responses to them.
The Polish adaptation of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT-PL) by Schaufeli et al.

OBJECTIVES The study aimed to present the Polish version of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT-PL) by W. Schaufeli et al. and to assess its validity and reliability. The tool measures the core symptoms of burnout (BAT-C): exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive and emotional impairment, and its secondary symptoms (BAT-S): psychosomatic complaints and psychological distress. METHODS The participants were 255 nursing staff members. The construct validity was assessed with a one-point job satisfaction scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale by Schaufeli et al. and the Job-related Affective Well-being Scale by van Katwyk et al. RESULTS The results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported an assumed bi-factor structure. This applies to both BAT-C as the four core symptoms and a general factor and BAT-S as a set of two secondary symptoms and a general factor. Both scales were strongly correlated with one another and differed from other measures of job-related well-being (job satisfaction, work engagement and negative emotions). The values of Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability indicated BAT-PL as a reliable measurement tool. CONCLUSIONS BAT-PL by W. Schaufeli et al. has good psychometric characteristics to be used in research on burnout and further validated in clinical practice.
Pedestrian detection using stereo night vision

This paper presents a method for pedestrian detection using a stereo night vision system installed on the vehicle. Motion information extracted from an image sequence is used to locate possible pedestrians, as moving people have motions that are not consistent with the movement of the background. Experimental results are shown to validate our approach and comparisons have been carried out between our approach and frame-by-frame based pattern recognition approaches.
Azide-Alkyne "Click" Reaction in Water Using Parts-Per-Million Amine-Functionalized Azoaromatic Cu(I) Complex as Catalyst: Effect of the Amine Side Arm.

A series of Cu(II) complexes, 1-4 and 6, were synthesized through a reaction of amine-functionalized pincer-like ligands, HL1,2, La,b, and a bidentate ligand L1 with CuCl2·2H2O. The chemical reduction of complex 1 using 1 equiv of sodium l-ascorbate resulted in a dimeric Cu(I) complex 5 in excellent yield. All of the complexes, 1-6, were thoroughly characterized using various physicochemical characterization techniques, single-crystal X-ray structure determination, and density functional theory calculations. Ligands HL1,2 and La,b behaved as tridentated donors by the coordination of the amine side arm in their respective Cu(II) complexes, and the amine side arm remained as a pendant in Cu(I) complexes. All of these complexes (1-6) were explored for copper(I)-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction at room temperature in water under air. Complex 5 directly served as an active catalyst; however, complexes 1-4 and 6 required 1 equiv of sodium l-ascorbate to generate their corresponding active Cu(I) catalyst. It has been observed that azo-based ligand-containing Cu(I)-complexes are air-stable and were highly efficient for the CuAAC reaction. The amine side arm in the ligand backbone has a dramatic role in accelerating the reaction rate. Mechanistic investigations showed that the alkyne C-H deprotonation was the rate-limiting step and the pendant amine side arm intramolecularly served as a base for Cu-coordinated alkyne deprotonation, leading to the azide-alkyne 2 + 3 cycloaddition reaction. Thus, variation of the amine side arm in complexes 1-4 and use of the most basic diisopropyl amine moiety in complex 4 has resulted in an unique amine-functionalized azoaromatic Cu(I) system for CuAAC reaction upon sodium l-ascorbate reduction. The complex 4 has shown excellent catalysis at its low parts-per-million level loading in water. The catalytic protocol was versatile and exhibited very good functional group tolerance. It was also employed efficiently to synthesize a number of useful functional triazoles having medicinal, catalytic, and targeting properties.
Low-Speed Dynamic Wind Tunnel Test Analysis of a Generic 53 Degree Swept UCAV Configuration With Controls

Several static and dynamic forced-motion wind tunnel tests have been conducted on a generic unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) configuration with a 53° swept leading edge. These tests are part of an international research effort to assess and advance the state-of-art of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to predict the static and dynamic stability and control characteristics for this type of configuration. This paper describes the dynamic forced motion data collected from two different models of this UCAV configuration as well as analysis of the control surface deflections on the dynamic forces and moments.
A Comparison Study between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typically Control in Graph Frequency Bands Using Graph and Triadic Interaction Metrics

Many researchers using many different approaches have attempted to find features discriminating between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically control (TC) subjects. In this study, this attempt has been continued by analyzing global metrics of functional graphs and metrics of functional triadic interactions of the brain in the low, middle, and high-frequency bands (LFB, MFB, and HFB) of the structural graph. The graph signal processing (GSP) provided the combinatorial usage of the functional graph of resting-state fMRI and structural graph of DTI. In comparison to TCs, ASDs had significantly higher clustering coefficients in the MFB, higher efficiencies and strengths in the MFB and HFB, and lower small-world propensity in the HFB. These results show over-connectivity, more global integration, and probably decreased local specialization in ASDs compared to TCs. Triadic analysis showed that the numbers of unbalanced triads were significantly lower for ASDs in the MFB. This finding may show the reason for restricted and repetitive behavior in ASDs. Also, in the MFB and HFB, the numbers of balanced triads and the energies of triadic interactions were significantly higher and lower for ASDs, respectively. These findings may reflect the disruption of the optimum balance between functional integration and specialization. All of these results demonstrated that the significant differences between ASDs and TCs existed in the MFB and HFB of the structural graph when analyzing the global metrics of the functional graph and triadic interaction metrics. In conclusion, the results demonstrate the promising perspective of GSP for attaining discriminative features and new knowledge, especially in the case of ASD. Graphical Abstract
COMPARISON OF THE USE OF TXDOT SEEDING MIXES AND FERTILIZER RATES TO THE USE OF NATIVE GRASS

Native varieties of grasses, having evolved over many eons, have clearly demonstrated their ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions and create stable vegetation communities. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has been seeding native grass species along with adapted grass species as part of its vegetation establishment program for many years. Over the past decade, the use of native grasses has greatly increased as more people have become aware of their restoration and habitat advantages as well as their beauty. TxDOT would like to test the feasibility of using an all-native species seeding mix for use in the establishment of roadside vegetation in roadway construction projects. This project surveys available native grass species and tests selected varieties as part of a mix under roadside conditions to determine which, if any, may be desirable additions to the current seeding program.
Estimation in dynamic panel data models: Improving on the performance of the standard GMM estimator

This chapter reviews developments to improve on the poor performance of the standard GMM estimator for highly autoregressive panel series. It considers the use of the ‘system’ GMM estimator that relies on relatively mild restrictions on the initial condition process. This system GMM estimator encompasses the GMM estimator based on the non-linear moment conditions available in the dynamic error components model and has substantial asymptotic efficiency gains. Simulations, that include weakly exogenous covariates, find large finite sample biases and very low precision for the standard first differenced estimator. The use of the system GMM estimator not only greatly improves the precision but also greatly reduces the finite sample bias. An application to panel production function data for the U.S. is provided and confirms these theoretical and experimental findings.
Highly‐contiguous bovine genomes underpin accurate functional analyses and updated nomenclature of MHC class I

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I region of cattle is both highly polymorphic and, unlike many species, highly variable in gene content between haplotypes. Cattle MHC class I alleles were historically grouped by sequence similarity in the more conserved 3′ end of the coding sequence to form phylogenetic allele groups. This has formed the basis of current cattle MHC class I nomenclature. We presently describe and compare five fully assembled MHC class I haplotypes using the latest cattle and yak genome assemblies. Of the five previously described “pseudogenes” in the cattle MHC class I region, Pseudogene 3 is putatively functional in all haplotypes and Pseudogene 6 and Pseudogene 7 are putatively functional in some haplotypes. This was reinforced by evidence of transcription. Based on full gene sequences as well as 3′ coding sequence, we identified distinct subgroups of BoLA‐3 and BoLA‐6 that represent distinct genetic loci. We further examined allele‐specific expression using transcriptomic data revealing that certain alleles are consistently weakly expressed compared to others. These observations will help to inform further studies into how MHC class I region variability influences T cell and natural killer cell functions in cattle.
Characteristics in trace elements compositions of tephras (B-Tm and To-a) for identification tools

Copyright © 2021 by The Geochemical Society of Japan. lacustrine and marine sediments can be preserved well when undisturbed by postdeposition erosion. Multiple dating studies using tephrochronology have been performed on lacustrine and marine sediments (Hopkins et al., 2015; Matsu’ura and Komatsubara, 2017; Sirocko et al., 2013). In order to establish the tephra layer as a robust chronological tool, it is essential to characterize each tephra using multiple approaches, such as morphology, mineralogy and geochemistry. The absolute date of the Millennium Eruption (ME) of Changbaishan Volcano (also referred to as Mt. Paektu, Baekdusan or Tianchi), located at the border between China and North Korea (Fig. 1a), has been defined as AD 946 analyzed by dendrochronological approaches (Hakozaki et al., 2018; Oppenheimer et al., 2017). This date is based on 14C contents in tree rings collected at the foot of Changbaishan Volcano by matching the observed 14C variations against the AD 774–775 14C spike (Miyake Characteristics in trace elements compositions of tephras (B-Tm and To-a) for identification tools
Test Methodology for Impact Testing of Portable Electronic Products

This paper introduces a test methodology to examine the durability of surface mount interconnects under impact loading when a portable electronic product is dropped. Conventional testing approaches that consider loading (total impact energy, orientation and number of impacts) as the governing criterion for failure, typically report difficulties in correlating with impact durability under field conditions. This study considers damage accumulated in the interconnects in terms of local flexural strain, strain rate and acceleration. The advantage is that the results are less dependant on structure and loading, because damage is quantified in terms of specimen response rather than the loading. An instrumented, repeatable impact test setup is developed. The test matrix covers the design space in terms of specimen styles, impact orientation, loading and boundary conditions. The entire test matrix is replicated twice for proof of consistency of the test data. A finite element model of the transient impact is developed. Results indicate that number of impacts to failure is a good damage metric for constrained impacts. The same damage metric may not be applicable for unconstrained (free) impacts because the strain signatures are more complex. A comparative analysis of the experimental and numerical data indicates a good correlation between the two. The end goal is to develop a consistent, accurate and generic methodology for ranking the impact durability of different surface mount interconnects technologies.Copyright © 2003 by ASME
Evaluating implementation of Coastal Zone Regulation notification in India using remote sensing change detection techniques, aided with machine learning algorithms.

Marine or coastal wetlands that host a diverse variety of ﬂora and fauna are unique and fragile as they are subjected to changing coastlines and undergo dynamic spatial shifts with respect to tidal movements. In India, the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notiﬁcation aims at the conservation of coastal regions, under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and regulates developmental and construction activities within the CRZ regions of marine wetlands, in addition to the coastal belt. Remote sensing techniques can be of great use in understanding if the implementation of the CRZ has helped to regulate the proliferation of settlements in the wetland system. In this study, remote sensing techniques along with machine learning classiﬁers have been used for detecting and quantifying the recent settlements that have been built in the zones regulated by the CRZ of the Vembanad wetland of Kerala. Three standard change detection pre-processing techniques were used over Linear Imaging Self-Scanning Sensor (LISS) IV imagery which was followed by classiﬁcation using machine learning algorithms: Support Vector Machine (SVM), random forest, and Artiﬁcial Neural Network (ANN) to identify the built-up erected in the CRZ region between 2012 and 2018. Comparing the performance of these classiﬁers, the random forest model was found to have the highest overall accuracy of 96%. It was found that the total area of new built-up that were constructed between 2012 and 2018 in the CRZ regions of 48 villages, that span across Ernakulam, Kottayam and Alappuzha districts of Kerala is 149 hectares. This usage of change detection techniques aided by machine learning algorithms over high-resolution LISS IV imagery would help to evaluate the eﬀectiveness of the CRZ notiﬁcation over other marine wetlands in India.
Estimation of waveguide phase error in silica-based waveguides

A new estimation method is proposed in order to clarify waveguide phase error factors. Using the proposed method, it is possible to analyze such factors as core size error and refractive index error, which cause optical phase error in waveguides. This method is applied to silica-based waveguides to estimate the waveguide phase error. This revealed an average core size error of 2.1/spl times/10/sup -3/ /spl mu/m and an average refractive index error of 1.9/spl times/10/sup -6/. Finally, based on the measured phase error values, the optimum arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) configuration is considered with a view to achieving low crosstalk.