Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non Conventional Approaches for Optimizing Of Cutting Parameters in Machining Process : A Review

As any cutting process problem in machining may have some unique characteristics, it may be difficult to select a suitable optimization technique that provide acceptable and improved cutting conditions. This paper discusses the non-conventional optimization approaches for optimizing the cutting parameters in various machining processes such as turning, drilling and milling operations. Based on the review; the advantages, limitations and applications of each technique that is classified as a nonconventional approach is described. The current review shows that each approach has its own features that work well and may not applicable in certain optimization problems. The features of the various optimization approaches and their application potentials are concluded in relation to the different type of machining processes.
Interaction Modal Logic for multiagent systems based on BDI architecture

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of multiagent system composed of a set of BDI agents based on role modeling and modal logic of interaction. Agents perform actions taking roles within a scenario that obeys a plan conformed for a set of goals and establishes relations between the participants. These plans and relations define interactions between agents. All interactions are divided in communicative and physical ones; a common model of interactions of the both types is proposed for its further formalization as a modal logic of interaction. The key characteristics of this logic are dynamic reasoning and dynamic plan executions modeled through modal categories.
REPRODUCTION AT ALL COSTS: THE ADAPTIVE STRESS RESPONSE OF MALE ARCTIC GROUND SQUIRRELS

We tested the hypothesis that adult male arctic ground squirrels ( Spermo- philus parryii plesius) exhibit an adaptive stress response during the mating period that may compromise their survival, whereas males at other times (nonreproductive adult males and juvenile males) have a normal functional stress response. We assessed the physiological responsiveness of the stress axis, of energy mobilization, and of the immune response by subjecting adult breeding males, adult nonbreeding males, and juvenile males to a hormonal challenge and an immunocompetence challenge. At the onset of the breeding season in spring, only 25-30% of the population were males, and of those present during the mating period, half disappeared soon thereafter, and 82% were not replaced by immigrants. Adult breeding males had the highest levels of free cortisol, the lowest maximum corticosteroid- binding capacity, slight dexamethasone resistance, the lowest hematocrit, the lowest number of white blood cells, the highest number of eosinophils, and the poorest ability to respond to the foreign antigen challenge in comparison with the other two male classes. All of these characteristics were indicative of chronic stress in breeding males that may directly com- promise their survival. Juvenile males in mid-August also showed many, but not all of these characteristics, indicative of a prolonged period of stress, presumably associated with the period of dispersal. Testosterone levels remained high irrespective of age or breeding condition, decreased when dexamethasone was injected, and increased when ACTH was injected. These latter results are unique in mammals. High testosterone levels and their augmentation with stressors may play a key role in maintenance of aggressive behavior. We conclude that breeding male arctic ground squirrels exhibit an adaptive stress response in which they trade off survival for reproduction. We hypothesize that similar stress re- sponses may have evolved in other species with comparable life histories.
METROPOLITAN TAXATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

As we enter the 21st Century, local governments will face challenges to how they raise revenue. Existing local tax systems are ill equipped to meet future basic revenue needs. Moreover, economic and technological changes will inevitably and profoundly alter tax systems of all governments. The problems with existing tax systems and future economic challenges will likely lead to an environment in which local taxation will be limited to an extent unseen in American history. The limitations will challenge the ability of local governments to fund basic services—a function that must be performed. The limitations will also alter the relationship between local governments within a metropolitan area. The ability of local governments to use tax policy as a means of furthering economic development i.e., competing with neighboring jurisdictions, will be greatly reduced. Finally, local tax limitations will lead local governments to seriously consider an alternative system for collecting revenue—land value taxation.
Transportation Costs, Inequities, and Trade-Offs

Transportation costs are frequently identified as having socially inequitable effects, especially for low-income households who have limited financial resources. The concerns are that low-income persons spend a disproportionately larger proportion of their total income on transportation due to the fixed costs associated with financing automobile purchase. Furthermore, low income persons unable to purchase an automobile often reside in locations that are not well connected by public transit to employment concentrations. This study examines neighborhood housing and transportation choices available to working households in 28 metropolitan regions in the U.S. The study is unique because it analyzes household characteristics at the census travel level. We first describe the trends in transportation costs by household income levels. We then argue that based on microeconomic theory predicting trade-offs between housing and transportation costs (H+T) as households choose residential locations, transportation cost burdens should not be considered separate from housing costs. In addition, we perform a cluster analysis to show that low income households are significantly burdened by the combination of housing and transportation costs and that these households and their neighborhoods potentially experience other social and economic burdens because of it.
Expectation maximization algorithms for conditional likelihoods

We introduce an expectation maximization-type (EM) algorithm for maximum likelihood optimization of conditional densities. It is applicable to hidden variable models where the distributions are from the exponential family. The algorithm can alternatively be viewed as automatic step size selection for gradient ascent, where the amount of computation is traded off to guarantees that each step increases the likelihood. The tradeoff makes the algorithm computationally more feasible than the earlier conditional EM. The method gives a theoretical basis for extended Baum Welch algorithms used in discriminative hidden Markov models in speech recognition, and compares favourably with the current best method in the experiments.
2 DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STOCK AND PROPERTY MARKETS

This paper investigates the longrun and short-term relationships between stock and property markets. We focus on the combined and relative impacts of a real estate system that comprises residential and office property prices on all-stock and property stock prices. Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration procedure, the results suggest that there exists a long-run contemporaneous relationship between all-stock (and property stock) prices and real estate prices. Both the long-run and short-term influences of the combined residential and office property prices on all-stock and property stock prices weaken after controlling for changes in the macroeconomic factors. Additionally, all-stock and property stock prices are largely influenced by office real estate price in the long run. On the other hand, residential real estate price impacts stronger on all-stock and property stock prices in the short-term. Our combined perspective has implications for portfolio investment strategies and policy-making.
ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling: Research Challenges and Future Prospects in Europe

As the role of government in the society is undergoing continuous change, consensus is starting to build around the potential that collaborative technologies have in the field of governance and policy modeling. For effective citizen empowerment and participation to become mainstream, at a greater scale, several challenges will have to be faced, which will require new tools to be developed. The research questions underlying the present paper are: which new ICT-enabled governance models and methods of monitoring, interaction, collaboration for policy making and enforcement are emerging, and which policy modelling mechanisms can be implemented in order to effectively involve citizens in decision making? The paper starts addressing these issues by defining the problem statement and discussing the changing role of the government in the Information Society, also proposing some elements for a conceptualisation of ICT for governance and policy modelling. It further presents the evolving debate on the e-Government and e-Governance agenda developments, as well as the state of the art and the limitations of research in these fields. Main emerging trends and future prospects within the evolving public sector are then anticipated in order to draw some preliminary conclusions outlining the challenges ahead and future research in the field of ICT for governance and policy modelling.
INTERACTING PHENOTYPES AND THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS. III. SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Interactions among conspecifics influence social evolution through two distinct but intimately related paths. First, they provide the opportunity for indirect genetic effects (IGEs), where genes expressed in one individual influence the expression of traits in others. Second, interactions can generate social selection when traits expressed in one individual influence the fitness of others. Here, we present a quantitative genetic model of multivariate trait evolution that integrates the effects of both IGEs and social selection, which have previously been modeled independently. We show that social selection affects evolutionary change whenever the breeding value of one individual covaries with the phenotype of its social partners. This covariance can be created by both relatedness and IGEs, which are shown to have parallel roles in determining evolutionary response. We show that social selection is central to the estimation of inclusive fitness and derive a version of Hamilton's rule showing the symmetrical effects of relatedness and IGEs on the evolution of altruism. We illustrate the utility of our approach using altruism, greenbeards, aggression, and weapons as examples. Our model provides a general predictive equation for the evolution of social phenotypes that encompasses specific cases such as kin selection and reciprocity. The parameters can be measured empirically, and we emphasize the importance of considering both IGEs and social selection, in addition to relatedness, when testing hypotheses about social evolution.
Vehicle level continuous integration in the automotive industry

Embedded systems are omnipresent in the modern world. This naturally includes the automobile industry, where electronic functions are becoming prevalent. In the automotive domain, embedded systems today are highly distributed systems and manufactured in great numbers and variance. To ensure correct functionality, systematic integration and testing on the system level is key. In software engineering, continuous integration has been used with great success. In the automotive industry though, system tests are still performed in a big-bang integration style, which makes tracing and fixing errors very expensive and time-consuming. Thus, I want to investigate whether and how continuous integration can be applied to the automotive industry on the system level. Doing so, I present an adapted process of Continuous Integration including methods for test case specification and selection. I will apply this process as a pilot project in a production environment at BMW and evaluate the effectiveness by gathering both qualitative and quantitative data. From the gained experience, I will derive possible improvements to the process for future implementations and requirements on test hardware used for Continuous Integration.
Association of hepatitis B virus pre-S deletions with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma in chronic hepatitis B.

BACKGROUND We aimed to determine whether hepatitis B virus (HBV) pre-S deletion was an independent factor for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS Pre-S deletions were determined in HBV isolates from 115 chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients with HCC. Sixty-nine patients were further matched with 69 CHB patients without HCC for age, sex, hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) status, and HBV genotype. RESULTS HBV pre-S deletions were clustered mainly in the 3' end of pre-S1 and 5' end of pre-S2 regions. Adjusted for confounding risk factors, patients with HCC had a higher prevalence of HBV with pre-S deletions than did patients without HCC (23 [33.3%] of 69 vs 11 [15.9%] of 69; P = .018; odds ratio [OR], 2.64). In particular, only pre-S2 deletions but not pre-S1 deletions were significantly associated with the development of HCC (P = .020). A higher prevalence of pre-S deletions was observed in HBV isolates from HCC patients under the age of 50 years than from those older than 50 years (10 [62.5%] of 16 vs 13 [24.5%] of 53; P = .012; OR, 5.13). Emergence of de novo pre-S deletions was documented before the development of HCC. CONCLUSIONS HBV pre-S2 deletions were an independent factor associated with the development of HCC. Its oncogenic role may be more important in young patients with HCC.
Multiscale Mechanical Model of the Pacinian Corpuscle Shows Depth and Anisotropy Contribute to the Receptor’s Characteristic Response to Indentation

Cutaneous mechanoreceptors transduce different tactile stimuli into neural signals that produce distinct sensations of touch. The Pacinian corpuscle (PC), a cutaneous mechanoreceptor located deep within the dermis of the skin, detects high frequency vibrations that occur within its large receptive field. The PC is comprised of lamellae that surround the nerve fiber at its core. We hypothesized that a layered, anisotropic structure, embedded deep within the skin, would produce the nonlinear strain transmission and low spatial sensitivity characteristic of the PC. A multiscale finite-element model was used to model the equilibrium response of the PC to indentation. The first simulation considered an isolated PC with fiber networks aligned with the PC’s surface. The PC was subjected to a 10 μm indentation by a 250 μm diameter indenter. The multiscale model captured the nonlinear strain transmission through the PC, predicting decreased compressive strain with proximity to the receptor’s core, as seen experimentally by others. The second set of simulations considered a single PC embedded epidermally (shallow) or dermally (deep) to model the PC’s location within the skin. The embedded models were subjected to 10 μm indentations at a series of locations on the surface of the skin. Strain along the long axis of the PC was calculated after indentation to simulate stretch along the nerve fiber at the center of the PC. Receptive fields for the epidermis and dermis models were constructed by mapping the long-axis strain after indentation at each point on the surface of the skin mesh. The dermis model resulted in a larger receptive field, as the calculated strain showed less indenter location dependence than in the epidermis model.
Low-temperature Polymer Bonding Using Surface Hydrophilic Treatment for Chemical/bio Microchips

Polymer materials have been used for electronic, optical and bio micro/nano devices. Polymer device fabrication technologies based on replication methods including hot embossing (Becker & Heim, 2000; Park et al., 2003; Shinohara et al., 2007b), injection molding (Becker et al., 1986; Svedberg et al., 2003), ultraviolet (UV) imprinting (Haisma et al., 1996; Kawaguchi et al., 2007; Shinohara et al., 2008d) and casting (Duffy et al., 1998; Slentz et al., 2001) can reduce costs. Polymer bonding technologies have also been required for sealing or stacking the devices. Some examples of bonding methods have been reported, including thermal direct bonding (Spierings & Haisma, 1994; Chen et al., 2004; Shinohara et al., 2007b), solvent bonding (Wang et al., 2002; Lin et al., 2007), and bonding using other intermediate layer (Gras et al., 2001; Lei et al., 2004). Low-temperature bonding technologies are required with deformation of the previous surface structures as small as possible. On the other hand, surface modification for biocompatibility is one of the most important processes for biochips. Polymer surface modification methods are classified into two categories. One is modification of the original surface (e.g., plasma treatment (Lianos et al., 1994; Kaminska et al., 2002; Chai et al., 2004; Lai et al., 2006), UV irradiation (Peeling & Clark, 1981; Murakami et al., 2003; Hozumi et al., 2004; Diaz-Quijada et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2009). The other is coating with other materials (Ratner, 1995; Oehr, 2003; Liu et al., 2004; Bi et al., 2006). In this chapter, two low-temperature bonding technologies are described. Section 2 introduces low-temperature direct bonding methods of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) or cyclo-olefin polymer (COP), and their applications of microchannel devices. Section 3 describes surface hydrophilic treatment method using aromatic polyurea film, and bonding method using the polyurea film.
A Variable Step-Size FXLMS Algorithm for Narrowband Active Noise Control

In this paper, a variable step-size filtered-x LMS (VSS-FXLMS) algorithm is proposed for a typical narrowband active noise control system. The new algorithm converges much faster than the conventional FXLMS algorithm does, and indicates a convergence rate quite similar to that of the filtered-x recursive least square (FXRLS) algorithm in stationary noise environments. It also considerably outperforms these two existing algorithms in nonstationary situations. The proposed algorithm requires some more computations as compared with the FXLMS algorithm; however, its computational complexity is significantly less than that of the FXRLS algorithm. Numerous simulations for stationary and nonstationary scenarios are conducted to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed VSS-FXLMS algorithm as compared with the FXLMS and the FXRLS algorithms.
Automated approach to classification of mine-like objects in sidescan sonar using highlight and shadow information

The majority of existing automatic mine detection algorithms which have been developed are robust at detecting mine-like objects (MLOs) at the expense of detecting many false alarms. These objects must later be classified as mine or not-mine. The authors present a model based technique using Dempster–Shafer information theory to extend the standard mine/not-mine classification procedure to provide both shape and size information on the object. A sonar simulator is used to produce synthetic realisations of mine-like object shadow regions which are compared to those of the unknown object using the Hausdorff distance. This measurement is fused with other available information from the object's shadow and highlight regions to produce a membership function for each of the considered object classes. Dempster–Shafer information theory is used to classify the objects using both mono-view and multi-view analysis. In both cases, results are presented on real data.
ROUTING TECHNIQUES IN COGNITIVE RADIO NETWORKS : A SURVEY

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are being studied intensively. The major motivation for this is the heavily underutilized frequency spectrum. CRN has the capability to utilize the unutilized frequency spectrum. Routing in CRN is a challenging task due the diversity in the available channels and data rates. In this paper, we present a survey of the state-of-the-art routing techniques in CRNs. We first outline the design challenges for routing protocols in CRNs followed by a comprehensive survey of different routing techniques. Furthermore we classified these routing protocols into spectrum aware-based, multipathbased, local coordination-based, reactive source-based and tree-based routing techniques depending on the protocol operation.
A framework of the PHY-layer approach to defense against security threats in cognitive radio networks

In this article we focus on the security in cognitive radio, which is one of the needs for new technologies requiring spectrum bands. The PHY-layer in CR is more complex than a conventional wireless communication system because of spectrum sensing and the dynamic spectrum access mechanism. Therefore, it becomes vulnerable to be invaded. We present the PHY-layer approaches to defense against security threats in CR networks. We analyze the validities and benefits of proposed approaches, which can be valid not only for the attacks in the PHY-layer but also for those in the upper layer.
Factors Affecting Regional SMEs Progression to Digital Business Ecosystems

SMEs are widely recognized as an important driving force of economic growth, yet, their uptake of ICT is still very low. Tosupport SMEs ICT adoption and to foster regional development, in 2000, the Lisbon Strategy on the Information Society andKnowledge-based economy created a vision for 2010 towards the creation of the European Digital Business Ecosystems(DBE). This paper is positioned within that context and reports upon a project involving 6000 SMEs whose aim was tosupport ICT adoption and to encourage SME networks through the creation of a Regional Business Portal. The papere xplores factors affecting the regional SMEs participating in the DBE. An in-depth longitudinal case study approach was adopted and multiple sources of evidence were used. Many factors affecting SMEs progression to DBE were identified:including people and organization, environmental, diffusion networks, technological, regional and time factors
A new measurement-based admission control method for IEEE802.11 wireless local area networks

The upcoming IEEE 802.11e standard supports the applications with QoS requirements by using differentiated medium access mechanism for different traffic categories. In order to protect the high priority data flows and improve network performance in a heavy-loaded IEEE 802.11e network, a new measurement-based distributed call admission control method is introduced in this paper. The proposed method is based on the measurement of the existing traffic load over IEEE 802.11e network. Depending on the amount of the existing traffic load, the admission controller decides whether or not to allow a data unit to have the right to access the wireless medium. The simulation results show that the proposed mechanism works well.