Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model for predicting cost overrun in small and medium-sized public construction project

Cost overrun is the important issue in the construction industry that gets attention in several countries. This study focuses on affected construction company to examine the cost overrun factors of a public construction project, such as dredge and road. The prediction model for cost overrun in pre-tender phase was developed base on artificial neural networks (ANN), case-based reasoning (CBR), and hybrid ANN-CBR by using actual information collected from the construction contract and experts interviewing. The evaluation results during models development process shown that ANN was more accurate than CBR. On the other hand, the result of each model validated with 12 unseen projects shown that ANN and CBR with factor weights averaged from the best ANN model also have acceptable accuracy. However, CBR is more useful to support constructors' decision, since CBR itself could produce results with similarity score included as the probability percentage.
The influence of gas expulsion and initial mass segregation on the stellar mass function of globular star clusters

Recently, De Marchi, Paresce & Pulone studied a sample of 20 globular clusters and found that all clusters with high concentrations have steep stellar mass functions while clusters with low concentration have comparatively shallow mass functions. No globular clusters were found with a flat mass function and high concentration. This seems curious since more concentrated star clusters are believed to be dynamically more evolved and should have lost more low-mass stars via evaporation, which would result in a shallower mass function in the low-mass part.
Calculating Entropy Estimate Using Binary Decision Diagrams

Information entropy is one of crucial concepts in modern information theory and related fields. Over the years a large number of methods for reliable estimation of information entropy have been invented. In this paper we introduce a method for the estimation entropy of binary streams based on binary decision diagrams. Binary decision diagrams are an efficient method of representation of discrete functions. By exploiting the useful properties of binary decision diagrams we may be able, in some cases, to significantly reduce the time and complexity of calculation of entropy estimate.
eQuilibrator—the biochemical thermodynamics calculator

The laws of thermodynamics constrain the action of biochemical systems. However, thermodynamic data on biochemical compounds can be difficult to find and is cumbersome to perform calculations with manually. Even simple thermodynamic questions like ‘how much Gibbs energy is released by ATP hydrolysis at pH 5? ’ are complicated excessively by the search for accurate data. To address this problem, eQuilibrator couples a comprehensive and accurate database of thermodynamic properties of biochemical compounds and reactions with a simple and powerful online search and calculation interface. The web interface to eQuilibrator (http://equilibrator.weizmann.ac.il) enables easy calculation of Gibbs energies of compounds and reactions given arbitrary pH, ionic strength and metabolite concentrations. The eQuilibrator code is open-source and all thermodynamic source data are freely downloadable in standard formats. Here we describe the database characteristics and implementation and demonstrate its use.
Social Distributed Hash Table

This paper presents an architecture called social distributed hash table (SDHT) that combines strengths of distributed hash table (DHT) algorithms and social networks making mobile search fast and context oriented. The paper presents possible implementations of the proposed architecture in the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) and as a standalone SIP based system. The architecture forms a cost efficient platform for providing innovative mobile services that take advantage of social context of human communication. The architecture can be used to deploy a global virtual mobile network by placing SDHT nodes in different geographical regions. The paper also presents a content sharing inside community service.
Proactive Security Framework for Online Business Web Portals with Implementation Details

Most of the critical information is stored or travelled throughout the Internet and prone to cyber threats all the time. The current manuscript provides a process to develop and implement an automated proactive security framework to alert/avoid such cyber threats for the critical online information. In addition, it also describes a feasibility study towards the adoption of the proposed process by the current user community with favorable results. The proposed work is able to help for the development of security add-ons to almost all the embedded software applications for the better secured services to the users.
Research of Software Reliability Based on Synthetic Architecture

In this paper we introduce some typical architecture-based software reliability model for software architecture reliability estimation, and modify model of software reliability estimation so that to improve precision of estimating software architecture reliability. Our approach is based on Markov chain properties and software architecture. At the same time, we propose the method of how to use the modified model to make a reliability estimation in a synthetic architecture so that to expand the application domain of this model. In addition, we conduct an experiment on to validate this method.
Forecasting the power consumption of a single domestic electric water heater for a direct load control program

Thermal storage units such as residential electric hot waters are feasible candidates to be used in a direct load control programs. They can store electric power in form of heat for later use. PowerShift Atlantic (PSA) is a leading project in developing a demand-side management program to provide up to 32MW reserve capacity through electric water heaters. To control water heaters properly, the controller needs to have an estimation of the on/off status of each individual water heaters in advance. This paper presents a monte-carlo statistical based method to create a short-term load forecast of the individual loads. This method was compared with a traditional neural network based load forecast. This paper also presents a model to estimate the relative error of the aggregated load forecast. The proposed methods were deployed on the PSA pilot and the experimental results are discussed in this paper.
Families of scroll Grid attractors

In this paper a new family of scroll grid attractors is presented. These families are classified into three called 1D-, 2D- and 3D-grid scroll attractors depending on the location of the equilibrium points in state space. The scrolls generated from 1D-, 2D- and 3D-grid scroll attractors are located around the equilibrium points on a line, on a plane or in 3D, respectively. Due to the generalization of the nonlinear characteristics, it is possible to increase the number of scrolls in all state variable directions. A number of strange attractors from the scroll grid attractor families are presented. They have been experimentally verified using current feedback opamps. Also Lur'e representations are given for the scroll grid attractor families.
The Lamperti representation of real-valued self-similar Markov processes

In this paper, we obtain a Lamperti type representation for real-valued self-similar Markov processes, killed at their hitting time of zero. Namely, we represent real-valued self-similar Markov processes as time changed multiplicative invariant processes. Doing so, we complete Kiu’s work [Stochastic Process. Appl. 10 (1980) 183–191], following some ideas in Chybiryakov [Stochastic Process. Appl. 116 (2006) 857–872] in order to characterize the underlying processes in this representation. We provide some examples where the characteristics of the underlying processes can be computed explicitly.
Efficient paging message design based on binary tree in NB-IoT system

Narrow band Internet of Things (IoT), based on legacy Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, is a hot cellular technology to support sensors and controllers applications. However, its paging capacity is insufficient if legacy paging mechanism is employed, due to the contradiction between the massive devices and the limited physical band resources. In this paper, a more efficient paging message is designed based on the binary tree, to significantly reduce the message size for enough paging capacity. We propose to indicate a set of value ranges encompassing the paged User Equipment (UE) identities, rather than to list all the paged UE identities as in legacy LTE system. It is verified by theoretical analyses and numerical simulations that the proposed paging message outperforms the existing approaches in statistical criteria.
Invocation of real-time objects in a CAN bus-system

The paper focuses on method invocation of real-time objects in a CAN-based distributed real-time system. A simple object model is introduced, which allows the convenient modelling of hardware and software components. Related to the object model, two issues are discussed. Firstly, a model is introduced which allows to form and address object groups. This reflects a basic need in a real-time system to distribute information to multiple clients efficiently. Secondly, the paper discusses an approach to express timing requirements for object invocations. To achieve distributed consensus on communication resource access, an EDF-like approach is introduced, which takes advantage of knowledge about deadlines, the number of remaining communication activities and the remaining worst-case execution time for the invoked method at each point of time.
Using a Variation of Elgamal Signature to Support Fast and Lazy Authenticating Origin Autonomous Systems

About the schemes for authenticating origin autonomous systems, related documents think it is appropriate to authenticate address attestations and related public keys only using the information of update messages. However, this approach is infeasible in existing schemes because update messages are limited in length to 4096 bytes and thus are too small to carry the necessary public key certificates. For realizing this approach, in this paper, we make full use of specific characteristics of a variation of ELGamal signature and thus present a method for fast and lazy authenticating origin ASs. In the process of hierarchical issuing keys of proposed method, an efficient formula of computing public keys is achieved. For authenticating public keys, it is not necessary for a verifier to check a series of certificates existing in certification path from the owner of advertised prefix to the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). Thus the lazy authentication of origin ASs is achieved because a verifier can authenticate address attestations and related public keys only using the information of update messages. The path validation from IANA to the owner of advertised prefix, where signatures can only be verified separately in existing asymmetric cryptography based solutions of IP prefix hijacking, can be replaced with efficient computing of only a single formula, which can bring about fast authentication of origin ASs. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work for authenticating origin autonomous systems by using ELGamal signature to achieve a fast scheme that can authenticate address attestations and related public keys only using the information of update messages.
Facial Template Synthesis based on SIFT Features

This paper proposes a procedure for facial template synthesis based on features extracted from multiple facial instances with varying pose. The proposed system extracts the rotation, scale and translation invariant SIFT features, also having high discrimination ability, from the frontal and half left and right profiles of an individual face images. These affine invariant features obviate the need of ad-hoc algorithms to register features of side profiles against frontal profiles for feature-set augmentation. An augmented feature set is then formed from the fusion of features from frontal and side profiles of an individual, after removing feature redundancy. The augmented feature sets of database and query images are matched using the Euclidean distance and Point pattern matching techniques. The experimental results are compared with the system using only frontal face images for both the matching strategies. The reported results prove the efficacy of the proposed system.
Experiential festival attributes, perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intention for Korean festivalgoers

Based on an extensive literature review of the festival experience, this study proposes that the experiences of festivalgoers can be classified into five main attributes, namely Escape, Playfulness, Togetherness, Sacredness, and Placeness. A survey of 450 South Koreans who had participated in some type of domestic festival in the past year statistically validated these attributes and explored the impact of each on the perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions of festivalgoers. The study shows that those Koreans who experienced Playfulness, Sacredness, and Placeness at a festival tended to perceive the festival as more valuable than those who experienced Escape and Togetherness, which were factors that did not significantly affect the perceived value of the festival. This study illuminates the nature of festival attributes and the particular characteristics most important to Korean festivalgoers, both of which provide theoretical and practical implications for tourism researchers and festival organizers.
Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma in the Elderly: A Review of Potential Difficulties

Half of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) are more than 65 years old. These elderly patients frequently have other diseases, some of them severe, which may alter their ability to receive standard curative therapy. However, these associated diseases are heterogeneous and only a few contraindicate chemotherapy treatments. We reviewed all potential difficulties, such as the evaluation of comorbidities, the heterogeneous functional status of this population, and the consequences of the aging process that might be associated with treating these patients, and now propose solutions. As standard rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (R-CHOP) chemotherapy may cure the majority of patients, it must always be the first proposed option. With this approach, elderly patients with DLBCL treated with a curative intent can reach a complete remission and have a similar outcome as younger patients. Reduced dose intensity must be applied for very elderly patients or those unfit for full-dose anthracycline. The critical question for a physician is why these patients cannot be treated with the standard regimen, namely R-CHOP. Clin Cancer Res; 19(7); 1660–9. ©2013 AACR.
Psychology or Psychological Science?

The question of renaming graduate psychology programs to psychological science is a timely and contentious issue. To better understand why some programs, but not others, are changing names, we surveyed chairpersons (Study 1) and faculty (Study 2) within graduate psychology and psychological science programs. Within psychology programs, a name change was often perceived as unnecessary, nonrepresentative, or intimidating to science-averse students. Within psychological science programs, a name change was often perceived as better conveying the science of psychology to others, a scientific/research focus, or interdisciplinary partnerships. Differences of opinion may be due to psychological science, as compared to psychology, faculty’s greater concern about conveying psychological science to others, clarifying their program’s focus, and partnering with other sciences.
Synthesis of Laboratory Ultrasound Contrast Agents

Ultrasound Contrast Agents (UCAs) were developed to maximize reflection contrast so that organs can be seen clearly in ultrasound imaging. UCAs increase the signal to noise ratio (SNR) by linear and non-linear mechanisms and thus help more accurately visualize the internal organs and blood vessels. However, the UCAs on the market are not only expensive, but are also not optimized for use in various therapeutic research applications such as ultrasound-aided drug delivery. The UCAs fabricated in this study utilize conventional lipid and albumin for shell formation and perfluorobutane as the internal gas. The shape and density of the UCA bubbles were verified by optical microscopy and Cryo SEM, and compared to those of the commercially available UCAs, Definity® and Sonovue®. The size distribution and characteristics of the reflected signal were also analyzed using a particle size analyzer and ultrasound imaging equipment. Our experiments indicate that UCAs composed of spherical microbubbles, the majority of which were smaller than 1 um, were successfully synthesized. Microbubbles 10 um or larger were also identified when different shell characteristics and filters were used. These laboratory UCAs can be used for research in both diagnoses and therapies.
Sulfide exposure accelerates hypoxia‐driven mortalit

The effect of the presence of sulfide on the survival of benthic organisms under hypoxia was tested using a meta‐analysis of published experimental results evaluating the effects of the presence of hydrogen sulfide on the median survival time of benthic macrofauna under hypoxia. The meta‐analysis confirmed that survival times under hypoxia are reduced by an average of 30% in marine benthic communities exposed to hydrogen sulfide. The effect of sulfide on survival was higher for egg forms than for juvenile or adult stages. The aggravation of the negative effects of spreading hypoxia in the presence of sulfide suggests that the threats derived from hypoxia to marine biodiversity are greater than anticipated on the basis of the direct effects of low oxygen concentration alone.
EVIDENCE OF SUPPRESSOR CELL ACTIVITY IN SPLEENS OF MICE BEARING PRIMARY TUMORS INDUCED BY MOLONEY SARCOMA VIRUS

Spleens from Moloney sarcoma virus (MSV) tumor-bearing C57BL/6N mice contained four times the normal number of mononuclear cells and displayed a markedly elevated "spontaneous" (mitogen-independent) DNA synthesis on a per cell basis. The number of macrophages were increased three-fold while there was a slight reduction in the percentage of T lymphocytes. The phytohemagglutinin (PHA) response on a per cell basis of spleens from tumor-bearing mice was decreased about 90% when compared with normal control mice. The primary in vitro immune response to sheep red blood cells was also suppressed to levels of less than 10% of normals. The PHA response could be restored by purification of MSV spleen cells by rayon adherence columns and by removal of phagocytic cells by an iron/magnet technique. The activity of suppressor cells in MSV spleens was demonstrated in mixtures with syngeneic normal spleen cells where a marked impairment of the PHA response was observed. Spleen cells from tumor-free nude mice and normal spleen cells treated by anti-θ serum plus guinea pig complement (C'), both totally unreactive to PHA, had no such effect. The inhibitor cell in MSV spleens was shown to be insensitive to inactivation by anti-θ plus C', but could be removed by the adherence columns and the iron/magnet technique. These data suggest that this suppressor cell is a cell of the monocyte/macrophage series. Suggestive evidence was also presented that the suppressor cells belong to a proliferating population in MSV spleens. Similar suppressor cells have been previously demonstrated in spleens of mice during a variety of immune responses. Our data show, that a tumor, although stimulating the immune system, nevertheless may be suppressive on certain immune functions through the activation of suppressor cells.
A Spreadsheet Cell-Meaning Model for Testing

Most attempts to test spreadsheets use the spreadsheetinternal model to automatically detect input, intermediate and output cells. In this paper, we discuss an example which shows why this approach is problematic even for simple spreadsheets. Following this, we derive a number of requirements for more feasible spreadsheet cell-meaning models and describe a first prototype we have designed.
Prefrontal cortex and episodic memory: Integrating ﬁndings from neuropsychology and functional brain imaging

INTRODUCTION Although it has been speculated for many years that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in long-term memory for events, or episodic memory, only recently have researchers made a concerted attempt to define this role. Most theories of prefrontal function suggest that this region implements " top-down " or " executive " processes that influence a variety of domains, including memory. For example, Luria (1966) postulated a role for the frontal lobes in the regulation of voluntary attention and the organization of goal-directed behavior. Building on the work of Luria, Shallice (1982) argued that the frontal lobes are required for the attentional selection of schemes of action in novel situations. A complementary role suggested for the prefrontal cortex is the suppression of additionally proposed that the frontal lobes prepare sensory areas for environmental changes that will be induced by motor actions.
A safe place : effectiveness of domestic violence shelters and their impact on clients seeking help

KATHERINE M. ALIX-GAUDREAU (Under the direction of Dr. Jody Clay-Warner) ABSTRACT This research project is an outcome evaluation of one domestic violence shelter’s services. I ask the question: “Do shelter services impact client independence after shelter stay? ” Traits and commonalities of intimate partner violence survivors are discussed. I provide an overview of shelters and evaluations in general, focusing specifically on “SafePlace”, a domestic violence shelter in a small southeastern city. Services provided to 164 resident shelter clients are compared to client housing after shelter stay. T-test and logistic regression analyses provide some evidence that shelter stay has an impact on clients’ future independence. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed, placing emphasis on the need for theory-driven and comprehensive data collection systems to make shelter evaluations possible.