Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design and Testing of Biochar Stoves

Biochar is a solid material obtained from the carbonization of biomass. Biochar is used on agricultural lands as a soil amendment to improve the fertility of the soils. Currently the most common method of producing biochar is through biochar stoves. There are two basic stove operations in the production of biochar. The first type of stove produces biochar by direct combustion of biomass. Here biomass is burnt inside a chamber in an oxygen limited environment. The resulting residue is the bio-char. The second type involves burning the biomass in one chamber and housing the biomass to be charred in the annular portion of an outer chamber. Heat is transferred from the burning fuel on the inner chamber to the material to be charred in the outer chamber. While the process of biochar production in these stoves is known, the basic principles of the stove design are not readily available. The design methodology for both the types was developed from first principles. Prototypes of both types were constructed based on the design developed and tested. The paper lists the basic principles in the design of biochar stoves and the test results.
Performance of Sprayed Fiber Reinforced Polymer Strengthened Timber Beams

A study was carried out to investigate the use of Sprayed Fiber Reinforced Polymer (SFRP) for retrofit of timber beams. A total of 10-full scale specimens were tested. Two different timber preservatives and two different bonding agents were investigated. Strengthening was characterized using load deflection diagrams. Results indicate that it is possible to enhance load-carrying capacity and energy absorption characteristics using the technique of SFRP. Of the two types of preservatives investigated, the technique appears to be more effective for the case of creosote-treated specimens, where up to a 51% improvement in load-carrying capacity and a 460% increase in the energy absorption capacity were noted. Effectiveness of the bonding agent used was dependent on the type of preservative the specimen had been treated with.
In situ field measurements of the temporal evolution of low-frequency sea-ice dielectric properties in relation to temperature, salinity, and microstructure

Abstract. The seasonal evolution of sea-ice microstructure controls key ice properties, including those governing ocean–atmosphere heat and gas exchange, remote-sensing signatures, and the role of the ice cover as a habitat. Non-destructive in situ monitoring of sea-ice microstructure is of value for sea-ice research and operations but remains elusive to date. We examine the potential for the electric properties of sea ice, which is highly sensitive to the brine distribution within the ice, to serve as a proxy for microstructure and, hence, other ice transport properties. Throughout spring of 2013 and 2014, we measured complex dielectric permittivity in the range of 10 to 95 kHz in landfast ice off the coast of Barrow (Utqiaġvik), Alaska. Temperature and salinity measurements and ice samples provide data to characterize ice microstructure in relation to these permittivity measurements. The results reveal a significant correlation between complex dielectric permittivity, brine volume fraction, and microstructural characteristics including pore volume and connectivity, derived from X-ray microtomography of core samples. The influence of temperature and salinity variations as well as the relationships between ice properties, microstructural characteristics, and dielectric behavior emerge from multivariate analysis of the combined data set. Our findings suggest some promise for low-frequency permittivity measurements to track seasonal evolution of a combination of mean pore volume, fractional connectivity, and pore surface area-to-volume ratio, which in turn may serve as proxies for key sea-ice transport properties.
ANTIPROLIFERATIVE EFFECT OF Dendrophthoe pentandra EXTRACTS TOWARDS HUMAN BREAST ADENOCARCINOMA CELLS (MCF-7)

Dendrophthoe pentandra (DP) is a semi-parasitic plant. Previous studies showed that this plant possessed diverse medicinal properties. The present study was carried out to determine antiproliferative activity of various DP crude extracts. Extracts of petroleum ether, diethyl ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol, have been evaluated through IC 50 value, which defined by the concentration of drug that is required for the inhibition of 50% of cell population in vitro . The determination of percentage cell viability was conducted by using MTT assay. The screening assay involved the use of malignant cell line MCF-7 (breast cancer cell) whereas the normal cell line was L929 (connective cell). The control drug used was tamoxifen. The ethyl acetate and methanol extracts were found to be more effective against MCF-7 cancer cell lines compared to the others. All extracts showed no remarkable effect against normal cell L929 with IC 50 values more than 100 µg/mL. In contrast to tamoxifen, all extracts showed less cytotoxicity effect towards normal cells. The data obtained from this study provide notable preliminary information on the cytotoxic/antiproliferative effect of different DP extracts and further study should be carried out to isolate the active compound of the most potential DP extracts.
HEVC based Stereo Video codec

Development of stereo video codecs in latest multi-view extension of HEVC (MV-HEVC) with higher compression efficiency has been an active area of research. In this paper, a frame interleaved stereo video coding scheme based on MVHEVC standard codec is proposed. The proposed codec applies a reduced layer approach to encode the frame interleaved stereo sequences. A frame interleaving algorithm is developed to reorder the stereo video frames into a monocular video, such that the proposed codec can gain advantage from inter-views and temporal correlations to improve its coding performance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed codec; three standard multi-view test video sequences, named “Poznan_Street”, “Kendo” and “Newspaper1”, were selected and coded using the proposed codec and the standard MV-HEVC codec at different QPs and bitrates. Experimental results show that the proposed codec gives a significantly higher coding performance to that of the standard MV-HEVC codec at all bitrates.
Laws of nature, natural properties, and the robustly best system

This paper addresses a famous objection against David Lewis’s Best System Analysis (BSA) of laws of nature. The objection—anticipated and discussed by Lewis (1994)— focuses on the standards of simplicity and strength being (in part) a matter of psychol-ogy. Lewis’s answer to the objection relies on his metaphysics of natural properties and its ability to single out the robustly best system, a system that is expected to come out far ahead of its rivals under any standard of simplicity and strength. The main task of this paper is to argue that Lewis’s reply to the objection in terms of nature being kind to us does not succeed, if nature’s kindness is understood in terms of the naturalness of the properties composing the Humean mosaic. For epistemic access to natural properties is downstream to any previous identiﬁcation of the best system. A possible Lewisian rejoinder in terms of a cross-world Humean mosaic of natural properties is considered and rebutted. The paper concludes by suggesting that Lewis could instead avail himself of a better answer to the objection, if the standards of simplicity and strength were reinterpreted along perspectivalist lines.
Running Head : Nitrate supplementation and hepatic blood flow

Dr Anthony Shepherd 11 Associate Research & Teaching Fellow 12 University of Exeter Medical School 13 St. Luke's Campus 14 College House 15 Heavitree Road 16 Exeter 17 EX1 2LU 18 Email: anthony.shepherd@exeter.ac. uk 19 01392 72 2877 20
Means of Knowledge Acquisition of Entrepreneurs and Their Success

The goal of this paper is to analyze different approaches to acquiring new knowledge. We analyze what means of knowledge acquisition are used by entrepreneurs, such as formal education process, one and more day professional development workshops, professional counselors, professional literature and information on the world wide web. When making a decision on what means to use in order to increase one’s knowledge, entrepreneurs employ different assessment criteria: time and money investment as well as pedagogical techniques used. Time shortage is the most frequently cited reason that entrepreneurs do not invest more personal resources into knowledge acquisition processes. The main hypothesis we test, postulates that entrepreneurs who invest more time and money into knowledge acquisition processes are more successful. Success is measured with an average annual degree of growth of sale, profits and number of employees in the last four years and with entrepreneur’s opinion concerning success of the company’s business. Finally, we develop the implication for public policy and educational institutions on the means that need to be employed so that entrepreneurs would invest more resources in knowledge acquisition processes.
Mathematics teacher's work with curriculum resources

Mathematics teachers have always worked with many curriculum resources. These resources include textbooks, computer software; they have recently evolved to incorporate a profusion of online resources, leading to important evolutions of teachers' work. To understand and study these evolutions, we have developed a theoretical approach in mathematics education: the documentational approach to didactics. In this conference, I briefly introduce the main principles of this approach, and I present examples of research projects that used this approach to study the interactions between teachers and curriculum resources and their consequences.
Helical gaps in interacting Rashba wires at low electron densities

Rashba spin-orbit coupling and a magnetic field perpendicular to the Rashba axis have been predicted to open a partial gap (``helical gap'') in the energy spectrum of noninteracting or weakly interacting one-dimensional quantum wires. By comparing kinetic energy and Coulomb energy we show that this gap opening typically occurs at low electron densities where the Coulomb energy dominates. To address this strongly correlated limit, we investigate Rashba wires using Wigner crystal theory. We find that the helical gap exists even in the limit of strong interactions but its dependence on electron density differs significantly from the weakly interacting case. In particular, we find that the critical magnetic field for opening the gap becomes an oscillatory function of electron density. This changes strongly the expected signature of the helical gap in conductance measurements.
Combining people and freight flows using a scheduled transportation line with stochastic passenger demands

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Combining people and freight flows using a scheduled transportation line with stochastic passenger demands Abood Mourad, Jakob Puchinger, Tom van Woensel
Patron Offending and Intoxication in Night-Time Entertainment Districts (POINTED)

Miller, P., Pennay, A. , Jenkinson, R. , Droste, N. , Chikritzhs, T. , Tomsen, S. , Wadds, P., Jones, S. C. , Palmer, D. , Barrie, L. & Lubman, D. I. (2013). Patron offending and intoxication in night-time entertainment districts (POINTED): A study protocol. International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research, 2(1) , 69-76. doi: 10.7895/ijadr.v2i1. 74 ( http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v2i1.74 ) Risky alcohol consumption is the subject of considerable community concern in Australia and internationally, particularly the risky drinking practices of young people consuming alcohol in the night-time economy. This study will determine some of the factors and correlates associated with alcohol-related risk-taking, offending and harm in and around licensed venues and night-time entertainment precincts across five Australian cities (three metropolitan and two regional). The primary aim of the study is to measure levels of pre-drinking, drinking in venues, intoxication, illicit drug use and potentially harmful drinking practices (such as mixing with energy drinks) of patrons in entertainment areas, and relating this to offending, risky behaviour and harms experienced. The study will also investigate the effects of license type, trading hours, duration of drinking episodes and geographical location on intoxication, offending, risk-taking and experience of harm. Data collection involves patron interviews (incorporating breathalysing and drug testing) with 7500 people attending licensed venues. Intensive venue observations (n=112) will also be undertaken in a range of venues, including pubs, bars and nightclubs. The information gathered through this study will inform prevention and enforcement approaches of policy makers, police and venue staff.
W43: the closest molecular complex of the Galactic bar?

We used a large database extracted from Galaxy-wide surveys of H {\scriptsize I}, $^{13}$CO 1-0, $8 \micron$ and $870 \micron$ continuum to trace diffuse atomic gas, low- to medium-density molecular gas, high-density molecular gas, and star formation activity which we complemented by dedicated $^{12}$CO 2--1, 3--2 observations of the W43 region. From the detailed 3D (space-space-velocity) analysis of the molecular and atomic cloud tracers through the region and despite its wide velocity range (\emph{FWHM}$\sim22.3 \kms$ around $\vlsr\sim 95.9 \kms$), we identified W43 as a large (equivalent diameter $\sim 140$ pc) and coherent complex of molecular clouds which is surrounded by an atomic gas envelope (equivalent diameter $\sim 290$ pc). We measured the total mass of this newly-identified molecular complex ($M_{{\tiny total}}\sim 7.1 \times 10^6 \msun$), the mass contained in dense $870 \micron$ clumps ($<5$ pc dense cloud structures, $M_{{\tiny clumps}}\sim 8.4 \times 10^5 \msun$) and conclude that W43 is particularly massive and concentrated. The distance we assume for the W43 complex is 6 kpc from the Sun, which may place it at the meeting point of the Scutum-Centaurus (or Scutum-Crux) Galactic arm and the Bar, a dynamically complex region where high-velocity streams could easily collide. The star formation rate of W43 is suggested not to be steady but it is increasing from $\, \sim 0.01 \msun\, {yr}^{-1}$ (measured from its $8\,\mu$m luminosity) to $\sim 0.1 \msun\, {yr}^{-1}$ (measured from its molecular content). From the global properties of W43, we claim it is an extreme molecular complex in the Milky Way and it could even be forming starburst clusters in the near future.
A NOVEL K-MEANS BASED JPEG ALGORITHM FOR STILL IMAGE COMPRESSION

Use of Digital Image Communication has increased exponentially in the recent years. Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is the most successful still image compression standard for bandwidth conservation. Evidently JPEG Compression system consists of a DCT transformation unit followed by a quantizer and encoder unit. At the decoder end, image is created by inverse DCT. In this paper, we present a set of new JPEG Compression algorithms that combines K-Means clustering algorithm and DCT to further reduce the bandwidth requirements. Experiments are carried out with many standard still images. Our algorithm identified to be giving almost same Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) as the standard JPEG algorithm.
Facilitating Engagement of African American Male Adolescents in Family Therapy: A Cultural Theme Process Study

This study suggests that systematic discussion of culturally salient content in therapy sessions can positively influence engagement (i.e., therapy participation and therapeutic alliance) with clinically referred African American adolescent males. In a sample of 18 African American adolescent males participating in 187 videotaped psychotherapy sessions, the in-session discussion of research derived, developmentally and culturally related content themes (anger/rage, alienation, respect, and journey from boyhood to manhood) were found to be positively associated with therapist-adolescent alliance and adolescent engagement. Discussions that focused on issues of trust and mistrust were found to negatively predict ratings of therapist-adolescent relationship, and discussions of racial identity/racial socialization were found to have no association with adolescent engagement. These findings provide clues about (a) how culturally responsive treatments can be developed, and (b) in this era of manualized therapies, the possibility of enhancing therapeutic outcomes by tailoring treatment protocols at specific levels of content focus and detail.
Swash zone bed level changes and sediment entrainment at the surf-swash boundary

In the process of estimating the effect of sediment advection into the swash zone from bore collapse, a method in which buried self-logging pressure transducers are used to measure bed level changes in the swash zone, over a timeframe of several hours to inter-swash level, has been tested against bed level changes obtained from rod measurements. The test shows perfect agreement in the upper and mid swash while minor disagreement (1 cm) in the lower swash occurred. The deployment of self-logging pressure transducers has proven to be an accurate, easy and flexible method to obtain highly detailed data on water levels and bed elevations in the swash zone. Water levels derived from the pressure transducers show that swash zone characteristics vary from the upper to lower swash. Using pressure transducers in the swash zone coupled with measurements of the hydrodynamics and sediment concentrations at the outer boundary of the swash zone will improve the ability to explain the role of sediment advection from bore collapse. In relation to this, a method which consistently identify bores at the surf-swash boundary and quantifies the suspended sediment load carried by such bores prior to their collapse and run-up in the swash zone, is also presented.
Replacing cornmeal with mango meal in diets for juvenile tambaqui Colossoma macropomum: growth and metabolic parameters

The effect on tambaqui fingerlings performance caused by diets containing two different carbohydrate sources was evaluated. Four isoproteic diets with different mango meal concentrations (0, 33, 66 and 100%) replacing cornmeal were tested. The feeding trial lasted 45 days and the feeding rate was 8% of total biomass. 240 tambaqui fingerlings with an initial weight average of 3.66g were distributed in 12 500-liter tanks in a recirculating water system with biofilter. Performance, feed intake, carcass yield, survival, total cholesterol, plasmatic free amino acids, hepatic aspartate aminotransferase(AST), hepatic glycogen and plasma glucose values were evaluated. The results showed that weight gain, daily weight gain, specific growth rate, apparent food consumption, cholesterol, AST and glycogen showed higher values in the treatments with the highest levels of mango meal. Apparent feed conversion, carcass yield, survival and plasma glucose were not affected by the two sources of carbohydrates tested. In conclusion, mango meal used in a practical diet for tambaqui improved growth performance.
Taklimakan dust aerosol radiative heating derived from CALIPSO observations using the Fu-Liou radiation model with CERES constraints

Abstract. The dust aerosol radiative forcing and heating rate over the Taklimakan Desert in Northwestern China in July 2006 are estimated using the Fu-Liou radiative transfer model along with satellite observations. The vertical distributions of the dust aerosol extinction coefficient are derived from the CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) lidar measurements. The CERES (Cloud and the Earth's Energy Budget Scanner) measurements of reflected solar radiation are used to constrain the dust aerosol type in the radiative transfer model, which determines the dust aerosol single-scattering albedo and asymmetry factor as well as the aerosol optical properties' spectral dependencies. We find that the dust aerosols have a significant impact on the radiative energy budget over the Taklimakan desert. In the atmospheres containing light, moderate and heavy dust layers, the dust aerosols heat the atmosphere (daily mean) by up to 1, 2, and 3 K day−1, respectively. The maximum daily mean radiative heating rate reaches 5.5 K day−1 at 5 km on 29 July. The averaged daily mean net radiative effect of the dust are 44.4, −41.9, and 86.3 W m−2, respectively, at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), surface, and in the atmosphere. Among these effects about two thirds of the warming effect at the TOA is related to the longwave radiation, while about 90% of the atmospheric warming is contributed by the solar radiation. At the surface, about one third of the dust solar radiative cooling effect is compensated by its longwave warming effect. The large modifications of radiative energy budget by the dust aerosols over Taklimakan Desert should have important implications for the atmospheric circulation and regional climate, topics for future investigations.
Jokowi’s Populism, Wealth and Local Democracy in Solo City

The making of populism in Surakarta city had almost been a tale. Mayor Jokowi was supposedly a humble, confident and broadened minded leader. Humble, that he was a person who had the willingness to listen to inputs from citizen. Confident, in a sense that he had necessary capacities to decide policies contrasting to others who often trapped in hesitance causing good policies hooked in their drawers. And broadened minded that he was open to new ideas. He was in his time people believed a potential transformative leader in Solo. This paper answers a question Why and how populism in Solo did contribute to some extent to democratic transformation, and what are challenges? It is not prepared to repeat the tale, rather written to provide a critical interpretation that populism is not shaped original from the populist’s kitchen, but from power relation dynamics with democracy actors. An interpretative analysis finds that vital part of Mayor Jokowi’s programmatic politics resulted from negotiation with CSOs and local fora. Despite CSO’s influence, there were two challenges left. They are populism that had gained its champion and some ironies so-called discrepancy and poverty. Connecting the two, this paper argues that alternative actor presence had been influential in democratic space but not strong enough that it could spur to linking populist programmatic politics to a better life for the poor. A space to facilitate democratic actors work together again is about an imperative to make democracy again on the march at Solo city.