Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICES IN SRI LANKAN PUBLIC LISTED COMPANIES

Purpose The main purpose of our study is to provide basic understanding about Environmental Management Accounting practices in Sri Lankan Public Listed Companies. This research was basically conducted to identify what are the existing Environment Management Accounting (EMA) practices in Sri Lankan public listed companies including different sectors and industries such as Manufacturing, Hotel, and Agriculture etc. Further we emphasized on improvements of practices; barriers to implementation and giving solutions for those barriers within the Sri Lankan context. Design / Methodology / Approach – This study was adopted both qualitative and quantitative approach. Data was collected mainly through a questionnaire distributed among the hundred Sri Lankan listed companies. The results of the questionnaire were triangulated by conducting pilot survey with sample of four companies which were selected from Public Listed Companies in Sri Lankan. A systematic literature review was conducted to support the study.
A rapid sampling valve with minimal dead space for laboratory scale fermenters

Rapid sampling and inactivation of cells from microbial cultures is essential to obtain meaningful values of intermediates with high turnover rates. A new sampling valve that minimizes the amount of culture removed from the fermenter vessel at each sampling is described and that also gives a short interval between harvesting and inactivation of the culture.
Variant histology in bladder cancer: diagnostic and clinical implications

Urothelial carcinoma differentiates into variant histological subtypes in approximately 25% of cases. Since every histological variant has unique characteristics, including metastatic potential, expression of immunotherapy targets, and susceptibility to radiation or chemotherapy, every variant offers a unique diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. However, since any single variant is relatively rare, there is a risk of missed pathological diagnosis and sub-optimal clinical management. Ensuring awareness among pathologists and wide-spread familiarity with the nuances of variants among urologists is therefore essential. Additionally, variant histologies may act as an intermediate between classical clinicopathological staging of bladder cancer and evolving molecular classification. Therefore, this review aims to provide a brief overview of the diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic implications of each variant histologic subtype. Despite the development of standardized diagnostic criteria, the diagnosis of variant histologies continues to pose a challenge and results in significant interobserver variability. The prognosis of any single variant is poorly studied. However, squamous and glandular differentiation are thought to have little effect on prognosis while micropapillary, sarcomatoid, plasmacytoid, and small cell carcinomas are associated with a poor prognosis. Although evidence surrounding therapeutic strategies is sparse, management guidelines have been developed for variant histologies, which are often treated more aggressively than pure urothelial carcinoma. For example, the presence of variant histology warrants radical cystectomy in patients with T1 disease. Recommendations surrounding neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy also differ with each variant. As new treatments emerge for advanced bladder cancer, studying outcomes in each variant will become critical. Since prognosis and management hinge on the presence of variant histologies, accurate diagnosis and a thorough understanding of these variants are imperative for optimal management of urothelial carcinoma.
Design and Implementation of the University of Waterloo IARRC Entry

—The design and construction of an autonomous racing platform is described. For the mechanical design of the vehicle, an electric remote control chassis is used as a starting point and retroﬁtted to include a suite of sensors. The robot has a set of processors that run estimation, control and planning algorithms. An algorithm is used to correlate LIDAR and vision information to accurately ﬁnd pylons and other obstacles around the robot. A trajectory planning algorithm based on generating Voronoi graphs that center the vehicle around the detected pylons is implemented for circuit race scenarios. For drag race situations a simpler and faster algorithm is used to calculate a straight path from the pylon map. Proportional and integral (PI) velocity control and non-linear trajectory tracking are used to smoothly traverse planned trajectories.
Fast Adaptation via Policy-Dynamics Value Functions

Standard RL algorithms assume fixed environment dynamics and require a significant amount of interaction to adapt to new environments. We introduce Policy-Dynamics Value Functions (PD-VF), a novel approach for rapidly adapting to dynamics different from those previously seen in training. PD-VF explicitly estimates the cumulative reward in a space of policies and environments. An ensemble of conventional RL policies is used to gather experience on training environments, from which embeddings of both policies and environments can be learned. Then, a value function conditioned on both embeddings is trained. At test time, a few actions are sufficient to infer the environment embedding, enabling a policy to be selected by maximizing the learned value function (which requires no additional environment interaction). We show that our method can rapidly adapt to new dynamics on a set of MuJoCo domains. Code available at this https URL.
U-Business Adoption and Strategies

Ubiquitous computing is changing people’s daily lives by providing the necessary flexibility to interact with anyone anytime, anywhere. Business based on ubiquitous computing (U-business) has emerged as a new paradigm and has become reality. U-business has been defined as the practical application of ubiquitous computing technologies to the business arena. The study introduces the notion of U-business as a new business paradigm and examines the current status of the U-business industry from a different prospective. In this study we analyze various organizational, technological, and strategic factors influencing U-business firms. The results suggest the most important outcomes of U-business adoption and the most important strategy for a firm to gain a competitive advantage through U-business. This study also investigates the current status of U-business in South Korea, including adoption methods, the level of investment, and technology adopted.
Evaluation of a feed-forward laser control approach for improving consistency in selective laser sintering

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is a popular industrial additive manufacturing technique for creating functional polymer components. One of the biggest limitations today with SLS is its poor mechanical consistency when compared with traditional manufacturing techniques, inhibiting the use of SLS among structurally critical components. Evaluation of the SLS process has revealed that the quality of components is strongly affected by the thermal history during the build process and poor control over this can lead to premature part failure. This paper will discuss a novel technique of improving in-situ thermal control by implementing a feed-forward laser controller that uses dynamic surrogate modelling to predict optimal laser power to achieve desired thermal characteristics. Thermal and destructive testing results will be presented showing that the described laser power controller is capable of decreasing the standard deviations of post sintering temperature by up to 57% and ultimate flexural strength by up to 45%.
IFC-Based Maintenance Budget Allocation

Maintenance budget appraisal and allocation is a fundamental activity for the definition of an effective Facility Management (FM) strategy. Once the maintenance policy is set by the assets’ owner, facility managers are asked to compare different maintenance strategies (i.e. preventive vs. corrective) in order to provide a reliable and cost-effective maintenance budget. This can be hindered by unavailability of data for maintenance of building components. Nowadays, Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides plenty of data, but procedures are seldom focused on maintenance costs appraisal and this frequently leads to an intensive data re-elaboration. The objective of this research is to provide a precise maintenance budget appraisal according to different maintenance strategies through the Facility Condition Index (FCI), calculated starting from data stored into an Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model. Data are stored in IfcAsset elements, using the related property sets. To overcome calculation needs, some additional attributes may be associated to elements and stored in custom property sets. The results of this research are a set of data, procedures and tools that allow the quantification and planning of maintenance expenditure, allowing a proper budget allocation. These procedures and tools answer the need of both designers during new constructions (to prepare the maintenance plan, as required by current Italian laws for public buildings) and asset managers during the digitisation of existing buildings (to store maintenance data and to rely on better appraisals). In this paper a demonstration is presented, with the purpose of showing the proposed methodology and tools. The demonstration has been carried out on some of the architectural and Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing (MEP) components that mainly contribute to the annual maintenance expenditure.
Estimating real driving emissions from MAX-DOAS measurements at the A60 motorway near Mainz, Germany

Abstract. In urban areas, road traffic is a dominant source of nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2). Although the emissions from individual vehicles are regulated by the European emission standards, real driving emissions often exceed these limits. In this study, two MAX-DOAS instruments on opposite sides of the motorway were used to measure the NO2 absorption caused by road traffic at the A60 motorway close to Mainz, Germany. In combination with wind data, the total NOx emissions for the occurring traffic volume can be estimated. We show that the measured emissions exceed the maximum expected emissions calculated from the European emission standards by a factor of 11 ± 7. One major advantage of the method used here is that from MAX-DOAS measurements the integrated NO2 concentration over the lowermost 2 to 3 km is determined. Thus, all emitted NO2 molecules are detected independent from their altitude and therefore the whole emission plume originating from the nearby motorway is captured by these measurements which is a key advantage compared to other approaches such as in-situ measurements.
Elasticity: The Relative Contribution of Demographic Parameters to Population Growth Rate

over plants grown without competition (P < .05). Plants suffering from both root and shoot competition were not significantly smaller than those suffering from root competition only, but they showed the greatest size variability. In plants competing both above and below ground, root competition accounted for the reduction in mean plant size, but shoot competition accounted for the increase in size inequality. The results support the hypothesis that competition for light is "asymmetric" and that the observed increases in plant size variability with increasing density may have been primarily due to competition for light. There may be situations in which competition for nutrients is also asymmetric, i.e., situations in which nutrients can be preempted by individuals with larger roots. Because a leaf is shaded only by leaves above it, competition for light appears to be inherently asymmetric.
The yellow cheek-patches of the Hermann's tortoise (Reptilia, Chelonia): Sexual dimorphism and relationship with body condition

Abstract Males and females of Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni) exhibit a conspicuous yellow patch on both their cheeks, whose origin and potential function are totally unknown. In this study, we measured the extent and the colour intensity of these patches in 29 male and 19 female tortoises in order to test for sexual difference in these features. In addition, we analysed the relationships between patch features and body condition to investigate the possible function of these ornaments as status signals. We detected symmetric yellow patches in all sampled females, while five males did not show at all the ornament, and two had a yellow patch only on the left cheek. Although head and scale size, as well as RGB values, did not differ between sexes, female patches were significantly larger than those of males. In addition, the extent of cheek patches was correlated to female body condition, suggesting that these ornaments may have evolved as honest signals of quality through sexual selection processes driven by female–female contests over rank or by male mate choice.
The Influence of Information Technology on Innovation Processes for Software Production in Kosovo

: - This paper will focus on innovation processes created by information communication technology. The paper discovers the relation of information technology in software and not software product service industry in innovation processes across their effect in the Middle and Big Enterprises (MBE-s) in Kosovo. The main objective of the study was to recognize the level of usage of the new technology, respectively the new information technology in Kosovo. The scientific methodology used in this work is the quantitative methodology with the deductive approach since it is intended to support the existing theory over the information technology and innovative processes. The results of this study shows, the influences of information technology in innovation process with p=0. 23. (MBE-s) should take appropriate steps to develop and improve new technologies by creating long-term policies and strategies derived from market needs.
Can wildlife pay its way?

Conservation philosophy is swinging away from the traditional approach of setting up reserves to give absolute protection to wildlife and is replacing it with more realistic strategies. To succeed today, conservationists should take into account the needs of the people who share their land with wild species. The author examines some of the ways in which wildlife can be valuable to local people and made to pay for its own conservation – game viewing, sport hunting, game cropping and ranching. The advantages and pitfalls are discussed and it is concluded that while these uses are possible for some some wildlife species, others will never have a direct economic value. Someone will have to pay for their conservation – and it should not be those who can least afford it.
Accuracy Analysis of Expression Recognition Rates Using Subspace Based Approaches

— This paper proposes a new approach for facial expression recognition by extracting and concatenating holistic and geometrical face features. High dimension feature dataset has been reduced by symmetrical weighted kernel locality preserving Fisher discriminant analysis (SWKLFDA). The main objectives of this research work are solving singularity problem of linear discriminant analysis, maximizing the Fishers ratio in nonlinear region of subspace by preserving local discriminant structure by increasing the variability between inter class scatter matrix, dimensional reduction and efficient recognition at larger variations of expressions and illumination. Extracted geometrical features were fused with Gabor magnitude and enhanced Gabor phase part. These isolated feature vector spaces were projected into subspace by SWKLFDA subspace method by enhancing and preserving the kernel discriminant features. Matching score level fusion was applied on projected subspace. Euclidean distance metric (L2) and support vector machine (SVM) classifier was implemented to classify the expressions. Performance analysis was carried out by comparing state of art approaches with proposed approach. Experimental results on JAFFE and YALE expression database demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Does Feminist Identification Prompt Racial Awareness? A Study of White American Respondents This paper was prepared for the 2018 American Political Science Association meeting

A long line of research finds that feminist identification correlates strongly with liberal values and policy preferences. This work suggests that this relationship is driven by feminists’ stronger sense of egalitarianism, lack of symbolic racism, tendency to reject moral traditionalism, and adoption of modern conceptions of gender roles. However, for the most part, work in this area has focused on the relationship between feminist identification and attitudes about gender issues. In this paper, we extend this scholarship by asking: does identifying as a feminist increase White respondents’ willingness to acknowledge inequities along racial lines? We argue that if feminist identification is an indicator of awareness of systemic inequities and broader commitment to minimizing their harmful implications, there should be distinguishable differences in non, weak, and strong feminists’ willingness to acknowledge racial discrimination. We conduct correlational and experimental analyses to test our hypotheses. Results of these analyses provide suggestive evidence that Whites who identify as strong feminists are more likely than their non and weak feminist counterparts to perceive racial discrimination. Thus, our study contributes to the existing literature by showing that Whites may adopt intersecting social identities that increase their willingness to acknowledge the role of racial bias in social situations. ∗This paper was prepared for the 2018 American Political Science Association meeting.
Broiler Growth and Carcass Responses to Diets Containing L-Threonine Versus Diets Containing Threonine from Intact Protein Sources

Abstract Threonine is typically the third limiting amino acid for broilers. Meeting the threonine minimum in least-cost formulation with crystalline L-threonine results in reduced dietary crude protein. This experiment evaluated the effect of dietary threonine from intact protein sources versus that of threonine from intact protein sources and crystalline L-threonine. Ross × Ross 308 broilers (1,440 of each sex) were randomized across 72 floor pens (40 birds/pen). The experimental design consisted of a 2 (sexes) × 6 (dietary threonine) factorial arrangement of treatments (12 treatments and 6 replications/treatment). Threonine treatments comprised 1) a control diet with no L-threonine, 2) Diet 1 plus 136 g of L-threonine/ton; 3) Diet 1 plus 272 g of L-threonine/ton; 4) Diet 1 plus 408 g of L-threonine/ton; 5) Diet 1 plus 544 g of L-threonine/ton; and 6) Diet 5 with a digestible threonine/lysine ratio of 0.65. All diets were formulated to the same minimum nutrient levels with no crude protein restriction. Dietary treatments were implemented from Days 1 to 20, 21 to 35, and 36 to 48. Growth responses were measured for each period and carcass responses were measured at Day 49. There were no significant threonine × sex interactions. Also, dietary threonine treatment differences did not occur for any parameter measured. Body weight gain, feed intake, and carcass parts weights were improved (P
Decreased Hematocrits in Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) Exposed to Oil: Distinguishing Oil Effects from Natural Variation

Abstract. Hematocrits were measured in Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) (n = 75) that were exposed to oil from a spill in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, USA, in 2003, and that laid eggs 17–39 days following the spill. Comparative data were obtained in three pre- and two post-spill years and from three unoiled reference sites. In non-spill years, annual means of hematocrit varied in parallel with breeding performance. Hematocrits were lower (mean 45.3, n = 75) and more variable in the oil spill year than in non-spill years, and 20% of birds sampled were anemic (hematocrit < 41.7). However, hematocrits were almost as low (mean 46.4, n = 44) in 2002, a year with naturally adverse conditions. In 2002, hematocrits and body-masses were depressed following two storms and recovered in parallel following the storms; hematocrits were positively correlated with body-mass and ambient temperature and negatively correlated with wind speed. In contrast, in 2003 hematocrits were negatively correlated with body-mass and temperature and positively correlated with wind speed. Hematocrits were very low (mean 39.8, n = 15) when birds were first sampled 20–23 days after the spill and recovered toward normal levels by day 39 (mean 49.4, n = 14). Reduced hematocrits can be a useful indicator of sublethal oil intoxication, especially in females, provided that they are not associated with low body-masses or adverse weather. Measuring hematocrits could be useful for rapid screening of populations sublethally exposed to oil.
Vision-Based Precision Pose Estimation For Autonomous Formation Flying

Autonomous formation flying of aircraft is a challenging problem, and is a key component of various important capabilities for autonomous aircraft, from air-to-air refueling, to formation-based traffic management, to increased aerodynamic efficiency due to reduced induced drag. Tight formation flying requires precise navigation of relative position and orientation, beyond what state-of-the-art inertial and GPS-based sensor suites are capable of. Using vision (in particular, monocular cameras) is a promising way to achieve the precise relative navigation of required precision such that tight formation flight is possible. Indeed, tight formation flying by human pilots relies entirely on human vision (direct line of sight at all times). This research aims to develop accurate and efficient pose estimation algorithms which utilize Bayesian filterning and modern computer vision developments (specifically, deep convolutional neural networks, or CNNs) as a core part of their operation.
Persuasive lighting : the influence of feedback through lighting on energy conservation behavior

Earlier research has investigated persuasive technology: Technology designed to influence human behavior or attitudes. The current research investigates lighting as persuasive technology. In an experimental study, participants could conserve energy while carrying out tasks and received feedback about their energy consumption in each task. We tested the effect of feedback through a lamp that gradually changed color dependent on energy consumption and compared these effects to more widely used factual feedback. Results indicated that feedback through lighting has stronger persuasive effects than factual feedback. Furthermore, factual feedback seemed more difficult to process than lighting feedback, because cognitive load interfered with processing factual feedback, but not with processing lighting feedback. Implications for theory and design of persuasive lighting, and (ambient) persuasive technology are discussed.