Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forecasts: uncertain, inaccurate and biased?

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) is the dominating methodology for appraisal of transport infrastructure projects across the globe. In order to adequately assess the costs and benefits of such projects two types of forecasts are crucial to the validity of the appraisal. First are the forecasts of construction costs, which account for the majority of total project costs. Second are the forecasts of travel time savings, which account for the majority of total project benefits. The latter of these is, inter alia, determined by forecasts of travel demand, which we shall use as a proxy for the forecasting accuracy of project benefits. This paper presents results from an on-going research project on uncertainties in transport project evaluation (UNITE) that find forecasts of demand to be not only uncertain, but at times also highly inaccurate and often displaying a concerning degree of bias. Demand for road projects appear to be systematically underestimated, while demand for rail projects appears to be systematically overestimated. We compare the findings in the present study with those of previous studies and discuss the implications for the validity of project appraisal in the form of CBA. It is recommended that more attention is given to monitoring completed projects so future forecasts can benefit from better data availability through systematic ex-post evaluations, and an example of how to utilize such data in practice is presented.
Refurbishment of higher education premises: Stakeholder engagement in the process and product

In spite of various initiatives, much of the UK university building stock is ageing and in need of modernisation both in terms of environmental performance and to respond to the changing landscape of pedagogy and andragogy. Higher educational establishments like to portray themselves as pioneers of a green campaign however decision processes may not always be as easy and straightforward as they seem. Contributing factors will include the complexity of the client brief, the difficulties of timetabling, the desire to operate democratic processes in decision-making and the inevitable compromises resulting from these often conflicting demands. Most universities will have restrictions on the budget, time and working schedules compounded by the need to carry out the construction work on sites where the normal academic activities are to continue. Many university clients will involve the end users in the process of decision-making causing an information overflow whilst some others choose not to get their employees (as the end users) involved at all. This research uses a surgery approach to an ongoing major refurbishment project to map the perceived success of the processes and construction product. The results are aimed to enable similar future projects to run with a greater perceived success, which will in turn benefit all the stakeholders.
NUMERICAL STUDY OF TURBULENT FLOW AROUND A SQUARE CYLINDER USING TWO LOW-REYNOLDS-NUMBER ε − k MODELS

This paper discusses the abilities of two different low-Reynolds-number ε − k eddy-viscosity models in resolving the complex physical features that arises in turbulent flows around a square cylinder at Re=22000. For the modeling of turbulence, the Launder & Sharma (LS) [1] and Kawamura & Kawashima (KK) [2] low-Re ε − k models have been employed. The present numerical results were obtained using a two-dimensional finitevolume code. The pressure field is obtained with the well-known SIMPLE algorithm. Advective volume-face fluxes are approximated using a bounded version of the upstream quadratic interpolation scheme, QUICK. Comparisons of the numerical results with the experimental data indicate that the steady computations, as expected, cannot produce reliable flow field predictions in the wake region downstream of the square cylinder. Consequently, the time derivatives of dependent variables are included in the transport equations and are approximated using the second-order Crank-Nicholson scheme. The unsteady computations significantly improve the predictions and the results of unsteady simulations with both turbulence models are in closer agreement with measurements compare to the steady predictions. The predicted value for St number is 0.126 and 0.123 using the LS and KK turbulence models respectively which are in good agreement with the measured value of 0.132. The unsteady predictions using the LS model are in better agreement with the measured data than those obtained with the KK model. Both turbulence models fail to produce reliable turbulence field predictions and, thus, it is necessary to apply more advance turbulence models, such differential stress models, for more accurate predictions of such flows. NOMENCLATURE A= Cross section area = D C Drag Coefficient ( 2 2 / 1 in A D AU PdA C ρ ∫ = ) D= Cylinder dimension = f Shedding frequency Mehrdad Risee and Azadeh Jafari 2 H= Channel height k = Turbulent kinetic energy = P Pressure = k P Production term Re= Reynolds number ( ν / Re D U in = ) = St Strouhal number ( in U fD St = ) t= time i U = Mean velocity components(U,V) = j iu u Reynolds stress tensor = i x Cartesian coordinate (x,y) Greek letters = β Aspect ratio (β =D/H) = ε Dissipation rate = ε~ Isotropic dissipation rate = ij δ Kronecker delta = τ Period of time = μ Dynamic viscosity = ν Kinematic viscosity = ρ Density
Email Visualizations to Aid Communications

Electronic mail has become the most widely used business productivity application. However, people increasingly feel frustrated by their email. They are overwhelmed by the volume, lose important items, and feel pressure to respond quickly. Though email usage has changed, our email clients largely have not. This paper describes our work on using various information visualization techniques (trees, timelines, and low-resolution overviews) in a new email client. These visualizations highlight the relationships among messages and between the people who exchange email.
Resilience indicators: prospects and limitations for early warnings of regime shifts

In the vicinity of tipping points—or more precisely bifurcation points—ecosystems recover slowly from small perturbations. Such slowness may be interpreted as a sign of low resilience in the sense that the ecosystem could easily be tipped through a critical transition into a contrasting state. Indicators of this phenomenon of ‘critical slowing down (CSD)’ include a rise in temporal correlation and variance. Such indicators of CSD can provide an early warning signal of a nearby tipping point. Or, they may offer a possibility to rank reefs, lakes or other ecosystems according to their resilience. The fact that CSD may happen across a wide range of complex ecosystems close to tipping points implies a powerful generality. However, indicators of CSD are not manifested in all cases where regime shifts occur. This is because not all regime shifts are associated with tipping points. Here, we review the exploding literature about this issue to provide guidance on what to expect and what not to expect when it comes to the CSD-based early warning signals for critical transitions.
Seeing market orientation through a capabilities lens

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how conceptualising market orientation within a capabilities framework may assist in developing further understanding of the construct.Design/methodology/approach – Compelling issues in the market orientation literature relating to the nature of the market orientation construct, the relationship of the construct with performance, and identifying antecedents to market orientation are discussed. The capabilities perspective is explored in the context of these issues. In particular, a perspective of market orientation based on the market‐sensing capability is proposed, which may provide additional insights into the construct.Research limitations/implications – The capabilities framework facilitates a more comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of market orientation, which captures the complex interaction of behavioural and cultural factors in the conceptualisation of the construct.Originality/value – This paper addresses the need to examine how ma.
Coincident brane nucleation and the neutralization of Lambda

Nucleation of branes by a four-form field has recently been considered in string motivated scenarios for the neutralization of the cosmological constant. An interesting question in this context is whether the nucleation of stacks of coincident branes is possible, and if so, at what rate does it proceed. Feng et al. have suggested that, at high ambient de Sitter temperature, the rate may be strongly enhanced, due to large degeneracy factors associated with the number of light species living on the worldsheet. This might facilitate the quick relaxation from a large effective cosmological constant down to the observed value. Here, we analyze this possibility in some detail. In four dimensions, and after the moduli are stabilized, branes interact via repulsive long range forces. Because of that, the Coleman‐de Luccia ~CdL! instanton for coincident brane nucleation may not exist, unless there is some short range interaction that keeps the branes together. If the CdL instanton exists, we find that the degeneracy factor depends only mildly on the ambient de Sitter temperature, and does not switch off even in the case of tunneling from flat space. This would result in catastrophic decay of the present vacuum. If, on the contrary, the CdL instanton does not exist, coincident brane nucleation may still proceed through a ‘‘static’’ instanton, representing pair creation of critical bubbles—a process somewhat analogous to thermal activation in flat space. In that case, the branes may stick together due to thermal symmetry restoration, and the pair creation rate depends exponentially on the ambient de Sitter temperature, switching off sharply as the temperature approaches zero. Such a static instanton may be well suited for the ‘‘saltatory’’ relaxation scenario proposed by Feng et al.
Aerodynamic Characteristic Analysis of Multi-Rotors Using a Modified Free-Wake Method

Much research is in progress to develop a next-generation rotor system for various aircrafts, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with multi-rotor systems, such as coaxial and tandem rotors. Development and design of such systems requires accurate estimation of rotor performance. The most serious problem encountered during analysis is wake prediction, because wake-wake and wake-rotor interactions make the problem very complex. This study analyzes the aerodynamic characteristics based on the free-wake method, which is both efficient and effective for predicting wake. This code is modified to include the effect of complex planforms as well as thickness by using an unsteady 3D panel method. A time-marching free-wake model is implemented based on the source-doublet panel method that assigns panels to the surface and analyzes them. The numerical wake instability, the most critical problem for analysis, is resolved by adopting slow start-up and by including viscous effects. Also, the instability due to wake interference in tandem rotor analysis is resolved by configuring the initial shapes of the multi-rotor wake as that of a single rotor wake trajectory. The developed code is verified by comparing with previous experimental data for coaxial and tandem rotors.
Rewarding instead of charging road users: a model case study investigating effects on traffic conditions

Instead of giving a negative incentive such as transport pricing, a positive incentive by rewarding travelers for ‘good behavior’ may yield different responses. In a Dutch pilot project called Peak Avoidance (in Dutch: ‘SpitsMijden’), a few hundred travelers participated in an experiment in which they received 3 to 7 euros per day when they avoided traveling by car during the morning rush hours (7h30-9h30). Mainly departure time shifts were observed, together with moderate mode shifts. Due to the low number of participants in the experiment, no impact on traffic conditions could be expected. In order to assess the potential of such a rewarding scheme on traffic conditions, a dynamic traffic assignment model has been developed to forecast network wide effects in the long term by assuming higher participation levels. This paper describes the mathematical model. Furthermore, the Peak Avoidance project is taken as a case study and different rewarding strategies with varying participation levels and reward levels are analyzed. First results show that indeed overall traffic conditions can be improved by giving a reward, where low to moderate reward levels and participation levels of 50% or lower are sufficient for a significant improvement. Higher participation and reward levels seem to become increasingly counter-effective.
The Kyoto Protocol, Inter-Provincial Cooperation, and Energy Trading: A Systems Analysis with integrated MARKAL Models

In this article, we examine least-cost strategies for teaching the greenhouse gas emission reductions specifiedby the Kyoto protocol for three Canadian provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. We analyze fourscenarios, each specifying a certain level of cooperation (i.e. of trading of emission permits and of electricity)between the provinces. To effect these analyses, four MARKAL models (one for each province and one forthe US) are used in a multi-regional framework that endogenizes energy and permit exchange levels andprices. The US model is included in the analysis in order to correctly simulate the important natural gasmarket between Canada and the USA. The results indicate that both permit trading and electricity exchangesare capable of significantly reducing the direct costs of abiding by the Kyoto protocol. The paper also includesan analysis of the the main policy issues faced by the three provinces while planning for a concerted effort toabate GHG emissions
Text Analysis - Exploring latent semantic models for information retrieval, topic modeling and sentiment detection

With the increasing use of the Internet and social media, the amount of available data has exploded. As most of this data is natural language text, there is a need for efficient text analysis techniques which enable extraction of useful data. This process is called text mining, and in this thesis some of these techniques are evaluated for the purpose of integrating them into the visual data mining software TIBCO Spotfire®. In total, five analysis models with different running time, memory use and performance have been analyzed, implemented and evaluated. The tf-idf vector space model was used as a baseline. It can be extended using Latent Semantic Analysis and random projection to find latent semantic relationships between documents. Finally, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Joint Sentiment/ Topic model (JST) and Sentiment Latent Dirichlet Allocation (SLDA) are used to extract topics. The latter two are extensions to LDA which also detects positive and negative sentiment. Evaluation was done using the perplexity measure for topic modeling, average precision for searching and classification accuracy of positive and negative reviews for the sentiment models. It was concluded that for searching, a vector space model with tf-idf weighting had similar performance compared to the latent semantic models for the test corpus used. Topic modeling showed to provide useful output, however at the expense of running time. The JST and SLDA sentiment detectors showed a small improvement compared to a baseline word counting classifier, especially for a multiple domain dataset. Finally it was shown that they had mixed sentiment classification accuracy from run to run, indicating that further investigation is motivated.
Concrete Damage in Field Conditions and Protective Sealer and Coating Systems

: Concrete structures undergo different forms of damage during their service life. The aim of this study is to identify the most common forms of concrete damage in ﬁeld conditions. A number of concrete elements and structures were visually inspected and the damage was photographed. The damage phenomena covered are delamination, popout, spalling, scaling, drying shrinkage cracking, corrosion-induced cracking, map cracking, rust and salt stains, discoloration, and mold and moss growths. The probable reasons for these damage phenomena are discussed in this study. Moreover, this study highlights how concrete structures can be protected from the aforementioned forms of damage by using sealer and coating systems as surface treatments. Different sealer and coating systems, emphasizing their selection for speciﬁc uses, installation on concrete substrate, effects on concrete durability, performance criteria, and performance evaluation methods have been discussed. Furthermore, some recommendations are given to improve the performance of concrete sealer and coating systems for the protection of concrete structures in ﬁeld conditions.
Water Reform and Co-operation

Abstract This paper examines the potential impact of water reforms on agricultural water users and the consequences of the privatisation of government water irrigation assets. Within this context, the role of co-operation and the use of the co-operative organisational structure is documented and explored. From a public policy perspective, the importance of co-operation and co-operative structures can be viewed as a response to market failure. The established and proposed water markets and associated property rights, have elements of common property resources, externalities and high transaction costs. The recognition of market failure and its consequences questions the standard economic efficiency arguments for an unregulated water market, and heightens the role of co-operation. Introduction This paper examines the impact of water reforms on agricultural water users in NSW with a view to analysing the possibilities for greater co-operation and use of co-operative structures in water markets. The rural water reforms implemented by the NSW Government are complex. They are complicated by on-going policy changes, the development of water catchment plans, the call for compensation payments to existing water users and the difficulties of separating water and land property rights. An important aspect of the reform process relates to the privatisation of NSW irrigation assets. During the mid- to late-1990s the NSW Government transferred its six irrigation schemes and irrigation assets in the Murray and Murrumbidgee areas at nil cost to locally owned public companies (eg, Murray and Murrumbidgee irrigation). A major issue for these organisations has been how they structure their organisations to provide for future asset replacement, upgrades and investment, especially to provide for future water savings. The paper serves to raise the debate surrounding the impact of the NSW reforms on agricultural production, in particular irrigation and large water user needs. It also provides commentary on the mix of competing policy objectives in NSW (eg, privatisation of government assets, micro-economic objectives and Council of Australian Governments (COAG) compensation issues), as well as the economic and environmental sustainability issues surrounding the reforms.
SET-UP AND EVALUATION OF A MID-INFRARED REFLECTOMETER AND INVESTIGATION OF THE OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF DOPED TIN TELLURIDE ALLOYS

A system comprised of a Bomem interferometer and a LT3-110 Heli-Tran cryostat was set up to measure the reflectance of materials in the mid-infrared spectral region. Several tests were conducted to ensure the consistency and reliability of the system. Silicon and Chromium, two materials with well known optical properties were measured to test the accuracy of the system, and the results were found to be in good agreement with the literature. Reflectance measurements on pure SnTe and several Pb and Mn-doped alloys were carried out. These materials were chosen because they exhibit a strong plasma edge in the mid infrared region. The optical conductivity and several related optical parameters were calculated from the measured reflectance. Very low temperature measurements were carried out in the far-infrared on Sn9SMn2Te, and the results are indicative of a spin glass phase at 0.8 K. Resistivity measurements were made at room temperature. The resistivity values were found, as expected, to decrease with increasing carrier concentration and to increase with increasing manganese concentration.
Synergy of policy implementation Through Corporate Social Responsibility in Gorontalo

This paper is study aimed to analize on synergy of policy implementation for the development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through Corporate Social Responsibility program and strengthening the role of the government agencies in Gorontalo city was a contribution of higher education institution in meeting the current challenges among the community, especially related to the improvement of policy implementation on the development of SMEs. This was a qualitative study which was conducted for a year. The informants for this study were obtained through purposive sampling method, they were comprised of: SMEs groups as beneficiaries of CSR program, field facilitator of the CSR Program, Experts in Public Policy, NGOs, City Office of Cooperation, Industry and Trades, and other related government agencies. The data were collected through observation, interview, and documentation. The data analysis was started from data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. In addition, in each stage of the data collections, Focus Group Discussions (FGD) was held with all related stakeholders.
The groundnut client oriented research in Tabora, Tanzania.

A client oriented groundnut research was carried out in Tabora, Tanzania. Objectives were to solicit farmers’ preferences on groundnut production and evaluate groundnut varieties under varying environments and conditions. Semi structured questionnaires and focus groups were used to solicit farmers’ opinions. On-station and on-farm trials were conducted based on recommendations suggested by farmers. On-station trial had 3 replications with 5 plots each laid in a randomized complete block design. Plot size was 25 m2. The net harvested area was 15 m2. The spacing used was 0.9 × 0.15 m. Onfarm trials involved 9 farmers each planting 5 varieties. Varieties used were Johari, Pendo, Nyota, Sawia and farmer. SPSS and Genstat computer software were used to analyse survey and field trials data, respectively. Drought and low yielding varieties were observed as the most serious problems in the area. Pendo and Johari varieties constantly out yielded other varieties and ranked first and second, respectively, under research and farmers managements. Genotypes sum of squares accounted for 54.93% of the variability. This study also revealed that, under some conditions, researchers and farmers’ variety selection criteria coincided. Based on the information generated by this study, Pendo and Johari were recommended.