Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nanomaterials Based on TiO2 for Effluent Pollutant Photodegradation

One of the most recent nanomaterials that has attracted great attention due to its unique properties is titanium dioxide. TiO2 powders possess interesting optical, dielectrical and catalytical properties, which results in industrial applications such as pigments, fillers, catalyst supports and photocatalysts. Photocatalysis over titanium dioxide has been heavily investigated as a promising means of treating a wide variety of emerging pollutants and recent research effort has been devoted to improving the photocatalytic efficiency of TiO2 through a variety of materials engineering approaches, such as enhancing the visible-light activity of TiO2 through doping. Tannery wastewater represents a serious environmental and technological problem, owing to the large amounts of poorly biodegradable organic chemicals used. The use of photocatalytic TiO2 nanoparticles to decontaminate industrial tannery wastewater has not been yet investigated. That is why, this paper aims to investigate the synthesis and characterization of TiO2 and N doped TiO2 nanoparticles used for the photodegradation of effluent pollutants from the leather industry. The new nanoparticles were synthesized through chemical routes and were characterized by dynamic light scattering and diffuse reflectance spectra measurements. Their photocatalytic activity was tested against an organic pollutant model, Orange II (OII).
The Contributions of Milton Friedman to Economics

Milton Friedman began his teaching career at the University of Chicago isolated intellectually. He defended the ideas that competitive markets work efficiently to allocate resources and that central banks are responsible for inflation. By the 1980s, these ideas had become commonplace. Friedman was one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century because of his major influence on how a broad public understood the Depression, the Fed's stop-go monetary policy of the 1970s, flexible exchange rates, and the ability of market forces to advance individual welfare.
3D GEOMARKETING SEGMENTATION: A HIGHER SPATIAL DIMENSION PLANNING PERSPECTIVE

Geomarketing is a discipline which uses geographic information in the process of planning and implementation of marketing activities. It can be used in any aspect of the marketing such as price, promotion or geo targeting. The analysis of geomarketing data use a huge data pool such as location residential areas, topography, it also analyzes demographic information such as age, genre, annual income and lifestyle. This information can help users to develop successful promotional campaigns in order to achieve marketing goals. One of the common activities in geomarketing is market segmentation. The segmentation clusters the data into several groups based on its geographic criteria. To refine the search operation during analysis, we proposed an approach to cluster the data using a clustering algorithm. However, with the huge data pool, overlap among clusters may happen and leads to inefficient analysis. Moreover, geomarketing is usually active in urban areas and requires clusters to be organized in a three-dimensional (3D) way (i.e. multi-level shop lots, residential apartments). This is a constraint with the current Geographic Information System (GIS) framework. To avoid this issue, we proposed a combination of market segmentation based on geographic criteria and clustering algorithm for 3D geomarketing data management. The proposed approach is capable in minimizing the overlap region during market segmentation. In this paper, geomarketing in urban area is used as a case study. Based on the case study, several locations of customers and stores in 3D are used in the test. The experiments demonstrated in this paper substantiated that the proposed approach is capable of minimizing overlapping segmentation and reducing repetitive data entries. The structure is also tested for retrieving the spatial records from the database. For marketing purposes, certain radius of point is used to analyzing marketing targets. Based on the presented tests in this paper, we strongly believe that the structure is capable in handling and managing huge pool of geomarketing data. For future outlook, this paper also discusses the possibilities of expanding the structure.
Assessing fun in platform games

Os jogos de plataformas sao um dos generos mais antigos de videojogos, e tem ganho popularidade recentemente devido as suas mecânicas simples. No entanto, podem tornar-se repetitivos depois de terminados, pelo que podem beneficiar significativamente do uso de geracao procedimental de conteudos, estendendo a sua duracao sem aborrecer o jogador. Ha varios metodos para gerar niveis procedimentalmente; alguns juntam componentes de baixo nivel diretamente, enquanto outros baseiam as suas construcoes em representacoes mais abstratas da estrutura do nivel.Nesta dissertacao, desenvolvemos um metodo de geracao de niveis em tres fases para niveis de Sonic, do segundo tipo, usando um grafo para representar os caminhos possiveis atraves do nivel. Depois, e alocado espaco no mapa a esses caminhos pela transposicao do grafo para uma grelha, mantendo a sua topologia. Feito isto, a zona retangular do nivel correspondente a cada bloco ocupado na grelha e construida de forma independente das outras. Adicionalmente, para adicionar um novo elemento de diversao e variedade, o gerador de niveis desenvolvido inclui tambem um gerador de bosses, o que permite a cada nivel incluir um desafio unico no fim, como faziam os jogos classicos de Sonic.A saida do gerador pode ser controlada por um conjunto de parâmetros, que controlam as probabilidades de varios elementos aparecerem. Para ajustar os niveis gerados as preferencias do jogador, um metodo de inferir e parametrizar essas preferencias a partir de dados de jogo foi desenvolvido, bem como uma forma de calcular parâmetros apropriados para o gerador a partir dos parâmetros de preferencia. O jogo desenvolvido foi entao sujeito a um teste, em que foi pedido a varias pessoas que jogassem um conjunto de niveis consecutivos numa sessao para avaliar a eficacia do mecanismo de adaptacao. Os resultados indicam que a abordagem seguida e promissora, embora haja ainda muito a melhorar.
Measuring Educational Service Quality Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

The main purpose of this study is to identify, evaluate and prioritize the educational service quality factors in public secondary schools by using parents’ views. To do this, the author applied Analytic Hierarchy Process method since it offers a systematic approach for multiple criteria decision making. The findings show that individual development is the most important determinant of service quality in public secondary schools, respectively followed by educational development and physical maintenance factors. This might be seen as evidence that parents want their children gain academic and social skills simultaneously.
Science & Technology, Development and Local Power: Elements for Analysis of the Brazilian Context

This paper discusses the theoretical aspects of the relationship between scientific and technological production of universities and local development. The central argument is that this relationship is potentialized when produced knowledge permits the occupation of a position in the scientific field and is linked to specific forms of local insertion. In the context of globalization, which keeps the center-periphery structure of the world economic system practically intact, articulation is proposed between global and local dimensions of the environment. The recovery of theoretical-empirical categories formulated by Economic Commission for Latin-America and the Caribbean helps to place the discussion in a political sphere, and to characterize local development as an expression of social change on territorially demarcated scales.
Energy Based Clustering Self Organizing Map Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks

Cluster based routing are the most frequently used energy efficient routing protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks which avoid single gateway architecture through dividing of network nodes into several clusters while in each cluster, Cluster Heads work as local Base stations. However, there is several energy efficient cluster-based protocols in the literature, most of them use the topological neighborhood or adjacency as main parameter to form the clusters. This paper present a new centralized adaptive Energy Based Clustering protocol through the application of Self organizing map neural networks (called EBC-S) which can cluster sensor nodes, based on their energy level and coordinates. We apply some maximum energy nodes as weights of SOM map units; so that the nodes with higher energy attract the nearest nodes with lower energy levels. So a cluster may not necessarily contain adjacent nodes. The new algorithm enables us to form energy balanced clusters and equally distribute energy consumption on whole network space. Simulation results show the considerable profit of our proposed protocol over LEACH and LEA2C (another SOM based protocol); by increasing the network lifetime and insuring more network coverage.
Coverage Density Based Approach for Concept Lattice Reduction: Coverage Density Based Approach for Concept Lattice Reduction

To address the lattice size exponential explosion problem in large scale data and rule mining, concept coverage density function and measurement model are introduced to reduce redundant concepts. The pruned lattice, named marked-concept Lattice, has linear space complexity and can be obtained through direct or synchronous construction or node-extraction. Analysis and simulation tests show that this reduction model not only significantly reduces normal concept lattice size, but also significantly improves lattice building and rule mining efficiency. Furthermore, marked concept carries crucial information and physical meanings, thus can make benefits for Web service relationship mining.
Upper tropospheric ice sensitivity to sulfate geoengineering

Abstract. Aside from the direct surface cooling that sulfate geoengineering (SG) would produce, investigations of the possible side effects of this method are still ongoing, such as the exploration of the effect that SG may have on upper tropospheric cirrus cloudiness. The goal of the present study is to better understand the SG thermodynamical effects on the freezing mechanisms leading to ice particle formation. This is undertaken by comparing SG model simulations against a Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) reference case. In the first case, the aerosol-driven surface cooling is included and coupled to the stratospheric warming resulting from the aerosol absorption of terrestrial and solar near-infrared radiation. In a second SG perturbed case, the surface temperatures are kept unchanged with respect to the reference RCP4.5 case. When combined, surface cooling and lower stratospheric warming tend to stabilize the atmosphere, which decreases the turbulence and updraft velocities (−10 % in our modeling study). The net effect is an induced cirrus thinning, which may then produce a significant indirect negative radiative forcing (RF). This RF would go in the same direction as the direct effect of solar radiation scattering by aerosols, and would consequently influence the amount of sulfur needed to counteract the positive RF due to greenhouse gases. In our study, given an 8 Tg-SO2 yr−1 equatorial injection into the lower stratosphere, an all-sky net tropopause RF of −1.46 W m−2 is calculated, of which −0.3 W m−2 (20 %) is from the indirect effect on cirrus thinning (6 % reduction in ice optical depth). When surface cooling is ignored, the ice optical depth reduction is lowered to 3 %, with an all-sky net tropopause RF of −1.4 W m−2, of which −0.14 W m−2 (10 %) is from cirrus thinning. Relative to the clear-sky net tropopause RF due to SG aerosols (−2.1 W m−2), the cumulative effect of the background clouds and cirrus thinning accounts for +0.6 W m−2, due to the partial compensation of large positive shortwave (+1.6 W m−2) and negative longwave adjustments (−1.0 W m−2). When surface cooling is ignored, the net cloud adjustment becomes +0.8 W m−2, with the shortwave contribution (+1.5 W m−2) almost twice as much as that of the longwave (−0.7 W m−2). This highlights the importance of including all of the dynamical feedbacks of SG aerosols.
Quantifying black carbon deposition over the Greenland ice sheet from forest fires in Canada

Black carbon (BC) concentrations observed in 22 snowpits sampled in the northwest sector of the Greenland ice sheet in April 2014 have allowed us to identify a strong and widespread BC aerosol deposition event, which was dated to have accumulated in the pits from two snow storms between 27 July and 2 August 2013. This event comprises a significant portion (57% on average across all pits) of total BC deposition over 10 months (July 2013 to April 2014). Here we link this deposition event to forest fires burning in Canada during summer 2013 using modeling and remote sensing tools. Aerosols were detected by both the Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (on board CALIPSO) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Aqua) instruments during transport between Canada and Greenland. We use high‐resolution regional chemical transport modeling (WRF‐Chem) combined with high‐resolution fire emissions (FINNv1.5) to study aerosol emissions, transport, and deposition during this event. The model captures the timing of the BC deposition event and shows that fires in Canada were the main source of deposited BC. However, the model underpredicts BC deposition compared to measurements at all sites by a factor of 2–100. Underprediction of modeled BC deposition originates from uncertainties in fire emissions and model treatment of wet removal of aerosols. Improvements in model descriptions of precipitation scavenging and emissions from wildfires are needed to correctly predict deposition, which is critical for determining the climate impacts of aerosols that originate from fires.
Understanding environmental management accounting (EMA) adoption: a new institutional sociology perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this research paper is to report the results of a study that explains the relationship between institutional pressure and environmental management accounting (EMA) adoption. Specifically, it looks at the pressure of government and other parties in society concerning EMA adoption among manufacturing companies in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing from the new institutional sociology theory, the paper seeks to identify the extent to which institutional pressure influences EMA adoption level. A total of 74 accountants from manufacturing companies in Malaysia participated in the survey. Institutional pressure (coercive isomorphism, normative pressure and mimetic processes) was tested against the level of EMA adoption via multiple regression analysis. Next, semi‐structured interviews were employed with four survey participants to gain further insights into the survey results.Findings – The findings of this study reveal some influence of institutional pressure on EMA adoptio.
Production of exopolymer particles by marine bacterioplankton under contrasting turbulence conditions

It has recently been shown that marine bacterioplankton release copious amounts of capsular material as 'semi-labile' to 'refractory' dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into the ambient water. The fate of this bacterioplankton-derived DOC remains largely unknown. Here we investigate the capability of this bacterial-derived capsular DOC to coagulate to exopolymer particles under contrasting turbulence regimes. Under high turbulence, fewer but larger particles (>2 μm in diameter) were detected, while the total exopolymer particle-mass (>0.2 μm) was higher under stagnant conditions. Under stagnant conditions most of the bacterial-derived particles remained in the size-class between 0.2 and 2 μm. The production rate of exopolymer particles was estimated to amount to about 4 amol C cell - 1 h -1 , representing about 25 % of the previously estimated bacterioplankton DOC release of about 15 amol C cell -1 h -1 . Considering that bacterioplankton represent the largest living surface in the ocean, the release and subsequent coagulation of bacterioplankton-derived capsular DOC might be an important, thus far largely neglected mechanism of exopolymer particle formation in the ocean.
Secure Image Encryption Based on an Ideal New Nonlinear Discrete Dynamical System

It is well known that encryption algorithms developed based on Logistic map suffer from limited key space due to the narrow regions of system parameters which can be used, potential risk of security in the presence of numerous periodic windows within the key space, and weakness in known-plain-text attack due to the inherent correlation among the chaotic sequence used for encryption. To overcome these existing problems, this paper presents a secure image encryption algorithm based on a new highly nonlinear discrete dynamical system with ideal chaotic characteristics. Transcendental functions are introduced together with modulo operations which physically represent discontinuous time-varying nonlinearities, leading to extremely complex chaotic behavior that is highly sensitive to system parameters and initial conditions, both of which are considered as the key for the cryptosystem. Extensive numerical experiment results have revealed that the proposed image encryption algorithm offers advantages of unlimited key space and high-level security, since those problematic periodic windows are no longer present within the key space, and it is extremely robust against known-plain-text attack, since the chaotic sequence generated bears no correlation whatsoever due to the folding effect of modulo operation. The algorithm makes truly efficient yet highly secure image encryption based on chaotic systems a reality.
ANTI-CANCER EFFECT OF PLANTAGO DEPRESSA ETHANOLIC EXTRACT IN B16F10 SKIN CANCER CELLS

Plantago depressa Willd. is a distributed herb which traditionally used for treating wound, fever, cancer and inflammation in some temperate asian countries. This present study aimed to investigate the anti-cancer activity of ethanol extract of Plantago depressa Willd. plant on B16F10 skin cancer cells. Cells were treated with different concentration of the PDE (25, 50, 100, 200 μg/mL) with or without lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation to evaluate its effect on cell viability. Furthermore, anti-cancer activity was evaluated by checking viability of B16F10 skin cancer cells in various concentration of the PDE extract (0.6, 1.2, 2.5 and 5 μg/mL), using CCK-8 assay. The results indicated that (i) the PDE treatment did not influence on cell viability of HaCaT skin normal cells dose-dependently; and (ii) PDE exhibits anti-cancer activity through inhibition of proliferation of B16F10 skin cancer cells.
Electrochemical Treatment of Synthetic Wastewaters Containing Alphazurine A Dye: Role of Electrode Material in the Colour and COD Removal

The electrochemical oxidation of Alphazurine A (azA) has been studied in Na2SO4 media at Ti/IrO2, Pb/PbO2 and boron-doped diamond (Si/BDD) electrodes by bulk electrolysis experiments under galvanostatic control at j = 30 and 60 mA cm -2 . The obtained results have clearly shown that the electrode material plays an important role for the electrochemical incineration of azA, where Pb/PbO2 and Si/ BDD lead complete mineralization of dye, while Ti/IrO2 disfavoured such process. The complete mineralization of ±zA on Pb/PbO2 and Si/BDD is due to the production of hydroxyl radicals on these materi- als surfaces. Current efficiencies obtained at Ti/IrO2, Pb/PbO2 and Si/ BDD gave values of 3, 24 and 42%, for each electrode material, at 30 mA cm -2 , respectively. These values were higher than those obtained at 60 mA cm -2 . Energy consumption values from the electrolyses performed at 30 mA cm -2 were 254, 124 and 51 kWh m -3 , for Ti/IrO2, Pb/PbO2 and Si/BDD, respectively. UV spectrometric measurements showed faster azA elimination at the Si/BDD electrode than those obtained on Ti/IrO2 and Pb/PbO2.
Some Calculations on Inflation and Corporate Taxation in Australia

This paper presents calculations of the effects of inflation on corporate tax liabilities in Australia. Inflation distorts the measurement of taxable corporate income in three main ways: it reduces the real value of depreciation allowances, creates artificial holding gains on inventories, and causes overstatement of the cost of debt financing under a nominal-interest accounting system. The first two of these effects work in the direction of overstating taxable income, while the third works in the opposite direction. The calculations suggest that in aggregate, inflation has increased effective tax rates on corporate income, with the largest effects occurring with a lag of several years after periods of high inflation.
Soil Temperature Regimes under Mixed Dipterocarp Forestsof Peninsular Malaysia

Soil temperature regimes of forested and open conditions at selected depths of 5, 10, 20 and 30 cm, were reported based on data collected over a two-year period. Results showed that temperature of soil under forest cover was consistently lower than of the open by 4 to GOC due to 'shading effect' of forest cover. The top 5 cm layer in the open showed the greatest variation whilst insignificant differences were observed among layers under forest. Weighted average soil profile temperature for both conditions seemed to follow closely the mean air temperature. However, open air temperatures consistently recorded lower values.
Preliminary evaluation for a functional support of the elbow and shoulder joint

In case of tetraplegic patients, restoration of the gripping function has been subject to major restrictions so far. Both operative interventions, such as tendon or muscle transfer as well as technical aids like neuroprostheses require an actively controllable shoulder function for the hand to be placed freely in space. Patients suffering from paraplegia with a complete loss of arm movements, who need help all day long, would win a considerable degree of independence and quality of life by a simple gripping function already. The “OrthoJacket” project is therefore aimed at creating the necessary technical and clinical prerequisites. By combining an actively moved orthosis with functional electrical stimulation (FES), a non-invasive, modular hybrid orthosis shall be developed for the upper extremity. Requirements for using a hybrid elbow and shoulder joint orthosis shall be presented below.
Toughness Improvement in Ternary HDPE/PS/PET Polymer Blends with Compatibilizer

Preparing polymer blends is an effective way to develop new raw materials. In the present study, the morphological and mechanical properties were investigated of ternary polymer blends. Immiscible plastics: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high density polyethylene (HDPE) and polystyrene (PS) were blended, which can be found in post- consumer waste in large quantities and compatibilizer agents were also added to the blend. Three different processing methods, internal mixing, extrusion and injection moulding were used during the production. The results show that the best mechanical properties can be achieved if the ternary polymer blends are produced by extrusion followed by injection moulding or direct injection moulding without prior homogenization, and styrene/ethylene-butylene/styrene copolymer grafted with maleic anhydride (SEBS-g-MA) was also added to the polymer blend.