Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Keeping up with the Joneses : examining community-level collaborative and competitive game mechanics to enhance houshold electricity-saving behaviour

To test the effectiveness of competitive and ollaborative settings on engaging households, a mobile app, called Social Power, was developed to provide electricity meter feedback in two gamified environments. The project aims at stimulating social engagement and promoting behavioural change to save electricity at the household level by forming teams of neighbours in two Swiss cities. The household participants are assigned to one of two teams: either a collaborative team where citizens in the same city try to reach a fixed, collective 10% electricity savings target together, or a competitive team which tries to save the most electricity in comparison to the other city. The collaborative and competitive games were run in parallel as a three month field experiment (with long term monitoring after one year, planned for spring 2017) involving 108 recruited households, and 46 who actively played. The experiment complements the process of smart meter roll-outs initiated by the local energy utility in each respective city with the secondary aim of capturing added benefits of smart meters. Weekly electricity-saving themed challenges are presented to the household member playing on the app. By playing, the participants can change their real-life electricity consumption by interacting differently with their home electricity appliances and at the same time acquire four types of points in the app: electricity saving, electricity efficiency, energy awareness and peak-shifting. New challenges each week and continued interaction aim to improve non-sustainable habits. Tips, quizzes with tangible prizes, and individual badges for accomplishments are used as further incentives for participation. Alongside the app, a blog page and Facebook exist to allow players to interact with each other. An electricity use interface visualises the household electricity demand at hourly and weekly intervals and shows the change from the historical average, as well as their team’s savings performance. In this paper we introduce preliminary results on the short-term success of the two game environments after the intervention phase completed in May 2016.
Modelling and Simulation of a System of Mobile Service Units for the Large-Scale Event Industry

Abstract A proposed system of mobile service units (MSUs) is modelled and simulated for the mega-scale event of the Hajj, where millions of visitors move about in four nearby cities for about two weeks and the proposed MSUs will be transported accordingly to serve them. The model consists of subsystems that represent the master plan for the four cities, the event programme of the Hajj, the MSUs, the transportation system, and the control centre. Simulation results show that the proposed system can be modelled and the MSUs can be used successfully for the Hajj. Simulation results also show that a significant reduction in resources, compared with the fixed service centres currently in operation, can be achieved using the proposed MSUs.
A Brief Introduction to Speech Synthesis and Voice Modification

For both engineers and linguists, the computer synthesis of natural speech is an objective that would provide many useful applications to human-computer interaction, including the realm of electro-acoustic music. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the area of speech synthesis by providing an overview of the three main methods of computer speech synthesis; namely concatenative, articulatory and formant syntheses. Some aspects of the current state of the technology are illuminated and the final section will explain the author’s motivation and current research approach to the field of voice modification. I. INTRODUCTION The automatic conversion of written text into speech would prove a vitally useful technology with many commercial and humanitarian applications. Speech is one of the most natural ways for humans to communicate with one another; enabling a computer to convey information in this manner has marked advantages over written text.
In search of time and memory. A neurobiological approach of Marcel Proust’s novel “In Search of Lost Time”

Marcel Proust with his Belle Époque French masterpiece “Remembrance of Things Past” (“In Search of Lost Time”) gave us significant insights into the workings of the brain and the nature of memory. Here I try to correlate convincingly Proust’s findings and ideas with current neurobiological knowledge. In this respect, various issues are discussed: The concept of time and its relation to memory; the strength of “involuntary memories” and the primacy of the senses of smell and taste; the weaknesses and fragility of memory and the discrepancy between reality and “voluntary memories”; the influences of our expectations on the way we perceive the world, and the limitations set by our physiology; the demanding and capricious nature of memory; the blessing of oblivion as an important biological mechanism; the “organic” nature of the mind; bizarre states of the mind such as synaesthesia and “phantom-limbs. ” Moreover, I suggest that Proust, having an informal yet strong background in neurology and deep knowledge of the principles that govern memory, constructed his great novel on the very same principles. Indeed, Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” remains the great novel of autobiographic memory, a canvas that extents to over 3,000 pages and expands over a long period of time. Time was only regained at the last part of the novel when Proust realized that it is through “involuntary memories” that one finds his personal history in time, the essence of his life and discovers his real self; and Proust made this revelation the most prominent characteristic of his work.
Mobility and elasticity of self-assembled membranes.

Molecular dynamics simulations are used in order to study the self-assembly process and the physicalproperties of ﬂexible membranes composed of amphiphilic molecules. On molecular scales, these mem-branes are observed to be rather mobile and to have rough surfaces arising from molecular protrusions,i.e., from the relative displacements of individual molecules. On length scales that are only somewhatlarger than the membrane thickness, on the other hand, the membranes are found to undergo smoothbending undulations. In this way, our study provides the ﬁrst explicit connection between computersimulations with molecular resolution and elastic membrane models based on differential geometry. [S0031-9007(98)08125-3]
The MDGs and the UN's Comparative Advantage in Goal-Setting

Symposium: Assessing the Millennium Development Goals Twelve years have passed since the United Nations declared an ambitious set of goals in the Millennium Development Resolution sought. The MDGs in part: to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, live in extreme poverty, and who do not have access to safe drinking water; to ensure that boys and girls equally access and complete primary education; to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters and underfive child mortality by two thirds; and to begin to reduce disease prevalence, particularly for HIV/AIDS and malaria. As we approach the target date for many of these goals, progress has been mixed. The contributions to this symposium examine the political and social processes of forming and implementing the MDGs to assess the possibilities for further progress on governance and improving peoples’ lives. Fall 2012 Volume 18, issue 1
Infants may use contingency analysis to estimate environmental states: An evolutionary, life-history perspective

Harshness and unpredictability early in life appear to be independently associated with long-term developmental outcomes, with environmental stressors affecting parental investment (e.g., responsiveness), which then shapes child development (e.g., onset of puberty). Research has detailed mediating physiological pathways, but has not specified how children transform experiences with their parents' and others' responsiveness into cognitive estimates about environmental harshness or unpredictability. In this article, we analyze this estimation process drawing on the study of contingency analysis. We propose that harshness and unpredictability produce distinct contingency profiles, and that children use these profiles to separately estimate each dimension. We conclude with six empirical predictions.
Issues in Personalization of Mobile Services

Personalization is gaining more importance with the increase of mobile and community services. Provision of personalized mobile services can help to meet the individual needs at a time and place when and where a user needs it. Mobile services should be designed to be usable and useful to realize the benefits of personalization. It is not an easy task to satisfy the individual’s goals or needs. Currently, mobile services are designed either using a client side or serverside approach. At the same time, it is raising different research issues ranging from technological to security or privacy concerns. In this work, we described the current research and development in the area of personalization of mobile services. The objective of this paper is to analyze which design approach is suitable for the personalization of mobile services. Finally, we have discussed issues and challenges related to client-side personalization vs server-side personalization and the recent trends in personalization of mobile services. Index Terms — mobile services, personalization, user model, context model, mobile information systems
DIRECTED POLYMERS, CRITICAL TEMPERATURE AND UNIFORM INTEGRABILITY By Alain Camanes

In this paper, we consider directed polymers in random environment. More accurately, we consider the critical temperature βc between weak and strong disorder. We find a necessary condition that ensures that this critical temperature is generally different from its lower bound obtained with the second moment method introduced by E. Bolthausen. To do this, we study a condition of uniform integrability originally due to B. Derrida and M.R. Evans. We also illustrate our result by examples of environments that satisfy this condition.
Influence of addition of host larval extract to medium on the virulence of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin and Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff) Sorokin against Spodoptera litura Fab.

Bio assays were conducted with MUCL 38502 strain of Beauveria basiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin and MUCL 8237 of Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff) Sorokin cultured on SDA and SDA supplemented with host insect larval extract against third instar larvae of Spodoptera litura Fab. The trials were conducted at the Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar to determine the effect on biological properties and virulence of the fungi. Each fungus responded differently to the supplementation. However, in both the fungi the bio mass, linear growth, conidial count and viability of the conidia were increased with the supplementation of larval extract. The LC 50 and LT 50 values of MUCL 38502 grown on SDA medium and medium supplemented with larval extract were 14.85 and 9.65 X10 5 conidia ml -1 and 123.02 and 113.95 h at 5X 10 7 conidia ml -1 respectively. The LC 50 and LT 50 values recorded with MUCL 8237 were 45.23 and 21.32 X10 5 conidia ml -1 and 138.72 and 130.93 h at 5X10 7 conidia ml –1 . The virulence of both the fungal isolates increased when grown on
Effect of tillage on the spatial variability of soil water properties

Soil samples, taken from the A and 8 horizons of no tillage and conventional tillage treatment sites were analyzed for texture, organic carbon content, bulk density, effective porosity, and saturated hydraulic conductivity. The statistical parameters ofmean, variance, coefficient ofvariation, and coefficient of skewness, as well as scaling factors, were determined for each of the variables. Autocorrelation structures were also investigated. The lognormal distribution gave the best-fit for the scaling factors. The spatial variability ofphysical and hydraulic properties in each horizon was quite high. The variability ofthe properties in the A horizon ofthe no tillage treatment was higher than that in the A horizon of the conventional tillage treatment. Differences in variability of the properties in the 8 horizon were not as large as in the A horizon, although all differences were considerable. Saturated hydraulic conductivity was the most spatially variable soil property and its variability was affected most by tillage. The spatial variability ofsoil texture was not affected by tillage.
Aspects of dark matter annihilation in cosmology

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on dark matter annihilation are a uniquely powerful tool in the quest to understand the nature of dark matter. Annihilation of dark matter to Standard Model particles between recombination and reionization heats baryons, ionizes neutral hydrogen, and alters the CMB visibility function. Surprisingly, CMB bounds on dark matter annihilation are not expected to improve significantly with the dramatic improvements in sensitivity expected in future cosmological surveys. In this paper, we will present a simple physical description of the origin of the CMB constraints and explain why they are nearly saturated by current observations. The essential feature is that dark matter annihilation primarily affects the ionization fraction which can only increase substantially at times when the universe was neutral. The resulting change to the CMB occurs on large angular scales and leads to a phenomenology similar to that of the optical depth to reionization. We will demonstrate this impact on the CMB both analytically and numerically. Finally, we will discuss the additional impact that changing the ionization fraction has on large scale structure.
Development and Validation of a Psychological Scale for Work-Related Drivers

Work-related drivers are in high demand in Nigeria because their services are needed in virtually all the private and public business sectors of the economy. Due to exposure to long hours of driving, work-related drivers are prone to vehicle crashes resulting in injuries, loss of man hours, or death. Psychological dimensions of driving have been implicated in literature as positive indicators to successful driving performance. However, there is a dearth of an indigenous psychological scale for assessing automobile drivers in Nigeria. This study was therefore designed to develop and validate a psychological scale for the selection of work-related drivers in Nigeria. This study utilized a cross sectional survey research design, and was carried out in metropolitan Lagos through pilot, main and validation studies utilising 715 participants in all. Using the inclusion criterion of ? 0.40, a 26-item composite scale (? = .80) was identified. Further analysis revealed four psychological dimensions of driving. The psychometric properties of the four dimensions revealed coefficient alphas of 0.75 to 0.96. These dimensions correlated positively and significantly with other similar measures. The scale is useful for identifying behavioural dispositions of drivers in the work setting. The scale also has implications for selection, training, transfer and promotion of drivers. Keywords – development, validation, work-related drivers, psychological dimensions, Nigeria
The role of Agility and Institutional Barriers in the relationship between Learning Orientation and Performance

Learning oriented organizations possess unique characteristics that allow them to be ahead of competitors and achieve competitive advantage. These firms are able to gather, process and use cutting-edge information and knowledge that take them to a higher baseline, developing competences able to transform members ‘mindsets, foresee and adapt itself according to the environment adversities, promote internal and external innovations and, as a consequence, achieve superior performance outcomes. The field literature about the relationship between learning orientation (LO) and performance (PE) points out the benefits of mediators in order to enhance results. Based on previous empirical research results, two important and unpublished constructs of these relationship are investigated in this article: Agility, relating to the speed knowledge is used in organization’s favor, and Institutional Barriers, obstacles that tend to block the learning process impeding to achieve better results. Therefore, this study purpose was to identify the roles of agility and institutional barriers in the relationship between LO and PE, through a literature review. It was possible to conclude that there is no study that relates this two relevant constructs to the LO-PE relationship, what highlight the relevance of this research and show scarcity of research around the theme. Finally, agility, as well as institutional barriers appeared to assume different roles in the considered relationship.
Electrical conductivity properties of expanded graphite–polycarbonatediol polyurethane composites

Conductive polymer composites of segmented polycarbonatediol polyurethane and expanded graphite (EG) have been synthesized with different amounts of EG conductive filler (from 0 to 50 wt%). SEM, X-ray diffraction measurements, Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectroscopies demonstrated a homogeneous dispersion of the EG filler in the matrix. The dielectric permittivity of the composites showed an insulator to conductor percolation transition with increase in EG content. Significant changes in the dielectric permittivity take place when the weight fraction of EG is in the range 20–30 wt%. Special attention has been paid to the dependence of the conductivity on frequency, temperature and EG content. The addition of EG to the matrix causes a dramatic increase in the electrical conductivity of 10 orders of magnitude, which is an indication of percolative behavior. A percolation threshold of ca 30 wt% was evaluated by using the scaling law of percolation theory. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry
One Approach to Risk Management in SMEs Banking

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key determinants of relations between banks and small and medium-sized enterprise segment (SME) in the context of SME banking value chain and credit risk management. Due to a limited number of sources of financing, SMEs often opt for cooperation with the banking sector. On the other hand, most of the banks form separate departments for the cooperation with the SMEsegment, not only in the field of credit, but also in the field of various advisory services offered by banks. The paper draws on SME financing and banking management literature and discusses conceptual models of credit risk management. The research finds that the stability of the banking sector is greatly influenced by the condition and development of the entire financial system of a country, so it is essential that banks take into account the liquidity and adequate resource policy. Bank performance depends on the chosen way of generating revenue (amount of profit), the required quality of assets (risk level) and the defined level of efficiency in operations (operational expense). The findings of the paper highlight the importance of risk management and the complexity of the credit analysis function in banks, as well as provide an overview of quantitative methods for measuring credit risk.
Endogenous tariff formation: the case of mercosur

Mercosur appears as an interesting case study for analyzing the determinants of exceptions in regional trade agreements. Its member countries Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay intended to make Mercosur a full customs union by January 1995. This goal turned out to be too ambitious, and the protocol of Ouro Preto and other agreements signed in December 1994 led to a hybrid solution. Overall, out of a total of 9,119 tariff lines, around 30 percent are subject, in at least one member country, to either external deviations from the common external tariff or internal deviations from free trade. Thus an important set of holes remains under the existing agreement, leading some authors to consider Mercosur an incomplete customs union. This article compares the results of the theoretical literature on endogenous tariff formation with evidence from Mercosur. The results show that Mercosur common external tariff and member countries' deviations from it and from internal free trade can be explained by sector or industry lobbying as predicted by the endogenous tariff literature. If a viable political economy is a key to success, then Mercosur is here to stay.
Dual Circularly Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna with Slot Array on Coaxial Cylinder

A dual circularly polarized (CP) omnidirectional antenna based on slot array in coaxial cylinder structure is presented in this paper. It is constructed by perpendicular slot pairs around and along the axis of the coaxial cylinder to realize the omnidirectional CP property, and two ports are assigned in its two sides as left hand circularly polarized (LHCP) port and right hand circularly polarized (RHCP) port, respectively. The proposed antenna achieves a bandwidth of 16.4% ranging from 5.05 to 5.95 GHz with an isolation higher than 15 dB between the two CP ports, and the return loss (RL) is higher than 10 dB within the bandwidth in both of the two ports. From the measured results, the average axial ratio (AR) of the proposed antenna in omnidirectional plane is lower than 1.5 dB.
Efficacy of Bee Venom as an Anti-Viral Therapy for HCV Genotype 4

Abstract- Use of traditional medicine is encouraged in many economically diverse countries when conventional medications fail. HCV prevalence is highest in Egypt at >10% of the general population, and China has the most people with HCV (29.8 million); approximately 52% of patients infected with HCV genotype 4 will develop chronic HCV. The use of interferon, currently the only approved therapy, is frustrating in many situations. Use of camel milk or drinking copious amounts of urine, moxibustion by fire, acupuncture and cupping, especially in the Saharan and Arabian areas, is currently popular in Egypt. Some traditional Egyptian medicine is related to Arabian, ancient Egyptian, or other religious beliefs. Most patients using traditional therapies show improvement over time in both clinical symptoms and laboratory results. Some showed SVR using Bee venom therapy. Keywords: bee venom, HCV, traditional, therapy. GJMR-B Classification : NLMC Code: QV 268.5, QV 704 EfficacyofBeeVenomasanAnti-ViralTherapyforHCVGenotype4
Phase Separation in the Wake of Moving Fronts: Experiments and Simulations

The formation of regular precipitate stripes in the wake of moving chemical reaction-diffusion fronts is investigated. Experiments on the $NaOH+CuCl_2$ reaction in PVA hydrogel yield stripes parallel or slightly oblique to the front that supplies the precursor of the precipitate. The pattern formation was modeled by phase separation described by the Cahn-Hilliard Equation. Computer simulations reproduced the parallel and the oblique striping as well. Stripes perpendicular to the front are unstable and cannot be observed, in complete agree with the experiments. Pattern formation in the wake of quenching fronts has also been investigated computationally, and compared to the previous results. It has been shown that below a certain front speed stripes perpendicular to the front will appear. Moreover, they will bend so that their growing end to be kept perpendicular even if the front changes its direction. This result can be important in designing several nanotechnologica lithographical processes.