Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
^Äëíê~â. Simulasi penapis optik untuk 1310nm panjang gelombang dan 1510nm operasi pada pandu gelombang optik planar berdasarkan bahan-bahan baru VTT yang berasal sol-gel menggunakan teknik MMI disajikan dalam tulisan ini. Bahan simulasi telah menunjukkan bahawa, pada prinsipnya, mirip dengan ke

Simulation of optical wavelength filter for 1310nm and 1510nm operation on planar optical waveguides based on new VTT sol-gel derived material using Multimode Interference (MMI) technique is presented in this paper. Simulations of the material have demonstrated that in principle, similar filtering efficiency to other materials reported in MMI devices, in terms of extinction ratio (ER), it was simulated to be 18.4 and 21.6 dB for the wavelengths of 1310nm and 1550 nm, respectively. Meanwhile, the simulated insertion loss (IL) is around 1.43-1.64 dB for both filtering operations. The structure consists of two cascaded MMI sections, employing General Interference (GI) and Paired Interference (PI) mechanisms. The advantages of MMI based devices and sol-gel derived materials are discussed in this paper. The self-imaging principle, material characterizations and the final design of MMI based filter structure are also demonstrated in this paper. hÉóïçêÇëW Optical waveguide; wavelength filter; MMI; general interference mechanism; paired interference mechanism; interference mechanisms; sol-gel derived materials ^Äëíê~â. Simulasi penapis optik untuk 1310nm panjang gelombang dan 1510nm operasi pada pandu gelombang optik planar berdasarkan bahan-bahan baru VTT yang berasal sol-gel menggunakan teknik MMI disajikan dalam tulisan ini. Bahan simulasi telah menunjukkan bahawa, pada prinsipnya, mirip dengan kecekapan penapisan dari bahan lain yang dilaporkan dalam peranti MMI, dalam kes pemusnahan nisbah (ER), ia dicatatkan sebanyak 18.4dB dan 21.6dB untuk panjang gelombang 1310 nm dan 1550 nm, masing-masing. Sementara itu, kehilangan masukan (IL) adalah sekitar 1.43-1.64 dB untuk kedua operasi penapisan. Struktur ini terdiri daripada dua bahagian kaskad MMI, iaitu mekanisma gangguan umum (GI) dan mekanisma gangguan berpasangan (PI). Kelebihan peranti berasaskan MMI dan bahan-bahan yang berasal sol-gel dibahas dalam makalah ini. Prinsip pencorakan sendiri, ciri-ciri bahan yg digunakan dan struktur akhir penapis berasaskan MMI ini juga ada ditunjukkan dalam makalah ini. = h~í~=âìåÅáK Gelombang pandu optik; penapis gelombang; MMI; mekanisma gangguan umum; mekanisma gangguan berpasangan; mekanisma gangguan; bahan-bahan terbitan sol-gel 1-5 Faculty of Electrical Engineering,, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru * Corresponding author: rashidi@fke.utm. my PO==========jlea=o^pefafI=^ej^a=pe^ojfI=^jfog^kI=jlea=e^kfcc=C=klo^w^k=
The Impact Of Information On Land Development: A Dynamic And Stochastic Analysis

In a two-period model, economists such as K.J. Arrow, A.C. Fisher, and C. Henry, have shown that when development is both indivisible and irreversible, a developer who ignores the possibility of obtaining new information about the outcome of such development will invariably underestimate the benefits of preservation and hence favor development. In this note, I extend the AFH analysis in two directions. I model the land development problem in a dynamic framework, explicitly specifying an information production function. In such a setting, I then ask and answer the question concerning when development should take place. Forthcoming in Journal of Environmental Management
An overview of data acquisition system for cutting force measuring and optimization in milling

This paper presents an approach, for the systematic design of condition monitoring system for machine tool and machining operations. The research is based on utilising the genetic optimization method for the on-line optimization of the cutting parameters and to design a programme for the signal processing and for the detection of fault conditions for milling processes. Cutting parameters and the measured cutting forces are selected in this work as an application of the proposed approach.
The role of sardine as prey for pelagic predators in the western Mediterranean Sea assessed using stable isotopes and fatty acids

This study combined the analysis of fatty acids and stable isotopes of nitrogen and carbon to test the hypothesis that the pelagic food web of the south Catalan Sea has a wasp-waist structure supported by sardines Sardina pilchardus. If this hypothesis were correct, most predators would be expected to have stable isotope ratios and fatty acid profiles consistent with those derived from a sardine-based diet. However, this was true only for mackerel Scomber scomber, blue butterfish Stromateus fiatola, all sea-birds and oceanic loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta. The values of the DHA/EPA index of neritic logger-head turtles and striped dolphins Stenella caeruleoalba were also consistent with a sardine/ squid diet, but their trophic positions were too high. On the other hand, the DHA/EPA index of most predatory fishes in- dicated that anchovies Engraulis encrasicolus and/or horse mackerel Trachurus trachurus were their main prey. Nevertheless, some amounts of low trophic level invertebrates were likely to be consumed by some predatory fishes, because their trophic positions where lower than expected from a fish-based diet only. The heterogeneous distribution of phytoplankton groups above and below the thermocline during the warm season is hypothesized to be the primary reason for this food web structure, although the strong reliance of some seabirds on sardines is the likely consequence of a massive consumption of discards from fishing boats. In short, there is little evidence for a wasp-waist structure based on sardine, which may explain why the populations of predators fluctuate less than the population of sardines.
Physical activity levels and injury prevention knowledge and practice of a cohort of carpentry students

The levels of physical activity and knowledge about postures and practices in carpentry students have not been extensively investigated. This study will inform occupational health practitioners about carpentry students’ physical activity levels and workplace practices, so that back care and injury prevention education can be included in the curriculum. Data were collected from 51 participants using a questionnaire that asked about levels of physical activity and knowledge and practice for injury prevention. On average 6.4 hours of physical activity was performed weekly outside of work and/or study hours by 86% of participants. Most participants identified components of a safe lifting technique (‘bend knees’ 76%; ‘back straight’ 45%). They reported that heavy loads were frequently lifted (51% often/always lifted weights of 20-30kg independently and 69% rarely using the assistance of a co-worker or lifting device). Although participants had a basic knowledge of common lifting strategies for back care and injury prevention, weights lifted independently were frequently over the deemed safe lifting level. The findings indicate that carpentry students have a basic knowledge of injury prevention and lifting techniques but do not necessarily implement their knowledge into practice. Overton M, Reynolds E, Clark N, Bhana H, Mulligan H, Elliot K, Minnoch P (2016) Physical activity levels and injury prevention knowledge and practice of a cohort of carpentry students. New Zealand Journal of Physiotherapy 44(2): 84-90. doi: 10.15619/NZJP/44.2. 03.
Relationships between spatial patterns of benthic assemblages in a mangrove forest using different levels of taxonomic resolution

The use of multivariate techniques to quantify spatlal and temporal patterns in assemblages requires decisions about the resolution to wlhich taxa are identified Sim~lar spatial patterns in assemblages are often found whether coarse or fine levels of taxonomic resolution are used. Whether coarser resolution retains patterns of relative difference In assemblages between habitats at a hicrarchy of spatial scales has not been widely examined. Where organisms are patchy at many spatial scales, numerous replicates are needed to represent assemblages adequately Identifying taxa into broad groups is generally quicker and cheaper than identification to species, so coarser resolution may release limited resources for the intensive sampling necebsdry for populations of highly dispersed and patchy organisms. In this study, intertidal epifaunal assemblages in urban mangrove forests were examined at scales of metres, tens of metres and hundreds of metres using 2 different levels of taxonomic resolution 93 taxa and 9 broad groups. Bray-Curtis measures of dissimilarity were also compared between the 2 levels of taxonomic resolution to test the hypothesis that quantitative differences in the assemblages at a hierarchy of spatial scales were retained with different levels of taxonomic resolution. Assemblages varied at each spatial scale. Similar patterns were obtained at each level of taxonomic resolution because the Bray-Curtis measures of dissimilarity were strongly correlated between the 2 1evc:ls. More variable sites, as identified using one level of taxonomic resolution, were also more variable using a different level of taxonomic resolution. Also, sites that were similar to each other when 93 taxa were used remained similar when the taxa were grouped into 9 groups. Transforming the data to the fourth root retained patterns of differences between sites, but altered patterns of variability within sites. The relative value of putting limited resources into increasing the size of the sample as opposed to increased taxonomic resolution in such habitats is discussed.
Antimicrobial activity of probiotic Lactobacillus strains towards Salmonella enterica ser enteritidis in whey

Aim: The aim of this study therefore, was to evaluate the suitability of whey as a delivery agent of probiotics culture towards diarrhoea causing pathogens. Procedure: Seven Lactobacillus strains (from NCDC and MTCC), including DDS-1 (well established probiotic culture) were screened, under controlled condition, for their capacity to inhibit Salmonella enteritidis in fermented whey. Result: The inhibitory mechanism was found to be dependent on the lowering of the pH of the medium and production of lactic acid. The antibacterial activity of L. paracasei 17 and L. casei 299 from NCDC were more effective in inhibiting Salmonella enteritidis, within 8hrs contact of fermented whey. Conclusion: Fermented whey can be use for the management against enteric diarrhoea
Actinobacteria from Cow Feces: Isolation, Identification and Screening for Industrially Important Secondary Metabolites

Increasing incidences of fungal infections across the world among plants and animals have driven the search and development of new antifungal compounds. In this context, Actinobacteria represents a prolific source of bioactive secondary metabolites. Under phylum Actinobacteria, genus Streptomyces contribute significantly to the production of secondary metabolites with different properties such as antibacterial, antifungal, anticancerous, immunosuppressants etc. [1, 2]. Sixty percent of antibiotics developed for agricultural purpose was isolated from the same genus [3]. Due to declining rate of discovery of new lead compounds from common sources, the cultivation of rare taxa of Actinobacteria from underexplored habitats has become a focus in the search for the next generation of antimicrobial agents [4]. It is clear from the evidence that researchers have been focussing on the screening of unusual and unexplored niche for new Actinobacterial strains and also to overcome the increasing demand of the bioactive molecules. Cow feces is a cheap and easily available bioresource on our planet. It is used as manure, biofertilizer, biopesticides, pest-repellent and as a source of energy [5]. Antimicrobial activity of Cow feces has been reported by many researchers [6−8]. Ayurveda suggests the use of panchgavya (Panchgavya in Sanskrit means a mixture of ghee, feces, urine, curd, milk) alone or in combination Actinobacterial strains isolated from Cow feces were studied for their antifungal attributes against phytopathogens and industrially important enzymes. A total of 30 Actinobacterial strains were obtained from 10 samples of cow feces. All the strains were belonging to the genera Streptomyces on the basis of morphological and chemotaxonomic analysis. During preliminary screening, out of 30 strains, 15 strains (50%) showed antifungal activity against five fungal phytopathogens including Aspergillus niger, Fusarium solani, Fusarium oxysporum, Macrophomina phaseolina and Rhizoctonia solani. While, isolate GBTCF-26 was found to be most active against R. solani with 62.2% inhibition of fungal mycelium, GBTCF-09 was prominent against F. solani and F. oxysporum with percent inhibition of 61.1% and 58.8%, respectively. Out of 30 strains, 19 (63.3%), 16 (53.3%), 11 (36.7%), 10 (33.3%), 4 (13.3%) and 8 (26.7%) strains were producing amylase, caseinase, gelatinase, lipase, chitinase and cellulose, respectively. The selected strains, GBTCF-09, GBTCF21 and GBTCF-26, were identified as Streptomyces sp. on the basis of their 16S rDNA sequence. The study supports the idea that the Actinobacteria from unique niches (Cow feces) possess the production potential of industrially important enzymes including bioactive molecules.
Performance Evaluation and Comparison of Network Firewalls under DDoS Attack

Network firewalls act as the first line of defense against unwanted and malicious traffic and also represent critical point of failure during DDoS attack. Predicting the overall firewall performance is crucial to network security administrators and designers in assessing the strength and effectiveness of network firewalls against DDoS attacks. In this paper, authors have made a humble attempt to study and compare DDoS performance of various types of firewalls in operation as on today. Analysis and detailed comparison is performed on open source packet filter (PF) firewall, Checkpoint SPLAT and Cisco ASA in a testing environment with laboratory generated DDoS traffic. It is attempted to identify various firewall DDoS performance parameters which can be considered during DDoS attack. Further, experiments are carried out to study effect of varying TCP Opening Timers on performance of stateful inspection firewall during Sync Flood attack. Also, in order to improve performance, intelligence is applied in PF firewall rulebase to mitigate DDoS.
An Improved Dominant-Set Algorithm for Detecting Conversational Groups in Images

Social encounters modelling is gaining more prominent as the need to analysis diverse social interaction groups is on the rise in both videos and images. Inspired by social psychological, social encounter attempts to analysis who is interacting with whom in a social gathering such as party, chat, etc. There exist two types of social encounters namely: focused and unfocused encounters. In this thesis, we modelled social encounter using a game-theoretical framework. We translate the notion of evolutionary game theory into social encounter where the pure strategy corresponds to the detected individuals in the scene and the payoff corresponds to similarity measure between subjects. Using this approach with position and orientation we are able to statistically modelled F-formation. We experimented this approached on several benchmark datasets and our experiment shows significant improvement in performance.
Plane Segmentation of Kinect Point Clouds using RANSAC

In this paper segmentation of planes in point cloud data generated by Microsoft Kinect is detected by using RANSAC method. Two experimental data are acquired by OpenNI and OpenCV library. Kinect camera is first calibrated and the holes in the acquired data are filled. Then, the data is filtered, downsampled and segmented via Point Cloud Library (PCL). Distance threshold and normal weighted distance parameters of RANSAC algorithm are evaluated in the experiments. Keywords—plane segmentation, Kinect, point cloud library
Agricultural Technology Adoption: A Panel Analysis of Smallholder Farmers' Fertilizer use in Kenya

Author(s): Olwande, John; Sikei, Geophrey; Mathenge, Mary | Abstract: Africa is the only region where agricultural productivity has continued to decline over the last decades and poverty levels have increased. This has necessitated the need to increase agricultural productivity. One way of increasing agricultural productivity is through introduction and use of improved agricultural technologies. This paper applied a double-hurdle model on a ten-year panel household survey data for 1,275 households to examine determinants of fertilizer adoption and use intensity in Kenya.Results show that the proportion of households using fertilizer dramatically rose in the last decade while fertilizer application rates increased marginally. Fertilizer use in the drier agro ecological zones is still way below that in the higher agro ecologically potential zones, indicating higher risk involved in and lower profitability of using fertilizer in the drier areas. Econometric estimation results show that age, education, credit, presence of a cash crop, distance to fertilizer market and agro ecological potential are statistically significant in influencing the probability of adopting fertilizer. The strongest determinants of fertilizer use intensity are gender, dependency ratio, credit, presence of cash crop, distance to extension service and agro ecological potential.The study suggests improving access to gricultural credit by especially low income farmers; concerted efforts to promote fertilizer use among farmers in the drier areas; and government investment in rural infrastructure, efficient port facilities and standards of commerce to reduce the cost of distributing fertilizer, as some of the ways to promote fertilizer use.
R&D Intensity and Market Valuation of Firm: A Study of R&D Incurring Manufacturing Firms in India

This study examines the impact of R&D expenditure on market valuation of firm proxied by Tobin’s q using firm level data for manufacturing firms in India. To accomplish the research objective this study obtained data from Prowess database of Centere for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) over the period of 2001-2010. The study forms an unbalanced panel comprising 2382 firm-year observations and employs Pooled-OLS and fixed effects models to analyze the relationship between R&D intensity and firm value as measured by Tobin’s q. The findings reflect an inverted U-shaped relationship between R&D intensity and firm value indicating the diminishing marginal return to each unit spent on R&D. The result implies that R&D investment have a positive impact on the market value of firm at the beginning, however, after a point these investments lower the market performance of firms.
A Review on Attribute Based Image Search Reranking

Image search reranking is one of the effective approach to refine the text-based image search result. Text-based image retrieval suffers from essential problems that are lead to the incapability of the associated text to appropriately evoke the image content. In this paper, reranking methods are put forward to address this drawback in scalable fashion. Based on the classifiers for each and every predefined attributes,each and every image is represented by an attribute feature consisting of the responses from these classifiers. This hypergraph can be used to model the relationship between images by integration of low-level visual features and attribute features. Hypergraph ranking is then performed to order the images. Its basic principle is that visually close images should have identical ranking scores. It improves the performance over the text-based image search engine
Fully Automated Machine for Scanning SIMP detectors

A fully automated measurement system has been built to measure uniformmity of the parameters of SiPM detectors with very high pixel densities. It has a light source with a microfocus spot (FWHM = 3 μm at the detector surface) and a precise positioning system (1 μm accuracy). A temperature control system with water cooling has been used to set the temperature of the measured detector. Finally, a low noise, custom made front-end amplifier has been designed to receive SiPM signals. This paper presents the MAPD-3N detector measurement results uniformity of gain and relative photon detection efficiency (PDE).
Using the Involvement Construct to Understand the Motivations of Customers of Casual Dining Restaurants in the USA

The purpose of this study was to investigate the motivations that push consumers to dine out and restaurant attributes that pull diners to a specific restaurant. Surveys were administered to a convenience sample of 559 respondents at a large university in the Southwest of the USA. Crosstabs, ANOVA, Correlations, Factor Analysis and Multiple Regression were employed to explore differences and relationships between variables. Findings identified a profile of diners at casual restaurants. Using the involvement construct, the push-pull motivational framework, and the hedonic and utilitarian motivational framework, results of this study indicate two primary reasons behind the decision to dine out at casual restaurants and six principal attributes that draw customers into these types of restaurants. In addition, diners were categorized into high/medium/low involvement categories and the linkages between involvement levels and motivations were explored. Both hedonic and utilitarian motivations were identified. Furthermore, motivational factors and restaurant attributes were found to predict diner loyalty. This paper provides the restaurant industry with insight and understanding as to what attracts diners into an establishment and what influences decisions behind dining out.
Assessment of cooperation within chosen supply system in the Czech chemical industry

Cost effective creation of value through integration of logistic processes is considered as a significant source of competitive advantage of applied logistics. This transition to supply systems with a dynamic structure requires solutions to a number of problems; one of them is to setup the ways of cooperation between the entities inside supply chains. Application of different forms of cooperation depends on a lot of problems inter alia on branch characteristics and characteristics of the manufactured product. Therefore, this paper identifies and evaluates, on the basis of comparison of literature research outcomes and analysis of cooperation ways between partners within chosen supply system in the chemical industry, the ways, the conditions, and the advantages of this cooperation.