Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Über den Einsatz einer LASER-Entfernungsbildkamera an autonomen Fahrzeugen

This thesis describes development and structure of an autonomous mobile robot, equipped with a Range-ImageCamera. The Range-Image-Camera (RIC or german: EBK) is a new measuring-system wich uses the time of flight and intensity of short laserflashes to get high-definition greyscaleand rangeimages of its actual environment. A rangeimage is more or less the same like a greyscale-image, but instead of brightness it contains an object range in every pixel of the CCD-array. This paper will explain the necessary physics, resolutions, conditions of environment and algorithms for rangeimage processing. Then a concept is shown, how to use threedimensional rangeimages of the workspace to provide navigation and obstacle avoidance for an autonomous wheelchair. Therefore a vector-based mathematical environment and vehicle model is used. This model transforms areas of the same spatial size to planes parallel to the floor, defined by its lower and upper boundaries in z-direction. The routeplanning algorithms are based on a global, multilevel environmental map. If the wheelchair detects new obstacles while driving, they are added to the global map. This means, the robot can be used in known and unknown environments. The software of navigation has the ability to explore the world in the area, which is necessary to reach a given destination. In environments with many obstacles the multilevel-model allows to solve complex navigation-problems, like turnings of 180 degrees with the seat passing under a table or going through narrow doors. This is shown in some examples at the end of this thesis.
Impact of Government Spending In Social Sectors on Economic Growth: A Case Study of West African Economic and Monetary Union Countries

This study aims to investigate the short-run and long-run effects of government’s social expenditure proxies, namely education, and health spending on economic growth during the period 1985 - 2019 in West African Economic and Monetary Union. Using Auto Regressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) based on panel data, the results of the study reveal that in short-run, government spending in social sectors has no significant impact on economic growth but in long-run the effects of education and health expenditures on the economic growth are significantly positive.
Developing management education in India

Driven by developments in science and technology, and globalization of business, the social, public and business organizations in the West had to undertake many changes in their management structure and operating practices. In response to such changes the educational programs in the Western countries have had to undergo noticeable changes in the curricula, content, methodology and coverage. The economic and the business environment in India is also undergoing somewhat similar changes as earlier experienced by the West. It is imperative that the structure of management education in India be changed. This paper suggests a strategy for institutional development for upgrading the quality of the academic program. The strategy takes into consideration the nature and characteristics of management education and the academic inputs.
Virtual Libraries as virtual learning spaces: the experiences of the LASSIE project

This paper reports on outcomes from a nine month project which explored possible uses of social software to support distance learners in their use of libraries. The paper highlights key issues arising from the literature review with more in depth discussion of five case study reports which aimed to explore practical uses of social software tools in library contexts. The researchers used social bookmarking tools to provide lists of resources and to encourage students to share web based resources with others. They also used blogs in a variety of ways and explored the social networking site Facebook. A podcast was used to develop students’ information literacy skills and feedback demonstrated its potential uses. Outcomes from theproject show that uses for social software in libraries are still in their infancy and also suggest a continuing need to embed information literacy skills in course programmes which will require building relationships with academic teaching colleagues.
Online Trust: A Moving Target

The design of trust in digital environments shapes how users relate. By reducing complexity, trust ex - pedites transactions, and thus, some developers of online spaces seek to resolve their users’ trust issues quickly. Some designers approach the problem of trust as a display of evidence. This chapter questions this approach, because it is easy to present a facade of trust on the Internet, and users are increasingly aware of this fact. Alternative design directions are reviewed, such as the enablement of trust, which may feature prominently in the future of trust design.
Compact microstrip branch‐line coupler with wideband quadrature phase balance

This letter presents planar microstrip branch‐line (BL) couplers with improved phase and amplitude stability bandwidth along with significant size reduction. The prototypes are designed to operate at 433 MHz frequency band suitable for ISM 433 MHz applications. The prototypes with symmetric polygonal modification (SPM) and asymmetric polygonal modification (ASPM) offer a wide quadrature phase bandwidth of 37.8% and 35.5% respectively, over which the phase imbalance is within 90°±5°. In SPM all four transmission lines of the BL coupler have been symmetrically modified to bring in 75.99% size reduction compared to the conventional design. Further asymmetric modification has been performed to bring an additional 12.34% size reduction, compared to symmetric, and providing an overall size reduction of 78.95% compared to conventional BL coupler. The prototypes are able to offer compactness without compromising much on the matching, transmission and isolation parameters. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:1369–1374, 2016
The Influence of Color Interreflections on Lighting Simulations

Abstract Most lighting simulation programs represent color as RGB triplets in a device-dependent color space such as ITU-R BT.709. Implicit in this representation is the assumption that interreflections between colored surfaces can be accurately calculated using three separate color bands. We demonstrate that while this assumption generally holds for most architectural finishes, it can result in substantial prediction errors for saturated colors.
Revisiting Cu-based shape memory alloys: Recent developments and new perspectives

Cu-based shape memory alloys belong to one important class of functional alloys, presenting shape memory effect and superelasticity due to their reversible martensitic transformation. Although they have been extensively studied since the middle of the last century, there are still many challenges to be solved. In the last decades, these alloys were extensively studied regarding new compositions, processing routes, phase transformation, mechanical and functional properties. Aspects of the thermoelastic phase transformation have been described using thermodynamic and thermo-mechanical studies, while the role of metallurgical features (such as grain size and morphology, ordering, precipitates and second phases) have been described mainly by phenomenological approach. In this sense this review discusses the advances in the general fundamentals of Cu-based shape memory alloys, the recent developments in processing routes, compositions, and applications in the last years.
Lupaş post quantum Bernstein operators over arbitrary compact intervals

This paper deals with Lupaş post quantum Bernstein operators over arbitrary closed and bounded interval constructed with the help of Lupaş post quantum Bernstein bases. Due to the property that these bases are scale invariant and translation invariant, the derived results on arbitrary intervals are important from computational point of view. Approximation properties of Lupaş post quantum Bernstein operators on arbitrary compact intervals based on Korovkin type theorem are studied. More general situation along all possible cases have been discussed favouring convergence of sequence of Lupaş post quantum Bernstein operators to any continuous function defined on compact interval. Rate of convergence by modulus of continuity and functions of Lipschitz class are computed. Graphical analysis has been presented with the help of MATLAB to demonstrate approximation of continuous functions by Lupaş post quantum Bernstein operators on different compact intervals.
The Relationship between Internal Longitudinal Foot Arch with Static and Dynamic Balance of 12-14 years Male Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between internal longitudinal foot arch with static and dynamic balance in male students aged between 12 and 14. Statistical population of this research consisted of all guidance schools for boys in Shahrekord province and some were selected thorugh cluster sampling method. 90 subjects were randomly selected from these schools as the sample of this research. All subjects took the foot print test and their foot arch was quantatively classified by Staheli index. Then subjects with mean and standard deviation of age 13+0.82 years, weight 47+7.19 kg and height 1.54+0.086 cm were classified into three groups of 30 subjects. Then each group took one-leg standing balance test for static balance and star excursion balance test for dynamic balance. Results identified no significant relationship between foot arch and static balance but there was a significant relationship between foot arch and dynamic balance. Therefore, it seemed that there was a significant relationship between the quantity of internal longitudinal foot arch and dynamic performance of subjects and not only deep-sensitive receivers of foot sole but also the surface of foot sole play a role in controlling dynamic posture. Therefore, the results showed a relationship between the quantity of internal longitudinal foot arch and the control of body balance.
Comparison of the Effect of Eight Week Training Program Schedule With Two Different Stretching Patterns Strengthening on Changes in the Status of Lower Cross Syndrome

Objective: Different timing of performing stretching and strengthening exercises can have different effects on the condition of Lower Crossed Syndrome (LCS). This study aims to compare the effects of eight-week training using stretching and strengthening exercises intermittently and simultaneously on the status of LCS in female college students. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, the study population consists of 300 female students of Guilan University aged 19-25 years. To assess LCS, the New York Posture Rating tool was used. 120 patients who had hyperlordosis were re-evaluated using flexible ruler for precise measurement of LCS. Finally, 45 students with a lumbar curvature angle of >45 degrees were selected and randomly divided into three groups of intermittent training (n=15), simultaneous training (n=15), and control (n=15). The training program consisted of corrective exercises for 8 weeks, 3 sessions per week, each for 60 minutes. One-way ANOVA was used for data analysis in SPSS v. 20 software Results: The difference between the intermittent training and control groups was significant (P=0.30), while no significant difference was observed between the simultaneous training and control groups (P=0.68). Conclusion: Performing stretching and strengthening exercises intermittently has a greater effect on reducing LCS than performing these exercises simultaneously.
Intensive Fishing Effort and Market Controls as Management Tools for Invasive Aquatic Species: A Review

Invasive aquatic species may disrupt ecosystems and cause socioeconomic damage. Biosecurity protocols were developed to prevent transport and unintended introductions of invasive species, but less attention has been paid to management once they become established. The use of classical fisheries stock assessment to determine levels at which selectively targeted fisheries elicit recruitment overfishing is discussed. Case studies of several species of invasive aquatic organisms, including lionfish Pterois spp. two species of mytilids and three species of crayfish, including Faxonius rusticus (Girard, 1852), are discussed as examples. Fecundity as measured by egg production rate (EPR) is a key factor determining how the various species react to fishing pressure. Ecosystem modelling of predatorprey relations between indigenous and invasive aquatic species suggests that restricting fishing effort on indigenous predators of invasive prey may be as effective in managing invasive species in lieu of directly increasing fishing effort on the targeted species itself. Invasive mytilids Dreissena polymorpha (Pallas, 1771) and Mytella strigata (Hanley, 1843) may not be effectively controlled by intensive fishing effort due to high EPR values. However, crayfish that brood offspring and exhibit much lower EPR values may be ideal candidates for stock assessment and setting fishing effort targets to promote recruitment overfishing. Recommendations for managing invasive aquatic species include: collecting data on population dynamics of the invasive species; assessing predator populations; developing fisheries that target the invasive species; and collecting socioeconomic data to understand the human dimensions of the impacts of the invasive species and inform subsequent policy development.
Tree Based Scalable Secure Group Communication

In order to establish a group communication, a common key must be available with all the members of the group. The group key can be used for encrypting data between the group members or restricting access to the resources intended for group members only. Each member in a group has a unique key referred as member key, used for decrypting data in a group. The group key is distributed by group key server, which changes the group key time to time called as group rekeying. It is mandatory that the group key changes after a new user has joined and an existing user departed periodically. The existing system analyse the Bursty behaviour and operation. Burstiness is an important behavior in Secure Group Communication (SGC). Performing bursty operation, which may accumulate the simultaneous leave and join as a single operation, thus reduces the frequency of key distribution and reduces time complexity. But in the existing system the aggregate operation will occur only in rare condition so it may not perform the key reduction in all cases as well as it perform less scalability and security. To achieve better scalability, security and key reduction a new group key management protocol based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem and a hierarchical tree is proposed, in which each node contains a key and a modulus. The Keys and modulus are constructed as a tree and maintained by the key server. The key server shares the keys with each member on the path from its leaf to the root. The keys on its path from the leaf to the root need to be updated in the protocol, when a member joins or leaves the group but all modulus must be kept fixed. To update the keys on the tree, the key server generates a new key for each update node and encrypts it with its children keys on its path from the leaf to the root. Thus the new scalable protocol increases the security, scalability issues when the group size goes up to millions of members and reduces the key.
Remote Sensing Image Registration based on a Geometrical Model
 Matching

Remote sensing image registration is the method of aligning two images from the same scene taken under different imaging circumstances containing different times, angles, or sensors. Scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) is one of the most common matching methods previously used in the remote sensing image registration. The defects of SIFT are the large number of mismatches and high execution time due to the high dimensions of classical SIFT descriptor. These drawbacks reduce the efficiency of the SIFT algorithm. To enhance the performance of the remote sensing image registration, this paper proposes an approach consisting of three different steps. At first, the keypoints of both reference and second images are extracted using SIFT algorithm. Then, to increase the speed of the algorithm and accuracy of the matching, the SIFT descriptor with the vector length of 64 is used for keypoints description. Finally, a new method has been proposed for the image matching. The proposed matching method is based on calculating the distances of keypoints and their transformed points. Simulation results of applying the proposed method to some standard databases demonstrated the superiority of this approach compared with some other existing methods, according to the root mean square error (RMSE), precision and running time criteria.
ZC3HC1 is a structural element of the nuclear basket effecting interlinkage of TPR polypeptides

The nuclear basket (NB), anchored to the nuclear pore complex (NPC), is commonly thought of as built solely of protein TPR polypeptides, the latter thus regarded as the NB’s only scaffold-forming components. In the current study, we report ZC3HC1 as a second building element of the NB. Recently described as an NB-appended protein omnipresent in vertebrates, we now show that ZC3HC1, both in vivo and in vitro, enables in a step-wise fashion the recruitment of TPR subpopulations to the NB and their linkage to already NPC-anchored TPR polypeptides. We further demonstrate that the degron-mediated rapid elimination of ZC3HC1 results in the prompt detachment of the ZC3HC1-appended TPR polypeptides from the NB and their release back into the nucleoplasm again, underscoring the role of ZC3HC1 as a natural structural element of the NB. Finally, we show that ZC3HC1 can keep TPR polypeptides positioned even at sites remote from the NB, in line with ZC3HC1 functioning as a protein connecting TPR polypeptides.
CHEMICALLY INDUCED MUTAGENESIS IN THE KING OYSTER MUSHROOM Pleurotus eryngii TO GENERATE HIGH-TEMPERATURE TOLERANT STRAIN

In this study, a high-temperature-tolerant strain of the king oyster mushroom (Pleurotus eryngii) was generated by chemical mutagenesis. Cultivation of P. eryngii generally involves incubating the mycelia at 25°C and then moving the spawns for further incubation at 18°C for fruitification. However, in tropical countries, the temperature is a major concern in the production of oyster mushroom where the average temperature is 32°C. In the current study, the mycelia were treated with ethyl methane sulphonate (EMS) or methyl methane sulphonate (MMS) for chemical-induced mutation. Seven mutants (EMS 1, 2, 6, 26, 35, 36, and 38) from EMS mutagenesis exhibited higher growth rates than the wild-type strain at 32°C. However, mutant strains from MMS mutagenesis showed a low growth rate when compared with wild-type. On sawdust substrate, the spawn running conditions for these strains were performed at 32°C, and fruitification occurred at 18°C. The yield and biological efficiency of EMS 36 and 38 mutants were higher than those of the wild-type strain. The activities of cellulase and xylanase of EMS 36 and 38 mutants showed that both these mutants had higher activities than the wild-type strain which may influence mushroom production. Therefore, these EMS 36 and 38 mutants can be cultivated in tropical countries, which could provide a high yield and reduce the cost during spawn running step.
Life-cycle assessment of post-disaster temporary housing

ABSTRACT The estimation of energy consumption and related CO2 emissions from buildings is increasingly important in life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies that have been applied in the design of more energy-efficient building construction systems and materials. This study undertakes a life-cycle energy analysis (LCEA) and life-cycle CO2 emissions analysis (LCCO2A) of two common types of post-disaster temporary houses constructed in Turkey. The proposed model includes building construction, operation and demolition phases to estimate total energy use and CO2 emissions over 15- and 25-year lifespans for container houses (CH) and prefabricated houses (PH) respectively. Energy efficiency and emission parameters are defined per m2 and on a per capita basis. It is found that the operation phase is dominant in both PH and CH and contributes 86–88% of the primary energy requirements and 95–96% of CO2 emissions. The embodied energy (EE) of the constructions accounts for 12–14% of the overall life-cycle energy consumption. The results show that life-cycle energy and emissions intensity in CH are higher than those for PH. However, this pattern is reversed when energy requirements are expressed on a per capita basis.
Profitability Assessment of Potato Production Applying Different Irrigation Methods

The present research was conducted during the dry and warm growing seasons of 2011, 2012 and 2013 at Guča, which is a well‐known potato‐growing region of Serbia. Potato was grown under both rainfed conditions and with irrigation, applying two methods: sprinkler and subsurface drip irrigation. The objective of the research was to conduct a comparative analysis and assess the profitability of potato production under rainfed conditions and with irrigation by these two methods. The main outcome of the research showed that higher yields and more profitable production are achievable with irrigation, compared to rainfed conditions. Subsurface drip irrigation was found to be more profitable than sprinkler irrigation. The results provided insight into the structure and distribution of income and expenses, the income and expense growth trend, the percentage profit growth in the case of sprinkler and subsurface drip irrigation, as well as potential income losses at the national level if the irrigation methods considered are not used. A detailed analysis of the production costs provided insight into the feasibility of optimizing potato‐growing approaches for all three types of production. The higher profitability of irrigated potato production opens the question of the need to increase irrigation coverage in Serbia. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
On the Design of a Curriculum that Meets ABET and AIS Requirements: Case of Web Design and Development Program

Many academic Information System (IS) institutes are seeking to demonstrate that their curriculum is aligned with professional association guidelines and their programs are accredited by reputable standards. Achieving these two goals is not straightforward. They require thorough understanding to both the curriculum design guidelines as well as the program accreditation criteria. This paper presents a contribution study on the design of curriculum of IS degree with concentration on Web Design and Development. The proposed curriculum demonstrates and follows the principles guiding the IS curriculum design recommended by the Association of Information Systems (AIS) and is aligned with Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) nine program outcome criteria.
Electro-optic sampling at the TESLA test accelerator: Experimental setup and first results

A mode-locked titanium-sapphire laser with 15 fs pulse width is used to determine the temporal profile of the ultrashort electron bunches in the linear TESLA Test accelerator. The experimental setup is described and first results are presented on the synchronization of the Ti:Sa laser with the radio frequency of the superconducting accelerator and on the coincidence measurements between the laser pulses and the coherent transition radiation pulses generated by the electron bunches. For the next step of the experiment, the electro-optic sensor will be mounted inside the vacuum pipe of the linac to permit a direct measurement of the electric field carried by the relativistic bunches.