Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of an Instrument to Measure Governance and Performance on Collaborative Infrastructure Projects

Collaborative infrastructure projects use hybrid formal and informal governance structures to manage transactions. Based on previous desk-top research, the authors identified the key mechanisms underlying project governance, and posited the performance implications of the governance (Chen et al. 2012). The current paper extends that qualitative research by testing the veracity of those findings using data from 320 Australian construction organisations. The results provide, for the first time, reliable and valid scales to measure governance and performance of collaborative projects, and the relationship between them. The results confirm seven of seven hypothesised governance mechanisms; 30 of 43 hypothesised underlying actions; eight of eight hypothesised key performance indicators; and the dual importance of formal and informal governance. A startling finding of the study was that the implementation intensity of informal mechanisms (non-contractual conditions) is a greater predictor of project performance variance than that of formal mechanisms (contractual conditions). Further, contractual conditions do not directly impact project performance; instead their impact is mediated by the non-contractual features of a project. Obligations established under the contract are not sufficient to optimise project performance.
Spirituality / religiosity of Elderly Front to Health Care: Scope of Review

Identify the published evidence on spirituality/religiosity of elderly people facing health care.It is a scope review, based on the recommendations of the JBI Manual for EvidenceSynthesisand Prisma-ScR. Searches were performed by two reviewers in the PubMed,LILACS, Science Direct and BDTD databases by the association of descriptors, includingstudies according to the inclusion criteria. A total of 3,129 publications were identified,selecting 13 studies that highlighted spirituality/religiousness as a way to manage health care.Evidence revealed that religious practices, faith and beliefs feed spirituality with positivefeelings, providing an understanding of the health-disease process for managing choices, selfcareand coping with pathologies. This study contributes to the professionals' reflection,expanding the perspective of care in the spiritual dimension, as well as stimulating furtherfuture research.
The significance of dual-mode elastography in the diagnosis of breast lesions by physicians with different levels of experience.

Background This study aimed to assess the diagnostic value of dual-mode elastography for benign and malignant breast lesions and determine whether this technique can improve the diagnostic ability of physicians with different levels of experience. Methods One hundred and eighty-three breast lesions were analyzed retrospectively, and the following values were calculated for the lesions with various shells: shear modulus (G), Young's modulus (E), shear wave velocity (Cs), and strain ratio (SR). A random forest algorithm was used to select the optimal modes for elastography. A receiver operating characteristic curve was used to assess the diagnostic efficacy for benign and malignant breast lesions. Sensitivity and specificity values were calculated to evaluate any improvements in the diagnostic efficacy of physicians with different levels of experience (junior, intermediate-level, and senior) in the evaluation of malignant breast lesions using dual-mode elastography. Results The best-performing mode of shear wave elastography (SWE) in the diagnosis of breast lesions was the A'min 1.0 (Cs) mode (minimum shear wave velocity of the area of interest and 1.0 mm around the area of interest), and the best-performing mode of strain elastography (SE) was the B/A' 0.5 (ratio of fat to the elasticity of the area of interest and 0.5 mm around the area of interest). When the two methods were used in series, results showed high specificity (98%), positive likelihood ratio (PLR) (21.2), and positive predictive value (PPV) (95%). Series means that if SE and SWE were malignant, the result in series was malignant, and that if either SE or SWE was benign, the result in series was benign. When the methods were used in parallel, the results showed high sensitivity (91%), negative likelihood ratio (NLR) (0.15), and negative predictive value (NPV) (89%). Parallel means that if SE and SWE were benign, the result in parallel was benign, and that if either SE or SWE was malignant, the result in parallel was malignant. When conventional ultrasound was combined with dual-mode elastography, the intermediate-level and junior physicians' diagnoses of breast lesions showed a higher sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve than conventional ultrasound diagnosis alone. Conclusions Dual-mode elastography is effective in the diagnosis of breast lesions. The sensitivity and specificity values in this study show that diagnoses made by junior and intermediate-level physicians improve when dual-mode elastography is used, although diagnoses made by senior physicians do not improve significantly.
A buck quadratic PWM soft-switching converter using a single active switch

High switching frequency associated to soft commutation techniques is a trend in switching converters. Following this trend a buck PWM converter is presented. The DC voltage conversion ratio of this converter has a quadratic dependence on duty-cycle, providing a large step-down. This new buck quadratic PWM soft-single-switched converter, having only a single active switch, provides high efficient operating condition for wide load range at high switching frequency. In order to illustrate the operating principle of this new converter a detailed study, including theoretical analysis, relevant equations and simulation and experimental results is carried out.
SECURE AND EFFICIENT HANDOVER AUTHENTICATION AND DETECTION OF SPOOFING ATTACK

WiMAX comprises of mobile nodes, to provide secure and seamless communication. Handover latency in WiMAX plays a vital role in performance of the system. In this paper we proposed a group manager scheme to reduce the handover latency and security consideration. The Group Manager sends the authentication details of the mobile node to the target Base Station. In order to provide security ,the Group Manager authenticate the Mobile node with base station using light weight RC4 algorithm and then sends it to access service network(ASN). In order to detect the Spoofing attack, an Attack Detection System has been developed using Support Vector Machine which prevents group manager and its mobile nodes from intruders. This approach drastically reduces the number of messages and time taken for authentication and thereby improves the overall efficiency of the network.
Heavy metals and microbial loads in raw fecal sludge from low income areas of Ashanti Region of Ghana

This study was carried out to determine the heavy metals and microbial loads of raw public toilet sludge from low income areas (peri-urban and rural) of Ashanti Region of Ghana. Fecal sludges were sampled from public toilets. Methods outlined in Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewaters were used for the analyses of fecal sludge samples. Range of heavy metals concentrations were found as 0.039–5.216 mg/l and 0.010–1.488 mg/l for peri-urban and rural areas, respectively. These concentrations were in the order of Mn > >Cu > >Fe > >Zn > >Pb > >Ar > >Cd and Zn > >Mn > >Fe > >Cu > >Pb > >Ar > >Cd for peri-urban and rural areas, respectively. The range of bacteria loads was measured as 1.4 × 106–4.5 × 107CFU/100 ml for peri-urban and 0.2 × 106–4.5 × 107CFU/100 ml for rural areas. Similarly, range of helminths was determined as 1–18 eggs/100 ml for both peri-urban and rural areas. The study showed that the levels of heavy metals and microbial quantities were generally higher in peri-urban compared to rural areas. However, fecal sludge from these low income areas are not recommended for direct use in agriculture unless they are given further treatment. Composting is recommended as a promising and suitable method for effective treatment of fecal sludge resulting in a hygienically safe and economically profitable product.
Shape Memory Alloys in Automotive Applications

Shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators have drawn much attention and interest due to their unique and superior properties, and are expected to be equipped in many modern vehicles at competitive market prices. The key advantage is that SMA actuators do not require bulky and complicated mechanical design to function, where the active element (e.g. SMA wire or spring) can be deformed by applying minimal external force and will retain to their previous form when subjected to certain stimuli such as thermomechanical or magnetic changes. This paper describes the SMA attributes that make them ideally suited as actuators in automotive applications and to address their limitations, feasibilities and prospects.
Effect of parameter variations at chip and wafer level on clock skews

In this paper, a methodology is proposed to determine clock skews and the performance of clock architectures considering parameter variations in an early stage of technology development. With this methodology, it is possible to separate process-induced clock skew from other effects like imperfect loading. Parameter variations are seen as one of the most important effects influencing chip performance in future. By comparing a 0.45- and a 0.25-/spl mu/m technology, it is shown that in the future, process variations will increase clock skew. The clock skews are determined by measuring the relevant device and metal line parameters as a function of position over chip and wafer. In the past, parameters like IDS, Vth, and resistances could be measured very precisely, although it was difficult to measure low capacitances of single metal lines in the range of femto farad. Thus a new measurement method is used to determine interconnect capacitances extremely precisely. Based on these measurement data, a netlist of a defined clock tree is created by a C-program, and the clock signal delay is simulated. From the delay simulation, we calculate the clock skew for each chip dependent on the parameter variations. Experimental results are separated into a basic random fluctuation part and processing-related contributions on the chip and wafer levels. In addition, the effect of temperature gradients on each chip to the clock skew is simulated. The methodology presented is not restricted to just one clocktree but allows investigation of all kinds of clock distribution circuits. The method has clear advantages with respect to chip area against clocktree realizations on a testchip. No direct and costly measurement of signal delays by voltage contrast methods is required, since all parameters are determined by measurement on the device level.
Inspiring low-energy retrofits: the influence of ‘open home’ events

‘Eco open home’ events showcase environmentally sustainable home renovations and retrofits. The role of these events is explored for imparting motivation and accelerating behavioural change to the event visitors for undertaking their own low-energy retrofits. Drawing on a wide range of visitor survey datasets, these community-led and locally situated events are analyzed from a social learning perspective, focusing on the visitor experiences, and the role that open home events have as situated learning, embracing the power of storytelling. Using a ‘Many Sets of Data’ approach, data are examined from three years of Australia's largest eco open home event, and visitor survey and interview reports from seven different UK eco open home events, highlighting visitor characteristics and experiences, and post-visit levels of technology adoption and behaviour change. The research finds a consistent positive experience for attendees, most of whom are homeowners already engaged on their journey of eco-home renovation. The high degree of satisfaction from attending eco open home events, combined with the high rates of perceived learning, and the track record of post-event renovation action demonstrate that these events encourage and support engaged attendees to undertake low-energy renovations.
An impossibility theorem on capital allocation

Two natural and potentially useful properties for capital allocation rules are top-down consistency and shrinking independence. Top-down consistency means that the total capital is determined by the aggregate portfolio risk. Shrinking independence means that the risk capital allocated to a given business line should not be affected by a proportional reduction of exposure in another business line. These two properties are satisfied by, respectively, the Euler allocation rule and the stress allocation rule. We prove an impossibility theorem that states that these two properties jointly lead to the trivial capital allocation based on the mean. When a subadditive risk measure is used, the same result holds for weaker versions of shrinking independence, which prevents the increase in risk capital in one line, when exposure to another is reduced. The impossibility theorem remains valid even if one assumes strong positive dependence among the risk vectors.
Interleaving techniques in magnetic components

This work presents a study of the quantification of the benefits that can be achieved by applying interleaving techniques between different layers (interlayer effect) and in the same layer (intralayer effect). A method to estimate the leakage inductance is also introduced in this work. This method allows the designer to quantify the improvements that can be obtained applying interleaving techniques in an easy way using a simple calculation. Some design guidelines are extracted in order to select the best winding strategy for each transformer. The analysis has been carried out by means of finite element analysis (FEA) techniques in order to take into account all the frequency and geometry effects.
Design of an Information Integration Control Network for Hybrid Electric Trucks

In view of the requirements on multi-target information interaction and implementing complicated control strategies among different ECUs in hybrid electric trucks, an information integration control network based on CAN bus is proposed. A HCS12 dual-core processor MC9S12XDG128 is adopted to design an information integration module for sensor signal acquisition and data transmission in the network. Application layer protocol is defined to optimize the message transmission mechanism. Meanwhile, Rate Monotonic Analysis (RMA) method is adopted to analyze bus load rate and real-time performance of the network. Bench test results have shown that the designed information integration control network for hybrid electric trucks owns good real-time performance and is reliable to implement communication and control tasks with low bus load rate.
Supposition about absence of contact inhibition of cancer cells

As is known, the superficial charge of most somatic cells is negative. Proceeding from this fact, somatic cells never interact. There is always some type of space (intercellular space) between them. Intercellular contacts are predominantly determined by two main factors: Van der Waals (positive taxis) and electrostatic (negative taxis) forces contributing to the formation of membrane electric potential. Presence of the intercellular space is a structural representation of the balance bet­ween these forces (contact inhibition).
Research on Horror Video Recognition Algorithms

Video content recognition has attracted more focus these years. In this paper, a basic procedure is introduced and the features used for affective recognition are presented in the categories of vision feature, audio feature and emotion feature. Classical algorithms using in affective recognition are introduced, and we studied the strength and disadvantage of the algorithms. At the end, some advises are given to help improving content recognition.
Electromagnetic penetration into a rectangular cavity with multiple rectangular apertures in a conducting plane

Electromagnetic wave penetration into a rectangular cavity with multiple rectangular apertures is studied. The Fourier transform and the mode matching method are used to obtain simultaneous equations for the modal coefficients. The simultaneous equations are solved to represent the cavity field in series forms, which are suitable for numerical computations. Numerical computations are performed to investigate the field penetration into a cavity in terms of the shielding effectiveness for a various geometry.
Bacterial Approaches to the Recovery of Scarce Metals

Many of the scarcest metals are critical to future energy technologies. However, these metals often have limited supplies, and their current production and recycling methods are complicated and use toxic chemicals. In order to ensure the availability of these metals alternative methods for their recovery need to be explored. This thesis describes biological methods for the recovery of some of these metals, specifically the lanthanides and tellurium. It is one of the first investigations for the biogenic recovery of either of these metals, making it unique in the field. The lanthanides are critical elements in the high performance magnets used in wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other ’green’ technologies, but they are difficult to separate fromone another because of their chemical similarity. We demonstrate a biogenicmethod based on lanthanide adsorption to the bacteria Roseobacter sp. AzwK-3b, followed by subsequent desorption as a function of pKa using a semi-continuous flow process. The desorption behavior suggests that the basicity of the individual lanthanides is important in determining their biosorption and desorption behavior. Similar selectivity was also found using phosphatidic acid liposomes. It is possible to concentrate a solution of equal concentrations of each lanthanide to nearly 50% of the two heaviest lanthanides in only two stages of enrichment, surpassing existing industrial practice. This suggests that there is an opportunity to harness the diversity of bacterial surface chemistry and liposome chemistries to fine tune the separation
A probabilistic approach to document classification

In this paper, we propose and experiment a probabilistic approach to document classification. We consider the problem of automatically assigning a new article to a Usenet newsgroup. To model a newsgroup, we build a probabilistic language model which is supposed to generate articles for this newsgroup. When a new article is presented, we use a Maximum A Posteriori rule to decide if the message was generated by this newsgroup or not. We evaluate this approach and compare it to a classification based on keywords. On these cases, the probabilistic approach gives better recall and precision indicators. The paper is structured as follows: we first present the problem of document classification in general terms. We then describe our application to newsgroup classification and present the data that we are using. We present first results for a classification based on keyword selection. Finally, we describe the probabilistic formulation of the problem, experiment this approach on the same data and compare the results.
Present practices and trends on the French power system to prevent voltage collapse

The authors present the measures taken on the French power system to prevent voltage collapse. After a brief presentation of the voltage collapse experienced in 1987 in the western part of France, the different time scales, from planning to real-time operation, are examined. The planning methodology, role of generating sets, operating rules, tools, and means of action for real-time operation are discussed. Finally, future trends and research in the field of assessing system vulnerability and detecting critical states in real time are presented. >
In Vitro study for hesperidin nanoparticles effect on phagocytic activity against Staphylococcus aureus

Hesperidin is one of the flavonoids from citrus peels and it recognized to possess various biological activities such as, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, antioxidant and antimicrobial potentials. The present investigation studies the immunological adjuvant influence of hesperidin nanoparticles. Hesperidin nanoparticles were prepared by nano-precipitation technique by using Poly (D, L-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) polymer and Poloxamer 407 was used as a stabilizer. This method was used because of their advantage of low setup cost and simplicity. Hesperidin nanoparticles were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and particle size analysis (PSA) analytical methods. The effect of hesperidin nanoparticles was higher than the effect of pure hesperidin, and there was an obvious increase in phagocytosis index (PI 82%) of hesperidin nanoparticles when compared with pure hesperidin (PI 56%) and in comparison with the control samples (PI 22%). In conclusion we need further studies about if nano-hesperidin has therapeutic effects.
Investigating Barriers to Knowledge Management a Case Study of the Air Force Center of Excellence for Knowledge Management

Abstract : Knowledge is becoming recognized as an organization's most valuable and powerful resource. As a resource, knowledge is used to improve an organization? s efficiency and effectiveness, to create innovative solutions, and to enhance decision making capabilities. Being such an important resource, it stands to reason that an organization's knowledge resources must be effectively managed. However, while an organization attempts to manage its knowledge, its efforts are constrained by a variety of influences acting as barriers. Using Holsapple and Joshi's (2000) "influences on the management of knowledge" framework, the purpose of this research is to identify those barriers which are acting as barriers to knowledge management (KM) efforts guided by the Air Force Center of Excellence for Knowledge Management. Based on the results of this research, a variety of managerial, resource, and environmental influences acting as barriers were found. It was also determined that the overarching problem of a lack of KM understanding throughout the Air Force serves as the greatest barrier to KM efforts guided by the Air Force Center of Excellence for Knowledge Management.
Economic Development via Collaborating Populations

Cooperation involves the integration of individual human efforts. When applied to a dyadic division of labor, production and trade, the most fundamental outcome is the unintentional mutual benefit of two parties. This is a fundamental tenet of economic growth through self-interest. Cooperation is manifest in various species in the animal kingdom. Collaboration opens the potential for innovation and the conversion of human capital imagination and creativity into new products and services, where mutual benefit is intentional. While cooperation is essential for ordinary economic growth, the path to extraordinary economic growth and development is collaboration → capitalization → gross domestic product → economic development. In economic development, consideration is given to both economic and social conditions. Collaboration is manifest in human beings and is responsible for superior development that would otherwise not be possible. It distinguishes the human species from all others.