Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating Arkansas roadway intersection accidents using traffic safety analysis methods: generalized estimating equations and roadway observation

ii List of Figures . v List of Tables . vi Acknowledgements . vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background . 1 1.2 Research Goals . 3 1.2.1 Evaluating Road Safety in Arkansas Using Statistical Analyses . 3 1.2.2 Evaluating Road Safety in Arkansas Using Observational Analyses . 3 1.2.3 Developing Implications of the Two Methods Used Together . 3 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW . 4 2.1 Growing Need for Improved Road Traffic Safety . 4 2.1.1 Increased Volume of Vehicles . 4 2.1.2 Increased Driver Inattention . 5 2.1. 3 Increased Road Traffic Accidents within the United States . 8 2.2 Characteristic Factor Levels of a Collision . 10 2.2.1 Environmental Factors . 10 2.2.2 Temporal Factors . 11 2.2.3 Geographic Factors . 12 2.2.4 Infrastructural Factors . 12 2.2. 5 Vehicular Factors . 13 2.2. 6 Human Factors . 14 2.3 Statistical Analysis of Road Traffic Safety . 15 2.4 Roadway Safety Audits . 18 CHAPTER III DATA DESCRIPTION . 20 3.1 Collecting Crash Data . 20 3.2 Crash Database . 21 3.2.1 Crash Level. 22 3.2.2 Vehicle Level . 24 3.2.3 Person Level . 25 3.3 Road Inventory Database . 26 CHAPTER IV – STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. 30 4.1 Methodology of Statistical Analysis . 30 4.1.1 Crash Occurrence and Frequency . 30 4.1.2 Crash Severity . 35 4.1. 3 Issues with Statistical Evaluation . 38 4.2 Statistical Model Results and Discussion . 39 4.2.1 Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression . 40
Do Wind Turbines Amplify the Effects of Lightning Strikes? A Full-Maxwell Modelling Approach

Wind turbines (WTs) can beseriously damaged by lightning strikes and they can be struck by a significant number of flashes. This should be taken into account when the WT lightning protection system is designed. Moreover, WTs represent a path for the lightning current that can modify the well-known effects of the lightning discharge in terms of radiated electromagnetic fields, which are a source of damage and interference for nearby structures and systems. In this paper, a WT struck by a lightning discharge is analyzed with a full-wave modelling approach, taking into account the details of the WT and its interactions with the lightning channel. The effects of first and subsequent return strokes are analyzed as well as that of the rotation angle of the struck blade. Results show that the lightning current along the WT is mainly affected by the ground reflection and by the reflection between the struck blade and the channel. The computed electromagnetic fields show that, for subsequent return strokes, the presence of a WT almost doubles their magnitude with respect to a lightning striking the ground. Such enhancement is emphasized when the inclined struck blade is considered.
Principles of Modelling Development Processes at Regional Level

The paper aims to be a general analysis material on the principles of modelling sustainable development processes at the regional level, by studying sustainable development of the economy of the regions by supporting regional socio-economic activities, i.e. those processes leading to a sustainable and harmonious development of the region and which do not result in adverse impacts on the human health or the environment. In this context, a regional development plan is proposed that sets out aspects structured on the following dimensions: economy, ecology, social. The plan analyzes all these areas but, what is very important, the adopted measures include elements common to the three spheres, as it is not advisable to prioritize the sectors.
Graphene as a Piezoresistive Material in Strain Sensing Applications

High accuracy measurement of mechanical strain is critical and broadly practiced in several application areas including structural health monitoring, industrial process control, manufacturing, avionics and the automotive industry, to name a few. Strain sensors, otherwise known as strain gauges, are fueled by various nanomaterials, among which graphene has attracted great interest in recent years, due to its unique electro-mechanical characteristics. Graphene shows not only exceptional physical properties but also has remarkable mechanical properties, such as piezoresistivity, which makes it a perfect candidate for strain sensing applications. In the present review, we provide an in-depth overview of the latest studies focusing on graphene and its strain sensing mechanism along with various applications. We start by providing a description of the fundamental properties, synthesis techniques and characterization methods of graphene, and then build forward to the discussion of numerous types of graphene-based strain sensors with side-by-side tabular comparison in terms of figures-of-merit, including strain range and sensitivity, otherwise referred to as the gauge factor. We demonstrate the material synthesis, device fabrication and integration challenges for researchers to achieve both wide strain range and high sensitivity in graphene-based strain sensors. Last of all, several applications of graphene-based strain sensors for different purposes are described. All in all, the evolutionary process of graphene-based strain sensors in recent years, as well as the upcoming challenges and future directions for emerging studies are highlighted.
Wideband, Beam-Steerable Reflectarray Antennas Exploiting Electronically Reconfigurable Polarization-Rotating Phase Shifters

We present a wideband reflectarray antenna with electronic beam-steering capability. The beam-steerable reflectarray uses an electronically reconfigurable polarization-rotating unit cell (PRUC) that acts as a wideband 1 bit phase shifter. The unit cell consists of four metallic single-headed arrows placed above a ground plane. The four arrows are connected to the unit cell’s bottom surface, which contains two p-i-n diodes for switching and three lumped inductors for RF–DC isolation. Changing the bias states of the two antiparallel p-i-n diodes reconfigures the unit cell between two operating states that provide a +90° and −90° polarization rotation (PR). Simulation results for the unit cell show a wide frequency range of 8.5–11.5 GHz over which the reconfigurable unit cell provides dominant reflection coefficients of >−2 dB and relative phase shifts of 0° and 180° for the two operating states. The proposed unit cell was used to construct a 256-element, fully electronically reconfigurable reflectarray prototype with aperture dimensions of 192 mm $\times192$ mm to demonstrate the design concept. The digital control circuitry needed to individually control the unit cells was also designed and fabricated. Experimental characterization of the reconfigurable reflectarray demonstrated the 2-D beam scanning capability within the scan range of ±60° over a 30% bandwidth.
Latin American Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Historical Perspective

This special issue seeks to appreciate the long-term study of SMEs as key players in the Latin American economies, with contributions on six countries: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. This is a representative sample of the Latin American subcontinent’s diversity when it comes to economy size, population, and inequality index. The articles presented spot key topics in the study of Latin American SMEs. This introduction focus on three central issues that arise from those articles: the role of public policies in SME emergence and development, the strategies pursued by these firms to adapt to environment changes, and the links between informality and SME creation.
The effects of Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) and honeybush (Cyclopia species) on air pollutant chemicals-induced cytoxicity in human skin fibroblasts and keratinocytes

© 2022 Akeem Olalekan Lawal. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Abstract Diesel Exhaust Particles (DEP) have been reported to be mainly responsible for most of the toxic effects of air pollution probably via a mechanism that involves induction of oxidative stress and proinflammatory response. Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) and Honeybush (Cyclopia species) are widely used due to their health promoting effects. This study examined the effect of Rooibos tea and Honeybush on the prooxidative and proinflammatory effects of standard reference material (SRM) 2975 DEP in human skin fibroblasts and immortalized keratinocyte cell lines. The cells were either exposed to different concentrations (5-50 g/ml) of DEP for 4 h or pre-treated with 40 and 60 g/ml of fermented (FR) or green (GR) Rooibos or fermented Honeybush (FH) for 6 h prior to 4 h exposure to 10 g/ml DEP. Exposure to DEP caused a significant decrease in cell viability, and increase in LDH leakage, ROS production, oxidative stress biomarkers and proinflammatory cytokines in both cell lines compared to control. However, the presence of the extracts significantly (p < 0.001) attenuate these effects. This study highlights the potential of FR, GR and FH in protecting against DEP-induced oxidative stress and proinflammatory effect in fibroblasts and keratinocytes probably.
An Exploration of Pathologies of Multilevel Principal Components Analysis in Statistical Models of Shape

3D facial surface imaging is a useful tool in dentistry and in terms of diagnostics and treatment planning. Between-group PCA (bgPCA) is a method that has been used to analyse shapes in biological morphometrics, although various “pathologies” of bgPCA have recently been proposed. Monte Carlo (MC) simulated datasets were created here in order to explore “pathologies” of multilevel PCA (mPCA), where mPCA with two levels is equivalent to bgPCA. The first set of MC experiments involved 300 uncorrelated normally distributed variables, whereas the second set of MC experiments used correlated multivariate MC data describing 3D facial shape. We confirmed results of numerical experiments from other researchers that indicated that bgPCA (and so also mPCA) can give a false impression of strong differences in component scores between groups when there is none in reality. These spurious differences in component scores via mPCA decreased significantly as the sample sizes per group were increased. Eigenvalues via mPCA were also found to be strongly affected by imbalances in sample sizes per group, although this problem was removed by using weighted forms of covariance matrices suggested by the maximum likelihood solution of the two-level model. However, this did not solve problems of spurious differences between groups in these simulations, which was driven by very small sample sizes in one group. As a “rule of thumb” only, all of our experiments indicate that reasonable results are obtained when sample sizes per group in all groups are at least equal to the number of variables. Interestingly, the sum of all eigenvalues over both levels via mPCA scaled approximately linearly with the inverse of the sample size per group in all experiments. Finally, between-group variation was added explicitly to the MC data generation model in two experiments considered here. Results for the sum of all eigenvalues via mPCA predicted the asymptotic amount for the total amount of variance correctly in this case, whereas standard “single-level” PCA underestimated this quantity.
Strategies for Bridging the Gap between Analysis and Design for Ecological Interface Design

Creating effective graphic displays using Ecological Interface Design (EID) can be a challenging endeavor. Thus far, there has been little guidance in the literature to decrease the gap that exists between EID analysis and design. This paper presents strategies to help bridge this gap. First, a visual thesaurus provides alternative graphic objects and display formats for showing single variables, single-variable constraints, multivariate constraints, and structural constraints (i.e., means-ends, part-whole, and causal/topological relationships). Second, a number of lessons learned have been identified to improve efficiency in the process and provide further refinements to the display design. These strategies can decrease the effort involved in creating EID displays, but do not completely remove creativity from the design process. Future research includes further developing generic and industry-specific graphic forms for the visual thesaurus, while embedding effective design practices.
Nutrition, defecation, and the lower gastrointestinal tract during critical illness

Purpose of review The goal of this report is to delineate the correlation between constipation as a manifestation of impaired gastrointestinal transit with adverse clinical outcomes, to identify risk factors, which predispose to this condition, and outline a management scheme for prophylactic treatment. Recent findings Constipation is common in the ICU, affecting upwards of 60–85% of critically ill patients. As suggested by case series and observational studies, constipation may be an independent prognostic factor identifying patients with greater disease severity, higher likelihood of organ dysfunction, longer duration of mechanical ventilation, prolonged hospital length of stay, and possibly reduced survival. Treating constipation is a low priority for intensivists often relegated to the nursing service, and few ICUs have well designed protocols in place for a bowel regimen. Small randomized controlled trials show improvement in certain outcome parameters in response to a daily lactulose therapy; hospital length of stay, sequential organ failure assessment scores, and duration of mechanical ventilation. However, aggregating the data from these studies in two separate meta-analyses showed that the effect of a bowel regimen on these three endpoints were not statistically different. Summary No causal relationship can be determined between constipation and adverse outcomes. Nonetheless, a clinical correlation seems to exist. Whether constipation is an epiphenomenon or simply a reflection of greater severity of critical illness, at some point it may contribute to worsening morbidity in the ICU. A graded prophylactic bowel regimen should help reverse impairment of the gastrointestinal transit and aid in reducing its deleterious impact on the hospital course of the critically ill patient.
Ecological Campus Development at the National Taipei University of Technology

Development of eco-campus in National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) was first introduced around 1980 by the dean of General Affairs, dean of general affairs, Sun Guo-Shun (currently president of Min Hwei College of Health Care Management), for the purpose of adding humanities corners and improving campus environment. Such a humanistic concern plays the role of a deep structure in development of eco-environment. Consequently, we (including the faculty of College of Humanities and Sciences) in 2003 began to urge that eco-environment be expanded to humanistic eco-environment. In 1980 the administration bought a large number of stones, adorned the Chinese banyan garden and other spots of the campus with water scenes, and planted various vines on the walls of several buildings (Guanghua Hall, Civil Engineering Hall and Materials and Mineral Resources Engineering Hall). The green fences, with the bird nests they contain, became the outward image of an eco-campus (Figure.1). Though part of it was casually eliminated during building renovation later, and so far there is no guarantee of its future existence, the waterscape of Chinese banyan garden with its diverse plants is still an important basis of humanities activities.
Optimal Copyset in Distributed Object Storage

In distributed storage systems, the replication mechanisms are usually used to ensure system reliability and data availability. Random replication is widely used in cloud storage systems to prevent data loss. Copyset Replication (CR) as a replication strategy, makes a nearly optimal trade-off between the number of scattered nodes and the probability of data loss. Compared with random replication, CR greatly reduces the probability of data loss caused by node failure. However, CR's random selection strategy makes it difficult to select the optimal copyset based on data characteristics such as calculation and storage. In response to this problem of CR, the Optimal Copyset Replication (OCR) proposed in this paper can select the optimal copyset according to the specified data characteristics and its corresponding node conditions. Finally, combined with Cyberspace Mimicry Defense (CMD) , we implemented OCR in a distributed object storage system and conducted related experiments. When the calculation type data reaches 300,000, the experimental results prove that compared with CR randomly selecting copyset, OCR reduces the data processing time by nearly 10% through selecting the optimal copyset. By setting relevant parameters, OCR can also ensure that the data distribution of each node is relatively uniform, and avoid data skew.
Design of Seawalls and Breakwaters

Seawall and breakwater design considered from standpoint of manner and effectiveness with which they reflect or dissipate incident wave energy; results of laboratory tests, particularly in regard to wave up-rush; laboratory work was performed in Laboratoire Dauphinois d' Hydraulique, Grenoble, France. (19 refs.)
Removal of chlorhexidine digluconate from aqueous solution by heterogenous photocatalysis using sunlight-driven Ni-doped TiO2 material

Photoactive Ni-TiO 2 was synthesized through green hydrothermal method with preferential photocatalytic performance in visible and solar light for synthetic and formulated wastewater treatment. Incorporation of this transition metal into TiO 2 was examined by XRD, FTIR, UV – visible DRS, XPS, SEM-EDS and HRTEM analysis. According to the Langmuir – Hinshelwood model, the photodegradation of the chlorhexidine digluconate under solar (R 2 =0.986) and simulated visible light (R 2 =0.982), follows a pseudo-first-order kinetics. The interaction of operational fractions, such as S/C ratio, irradiation time, and pH of the reaction mixture, were evaluated using the RSM. Although complete mineralization of CHD was not achieved using Ni-TiO 2 under visible light, but the parent compound was mineralized to some extent, as demonstrated by TOC reduction (85.71%-synthetic wastewater and 61.17%-formulated wastewater), UV 254 (89.91% synthetic wastewater and 55.39%-formulated wastewater) and UV 280 (68.23%-synthetic wastewater and 68.23%-formulated wastewater) absorbance variations. Based on the identified transformed products, the possible degradation pathway was proposed and bacterial susceptibility test on Bacillus cereus DPAML065 was performed to evaluate the toxicity of oxidation intermediates. Comparative studies about energy consumption and removal efficiency during simulated visible light/Ni-TiO 2 and sunlight/ Ni-TiO 2 mediated treatment system for formulated wastewater revealed that sunlight/ Ni-TiO 2 mediated treatment system was high energy efficient (1.67 kWhKg -1 ) system.
Wife's Accountability in Islamic Household Accounting

This study was conducted to find the form of a wife's responsibility in Islamic household accounting, with a transcendental phenomenological approach. Transcendental phenomenological analysis techniques include 5 stages, namely: noema, noesis, epoche, intentional analysis and eidetic reduction. The results of the study indicate that the responsibility carried out by the wife in an Islamic household carried out in her household is accountability with the aim of maintaining self-esteem and maintaining self-image of her husband, for the expenses made, where there are 6 responsibilities, namely: income, maintenance, ZIS , consumption, investment, and saving into 4 responsibility centers, namely: revenue center, cost center, investment center and wealth center.
Modified Extended State Observer Control of Linear Systems

In this paper, a novel architecture for model following control of uncertain Linear Time Invariant (LTI) systems in case of state feedback is presented. The architecture is based on a Modified Linear Extended State Observer (MLESO), which estimates the disturbance signal that causes the real plant to deviate from the reference model. Unlike conventional Linear Extended State Observers, the MLESO is derived by shaping the transfer function from the unknown disturbance to the known disturbance estimate output. By virtue of an appropriate control law, the disturbance estimate is used to compensate the model following error. In contrast to similar approaches such as Model Reference Adaptive Control or several variants of L1 Adaptive Control, the presented approach does not rely on a nonlinear or hybrid control law, but may be realized as a continuous time, LTI system. While nonlinear adaptive control laws may certainly outperform linear control laws in appropriate conditions, the certification of adaptive control laws remains an open problem until today. For this reason, linearity is seen as a major advantage of the presented architecture.
Modelos fotoelásticos aplicados a la restauración dental

RESUMEN Objetivo: Mejorar la comprensión de los cambios generados por los procedimientos restaurativos a través de modelos fotoelásticos. La reconstrucción dental debe fundamentarse en principios de oclusión para no provocar puntos prematuros de contacto durante los procedimientos de preparación y restauración que pueden provocar trastornos como trauma oclusal, disfunción de la ATM o fracturas. En este documento se presenta un método didáctico para visualizar de forma objetiva las cargas oclusales y su distribución. Materiales y métodos: Se realizaron modelos fotoelásticos de dientes y segmentos maxilares, para visualizar los efectos de las preparaciones dentales y las restauraciones, así como el desgaste de los puntos prematuros de contacto. Resultados: Por fotoelasticidad, se analizó la dirección, intensidad y distribución de esfuerzos en la corona y el soporte óseo. Conclusiones: La técnica permite visualizar cómo se afectan las estructuras desde la preparación cavitaria, los diferentes esfuerzos con fresas de diamante o carburo, además de observar cómo un punto prematuro de contacto no solo afecta al órgano que lo contiene, sino las estructuras aledañas.