Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Construction of Reality in Pakistani English Newspapers: A Semiotic Analysis Study

Representation of social issues of the society through cartoons is of great importance in Pakistan. The newspapers’ cartoonists represent social issues according to their own objectives. They construct satire on these social issues by using images and captions. It is significant to investigate how the newspapers’ cartoonists frame reader’s opinion about social issues of the society through linguistic choices. The current study was conducted to examine social satire in cartoons in Pakistani English newspapers. The objectives of the current research were to identify the recurring social themes in cartoons, to investigate the semiotic devices used in cartoons and to find out the logical connection developed between linguistic and semiotic devices in cartoons for the reflection of social issues in Pakistani English newspapers. The present research was qualitative in nature. The data were collected from the cartoons published in Pakistani English newspapers i.e. Daily Times (Pakistan), Dawn and The Nation. Barthes’ (1974) model of semiological analysis was used for interpretation of social satire in cartoons in Pakistani English newspapers. After analysis, it was found that the newspaper’s cartoonists used specific linguistic devices like exaggeration, symbolism, labeling, caption, irony and analogy for construction of social satire in cartoons. They also exposed the social issues like corruption, inflation, explanation, terrorism, poor democracy, wrong policies of the government, thana culture, energy crises, meat adulteration and child brutality. There were also logical connections between linguistic and semiotic devices in cartoons to enhance the reader’s understanding of social satire.
Peer Review #2 of "Predicting gene expression using DNA methylation in three human populations (v0.2)"

Background. DNA methylation, an important epigenetic mark, is well known for its regulatory role in gene expression, especially the negative regulation in the promoter region. However, its correlation with gene expression across individuals at human population level has not been well studied. In particular, it is unclear if genome-wide DNA methylation profile of an individual can predict her/his gene expression profile. Previous studies were mostly limited to association analyses between single CpG site methylation and gene expression. It is not known whether DNA methylation of a gene has enough prediction power to serve as a surrogate for gene expression in existing human study cohorts with DNA samples other than RNA samples.
PreSTA: Preventing Malicious Behavior Using Spatio-Temporal Reputation

Abstract : FUTURE: WIKIPEDIA -- PURPOSE: Build a blacklist of user-names/IPs based on the probability they will vandalize. TEMPORAL: Straightforward, vandals are probably repeat offenders * Registered users have IDs indicating when they joined, are new users more likely to vandalize? SPATIAL: Geographical -- Based on user location (i.e., Washington, DC) * Topical: A user may vandalize one topic (Rush Limbaugh) while properly editing another (Barack Obama) * Anonymous users: IP address properties * Certain administrators have rollback (revert) privileges * Comment: Reverted edit by X to last edition by Y.
EVALUASI BAHAN SETEK DALAM USAHA MEMPERTAHANKAN POTENSI PRODUKSI DAN KUALITAS TOMAT HIBRIDAEvaluation on Cutting Material in Maintaining Hybrid Tomato Product on Potency and Quality

The research aims to evaluate cutting material use in maintaining of hibrid tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum Mill.) and for determining the deviation in F-2 population. This research was conducted in Besi, Ngaglik Sleman, Yogyakarta from April 2000 to March 2001. This research used F-1 population, cutting population and segregated F-2 population. Quantity measurements consist of : the number of fruit’s bunches, the number of fruits per bunch, the total number of fruits, the number of fruits per plant, the weight of the total fruits and the weight of single fruit. Quality measurements consist of concentration of vitamine C, pro-vitamine A and Ca oxalat. The result showed that there were no significant differences between F-1 population and the cutting’s population on the number of bunch per plant and the number of fruits per bunch. However, the total number of fruits, the weight of the total fruits and the weight of a single fruit significantly increased compared with cutting’s population. Keywords : cutting material, hybrid tomato
Management and operational practices of municipal and regional water and sewerage companies in Latin America and the Caribbean

Institutional weakness is one of the most important obstacles that stands in the way of the efficient provision of water and sewerage services in Latin America. To address this concern, the World Bank undertook a study to help identify and disseminate information about successful management and operational practices in well-run sector companies in the Latin American region. The study also quantifies, to the extent possible, operational indicators that can be used as bench marks for other, less developed, sector agencies. The findings of this study strongly suggest that good management practices should be placed at the center stage of any company striving to reach high levels of effectiveness and efficiency. The examples of successful management practices documented in this study show that adequate operational efficiency and effectiveness can be attained by all utilities in the region.
Some observations on teaching practical controller tuning methods in a laboratory set-up

Most technical universities use similar methods for educating future control engineers in the field of control circuit design. Importance is attached to theoretical knowledge of control, rather than practical skills, and this is supported by textbooks that have a mainly theoretical character. The mathematical knowledge of students may be strengthened in this way, and they can acquire a good insight into theoretical relations, but the students receive little training in problems of everyday implementation. This has led to an absurd situation, where industrial practice rejects advanced modern methods due to some unsatisfactory results, failing to take into account that the design method is not to blame. Experience has been acquired from a comparison between the new model-free PID controller tuning algorithm and other tuning procedures which are easy to describe theoretically, but which are difficult to implement in practice. Some successfully implemented methods are generally regarded as insufficiently scientific, or remain in individual ownership of implementation experts. This paper focuses on how to deal with controller adjustment, with reference to implementation and to ways of training control engineers.
TxDOT Best Practices Model and Implementation Guide for Advance Planning Risk Analysis for Transportation Projects

The Advance Planning Risk Analysis (APRA) for transportation projects is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that offers a method to measure project scope definition for completeness and identify potential risks early in the project. In other words, it helps optimize the identification of project requirements during the project development process across all major disciplines, including right-of-way, utilities, environmental, design, transportation planning and programming, and construction. It identifies and precisely describes each critical element of the project scope and allows a project team to quickly predict factors impacting project risk. It is intended to evaluate the completeness of the scope definition at any point prior to plans, specifications, and estimates (PS&E) development and construction. This report provides a definition of APRA, discusses the benefits of APRA, gives instructions for assessing a project, discusses what an APRA score means, and offers concluding remarks of how to improve performance on future projects.
Development of on Intelligent Automatic Door System Using Ultrasonic Sensors

This paper proposes an ultrasonic sensor based intelligent automatic door system which improves the performance of conventional door systems by adding more intelligent functions such that it offers more convenience to passersby and reduces power loss. The conventional automatic door systems employed passive and active infrared sensors for detecting objects and human bodies. But, they have problems such as power loss in door closing, not sensing fast approaching objects, and safety. The proposed automatic door system with ultrasonic sensors prevents unnecessary door closings to save the power and senses fast approaching objects to open the door at proper time, and improves safety. Thus, the proposed system improves the performance of the conventional systems in terms of operation, economy, and safety.
Investigating the effect of ball impact location on the overhead motion in tennis during game play

Tennis is a competitive sport played by millions of people worldwide. The characteristics of the game of tennis produce stress on the musculoskeletal system, especially in the upper extremity. Upper extremity injuries often occur when the arm is highly accelerated, as happens in tennis. These high accelerations require large forces to be applied to the wrist, elbow and shoulder. Upon ball impact, a large amount of force is transferred to the ball from the tennis racket. However, depend- ing on the impact location, large reaction forces can also be produced in the body. These large reaction forces must pass through the kinematic chain from the hand to the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints and into the torso. As a result, wrist, elbow and shoulder joint injuries are common. Motion capture has been used to study the biomechanics of the overhead motion in tennis; yet, this method measures pre- and post-impact dynamics not the actual instant at which the interaction between the ball and the racket occurs. Therefore, to make a more accurate representation, the impact itself needs to be studied. Investigating the impact itself will provide more insight into what is happening at the exact moment of the collision and how the kinematic chain is a ected. A commercial racket was purchased and customized by substituting the orig- inal handle by a one inch diameter acetyl rod, and adding unidirectional and triaxial strain gauges to it. A custom electrical circuit was designed and built to measure the strain in the racket handle during ball impact. Two participants used the instrumented racket to each hit a total of 20 regular serves divided into 4 di erent sets. Participants were photographed during the serve using a high speed camera at 120 frames per second. These photographs were used to identify the ball impact location of each serve. Strain waveforms collected using a custom electrical circuit were ana- lyzed to determine the peak ball impact force, the wrist reaction forces, and torques from the bending moments developed in the racket handle during impact. Results showed that the instrumented tennis racket was able to evaluate the e ect of ball impact location of the overhead motion in tennis during game play. The instrumented racket was able to measure ball forces, wrist reaction forces (equal in magnitude to ball forces but opposite in direction as a result of not taking into ac- count the transfer of linear and angular momentums) and torques generated by the bending moments at the hand during ball impact. This device or an improved version may be useful to get a better understanding of the forces and moments created with di erent types of movements during tennis play. It would be especially useful when employed in collaboration with a motion cap- ture system. A more complete understanding of tennis biomechanics can be gained by including racket impact forces and bending moments with motion capture to quantify the e ect that ball impact location has on the transfer of forces to the joints passing through the kinematic chain.
Does Sector Make a Difference in HRM Practices? Turkish Companies in Marmara Region

HRM discipline, occurring in 1920’s in the USA, has been predominant in the USA and the European countries and there has been evolving phases throughout the 20th century (Storey, 1989). It has been observed that the activities, objectives, dimensions, and importance of the human resource function have changed dramatically since the 1970s (Lundy, 1994). This is a result of social, political, economical, legal and technological developments and the changes of work life, organisational features, labour. HRM functions and practices are also affected by many other factors like national and organisational circumstances (Andersen, 2000), sector, market type (Beer et al., 1984). In Turkey, there is similar development. The Turkish HRM literature has a paralel rhetoric especially to USA and Europe but the reality HR practices are not at the level that is told in the literature (Ercek, 2006). The reality is different as a result of internal and external factors effect to organisational structure and so to HRM functions. These factors are organisational features, interpersonal relations, job’s features and personal characteristics are the internal factors and external labour, external resources, rivals and regulators are the external factors (Kaynak et al., 2000; Bingol, 2006; Sabuncuoglu, 2000), the current situation of the market in which the company operates (Uyargil and Ozcelik, 2001). Also in Turkey organisational structure (Ercek, 2006) and the number of employees (Cakmak et al., 2007) in other words organisational size affect the HR practices and causes differentiation. Organisational size is also one of the factors that determine the efficiency of HR practices (Aycan, 2001; Ozcelik and Aydinli, 2006; Tanova and Nadiri, 2005). The circumstances of the HR practices in Turkey must be investigated more (Ercek, 2006). This paper starts from this point and will investigate if sector is an important factor that affect HRM practices. This paper critically explores if sector makes a difference in HRM practices and according to this aim the research will be based on questionnaires conducted within companies of manufacturing and service sectors who have HR departments in Marmara Region of Turkey. The data gained from the questionnaires are analyzed statistically using SPSS 17.00.
Modelling Requirements for EURACE

AbstractThis document presents the initial modelling requirements for the development of theEURACE simulator. It is a survey of market mechanisms, trading protocols and learningalgorithms. Its main purpose is to provide a catalogue of modelling choices and to serve asa background survey for the EURACE project as a whole. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the European Union through its 6 th Framework Programme,FET-IST ’Complex Systems’. Funding for the STREP research project ‘EURACE’ undercontract no. 035086, is gratefully acknowledged. The following persons have contributed tothis paper. Andrea Teglio contributed to Section 7 on learning mechanisms. Discussions withEric Guerci on the electricity markets in Section on 6.2 are gratefully acknowledged. Generaldiscussions on the topics in this paper have been held at various stages of development duringthe EURACE meetings. The ﬂrst was held in Ancona, 27 October 2006 and the second washeld in Nice, 26-28 January 2007. The usual disclaimer applies.3
The beginning of a new era in design: Calibrated discrete element modelling

The reliable storage and flow of bulk materials requires a comprehensive design process and good understanding of the flow properties of a bulk material. Analytical and empirical design techniques form the backbone of many design processes as they have been validated by research, however, theories based on continuum mechanics have many shortcomings and are restricted to 2-D analysis. Discrete element modelling (DEM) is proving to be a popular analysis and simulation method to verify designs for a wide range of bulk material processing and handling operations, such as transfer chutes. With the advances in computing and DEM technology, DEM has become a popular numerical method found on many engineers' desktops.
Design and Implementation of tiny UDP/IPv6 Protocols for Sensor Networks

Collecting and managing the sensor information through the Internet is critical to effectively manage and utilize the sensor information. The interworking technique of the sensor network and internet is required to realize the desirable condition for managing and utilizing the sensor information. Among many interworking techniques, the translation technique using the gateway had been widely studied. However, the technique which mounts IP-based Internet protocols directly on the sensor node is getting more attention recently. Particularly, IPv6 is suitable for the communication protocol for the sensor network, because its features, such as abundant address space or address auto-configuration, are well matched with the sensor network. In this paper, we design the tiny UDP/IPv6 protocol functions which are suitable for the sensor network environment, and we implemented the functions with TinyOS based nesC. After we examined the simulation results of by using TOSSIM and TinyViz, we carried out the experimental performance evaluation for the program by mounting the tiny UDP/IPv6 on the sensor node (Mote).
Refractive Index Measurement of Lithium Ion Battery Electrolyte with Etched Surface Cladding Waveguide Bragg Gratings and Cell Electrode State Monitoring by Optical Strain Sensors

In this scientific publication, a new sensor approach for status monitoring, such as state of charge and state of health, of lithium ion batteries by using special Bragg gratings inscribed into standard optical glass fibers is presented. In addition to well-known core gratings, embedded into the anode of 5 Ah lithium ion pouch cells as a strain monitoring unit, the manufacturing of a surface cladding waveguide Bragg grating sensor incorporated into the cell’s separator, that is sensitive to changes of the refractive index of the surrounding medium, is demonstrated. On the basis of the experiments carried out, characteristics of the cell behavior during standard cyclization and recognizable marks in subsequent post-mortem analyses of the cell components are shown. No negative influence on the cell performance due to the integrated sensors have been observed; however, the results show a clear correlation between fading cell capacity and changes of the interior optical signals. Additionally, with the novel photonic sensor, variations in the electrolyte characteristics are determinable as the refractive index of the solution changes at different molar compositions. Furthermore, with the manufactured battery cells, abuse tests by overcharging were conducted, and it was thereby demonstrated how internal battery sensors can derive additional information beyond conventional battery management systems to feasibly prevent catastrophic cell failures. The result of the research work is an early stage photonic sensor that combines chemical, mechanical and thermal information from inside the cell for an enhanced battery status analysis.
VALUE OF TRAVEL TIME: AN ACTIVITY-BASED TRAVEL ANALYSIS

Travel time savings are frequently one of the most important sources of benefit in transportation projects. Conventional methods of measuring value of travel time with revealed preference (RP) data or stated preference (SP) data have many drawbacks in application. In some aspects, however, RP data and SP data are mutually complementary and can be combined to give a convincing estimate of value of travel time. In this paper, the importance of measuring value of travel time based on activity-travel analysis rather than only on travel analysis is discussed. Then by applying economic theory the entire value of travel time (VOT) is indicated in two parts: the value of the decrease in disutility of travel (VOTT) and the value of the increase in utility induced by the use of travel time savings in activities (VOTA). The two parts are quite different in nature due to the fact that VOTT is mainly related to travel and VOTA is related to activity. By certain proper assumptions these two parts of VOT can be identified and analysed individually. Finally, an empirical procedure is suggested in which VOTT is first measured with SP data, then the entire VOT is measured by combining RP data and SP data. In application, such a procedure is able to provide an analytical comprehension of VOTT corresponding to travel and VOTA corresponding to activity. For the covering abstract, see IRRD 889300.
Simplified Daylight Spectrum Approximation by Blending Two Light Emitting Diode Sources

Abstract : Energy-conscious facility designs strive to include natural daylight in workspaces. To improve the efficiency of illumination, significant efforts are underway to adopt more efficient light emitting diode (LED) lamps and to effectively integrate daylight with active dimming of electric lighting. However, the correlated color temperature (CCT) and spectral content of daylight varies throughout the day while existing electric light sources produce light with a fixed CCT, resulting in mixed-illumination environments. The color rendering requirements for a lamp that permits the selection of color temperature across a significant portion of the daylight locus is explored. The analysis indicates that it is possible to form a lamp having only two independently controllable groups of narrowband emitters that is capable of producing light that achieves a nearly colorimetric match to daylight from 4000-10,000K. A prototype LED lamp, with a simple control and novel drive scheme, which produces white light over a range of CCTs by blending light from a pair of sources, each with numerous, tuned LED emitters, is demonstrated. The prototype validates the lamp concept -- producing light over a broad range of CCT values (4000-8000K) while maintaining a stable color quality rendering score without requiring computations for spectral approximation once employed.
Project 600: Inspire, Connect and Transform

This paper provides an overview of the highly successful Education Queensland Project 600 literacy and numeracy strategic initiative, with more than 19000 students from Years 3-9 being involved since its inception as Project 300 in 2011. Project 600, which aims to inspire, connect and transform student learning through deep engagement, involves Education Queensland's regions choosing a specific area to focus on within their improvement agenda.
Digital Heritage Systems: the ARCO Evaluation

This chapter describes the evaluation methods conducted for a digital heritage system, called ARCO (Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects), which examines the tools and methods used for its evaluation. The case study describes the knowledge acquired from several user requirement assessments, and further describes how to use this specific knowledge to provide a general framework for a holistic virtual museum evaluation. This approach will facilitate designers to determine the flaws of virtual museum environments, fill the gap between the technologies they use and those the users prefer and improve them in order to provide interactive and engaging virtual museums. The proposed model used not only quantitative, but also qualitative evaluation methods, and it is based on the extensive evaluations of the ARCO system by simple end-users, usability experts and domain experts. The main evaluation criteria were usability, presence, and learning.