Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Graph Convolutional Networks for Turn-Based Strategy Games

In this paper, we research Turn-Based Strategy (TBS) games that allow players to move multiple pieces in one turn and have multiple initial states. Compared to a game like Chess, which allows only one piece to move per turn and has a single initial state, it is difficult to create a strong computer player for such a group of TBS games. Deep learning methods such as AlphaZero and DQN are often used to create strong computer players. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used to output policies and/or values, and input states are represented as “image”-like data. For TBS games, we consider that the relationships among units are more important than their absolute positions, and we attempt to represent the input states as “graphs”. In addition, we adopt graph convolutional neural networks (GCNs) as the suitable networks when inputs are graphs. In this research, we use a TBS game platform TUBSTAP as our test game and propose to (1) represent TUBSTAP game states as graphs, (2) employ GCNs as value network to predict the game result (win/loss/tie) by supervised learning, (3) compare the prediction accuracy of GCNs and CNNs, and (4) compare the playing strength of GCNs and CNNs when the learned value network is incorporated into a tree search. Experimental results show that the combination of graph input and GCN improves the accuracy of predicting game results and the strength of playing TUBSTAP.
Design of Microstrip LPF with Sharp Cut-off Frequency and Wide Stopband

Abstract A novel lowpass filter with wide stopband and sharp skirt characteristics is proposed. To obtain the applicable lowpass filter, several cells of coupled T-shaped resonator, U-shape and dumbbell-shaped resonators are connected in series. The proposed filter has low insertion loss, high return loss in the passband and wide stopband. The transition band is from 3.18 to 3.29 GHz with −3 and −20 dB, respectively. Results of the fabricated filter exhibit a roll-off and relative stopband bandwidth of 217 and 137%, respectively. Measurement and simulation results show good agreement.
Single mach-zehnder modulator with active Y-branch for higher than 60 dB extinction-ratio operation

We investigated a lithium niobate (LiNbO3) single Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) with an active V-branch, which is similar to an optical V-branch switch. Using the modulator, we demonstrated high extinction-ratio operation (>60 dB) and confirmed the function and the useful of the active Vbranch MZM.
Wildfire–atmosphere interaction index for extreme-fire behaviour

Abstract. During the last 20 years extreme wildfires have challenged firefighting capabilities. Often, the prediction of the extreme behaviour is essential for the safety of citizens and firefighters. Currently, there are several fire danger indices routinely used by firefighting services, but they are not suited to forecast extreme-wildfire behaviour at the global scale. This article proposes a new fire danger index, the extreme-fire behaviour index (EFBI), based on the analysis of the vertical profiles of the atmosphere above wildfires as an addition to the use of traditional fire danger indices. The EFBI evaluates the ease of interaction between wildfires and the atmosphere that could lead to deep moist convection and erratic and extreme wildfires. Results of this research through the analysis of some of the critical fires in the last years show that the EFBI can potentially be used to provide valuable information to identify convection-driven fires and to enhance fire danger rating schemes worldwide.
Warfarin-Related Nephropathy Manifested as Diffuse Mesangial Proliferative Glomerulonephritis

Warfarin is associated with anticoagulant-related nephropathy (ARN), one of the potential side effects. This is evidenced by a progressively increasing number of detected cases of deterioration in the kidney function even in patients with normal baseline function (GFR {glomerular filtration rate}) in addition to the chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients who are already vulnerable to ARN. There has been a clinical correlation in a rapid decline of kidney function and international normalized ratio (INR) levels of greater than three. ARN is a significant but underdiagnosed complication of anticoagulation that is associated with increased renal morbidity and all-cause mortality. We want to emphasize the importance of monitoring kidney function regularly and adjusting the appropriate doses of warfarin. We present a case of a 57-year-old female who was on warfarin for the mechanical aortic valve, presented with acute kidney injury and supratherapeutic INR. Her renal biopsy showed diffuse mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis.
Late Bindings in AgentSpeak(L)

For agents based on BDI theory, some problems remain open. These include parts of the interpretation of these systems that are nondeterministic in the original specifications, and finding methods for their determinism should lead to improved rationality of agent behaviour. These problems include the choice of a plan suitable for achieving the goal, then the choice of the intention to be pursued by the agent at any given time, and if a language based on predicate logic is used to implement such an agent, then there is also the problem of choosing variable substitutions. One such agent-based system is systems using the AgentSpeak(L) language, which will be the basis for this paper. We will introduce late binding into the interpretation of this language and show that they do not make the agent lose the possibility of achieving the goal by making unnecessary or incorrect substitutions in cases where such a decision is not necessary. We show that with late binding substitutions the agent operates with all possible substitutions given by the chosen plan to the goals in the plan structure, and that these substitutions are always valid with respect to the acts performed so far
Le retour d’expérience en tant que cadre théorique pour l’analyse de l’activité et la conception sûre

Differentes etudes ont ete conduites au cours d’un projet pluridisciplinaire francais GIPC-PROSPER sur le theme « Integration de la prevention dans la conception » (Fadier, Neboit, & Ciccotelli, 2003). Un des objectifs principaux etait le developpement d’un cadre theorique et methodologique orientant une meilleure prise en compte des conditions d’utilisation reelles des equipements industriels dans le processus de conception. Les principaux resultats resultent de la proposition de nouveaux concepts pour l’analyse de l’activite de travail qui a pour but de faire un retour d’experience vers une conception plus sure (activites limites tolerees a l’usage et conditions limites tolerees par l’usage). Ainsi l’analyse de l’activite de travail reelle apparait comme un outil pour la conception en permettant un feedback a divers experts impliques dans la conception d’une situation de travail. A partir de l’analyse du travail certains aspects de la situation future probable peuvent etre anticipes, ainsi que certains risques pour la securite peuvent etre mieux controles des la conception. Ceci signifie d’integrer ces aspectsla dans les cahiers de charges.
Industrial organization dynamics : bounded capabilities and technological interfaces of the Brazilian shipbuilding and Offshore Industry

Technological progress and Innovation are generally accepted as the fundamental phenomenon of economic development of nations. However, understanding the underlying mechanisms behind 'development' still seems to be a challenge. This requires an empirical assessment into the way economic activity is created and distributed across firms and markets giving the shape and scope of industrial organization. Drawing on evolutionary and transaction costs, industrial organization is defined as economic relations of technological complementarities where bounded capabilities connect through technological interfaces. The way firms and markets deal with their capability boundedness will determine the dynamic potential that can be generated in the economic system. This research begins by asking what determines shape and scope of industries and its underlying dynamics? In order to address this question, this thesis will analyze the recent developments of the Brazilian Shipbuilding and Offshore Industry where government has put in place an entire institutional arrangement to boost industrial/market competitiveness and technological catch-up in the hopes of generating economic development. The scenario of a re-emerging complex sector where the capabilities of firms are under construction, allows the examination of the dynamics behind the organization of the industry through the analysis the different technological interfaces involved. The research begins by first analyzing the evolution and dynamics of the shipbuilding sector worldwide and later, it explores the recent shape, scope and dynamics of the Brazilian Shipbuilding Industry by assessing, describing and analyzing the set of technological interfaces and bounded capabilities found at one shipyard. Results show that despite of the policies designed to promote the development of the sector, the industry depends on the ability of the various economic agents absorb the necessary knowledge and give cohesion to technological interfaces. Paradoxically, project stability seems to precede industrial dynamics in order to accelerate learning process and effectively succeed in catching-up. It depends on the internal and external integration of the different actors involved. While the analyzed site has current specific assets that denote a competitive potential, it sought to overcome the limits of knowledge through the intensification of technology transfer. Instability at the interfaces play against learning. This is increasingly improving through the intensification of knowledge transfer with the international partner. Despite the favorable institutional environment intended to provide the industry with some time to catch up, the window of opportunity created by it may not be long enough. Therefore, the industry needs to find a way to learn faster. Technological transfer mechanisms should be used to reduce the costs of building capabilities. Key-words: Industrial Organization Dynamics, Technological Interfaces, Bounded Capabilities, Shipbuilding and Offshore Industry.
Cells on Hydrogels with Micron-Scaled Stiffness Patterns Demonstrate Local Stiffness Sensing

Cell rigidity sensing—a basic cellular process allowing cells to adapt to mechanical cues—involves cell capabilities exerting force on the extracellular environment. In vivo, cells are exposed to multi-scaled heterogeneities in the mechanical properties of the surroundings. Here, we investigate whether cells are able to sense micron-scaled stiffness textures by measuring the forces they transmit to the extracellular matrix. To this end, we propose an efficient photochemistry of polyacrylamide hydrogels to design micron-scale stiffness patterns with kPa/µm gradients. Additionally, we propose an original protocol for the surface coating of adhesion proteins, which allows tuning the surface density from fully coupled to fully independent of the stiffness pattern. This evidences that cells pull on their surroundings by adjusting the level of stress to the micron-scaled stiffness. This conclusion was achieved through improvements in the traction force microscopy technique, e.g., adapting to substrates with a non-uniform stiffness and achieving a submicron resolution thanks to the implementation of a pyramidal optical flow algorithm. These developments provide tools for enhancing the current understanding of the contribution of stiffness alterations in many pathologies, including cancer.
The Effect of Top Management Team Gender Diversity on Climate Change Management: An International Study

The aim of this research was to assess the effect of top management team gender diversity on firms’ effective commitment to climate change management from two new perspectives: a more detailed analysis of gender diversity in corporate management and an international analysis of the phenomenon. Broadening climate change management assessment through selected CDP qualitative metrics for governance, risk management and strategy provides a more in-depth view of climate change managerial practices. Even though a growing body of academic literature highlights the potential positive impact of gender diversity, this empirical research based on a sample of 836 firms from 16 developed countries provides mainly inconclusive results. These results may be explained first by a still insufficient and below critical mass, percentage of women within top management teams; and second, by a selection bias, as only the best performers disclose their climate change management data. This also calls for companies to improve their gender diversity among the top management team, and for regulators to further extend compulsory climate change management reporting.
Design System for Managing Complexity in Aerospace Systems

A new generation of aerospace systems has introduced more-electric technologies and highly coupled architectures, leading to a substantial increase in design complexity. The inability of current design systems to manage this complexity has lead to substantial cost and schedule overruns during the development of new military and commercial platforms. This paper presents the framework for a new design process to manage system complexity and highlights four key elements: 1) Abstraction-based design tools to allow complex interactions to be assessed at a high level of abstraction early in the design cycle; 2) Quantitative complexity metrics that can guide early design decisions and identify sources of complexity within candidate designs; 3) Advanced architecture synthesis methods that enable the formal and automated architecture synthesis, enumeration, and evaluation of feasible architecture options; and 4) Robust uncertainty management for identifying strong coupling between systems with high uncertainty, thereby allowing the identification and management of key risks.
The Use of X-ray Scanning Technology for Improving Maritime Security: An Exploratory Study

X-ray scanning technology is developing rapidly for security inspection because of its effectiveness in providing clear and unobtrusive views of the contents of items hidden inside packages, baggage, and containers. Also, it is able to add intelligence for cargo inspectors and to minimize human intervention in the baggage and cargo inspection process without opening up suspected baggage or containers. Although X-ray scanning technology has been used for a number of years in the aerospace industry for security screening, it is rarely used in other industry sectors. For example, despite its proven benefits, maritime industry sectors and port authorities still have not fully explored the possibility of using X-ray scanning technology for global supply chain operations. Through an exploratory study, this article identifies a multitude of factors that facilitate or hinder the use of X-ray scanning technology in the Korean maritime sectors. Also, this article gauges its usefulness for enhancing maritime security and global supply chain operations, assessing the managerial benefits of X-ray scanning technology from the perspectives of emerging maritime sectors.
Health Misinformation Detection in the Social Web: An Overview and a Data Science Approach

The increasing availability of online content these days raises several questions about effective access to information. In particular, the possibility for almost everyone to generate content with no traditional intermediary, if on the one hand led to a process of “information democratization”, on the other hand, has negatively affected the genuineness of the information disseminated. This issue is particularly relevant when accessing health information, which impacts both the individual and societal level. Often, laypersons do not have sufficient health literacy when faced with the decision to rely or not rely on this information, and expert users cannot cope with such a large amount of content. For these reasons, there is a need to develop automated solutions that can assist both experts and non-experts in discerning between genuine and non-genuine health information. To make a contribution in this area, in this paper we proceed to the study and analysis of distinct groups of features and machine learning techniques that can be effective to assess misinformation in online health-related content, whether in the form of Web pages or social media content. To this aim, and for evaluation purposes, we consider several publicly available datasets that have only recently been generated for the assessment of health misinformation under different perspectives.
Analysing the Sentiments in Online Reviews with Special Focus on Automobile Market

Analysing the sentiments in online reviews assists in understanding customers’ satisfaction with a provided service or product, which gives the industry an opportunity to enhance the quality of their commodity, increase sales volume, develop marketing strategies, improve response to customers, promote customer satisfaction, and enhance the industry image. However, the studies focusing on applying machine learning algorithms and word embedding models, as well as deep learning techniques to classify the sentiments in reviews extracted from automobile forums, are arguably limited, and to fill this gap, this research addressed this area. Moreover, the research concentrated on categorizing positive, negative, and mixed sentiment categories in online forum reviews. The procedures for gathering and preparing the dataset are illustrated in this research. To perform the classification task, a set of models which include supervised machine learning, deep learning, and BERT word embedding is adopted in this research. The results show that the combination of the BERT word embedding model with the LSTM model produced the highest F1 score. Finally, the paper lays out recommendations to enhance the proposed system in future studies.
Performance Study of Copper Matrix Composite Materials with CNTs,Al_2O_3 Double Reinforced by Powder Metallurgy Method

Carbon nanotubes(CNTs)/alumina(Al2 O3)/copper matrix composite materials by magnetic stirring process(MS) and spark plasma sintering(SPS) technology are studied.The characterization of specimens is carried out by field emission scanning electron microscopy.And then Brinell hardness,electrical conductivity,thermal conductivity and wear resistance performance are tested.The results show that CNTs and Al2 O3 obtained uniform dispersion within Cu matrix.The copper matrix composite has the best comprehensive performance when adding 0.5% CNTs and 3.5%Al2 O3.The relative density is 98.4%. Brinell hardness is 83.52 N/mm2and average friction coefficient is 0.106,increases by 33.2% and decreases by 47% compared with pure Cu respectively.The thermal conductivity is 184.99 W/(m·K). The electrical conductivity is 4.93×107Ω-1·m-1,equivalent to 91.5% IACS.
NEUROEVAL: software for self-evaluation of students in a medical school of Ghana

Se efectuó un estudio de desarrollo tecnológico en la Universidad para Estudios del Desarrollo, en especial la Escuela de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud de Tamale (Northern Region, Ghana), de enero a marzo del 2010, mediante la confección de un software educativo nombrado NEUROEVAL, que incluía el contenido impartido sobre el sistema nervioso central en las clases prácticas de Anatomía y serviría para la autoevaluación de los estudiantes, previo al examen final de cada sección. La eficacia del software se validó mediante encuestas a usuarios (n=15) y expertos (n=7), los cuales coincidieron al evaluarlo como útil (93,7 y 100,0 %, respectivamente). En cuanto a su diseño, los usuarios lo hallaron funcional y comprensible, mientras que los expertos refirieron que era simple. El contenido fue valorado como importante para ambos grupos. En fin, el aporte de esta herramienta informática al proceso docente fue satisfactorio.
Phylogenetics and Biogeography of Lilium ledebourii from the Hyrcanian Forest

Lilium ledebourii (Baker) Boiss is one of the most endangered lilies, restricted to only a few small and fragmented areas in the Hyrcanian forest. This study aimed at evaluating the taxonomy of this unique Iranian lily and reconstructing divergence time from other species of the genus Lilium to address the role of this region in its diversification. Phylogenetic trees based on nuclear ITS and chloroplastic matK strongly supported the monophyly of the genus Lilium and division into subclades hardly matching prior morphological classifications. Biogeographic analyses using S-DIVA revealed East Asia as the ancestral range from where Lilium presented a multidirectional expansion towards North America, West-Central Asia, North Asia, and Europe. Diverging from ancestral Lilium during the beginning of Eocene (50 Ma; 95% HDP: 68.8–36.8). Specific members of Lilium colonized Iran (Western Asia) separated from the Clade IV (West-Central Asia and Europe lineage), and then yielded the Iranian L.ledebourri. Accordingly, the north of Iran appears to have promoted both long-term persistence and migration of Lily species from Asia to the Europe.
Exploring Barriers of Knowledge Management Implementation KMI in Egyptian Hotel Industry

Purpose: The current study aim to investigate and model the Knowledge Management Implementation (KMI) barriers, as well as suggesting some overcoming strategies to cope with KMI barriers . Design/methodology/approach: It has employed a quantitative method by developed a questionnaire based on the literature and distributed it among hotel employees in Four and Five-star hotels in Alexandria in Egypt. A total of 386 valid questionnaires were analyzed by SEM . Findings: Results of the path analysis indicated that barriers of the organizational culture and human resources have a positive impact on KMI. However, the technology infrastructure barriers have a negative impact on KMI . Originality/value: A major concern of hotel to increase the hotel performance with high level of employees' turnover, this study provides an inclusive investigation of KMI barriers in hotel industry. Also, it explores strategies to overcome the KMI barriers . Practical Implications: In order not to deprive Egyptian hotels from KMI benefits, the study suggested practical implications to enable them overcoming the KMI barriers, 1 Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, Pharos University, Alexandria, Egypt.
Effect of Morning and Evening Exercise on Energy Balance: A Pilot Study

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of randomizing adults with overweight and obesity (BMI 25–40 kg/m2) to morning (06:00–10:00) or evening (15:00–19:00) aerobic exercise. Participants completed four exercise sessions per week in the morning (AM, n = 18) or evening (PM, n = 15). The exercise program was 15 weeks and progressed from 70 to 80% heart rate maximum and 750–2000 kcal/week. Bodyweight, body composition, total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), energy intake (EI), sleep, sedentary behavior (SB), non-exercise physical activity (NEPA), and maximal aerobic capacity were assessed at baseline and week 15. Study retention was 94% and adherence to the supervised exercise program was ≥90% in both groups. Weight change was −0.9 ± 2.8 kg and −1.4 ± 2.3 kg in AM and PM, respectively. AM and PM increased TDEE (AM: 222 ± 399 kcal/day, PM: 90 ± 150 kcal/day). EI increased in AM (99 ± 198 kcal/day) and decreased in PM (−21 ± 156 kcal/day) across the intervention. It is feasible to randomize adults with overweight and obesity to morning or evening aerobic exercise with high levels of adherence. Future trials are needed to understand how the timing of exercise affects energy balance and body weight regulation.