Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study of management's perception of front desk service quality at casino and non-casino hotels

The purpose of this study was to compare casino to non-casino hotels of comparable size in Las Vegas, Nevada, to determine if differences exist in management's perception of the service quality being delivered by the front desk. The study tested the descriptive hypothesis that no differences existed in the delivery of service quality by the front desk of casino and non-casino hotels from management's perception. A descriptive-elemental study was utilized to collect information through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with front desk management personnel. The information obtained from these interviews were categorized and compared to determine if there were differences in the responses. The results indicated that the consensus of front desk management personnel perceived no difference in the delivery of service quality by the front desk of casino and non-casino hotels although differences did exist within categories. This indicates that a problem may exist in the delivery of service quality at the front desks, but management is unaware of the problem. The implications of this are discussed along with suggestions for additional future research.
Homoploutia: Top Labor and Capital Incomes in the United States, 1950—2020

Homoploutia describes the situation in which the same people (homo) are wealthy (ploutia) in the space of capital and labor income in some country. It can be quantified by the share of capital-income rich who are also labor-income rich. In this paper we combine several datasets covering different time periods to document the evolution of homoploutia in the United States from 1950 to 2020. We find that homoploutia was low after World War II, has increased by the early 1960s, and then decreased until the mid-1980s. Since 1985 it has been sharply increasing: In 1985, about 17% of adults in the top decile of capital-income earners were also in the top decile of labor-income earners. In 2018 this indicator was about 30%. This makes the traditional division to capitalists and laborers less relevant today. It makes periods characterized by high interpersonal inequality, high capital-income ratio and high capital share of income in the past fundamentally different from the current situation. High homoploutia has far-reaching implications for social mobility and equality of opportunity. We also study how homoploutia is related to total income inequality. We find that rising homoploutia accounts for about 20% of the increase in total income inequality in the United States since 1986. (Stone Center Working Paper Series)
Association of rs81471943 and reproductive traits reveals EXOC4 as novel molecular breeding marker in pigs

Background: In mammals, the exocyst complex component 4 ( EXOC 4 ) gene has often been reported to be involved in vesicle transport. The rs81471943 (C/T) locates at the intron of porcine EXOC 4 , and six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) within 5-10 Mb around EXOC 4 are associated with ovary weight, teat number, total born alive, and corpus luteum number. However, the molecular mechanisms between EXOC 4 and reproductive performance of pigs remains incompletely elucidated.Results: In this study, rs81471943 was genotyped from a total of 994 Duroc sows, and the genotype and allele frequency of rs81471943 (C/T) were statistically analyzed. Then the associations between rs81471943 and four reproductive traits including number of piglets born alive (NBA), litter weight at birth (LWB)，number of piglets weaned (NW), and litter weight at weaning (LWW) were determined. Besides, the sanger sequencing and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) were utilized to identify genotype of rs81471943. We found that the genotype frequency of CC was significantly higher than that of CT and TT, and TT was the favorable genotype on NW ( P =0.01) and LWW ( P <0.01). Moreover, 5’-deletion and luciferase assays identified a positive transcription regulatory element in -1826/-1551 of EXOC 4 . After exploring -1826/-1551 fragment, -1781G/A linked with rs81471943 (C/T) were identified by analysis the transcription activity of the haplotypes, and -1781 G/A might influence the potential binding of P 53 , ETS transcription factor ( ELK1 ), and myeloid zinc finger 1 ( MZF 1 ). Conclusions: In 994 Duroc pigs, rs81471943 of TT was the favorable genotype on NW (P=0.01) and LWW (P<0.01), and the haplotypes of -1781G/A and rs81471943 significantly affect the transcription activity of EXOC 4 , which might influence the binding of potential cis-acting elements P 53 , ELK 1 and/or MZF 1 . These findings provide useful information for identifying the molecular marker of EXOC 4 -assisted selection in pig breeding.
Hybrid Cars and HOV Lanes

From 2005 to early 2007, California issued 85,000 Clean Air stickers that allowed three models of hybrid cars to avoid congestion by driving on High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV or ‘carpool’) lanes with a single occupant. From data on used car prices, the authors estimate the willingness-to-pay for one of these Clean Air stickers is around $1,460 per sticker per year, or $442 million for all 85,000 stickers. The high value of a Clean Air sticker, and the comparatively small public benefits of the program suggest that the program was not economically justified once opportunity costs were taken into account. Instead the program amounted to an inefficient giveaway to a limited number of hybrid car enthusiasts. A program where HOV lane space is sold or auctioned to raise funds for transportation improvements and air pollution mitigation problems would increase efficiency and equity in comparison to the provision of HOV rights to hybrid vehicles.
A Configurable Component Framework Supporting Platform-Based Product Development

Product development in the automotive industry is a challenging task for many reasons. There is an ongoing globalization and a constant evolution in the relationships between the OEMs and their suppliers driving an almost constant stream of changes and new challenges to well-established organizations and companies. During a long period of time the automotive industry has established more and more of a mass-customized approach to its business operations. Customers require products to be almost individually tailored to their needs, expectations, and personalized statements. On the other hand, the automotive industry strives minimize costs to be competitive and profitable. Economy of scale from high volumes of common parts is a common approach to minimize product costs. A complementary approach is reuse of existing parts whenever possible. The combination of these factors drives a platform-based approach to product development. The challenge is to maintain a capability to deliver customized products while reducing the number of unique components and design solutions needed for the customization. Modularization and design for variety are approaches to create design solutions that can be used in such an environment to create the appropriate variety using a limited set of component. This thesis argues for the need to introduce more capable product descriptions that can be used by all engineering disciplines and in a cross-functional teamwork during all lifecycle phases of the product. Given the need for product variety the core product definition must include mechanisms to define and manage this variety and enable representation of all relevant product configurations. The main contributions of the research lie in:  definition of the concept of configurable components that are presented as the elements and building blocks capable of providing the foundation for a next generation product description systems,  extension and linkage of existing design theories and methods (e.g. function-means modeling) with the proposed concept of configurable components that extends the current knowledge with mechanisms and methods to deal with variety, and  extension of the concept of configurable components to be used also for manufacturing system modeling with linkage between the product and the manufacturing system models. The research presents an integrated framework for utilizing configurable product and manufacturing system models. The concept of configurable components, the focus on appropriate design bandwidth, and the integrated framework will improve the capability develop high variety and platform-based products with a co-optimization of variety and commonality.
New Tools: Digital media in landscape architecture

Landscape architects use analogue and digital media to understand and design urban areas and the countryside. Because new media in particular enable us to use different approaches to thinking and communicating about spatial design issues, they are contributing to the development of the field. This book chapter explains where digital media belong as part of a long tradition and examines the ways in which they can be used.
Green Preparation of Bioplastics Based on Degradation and Chemical Modification of Lignin Residue

Owing to its high abundance, high availability, and eco-friendly properties, lignin is currently considered a potential candidate for replacement of petroleum-based plastics. However, the direct incorporation of lignin in bioplastics is not highly efficient and is difficult to carry out due to the complex and heterogeneous structure of lignin. In order to utilize lignin in the production of value-added bioplastics, many processes have been investigated to modify lignin to obtain desired macromonomers possessing enhanced properties compared to lignin itself. In this review, depolymerization via liquefaction and chemical modification of lignin are discussed as two main approaches in order to evaluate the utilization of lignin in bioplastics applications. The optimal conditions for each process are discussed to provide a more detailed outlook. In addition, we also provide an overview of some common bioplastics as well as practical applications. Due to their high performance, these bioplastics are expected to be feasibly commercialized in the near future.
TIME-TO-COLLISION JUDGEMENTS: VISUAL AND SPATIO-TEMPORAL FACTORS

A fundamental aspect in driving is predicting critical events in the near future. A driver on a collision course, for example, has to accurately evaluate how close s/he is to the impending collision in order to brake or swerve at the right time. In other words, s/he has to judge time-to-collision (TTC), which refers to the time that remains before reaching an obstacle, and thus to the time available for taking action. TTC is considered to be a crucial parameter in controlling avoidance behaviour. TTC is also likely to be involved in more complex judgement tasks such as overtaking or left-turn manoeuvres, where the driver has to determine whether there is enough time for the planned action. The underlying concept of temporal action control is being used increasingly often in the study of driving behaviour, which addresses the anticipatory aspects of actions such as braking, trajectory control, car following, traffic merging decisions, curve taking, stop-or-go decisions at intersections, and so on. Various equivalent terms have been employed, depending on the situation under investigation, including 'time-to-contact', 'time-to-arrival', and 'time-to-go'. The concept has also proven useful in aircraft conflict resolution and ship piloting, which involve considerably larger time frames. The current study is more specifically concerned with impending collision situations which occur when a driver is approaching a stationary vehicle. The objective was to investigate the determinants of perception-related errors which are thought to contribute to rear-end collisions (Mortimer, 1990). Rear-end collisions represent 20-25% of the total number of accidents, and 80% of rear-end crashes occur in situations where the vehicle struck was stationary or travelling very slowly. A better understanding of the visual information that drivers need to accurately judge TTC in this situation is an important condition for effective preventive action. For the covering abstract, see IRRD 896859.
The Comparison of Trunk Muscle Activities During Sling and Mat Exercise

The purpose of this study was to verify the most effective spinal stabilization exercises program by comparing the activities of muscles contributing to spinal stabilization during four types of exercises using a sling and a mat. Twenty healthy males were recruited and each subjects performed four types of exercises. Exercise 1 was performed in a quadruped position with the subjects lifting the left arm and the opposite leg on the mat. Exercise 2 was performed in a prone position while holding a sling with the right hand and the left knee was fully extended while lifting the left arm and right leg. Exercise 3 was performed in quadruped position while holding a sling with one the right hand and lifting the opposite arm and leg. In exercise 4, subjects were instructed to maintain a balance push-up position while holding slings with both hands in 10 cm forward reaching with extended elbows. Electromyographic(EMG) activities were recorded from the multifidus, external oblique, internal oblique, abdominal rectus, and erector spinalis muscles during the exercises. The EMG amplitude of each muscle was normalized to the amplitude in the maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) of each muscle. Repeated ANOVA and Bonferroni's tests were used to compare the differences in the muscle activity according to the types of exercise. The EMG amplitudes of all the muscles were significantly different according to the types of exercises (p
NEUE VERFAHREN DER COMPUTERGESTÜTZTEN ANALYSE DES SCHLAFES

Der Schlaf nimmt ein Drittel der Lebenszeit des Menschen ein. Erst in den letzten 10 Jahren hat sich die Schlafforschung zu einer Schlafmedizin entwickelt. Die Schlafmedizin befaßt sich mit der Diagnostik und Therapie von Störungen die im Schlaf ihre Ursache haben und mit Störungen die den Schlaf beeinträchtigen. Um diese Störungen quantitativ zu untersuchen und zu behandeln entstanden klinisch arbeitende Schlaflabore heute 189 auf einem geprüften Qualitätsstandard arbeitende Labore in Deutschland. Die schlafmedizinische Diagnostik erfordert eine multi-parametrische Signalaufzeichnung und Datenanalyse. Die Schlaftiefe und die Struktur des Schlafes werden durch das Elektroenzephalogramm (EEG), das Elektrookulogramm (EOG) und das Elektromyogramm (EMG) bestimmt. Störungen der Atmung werden durch Erfassung des Atemflusses an Mund und Nase, der Atmungsbewegungen auf Thoraxhöhe (RC) und Abdomenhöhe (Abd), der pulsoximetrischen Sauerstoffsättigung (SaO2) und des Schnarchgeräusches identifiziert. Das Herzkreislauf System wird mit EKG und nicht-invasiven Blutdruck (PART) Messungen verfolgt. Moderne Systeme zur Diagnostik des Schlafes, sogenannte Polysomnographen, sind computergestützt. Sie digitalisieren die Signale, zeichnen sie auf und werten sie nach Beendigung der Messung aus [1].
A Fly That Has No Counselor Will Follow the Corpse to the Grave: Nigerian Culture’s Influence on Negotiation

Gaining global economic advantages in the current era involves transcending national borders and forming collaborative business relationships within frontier markets such as Nigeria. The negotiations mandated by these relationships are highly culturally-dependent as such, foreign entities must learn the Nigerian negotiating style before engaging in business within the nation. We thus present, in this research, a profile of the Nigerian negotiating style. We empirically test a previously published series of propositions on the Nigerian negotiation profile and find that even though higher status negotiators are desired, informal and collectivistic/consensus-driven negotiations that result in complex agreements are preferred.
Feature extraction and enhancement for real‐time semantic segmentation

Most of the semantic segmentation real‐time networks improve the segmentation speed by reducing the spatial resolution, leading to the accuracy being significantly reduced as a result. To solve this problem, we propose feature enhancement module (FEM), feature extraction and fusion module (FEFM). By extracting and enhancing the future map before the image down‐sample on the backbone and fusing the low‐level features with rich details and the high‐level features with more semantic information. Based on the FEM and FEFM, we introduce a real‐time semantic segmentation network feature extraction and enhancement network. In the experiment, using Cityscapes and CamVid datasets, the proposed network achieves a balance between computing speed and accuracy. Without additional processing and pretraining, it achieves 75.47% Mean IoU on the Cityscapes test dataset with only 29.96G Flops and a speed of 94 frames per second on a single RTX 2080Ti card. Code is available at https://github.com/favoMJ/FEENet.
Factors Influencing How Students Value Asynchronous Web Based Courses

This dissertation discovered the factors influencing how students value asynchronous Web-based courses through the use of qualitative methods. Data was collected through surveys, observations, interviews, email correspondence, chat room and bulletin board transcripts. Instruments were tested in pilot studies of previous semesters. Factors were identified for two class formats. The asynchronous CD/Internet class format and the synchronous online Web based class format. Also, factors were uncovered for two of the instructional tools used in the course: the WebCT forum and WebCT testing. Factors were grouped accordingly as advantages or disadvantages under major categories. For the asynchronous CD/Internet class format the advantages were Convenience, Flexibility, Learning Enhancement, and Psychology. The disadvantages included Isolation, Learning Environment, and Technology. For the synchronous online Web based class format the advantages were Convenience, Flexibility, Human Interaction, Learning Enhancement and Psychology, whereas the disadvantages included Isolation, Learning Environment and Technology. Concurrently, the study revealed the following factors as advantages of the WebCT Forum: Help Each Other, Interaction, Socialization, Classroom News, and Time Independent. The disadvantages uncovered were Complaints, Technical Problems and Isolation. Finally, advantages specified for the WebCT testing tool were Convenience, Flexibility and Innovations, and its disadvantages were Surroundings Not Conducive to Learning, and Technical Problems. Results indicate that not only classroom preference, learning style and personality type influence how students value a Web based course, but, most importantly, a student's lifestyle (number of personal commitments, how far they live, and life's priorities). The WebCT forum or bulletin board, and the WebCT testing or computerized testing were seen mostly by students, as good tools for encouraging classroom communication and testing because of the convenience and flexibility offered. Still, further research is needed both quantitatively and qualitatively to ascertain the true weight of the factors discovered in this study.
Método Robusto de Marca de Agua para Audio con Transformada Haar* Robust Audio Watermaking Using Haar Transform

This work shows a robust Watermarking method to be introduced in audio files. The new in this method is the use of the Wavelet Haar Transform in combination with Patcwork algorithm in the frequency domain. This combination makes the Watermarking robust against compression, filtering and resampling. We use MATLAB to implement the tests of audio
From Heart to Head to Hand: A Synthesis of Issues & Strategies Raised at the From Content to Play Symposium

On June 4-5, 2005, more than 160 museum educators, designers, researchers, architects, and consultants gathered at the J. Paul Getty Museum for the symposium “From Content to Play: Family-Oriented Interactive Spaces in Art and History Museums. ” Symposium panels and discussions focused on several key issues faced by museums as they engage in the creation of interactive spaces and experiences for families. How can interactive spaces best respond to the needs of family audiences? In what ways can museums collaborate with artists and art schools in the creation of these spaces? What is the role of the object, and how should works of art be used and interpreted? What are the relative merits and challenges of high-tech versus low-tech design strategies? What can we learn from the architect’s perspective? How do our values and philosophies shape the spaces we create?
Results from the Swedish National Screening Programme 2005 : Subreport 3: Perflourinated Alkylated Substances (PFAS)

IVL Svenska Miljoinstitutet har, tillsammans med NILU (Norsk institutt for luftforskning), pa uppdrag av Naturvardsverket genomfort en screening av perflourinerade amnen (PFAS). Huvudsyftet med stu .
Information Sharing in Independent Dyadic Business Relstionships : A Case Study of Four Focal Companies in the Clothes Manufacturing Industry of Imbaba and Warrak, Great Cairo, Egypt.

Purpose - The purpose of the thesis is to record the content of the information shared by buyer to supplier in independent dyadic business relationships in the clothes manufacturing industry of Imbaba and Warrak, Great Cairo, Egypt. The objective is as well to describe how this sharing is managed in terms of communication frequency, order cycle time and information technology used. Methodology – A case study was performed on four companies in the clothes manufacturing industry of Imbaba and Warrak, Egypt. The empirical data was collected through six semi-structured interviews. The results were thereafter analyzed through a summarized framework. Findings - The content of shared information is mainly of traditional character, nevertheless do 50 % of the relationships as well include elements of additional soft information. When the information sharing is performed through regular communication do the frequency vary with an average of 0.43, once every 2.3 days. The order cycle times vary from delivery the same day as order placement to three days after order placement, with an average of 0.5 days. The information is shared through two different information technologies: face-to-face and telephone. Research implications – Imbaba and Warrak are considered one of the poorest districts in the Great Cairo region. The region has although seen great development the last 12-15 years and is today a main district for the industry of clothes manufacturing in Cairo. The role of information sharing yet appears to be poorly examined. Originality/value - Making the situation evident to the case companies will impact on their possibilities to make further improvements within the area of information sharing. Key words Information sharing, dependence, independence, dyad, content, frequency, order cycle time, information technologies. Paper type Bachelor Thesis