Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Mediterranean Merchant Fleet Analysis – Current Situation and Prospects

Though International Ocean trade shipping is plagued with low freights and a continuous inflow of new buildings, this is not the case with smaller (geographically speaking) markets where the merchant fleet is caring for the special needs of the market. Under these conditions the merchant fleet trading in the Mediterranean Sea suffers from aged ships that will soon be unable to trade in the European shores under the impending regulations for the safety of shipping. The author analyzed the characteristics of the Mediterranean merchant fleet in order to assess its future and prospects. The methodology of the analysis is based on statistic and data-mining techniques in combination with the author’s in depth knowledge of the shipping industry so as not to make long from the original data. Based on the findings from this analysis, the author will try to point out the rising need to renew the Mediterranean merchant fleet. Also the current building trends are analyzed presenting an assessment of the new building sizes on the main types of merchant ships for the market at hand. Finally this paper will attempt to show that if proper motives are given to European shipyards or ship owners the majority of the shipbuilding activity will reside in European shipyards and the European proposal of Short Sea Shipping can become a fact in turn resulting in a steady flow of building activity for the years to come and a far cheaper trading path for goods.
WOODY VINES AND FOREST MANAGEMENT IN MALAYSIA

SUMMARY In lowland dipterocarp forest in Malaysia, woody vines increase damage associated with felling and slow rates of regeneration after selective logging. When trees connected by vines are felled, they tend to pull each other down. Vines have flexible stems and generally survive falling. The fallen vines sprout profusely and give rise to many of the vines that infest the trees that are supposed to constitute the next timber crop. Vine cutting prior to logging has advantages over post-felling vine control. If the vine treatment is sufficiently in advance of logging for the stems to decay, logging damage is decreased. Although the rooted stumps of cut vines may sprout, by making sure that vine stems are dead before they fall, a major source of vines in regenerating forest is removed.
OSCADY: A COMPUTER PROGRAM TO MODEL CAPACITIES, QUEUES AND DELAYS AT ISOLATED TRAFFIC SIGNAL JUNCTIONS

A computer program, OSCADY, has been developed to model capacities, queues and delays at isolated traffic signal junctions. The program includes recently derived empirical formulae for saturation flow calculations, routines to optimise signal settings and time-dependent equations for queue and delay prediction. The user inputs include geometric characteristics of the junction, signal timing arrangements, and demand flow information. OSCADY is intended to model peak period operation, although longer periods can be considered. The program can model most staging arrangements at three- or four-arm junctions. OSCADY can either implement supplied timings or be used to calculate suitable ones. Queues and delays are calculated for each of a succession of short time segments (usually 10 or 15 minutes) within the modelled period. Both existing or proposed layouts can be assessed, and the effects of possible modifications examined. The program can be used on most types of computers (including micro-computers), and both batch and interactive versions are available. (TRRL)
Controlling small fixed wing uavs to optimize image quality from on-board cameras

Small UAVs have shown great promise as tools for collecting aerial imagery both quickly and cheaply. Furthermore, using a team of small UAVs, as opposed to one large UAV, has shown promise as being a cheaper, faster and more robust method for collecting image data over a large area. Unfortunately, the autonomy of small UAVs has not yet reached the point where they can be relied upon to collect good aerial imagery without human intervention, or supervision. The work presented here intends to increase the level of autonomy of small UAVs so that they can independently, and reliably collect quality aerial imagery. The main contribution of this paper is a novel approach to controlling small fixed wing UAVs that optimizes the quality of the images captured by cameras on board the aircraft. This main contribution is built on three minor contributions: a kinodynamic motion model for small fixed wing UAVs, an iterative Gaussian sampling strategy for rapidly exploring random trees, and a receding horizon, nonlinear model predictive controller for controlling a UAV's sensor footprint. The kinodynamic motion model is built on the traditional unicycle model of an aircraft. In order to create dynamically feasible paths, the kinodynamic motion model augments the kinetic unicycle model by adding a first order estimate of the aircraft's roll dynamics. Experimental data is presented that not only validates this novel kinodynamic motion model, but also shows a 25% improvement over the traditional unicycle model. A novel Gaussian biased sampling strategy is presented for building a rapidly exploring random tree that quickly iterates to a near optimal path. This novel sampling strategy does not require a method for calculating the nearest node to a point, which means that it runs much faster than the traditional RRT algorithm, but it still results in a Gaussian distribution of nodes. Furthermore, because it uses the kinodynamic motion model, the near optimal path it generates is, by definition, dynamically feasible. A nonlinear model predictive controller is presented to control the non-minimum phase problem of tracking a target on the ground from a UAV with a fixed camera. It is shown that this novel controller is probabilistically guaranteed to asymptotically converge to the path that minimizes the cross-track error of the UAV's sensor footprint. In addition, for a minimum phased problem, it is shown that its tracking performance is on par with a sliding mode controller, which at least theoretically, is capable of achieving perfect tracking. Finally, all three of these contributions are experimental validated by performing a variety of tracking tasks using the Berkeley Sig Rascal UAV.
PSYCHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF DIFFERENT ETHNIC GROUPS’ MALE REPRESENTATIVES WITH DIFFERENT CULTURAL MODES

The article analyzes the works of domestic and foreign authors on the problem of family values in adolescence and describes the attempt to make a research on psychological features of different ethnic groups’ representatives with different cultural modes. It contains theoretical and empirical analysis of psychological features of different ethnic groups’ representatives with different social modes on the example of representatives of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar ethnic groups. The problem of social psychological research of processes of development of integrity of personality is examined in the conditions of modern society. On the basis of assumption about the presence of types of socialization corresponding to the different cultural modes there are described the types of integrity of personality - traditional, modern, postmodern. The creation of psychological portraits of representatives of individual ethnic groups with different social styles allowed to study the above issues in more detail, and the novelty of this study would be an impetus for further in-depth scientific elaboration of this topic. Life within a certain cultural mode in an ethnic group influences the psychological well-being of ethnic representatives. Thus, the purpose of the article was to portrait the psychological characteristics of the representatives of the studied ethnic groups. The portraits were composed on the basis of socio-cultural components of psychological well-being. The aforementioned study was conducted among 70 young men aged from 18 to 25 years who belonged to Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar ethnic groups (35 people from each group respectively). The study used the next mentioned instruments: Questionnaire “Development of the whole personality in the conditions of modern changes” (Vlasova O.I., Shcherbina V.S.); Riff Psychological Well-Being Scale Technique. The results obtained allowed us to establish a typical distribution of the prevalence of known cultural modes among young men - Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.
Design pattern contracts

A design pattern describes a commonly recurring problem in the design of object-oriented software, a solution to that problem, and the context in which the solution can be applied. The benefits of design patterns are two-fold. First, patterns serve as guidance to the novice designer. Second, they provide an extended vocabulary for documenting software design. In the mid 1990s, the publication of several pattern catalogs—compendiums of design patterns—popularized patterns as a tool for designing object-oriented software. Today, many of these catalogs are standard references, and the patterns they contain are an important part of software practice. Unfortunately, the descriptive format popularized by these catalogs is inherently imprecise. As a consequence, it is unclear when a pattern has been applied correctly, or what can be concluded about a system implemented using a particular pattern. This ambiguity threatens to undermine the two principal benefits associated with the use of design patterns. First, novice designers are more prone to error without a precise description of how each pattern must be applied. Second, documentation describing the patterns applied in designing a system may be misleading, as different designers can interpret pattern descriptions in subtly different ways. To address the ambiguity issues associated with design pattern descriptions, we introduce the concept of a design pattern contract as a formalism for precisely specifying design patterns. Like all contracts, a design pattern contract consists of two primary components: a responsibilities component and a rewards component. The responsibilities component of a pattern contract precisely characterizes the requirements that must be satisfied by the designer when applying a particular pattern. The rewards component specifies the system properties that are guaranteed to be exhibited if the contract responsibilities are indeed satisfied. The contract formalism alone, however, is not enough to guarantee that design patterns will be applied correctly. After all, software design is a complex task. Even when guided by a precise set of requirements, designers can—and do—make mistakes. To detect such contract violations, we introduce the notion of a contract monitor—an executable unit of deployment used to detect runtime contract violations. During the testing phase of a system's life cycle, the designer can instrument the system with the appropriate monitors to determine if the contracts used in its construction were applied correctly. We present two approaches to implementing these monitors. The choice of which to use depends on the requirements of the system, and the skill-set of the designer.
Retention time of novel charge trapping memories using Al2O3 dielectrics

Replacing oxide-nitride-oxide (ONO) dielectrics in charge trapping memories such as SONOS (Silicon/ONO/Silicon) and NROM (Nitrided read only memory) by high-K materials potentially offers improved scaling properties of the devices. In particular, a high dielectric constant of at least one of the three layers allows one to reduce the total equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) thus achieving the same programming electric field as in ONO stacks at reduced voltage. In this study, we evaluate the retention time of charge trapping memories using Al2O3 as a trapping dielectric and as a control gate dielectric. We find sufficiently large shifts of the threshold voltage allowing for retention times of more than ten years for the Al2O3 charge trapping memories. High-temperature annealed, polycrystalline layers are found to be more useful than amorphous layers annealed at 400-600°C due to better retention time, smaller EOT and flat band shifts and a smaller amount of fixed interface charges.
Micro-Network Processor : A Processor Architecture for Implementing NoC Routers

Routers are probably the most important component of a NoC, as the performance of the whole network is driven by the routers’ performance. Cost for the whole network in terms of area will also be minimised if the router design is kept small. A new application specific processor architecture for implementing NoC routers is proposed in this master thesis, which will be called µNP (Micro-Network Processor). The aim is to offer a solution in which there is a trade-off between the high performance of routers implemented in hardware and the high level of flexibility that could be achieved by loading a software that routed packets into a GPP. Therefore, a study including the design of a hardware based router and a GPP based router has been conducted. In this project the first version of the µNP has been designed and a complete instruction set, along with some sample programs, is also proposed. The results show that, in the best case for all implementation options, µNP was 7.5 times slower than the hardware based router. It has also behaved more than 100 times faster than the GPP based router, keeping almost the same degree of flexibility for routing purposes within NoC.
Evaluation of Concrete Structures Affected by Alkali-Silica Reaction and Delayed Ettringite Formation: Part 2

This report details the results of a comprehensive research project aimed at evaluating the potential use of non-destructive testing (NDT) to assess structures affected by Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) and/or Delayed Ettringite Formation (DEF). This project was a collaborative effort between the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University (TAMU). The results presented in this report are those obtained by the team at TAMU. Available data on the performance of large-scale samples exhibiting ASR and/or DEF are presented, and the analysis of these data shows that steel-concrete bond is affected by ASR/DEF. Multiple techniques for assessing the steel-concrete interface are presented, and the impact-echo method is selected for further study. A small-scale laboratory experiment using impact-echo shows that this technique has the potential to detect ASR/DEF-induced defects at the steel-concrete interface. The application of impact-echo to large-scale samples with ASR yields inconclusive results, and further work is needed to determine if impact-echo can be used to assess the steel-concrete interface of ASR/DEF-affected field structures
Brazilian Institute for Web Science Research

This paper introduces the Brazilian Institute for Web Science Research, which will congregate 110 researchers from 10 Brazilian institutions. Investigations conducted within the Institute will range from understanding the impact the Web has on the daily lives of individuals to meeting the challenges of the Web graph. They will adress the problems of developing software for Web-wide applications, of searching, retrieving and managing data stored in hundreds of millions of Web sites, and of proposing novel architectures that overcome the limitations of the current Web infrastructure.
Extraordinary experience of the brazilian NFL audience: a netnography on Twitter interactions

Objetivo: Os telespectadores brasileiros da National Football League (NFL) são incentivados a repercutir sobre os jogos nas redes sociais, uma vez que as interações entre os consumidores mudam sua percepção sobre suas experiências. Assim, o objetivo da presente pesquisa é analisar como os telespectadores da NFL no Brasil expressam a experiência extraordinária de consumo a partir de interações virtuais definidas durante a transmissão de seus jogos.Metodologia: Adotamos o método netnográfico, elaborado para investigar as práticas de consumo cultural que ocorrem em ambientes online. Nosso estudo cobre três temporadas da NFL, de 2016 a 2019. O corpus de pesquisa é composto por todos os tweets relacionados às hashtags propostas pelos canais da ESPN Brasil para reverberar suas transmissões da liga.Originalidade/Relevância: A pesquisa apresenta como uma liga esportiva com repercussão midiática mundial propicia ao público uma experiência extraordinária não apenas pelo seu conteúdo, mas também pela interação on-line dos fãs através das mídias sociais.Principais resultados: Os resultados evidenciam duas categorias de experiência extraordinária: uma apresenta caráter midiático e diz respeito à maneira como a NFL fornece uma experiência incomum de consumo para os telespectadores no Brasil, enquanto a outra destaca uma modalidade esportiva que se baseia em características um tanto incomuns para consumidores de esporte no país. Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: A pesquisa indica como o consumo de uma modalidade esportiva por um público virtualmente mediado emula as emoções e o senso de coletividade expressos durante as experiências presenciais, ainda que requerendo a noção de espetáculo.
Individual Blade Pitch Control for Alleviation of Vibratory Loads on Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

Among the renewable energy technologies, offshore wind energy is expected to provide a significant contribution for the achievement of the European Renewable Energy (RE) targets for the next future. In this framework, the increase of generated power combined with the alleviation of vibratory loads achieved by application of suitable advanced control systems can lead to a beneficial LCOE (Levelized Cost Of Energy) reduction. This paper defines a control strategy for increasing floating offshore wind turbine lifetime through the reduction of vibratory blade and hub loads. To this purpose a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller based on measured blade-root bending moment feedback provides the blade cyclic pitch to be actuated. The proportional and integral gain matrices are determined by an optimization procedure whose objective is the alleviation of the vibratory loads due to a wind distributed linearly on the rotor disc. This control synthesis process relies on a linear, state-space, reduced-order model of the floating offshore wind turbine derived from aero-hydroelastic simulations provided by the open-source tool OpenFAST. In addition to the validation of the proposed controller, the numerical investigation based on OpenFAST predictions examines also the corresponding control effort, influence on platform dynamics and expected blade lifetime extension. The outcomes show that, as a by-product of the alleviation of the vibratory out-of-plane bending moment at the blade root, significant reductions of both cumulative blade lifetime damage and sway and roll platform motion are achieved, as well. The maximum required control power is less than 1% of the generated power.
Influence of Bacillus cereus-Gold Interaction on Bio-flotation of Gold in the Presence of Potassium Butyl Xanthate

Bacillus cereus is used to enhance the gold floatability in the presence of potassium butyl xanthate (PBX) as a collector and pine oil as a frother. The effect of bacteria interaction on the gold and quartz behavior as the main components of the gold ore was investigated using zeta-potential, contact angle, SEM, and FTIR measurements. The effect of pH, contact time, temperature, and concentration of xanthate, pine oil, and Bacillus cereus on the floatability of the gold and quartz was investigated. The zeta-potential of gold is strongly affected by Bacillus cereus interaction, while the maximum floatability is achieved at neutral pH. A concentrate of 10612 g/t gold with 95% recovery is obtained from a binary mixture contains 500 g/t gold in the presence of 1×108 Bacillus cereus cells, 5×103 M potassium butyl xanthate and 5×103 M pine oil at pH 7 and 35C for 10 min.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL AIRPORTS ON TOURISM ENTERPRISES. THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRIPOLI AIRPORT, IN GREECE

Air transport and tourism development are considered to be two closely related concepts. According to international literature, one of the most important modes of passenger transport around the world is air transport, thus affecting the economic development of many areas, especially those isolated geographically and touristically, as well as local tourism businesses. Understanding the scale of these impacts is important not only for the development of tourism businesses and the local economy, but also for policy makers who make strategic decisions. Most studies focus on the impact of large airports on the national and regional economy, while much less attention has been given to the impact of airports on regional destinations. This study, exploring the potential of the Tripoli military airport in Greece as a civilian airport, seeks to analyse the functional relationship between small regional airports and local tourism businesses, the results of which can contribute to the financial planning and organization of a destination.
An Effective Congestion and Interference Secure Routing Protocol for Internet of Things Applications in Wireless Sensor Network

This paper provides an effective Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) routing solution for Internet of Things(IoT) applications cognizant of congestion, security, and interference. Because several sources try to deliver their packets to a destination simultaneously, which is a common case in IoT applications. The proposed congestion and interference aware safe routing protocol is claimed to work in networks with high traffic. The signal to interference ratio (SINR), congestion level, and survival factor is used in our suggested procedure to estimate the cluster head selection factor first. The adaptive fuzzy c-means clustering method clusters the network nodes based on the cluster head selection factor. After that, data packets are encrypted using Adaptive Quantum Logic-based packet coding. Finally, the Adaptive Krill Herd (AKH) optimization method identifies the least congested corridor, resulting in optimal data transmission routing. The exploratory findings show that the provided strategy outperforms previous methodologies in network performance, end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and node remaining energy level.
7 Model order reduction in neuroscience

The human brain contains approximately 109 neurons, each with approximately 103 connections, synapses, with other neurons. Most sensory, cognitive, and motor functions of our brains depend on the interaction of a large population of neurons. In recent years, many technologies have been developed for recording large numbers of neurons either sequentially or simultaneously. Increases in computational power and algorithmic developments have enabled advanced analyses of the neuronal population parallel to the rapid growth of quantity and complexity of the recorded neuronal activity. Recent studies made use of dimensionality and model order reduction techniques to extract coherent features which are not apparent at the level of individual neurons. It has been observed that the neuronal activity evolves on low-dimensional subspaces. The aim of model reduction of large-scale neuronal networks is the accurate and fast prediction of patterns and their propagation in different areas of the brain. Spatiotemporal features of brain activity are identified on low-dimensional subspaces with methods such as dynamic mode decomposition, proper orthogonal decomposition, the discrete empirical interpolation method, and combined parameter and state reduction. In this chapter, we give an overview of the currently used dimensionality reduction and model order reduction techniques in neuroscience.