Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional Collision Risk Prediction System at a Collision Area Considering Spatial Pattern

To reduce the risk of collision in territorial sea areas, including trade ports and entry waterways, and to enhance the safety and efficiency of ship passage, the International Maritime Organization requires the governing body of every country to establish and operate a vessel traffic service (VTS). However, previous studies on risk prediction models did not consider the locations of near collisions and actual collisions and only employed a combined collision risk index in surveillance sea areas. In this study, we propose a regional collision risk prediction system for a collision area considering spatial patterns using a density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN). Furthermore, a fuzzy inference system based on a near collision (FIS-NC) and long short-term memory (LSTM) is adopted to help a vessel traffic service operator (VTSO) make timely optimal decisions. In the local spatial pattern stage, the ship trajectory was determined by identifying the actual-collision and near-collision locations simultaneously. Finally, the system was developed by learning a sequence dataset from the extracted trajectory of the ship when a collision occurred. The proposed system can recommend an action faster than the fuzzy inference system based on the near-collision location. Therefore, using the developed system, a VTSO can quickly predict ship collision risk situations and make timely optimal decisions at dangerous surveillance sea areas.
Fuzzy dynamic programming approach to reactive power/voltage control in a distribution substation

A fuzzy dynamic programming (FDP) approach is proposed for solving the reactive power/voltage control problem in a distribution substation. The main purpose is to improve the voltage profile on the secondary bus and restrain the reactive power flow into a main transformer at the same time. To reach our objectives, the load tap changer (LTC) usually installed in a main transformer is employed to adjust the secondary voltage and the capacitor connected to the secondary bus is employed to compensate the reactive power flow for the load demands. We first forecast the real and reactive power demands of a main transformer and its primary voltages for the next day. With these forecasting data at hand, a fast LTC tap position estimation formula that takes the load models into account is derived to effectively reduce the computational burden for the proposed approach. Practical constraints on bus voltage limits, maximum allowable number switching operations in a day for the LTC and capacitor and the tolerable worst power factor for a main transformer are also considered. To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach, reactive power/voltage control at a distribution substation within the service area of Taipei City District Office of Taiwan Power Company is investigated. It is found that a proper dispatching schedule for the LTC and capacitor can be reached by the proposed approach.
Influence of Probiotic Supplementation on Health Status of the Dogs: A Review

Most commonly, pet dogs suffer from gastrointestinal (GI) diseases due to careless eating behaviors, such as eating food other than dog food; excess or insufficient nutrient intake of food leading to malnutrition, which could be harmful to dogs; a lack of digestive enzymes; food intolerance or allergies; infections; and/or breed-related hypersensitivities. Probiotics are live microorganisms that deliver health benefits to the host when administrated in an adequate amount. The possible mechanism behind probiotics’ beneficial effects could be their positive regulation of the host’s intestinal microbiota. Probiotics are reported to have therapeutic properties against canine GI and other diseases. The most suitable dosages and applications of probiotics have not been evaluated extensively. The present review summarizes current knowledge regarding the benefits of probiotics and the changes in canine microbiota during probiotic interventions. This literature review provides clinical evidence for probiotics’ beneficial effects in preventing or treating canine ill-health conditions. Based on current knowledge, subsequent researchers could develop or improve probiotics-based canine pharmacological products.
A Hybrid Vision Processing Unit with a Pipelined Workflow for Convolutional Neural Network Accelerating and Image Signal Processing

Vision processing chips have been widely used in image processing and recognition tasks. They are conventionally designed based on the image signal processing (ISP) units directly connected with the sensors. In recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have become the dominant tools for many state-of-the-art vision processing tasks. However, CNNs cannot be processed by a conventional vision processing unit (VPU) with a high speed. On the other side, the CNN processing units cannot process the RAW images from the sensors directly and an ISP unit is required. This makes a vision system inefficient with a lot of data transmission and redundant hardware resources. Additionally, many CNN processing units suffer from a low flexibility for various CNN operations. To solve this problem, this paper proposed an efficient vision processing unit based on a hybrid processing elements array for both CNN accelerating and ISP. Resources are highly shared in this VPU, and a pipelined workflow is introduced to accelerate the vision tasks. We implement the proposed VPU on the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform and various vision tasks are tested on it. The results show that this VPU achieves a high efficiency for both CNN processing and ISP and shows a significant reduction in energy consumption for vision tasks consisting of CNNs and ISP. For various CNN tasks, it maintains an average multiply accumulator utilization of over 94% and achieves a performance of 163.2 GOPS with a frequency of 200 MHz.
Social Network Analysis of Collaborative Ventures for Overseas Construction Projects

As the world construction market becomes more globalized, an increasing number of construction companies, including both large companies (LCs) and small and medium-sized companies (SMCs), have extended their business to the global market. During this process, the number of collaborative ventures to mitigate the burden of entry risks has greatly increased. This study aims to investigate the formation of construction firms’ collaborative networks for performing international projects from both the LC and SMC network perspectives. To this end, 389 real cases of overseas projects executed by Korean firms over the last two decades that involved collaboration were analyzed using social network analysis (SNA) approach. The result showed that LCs and SMCs have different perspectives when pursuing collaborative ventures for overseas construction projects; LCs have a tendency to form large and dense networks, whereas SMCs prefer to maintain long-term and targeted relationships. Moreover, this study showed a series .
Application of a quasi-steady flow CFD model to simulate BMP response

In the last several years, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has emerged as a tool to accurately predict the response of best management practices (BMPs) to highly unsteady rainfall runoff (stormwater), particulate matter (PM), and metal and nutrient loadings. Commensurately, such predictive capability for highly unsteady loadings can require much higher computational time than steady loadings. Therefore to reduce computational time for a given level of accuracy, this study tests a quasi-steady modeling approach to reproduce the unsteady load response of three stormwater BMPs. These units are a hydrodynamic separator (HS), a granular media-based volumetric clarifying filtration system (VCF), and a primary clarifier (PC). The quasi-steady steps were determined based on creating a frequency distribution of flow rates loading each BMP. The quasi-steady steps required to accurately represent the unsteady PM clarification were a function of influent unsteadiness and the mechanisms of each unit. Modeled PM clarification reproduced measured PM data from each physical model tested in situ with a relative percent difference (RPD) of less than 10%. Results indicate that with up to 15 quasi-steady steps the measured load-response data generated from unsteady rainfall-runoff events was reproduced for the VCF but generated deviation for the HS and PC. The quasi-steady method reduced computational time by an order of magnitude, several hours, compared with a fully unsteady method. Results suggest that additional quasi-steady steps are required to reduce deviation for the PC and HS.
Attentional bias to emotions after prolonged endurance exercise is modulated by age

ABSTRACT Physical exercise has an impact in biasing attention to positive or negative emotional stimuli. While attentional shift to emotions varies with age, evidence is lacking on the effect of prolonged endurance exercise on age-related attentional bias to emotions. This study aims at filling this knowledge gap, by applying a dot-probe task to measure attentional bias to emotions before and after a half-marathon in healthy participants of different ages (age range 21–65 years). State anxiety, positive and negative affect were also assessed. Younger adults showed attentional bias towards anger and away from sadness after the race, supporting the hypothesis of the congruency between the high-arousing task and the associated emotion (anger) in the modulation of attention. Conversely, older adults showed a bias away from anger, likely representing an attempt to maintain an optimal emotional level after the competition. This study sheds new light on how age impacts on emotional mechanisms involved in prolonged endurance exercise and suggests that regulatory processes in response to stress may be involved differently, depending on age.
Altered Dynamic Functional Connectivity of Cuneus in Schizophrenia Patients: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Objective: Schizophrenia (SZ) is a functional mental condition that has a significant impact on patients’ social lives. As a result, accurate diagnosis of SZ has attracted researchers’ interest. Based on previous research, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) reported neural alterations in SZ. In this study, we attempted to investigate if dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) could reveal changes in temporal interactions between SZ patients and healthy controls (HC) beyond static functional connectivity (sFC) in the cuneus, using the publicly available COBRE dataset. Methods: Sliding windows were applied to 72 SZ patients’ and 74 healthy controls’ (HC) rsfMRI data to generate temporal correlation maps and, finally, evaluate mean strength (dFC-Str), variability (dFC-SD and ALFF) in each window, and the dwelling time. The difference in functional connectivity (FC) of the cuneus between two groups was compared using a two-sample t-test. Results: Our findings demonstrated decreased mean strength connectivity between the cuneus and calcarine, the cuneus and lingual gyrus, and between the cuneus and middle temporal gyrus (TPOmid) in subjects with SZ. Moreover, no difference was detected in variability (standard deviation and the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation), the dwelling times of all states, or static functional connectivity (sFC) between the groups. Conclusions: Our verdict suggest that dynamic functional connectivity analyses may play crucial roles in unveiling abnormal patterns that would be obscured in static functional connectivity, providing promising impetus for understanding schizophrenia disease.
High-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy as Monotherapy for Low- and Intermediate-Risk Prostate Cancer. Oncological Outcomes After a Median 15-Year Follow-Up

Introduction To evaluate the oncological outcome of high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy (BRT) as monotherapy for clinically localised prostate cancer (PCA). Material and Methods Between January 2002 and February 2004, 141 consecutive patients with clinically localised PCA were treated with HDR-BRT monotherapy. The cohort comprised 103 (73%) low-, 32 (22.7%) intermediate- and 6 (4.3%) high risk patients according to D’Amico classification or 104 (73.8%) low-, 24 (17.0%) intermediate favourable-, 12 (8.5%) intermediate unfavourable- and one (0.7%) very high risk patient according to National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) one. Patients received four fractions of 9.5 Gy delivered within a single implant up to a total physical dose of 38 Gy. Catheter-implantation was transrectal ultrasound-based whereas treatment planning CT-based. Thirty-three patients (23.4%) received ADT neoadjuvantly and continued concurrently with BRT. Biochemical relapse-free survival (BRFS) was defined according to the Phoenix Consensus Criteria and genitourinary (GU)/gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity evaluated using the Common Toxicity Criteria for Adverse Events version 5.0. Results Median age at treatment and median follow-up time was 67.2 and 15.2 years, respectively. Twenty-three (16.3%) patients experienced a biochemical relapse and 5 (3.5%) developed distant metastases, with only one patient dying of PCA. The BRFS was 85.1% at 15 years and 78.7% at 18 years. The corresponding overall survival, metastases-free survival, and prostate cancer specific mortality at 15- and 18-years was 73.9%/59.1%, 98.3%/90.6%, and 100%/98.5% respectively. Late grade 3 GI and GU toxicity was 4.2% and 5.6% respectively. Erectile dysfunction grade 3 was reported by 27 (19%) patients. From the prognostic factors evaluated, tumor stage (≤T2b compared to ≥T2c) along with the risk group (low-intermediate vs. high) when using the D’Amico classification but not when the NCCN one was taken into account, correlated significantly with BRFS. Conclusion Our long-term results confirm HDR-BRT to be a safe and effective monotherapeutic treatment modality for low- and intermediate risk PCA.
Understanding the Future Impacts of Electric Vehicles—An Analysis of Multiple Factors That Influence the Market

The electric vehicle market is an increasingly important aspect of the automotive industry. However, as a relatively new technology, several issues remain present within the industry. An analysis is utilised to examine these issues, along with how they affect the industry and how they can be tackled. Several key issues that affect the electric vehicle market, as well as how efforts to address these issues influence the market, are identified. The analysis also includes the examination of ethical issues, with the issues that arise from the production of raw materials for electric vehicles. The analysis and examination of ethical issues display a wide range of problems in the industry. However, it did highlight the efforts being made to lessen the effect of these problems by various groups, such as regulation by EU and US governing bodies on the materials mined. From this analysis, this paper identifies that many of the other factors examined are directly or indirectly influenced by political and economic factors, also examined in this review. This highlights the impact that governing bodies and businesses have on a vast number of issues that are present within the market and how they can resolve the harmful factors examined.
Analysis of Wind Tunnel Wall Interference Effects on Subsonic Unsteady Airfoil Flows

In this work, the effect of wall interference on steady and oscillating airfoils in a subsonic wind tunnel is studied. A variety of approaches including linear theory, compressible inviscid and viscous computations, and experimental data are considered. Integral transform solutions of the linearized potential equations show an augmentation of the lift magnitude for steady flows when the wall is close to the airfoil surface. For oscillating airfoils, lift augmentation is accompanied by a significant change in the phase of the lift response. Idealized compressible Euler calculations are seen to corroborate the linear theory under conditions that are sufficiently away from acoustic resonance. Further, the theory compares well with compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes calculations and experimental measurements over a wide range of attached flows at subsonic Mach numbers. The present methodology can thus be used to predict wall interference effects and also to help extrapolate linear and nonlinear (dynamic stall) wind tunnel data to free-air conditions.
Keynote 5. Research and customized solutions on any-wire IP-networks for multiple infrastructures

Devolo developed a tool for monitoring and debugging the power line network. If the end-users accepts, each power line communications (PLC) device sends periodically reports to a central data base. These reports show the network topology as well as some additional information on the link status such as the physical data rate for example. This information is collected and used for field analysis. This paper shows a summary of the statistical analysis of more than 7 million records collected from more than 23,200 users distributed all over Europe.
A closed-form formula for 2-D ohmic losses calculation in SMPS transformer foils

A new formula aimed at calculating ohmic losses in switch-mode power supply (SMPS) transformers is presented. It is based on intensive two-dimensional (2-D) finite element method (FEM) simulations, the results of which have been summarized in a closed-form formula following a "semi-empirical" approach. The main benefit of this new formula, specifically intended for industrial designers, is to combine the precision of 2-D models with the ease-of-use and speed of calculation of one-dimensional (1-D) models, on the whole frequency range. It accurately covers cases where the classical Dowell's formula significantly underestimated the losses, specifically those with significant edge effect in foil windings. Experimental validation and discussion of accuracy is provided. At the moment, the formula is only valid for one layer of foil located between a zero and a maximum of the magnetomotive force but a similar approach could be applied with success to other types of windings. Furthermore, the analytical expression proposed in the article, based on Maxwell equations, can be used as a stand-alone tool to model the real behavior of any type of winding. More accurate understanding of the 2-D field is also possible thanks to the direct link established between the losses and the geometrical data of the winding.
The Synergy between John Dewey’s Educational Democracy and Educational Reforms in New South Wales, Australia

“Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. John DeweyThe current study examines the impact of John Dewey’s democratic educational principles on the recent educational reforms in New South Wales, Australia, using data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews, with open-ended questions, as part of case studies designed for this purpose. The participants in this study are all Australian educators (n=60), undertaking full-time and part-time academic posts, involving learning and teaching activities at universities and other higher educational institutions/providers in Sydney, Australia. As part of the case studies, the individual, personal, and professional teaching and learning journeys of the educators are sketched in details in relation to John Dewey’s four (4) key democratic educational reformative principles. Finally, this research study concludes by providing a realistic response to the following question: Given the current liberal and relatively democratic educational system in New South Wales, are the Australian educators truly given the opportunity to create a positive and constructive future vision for Australia, in general, and the Australian graduates, in particular. The current study further provides a realistic and clear-cut description of the hurdles facing the current educational system in New South Wales, Australia.
Subjective and Objective Insecurity in Spanish Cities

This article related crime rates to social risk factors and to the feeling of insecurity in Spain. The first finding of this study, financed by National I + D Plan CSO2016-77549-P, AEI-FEDER, was the direct relation between crime rates and some sociodemographic factors such as population, unemployment, urban land area, and hotel occupancy, based on the question of which social risk factors correlate to crime rates. The second finding was that social factors drive citizens’ feelings of insecurity, according to whether feelings of insecurity are linked to crime rates or perceived risk factors. The research was based on a quantitative methodology, using two data sources: reworked official statistics treated by HJ-Biplot analysis; a 2019 CATI survey with N = 3904, sample error between 5.2% and 3.7% according to territory, 95% confidence level. The main conceptual conclusion of the study was the link between well-being and security. The main methodological contribution was the application of HJ-Biplot analysis to the social sciences.
Evaluation of Embrace WetBond and Helioseal-F sealant retention with and without a Self-etch adhesive: A 12 month follow-up

Background Pit and fissures on the young permanent tooth are ideal in harbouring dental plaque and calculus. Hence it is important to provide a preventive agent to protect against dental caries. Aim: To evaluate the retention of two different pit and fissure sealants with and without a self-etch adhesive in the first permanent molars for a period of one year. Material and Methods 280 molars were included among 70 healthy children. According to randomisation, the groups were divided into Group IA - Embrace without Adhse One F bonding agent and Group IB - Embrace with Adhse One F bonding agent, Group IIA - Helioseal F without Adhse One F bonding agent and Group IIB - Helioseal F with Adhse One F bonding agent. The sealants were assessed clinically at 3,6,9, and 12 months using the modified Colour, Coverage, Caries (CCC) sealant evaluation system. Results At the end of 12 months, the retention rates of Group IB showed statistically significant results, followed by Group IIB, Group IA and Group IIA. Conclusions At twelve months follow-up Embrase WetBond and Helioseal-F were better retentive when used with a Adhese One F bonding agent which was statistically significant. Key words:Retention, Bonding agent, Embrace WetBond, Helioseal-F.
Is Difficulty Mostly About Impossibility? What Difficulty Implies May Be Culturally Variant

Difficulty can signal low odds (impossibility) and high value (importance). We build on culture-as-situated cognition theory’s description of culture-based fluency and disfluency to predict that the culturally fluent meaning of difficulty is culture-bound. For Americans, the culturally fluent understanding of ability is success-with-ease-not-effort, hence difficulty implies low odds of ability. This may disadvantage American institutions and practices—learning requires gaining competence and proficiency through effortful engagement. Indeed, Americans (Studies 1, 3–8; N = 4,141; Study 2, the corpus of English language) associate difficulty with impossibility more than importance. This tendency is not universal. Indian and Chinese cultures imply that difficulty can equally signal low odds and value. Indeed, people from India and China (Studies 9–11, N = 762) are as likely to understand difficulty as being about both. Effects are culture-based; how much people endorse difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-impossibility in their own lives did not affect results.