Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphological and physicochemical characterization of selected soursop accessions fruits in Nayarit

In Mexico there is a morphological and biochemical variability of soursop germplasm, mainly due to its propagation by seed. The last years were identified in Nayarit accessions (TR, VCA1, VCA4, VCA5 and VCA10) with outstanding characteristics; therefore, in 2017 the morphological and physicochemical characterization of fruits of these accessions was carried out. The morphological characterization was carried out with the descriptors of the guide of tests of distinction, homogeneity and stability of the international union for the protection of plant varieties (UPOV) in annonaceae. The physicochemical parameters were determined by the AOAC methods. Morphological differences were found in size and shape of fruits, size of spines, quantity and size of seeds. In the fruits of TR and VCA4 the largest size predominated and in the VCA5 smaller size. The trapezoidal shape predominated in the TR and the conical in VCA1 and VCA4. The TR and VCA10 fruits had greater bark thickness and smaller spines; while the VCA4 had larger spines. Fruits TR, VCA4 and VCA10 had a higher number of seeds and VCA5 had a lower number; with larger seeds in the TR and less in VCA1 and VCA4. There were no differences in pulp yield (68.7-72.4%), but it was directly proportional to the fruit size (r= 0.532) with p < 0.001. In the physicochemical characteristics, the TR fruits at maturity of consumption had greater intensity of the green of the skin, greater firmness, soluble solids content (SST) and °Brix/acidity ratio.
“To Evaluate the Different Causes and Preventive Measures of Low Back Pain: A Retrospective Study”

: Introduction: Most epidemiological data concerning low back pain (LBP) are related to developed and industrialized countries but little information about LBP in the general population in developing and low-income countries. Back pain affects 60-80% of people at some time in their lives. Acute low back pain is one of the most common reasons for adults to see a family physician. Although most patients recover quickly with minimal treatment, proper evaluation is imperative to identify rare case of serious underlying pathology. Aim of the study: The aim of the study is to evaluate the different causes of low back pain, occupational and risk factors, association with age and sex of the patient and their life styles. Materials and Methods : The present study is a retrospective study of 300 patients of low back pain between the age group of 31-70 years of both sexes who were admitted and treated at Dept. of Forensic Medicine, Kushtia Medical College Hospital, Kushtia, Bangladesh from January 2020 to December 2020. The information was collected from the patients regarding their occupation, education, obesity, smoking, tuberculosis, diabetes, alcohol consumption, osteoporosis, Osteoarthritis and history of trauma. The provisional diagnosis of cases was done and confirmed radiologically. A proforma was prepared and the patient’s age, sex, duration of symptoms, place of living and the cause for low back pain was noted. A neurological examination of the lower limbs was performed. Results: The author tabulated 300 patients of low back pain into four categories according to age and noted the number of cases in each group. The highest number of cases (124) is observed in the age group of 31-40 years (41%) and the lowest number of cases (45) is observed in the age group of 51-60 years (15%). All patients were thoroughly interrogated (occupational, trauma, infection, diabetes mellitus, smoking, alcohol and medication history), subjected to a rigorous clinical examination and a battery of investigations. In 300 cases of LBP studied, the most common cause for back pain was disc prolapse (44%). The next common causes were lumbar spondylosis, spondylolisthesis and lumbar spinal stenosis (17%, 10% & 10% respectively). The study found association between low back pain and various factors. Prevention is the best strategy for avoiding low back pain but is realistically hard to practice because the problem of low back pain has many environmental and intrinsic risk factors. Conclusion: Low back pain affects a large proportion of the population and is difficult to diagnose. Physicians must accept the diagnostic ambiguity that often accompanies the condition. can lead to a meaningful reduction in the incidence of debilitating back pain.
A novel crimping technique approach for high power white good plugs

Version: . 2022 Abstract: The crimping process is essential to human health and the durability of devices, especially in domestic appliances. Moreover, terminal crimping is critical to the safe transmission of electricity; incorrect crimping leads to problems including overheating of the plug, power loss, arc, and failure of the mechanical connection. In recent years, analysis has been performed by the finite element method (FEM) to prevent the incorrect design of crimping and to develop higher performance crimping techniques. A novel crimping technique for domestic appliances requiring high-powered plugs is proposed in this study. After defining the crimp parameters and the materials that are used for the crimp design, optimization is undertaken by using an analytical solver that uses both numerical calculation and finite element method analysis by COMSOL TM and Hyperworks. Prototypes are manufactured based on the result of the research, and capability analysis is performed using a histogram diagram. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed crimping technique for high-powered applications are validated by simulation and
Tensile Behaviour of the Natural Areca Fiber Reinforced Rubber Composites

The aim of the present work was to investigate the effect of compounding temperature and fiber loading on the tensile strength of areca fiber reinforced natural rubber composites. Composite boards were fabricated by using a heat press machine. Composites reinforced with 60% fiber loading at different compounding temperature, 130, 140, 150 and 160 o C; and composites with 40, 50, 60 and 70% fiber loading at 130 o C were fabricated and analysed for tensile strength according to ASTM standards. reinforced natural rubber composites with 60% fiber loading at 130 o C showed maximum tensile strength. The effect of compounding temperature on tensile strength of composites was insignificant.
MOSFHET: Optimized Software for FHE over the Torus

Homomorphic encryption is one of the most secure solutions for processing sensitive information in untrusted environments, and there have been many recent advances towards its efficient implementation for the evaluation of linear functions and approximated arithmetic. However, the practical performance when evaluating arbitrary (nonlinear) functions is still a major challenge for HE schemes. The TFHE scheme [Chillotti et al. , 2016] is the current state-of-the-art for the evaluation of arbitrary functions, and, in this work, we focus on improving its performance. We divide this paper into two parts. First, we review and implement the main techniques to improve performance or error behavior in TFHE proposed so far. For many, this is the first practical implementation. Then, we introduce novel improvements to several of them and new approaches to implement some commonly used procedures. We also show which proposals can be suitably combined to achieve better results. We provide a single library containing all the reviewed techniques as well as our original contributions. Our implementation is up to 1.2 times faster than previous ones with a similar optimization level, and our novel techniques provide speedups of up to 2.83 times on algorithms such as the Full-Domain Functional Bootstrap (FDFB).
Ambient vibration testing in the rehabilitation of centenary steel bridges

1501 ABSTRACT: The use of modal testing through ambient vibration to assess the changes in rehabilitated structures and to enable the evaluation of the actual effectiveness of different rehabilitation strategies emerge as an extremely important topic, since the current knowledge in this field is short and therefore demands an improvement in order to achieve more cost-effective designs without lowering the required safety levels. This paper presents the ambient vibration tests conducted on centenary steel bridges before and after their rehabilitation, with the purpose of evaluating the changes in their dynamic properties as a result of the adopted strengthening strategies. The implemented testing programs, experimental setups, data processing and modal identification techniques are described. Field data validated numerical models for the analysis of the structural changes produced by the strengthening process are presented. Significant conclusions were drawn by comparing the experimental and numerical results between the pre and post-rehabilitation conditions, namely in what concerns the vibration levels experienced by the structures, their stiffness variation and suitability of the adopted modeling methodologies.
Student Mental Models of the Longleaf Pine Ecosystem

There is a nationwide focus in science education in the United States on the ability of students to develop and use models. Using the Contextual Model of Learning that considers learning is inseparably bound to the context in which it occurs, this study looks at drawings of the longleaf pine ecosystem created by 293 4th Grade students prior to and again after their multiple day visits to an environmental education center in the southeastern United States. Using flora and fauna processes considered as indicative of the ecosystem by ecologists, seven distinct mental model categories were developed from student artifacts. Comparison of the pre to post-frequencies in each model demonstrate a statistically significant increasing level of sophistication in the mental models to more closely approximate the conceptual models of ecologists after participation in instruction at the Center. Progression to more sophisticated mental models was documented even when addressing these models and their development was not a direct intent of the instruction. These data also support the importance that context can play in the learning of ecological concepts and the significance of including informal experiences to the formal K-12 curriculum.
(2015). Coagulation status in dogs with naturally occurring Angiostrongylus vasorum infection. Journal of Small Animal Practice , 56 (8), 485-490.

Angiostrongylus is associated with bleeding tendencies in approximately 1/3 of 8 clinical cases, but the cause of the coagulopathy is poorly understood although 9 DIC is a proposed cause (Koch & Willesen 2009). Thromboelastography (TEG) is 10 a global evaluation of coagulation and has not been described in a cohort of dogs 11 with this disease. Thromboelastography in association with other measures of 12 coagulation, PT, aPTT, antithrombin percentage activity, d-dimer concentration 13 and von Willebrand factor concentration were evaluated in a group of 30 dogs 14 with A.varosum infection. 18 dogs had signs of bleeding on physical examination. 15 TEG was consistent with hypocoagulation in 17 of these dogs. There was no 16 association between any of the other measures and hypocoagulation on TEG. 17 Abnormal coagulation times were not significantly associated with the presence 18 of bleeding. Only fibrinogen concentration was significantly different, (lower) in 19 dogs that were bleeding compared to those that weren’t. D-dimer concentrations 20 were increased in 22/25 cases in the study, however other coagulation 21 parameters were more variable. Although the changes identified in this study 22 were not consistent within groups there is activation of coagulation within this 23 population, possibly consistent with an intravascular disseminated coagulopathy.
Discriminator-Weighted Offline Imitation Learning from Suboptimal Demonstrations

We study the problem of offline Imitation Learning (IL) where an agent aims to learn an optimal expert behavior policy without additional online environment interactions. Instead, the agent is provided with a supplementary offline dataset from suboptimal behaviors. Prior works that address this problem either require that expert data occupies the majority proportion of the offline dataset, or need to learn a reward function and perform offline reinforcement learning (RL) afterwards. In this paper, we aim to address the problem without additional steps of reward learning and offline RL training for the case when demonstrations contain a large proportion of suboptimal data. Built upon behavioral cloning (BC), we introduce an additional discriminator to distinguish expert and non-expert data. We propose a cooperation framework to boost the learning of both tasks, Based on this framework, we design a new IL algorithm, where the outputs of discriminator serve as the weights of the BC loss. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm achieves higher returns and faster training speed compared to baseline algorithms.
Combined pharmacomechanical thrombectomy with selective catheter-directed thrombolysis in patients with acute proximal deep vein thrombosis

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the characteristics and the outcomes of combined percutaneous pharmacomechanical thrombectomy with selective catheter-directed thrombolysis for acute iliofemoral deep vein thrombosis. Methods Between March 2018 and February 2020, a total of 37 patients (21 males, 16 females; mean age: 55±13.8 years; range, 21 to 79 years) with symptomatic acute iliofemoral vein thrombosis who underwent combined percutaneous pharmacomechanical thrombectomy and catheter-directed thrombolysis were retrospectively analyzed. All patients received a three-step therapy: (i) insertion of a temporary inferior vena cava filter, (ii) percutaneous pharmacomechanical thrombectomy via rotational mechanical thrombectomy device with an adjuvant 0.15 mg/kg recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator alteplase, and (iii) catheter-directed thrombolysis with continuous 1 mg/h tissue-type plasminogen activator alteplase. Data including demographic characteristics of the patients, bleeding complications, technical success, and adjuvant angioplasty rates were analyzed. The Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to evaluate freedom from re-thrombosis at 3, 6, and 12 months of follow-up was calculated. Results The majority of the patients had left-sided (n=22, 59.4%) proximal deep vein thrombosis. Successful insertion of the inferior vena cava filter was achieved in 97.2% (n=36) of patients. The technical success rate was 89.1% (n=33). Adjuvant venous angioplasty was performed in four patients (10.8%) and no venous stents were used. No major bleeding was occurred, while minor bleeding was observed mostly in the form of hematuria (n=12, 32.4%). No mortality was observed. The 3, 6, and 12-month freedom from re-thrombosis rates were 96.3%, 92.6%, and 86.0%, respectively. Conclusion Combined percutaneous pharmacomechanical thrombectomy and catheter-directed thrombolysis seems to be an effective and safe treatment of the iliofemoral acute deep vein thrombosis with acceptable minor bleeding complications post-interventionally.
Design methodology for a 40-GSamples/s track and hold amplifier in 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology

A 40-GSamples/s track and hold amplifier (THA) is designed and fabricated in 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS and operates from a 3.6-V supply. The total power consumption is 540 mW with a chip area of 1.1 mm 2 . Time domain measurements demonstrate 40-GHz sampling and S-parameter measurements show a 3-dB bandwidth of 43 GHz in track mode. For 19-GHz input signals, a total harmonic distortion of -27 dB at the 1dB compression point has been measured and a spurious-free dynamic range of 35 dB has been achieved.
Direct Optimization for Classification with Boosting

Zhai, Shaodan. Ph.D., Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Wright State University, 2015. Direct Optimization for Classification with Boosting. Boosting, as one of the state-of-the-art classification approaches, is widely used in the industry for a broad range of problems. The existing boosting methods often formulate classification tasks as a convex optimization problem by using surrogates of performance measures. While the convex surrogates are computationally efficient to globally optimize, they are sensitive to outliers and inconsistent under some conditions. On the other hand, boosting’s success can be ascribed to maximizing the margins, but few boosting approaches are designed to directly maximize the margin. In this research, we design novel boosting algorithms that directly optimize non-convex performance measures, including the empirical classification error and margin functions, without resorting to any surrogates or approximations. We first applied this approach on binary classification, and then extended this idea to more complicated classification problems, including multi-class classification, semi-supervised classification, and multi-label classification. These extensions are nontrivial, where we have to mathematically re-formulate the optimization problem: defining new objectives and designing new algorithms that depend on the specific learning tasks. Moreover, we showed good theoretical properties of the optimization objectives, which explains why we define these objectives and how we design algorithms to efficiently optimize them. Finally, we showed experimentally that the proposed approaches display competitive or better results than state-of-the-art convex relaxation boosting methods, and they perform especially well on noisy cases.
Handbook of Food Science and Technology 1: Food Alteration and Food Quality

This book serves as a general introduction to food science and technology, based on the academic courses presented by the authors as well as their personal research experiences. The authors’ main focus is on the biological and physical-chemical stabilization of food, and the quality assessment control methods and normative aspects of the subsequent processes. Presented across three parts, the authors offer a detailed account of the scientific basis and technological knowledge needed to understand agro-food transformation. From biological analyses and process engineering, through to the development of food products and biochemical and microbiological changes, the different parts cover all aspects of the control of food quality.
Thermohaline variability in the upper ocean

The main goal of this exploratory study is to determine how the temperature-salinity relationship changes with horizontal length scale and depth in the ocean. Temperature and salinity were measured on a range of scales from 4 m to 1000 km, towing a SeaSoar along isobars and isopycnals in the subtropical gyre of the North Pacific, during the winter of 1997. The wavelet transform technique is used to compute the horizontal density ratio and thermohaline variability as a function of scale and location. Measurements along an isobar in the mixed layer show that the horizontal density ratio is 1 at all scales observed; that is, horizontal temperature and salinity gradients tend to cancel each other in their effect on density. Thermohaline variability at small scales is intermittent and clusters around large-scale thermohaline anomalies. Below the base of the mixed layer, horizontal gradients of temperature are only partially opposed by salinity, and the density ratio is close to 2. In the thermocline the distribution of thermohaline variability is uniform along isobars but intermittent and colocated at different scales along isopycnals. Density-compensated variability, ubiquitous in the mixed layer, is reduced along deeper isopycnals. Compensation of horizontal temperature and salinity gradients supports recent theoretical ideas that mixing in the winter mixed layer depends on horizontal density gradients.
Directional-DRX for 5G wireless communications

Directional-discontinuous reception (D-DRX) is proposed for millimetre-wave enabled fifth-generation communications. In addition to conventional active, short-sleep and long-sleep states, the proposed mechanism considers a separate beam searching state, to address alignment of directional beams between user equipment (UE) and evolved node B after a sleep cycle. Semi-Markov process is explored to capture various states of UE and probabilistically estimate its power saving and delay. A numerical analysis is conducted to validate the performance of D-DRX proposal. About 10% improvement is achieved in power saving with a marginal decrease in delay compared with maximum possible beam search time.
Penerapan Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Dalam Pengujian Model Penerimaan Sistem Informasi Keuangan Daerah

This study analyzed the factors which influence the acceptance of the Financial Information System for local Government (SIPKD) using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). TAM stated that behavioral intension to use Information System are determined by two beliefs: perceived usefulness (POU) and perceived ease of use (PEU). Perceived usefulness (POU) was defined as the extent to people were sure that the use of the system will improve its performance. Perceived ease of use (PEU) was defined as the extent to people were sure that the system is easy to use. This study analyzed the acceptance SIPKD in the context of the acceptance by the user. User are the local government employee have an obligation to run SIPKD. The analysis focused on the user's perception regarding SIPKD they should run. User perception analyzed is user perception about the ease of use SIPKD and user perceptions about the benefits SIPKD in their work. Research was conducted on the SIPKD in the Special Province of Yogyakarta. Respondents of this study 67 from various agencies in the region of Yogyakarta. The results showed that the Perceived usefulness influence the using of SIPKD, while Perceived Ease of Use does not influence
The effect of different management strategies on the dynamics of saproxylic insect habitats

Prace zahrnuje studie zabývajici se hmyzem vazaným na mrtve dřevo a jeho stanovistě. Soucasti je literarni reserse a přehled stavajicich problemů v ochraně biodiverzity saproxylickeho hmyzu, studie vlivu aktivnich zasahů do ekosystemů nižinných lesů mirneho pasma, např. vliv výmladkoveho hospodařeni (pollarding, pařezeni), na saproxylicka i dalsi lesni spolecenstva, a nakonec zhodnoceni významu soliternich stromů pro biodiverzitu saproxylickeho hmyzu.
Estimating Discrete Games of Complete Information: Bringing Logit Back in the Game

This paper considers the estimation of discrete games of complete information without assumptions on the equilibrium selection rule, which is often viewed as computationally difficult. We propose computationally attractive approaches that avoid simulation and grid search. We show that the moment inequalities proposed by Andrews, Berry, and Jia (2004) can be expressed in terms of multinomial logit probabilities, and the corresponding identified set is convex. When actions are binary, we can characterize the sharp identified set using closed-form inequalities. We also propose a simple approach to inference. Two real-data experiments illustrate that our methodology can be several orders of magnitude faster than the existing approaches.