Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transfer Matrix Computation for Wave Action Simulation in an Internal Combustion Engine

A new technique for simulating engine pressure waves consisting of linking pressure response and mass flow rate excitation in the frequency domain has been presented. This is achieved on the so-called “dynamic flow bench”. With this new approach, precise, fast and robust results can be obtained while taking into account all the phenomena inherent to compressible unsteady flows. The method exhibited promising results when it was incorporated in a GT-Power/Simulink coupled simulation of a naturally aspirated engine.However, today’s downsized turbocharged engines come with more stringent simulation necessities, where discontinuities such as the charge air cooler (CAC) must be correctly modeled. Simulating such engines with the transfer function methodology is quite difficult because it requires mounting the entire intake line on the bench. Modeling wave action for these engines requires an understanding in the frequency domain of the flow’s characteristics through the different elements that make up the intake line. This leads us to study the acoustic transfer matrices.In order to split the intake line into separate elements, a straight duct of 185mm length is chosen as a first reference. It is mounted on the dynamic flow bench and pressure response is measured after an impulse mass flow excitation. Transfer functions of relative pressure and mass flow rate are then identified at given points upstream and downstream of this reference tube. These functions produce the desired transfer matrix poles.The resulting matrix is validated by inserting the tube in the intake lines of two four-cylinder engines which are modeled in GT-Power. Pressure and mass flow are registered at the measurement points of the tube from the simulation. The time series data upstream of the tube is treated in the frequency domain and the transfer matrix is used to calculate the corresponding downstream values. Measured values from the native simulation and those calculated using the transfer matrix propagation are then compared.Finally, the experimental technique for identifying transfer matrices of more complex elements using two versions of the previous tube is presented.Copyright © 2012 by ASME
Medication selection for the treatment of acute infective diarrhea in Thai pharmacies: a qualitative study

World Health Organization (WHO) released the treatment manual of diarrhea in 2005. We aimed to investigate the rationale for selecting medications for acute infective diarrhea in Thai community pharmacies and to see if the selection complied with the WHO manual. A theoretical 18-year-old patient with acute infective diarrhea was used for interviews. The protocol and materials for the research were approved by Institutional Review Board. A total of 30 drugstore personnel were selected by convenience sampling and included. The first author manually coded, extracted for themes, and translated the transcript. Participants did not dispense oral rehydration salt because of the feeling that diarrhea was not severe. Absorbents were dispensed because they were perceived as the first-line medication for noninfective or mild diarrhea. Antibiotics were dispensed because of the concerns for the prognosis and the expected patient pressure. None provided zinc to the patient because of the lack of knowledge of the indication of zinc. We found that dispensing for acute infective diarrhea in Thai drugstores deviated from the WHO treatment guideline. The reasons were that the pharmacy personnel were not practicing evidence-based medicine, the lack of knowledge, the patient pressure, the unavailability of products, and the perceived availability of information in local guidelines.
A study of HVDC transmission line audible noise and corona loss in an indoor corona cage.

The main objective of this research was to study DC conductor corona loss (CL) and audible noise (AN) in the context of local climatic conditions, through corona cage measurements, and do a comparative analysis of the measured data with results available in literature and EPRI TLW software simulation results. The ultimate aim was to assess the applicability of the software to our local conditions and hence determine, if necessary, appropriate correction factors for application in HYDC transmission line designs. For this study, short term measurements of corona AN and currents were carried out in an indoor meshed cylindrical corona cage, under DC and AC voltages. The cage was later converted into a short test line and some of the measurements repeated. The DC supply was obtained from a two stage ±500 kV Walton-Cockroft generator. The AC voltages were obtained from a 2x 100 kV, 50 Hz, AC test transformer set. The tests were performed using single solid and stranded aluminium conductors with three different diameters (1.6 cm, 2.8 cm, and 3.5 cm). All the measurements were carried out at low altitude. A CoroCAM I camera was used to determine the corona inception gradients and to observe the corona activity at different surface gradients and under different voltages and polarities. AN measurements at different conductor surface gradients were done using the Rohde&Schwarz and the Bruel&Kjaer sound level meters. To obtain the frequency spectra, a Bruel&Kjaer octave-band filter set attached to the sound level meter was used. The measured data was corrected for both height and length effects, and then compared with simulations from the EPRI-TLW software through curve fitting. A digital micro-ammeter connected to the centre of the cage through a 560 . Q measuring resistor was used to measure the corona current. Current pulses were viewed using a digital storage oscilloscope. To verifY the corona current results obtained from the cage measurements, current measurements were also done for a point-plane spark gap. The corona current data was, later on, used to evaluate the total corona power loss for DC. The results obtained from test line measurements were used to compare the CL and AN for different configurations.
‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’: Political violence and counter-insurgency in Egypt

The authors analyse newly collected time-series data measuring the dimensions of violent political conflict in Egypt. Attention is focused on the interaction between politically motivated attacks by Islamists and the counter-insurgency measures used by the Egyptian government. Both insurgency and counter-insurgency are multidimensional. Insurgency includes attacks on tourists, on Egyptian civilians and on security forces. Counter-insurgency includes arrests and attacks on militants. To some extent, the dynamics of insurgency and counter-insurgency can be described by two distinct cycles of violence: one related to highly politicized activities on both sides, and another related to less explicitly political activities. However, the two cycles are inter-related, leading to complex and asymmetric dynamics in the relationships between the different dimensions of the conflict. The authors find that the combination of political repression and military counter-insurgency measures employed by the Egyptian government has the potential to exacerbate rather than reduce political violence. On the other hand, the overall level of conflict intensity in Egypt can be mitigated by food subsidies. Finally, the existence of significant spillovers from upsurges in the Israeli—Palestinian conflict shows the regional importance of reaching a Middle East peace agreement.
Evaluation of Fatigue Bond Strength of Anchorage Zones with a Mechanical Model

AbstractThe paper describes a numerical model to analyze the fatigue behavior of RC anchorage zones. The model takes into account the cycle-dependent bond-slip behavior at the steel-concrete interface and is able to reproduce the experimental increase of the relative slip developed with number of load cycles, as well as the process of redistribution of stresses that takes place over the anchorage length as a result of fatigue damage. The results compare satisfactorily with existing experimental results. The model has been used to derive S-N curves to provide the fatigue strength of anchorage zones under different confinement conditions and various values of the anchorage length-to-diameter ratio and the steel diameter. The results indicate that the confinement degree plays a significant role in the fatigue bond strength: no fatigue problems are found for the well-confined concrete condition, but significantly short fatigue strength is obtained under the moderately confined and unconfined concrete conditions.
THE USE OF CAR PHONES AND CHANGES IN DRIVER BEHAVIOUR

The effects of mobile telephone use on traffic safety is discussed in the article. A number of empirical studies are reviewed and it is concluded that the use of a mobile telephone concurrently with car driving may have a negative impact upon traffic safety. The sub-tasks of entering a telephone number and having a demanding conversation are especially likely to increase the risk of an accident. To minimize the negative impact from telephoning on traffic safety a number of recommendations are suggested.
Suicide Exposure and the Impact of Client Suicide: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract Objective Client suicide, used to refer to situations where a mental health practitioner (MHP) is exposed, affected, or bereaved by a client’s suicide, is known to have a profound impact on MHPs. The current study investigated (1) the short- and long-term impact of client suicide and (2) to what extent gender, years of experience, therapeutic background, and exposure to suicidality predicted impact. Methods An international sample of 213 mental health practitioners completed an online survey on the impact of client suicide. Results and Conclusion Overall, results indicate MHPs are significantly affected by client suicide. A two-factor model in which impact of client suicide was predicted by two latent variables, MHP Characteristics and Exposure to Suicidality, explained 43% of short-term, 69% of long-term emotional, and 60% of long-term professional impact. Whereas MHP characteristics did not significantly predict any of the three impact variables (ps >.05), Exposure to Suicidality significantly predicted all three outcome variables (ps <.001). Interestingly, lived experience or exposure to suicidality of friends/family members predicted more impact, while exposure to suicidality at work predicted less impact of client suicide. Implications for both research and clinical practice are discussed. HIGHLIGHTS MHPs are significantly affected by client suicide; Previous exposure to suicidality predicts the impact of client suicide; MHP characteristics do not predict the impact of client suicide.
Distribution and Potential Sources of OCPs and PAHs in Waters from the Danshui River Basin in Yichang, China

To investigate the concentrations, spatial distribution, potential sources and mass fluxes of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in waters from the Danshui River Basin, a total of 20 water samples were collected and analyzed from a karstic river in Western Hubei of Central China. The average concentrations of total OCPs and PAHs in the river water were 4719 pg·L−1 and 26.2 ng·L−1, respectively. The characteristic ratios of different isomers and the composition analysis of individual OCPs and PAHs revealed that HCHs originated from a mixed input of technical HCHs and Lindane, DDTs were mainly from technical DDTs, and PAHs mainly originated from biomass and coal combustion. The mass flux analysis showed that PAHs had a higher emission and heavier burden than OCPs in the Danshui River Basin. OCPs and PAHs emitted from agricultural or other human activities could enter the groundwater and then be transported to the surface/river water in the karst area. The adsorption of OCPs and PAHs by particles and the sedimentation of particles could be the primary processes to intercept these pollutants in the water of the karstic river system.
Reactive power handling with series-resonant converters

A description is given of a series-resonant reactive power compensator based on a series-resonant converter topology. The compensator delivers high-quality sinusoidal waveforms, while it preserves the advantages of resonant converters, such as low switching losses and low component stress, improved reliability, low electromagnetic interference (EMI), and low size and weight of components. The topology an associated switching schemes are derived. Simulation results are presented and measured waveforms are shown for a 1-kVA compensator. >
Condition Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis for Marine Diesel Engines using Information Fusion Techniques

The structural complexity of marine diesel engines and the failure transmission path significantly influence the quality of a measured vibration signal. A set of accelerometers have been involved in the condition monitoring and fault diagnosis (CMFD). To make full use of multi-channel sensor signals, a new information fusion method is proposed for the CMFD of marine diesel engines in this paper. For the signal fusion, the independent component analysis (ICA) was firstly adopted to separate useful source signal close to the engine vibration characteristics of the fault components from multi-channel sensors. Then the short time Fourier transform (STFT) was applied to the fault feature extraction and the principal component analysis (PCA) was used to fuse the feature space from a high dimension into a very low one. Followed, a Fuzzy neural network (FNN) classifier was employed to identify the engine faults. The real vibration data measured on a ship using four-channel sensors was used to evaluate the proposed method. The experimental diagnostic results demonstrate that the developed diagnostic method captures distinct time-frequency features of the vibration signals for monitoring the engine health condition with a fault detection rate of 90.5%. Moreover, the performance of the proposed method is superior to that without information fusion processing. Thus, the proposed method is feasible and available for the CMFD of marine diesel engines. Ill. 5, bibl. 11, tabl. 1 (in English; abstracts in English and Lithuanian). DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.eee. 123.7. 2387
Impacts of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. and Thymbra spicata L. essential oils on postharvest gray mold of strawberries

Antifungal activities of two essential oils (EOs), derived from the Lavandula angustifolia L. and Thymbra spicata L. plant leaves were tested in current study against two isolates (M1-5 and M3-5) of Botrytis cinerea in Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA). These studies were performed in vitro and a further in vivo test with vapor contact application of the EOs was performed with strawberry fruits to confirm the antifungal activities in postharvest storage. In vitro studies were conducted with four different application doses (0.25, 0.50, 1.00 and 2.00 mL L-1) of both EOs with poisoned food technique. The highest dose (2.00 mL L-1) of L. angustifolia had a 92.50% mycelial growth inhibition on M1-5, where the same dose of same oil had 0.00% mycelial growth inhibition on M3-5. On the other hand, the highest dose (2.00 mL L-1) of T. spicata had 16.76% and 51.18% of mycelial growth inhibition on M1-5 and M3-5, respectively. The lower doses had less or no antifungal activity, thus only the highest doses were tested in the consecutive in vivo studies. Results suggested that both of the EOs had moderate impact on the prevention of disease severity at strawberry cv. Camarosa fruits, inoculated with M1-5 and M3-5 isolates. The EOs were also noted to have a significant influence on the prevention of the weight loss and loss of soluble solids concentration. Results suggested that the vapor contact application of L. angustifolia and T. spicata essential oils have potential to be alternative to synthetic fungicides for controlling gray mold in strawberry fruits caused by B. cinerea .
Interleukin‐1β–Activated Microvascular Endothelial Cells Promote DC‐SIGN–Positive Alternatively Activated Macrophages as a Mechanism of Skin Fibrosis in Systemic Sclerosis

To characterize the role of interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β) and microvascular endothelial cells (MVECs) in the generation of alternatively activated macrophages in the skin, and to explore their role in the development of skin fibrosis in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma).
Factors affecting customers’ intention to voice shopping over smart speaker從智慧音箱品質、互補性與隱私風險探討影響智慧音箱使用者語音購物因素

ABSTRACT AI-enabled applications such as smart speakers (e.g. Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Nest Audio) have been widely accepted in the home and workplace. In addition to their native functionality, such devices allow for integration of and access to third party services such as music streaming, internet of things applications and e-commerce. This study seeks to better explain factors that increase device usage ‘stickiness’, particularly that of the voice shopping function in terms of information system quality, perceived complementarity, perceived value and privacy risk. This study uses survey data from 291 smart speaker users to empirically model the effect of such factors on device stickiness and intention to purchase products/services via smart speakers. Overall, the results reveal that voice recognition quality, utilitarian and hedonic value, and perceived privacy risk explain about 71% of smart speaker stickiness which then determines 58% of voice shopping intention.
Associations between Park and Playground Availability and Proximity and Children’s Physical Activity and Body Mass Index: The BEACH Study

A cross-sectional study was designed to evaluate the relationship between the availability and proximity to parks and playgrounds and physical activity (PA). Moreover, the accessibility to parks and playgrounds and its association with active commuting to/from school (ACS) and body mass index (BMI) were analyzed. The sample was composed of children aged 6–12 years old from the BEACH (Built Environment and Active CHildren) study in Valencia, Spain. The availability and proximity to parks and playgrounds were calculated at different buffer sizes (250, 500, 1000 and 1250 m) using geographical information system data. PA out of school was assessed using accelerometers. Sociodemographics and ACS were measured with a parent questionnaire. Objectively measured weight and height were used to calculate BMI. Mixed linear regression analyses were conducted for each exposure variable, adjusting for sociodemographics, neighborhood walkability level, and participant clustering. The number of parks and playgrounds were positively associated with moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) and total PA (TPA); including light PA and MVPA, during weekdays, in different buffer sizes. A negative relationship between distance to the nearest playground and TPA during weekdays was found. In addition, the number of playgrounds was positively related to ACS in different buffer sizes, whereas park land area was negatively related to the BMI percentile. This study highlights the importance of assessing the availability and proximity to parks and playgrounds in children’s neighborhoods when PA behavior and weight status are analyzed. Study findings may help policymakers when targeting interventions to promote health-enhancing behaviors in children.
A novel lossless passive snubber for soft-switching boost-type converters

A novel lossless passive snubber is proposed for soft switching boost-type converters. The proposed snubber does not use any auxiliary switches, but uses two identical snubber capacitors which are charged in parallel at turn off of the main switch and discharged in series at turn on automatically, and the discharged energy is recovered effectively (more than 95% recovery) into the output capacitor. Thus, the snubber provides zero-voltage switching for the converter main switch, reducing both the turn-off losses and the electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise, which improves the converter performance. The experimental results of a 20 kHz 600 W DC-DC boost converter and a single-phase AC-DC boost rectifier with the new snubber are presented.
EFFECT OF MAGNITUDE OF VERTICAL WHOLE-BODY VIBRATION ON ABSORBED POWER FOR THE SEATED HUMAN BODY

Abstract The power absorbed by 12 male subjects during exposure to vertical whole-body vibration at six magnitudes of random vibration (0·25, 0·5, 1·0, 1·5, 2·0 and 2·5 ms−2r.m.s.) has been measured in the laboratory. All subjects showed greatest absorbed power at about 5 Hz, but the frequency of this peak in the absorbed power reduced with increasing vibration magnitude. The total absorbed power increased approximately in proportion to the square of the acceleration magnitude: normalizing the absorbed power to the square of the r.m.s. vibration magnitude removed most of the differences, although the changes in resonance frequency were still evident. The frequency dependence of absorbed power at a constant magnitude of acceleration was approximated by a simple weighting having slopes of ±6 dB/octave either side of 5 Hz. Comparing the characteristics of this absorbed power weighting to standard frequency weightings showed substantial differences, especially at high frequencies. It is concluded that the differences from currently accepted frequency weightings are so great that the absorbed power is unlikely to yield good general predictions of the discomfort or risks of injury from whole-body vertical vibration.
Governance, Real Output and Foreign Direct Investment in Asia: A Panel Data Analysis

This study intends to analyze the impact of governance (such as political, economic and institutional governance) on real output (GDP) and foreign direct investment (FDI) in 26 Asian countries during 1996 – 2019. Results of panel ARDL show the positive impact of capital, labor and trade openness on GDP and FDI. Institutional governance affects GDP and as well as FDI negatively and validates the notion that corruption greases the wheel of growth but when institutional governance is used with other indicators of governance in the model, it affects the FDI positively. Other dimensions of governance such as political and economic governance have a positive and significant impact on GDP and FDI in all model specifications. The results of the panel causality test that there is bi-directional causality from governance to GDP but evidence of bi-directional causality among governance indicators have also been found. The study emphasized on the policy making to improve the level of governance in Asian countries.
COVID-19 Pandemic as a Change Agent in the Structure and Practice of Statistical Consulting Centers

Abstract When New York City (NYC) became an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, statistical consulting centers at academic medical institutions in the area were immediately inundated with requests from hospital leadership and researchers for methodological support to address different aspects of the outbreak. Statisticians suddenly had to pivot from their usual responsibilities to focus entirely on COVID-19 work, and consulting centers had to devise innovative strategies to restructure their workflow and develop new infrastructure to address the acute demand for support. As statisticians from seven NYC-area institutions, we share our experiences and lessons learned during the pandemic, with the hope that this will lead not only to better preparedness for future public health crises when the skills and expertise of statisticians are critically needed, but also to lasting improvements to the structure and practice of statistical consulting centers.