Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EFFECT OF INJECTION TIMING ON PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF DIRECT INJECTION DIESEL ENGINE WITH CERAMIC COATED CYLINDER HEAD

were carried out to evaluate the performance of diesel engine with low heat rejection (LHR-1) combustion chamber consisting of conventional piston, conventional liner and ceramic coated cylinder head with neat diesel with varied injection timing. Performance parameters (brake thermal efficiency, exhaust gas temperature, coolant load, volumetric efficiency and sound levels ) were determined at various values of brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) of the engine with LHR-1 combustion chamber and compared with neat diesel operation on conventional engine (CE) at similar operating conditions. The optimum injection timing was found to be 31 o bTDC (before top dead centre) with conventional engine, while it was 30 o bTDC for engine with LHR-1combustion chamber with diesel operation. Engine with LHR-1 combustion chamber with neat diesel operation showed comparable performance at manufacturer's recommended injection timing of 27 o bTDC, and
Improvement of the diode characteristics using emitter-controlled principles (EMCON-diode)

In this paper it is shown experimentally how the shape and the amount of the carrier distribution in the middle region of a diode influences the static behavior (voltage-current characteristic), the dynamic behavior (reverse recovery current, reverse recovery charge, soft recovery) and the temperature dependence of these characteristics. By combining the lifetime dominated Hall-principle and the emitter-controlling Kleinmann-principle various diodes were manufactured and investigated. With an infrared absorption technique the corresponding carrier distributions were measured.
Immediate impact of COVID-19 on eye banking in India

Purpose: In India, COVID-19 infected more than 10 million and caused more than 148,000 fatalities during 2020. Due to “lockdown” eye banks were shuttered in March, 2020 and reopened for operations in the month of May, 2020. This study assesses the immediate impact of the pandemic on eye banking and cornea transplantation in India. Methods: Data was gathered through an online survey of the eye banks and cornea surgeons in India. The questionnaire collected information on the vital statistics of eye bank operations and cornea transplants for the period from March to June for the years 2019 and 2020. Results: 47 eye banks responded to the survey. Collectively in the March–May 2020 period, corneas collected and transplanted declined by 78.27% and 79.14%, respectively, compared to the same period of 2019. In June 2020, the first full month after operations restarted, the collection and transplants were respectively, 82.10% and 81.82%, lower than June, 2019. Long-term glycerine preservation of corneas in the period from March to June 2020 increased by 124.5% compared to same period in 2019, but overall only 5.26% of the corneas recovered were preserved in this way. 44.44% of the eye banks collected corneas only from donors with negative COVID-19 diagnosis. 36.11% of the respondents rejected all suspicious cases, such as donors with respiratory pathologies, and 2.78% of the respondents accepted donations from medico legal cases only. 19.44% of the responding eye banks did SARS-CoV-2 nasal swab test for the deceased donor. 79.5% of the eye banks reported that staff were willing to work during the pandemic, and 82.05% eye banks gave special training to staff before restarting services. Conclusion: Due to the steep decline in collections and transplants, 2020 can be termed as a lost year in Indian eye banking. Attention to Hospital Cornea Recovery Programs, continuous situation monitoring, and ongoing staff training programs are recommended.
African female university students' experiences of online education at home during the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of the study on which this paper is based was to explore how self-identified female African university students understand the influence of their home environments on their experiences of online education. The study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic when universities in South Africa and elsewhere introduced online teaching and learning. Using a qualitative approach to a single case study design within a critical feminist paradigm, we carried out an inductive thematic analysis of the data from seven in-depth, open-ended questionnaires and metaphors. We found that home environments play an important role in the education of female African students, particularly in a context characterised by gender inequalities exacerbated by inequities in material resources. However, a sense of agency, displayed by some participants, indicated their determination to rise above the many forms of marginalisation and discrimination they experienced.
Humanities Education in the U.S. Rural South: Design, Development, and Practice

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a humanities education project that took place in a middle school in the rural U.S. South. Through a partnership between a state university and local school system, K-12 teachers engaged in two years of professional development on the integration of humanities education into the regular curriculum through project-based learning (PBL). During this project, teachers were required to personally and professionally engage with racial tensions rooted in the history of the local community as they learned to implement their PBL activities. This context is central to the design and implementation of the project as presented in this paper. We detail three learning strategies that emerged and how these were taken up by teachers: the personalization of history, historical perspective taking, and modeling a critical position. We discuss the implications of these strategies for integrating PBL and humanities education in a way that attends to socio-cultural-historical contexts. Implications for the practice of learning design in similar contexts are also discussed.
An Instance-based Multi-task Graph Network for Complex Facility Recognition in Remote Sensing Imagery

With the availability of very high-resolution remote sensing imagery, the fine-grained recognition of complex geospatial facilities has become possible. We can view these facilities as a combination of component objects with specific functions and distribution. However, the existing methods are insufficient in modeling spatial relations of component objects. In this paper, we propose an instance-based multi-task graph network (IBMG-Net) for complex facility recognition. Specifically, we perform pixel-level component objects prediction and facility recognition simultaneously and achieve performance improvement of both tasks by joint multi-tasking training. Given the component information, we build an instance-based graph neural network (IBGN) where components are defined as nodes and their spatial relations are encoded as edges. The IBGN module aim to flexibly model spatial relations of complex facility. To enhance the feature representation of component objects, we utilize the multi-scale region of interest module (MS-ROI) to retain all scale-specific features and the sparse context module(SCM) to aggregate long-range context information. In addition, we build a new multi-task dataset for complex facility recognition in remote sensing (MCF dataset) to verify the effectiveness of our method and alleviate the lack of pixel-level labeled multi-task datasets in remote sensing. Extensive experiments on MCF also indicate that the significant performance improvement of our approach to complex facility recognition.
Trends in Clinical Trial Registration in Dentistry: An Analysis of Registered Clinical Trials in the Clinical Research Information Service from 2013 to 2021 in South Korea

The Clinical Research Information Service (CRIS) in South Korea provides a clinical trial registry platform in which all clinical trials should be mandatorily and prospectively registered. However, to date, the registration status of clinical trials in the field of dentistry has not been investigated. Therefore, this study aimed to provide an overview of the methodological design and trends of the registered clinical trials over a period of nine years. Information about registered clinical trials in the field of dentistry from the CRIS was comprehensively collected from 2013 to 2021. The details assessed from the collected trials include: type of sponsors, recruitment status, study design, randomization, allocation concealment, single or multi-centric, retrospective or prospective registration, and publication status. A total of 65 registered clinical trials were identified. The number of clinical trials in dentistry in South Korea was found to be less; however, an increasing trend was observed in the recent three years. A majority of the trials were interventional (81.5%), single-centered (86.2%), and conducted on patients (81.5%) and in private hospitals (55.4%). A considerable number of trials had an unclear phase, were retrospectively registered, and rarely published. Regarding the quality, most trials have inadequately reported the method of randomization and allocation concealment. The number of clinical trials in dentistry is still low in South Korea, and most of them were registered retrospectively. A poor-quality reporting of methods at several specific areas was observed. It is necessary for dental investigators to raise awareness of the need to register clinical trials.
N-acetylcysteine Can Induce Massive Oxidative Stress, Resulting in Cell Death with Apoptotic Features in Human Leukemia Cells

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), often used as an antioxidant-scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vitro, was recently shown to increase the cytotoxicity of other compounds through ROS-dependent and ROS-independent mechanisms. In this study, NAC itself was found to induce extensive ROS production in human leukemia HL-60 and U937 cells. The cytotoxicity depends on ROS-modulating enzyme expression. In HL-60 cells, NAC activated NOX2 to produce superoxide (O2•−). Its subsequent conversion into H2O2 by superoxide dismutase 1 and 3 (SOD1, SOD3) and production of ClO− from H2O2 by myeloperoxidase (MPO) was necessary for cell death induction. While the addition of extracellular SOD potentiated NAC-induced cell death, extracellular catalase (CAT) prevented cell death in HL-60 cells. The MPO inhibitor partially reduced the number of dying HL-60 cells. In U937 cells, the weak cytotoxicity of NAC is probably caused by lower expression of NOX2, SOD1, SOD3, and by the absence of MOP expression. However, even here, the addition of extracellular SOD induced cell death in U937 cells, and this effect could be reversed by extracellular CAT. NAC-induced cell death exhibited predominantly apoptotic features in both cell lines. Conclusions: NAC itself can induce extensive production of O2•− in HL-60 and U937 cell lines. The fate of the cells then depends on the expression of enzymes that control the formation and conversion of ROS: NOX, SOD, and MPO. The mode of cell death in response to NAC treatment bears apoptotic and apoptotic-like features in both cell lines.
Postweaning administration of aqueous leaf extract of Gongronema latifolium may improve obesity indices in young adult offspring

Introduction: Metabolic diseases are multifactorial resulting from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and environmental influences. Genetic influence alone does not suffice to explain the rate at which these diseases have increased. Diet manipulations during critical developmental periods have been used to identify their contribution to obesity and diabetes development in offspring. Gongronema latifolium (GL) has been used for many generations for medicinal and nonmedicinal purposes. The leaves of GL are primarily used as spice and vegetable in traditional folk medicine. Aim: The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of postweaning consumption of aqueous leaf extract of GL on obesity indices in young adult offspring. Materials and Methods: Adult female Wistar rats were used and pregnancy was achieved by introducing matured male Wistar rats of proven fertility at the ratio of two females to one male during proestrus. At the day of delivery, adult female rats were randomly divided into two groups; Group I (normal control) and Groups II–IV (GL extract-treated group). The offspring of the different maternal groups also assumed their mothers' group. Group I was the normal control group while Groups II–IV were given 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg of GL extract, respectively. At postnatal day (PND), 21 offspring were weaned from their mothers and assumed the group of their mothers till PND 42. Parameters such as body weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, body weight-waist circumference ratio, insulin level, liver enzymes (ALT, ALP, and AST), and oral glucose tolerance were assessed in the experimental animals. Results: There was a significant decrease in anthropometric indices (body weight, BMI, waist circumference, body weight-waist circumference ratio) and serum ALT, ALP, and AST levels in the young adult offspring of the GL extract group. However, there was a significant (P < 0.05) increase in insulin level in offspring whose mothers consumed GL extract when compared to the values of the normal control. Conclusions: This study showed that postweaning consumption of GL had significant effects on anthropometric indices, hepatoactivity, insulin sensitivity, and blood glucose level.
Role of Cortico-ponto-cerebellar Tract from Supplementary Motor Area in Ataxic Hemiparesis of Supratentorial Stroke Patients

Cortical lesions of the supplementary motor area (SMA) are important in balance control and postural recovery in stroke patients, while the role of subcortical lesions of the SMA has not been studied. This study aimed to investigate the subcortical projections of the SMA and its relationship with ataxia in supratentorial stroke patients. Thirty-three patients with hemiparesis were divided into 3 groups (severe ataxia, n = 9; mild to moderate ataxia, n = 13; no ataxia, n = 11). Ataxia severity was assessed using the Scale for Ataxia Rating Assessment. Diffusion tensor imaging analysis used the fractional anisotropy (FA) values and tract volume as parameters of white matter tract degeneration. The FA values of regions related to ataxia were analyzed, that is the SMA, posterior limb of the internal capsule, basal ganglia, superior cerebellar peduncle, middle cerebellar peduncle, inferior cerebellar peduncle, and cerebellum. Tract volumes of the corticostriatal tract and cortico-ponto-cerebellar (CPC) tract originating from the SMA were evaluated. There were significant differences among the 3 groups in FA values of the subcortical regions of the CPC tract. Furthermore, the volume of the CPC tract originating from the SMA showed significant negative correlation with ataxia severity. There was no correlation between ataxia and corticostriatal tract volume. Therefore, we found that subcortical lesions of the CPC tract originating from the SMA could contribute to ataxia severity in stroke patients with ataxic hemiparesis.
A Smart Cell Monitoring System Based on Power Line Communication—Optimization of Instrumentation and Acquisition for Smart Battery Management

Energy density of current generation battery packs is insufficient for next generation electric vehicles nor the electrification of the aerospace industry. Currently, approximately a third of energy density is lost due to ancillary demands (e.g., cooling and instrumentation) within a pack, relative to cell energy density. Smart cells, instrumented cells with sensors and circuitry, offer a means to monitor cell performance (e.g. temperature, voltage, current data). Uniquely here we demonstrate our 21700 cells instrumented with internal thermistor sensing arrays with custom miniature interface circuitry including data acquisition and communication components. This circuitry including a power line communication (PLC) system, enables sensor data to be collected and transmitted to a master controller without requiring additional wiring, and can achieve an excellent <0.005 % message error rate. The control and communication system includes the use of adaptive sampling algorithms (during identified periods of low demand, through temperature and current measurements) the cells transmit data at 0.2 Hz, increasing to 5 Hz (normal operation) or 10 Hz (beyond operating limits). This method was demonstrated via drive cycling and external heating to alert the master controller to abnormal operating conditions (rapidly, to avoid missing key features) while saving 65% volume of data during a 90 minute experiment.
DC-bus voltage control of three-phase AC/DC PWM converters using feedback linearization

In this paper, a fast voltage control strategy of three-phase AC/DC pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converters applying a feedback linearization technique is proposed. First, incorporating the power balance of the input and output sides in system modeling, a nonlinear model of the PWM converter is derived with state variables such as AC input currents and DC output voltage. Then, by input-output feedback linearization, the system is linearized and a state feedback control law is obtained by pole placement. With this control scheme, output voltage responses become faster than those in a conventional cascade control structure. For robust control to parameter variations, integrators are added to the exact feedback control law. Since the fast voltage control is feasible for load changes, it is shown that the DC electrolytic capacitor size can be reduced. In addition, the capacitor current is analyzed for size reduction of the capacitor. As is usual with PWM converters, the input current is regulated to be sinusoidal and the source power factor can be controlled at unity. The experimental results are provided to verify the validity of the proposed control algorithm for a 1.5 kVA insulated gate bipolar transistor PWM converter system.
Hipernetch: High-Performance FPGA Network Switch

We present Hipernetch, a novel FPGA-based design for performing high-bandwidth network switching. FPGAs have recently become more popular in data centers due to their promising capabilities for a wide range of applications. With the recent surge in transceiver bandwidth, they could further benefit the implementation and refinement of network switches used in data centers. Hipernetch replaces the crossbar with a “combined parallel round-robin arbiter”. Unlike a crossbar, the combined parallel round-robin arbiter is easy to pipeline, and does not require centralised iterative scheduling algorithms that try to fit too many steps in a single or a few FPGA cycles. The result is a network switch implementation on FPGAs operating at a high frequency and with a low port-to-port latency. Our proposed Hipernetch architecture additionally provides a competitive switching performance approaching output-queued crossbar switches. Our implemented Hipernetch designs exhibit a throughput that exceeds 100 Gbps per port for switches of up to 16 ports, reaching an aggregate throughput of around 1.7 Tbps.
Solitary Nitric Oxide Signaling Mediates Mild Stress-Induced Anxiety and Norepinephrine Release in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis during Protracted Ethanol Withdrawal

Ethanol withdrawal (EtOHW) alters the pattern of neurohormonal and behavioral response toward internal and external stimuli, which mediates relapse to alcohol use even after a long period of abstinence. Increased noradrenergic signaling from the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) during EtOHW underlies withdrawal-induced anxiety, while nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors injected into the periaqueductal area attenuate EtOHW-induced anxiety. Therefore, this study investigated the involvement of NOS within the NTS in anxiety and increased norepinephrine (NE) release in the BNST during protracted EtOHW in rats exposed to a mild stress. Rats were intraperitoneally administered 3 g/kg/day EtOH for 21 days followed by 28 days of withdrawal, and on the 28th day of withdrawal, the rats were subjected to restraint stress for 7 minutes. The elevated plus maze test was employed to evaluate anxiety-like behavior in rats, and in vivo microdialysis was used to measure the extracellular NE level in the BNST. In elevated plus maze tests, EtOHW rats but not EtOH-naive rats exhibited anxiety-like behavior when challenged with 7-minute mild restraint stress, which was, respectively, mitigated by prior intra-NTS infusion of the nitric oxide scavenger 2-(4-carboxyphenyl)-4,4,5,5-tetramethylimidazoline-1-oxyl-3-oxide (carboxy-PTIO), nonselective NOS inhibitor NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), or selective neuronal NOS (nNOS) inhibitor 7-nitroindazole (7-NI). Each of these agents also decreased the plasma corticosterone levels in EtOHW rats. In in vivo microdialysis, prior intra-NTS infusion of carboxy-PTIO, L-NAME, or 7-NI attenuated the mild stress-induced NE release in the BNST of EtOHW rats. Additionally, EtOHW rats showed increased solitary nNOS gene and protein expression. Moreover, the anxiolytic effect of intra-NTS administration of 7-NI was abolished by subsequent intra-NTS administration of sodium nitroprusside. These results suggest that elevation of solitary nitric oxide signaling derived from nNOS mediates stress-precipitated anxiety and norepinephrine release in the BNST during protracted EtOHW.
Climate change and the UK house building sector: perceptions, impacts and adaptive capacity

This paper explores how climate change could affect the UK house-building sector, focusing on the question of how companies can adapt to changing climatic conditions. It presents the results of in-depth interviews in five house-building companies in the UK. We start from the assumption that climate change is only one driver among many, including technological innovation, shifting consumer expectations and changing regulation, that the industry faces. This approach draws on insights that are well established in the management and innovation literatures, but have often been neglected in studies of climate change. We report research about the perceptions of house builders about future impacts of climate change, potential adaptation measures that may be open to them and their ability to carry out these measures. The paper draws conclusions about the challenges that climate change presents to the UK house building industry. Cet article analyse comment les changements climatiques pourraient toucher le secteur de la construction de logements au Royaume-Uni en se concentrant sur la question de savoir comment les entreprises peuvent s'adapter aux changements climatiques. Il présente les résultats de consultations approfondies menées auprès de cinq grandes sociétés de construction de logements au Royaume-Uni. Nous partons de l'hypothèse que les changements climatiques ne sont qu'un facteur, parmi de nombreux autres, y compris l'innovation technologique, qui déplacent les attentes du consommateur et modifient les réglementations que les industries doivent respecter. Cette approche s'appuie sur des informations concernant des organisations bien établies dans le secteur de la gestion de la connaissance et de l'innovation mais qui ont souvent été négligées lors d'études sur les changements climatiques. Nous rendons compte de recherches sur la perception qu'ont les constructeurs de logements des impacts futurs des changements climatiques, des mesures d'adaptation possibles qui peuvent s'ouvrir à eux et sur leur possibilité à appliquer ces mesures. Cet article tire des conclusions sur les défis que constituent les changements climatiques pour l'industrie de la construction de logements au Royaume-Uni.