Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microwave-Assisted Extraction and In Vitro Antioxidant Evaluation of Polysaccharides from Enteromorpha prolifera

An efficient microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) technique was developed to extract polysaccharides from Enteromorpha prolifera (PEP). The operating parameters, such as microwave power, liquid/material ratio, temperature and extraction time, were optimized using orthogonal array design coupled with single factor method. PEP yield was determined by the phenol-sulfuric acid method. The optimum extraction conditions were determined as follows: microwave power, 700 W; liquid/material ratio, 40:1 (mL/g); temperature, 70 °C; and extraction time, 25 min. Under such conditions, PEP yield reached to 10.79 %. In comparison with conventional hot water extraction and ultrasonic-assisted extraction, MAE showed obvious advantages in terms of high extraction efficiency, saving energy, rapidity, solvent consumption, and so on. The data demonstrated that MAE could be a fast and reliable method for quantitative analysis of PEP. The scavenging capability of PEP to DPPH/hydroxyl radical reached to 65.2 % and 41.2 % at the concentration of 0.5 mg/mL. The reducing power of PEP was 0.354. Compared with butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and gallic acid (GA), the experimental results showed that DPPH radical scavenging activity of PEP was higher than that of BHT. Thus, PEP had good potential as a natural antioxidant used in functional food or medicine industries.
Competitive Advantage of Environmental Management and Green Innovation

La gestion basada en el medio ambiente es un tema que se esta discutiendo ampliamente en varias publicaciones. Este estudio utiliza el metodo mixto con cuestionario; el mismo se distribuye a 110 encuestados, entrevistandose ademas a 3 informantes de la gerencia de BUMDES. El resultado de este estudio muestra que la gestion ambiental y la innovacion ecologica pueden tener un efecto positivo y significativo en la ventaja competitiva y el desempeno de la empresa. Se espera que el resultado de este estudio pueda ayudar al gobierno y a los gerentes de BUMDES a desarrollar aun mas la gestion ambiental y la innovacion ecologica.
Demonstration of a six-dot quantum cellular automata system

We report an experimental demonstration of a logic cell for quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA). This nanostructure-based computational paradigm allows logic function implementation without the use of transistors. The four-dot QCA cell is defined by a pair of series-connected double dots, and the coupling between the input and the output double dots is provided by lithographically defined capacitors. We demonstrate that, at low temperature, an electron switch in the input double dot induces an opposite electron switch in the output double dot, resulting in a polarization change of the QCA cell. Switching is verified from the electrometer signals, which are coupled to the output double dot. We perform theoretical simulations of the device characteristics and find excellent agreement with theory.
The Influence of Mobile Phone Users on the Design of 3G Products and Services

This article discusses some examples of the social practices that dominate the ways in which many people have appropriated mobile communications. It will explore how these behaviours might have a bearing upon the arrival of future 3G (third generation) mobile communications products and services by examining how, alongside the continued demand for innovation and design in mobile communications, some very simple functional, economic and emotional needs are defining the basic requirements for mobile communications.
Crop management strategies to improve forage rape seed yield

In New Zealand, forage rape (Brassica napus L.) is an important supplementary feed crop in animal production systems. Detailed investigations on seed production are limited and strategies for maximising seed production are not well understood. The objective was to increase seed yield of forage rape by manipulating crop architecture using combinations of mechanical topping, plant growth regulators (difenoconazole and paclobutrazol) and sowing date. Data were collected for components of yield, including dissection of plants into four seed fractions. Topping at yellow bud or delaying sowing until April significantly (P<0.05) increased seed yield by 40-60% compared with control treatments. On average, 85% of seed was from secondary racemes with 60% coming from middle and lower racemes. Plant height was significantly (P<0.05) different among treatments. Seed yield of forage rape can be influenced by manipulation of crop architecture through mechanical topping and sowing date. There is therefore scope for forage seed growers to improve seed yield of forage rape through adoption of simple improvements in practice.
The StyleGestures entry to the GENEA Challenge 2020

This paper describes the StyleGestures entry to the GENEA (Generation and Evaluation of Non-verbal Behaviour for Embodied Agents) challenge 2020. The GENEA challenge is a recent initiative designed to benchmark and compare systems for gesture generation by providing a common dataset and evaluation. For this first edition of the challenge, we submitted our recently published probabilistic gesture synthesis system based on normalising flows. Only minor adjustments were made to the published system. The method takes speech audio as input and generates new gesture poses in a continuous fashion. As the method is probabilistic, a large variety of gestures can be sampled from the same speech audio. The system can be trained end-to-end and requires no manual annotation. We were pleased to see that our system ranked as one of the top two systems in both challenge evaluations, even though we only used audio as input and did not exploit the text transcriptions.
Factors Affecting Coffee ( Coffea Arabica L.) Quality in Ethiopia: A Review

Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) is the most significant crop and is consumed all over the world. Twenty-five percent of Ethiopia's population is dependent on the coffee business. Coffee quality can be affected by a variety of factors, including genetic and environmental factors, as well as the level of care given from the field to the bloodletting. On those factors, various studies have been conducted. As a result, this review aims to find out the elements that influence coffee quality in Ethiopia, as well as the analysis gap in coffee quality. Cup quality is also a fancy attribute that is influenced by several elements such as genetics, ecology, cultivation, processing method systems, and storage conditions. One of the most important stages in the preparation of any agricultural product, including coffee, is storage. The quality of coffee is affected by post-harvest operations and the plant's structure. Every stakeholder, including farmers' awareness, has played a part in Ethiopia's intriguing coffee quality.
Characteristics of Cavitation Erosion Using Image Processing Techniques

This paper deals with the analysis of eroded surfaces obtained from cavitation-erosion experiments on stainless steel in water and oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions using image processing. Two analysis techniques that are very promising in this respect are the wavelet decomposition transform and fractals. These can be used to extract parameters that characterize the cavitation intensity in a similar manner to that of the mean depth of erosion (MDP). The extracted parameters are the wavelet energy and entropy as well as the fractal dimension. Both of the image feature parameters and the MDP decrease with adding oil to water. Also, it was found that the variation of image feature parameters versus concentration of oil-in-water emulsions has a general trend that does not depend on magnification factor. The cavitation erosion behavior and mechanism for water and o/w emulsions were analyzed and it was found that the predominant failure mode was fatigue for water and o/w emulsions. The results show that a corrosive effect appears at 5 and 10 wt% o/w emulsions.
Learning Representations for Anonymizing Sensor Data in IoT Applications

Recent years have witnessed a growth in the deployment of IoT devices in homes and workplaces. The number of IoT devices is projected to surpass tens of billions in the near future. This rapid growth can be credited to useful insights and convenience offered by IoT services and applications. A typical IoT device is equipped with one or several sensors which are capable of collecting high-fidelity and high-sample-rate data from the environment, often without notifying the user. This ubiquitous and inconspicuous data collection threatens user privacy as the collected data may contain private or sensitive information which can be extracted by malicious applications through unsolicited inferences. This thesis investigates potential solutions based on generative machine learning models to limit the accuracy of privacy-intrusive inferences with an imperceptible impact on the accuracy of useful and desired
24 Months Inhalation Carcinogenicity Study of Bitumen Fumes in Wistar (WU) Rats

I n the United States the terms bitumen and asphalt are synonymous. Bitumen is a complex mixture of a large number of high molecular weight organic compounds made by processing of petroleum crude oils. (1) Depending on the type of application, different grades of bitumen are used. The profile of volatile components (either as gases or aerosols) produced depends on the type of bitumen and its working temperature. Bitumen fumes were characterized and described, e.g., by Thayer et al.(2) Belinsky et al.(3) Knecht et al.(4) and Burstyn et al.(5) The difficulty is to decide whether laboratory derived bitumen fume is representative for typical working conditions. It is known that bitumen and bitumen fumes contain small amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) but the concentrations are several orders of magnitude lower when compared to coal tar. Occupational exposure to fumes originating from hot bitumen may occur via inhalation or contact to the skin. Major industrial applications of bitumen are road paving and roofing. Generally, the temperature of the heated bitumen is higher for roofing applications compared to paving of roads. (6) The fumes comprise a mixture of gaseous and aerosol components; the ratio of these components will vary depending upon the working conditions. (6) Concern has been expressed about potential health effects (irritation and carcinogenicity of the skin and respiratory tract), particularly in view of the potential for long-term exposure to PAHs present in bitumen. (7) Therefore, numerous epidemiological and toxicological studies have been performed. Partanen and Boffetta(8) conducted a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies involving pavers and highway workers exposed to bitumen and did not find overall evidence for lung cancer risk among pavers. The conclusions of the epidemiological study published by Boffetta et al.(9,10) are:
Propagation Constant Below Cutoff Frequency in a Circular Waveguide with Conducting Medium

Exact and approximate propagation characteristics of normal modes in the cutoff region of a circular waveguide surrounded by a medium of finite conductivity are discussed. An exact solution is obtained by numerical analysis, and an approximate one is derived by expanding the characteristic equation considering the finite conductivity of the cylinder wall. The computed values are compared with experimental ones. It is shown that the attenuation of TM/sub 01/ mode at frequencies that are much lower than the cutoff frequency is constant, i.e., independent of frequency and the material constants of the external medium, and this mode is the most suitable one for realizing a precision circular piston attenuator.
A short tutorial contribution to impedance and AC-electrokinetic characterization and manipulation of cells and media: Are electric methods more versatile than acoustic and laser methods?

Abstract Lab-on-chip systems (LOCs) can be used as in vitro systems for cell culture or manipulation in order to analyze or monitor physiological cell parameters. LOCs may combine microfluidic structures with integrated elements such as piezo-transducers, optical tweezers or electrodes for AC-electrokinetic cell and media manipulations. The wide frequency band (<1 kHz to >1 GHz) usable for AC-electrokinetic manipulation and characterization permits avoiding electrochemical electrode processes, undesired cell damage, and provides a choice between different polarization effects that permit a high electric contrast between the cells and the external medium as well as the differentiation between cellular subpopulations according to a variety of parameters. It has been shown that structural polarization effects do not only determine the impedance of cell suspensions and the force effects in AC-electrokinetics but can also be used for the manipulation of media with inhomogeneous temperature distributions. This manuscript considers the interrelations of the impedance of suspensions of cells and AC-electrokinetic single cell effects, such as electroorientation, electrodeformation, dielectrophoresis, electrorotation, and travelling wave (TW) dielectrophoresis. Unified models have allowed us to derive new characteristic equations for the impedance of a suspension of spherical cells, TW dielectrophoresis, and TW pumping. A critical review of the working principles of electro-osmotic, TW and electrothermal micropumps shows the superiority of the electrothermal pumps. Finally, examples are shown for LOC elements that can be produced as metallic structures on glass chips, which may form the bottom plate for self-sealing microfluidic systems. The structures can be used for cell characterization and manipulation but also to realize micropumps or sensors for pH, metabolites, cell-adhesion, etc.
Improving transverse actuation of piezoceramics using interdigitated surface electrodes

The possibility of using interdigitated surface electrode patterns to improve the transverse actuation capability of electroceramic actuators is investigated. This pattern produces nonuniform electrical fields in the plane of the wafer which utilize the longitudinal piezoelectric effect to generate larger, more anisotropic planar actuation than conventional piezoelectric devices. Analytical models are developed for a representative electroceramic volume element of a piezoelectric wafer with interdigitated electrodes. These models incorporate full electromechanical coupling through the constitutive relations and are solved using approximate energy methods. The analytical models are compared to piezoelectric finite element solutions. The analysis predicts a range of electrode thickness and spacings which can increase the achievable transverse actuation. An experimental program was performed to validate the analytical results. The experimental results verified the analytical prediction of highly orthotropic large magnitude in plane strains.
Mechanism Analysis of the Influence of Seat Attributes on the Seat Dip Effect in Music Halls

The seat dip effect (SDE) is an acoustic phenomenon of low-frequency band attenuation that occurs in the music halls when the sound of the music passes at a near grazing incidence over the seats. In this paper, the numerical simulations on the basis of the finite element method are conducted to study the influence of seat attributes (seat height, seat spacing and seat absorption) on the SDE and the corresponding mechanism. The mapping of sound spatial distribution related to the SDE is employed to observe the behavior of sound between the seats. The results show that the dip frequency of the SDE can be shifted to frequencies lower than theoretical values when the seat height is smaller than the seat spacing. Additionally, the SDE attenuation can be distinctly suppressed in a sequence from the front seats to the rear seats with an absorption improvement to the seat back or cushion, and the seat back absorption is more effective than the cushion absorption. A mechanism analysis reveals that the SDE is highly associated with standing waves inside the seat gaps and with the “diffusion” effect on the grazing incident waves by energy flow vortexes around the top surfaces of the seats.
Development of monopoly mite game as a health promotion media to increase knowledge and understanding about house dust mites in student boarding house

Student’s knowledge of house dust mite (TDR) is still limited as well as the learning media used are uncomplicated. However, aside from learning outcome, knowledge of environmental health and hygiene are ignored. This study aims to produce health promotion media and analyze the effectiveness. This type of study was conducted by Research and Development (R&D) modified model by Borg & Gall. Data were collected from material expert, media expert, and extensive trial (experiments) that involving 30 students of Biology education department who have taken parasitology courses. As data analysis uses paired t-test (paired sample t-test). The result of the Mite Game Monopoly health media promotion products shows the validation of media experts and material experts are categorized very well with percentages of 97% and 89%. The result of data analysis obtained a value P < 0.05 which means there is a significant difference in the average value of pretest and posttest, it shows an increase of knowledge and understanding of TDR between before and after using the Mite Game Monopoly media.
Comparison of efficacy of Infliximab and Etanercept on Rheumatoid Arthritis patients

Background: This study aims to to compare the efficacy of infliximab and etanercept in Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients to help clinicians select the most effective treatment options. Methods and Materials: This was a retrospective cohort study conducted in Urmia, Iran, from March 21, 2017, to February 20, 2018. The data were collected by checklists from RA patients referred to the rheumatology clinic of Urmia Imam Khomeini Hospital who were receiving either infliximab or eetanercept . Inclusion criteria were: the diagnosis of RA according to revised 2016 criteria of American college of Rheumatology(ACR)/ European League Against Rheumatism, patients aged over 18, consented to participate in the study and poor response to other drugs. Both genders were included. Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR), C Reactive Protein (CRP), Tender Joint Count (TJC), Swollen Joint Count (SJC), and Disease Activity Score (DAS) (28 scores) were analyzed before and after the treatment. Findings: In a total of 44 eligible patients, 13 patients received infliximab and 31 received etanercept . The mean age was 53.92 ± 10.94 and 52.8±64.13 in infliximab and etanercept groups, respectively. No significant differences were reported, concerning ESR (p= 0.97) and CRP (p= 0.96), while a significant decrease in the Infliximab group compared to the etanercept group was demonstrated in terms of DAS28 scores (p=0.028), Global Health (GH) (p=0.005), SJC (p=0.008), and TJC (p=0.01). Conclusion: This study demonstrated a significant difference between the two groups in the DAS scores 28, SJC, TJC, and GH.
Ridge preservation with OSSEO+ compared to Cenobone for implant site development: a clinical and histologic study in humans

This randomized double blind clinical trial was accomplished on 20 patients. Subjects were divided into two groups of 10 each with respect to similarity in age, gender, jaw being treated and cigarette smoking habits. The effect of each material was studied clinically and histologically. Horizontal and vertical ridge dimensions were determined immediately after tooth extraction and three months later before implant placement. Three months after application of each material, histologic analysis of the trephine cores was done to determine the percentage of vital, non-vital, trabecular, amorphous bones and number of osteoblasts. Statistical analysis was done using Repeated Measure ANOVA . T-test was used for statistical analysis of bone formation.
Does the Determinant of Technology Affect the Indonesian Government Accountability

This quantitative descriptive study aims to analyze the relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) factors that have been adopted by local governments in Indonesia on the Public Accountability (Y). Using a purposive sampling technique, panel data were obtained as many as 450 observations from 150 districts in the 2017-2019 period. Descriptive analysis and regression of panel data using software Eviews 09. The findings of this study explain that ICT Determinants simultaneously show a relationship significant through the F-statistic test. While the t-test used to test the effect of each independent variable has various results. The partial test demonstrates that Technology Development (X3), Website Accessibility (X5), and Press Visibility (X6) affect Public Accountability, but the research has not been able to find a significant relationship between Telecommunication Networks (X1), Internet Access (X2), e-Government (X4), and Electronic Procurement (X7) on Public Accountability. The results of this study can be used as consideration for the government in formulating policies related to ICT in order to realize public accountability.
FATIGUE PERFORMANCE OF COMPOSITE TUBULAR K-JOINTS FOR TRUSS TYPE BRIDGE

The structural performances of composite tubular K-joint leading to real truss bridge construction of high speed Shinkansen train are presented. The experimental studies on improving the fatigue performance of welded steel tubular joints by upgrading the structural joint details and improving the weld toe profiles were carried out on ten tubular K-joints under repeated constant amplitude load. The behaviour of all joints were examined through the analyses and the tests. The results suggest that concrete filled tubular joints are able to improve the fatigue strength substantially compared to unfilled joint.
Formal and informal contracting processes in the competitive dialogue procedure: a multiple case-study (on-line)

The competitive dialogue (CD) procedure aims to align the complex demands of principals with possible solutions that contractors have to offer. It is, however, unclear how formal and informal structures and processes in the CD are interrelated and how they determine its effectiveness. The major question in this study is how informal and formal contracting processes differ between projects procured through the CD and comparable projects that are traditionally procured. In a theoretical framework, it is shown that both the negotiations and the commitment stages consist of a formal part (formal bargaining/formal legal contract) and an informal part (informal sense-making/informal psychological contract), and that these dynamically interact as problems of understanding are identified and resolved. These elements and their interactions are studied in four comparable construction projects. The results of this multiple-case study show that commitments and negotiations can substitute for one another, whereas the formal and informal processes within these stages are complementary. Problems of understanding are key in the development of both formal and informal contracts
Scalable design of DEAP for energy harvesting utilizing PolyPower

Design and manufacture of DEAP based devices used for energy harvesting is a challenging multidiscipline task. Research has predominately focused on small scale proof of concept designs and human powered size devices. Methods for scaling from the proof of concept size into large scale DEAP devices are addressed. DEAP material properties for energy harvesting applications are established. Results of the mechanical and electrical characterization of large scale DEAP energy harvesting devices are presented. Manufacturing and quality controls concepts used by Danfoss PolyPower for large scale energy harvesting are presented.