Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Numerical investigation of CSP air cooled condenser fan

CSP power plants are usually installed in desert regions due to the high availability of direct normal irradiance during the year. This usually entails the unavailability of water to be used for condensation in Rankine cycle and the consequent choice of air-cooled condensers (ACCs) [1]. When dealing with ACCs the main mechanical component is the fan, that drives fresh air towards the heat exchangers driving all the process. The main characteristic of this fan is its size that spans from 7 to 13 m of external diameters, thus resulting in a series of technical problems to be addressed. Such high-volume and low speed fans present critical problem during the testing phase [2]. This dissertation focuses on the certification of fan performance, that follows ISO 5801 [3]. Given the size of the actual ACC fan, it is not possible to test it in its full-size, but scaling of the device is required to fit it to smaller facilities, like the Stellenbosh laboratory that was used in this case, where the maximum diameter is fixed at 1.5 m. This of course poses some problems when scaling performance (previous works [4] showed that the scaled performance fits quite well the full size pressure ratio, whilst underestimating efficiency). Another issue in this case is the derating of performance from ISO to real-life installation layout, that is a key issue like in most fan installations. In the following a series of CFD simulations is performed to address this issue and calculate the characteristic curve of the fan in real life installation setup. The setup that is reproduced here is the test-facility for ACCs that was built in Stellenbosh University under Minwater CSP H2020 project [5].
Efficient Offline Outer/Inner DAC Mismatch Calibration in Wideband ΔΣ ADCs

Distortion due to feedback DAC mismatch is a key limitation in $\Delta \Sigma $ ADCs for wideband wireless communications. This article presents an efficient frequency-domain mask-based offline mismatch calibration method of both the outer DAC and the inner DACs in a $\Delta \Sigma $ ADC. The test stimulus for the calibration is a two-tone signal near the band edge. To avoid the need for high-performance signal generation, a frequency mask is applied to void the stimulus signal and its phase noise. In this way, the method is robust against distortion and jitter in the stimulus signal, which therefore could be combined from two low-quality signal generators. The two-tone band-edge signal has the additional benefit that the number of needed samples of the excitation signal is very modest because as many intermodulations as possible contribute to the calculation of the mismatch errors of the DACs. Experimental results confirming the calibration method are obtained from a prototype chip, designed for an 85MHz signal bandwidth in 28nm CMOS technology. A two-tone stimulus around 78 MHz is applied to calculate the mismatch of the outer DAC and the inner DAC with only 68K samples. With the DACs calibrated, an SFDR improvement of 28.1 dB is achieved for a single-tone input at 5 MHz, while for a two-tone input around 71 MHz, the IM3 is improved from −63.6 dBc to below the noise floor (<−94.1 dBc). This illustrates the effectiveness of the approach.
Trichoderma efficiency in the maintenance and productivity of soybean plants in producing savanna regions, Tocantins, Brazil

Trichoderma is a natural soil fungus that has been extensively studied and used in agricultural production as a biofertilizer and soil inoculant. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate the efficiency of Trichoderma in maintenance and productivity of soybean plants in producing savanna regions, Tocantins, Brazil. Experiments were carried out in three regions in the state of Tocantins, Gurupi, Alvorada and Crixas. The experimental design was performed in a randomized block with four replicates. The treatments were composed by the control without inoculation and inoculation of Trichoderma (Trichoderma asperellum) at the dose of 2 kg ha-1. The inoculation of Trichoderma asperellum, strain UFT 201, promoted the initial and final maintenance of plants in all the experiments in the different regions and increased also the productivity in the experiments in Gurupi and Crixas regions. For the experiment in Gurupi, the treatment with Trichoderma inoculation was also higher in relation to control, with production of 2514 kg ha-1, which represented an increase above 34.5%. In Crixas the treatments with the inoculation of Trichoderma presented a production of 3840 kg ha-1, 33% higher than the control that was of 2880 kg ha-1.
Intelligent Cloud Based Heart Disease Prediction System Empowered with Supervised Machine Learning

: The innovation in technologies related to health facilities today is increasingly helping to manage patients with different diseases. The most fatal of these is the issue of heart disease that cannot be detected from a naked eye, and attacks as soon as the human exceeds the allowed range of vital signs like pulse rate, body temperature, and blood pressure. The real challenge is to diagnose patients with more diagnostic accuracy and in a timely manner, followed by prescribing appropriate treatments and keeping prescription errors to a minimum. In developing countries, the domain of healthcare is progressing day by day using different Smart healthcare: emerging technologies like cloud computing, fog computing, and mobile computing. Electronic health records (EHRs) are used to manage the huge volume of data using cloud computing. That reduces the storage, processing, and retrieval cost as well as ensuring the availability of data. Machine learning procedures are used to extract hidden patterns and data analytics. In this research, a combination of cloud computing and machine learning algorithm Support vector machine (SVM) is used to predict heart diseases. Simulation results have shown that the proposed intelligent cloud-based heart disease prediction system empowered with a Support vector machine (SVM)-based system model gives 93.33% accuracy, which is better than previously published approaches.
Spectral Efficiency Enhanced Cooperative Device-to-Device Systems With NOMA

This paper considers a cooperative device-to-device (D2D) system with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). We assume that the base station (BS) can simultaneously communicate with all users to satisfy the full information transmission requirement. In order to characterize the impact of the weak channel and different decoding schemes, two novel decoding strategies are introduced: single signal decoding scheme and maximum ratio combining (MRC) decoding scheme, respectively. With the single signal decoding scheme, the users decode the received signals immediately after the receptions from the BS. On the other hand, the MRC decoding scheme jointly decodes the received signals via MRC until the corresponding phase comes and the users jointly decode the received signals by employing MRC. Considering Rayleigh fading channels, the ergodic sum-rate (SR), outage probability and outage capacity of the proposed D2D-NOMA system are analyzed. Moreover, approximate expressions for the ergodic SR are also provided with a negligible performance loss. Numerical results demonstrate that the ergodic SR and outage probability of the proposed D2D-NOMA scheme overwhelm that of the conventional NOMA schemes. Furthermore, it is also revealed that the system performance including the ergodic SR and outage probability are limited by the weak channel for both the single signal decoding scheme and conventional NOMA schemes, but not for the MRC decoding scheme.
The Contingent Effects of New Venture's Improvisational Capability and Ambidextrous Search

Despite the growing interests on the construct of improvisation, there is a limited understanding of the specific conditions under which improvisational capability can be shaped and effectively drive the performance. This article explores the antecedents and outcomes of the new venture's improvisational capability. We propose that the “proactive-reactive” search helps build improvisational capability in the interaction with environmental turbulence. Based on a sample of 257 Chinese start-ups, the hierarchical linear regression model was used to test hypotheses. We find that, in fast-changing environments, proactive search has an enhanced positive association with improvisational capability, but under low environmental turbulence, only the reactive search is effectual. Our findings also demonstrate that the effect of improvisational capability in driving a new firm's performance depends on the level of environmental turbulence.
Hermatomyces trangensis sp. nov., a new dematiaceous hyphomycete (Hermatomycetaceae, Pleosporales) on sugar palm in Thailand

A new species of a hyphomycetous fungus, Hermatomyces trangensis, was collected during an investigation of the diversity of palm fungi in Na Yong district, Trang province, Southern Thailand, and is introduced in this paper based on morphological and molecular evidence. The fungus is characterized by the production of only one type of conidia, globose or subglobose in front view, broadly ellipsoidal or oblong in lateral view, with dark brown to black central cells and subhyaline to pale brown peripheral cells and sporulation in culture. Phylogenetic analyses of combined SSU rDNA, LSU rDNA, ITS rDNA, TEF1 and RPB2 sequence data using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference approaches placed the fungus within a strongly supported clade with other Hermatomyces species within the family Hermatomycetaceae (Pleosporales, Dothideomycetes). Morphologically, it is similar to other taxa with only one type of conidia such as H. sphaericus, H. sphaericoides and H. verrucosus but molecular data clearly support H. trangensis as distinct from those species.
Who Are The Traditional Healers Treating Mental Illnesses In Rural Ethiopia? A population-Based Descriptive Study

Background Ethiopia is a traditional country with a pluralistic health care system where people use the traditional health care systems in combination with the modern health care. In view of this, we assessed the profile of faith and traditional healers and their experience in treating people with mental illness in rural district Ethiopia so that inform the health minister to consider working towards integration with modern biomedical care to improve access. Methods We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study among 173 traditional healers in Sodo district of Ethiopia. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews by trained enumerators using pretested structured questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Result The median age of traditional and faith based healers was 55 (IQR=48.5, 67 years), about a third (29.5%) of them were female and 54(31.2%) earned their living exclusively from traditional healing practice. Eighty six (48.6%) healers didn’t attend formal education. Four types of healers were identified-herbalists accounted for 59% (n=102), faith healers were 36 (20.8%) mixed herbal and faith practitioners were 19(11.0%) and 16 (9.2%) were diviners. Most, 119(69%) had been practicing for an average of 15 years. Half of healers entered into the healing practice due to family kinship, whereas 26(15%) because of ancestral spirit. Seventy one (41%) of the healers reported that they have ever treated patients with mental illness in their lifetime. Sixty three(36.4%) reported that they had treated mental illness within the past one year, of which 30(47%) treat only mental illness while 33(52%) treat both mental and physical illnesses. All faith healers and divine healers reported treating mental illness while 11(57.9%) of mixed healers, and no herbalists reported treating mental illness. Only 58(33.5%) believed that mental illness can be cured completely. Conclusion Significant proportion of traditional healers manages mental illness and remains an important part of the healthcare system in the rural setting of Ethiopia. Herbalists believed that biomedical treatments are preferable for mental illnesses, while faith healers and diviners believed traditional practices alone or in combination with biomedical practices is the treatment of choice.
Nuclear Morphometric Study in Different Thyroid Lesions

Most of thyroid nodules are benign, while malignant thyroid tumors represents only 5– 24% of cases. However, there is increase in thyroid cancer incidence in the last 30 years (Colonna et al., 2010) and (Cătană et al., 2012). Thyroid carcinoma is the most common malignancy of the endocrine system (Ozolins et al., 2012). According to Egyptian National Cancer Institute, thyroid carcinoma constituted a majority of 65.31% of endocrine malignant tumors. The most common malignant tumor of thyroid gland is papillary carcinoma accounting for 67.6% (Mokhtar et al., 2007).
The effects of 17β-estradiol on striatal dopamine transmission and its implications for responsivity to antipsychotics in female rats

There are sex differences in the symptom manifestation of schizophrenia as well as in the response to antipsychotics. For example, women respond better to antipsychotic treatment when estrogens are used as an adjuvant therapy. This has led to the question of whether sex hormones play a role in the neurobiology of this disorder and/or the response to treatments. The earliest version of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia proposed that this disorder is associated with hyperactive striatal dopamine transmission and most antipsychotics antagonize dopamine D2 receptors. Yet, estrogens themselves have been shown to enhance striatal dopamine transmission; suggesting a paradox. This thesis examined the relationship between one estrogen, 17β-estradiol, and dopamine, and the mechanisms through which 17β-estradiol affects D2 receptors. Specifically, the effects of 17β-estradiol on tonic/phasic dorsal striatal dopamine release was measured. The effects of 17β-estradiol on specifically phasic dorsal striatal dopamine release was examined. It was shown that 17β-estradiol rapidly increases both tonic and phasic dorsal striatal dopamine release in vivo in anesthetized female rats. The rodent model of amphetamine sensitization, which mimics in rats some of the neuronal changes thought to occur in schizophrenia, was then used for the ensuing two studies. In those experiments, the mechanisms through which 17β-estradiol and the antipsychotic, haloperidol, affect dopamine transmission were explored via their effects on dopamine D2 receptor affinity and some of its second messenger proteins (i.e., Akt, phosphorylated Akt, and β-arrestin). Both 17β-estradiol and haloperidol increase the affinity of D2High and D2Low receptors. Additionally, the combination of 17β-estradiol and haloperidol together decrease the proportion of dopamine D2 receptors in the high affinity state. However, there were no observed effects on second messenger proteins. These studies provide one potential mechanism, i.e., via dopamine D2 receptor affinity state, through which 17β-estradiol in conjunction with the antipsychotic, haloperidol, may enhance its effects on reducing striatal dopamine transmission despite increasing dopamine release. These data have implications for the beneficial effects of estrogens in the treatment of schizophrenia in women.
Resilience of benthic diatom communities in Mediterranean streams: role of endangered species

The extent of drought in Mediterranean streams has been intensifying recently, and the mean annual discharge is expected to experience a decreasing trend in coming years, with significant effects on aquatic ecosystems. The aim of this study was to analyse colonisation patterns of diatom communities that differed in terms of taxonomic composition and percentage of endangered taxa exploring the possible development of resistance mechanisms. To this end, we selected three Mediterranean streams comparable in terms of water quality, but different in terms of surrounding land use, and we performed two experimental treatments. The first treatment consisted in artificially drying and cleaning of substrates (cobbles) to analyse the post-drought recolonisation process that is only driven by drift and immigration. In the second treatment cobbles coming from a site experiencing a seasonal drought were transplanted upstream in a perennial stretch to explore the possible development of resistance mechanisms within diatom communities periodically exposed to droughts. We observed that stream identity played an important role in determining diatom assemblage composition. Highly natural stretches had a high abundance of endangered species, which were less resilient to drought than assemblages composed of general and widespread taxa. Moreover, according to our results, resistance mechanisms did not play a significant role in recovery patterns. Improving our knowledge of diatom resilience mechanisms is very important in a global climate change scenario, especially in Mediterranean streams.
Highly replicated sampling reveals no diurnal vertical migration but stable species-specific vertical habitats in planktonic foraminifera

Diurnal vertical migration (DVM) is a widespread phenomenon in the upper ocean, but it remains unclear to what degree it also involves passively transported micro- and meso-zooplankton. These organisms are difficult to monitor by in situ sensing and observations from discrete samples are often inconclusive. Prime examples of such ambiguity are planktonic foraminifera, where contradictory evidence for DVM continues to cast doubt on the stability of species vertical habitats, which introduces uncertainties in geochemical proxy interpretation. To provide a robust answer, we carried out highly replicated randomized sampling with 41 vertically resolved plankton net hauls taken within 26 hours in a confined area of 400 km2 in the tropical North Atlantic, where DVM in larger plankton occurs. Manual enumeration of planktonic foraminifera cell density consistently reveals the highest total cell concentrations in the surface mixed layer (top 50 m) and analysis of cell density in seven individual species representing different shell sizes, life strategies and presumed depth habitats reveals consistent vertical habitats not changing over the 26 hours sampling period. These observations robustly reject the existence of DVM in planktonic foraminifera in a setting where DVM occurs in other organisms.
Discourse Markers Activate Their, Like, Cohort Competitors

ABSTRACT Speech in everyday conversations is riddled with discourse markers (DMs), such as well, you know, and like. However, in many lab-based studies of speech comprehension, such DMs are typically absent from the carefully articulated and highly controlled speech stimuli. As such, little is known about how these DMs influence online word recognition. The present study specifically investigated the online processing of DM like and how it influences the activation of words in the mental lexicon. We specifically targeted the cohort competitor (CC) effect in the Visual World Paradigm: Upon hearing spoken instructions to “pick up the beaker,” human listeners also typically fixate—next to the target object—referents that overlap phonologically with the target word (cohort competitors such as beetle; CCs). However, several studies have argued that CC effects are constrained by syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints. Therefore, the present study investigated whether DM like influences online word recognition by activating its cohort competitors (e.g., lightbulb). In an eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm, we demonstrate that when participants heard spoken instructions such as “Now press the button for the, like … unicycle,” they showed anticipatory looks to the CC referent (lightbulb)well before hearing the target. This CC effect was sustained for a relatively long period of time, even despite hearing disambiguating information (i.e., the /k/ in like). Analysis of the reaction times also showed that participants were significantly faster to select CC targets (lightbulb) when preceded by DM like. These findings suggest that seemingly trivial DMs, such as like, activate their CCs, impacting online word recognition. Thus, we advocate a more holistic perspective on spoken language comprehension in naturalistic communication, including the processing of DMs.
FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF LOTION AND CREAM OF NANOSIZED CHITOSAN-MANGOSTEEN (Garcinia mangostana L.) PERICARP EXTRACT

Nanosized chitosan-mangosteen pericarp extract has antiacne activity against Pseudomonas acnes. This study aimed to formulate and evaluate of lotions and creams of nanosized mangosteen pericarp extract. Lotions were formulated with various suspending agents, i.e. xanthan gum, carboxymethylcellulose, and bentonite magma. Creams were formulated with various ingredients of the oil phase, i.e. adeps lanae, liquid paraffin, and glycerin. Evaluation of lotions and creams for six-week observation includes organoleptic characteristics, homogeneity, pH, viscosity, irritancy test, and a preference test. Data were shown as mean and standard deviation, then statistically analyzed using one-way analysis of variance. The results were showing that the mangosteen pericarp extract can be prepared as a nanosized particle, then formulated as lotions and creams with various formulas. All lotions and creams met the requirements and non-irritating. FC3 was the most preferred formula.
Clinical outcome of pediatric hand burns and evaluation of neglect as a leading cause: A retrospective study

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Majority of the pediatric burns happen when an adult is nearby the child. This suggests the role of adult carelessness or neglect as a cause of burns. The aim of this study is to provide clinical data on pediatric hand burns and to draw attention to the role of neglect in pediatric burn injuries. METHODS: Children admitted to a tertiary burn center between September 2017 and October 2018 were included in the study. Epidemiological data including age, sex, etiology and place of injury, presence of caregiver nearby, physical signs of neglect or abuse, clinical outcomes including burned total body surface area, length of admittance, and complications were recorded. RESULTS: A total of 335 pediatric burns were admitted to the burn center. Among them 89 patients with hand involvement were included in the study. Most of the patients were under the age of 6 (79.8%) and 88.8% of the burn accidents occurred indoors. Scalding was the main mechanism for hand burns. There was an adult nearby in 71.9% of the patients. Among patients with hand involvement, 19 (21.35%) were considered as neglect. All the neglect cases were under the age of 6. CONCLUSION: Pediatric burn accidents occurred mainly at home, mostly with an adult around. Habits of drinking hot beverages, dangerous cooking practices and lack of awareness are some important issues leading to burn accident. Neglect is found in 21.35% of hand burns as the etiology. In addition to general preventive measures special attention should be paid to the signs of neglect in the evaluation of patients. These burns should also be reported to official services, as they may reflect inadequate supervision or neglect by the caregiver.