Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-Time Identification of Optimal Operating Points in Photovoltaic Power Systems

Photovoltaic power systems are usually integrated with some specific control algorithms to deliver the maximum possible power. Several maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods that force the operating point to oscillate have been presented in the past few decades. In the MPPT system, the ideal operation is to determine the maximum power point (MPP) of the photovoltaic (PV) array directly rather than to track it by using the active operation of trial and error, which causes undesirable oscillation around the MPP. Since the output features of a PV cell vary with environment changes in irradiance and temperature from time to time, real-time operation is required to trace the variations of local MPPs in PV power systems. The method of real-time estimation proposed in this paper uses polynomials to demonstrate the power-voltage relationship of PV panels and implements the recursive least-squares method and Newton-Raphson method to identify the voltage of the optimal operating point. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is successfully demonstrated by computer simulations and experimental evaluations of two major types of PV panels, namely: 1) crystalline silicon and 2) copper-indium-diselenide thin film
Entropy-based load-balancing for software-defined elastic optical networks

To support emerging traffic demands, metro optical networks evolve over time with the addition of new links to relieve network bottlenecks and congestion. These new resources need to be optimally located in the network, in order to minimize the cost of the new deployment. Spectrum-fragmentation and network-wide load imbalance impede the optimal allocation of network resources. With the recent convergence of advanced flexible and programmable optical devices with emerging software-defined network paradigms, it is possible to flexibly and dynamically defragment the spectrum and balance the load on the network. This study introduces an optimization strategy for software-defined elastic optical networks for fiber-load balancing across the network, while minimizing the cost of the resulting service disruption. An entropy-based metric is proposed for measuring load imbalance and used to design utility functions for the joint optimization, taking into consideration the optical and defragmentation constraints.
New frontiers for intelligent content-based retrieval

In this paper, we examine emerging frontiers in the evolution of content-based retrieval systems that rely on an intelligent infrastructure. Here, we refer to intelligence as the capabilities of the systems to build and maintain situational or world models, utilize dynamic knowledge representation, exploit context, and leverage advanced reasoning and learning capabilities. We argue that these elements are essential to producing effective systems for retrieving audio-visual content at semantic levels matching those of human perception and cognition. In this paper, we review relevant research on the understanding of human intelligence and construction of intelligent system in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, semiotics, and computer vision. We also discus how some of the principal ideas form these fields lead to new opportunities and capabilities for content-based retrieval systems. Finally, we describe some of our efforts in these directions. In particular, we present MediaNet, a multimedia knowledge presentation framework, and some MPEG-7 description tools that facilitate and enable intelligent content-based retrieval.
Analyzing runtime adaptability of collaboration patterns

With the emergence of large-scale complex systems, the boundary between humans and software becomes increasingly blurry. Adaptation mechanisms thus need to consider the interaction structure amongst users to derive appropriate adaptation actions. Most existing systems, however, lack such collaboration awareness and thus cannot deliver the required flexibility that large-scale collaboration need to remain operational. In this paper, we analyze the flexibility of the underlying collaboration structures based on behavior, asynchrony, state, and execution context. The evaluation of three collaboration patterns and exemplary real world systems demonstrates that collaboration pattern awareness is of uttermost importance for apprehending a system's adaptation constraints and subsequently enacting appropriate adaptation actions.
Visual saliency and categorisation of abstract images

Visual object categorisation problem has attracted significant attention during the last ten years, and the two main hypotheses adopted by virtually all methods are i) detection of visual saliency and ii) bag-of-visual-words based categorisation. It is, however, difficult to verify the hypotheses with humans since many recordings, such as gaze fixation locations, represent processing after the recognition and the object classification task is too easy for humans producing no information about uncertainties in the cognitive process. To the authors' best knowledge, this work is the first attempt to study the main hypotheses and state-of-the-art algorithms for visual object categorisation with abstract images. These images inhibit rapid recognition and cause the observers' opinions differ substantially in assigning the images into “similar categories”. Our work reveals interesting findings: the state-of-the-art methods' performances drop to almost pure chance while human observers remain surprisingly consistent.
Unimodular random trees

Abstract We consider unimodular random rooted trees (URTs) and invariant forests in Cayley graphs. We show that URTs of bounded degree are the same as the law of the component of the root in an invariant percolation on a regular tree. We use this to give a new proof that URTs are sofic, a result of Elek. We show that ends of invariant forests in the hyperbolic plane converge to ideal boundary points. We also note that uniform integrability of the degree distribution of a family of finite graphs implies tightness of that family for local convergence, also known as random weak convergence.
Effect of coumaphos on cholinesterase activity, hematology, and biochemical blood parameters of bovines in tropical regions of Mexico

To assess the effect of coumaphos [O-(3-chloro-4-methyl-2-oxo-2H-1-benzopyran-7-yl) O,O-diethyl phosphorothioate] exposure on physiological responses during bovine production, acetylcolinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) activities were measured in whole blood, erythrocytes, and plasma of healthy male steers (Bos Taurus x Bos indicus) sprayed with coumaphos at a non-lethal dose of 1 mg kg− 1 body weight per day once every 14 (in vivo group) or 21 days (southern and central groups). Coumaphos topically administered at 1 mg/kg body weight per day to cattle under normal management practices in tropical areas produced a significant inhibition in erythrocyte (RBC) AChE and BuAChE activities when compared to baseline levels. RBC-AChE activity for the in vivo group decreased 71.3% (P < 0.05) and BuChE activity 59.1% (P < 0.05); RBC-AChE activity decreased 55.1% (P < 0.05) (southern group) and 43.4% (P < 0.05) (central group). Compared to the control specimens, steers from in vivo, southern, and central groups after 150 days of exposure had lower (P < 0.05) leukocyte count, absolute lymphocyte, erythrocyte, and platelet counts. Decreases in RBC-AChE activities correlated with decreased lymphocyte (r = 1.000, p = 0.01), erythrocyte (r = 1.000, p = 0.003), and platelet counts (r = 0.841, p = 0.036). Significantly increased BUN levels (P < 0.05) correlated with the decrease in RBC-AChE activities (r = − 0.997, p = 0.047) and with the decrease in absolute red blood cell (r = − 0.883, p = 0.020) and lymphocyte (r = − 0.825, p = 0.043) counts; increased (P < 0.05) total plasma protein levels correlated with the decrease in RBC-AChE activities (r = −0.998, p = 0.043), absolute red blood cell (r = − 0.998, p = 0.040), lymphocyte (r = − 0.893, p = 0.017), and platelet (r = -0.855, p = 0.030) counts. The physiological responses correlated with the erythrocyte acetylcholinesterase inhibition could be considered as early indicators or warning responses of bovine exposures to organophosphorus pesticides (OPs).
Antimalarial Effects of Iranian Flora Artemisia sieberi on Plasmodium berghei In Vivo in Mice and Phytochemistry Analysis of Its Herbal Extracts

The aim of this study is pharmacochemistry of Iranian flora Artemisia sieberi and its antimalarial effects on Plasmodium berghei in vivo. This is the first application of A. sieberi for treatment of murine malaria. A. sieberi were collected at flowering stage from the Khorassan and Semnan provinces of Iran; the aerial parts were air-dried at room temperature and then powdered. The powder was macerated in methanol, filtered with Bokhner hopper and solvent was separated in rotary evaporator. Total herbal extract was subsequently processed for ether and chloroform extracts preparation. The toxicity of herbal extract was assessed on naive NMRI mice with high, average and low doses; then pathophysiological signs were assessed. Finally, the antimalarial efficacy was investigated on two groups of Plasmodium berghei infected mice. Percentage of parasitaemia and pathophysiology were also evaluated. The results of this assessment showed no toxicity even by high concentration of herbal extract. A significant reduction in percentage of parasitaemia was observed; no alterations of hepatosplenomegaly and body weight were indicated in study group. A. sieberi extracts showed antimalarial effects against murine malaria with some efficacies on reducing pathophysiology. However, there is requirement to find the major component of this herbal extract by further studies.
Independent slip systems in crystals

Abstract The number of independent slip systems available in a given slip mode follows from the yield surface of the crystal. This general method is summarized to complement a recent paper by Groves and Kelly. On some points we come to different conclusions: the amount of slip in a new mode does not have to be independent of the amounts in previous modes to provide extra independent systems; the number of independent systems that have to be available for general bicrystal deformation is found to be two in most orientation relationships. Some implications for the interpretation of experimental observations are stated.
Ternary Segmentation for Improving Search in Top-down Induction of Segmental ITGs

We show that there are situations where iteratively segmenting sentence pairs topdown will fail to reach valid segments and propose a method for alleviating the problem. Due to the enormity of the search space, error analysis has indicated that it is often impossible to get to a desired embedded segment purely through binary segmentation that divides existing segmental rules in half – the strategy typically employed by existing search strategies – as it requires two steps. We propose a new method to hypothesize ternary segmentations in a single step, making the embedded segments immediately discoverable.
Vaginal Misoprostol versus Vaginal Estradiol in Overcoming Unsatisfactory Colposcopy

Background: Unsatisfactory colposcopy, an inability to visualize the entire transformation zone, is found in about 10-20% of the patients undergoing the procedure. These patients usually require conization for a comprehensive evaluation of the cervix. Our study aims to compare the efficacy and safety of vaginal misoprostol versus vaginal estradiol in overcoming unsatisfactory colposcopy. Methods: We studied 48 women with unsatisfactory colposcopy. They were randomized into two groups: group I (n = 24) received 200 µg misoprostol vaginally and colposcopy was repeated after 6 h, while the subjects in group II (n = 24) were prescribed a 7-day course of 50 µg estradiol for vaginal insertion followed by a repeat colposcopy. The efficacy and safety of these two drugs were compared. Results: Repeat colposcopy was satisfactory in 70.8% of the women given vaginal misoprostol compared to 82.6% of the women who used vaginal estradiol. The difference was not statistically significant. The adverse effects were reported more often by the women in the misoprostol group (41.6%) as compared to those in estradiol group (13%) (p = 0.04). Conclusion: Both estradiol and misoprostol were comparable in overcoming unsatisfactory colposcopy. However, a higher incidence of adverse effects was noted with misoprostol as compared to estradiol.
Patient and parent preferences for characteristics of prophylactic treatment in hemophilia

Introduction New longer-acting factor products will potentially allow for less frequent infusion in prophylactic treatment of hemophilia. However, the role of administration frequency relative to other treatment attributes in determining preferences for prophylactic hemophilia treatment regimens is not well understood. Aim To identify the relative importance of frequency of administration, efficacy, and other treatment characteristics among candidates for prophylactic treatment for hemophilia A and B. Method An Internet survey was conducted among hemophilia patients and the parents of pediatric hemophilia patients in Australia, Canada, and the US. A monadic conjoint task was included in the survey, which varied frequency of administration (three, two, or one time per week for hemophilia A; twice weekly, weekly, or biweekly for hemophilia B), efficacy (no bleeding or breakthrough bleeding once every 4 months, 6 months, or 12 months), diluent volume (3 mL vs 2.5 mL for hemophilia A; 5 mL vs 3 mL for hemophilia B), vials per infusion (2 vs 1), reconstitution device (assembly required vs not), and manufacturer (established in hemophilia vs not). Respondents were asked their likelihood to switch from their current regimen to the presented treatment. Respondents were told to assume that other aspects of treatment, such as risk of inhibitor development, cost, and method of distribution, would remain the same. Results A total of 89 patients and/or parents of children with hemophilia A participated; another 32 were included in the exercise for hemophilia B. Relative importance was 47%, 24%, and 18% for frequency of administration, efficacy, and manufacturer, respectively, in hemophilia A; analogous values were 48%, 26%, and 21% in hemophilia B. The remaining attributes had little impact on preferences. Conclusion Patients who are candidates for prophylaxis and their caregivers indicate a preference for reduced frequency of administration and high efficacy, but preferences were more sensitive to administration frequency than small changes in annual bleeding rate.
Smart-aggregate-based damage detection of fiber-reinforced-polymer-strengthened columns under reversed cyclic loading

Structural health monitoring is an important aspect of the maintenance of large civil infrastructures, especially for bridge columns in areas of high seismic activity. In this project, recently developed innovative piezoceramic-based sensors were utilized to perform the health monitoring of a shear-critical reinforced concrete (RC) bridge column subjected to reversed cyclic loading. After the column failed, it was wrapped with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets, commonly used to retrofit seismically damaged structures. The FRP-strengthened column was retested under the same reversed cyclic loading pattern. Innovative piezoceramic-based sensors, called ‘smart aggregates’, were utilized as transducers for health monitoring purposes. On the basis of the smart aggregates developed, an active-sensing approach and an impact-hammer-based approach were used to evaluate the health status of the RC column during the loading procedure. Wave transmission energy is attenuated by the existence of cracks during the loading procedure, and this attenuation phenomenon alters the curve of the transfer function between the actuator and sensor. To detect the damage occurrence and evaluate the damage severity, transfer function curves were compared with those obtained during the period of healthy status. A transfer-function-based damage index matrix was developed to demonstrate the damage severity at different locations. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of the smart aggregates in health monitoring of the FRP-strengthened column as well as the unstrengthened column. The experimental results show that the proposed smart-aggregate-based approach can successfully detect damage occurrence and evaluate its severity.
Multilinear Map via Scale-Invariant FHE: Enhancing Security and Efficiency

Cryptographic multilinear map is a useful tool for constructing numerous secure protocols and Graded Encoding System (GES) is an approximate concept of multilinear map. In multilinear map context, there are several important issues, mainly about security and efficiency. All early stage candidate multilinear maps are recently broken by so-called zeroizing attack, so that it is highly required to develop reliable mechanisms to prevent zeroizing attacks. Moreover, the encoding size in all candidate multilinear maps grows quadratically in terms of multilinearity parameter κ and it makes them less attractive for applications requiring large κ. In this paper, we propose a new integer-based multilinear map that has several advantages over previous schemes. In terms of security, we expect that our construction is resistant to the zeroizing attack. In terms of efficiency, the bit-size of an encoding grows sublinearly with κ, more precisely O((log2 κ) ). To this end, we essentially utilize a technique of the multiplication procedure in scale-invariant fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), which enables to achieve sublinear complexity in terms of multilinearity and at the same time security against the zeroizing attacks (EUROCRYPT 2015, IACR-Eprint 2015/934, IACR-Eprint 2015/941), which totally broke Coron, Lepoint, and Tibouchi’s integer-based construction (CRYPTO 2013, CRYPTO2015). We find that the technique of scale-invariant FHE is not very well harmonized with previous approaches of making GES from (non-scale-invariant) FHE. Therefore, we first devise a new approach for approximate multilinear maps, called Ring Encoding System (RES), and prove that a multilinear map built via RES is generically secure. Next, we propose a new efficient scale-invariant FHE with special properties, and then construct a candidate RES based on a newly proposed scale-invariant FHE. It is worth noting that, contrary to the CLT multilinear map (CRYPTO 2015), multiplication procedure in our construction does not add hidden constants generated by ladders of zero encodings, but mixes randoms in encodings in non-linear ways without using ladders of zero encodings. This feature is obtained by using the scale-invariant FHE and essential to prevent the Cheon et al.’s zeroizing attack.
Synthesis of Ni-P-PTFE-nano-Al2O3 composite plating coating on 45 steel by electroless plating

Hybrid Ni-P alloy plating coating containing nano-A12O3 and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) particles on the substrate of 45 steel has been prepared by an electroless plating method. The microstructure, microhardness, and wear resistance of the composite plating coating were analyzed using a microhardness tester, optical microscope, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and friction-wear tester. The results show that the Ni–P–PTFE–nano-Al2O3 composite plating coating with high wear resistance and a low friction coefficient, made by the combination of 3g/L nano-A12O3 and 10 mL/L PTFE particles in plating solution, was responsible for enhancing tribological and lubricating properties on the 45 steel surface. The microhardness of the Ni-P-PTFE-nano-Al2O3 amorphous coating was HV452; its hardness was correspondingly increased and reached HV756 with a heat treatment at 350°C for 1 h, with the PTFE particles in the coating undestroyed. Simultaneously, the wear loss was 1.6 mg and the friction coefficient was 0.11, the cooperative effect of both particles enabled the Ni-P-PTFE-nano-A12O3 composite coating to have highly wear-resistant and lubricating properties.
Preparation of β-TCP/TiO2 Composite by Hot-Pressing

In this work, tricalcium phosphate [TCP, β-Ca3(PO4)2]/titania composite were prepared with different ratio of 75/25, 50/50 and 25/75 (HA/TiO2, wt %). The TiO2 and hydroxyapatite (HA) powders, as starting materials, were synthesized by precipitation and hydrothermal methods, respectively. The sintered bodies of β-TCP/TiO2 composite were prepared by hot pressing at pressure of 30 MPa and temperature of 800-1000 oC for 30 min under the pressure of 30 MPa in N2 atmosphere. During the sintering process, hydroxyapatite was decomposed to β-TCP and CaTiO3 at elevated temperature because TiO2 could accelerate the decomposition of hydroxyapatite. The hot-pressed composite with 98% of sintered density, showed high value of 1080 Hv in hardness, compared with the pure hydroxyapatite (600 Hv) before immersion in distilled water. Increasing sintering temperature led densification of the composite with moderately uniform microstructures. As increasing the amount of TiO2, the surface of the composite was less damaged or dissolved.
A new online clustering approach for data in arbitrary shaped clusters

In this paper we demonstrate a new density based clustering technique, CODSAS, for online clustering of streaming data into arbitrary shaped clusters. CODAS is a two stage process using a simple local density to initiate micro-clusters which are then combined into clusters. Memory efficiency is gained by not storing or re-using any data. Computational efficiency is gained by using hyper-spherical micro-clusters to achieve a micro-cluster joining technique that is dimensionally independent for speed. The micro-clusters divide the data space in to sub-spaces with a core region and a non-core region. Core regions which intersect define the clusters. A threshold value is used to identify outlier micro-clusters separately from small clusters of unusual data. The cluster information is fully maintained on-line. In this paper we compare CODAS with ELM, DEC, Chameleon, DBScan and Denstream and demonstrate that CODAS achieves comparable results but in a fully on-line and dimensionally scale-able manner.
Optically transparent and circularly polarized patch antenna for K-band applications

This contribution presents an optically transparent and circularly polarized patch antenna to be integrated on a solar cell. The whole configuration is suitable to be use in a wireless sensor node acting as a communication interface and a power source. The antenna consisting of grid lines is studied concerning the impedance behavior due to the applied mesh. A single fed truncated corners meshed patch antenna with meshed ground plane on quartz glass is investigated. This structure with an overall transparency of 92 % has similar antenna properties to the opaque counterpart. Additionally, the alignment errors between both meshed layers possibly caused by the fabrication process is addressed concerning the axial ratio. A prototype is realized and measured to verify the simulation results.