Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design algorithm of grid-side LCL-filter for three-phase voltage source PWM rectifier

A design algorithm for grid-side LCL-filter of three-phase voltage source PWM rectifier is presented, which allows to use reduced values of inductance, improve system dynamic performance and reduce cost compared to traditional L-filter. These advantages are even more attractive in medium and high power applications. In this paper, the design criterion and calculation procedures are introduced in detail. A design example is reported, and the obtained LCL-filter has been realized and tested by simulation and experiments. Experimental results show that the obtained LCL-filter can provide sufficient attenuation of current harmonics and meanwhile ensure a high grid-side power factor. The goodness of this design method is demonstrated.
The Determinants of Corporate Sustainability Performance

This paper investigates the factors that drive high levels of corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Using a stakeholder framework, we examine the incentives for US firms to invest in sustainability principles and develop a number of hypotheses that relate CSP to firm-specific characteristics. Our results indicate that leading CSP firms are significantly larger, have higher levels of growth and a higher return on equity than conventional firms. Contrary to our predictions, leading CSP firms do not have greater free cash flows or lower leverage than other firms.
Feature Tracking and Expression Recognition of Face Using Dynamic Bayesian Network

The human face plays a central role in social interaction, hence it is not surprising that facial information processing is an important and highly active subfield of cognitive science research. The face is a complex stimulus displaying information about identity, age, gender, as well as emotional and attention state. Here we consider the problem of extracting information about emotional state (facial expression) from single images. Due to the difficulty of obtaining controlled video sequences of standard facial expressions, many psychological and neurophysiologic studies of facial expression processing have used single image motivations. In proposed system, in contrast to the mainstream approaches, we are trying to build a probabilistic model based on the Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) to capture the facial interactions at different levels. Hence the proposed system deal with the identification of facial expression on the image captured through camera.
Comparison of Flux-Switching PM Motors With Different Winding Configurations Using Magnetic Gearing Principle

In this paper, the magnetic gearing principle is extended to the flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) motor for its armature winding configuration design. First, the no-load flux density in motor air gap is qualitatively analytically calculated using the equivalent magnetic circuit method, so that the predominant space harmonic components (PSHCs) can be separated. Then, the slot vector graph can be drawn according to the pole-pair numbers and rotation directions of these PSHCs. Consequently, the armature winding configuration of a 12/10-pole FSPM motor is designed based on the slot vector graph using the conventional motor design method. In addition, two new 12/7-pole FSPM motors with the conventional non-overlapping concentrated and distributed winding are proposed, and the electromagnetic performances of the three motors are analyzed and compared. Finally, the analytical results are verified by the finite-element analysis and experimentation.
Spoken CALL Shared Task system description

We describe the systems we applied to the Spoken CALL Shared Task text-processing track in which an ‘accept’ or ‘re-ject’ label had to be applied to transcribed responses to a given ‘prompt’ stimulus. The data come from a language tutoring sys-tem for Swiss-German learners of English. In our system we attempt to capture the grammaticality and semantic dimensions of language assessment: dimensions which are explicitly labelled in the training corpus. With the training data we achieved accuracies and differential scores well above the baseline. However, our system performed less well on the test data and we discuss ways to improve performance
Separating Urban Agglomeration Economies in Consumption and Production

In this paper, we estimate the net agglomeration economies on the consumption side as well as the production side using Japanese city-based data from 1992, when interregional net migration nearly ceased. We show that doubling city size increases the nominal wage by approximately 10% but decreases the real wage by approximately 7-12%. The 10% increase of the nominal wage is attributed to the productivity increase in production activities while the 7-12% decrease of the real wage is a compensation for the net agglomeration economies, which are the benefits from product variety minus the costs of congestion. In other words, city bigness not only enhances the productivity of firms but also brings net agglomeration economies to households. In this way, we separate the net agglomeration economies on the production side from those on the consumption side.
Trust list: Internet-wide and distributed IoT traffic management using blockchain and SDN

As the Internet of Things (IoT) develops and expands, management of IoT communications becomes a major challenge. A large number of IoT devices may be installed anywhere end users wish, then left unattended and be misused to attack others. In edge networks, it is difficult to properly prevent undesired communication without knowledge of the properties of an IoT service and its devices. In this paper, we argue that application service providers, developers, and network operators should 1) verify and know the authenticity of IoT services, devices, and their communications, and 2) prevent unwanted traffic from IoT devices in a trustworthy, scalable, and distributed manner. This paper proposes a Trust List that represents the distribution of trust among IoT-related stakeholders and provides autonomous enforcement of IoT traffic management at the edge networks by integrating blockchains and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The principle of Trust List is automating the process of doubting, verifying, and trusting IoT services and devices to effectively prevent attacks and abuses. The proof of concept implementation and experiment of the Trust List using both public and private blockchains reveal its good practice and suggest studies for realistic deployment.
Platforms and Ecosystems for Connected Car Services

Value-adding services are introduced in more and more industries. Often such services are delivered by platforms as in the example of connected cars. In this industry, a broad range of platforms appears to provide actors like customers and owners of vehicles with services. Consequently, complex ecosystems are developed around the connected vehicles. This article deals with platform concepts in the mentioned area. A study with qualitative research design identified different platform types for connected cars.
Improving RBC K transport and hemoglobin-O2 binding by amiloride: A novel therapeutic approach for reversion of angina and myocardial ischemia in coronary heart diseases.

UNLABELLED Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality across the entire world, in which reversion of angina or improvement of ECG remains an unrealistic therapeutic option for most patients, suggesting that microvascular dysfunction or impaired oxygen delivery might be critical factors in CHD. This research article, thus presents the rationale basis, clinical and experimental, for the first therapeutic innovation addressing the role of red blood cell (RBC) H/K and O2/CO2 exchanges in CHD. It is followed by a randomized single-blind trial of Amiloride and Optimal Medical Therapy (OMT, n=35 cases) vs OMT alone (n=35 cases) in patients having angina, ST-T alteration and a defective RBC-K transport. All patients had serial clinical evaluation, Ion Transport Studies, ECGs and non-invasive aortic waveform and cardiovascular hemodynamic recordings. Statistical analysis was performed by SAS. RESULTS Amiloride rapidly improved RBC-K (93.5 ±4 vs 84.5 ±4 mmol/lc, p= < 0.001), angina (80% of cases, 1.5 ±0.3 weeks, CI:1.72 to 1.45), CCS Class (1.3 ±0.5 vs 3.1 ±0.8, p < 0.001) vs patients with OMT alone CCS Class (3.2 ± 0.4 vs 3.3 ± 0.5, p =0.21). Reversion of angina was sustained through the next 6-months (87% vs 26 % in OMT, RR 2.1, odds ratio 6.31, Pearson x2 34.6,p < 0.0001 at 95% CI) and 1-year (85% vs 37% OMT). At 6-months of amiloride, ECG became normal (29% vs 0%, RR ∞ uncalculated-time, odds ratio ∞, Pearson x2 42.4 at 95% CI, p < 0.0001), improved (55% vs 29%; RR2.1, odds ratio 3.16, 95% CI, p < 0.0001) or unchanged (15% vs 67% OMT). At 1-year, seven patients on amiloride (18%) exhibited evidence of electrical regeneration of the heart, not observed with placebo. IN CONCLUSION This therapeutical innovation of amiloride improves RBC H/K and O2/CO2 function, and reverses angina, ST-T alterations while inducing electrical regeneration of the heart, in patients receiving optimal medical treatment for angina. The article has short discussion on the relevant patents to the topic.
Whole-Genome Sequencing for National Surveillance of Shigella flexneri

National surveillance of Shigella flexneri ensures the rapid detection of outbreaks to facilitate public health investigation and intervention strategies. In this study, we used whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to type S. flexneri in order to detect linked cases and support epidemiological investigations. We prospectively analyzed 330 isolates of S. flexneri received at the Gastrointestinal Bacteria Reference Unit at Public Health England between August 2015 and January 2016. Traditional phenotypic and WGS sub-typing methods were compared. PCR was carried out on isolates exhibiting phenotypic/genotypic discrepancies with respect to serotype. Phylogenetic relationships between isolates were analyzed by WGS using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing to facilitate cluster detection. For 306/330 (93%) isolates there was concordance between serotype derived from the genome and phenotypic serology. Discrepant results between the phenotypic and genotypic tests were attributed to novel O-antigen synthesis/modification gene combinations or indels identified in O-antigen synthesis/modification genes rendering them dysfunctional. SNP typing identified 36 clusters of two isolates or more. WGS provided microbiological evidence of epidemiologically linked clusters and detected novel O-antigen synthesis/modification gene combinations associated with two outbreaks. WGS provided reliable and robust data for monitoring trends in the incidence of different serotypes over time. SNP typing can be used to facilitate outbreak investigations in real-time thereby informing surveillance strategies and providing the opportunities for implementing timely public health interventions.
Implementation and evaluation of parallel FFT on Engineering and Scientific Computation Accelerator (ESCA) architecture

The fast Fourier transform (FFT) is a fundamental kernel of many computation-intensive scientific applications. This paper deals with an implementation of the FFT on the accelerator system, a heterogeneous multicore architecture to accelerate computation-intensive parallel computing in scientific and engineering applications. The Engineering and Scientific Computation Accelerator (ESCA) consists of a control unit and a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processing element (PE) array, in which PEs communicate with each other via a hierarchical two-level network-on-chip (NoC) with high bandwidth and low latency. We exploit the architecture features of ESCA to implement a parallel FFT algorithm efficiently. Experimental results show that both the proposed parallel FFT algorithm and the ESCA architecture are scalable. The 16-bit fixed-point parallel FFT performance of ESCA is compared with a published work to prove the superiority of the mapping algorithm and the hardware architecture. The floating-point parallel FFT performances of ESCA are evaluated and compared with those of the IBM Cell processor and GPU to demonstrate the computing power of the ESCA system for high performance applications.
Culturing purifies murine lymph node lymphatic endothelium.

BACKGROUND Lymph node (LN) lymphatic sinuses transport lymph, cells, and antigens from the periphery through the LN. The lymphatic endothelium lining these sinuses appears to be an important contributor to the lymph node immune response. It has been challenging to obtain sufficient LN lymphatic endothelial cells for investigation of their functions, as they are minor constituents of LNs. METHODS AND RESULTS A procedure was developed to purify lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC) from murine LNs, which yields large numbers of primary LN LEC. Two-dimensional in vitro cultures of dissociated LN stromal cells initially consist of multiple cell types, and then rapidly evolve to produce pure cultures of lymphatic endothelium within a few passages. One million LEC can be harvested after 4 weeks of culture, and much larger cell numbers can be obtained by continued culturing over long periods. The LEC cultures maintain endothelial morphology and expression of LEC markers, and preserve the same slow growth characteristics over at least 20 passages. The LEC cultures readily form tubes in Matrigel at early and at late passages, resembling those formed by LEC lines. CONCLUSIONS A simple and economical approach to obtain purified primary murine LN LEC was developed for in vitro studies of their function. The morphology, growth characteristics, and functional behavior of these cells in tube formation assays did not change between initial and long-term passages. Large numbers of these cells can be harvested after long-term passage, so that they can be studied in biochemical and biological assays.
Loss of γ-cytoplasmic actin triggers myofibroblast transition of human epithelial cells

Loss of γ-cytoplasmic actin induces epithelial-to-myofibroblast transition (EmyT), which depends on activation of SRF and its cofactor, MRTF, formin-mediated actin polymerization, and activated Rho GTPase. This demonstrates a unique role of γ-cytoplasmic actin in regulating the epithelial phenotype and the suppression of EmyT.
SceneFlowFields: Dense Interpolation of Sparse Scene Flow Correspondences

While most scene flow methods use either variational optimization or a strong rigid motion assumption, we show for the first time that scene flow can also be estimated by dense interpolation of sparse matches. To this end, we find sparse matches across two stereo image pairs that are detected without any prior regularization and perform dense interpolation preserving geometric and motion boundaries by using edge information. A few iterations of variational energy minimization are performed to refine our results, which are thoroughly evaluated on the KITTI benchmark and additionally compared to state-of-the-art on MPI Sintel. For application in an automotive context, we further show that an optional ego-motion model helps to boost performance and blends smoothly into our approach to produce a segmentation of the scene into static and dynamic parts.
HOW TO HANDLE THE STICK: POSITIVE PROCESSES AND CRUCIAL BARRIERS OF PARTICIPATORY FOREST MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT Although participatory forest management (PFM) has attracted increasingly positive attention and its importance is clearly accepted among practitioners, pilot projects are experiencing difficulties expanding from externally funded donor schemes. Case studies in Tanzania and Mozambique show that the forest is important for local people and they understand their new role as forest managers. However critical factors are the low capacity of local institutions and a lack of extension staff to train the communities in the forest management skills needed and to ensure the accountability of community leaders. Only a strong commitment from the Government will ensure the long-term financial sustainability of these participatory initiatives. This paper also examines the relationship between the local communities, national and local governments and external funding agencies, and concludes that conflicting interests at both the local level and at the central, political level are barriers to successful PFM. Research to analyse critically the reality and impact of participatory forestry is required to determine whether the PFM systems supported by donors can be sustained.
Effect of low‐dose calcium supplements on bone loss in perimenopausal and postmenopausal Asian women: A randomized controlled trial

Current standard‐dose calcium supplements (eg, 1000 mg/d) may increase the risk for cardiovascular events. Effectiveness of lower‐dose supplements in preventing bone loss should thus be considered. This study aimed to assess whether calcium supplements of 500 or 250 mg/d effectively prevent bone loss in perimenopausal and postmenopausal Japanese women. We recruited 450 Japanese women between 50 and 75 years of age. They were randomly assigned to receive 500 mg of calcium (as calcium carbonate), 250 mg of calcium, or placebo daily. Medical examinations conducted three times over a 2‐year follow‐up period assessed bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar spine and femoral neck. One‐factor repeated measures ANOVA was used for statistical tests. Subgroup analyses were also conducted. Average total daily calcium intake at baseline for the 418 subjects who underwent follow‐up examinations was 493 mg/d. Intention‐to‐treat analysis showed less dramatic decreases in spinal BMD for the 500‐mg/d calcium supplement group compared to the placebo group (1.2% difference over 2 years, p = 0.027). Per‐protocol analysis (≥80% compliance) revealed that spinal BMD for the 500‐mg/d and 250‐mg/d calcium supplement groups decreased less than the placebo group (1.6%, p = 0.010 and 1.0%, p = 0.078, respectively), and that femoral neck BMD for the 500‐mg/d calcium supplement group decreased less relative to the placebo group (1.0%, p = 0.077). A low‐dose calcium supplement of 500 mg/d can effectively slow lumbar spine bone loss in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with habitually low calcium intake, but its effect on the femoral neck is less certain. Calcium supplementation dosage should thus be reassessed. (Clinical Trials Registry number: UMIN000001176). © 2012 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Salient Region-Based Online Object Tracking

In this paper, we propose a salient region-based tracking method that discriminates the exact target region from background by using a probabilistic color model. The color model is updated using image pixels included in salient region. From the extracted salient region, we derive shape model which can be combined with color model that enable the tracker to be robust when the color distribution of target object is similar with other objects. Additionally, we adopt template matching weighted by the shape model to discriminate the target when the background has very similar color distribution with target object. The weight between color matching and template matching is automatically determined based on the confidence of the response map. The proposed method is robust to scale change, object transformation, and rotation. In experiments on public datasets, the proposed method achieved a higher result compared with existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of Expected Overlap Ratio (EAO) only using color model and template matching. The internal analysis proves that the combination of salient region and shape model can increase the tracking performance.
Analysing of 3D beamforming in MIMO radars

A multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar system is an emerging research field which has attracted many studies in recent years. This type of radar, unlike conventional phased array radar, can transmit different probing signals via its antennas, that may be correlated or uncorrelated with each other. This waveform diversity offered by MIMO radar systems enable superior capabilities compared to conventional phased array radar. Many papers have introduced different ways for beamforming of MIMO radar. In this paper it is desirable to analysis some methods for beamforming of MIMO radars with planar arrays constellation and examine their 3D result beam-pattern of such constellations for covariance based MIMO radar waveforming method. MATLAB software is being employed for simulations.
Reaching the Ultra‐Poor: Adapting Targeting Strategy in the Context of South Sudan

This paper focuses on an innovative model to enable the ultra‐poor ‘graduate’ from extreme poverty into sustainable livelihoods. The first part of the paper makes a comparative review of the ‘graduation model’. Evidence confirms consistent impacts on consumption, food security and productive assets across multiple sites. The second part assesses targeting effectiveness of this model in South Sudan. Combining Consultative Group to Assist the Poor poverty assessment tool with discriminant analysis for better accuracy, it is observed that the programme maintained its effectiveness in targeting the ultra‐poor. Success of this approach can be attributed to both adaptability and rigorousness in implementing targeting methods. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Technology Spillovers of Foreign Direct Investment in Coastal Regions of East China: A Perspective on Technology Absorptive Capacity

By establishing a foreign direct investment (FDI) technology spillover estimation model based on technology absorptive capacity and using provincial panel data of the coastal regions of East China from 2001 to 2010, we empirically conclude that FDI technology spillover effect in the coastal regions of East China is not significant. However, technology absorptive capacity is the determining factor of FDI technology spillover effect. Further analysis shows that technology absorptive capabilities respectively represented by institutional change and human resources have different effects on the endogenous economic growth and the FDI technology spillovers. To be more specific, the effect of technology absorptive capacity represented by the level of human resources on the economic growth and FDI technology spillovers is much more significant than that represented by institutional change.
Restructuring in Financial Services A Transaction Cost Perspective

The growth of the Internet and a rapidly evolving regulatory climate in the United States and abroad are changing the shape of the financial service industry. This paper presents results of an exploratory analysis of the evolving organizational forms and proposes the use of transaction cost economics to obtain insights into the continued restructuring of the industry. Our research premise is that information technology capabilities facilitate the adoption of new organizational forms and alter the strategy of industry participants. We further propose that transaction cost economics theory provides insight into the linkages between a firm’s strategy and the future structure of the industry.
Koszty i dochodowość produkcji mleka w polskich gospodarstwach w latach 2006-2009

Omówiono organizację polskich gospodarstw mlecznych, ich efekty produkcyjne i koszty produkcji mleka w latach 2006-2008. Dokonano także oceny organizacji polskich gospodarstw mlecznych i ich efektów produkcyjno-ekonomicznych, w konfrontacji z odpowiednimi gospodarstwami krajów Unii Europejskiej za 2008 r. W polskich gospodarstwach w tym okresie wystąpił wzrost stopnia koncentracji produkcji mleka i wzrost wydajności mlecznej krów. Wzrosła jednocześnie produktywność pracy i ziemi. Polskie gospodarstwa mleczne, w porównaniu z gospodarstwami Unii Europejskiej, charakteryzują się niższą produktywnością pracy i ziemi. Zmniejsza się natomiast różnica między cenami skupu mleka w Polsce a krajami Unii Europejskiej. Ceny skupu mleka w Polsce są niższe niż w krajach UE.