Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Doubly Fed Induction Generator for wind energy generation using nine-switch power converter

A Three-Phase Nine-Switch Converter (NSC) topology for Doubly Fed Induction Generator in wind energy generation is proposed in this paper. This converter topology was used in various applications such as Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Uninterruptable Power Supplies. In this paper, Nine-Switch Converter is introduced in Doubly Fed Induction Generator in renewable energy application for the first time. It replaces the conventional Back-to-Back Pulse Width Modulated voltage source converter (VSC) which composed of twelve switches in many DFIG applications. Reduction in number of switches is the most beneficial in terms of cost and power switching losses. The operation principle of Nine-Switch Converter using SPWM method is discussed. The resulting NSC performance of rotor side current control, active power and reactive control are compared with Back-to Back voltage source converter performance. DC link voltage regulation using front end converter is also presented. Finally the simulation results of DFIG performances using NSC and Back-to-Back VSC are analyzed and compared.
INCIDENCE OF SUSTAINED OCULAR HYPERTENSION USING PREPACKAGED VERSUS FRESHLY PREPARED INTRAVITREAL BEVACIZUMAB FOR NEOVASCULAR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION

Purpose: To compare the incidence of sustained ocular hypertension (OHT) after intravitreal injections of prepackaged versus freshly prepared bevacizumab monotherapy for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration. Methods: Charts of 1,216 patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration receiving intravitreal bevacizumab monotherapy at 2 retina practices using different preparations of bevacizumab between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2011, were reviewed. Primary outcome was incidence of sustained OHT, defined as intraocular pressure >25 mmHg with an increase ≥6 from baseline on ≥2 consecutive visits or requiring treatment. Results: A total of 6,479 injections in 740 eyes of 634 patients were included and 14 eyes (0.81% incidence per eye-year) developed sustained OHT. For eyes receiving prepackaged bevacizumab, 10 of 339 eyes (1.39% incidence per eye-year) developed sustained OHT compared with 4 of 401 eyes (0.39% incidence per eye-year) receiving freshly prepared bevacizumab, giving an incidence rate ratio of 3.55 (95% confidence interval, 0.93–13.49; P = 0.063). All eyes that developed sustained OHT achieved intraocular pressure control with observation or topical therapy alone. Conclusion: Incidence of sustained OHT after intravitreal bevacizumab is low. We found a trend toward higher rates of sustained OHT with prepackaged bevacizumab although this difference was not statistically or clinically significant.
INKA: An Ink-based Model of Graph Visualization

Common quality metrics of graph drawing have been about the readability criteria, such as small number of edge crossings, small drawing area and small total edge length. Bold graph drawing considers more realistic drawings consisting of vertices as disks of some radius and edges as rectangles of some width. However, the relationship that links these readability criteria with the rendering criteria in node-link diagrams has still not been well-established. This paper introduces a model, so-called INKA (Ink-Active), that encapsulates mathematically the relationship between all common drawing factors. Consequently, we investigate our INKA model on several common drawing algorithms and real-world graphs.
A Low-Power Text-Dependent Speaker Verification System with Narrow-Band Feature Pre-Selection and Weighted Dynamic Time Warping

To fully enable voice interaction in wearable devices, a system requires low-power, customizable voice-authenticated wake-up. Existing speaker-veriﬁcation (SV) methods have shortcomings relating to power consumption and noise susceptibility. To meet the application requirements, we propose a low-power, text-dependent SV system comprising a sparse spectral feature extraction front-end showing improved noise robustness and accuracy at low power, and a back-end running an improved dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm that preserves signal envelope while reducing misalignments. Without background noise, the proposed system achieves an equal-error-rate (EER) of 1 . 1% , compared to 1 . 4% with a conventional Mel-frequency cepstral coefﬁcients (MFCC)+DTW system and 2 . 6% with a Gaussian mixture universal background (GMM-UBM) based system. At 3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the proposed system achieves an EER of 5 . 7% , compared to 13% with a conventional MFCC+DTW system and 6 . 8% with a GMM-UBM based system. The proposed system enables simple, low-power implementation such that the power consumption of the end-to-end system, which includes a voice activity detector, feature extraction front-end, and back-end decision unit, is under 380 µ W.
Birth of mice produced by germ cell nuclear transfer

That mammals can be cloned by nuclear transfer indicates that it is possible to reprogram the somatic cell genome to support full development. However, the developmental plasticity of germ cells is difficult to assess because genomic imprinting, which is essential for normal fetal development, is being reset at this stage. The anomalous influence of imprinting is corroborated by the poor development of mouse clones produced from primordial germ cells (PGCs) during imprinting erasure at embryonic day 11.5 or later. However, this can also be interpreted to mean that, unlike somatic cells, the genome of differentiated germ cells cannot be fully reprogrammed. We used younger PGCs (day 10.5) and eventually obtained four full‐term fetuses. DNA methylation analyses showed that only embryos exhibiting normal imprinting developed to term. Thus, germ cell differentiation is not an insurmountable barrier to cloning, and imprinting status is more important than the origin of the nucleus donor cell per se as a determinant of developmental plasticity following nuclear transfer. genesis 41:81–86, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
What's my method?: a game show on games

What's My Method? is the game show that asks the question, "How do you user-test games? " The goal of this session is to highlight important differences between user research methods for games and productivity software in an instructive and engaging format. Emotion measurement scenarios are presented to the contestants and audience as questions in a fictional game show. Three games researchers "compete" to propose the best methodology to research thorny questions from real games. The audience acts as the judge, deciding how many points to award contestants for their answers.
Change in frequency of acute and subacute effects of ecstasy in a group of novice users after 6 months of regular use.

BACKGROUND Recent research trends are to specify the relation between patterns of ecstasy use and side effects, possibility of dependency, tolerance and long term neurocognitive damage. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of regular ecstasy use on its acute and subacute effects. SUBJECTS AND METHODS At the first stage, we recruited 120 subjects. If participants continued regular use of ecstasy in this period, they were asked to participate in the second stage of the research 6 months later. Thirty-five subjects attended the second stage of the study, 5 of which were excluded because they had less than 5 drug experiences during the last 6 months. At last, we recruited 30 novice ecstasy users by means of the snowball technique in Tehran, Iran. The pattern of use and experienced effects of ecstasy was documented at the beginning and after 6 months of regular consumption with a self administered questionnaire. RESULTS Little or no change was observed in acute effects. Those subacute effects that had considerable increase in frequency were anxiety, depression, aggression, memory impairment, poor concentration and learning problems. CONCLUSION Small change in acute effects suggests low possibility of tolerance after at least 6 months of regular use. Our results support long term neurocognitive damage and mood impairment with ecstasy use.
Creation of an Annotated Corpus of Spanish Radiology Reports

This paper presents a new annotated corpus of 513 anonymized radiology reports written in Spanish. Reports were manually annotated with entities, negation and uncertainty terms and relations. The corpus was conceived as an evaluation resource for named entity recognition and relation extraction algorithms, and as input for the use of supervised methods. Biomedical annotated resources are scarce due to confidentiality issues and associated costs. This work provides some guidelines that could help other researchers to undertake similar tasks.
Nonstationary time series analysis by temporal clustering

The object of this paper is to present a model and a set of algorithms for estimating the parameters of a nonstationary time series generated by a continuous change in regime. We apply fuzzy clustering methods to the task of estimating the continuous drift in the time series distribution and interpret the resulting temporal membership matrix as weights in a time varying, mixture probability distribution function (PDF). We analyze the stopping conditions of the algorithm to infer a novel cluster validity criterion for fuzzy clustering algorithms of temporal patterns. The algorithm performance is demonstrated with three different types of signals.
Harvesting Deep Models for Cross-Lingual Image Annotation

This paper considers cross-lingual image annotation, harvesting deep visual models from one language to annotate images with labels from another language. This task cannot be accomplished by machine translation, as labels can be ambiguous and a translated vocabulary leaves us limited freedom to annotate images with appropriate labels. Given non-overlapping vocabularies between two languages, we formulate cross-lingual image annotation as a zero-shot learning problem. For cross-lingual label matching, we adapt zero-shot by replacing the current monolingual semantic embedding space by a bilingual alternative. In order to reduce both label ambiguity and redundancy we propose a simple yet effective approach called label-enhanced zero-shot learning. Using three state-of-the-art deep visual models, i.e., ResNet-152, GoogleNet-Shuffle and OpenImages, experiments on the test set of Flickr8k-CN demonstrate the viability of the proposed approach for cross-lingual image annotation.
Using Runtime Verification to Design a Reliable Execution Framework for Scientific Workflows

In this paper, we describe the design of a scientific workflow execution framework that integrates run-time verification to monitor its execution and checking it against the formal specifications. For controlling workflow execution, this framework provides for data provenance, execution tracking and online monitoring of each work flow task, also referred to as participants. The sequence of participants is described in an abstract parameterized view, which is used to generate concrete data dependency based sequence of participants with defined arguments. As participants belonging to a workflow are mapped onto machines and executed, periodic and on-demand monitoring of vital health parameters on allocated nodes is enabled according to pre-specified invariant conditions with actions to be taken upon violation of invariants.
Genome‐wide analysis of allele frequency change in sunflower crop–wild hybrid populations evolving under natural conditions

Crop‐wild hybridization occurs in numerous plant species and could alter the genetic structure and evolutionary dynamics of wild populations. Studying crop‐derived alleles in wild populations is also relevant to assessing/mitigating the risks associated with transgene escape. To date, crop‐wild hybridization has generally been examined via short‐term studies, typically within a single generation, focusing on few traits or genetic markers. Little is known about patterns of selection on crop‐derived alleles over multiple generations, particularly at a genome‐wide scale. Here, we documented patterns of natural selection in an experimental crop × wild sunflower population that was allowed to evolve under natural conditions for two generations at two locations. Allele frequencies at a genome‐wide collection of SNPs were tracked across generations, and a common garden experiment was conducted to compare trait means between generations. These data allowed us to identify instances of selection on crop‐derived alleles/traits and, in concert with QTL mapping results, test for congruence between our genotypic and phenotypic results. We found that natural selection overwhelmingly favours wild alleles and phenotypes. However, crop alleles in certain genomic regions can be favoured, and these changes often occurred in parallel across locations. We did not, however, consistently observe close agreement between our genotypic and phenotypic results. For example, when a trait evolved towards the wild phenotype, wild QTL alleles associated with that trait did not consistently increase in frequency. We discuss these results in the context of crop allele introgression into wild populations and implications for the management of GM crops.
Short duration grazing research in Africa.

O ver the past 30 years short-duration grazing has become both a popular and controversial approach to grazing management. Theories behind short-duration grazing, developed by Allan Savory in Zimbabwe, Africa, were initially introduced in the United States by Goodloe (1969) and Savory (1978). Later Allan Savory made a progressive series of refinements summarized by Savory and Parsons (1980), Savory (1983), Savory (1988), and Savory (1999). Various studies in North America attempting to evaluate Savory's theories on short-duration grazing were reviewed by Holechek et al. (2000). The "Charter Grazing Trials" conducted in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were the research foundation for shortduration grazing as originally conceived by Allan Savory (Rangelands, June 2000, letter to the editor, p. 32 & 33). Reader comments published in "Rangelands" under letters to the editor regarding the Holechek et al. (2000) review of short duration grazing in North America make repeated reference to the "Charter Trials" but a detailed analysis is lacking. Our objective is to review the three scientific papers on the "Charter Grazing Trials" as well as other African studies on short-duration grazing. Primary references for our review of the Charter Trials are Clatworthy (1984), Worthington (1984), and Parsons (1984). These reports published in the Zimbabwe Agricultural Journal, provide summaries of vegetation, livestock and economic outcomes from the 7-year Charter Trials conducted between 1969 and 1975. This research project derives its name from the Charter Estate, a London based company, which provided land, cattle and facilities for conducting the research. The Rhodesian Minister of Agriculture arranged the trials. Vegetation monitoring was done by the Rhodesian (Zimbabwe) Research Station, while the University of Rhodesia conducted economic comparisons. Mr. Savory, according to his letter to the editor (Rangelands, June 2000, p. 32 and 33) played a key role in planning and decision making for the "Charter Trials" and endorses the findings. The basis for the "Charter Trials" was Mr. Savory's contention he could double the stocking rate on any land under conventional management, improve the land and make more profit using the planned grazing process then called short-duration grazing, but today called Holistic Planned Grazing (Savory, Rangelands, June 2000, letter to the editor, p.32).
Applicability of the Impact on Family Scale for Assessing Families with Behaviorally Difficult Children

The present paper reports a series of studies on the potential usefulness of the Stein and Riessman Impact on Family Scale for assessing the effects of behaviorally difficult children on their families. Subjects were parents of 54 clinic and 76 nonclinic children who completed a child behavior or child temperament questionnaire in addition to the Impact on Family Scale. Findings suggest that, while the scale was developed for assessing the influence of a physically ill child on the family, this general assessment approach may also have value in assessing family-related changes associated with having a child who is difficult to look after.
Effect of human growth hormone treatment on adipose tissue in children

Body fat and the size and number of adipose cells were determined in 22 children with growth hormone deficiency before and after 6 months of replacement therapy with human growth hormone (HGH). A marked reduction in body fat and adipose cell size was found, and the total number of adipose cells increased at the normal rate during treatment. HGH does not appear to induce catch-up growth in the number of adipose cells.
Cross-Reactivity of Ryanodine Receptors with Plasma Membrane Ion Channel Modulators

Various pharmacological agents designed to modulate plasma membrane ion channels seem to significantly affect intracellular Ca2+ signaling when acting on their target receptor. Some agents could also cross-react (modulate channels or receptors beyond their putative target) with intracellular Ca2+ transporters. This study investigated the potential of thirty putative modulators of either plasma membrane K+, Na+, or transient receptor potential (TRP) channels to cross-react with intracellular Ca2+ release channels [i.e., ryanodine receptors (RyRs)] from skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). Screening for cross-reactivity of these various agents was performed by measuring the rate of spontaneous Ca2+ leak or caffeine-induced Ca2+ release from SR microsomes. Four of the agents displayed a strong cross-reactivity and were further evaluated with skeletal RyR (RyR1) reconstituted into planar bilayers. 6,12,19,20,25,26-Hexahydro-5,27:13,18:21,24-trietheno-11,7-metheno-7H-dibenzo [b,n][1,5,12,16]tetraazacyclotricosine-5, 13-diium dibromide (UCL 1684; K+ channel antagonist) and lamotrigine (Na+ channel antagonist) were found to significantly inhibit the RyR1-mediated caffeine-induced Ca2+ release. TRP channel agonists anandamide and (−)menthol were found to inhibit and activate RyR1, respectively. High concentrations of nine other agents produced partial inhibition of RyR1-mediated Ca2+ release from SR microsomes. Various pharmacological agents, especially TRP modulators, also inhibited a minor RyR1-independent component of the SR Ca2+ leak. Overall, ∼43% of the agents selected cross-reacted with RyR1-mediated and/or RyR1-independent Ca2+ leak from intracellular stores. Thus, cross-reactivity should be considered when using these classes of pharmacological agents to determine the role of plasmalemmal channels in Ca2+ homeostasis.
Improving the quality of photoacoustic images using the short-lag spatial coherence imaging technique

Clutter noise is an important challenge in photocoustic (PA) and ultrasound (US) imaging as they degrade the image quality. In this paper, the short-lag spatial coherence (SLSC) imaging technique is used to reduce clutter and side lobes in PA images. In this technique, images are obtained through the spatial coherence of PA signals at small spatial distances across the transducer aperture. The performance of this technique in improving image quality and detecting point targets is compared with a conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming technique. A superior contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are observed when SLSC imaging is employed. Point spread function of point targets shows an improved spatial resolution and reduced side lobes when compared with DAS beamforming. Also shown is the impact of increasing the number of frames on which SLSC is applied. The results show that contrast, CNR, and SNR are improved with increasing number of frames.
Protein Threading using Parallel Evolution Strategy

The protein threading problem is the problem of determining the three-dimensional structure of a given but arbitrary protein sequence from a set of known structures of other proteins. This problem is known to be NP-hard and current computational approaches are time-consuming and data-intensive. In this paper, we propose an evolution strategy for protein threading. We also propose parallel methods for fast threading. We have obtained encouraging energy results as well as significant reduction in threading time.
Gasification of Coal-Petcoke Blends in a Pilot Scale Gasification Plant

This paper investigates the synergistic interaction in a gasification of coal and petcoke blends in a 150 kWth pilot scale gasification plant. Petcoke was used either in combination with coal or separately to produce syngas in an atmospheric fluidized bed gasifier using air as gasifying agent. Syngas composition and carbon conversion efficiency were recorded and calculated. The results show that the increase in petcoke content in the fuel blend tends to lower the syngas composition. In addition, the carbon conversion efficiency also decreased with the increase in petcoke percentage in the blend. However, the conversion efficiency and syngas composition started to increase again when the petcoke percentage in the blend was more than 50%. As far as the mixture of coal and petcoke is concerned, optimum gasification efficiency was obtained at a 90:10 coal:petcoke blend. The lowest heating value was observed when the mixture was at 50:50. Therefore this mixture needs to be avoided when gasifying the coal: petcoke blend because it has the minimum gasification efficiency.
Body Mass, Structural Size, and Life-History Patterns of the Columbian Ground Squirrel

Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus) exhibit an elevational cline in several life-history traits and in body mass. Body mass is a trait that might interact with the elevational changes in life histories, but it could reflect either or both of two underlying factors: structural size and physiological condition. I studied these factors in several populations of ground squirrels. Structural size was estimated from first principal component scores in an analysis of postcranial bone lengths. Physiological condition was inferred from differences in body mass that were independent of structural size. Field body mass and structural size of yearlings decreased with increasing elevation, which indicates slower growth at higher elevations. For adults, physiological condition was not measured directly, but evidence suggested that it was reflected by changes in body mass: body mass declined with increasing elevation but structural size did not, residuals of body mass on structural size showed the same patterns of change as body mass, most of the variation in body mass was orthogonal to a "general size factor" in principal components analyses, and significant changes in body mass of individuals could be stimulated by experimental supplementation of food. Life-history traits and physiological condition covaried along the elevational cline and were phenotypically plastic, but the structural size of adult ground squirrels was not an extremely plastic trait.