Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Site-Structure Resonance as a Proxy for Structural Damage

Since 1992, the reconnaissance teams of the German Task Force for Earthquakes have undertaken numerous field missions to disaster areas after strong earthquakes worldwide. During these missions, a unique database of damage cases has been collected, which serves as the basis for examining whether site-structure resonance effects contribute to building damage. The selected buildings that partly experienced slight to moderate damage during a recent major event have been experimentally tested in order to identify their structural parameters and to allow a calibration of the structural building models. In addition, instrumental noise recordings were made directly at the building sites to derive the ranges of predominant site periods. By correlating the ranges of predominant site periods with the building's capacity curves, representing the inelastic displacement behavior under lateral effects, a quick survey procedure has been developed to estimate the impact of agreements between periods of the site and the structure contributing to structural earthquake damage.
Optimal Control of a HVDC Transmission Link

This paper applies the modern control theory to design HVDC controllers. The state regulator and tracking techniques have been used to design controller feedbacks to improve system performance. Both optimal and sub-optimal controllers have been designed. An 'eigenvalue search' technique has also been applied to determine the desired controller gain and time constant. Using the various designed controllers, the dynamic performance of the system has been studied on both a digital computer and a small scale simulator. Some of these time domain studies are included in addition to the root locus plots.
Power detection method using a virtual ground node for RF CMOS power amplifier applications

We propose a power detection method for RF CMOS power amplifier applications using the second harmonic component at the virtual ground node. With the proposed detection method, we remove the fundamental signal distortion problems. Because the input of the power detector is the second harmonic component of virtual ground node of the amplifier, the ripple voltage can be reduced compared to when the fundamental signal component is used. We designed a simple amplifier with the proposed detection method and verify the feasibility of the proposed method.
Identification and estimation of equivalent area parameters using synchronised phasor measurements

A new approach is proposed for obtaining a non-linear area-based equivalent model of power systems to express the inter-area oscillations using synchronised phasor measurements. The generators that remain coherent for inter-area disturbances over a wide range of operating conditions define the areas, and the reduced model is obtained by representing each area by an equivalent machine. The parameters of the reduced system are identified by processing the obtained measurements, and a non-linear Kalman estimator is then designed for the estimation of equivalent area angles and frequencies. The simulation of the approach on a two-area system shows substantial reduction of non-inter-area modes in the estimated angles. The proposed methods are also applied to a ten-machine system to illustrate the feasibility of the approach on larger and meshed networks.
Shilnikov orbits in an autonomous third-order chaotic phase-locked loop

We investigate Shilnikov homoclinic bifurcation from a new type of phase-locked loop (PLL) which uses second-order loop filter with no modulation carrier input. This system can be represented as a 3rd-order autonomous system with piecewise linear characteristics. We have found many Shilnikov orbits, and draw a bifurcation diagram in gain K/sub 0/ versus detuning /spl delta/ parameter plane.
Current Sharing of Paralleled Power MOSFETs at PWM Operation

A basic model for static parallel operation of power MOSFETs is extended to include the impact of branch inductances as well as their mismatch on current sharing and on worst-case junction temperature. Assuming moderate temperature ripples, the thermal aspects of paralleling MOSFETs in a typical half-bridge circuit are analysed using a local average approximation method. Regarding PWM operation, equations are derived for the steady state to deduce the worst-case scenario for any number of parallel devices at given parameter spread and operation conditions. In an example, a worst-case is identified by that model, which is then employed in simulations of a more complex electro-thermal SPICE model to further include switching losses. Comparison shows that both of the considered dynamic current-sharing effects may substantially contribute to the peak junction temperatures.
High-power high-brightness semiconductor tapered diode lasers for the red and near infrared spectral range

The most promising concept to achieve high-output power together with a good beam quality is the tapered laser consisting of a straight ridge waveguide (RW) section and a tapered gain-region. The RW section should support only the fundamental guided mode and should suppress higher order modes. The taper angle has to be selected with respect to the lateral divergence of the beam propagating from the RW to the tapered section. High brightness tapered devices in the wavelength range between 635 nm and 1085 nm will be presented. For red emitting tapered lasers around 650 nm, the output power is limited to about 1 W due to the properties of the laser material. At this output power a beam propagation ratio M2 of 1.3 and a brightness of 100 MW•cm-2•sr-1 will be shown. Devices made from laser structures with low vertical divergence down to 25° (95% power included) without a significant deterioration of device parameters will be presented for the longer wavelength range near 1 μm. For tapered lasers manufactured from these structures, nearly diffraction limited output powers larger than 10 W and a brightness of 1 GW•cm-2•sr-1 were measured.
A New Wood Recognition Method Based on Texture Analysis

A novel and efficient wood recognition method based on texture analysis is presented in this paper. Firstly, the sample images are divided into several regions after cutting from wood stereogram images. Then, more features are extracted by Gabor Wavelets through five scales and eight orientations. For getting the key points of these Gabor features, clustering and sifting operation are used to dislodge the dimmed features that extracted from the noise regions, such as cleavage region, resin canal region and so on. Finally, the Earth Mover’s Distance is used as the distance measure to compare these features by nearest neighbor classifier. The experiment on 24 species and 480 sample images shows that the recognition rate can even up to 97.5 percents, which gives a satisfactory classiﬁcation performance compared with the current state-of-the-art methods.
Understanding the governance of reforms to urban transport in developing cities

Numerous international development agencies and researchers advocate the use of dedicated transport authorities in urban areas as a means for strengthening the institutional frameworks needed to improve transport services in cities. While such bodies are widespread in developed countries, little is known about the benefits and drawbacks of their use in developing Asian cities. The very different institutional contexts into which such management would be integrated raise some interesting questions as to how effective such models could be in these cities. This thesis examines two transport authorities that have been created to improve the coordination of urban transport in the Asian region – the Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) in Malaysia, and the Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) in Bangalore, India. The aim is to explore the motivations underpinning the reforms and the creation of these two bodies, as well as to understand how the reforms have subsequently unfolded in terms of their implementation, these agencies’ abilities to implement their plans, the outcomes they have achieved and the problems they experience. This research utilises a qualitative approach to undertake a cross-national case study through semi-structured interviews of stakeholders in the urban transport sector, including civil servants, politicians, private sector workers and academics. The data from these interviews was augmented by assessment of written materials. The findings show how the creation and empowerment of SPAD and the BMLTA have been influenced by contextual factors and constraints that arose during their implementation. These findings also provide insights into factors that determine the performance of these authorities. The creation of SPAD and BMLTA which aimed to change the way urban transport was governed in their contexts, has only provided a partial degree of success. The reforms have been successful in Malaysia to a certain extent as it has a clear operational mandate. By contrast, in Bangalore, the reforms have achieved only weak coordination. The reforms were dominated by the existing institutional landscape and power struggles. With strong political leadership, some aspects of this can be overcome, but not to the extent that these bodies have control over the range of policy tools needed to deliver a truly integrated transport strategies.
Statistical Estimations of the Distribution of Fire Growth Factor - Study on Risk-Based Evacuation Safety Design Method

YOSHIKAZU DEGUCHI, HIROAKI NOTAKE, JUN’ICHI YAMAGUCHI, and TAKEYOSHI TANAKA Research & Development Institute Takenaka Corporation 1-5-1 Ohtsuka, Inzai-city, Chiba, 270-1395, Japan Institute of Technology Shimizu Corporation 3-4-17 Etchujima, Koto-ku, Tokyo, 135-8530, Japan Technical Research Institute Obayashi Corporation 4-640, Shimokiyoto, Kiyose-city, Tokyo, 204-8558, Japan Disaster Prevention Research Institute Kyoto University Gokasyo, Uji, Kyoto, 611-0011, Japan
Designing of engineered fabrics using particle swarm optimization

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to design woven fabrics with desired quality and low manufacturing cost by optimizing the weave parameters such as count, crimp and thread spacing of warp and weft yarns. Design/methodology/approach – To fulfill this goal, the authors endeavor to devise a searching mechanism based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) for efficiently finding the appropriate combination of weave parameters. Findings – The experimental validation confirms that the proposed method has an excellent search capacity to obtain the best combinations of weave parameters for producing the fabrics with requisite quality at low cost. Practical implications – The quick response capability of the system would benefit the fabric manufacturers for efficient determination of the required weaving parameters to produce the engineered fabrics. Originality/value – This paper offers a maiden application of PSO technique to design engineered products in textiles. The method is easy to implement and it is co.
Context-Based Separation of Cell Clusters for the Automatic Biocompatibility Testing of Implant Materials

This paper presents a new method to separate cells on microscopic surfaces joined together in cell clusters into individual cells. Important features of this method are that the remaining object geometry is preserved and few contour points are required for finding joints between neighboring cells. There are alternative methods such as morphological operations or the watershed transformation based on the inverse distance transformation but they have certain disadvantages compared to the method presented in this paper. The discussed method contains knowledge-based components in form of a decision function and exchangeable rules to avoid unwanted separations.
Posterolateral decompression, distractive reduction and reconstructive stabilization for the treatment of thoracic and lumbar spine fracture-dislocations

Background: Fracture-dislocations of the thoracic and lumbar spine are uncommon and highly unstable injuries, and the ideal management for patients with thoracic and lumbar spine fracture-dislocations is challenging. This study was designed to evaluate the clinical and radiographic results following posterolateral decompression, distractive reduction and reconstructive stabilization for patients with severe thoracic and lumbar spine fracture-dislocations.Methods: Twenty-three patients with thoracic and lumbar spine fracture-dislocations underwent this procedure. Demographic data, radiographic results, neurologic function, clinical functions and treatment-related complications were prospectively evaluated. Results: The average preoperative sagittal and coronal displacement was 31.9% and 6.7%, significantly improved to 6.4% and 2.1% after surgery, respectively. The final sagittal and coronal displacement was 5.3% and 1.5%. The average segmental kyphosis was 20.4° before surgery, markedly corrected to 4.7° immediately after surgery. The final sagittal kyphosis was 6.1°. Twelve patients with incomplete neurologic deficits had improvement by at least one ASIA grade neurologic improvement. The preoperative pain level showed a mean VAS score of 9.5 improved to 3.5 postoperatively, and to 1.2 at the final follow-up. Mean ODI preoperatively was 90.2%, and improved to 38.3% postoperatively, and to 24.9% at the final follow-up. No patient had persistent postoperative back pain. No obvious complications were observed in this series.Conclusions: Posterolateral decompression, distractive reduction and reconstructive stabilization is a reasonably safe and effective technique for thoracic and lumbar spine fracture-dislocations. This replicable procedure can result in satisfactory clinical and radiographic outcomes, with sufficiently circumferential decompression, excellent reduction, perfect spine alignment, solid instrumentation and sound fusion.
Cultural Exposure as a Creative Experiential Learning Intervention

ABSTRACT Counselor education programs often use cultural immersion as a creative pedagogical approach to foster cultural responsiveness. This form of experiential learning can instill and deepen multicultural and social justice counseling competencies. The purpose of this article is to highlight the potential of a domestic immersion experience as a creative experiential learning intervention by outlining one counselor education program’s experience using a brief cultural immersion trip over the course of three years. The author highlights the importance of using experiential learning to instill cultural responsiveness, describes the cultural immersion trip, and discusses applications for counselor education programs seeking to implement a cultural immersion experience.
On the potential of computational methods and numerical simulation in ice mechanics

This paper deals with the challenge of developing better methods and tools for analysing interaction between sea ice and structures and, in particular, to be able to calculate ice loads on these structures. Ice loads have traditionally been estimated using empirical data and "engineering judgment". However, it is believed that computational mechanics and advanced computer simulations of ice-structure interaction can play an important role in developing safer and more efficient structures, especially for irregular structural configurations. The paper explains the complexity of ice as a material in computational mechanics terms. Some key words here are large displacements and deformations, multi-body contact mechanics, instabilities, multi-phase materials, inelasticity, time dependency and creep, thermal effects, fracture and crushing, and multi-scale effects. The paper points towards the use of advanced methods like ALE formulations, mesh-less methods, particle methods, XFEM, and multi-domain formulations in order to deal with these challenges. Some examples involving numerical simulation of interaction and loads between level sea ice and offshore structures are presented. It is concluded that computational mechanics may prove to become a very useful tool for analysing structures in ice; however, much research is still needed to achieve satisfactory reliability and versatility of these methods.
Dual‐Band Ring Slot Antenna with Circular Polarization

A design for dual‐band circularly polarized (CP) antennas is presented. The antenna is composed of two concentric shorted annular slots, and each slot can generate CP radiation at its one wavelength resonant mode or one‐and‐a‐half wavelength resonant mode by varying the position of the shorted section. When the one wavelength mode of the outer slot and the one‐and‐a‐half wavelength mode of the inner slot are simultaneously excited with a microstrip line, the antenna has two CP operating frequencies with a large frequency ratio (FR). A small FR can also be achieved when the outer and inner annular slots are operated at the one‐and‐a‐half wavelength mode and one wavelength mode, respectively. For the proposed design, two examples with the FRs of 1.05 and 1.9 are designed and implemented. Details of the experimental results are shown. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:2077–2080, 2013
Suppressed back-lobe substrate-integrated waveguide slot array antenna for X-band

Utilising an array that is constructed by combining short-ended stubs and microstrip lines, a planar-choke structure is presented. By locating the proposed chock structure on the bottom of the substrate-integrated waveguide slot array antenna, undesired spillover current and edge diffractions are removed. Measurement result show that in the operational bandwidth the backward radiation is reduced by more than 20 dB and the side-lobe level is improved by 5 dB without degrading of the antenna's electrical performance.
Terahertz toroidal metasurface biosensor for sensitive distinction of lung cancer cells

Abstract Lung cancer is the most frequently life-threatening disease and the prominent cause of cancer-related mortality among human beings worldwide, where poor early diagnosis and expensive detection costs are considered as significant reasons. Here, we try to tackle this issue by proposing a novel label-free and low-cost strategy for rapid detection and distinction of lung cancer cells relying on plasmonic toroidal metasurfaces at terahertz frequencies. Three disjoint regions are displayed in identifiable intensity-frequency diagram, which could directly help doctors determine the type of lung cancer cells for clinical treatment. The metasurface is generated by two mirrored gold split ring resonators with subwavelength sizes. When placing analytes on the metasurface, apparent shifts of both the resonance frequency and the resonance depth can be observed in the terahertz transmission spectra. The theoretical sensitivity of the biosensor over the reflective index reaches as high as 485.3 GHz/RIU. Moreover, the proposed metasurface shows high angular stability for oblique incident angle from 0 to 30°, where the maximum resonance frequency shift is less than 0.66% and the maximum transmittance variation keeps below 1.33%. To experimentally verify the sensing strategy, three types of non-small cell lung cancer cells (Calu-1, A427, and 95D) are cultured with different concentrations and their terahertz transmission spectra are measured with the proposed metasurface biosensor. The two-dimensional fingerprint diagram considering both the frequency and transmittance variations of the toroidal resonance dip is obtained, where the curves for different cells are completely separated with each other. This implies that we can directly distinguish the type of the analyte cells and its concentration by only single spectral measurement. We envisage that the proposed strategy has potential for clinical diagnosis and significantly expands the capabilities of plasmonic metamaterials in biological detection.
The Use of Kalman Filter and Neural Network Methodologies in Gas Turbine Performance Diagnostics: A Comparative Study

The goal of gas turbine performance diagnositcs is to accurately detect, isolate, and assess the changes in engine module performance, engine system malfunctions and instrumentation problems from knowledge of measured parameters taken along the engine’s gas path. The method has been applied to a wide variety of commercial and military engines in the three decades since its inception as a diagnostic tool and has enjoyed a reasonable degree of success. During that time many methodologies and implementations of the basic concept have been investigated ranging from the statistically based methods to those employing elements from the field of artificial intelligence. The two most publicized methods involve the use of either Kalman filters or artificial neural networks (ANN) as the primary vehicle for the fault isolation process. The present paper makes a comparison of these two techniques. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1419016#
Asymmetric genetic differentiation: evidence for hybridization between two sympatric termite species in nature

Hybridization between species is likely to be associated with a new ecological impact. However, in termites, reports of hybridization mostly focus on hybrid zones caused by species invasion or the development of initial-stage colonies. In this study, we combined microsatellite genotyping with mitochondrial DNA sequencing to investigate the hybridization and adaptive introgression between two sympatric, long-diﬀerentiated related termite species, Reticulitermes ﬂaviceps and R. chinensis, in nature. Similar levels of mitochondrial and nuclear genetic diversity were found in R. ﬂaviceps and R. chinensis. Asymmetric interspeciﬁc genetic diﬀerentiation was observed between mitochondrial and nuclear genes, with high genetic divergence found in mitochondrial DNA but low genetic divergence in nuclear genes. Our results indicated a lack of mitochondrial gene exchange in R. ﬂaviceps and R. chinensis but unconstrained nuclear introgression between them. This asymmetric genetic diﬀerentiation between nuclear and cytoplasmic material strongly suggests that there is interspeciﬁc hybridization between R. ﬂaviceps and R. chinensis in nature, which provides new insight into the dynamics of hybridization and its potential consequences for speciation in termites.
A new principle based on Pearson correlation coefficient to avoid mal-operation of the restricted earth fault protection

This paper presents a new principle based on the Pearson correlation coefficient principle to avoid maloperation of the restricted earth fault protection (REF), by calculating the correlation coefficient of 3I0 (residual current) and IN (star-point current) to determine internal or external fault. When the transformer earth fault occurs, the direction and intensity of 3I0 (residual current) between IN (starpoint current) almost change in the same way, that means perfect positive correlation. When the external earth fault occurs, 3I0 and IN are close to be perfect negative correlation. When CT saturation or inrush condition happens, the correlation coefficient is also significantly negative. Therefore, it can make use of the correlation coefficient calculation, in case 3I0 and IN are strong negative correlation then restraint or delay the REF protection trip. In this way can improve the reliability of the REF protection, while avoiding the harmonic restraint principle leads to the REF protection's sensitivity reduction. The Matlab software was used to analyse fault data which recorded from RTDS test environment obtained typical power transformer fault simulation. The test item includes: internal and external metal fault, internal and external fault occurs with CT saturation, transformer winding to ground fault and the high resistance ground fault, through theoretical analysis and dynamic simulation experiment verifies the feasibility and validity of the new principle. This new method also can easily to apply on modern digital protection device. (4 pages)