Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-cultural adaptation, reliability, and validity of the Chinese version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Adult Hearing Loss

Abstract Objective Few mental health assessment tools are available for people with hearing loss (HL) in China. The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Adult Hearing Loss (AAQ-AHL) has been specifically designed to assess psychological inflexibility in adults with HL and may help assess mental health status promptly for targeted psychological interventions. The study aimed to investigate the cross-cultural validity and reliability of the Chinese version of the AAQ-AHL to assess its applicability to teenagers and adults with HL in China. Design A descriptive and correlational study of a convenience sample of students aged above 12 years. All participants were invited to complete an online questionnaire. Study samples Participants included 402 students with HL. Results The Chinese version of the AAQ-AHL was shown to be an excellent, reliable, and valid instrument that can be used to assess psychological inflexibility in teenagers and adults with HL by clinicians working with Mandarin-speaking populations. Conclusion Although the AAQ-AHL showed very good psychometric properties in hearing-impaired students aged above 12 years, further testing is needed to validate the measure across other age groups and validate its feasibility and utility in clinical applications.
Pushing the Limits using Business Model Innovation a Three Pronged Approach and Lessons Learned

In a constantly changing business environment, with increasing digitisation and fourth industrial revolution blurring the traditional value creation boundaries, companies need to explore ways to push the limits to remain competitive. Business model innovation offers companies the dynamic capability to differentiate business models and find innovative revenue streams while reducing costs. As such, the question arises as to how company may use business model innovation to remain competitive as the world digitises. Based on a literature review and empirical research involving six case studies, a three pronged approach in support of business model innovation is proposed. Business model innovation has the potential to push the limits when company executives and academia focus on the interrelation between drivers, process and components. Moreover, both effective and ineffective practices based on the research are presented. In conclusion, for companies to use business model innovation in pushing the limits, there is need to respond to the business model innovation drivers, adopt a systematic process and change at least one or more business model components and taking into account the interactions between these three concepts. This article may contribute to existing theory in the field of business model innovation and lessons learned from executives that have pushed the limits using business model innovation. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2021-02-01-03 Full Text: PDF
Improvement initiative paths in operations

Considers the improvement initiatives which companies implement in operations, in the areas of design, supply and production (for example, design computerization, linkages with suppliers, JIT, quality improvement, flexible automation, etc.). By means of a survey examines the question of the existence of different paths followed by companies to innovate their operations and obtain better performance levels. Identifies four different paths, which have been labelled pioneers, innovators, followers and discriminators on the basis of the number of initiatives undertaken, an earlier or later start‐up, the sequence of their start‐ups and the level of penetration reached within the plant. Examines the four paths in relation to the characteristics of the business environments in which the companies examined operate and their performance levels.
Do Environmental Regulations Improve Industrial Efficiency?

This study was based on research on the impact of environmental regulation on industrial efficiency in 30 provinces from 2005 to 2017 in China. For the explained variables, the industrial efficiency of the DEA-Malmquist method was utilized for the decomposition and measurement of overall factor productivity, and government environmental governance variables were added as instrumental variables for two-stage least-squares regression. In addition, environmental regulatory intensity and year were utilized as threshold variables for the threshold test. In the benchmark regression, environmental regulation harms regional industrial efficiency. However, according to the IV estimation of government environmental governance variables, environmental regulation has a positive effect on the transformation of regional industrial efficiency. The influence of environmental regulation on industrial efficiency will be first suppressed and then promoted with the gradual increase of regulatory intensity. Furthermore, there is significant spatial heterogeneity in the impact of environmental regulations.
Analysis of the characteristics of air–yarn coupling movement in the profiled reed groove of an air-jet loom

The movement characteristics of yarn in the profiled reed groove of an air-jet loom can have a great impact on the performance of the fabric. Unstable yarn movement tends to lead to weft defects, as short wefts or weft breaks may occur, which could deteriorate the quality of the final fabric. In this paper, the characteristics of the yarn movement in a profiled reed groove are numerically studied. The arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method is used to solve the two-way airflow–yarn interaction and the yarn is simulated with the ball–socket model. A fluctuation ratio is defined to characterize the unsteadiness of the yarn movement. Our simulation first investigates the effect of the gap ratio of the profiled reed groove (β) on the yarn movement then compares the movements of different yarn kinds. The simulation results indicate that a larger β not only decreases gas leaks (thus saves gas consumption), but also stabilizes the yarn movement. Our simulation results also show that the movement of the yarn of polypropylene is more stable than the other two weft-yarn materials. An experiment is also conducted to validate our numerical results, which shows a favorable agreement between them. Our numerical results of the yarn movement in the profiled reed groove can provide a valuable insight into the optimization of the weft insertion system of the air-jet loom.
Comparative evaluation of batch and continuous process biogas production from animal wastes

The production of biogas, an alternative source of energy from animal wastes, was investigated in the laboratory scale using the simple single-state digesters. In this study, a comparison between two feed processes, a batch feeding process and a continuous feeding process, both within mesophilic temperature ranges was carried out. The digesters were fed with mixture of cow dung and poultry droppings and operated at ambient temperature of 30°C as baseline and temperatures of 32−45°C for 30 days. In this study, the optimum temperature for biogas production from the blends of the animal wastes was determined as controlled heat was supplied to the digester. Results obtained indicate maximum biogas yield of 3.603 litres from the digestion of the animal wastes at temperature of 370°C in the continuous process while maximum biogas yield of 2.685 litres was obtained at temperature of 400°C for the batch process.
Undergraduate Mechatronics Research Case Study: Contributing towards a Dexterous Robot Hand

The importance of implementing a strong project-based approach to undergraduate mechatronics education and the enhancement obtained through the introduction of a research aspect to these projects have been emphasized in the literature. This paper describes the immersion of final-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students into the research programme of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering of the University of Malta, through supervised undergraduate projects that build upon each other from year to year, eventually leading to publications in the international research literature. We focus on the area of robot hands and present an extended project as a case study. We first describe briefly a selection of research-oriented undergraduate projects in this area carried out over the last decade. The paper then focuses on one particular project among those described, involving the development of an anthropomorphic robot hand with eight degrees of freedom that is based on observations of the attributes and the limitations of the human hand. The robot hand is intended to be used as a teleoperated slave device and a particular objective is to reduce its size and weight through the remote location of all of the actuators and sensors. The paper gives a detailed rationale for the design, followed by descriptions of the kinematic, mechanical, actuation, sensing and control systems of the constructed prototype. This is followed by a description of sensor calibration procedures and results. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the significance of this work, addressing both the educational and research aspects, and of future directions to be taken.
Architecture and Software Design for a Service Robot in an Elderly-Care Scenario

ABSTRACT Systems for ambient assisted living (AAL) that integrate service robots with sensor networks and user monitoring can help elderly people with their daily activities, allowing them to stay in their homes and live active lives for as long as possible. In this paper, we outline the AAL system currently developed in the European project Robot-Era, and describe the engineering aspects and the service-oriented software architecture of the domestic robot, a service robot with advanced manipulation capabilities. Based on the robot operating system (ROS) middleware, our software integrates a large set of advanced algorithms for navigation, perception, and manipulation. In tests with real end users, the performance and acceptability of the platform are evaluated.
Existence of Periodic Traveling Wave Solutions for a K-P-Boussinesq Type System

In this paper, via a variational approach, we show the existence of periodic traveling waves for a Kadomtsev-Petviashvili Boussinesq type system that describes the propagation of long waves in wide channels. We show that those periodic solutions are characterized as critical points of some functional, for which the existence of critical points follows as a consequence of the Mountain Pass Theorem and Arzela-Ascoli Theorem.
Bidirectional DC-DC Converter with Full-bridge / Push-pull circuit for Automobile Electric Power Systems

In recent years, energy storage systems assisted by super capacitor have been widely researched and developed to progress power systems for the electronic vehicles. In this paper, a full-bridge/push-pull circuit-based bidirectional DC-DC converter and its control methods are proposed. From the results of detailed experimental demonstration, the proposed system is able to perform adequate charge and discharge operation between low-voltage high-current super capacitor side and high-voltage low-current side with drive train and main battery. Furthermore, conduction losses and voltage/current surge are drastically reduced by ZVS operation with loss-less snubber capacitor in high voltage side as well as the synchronous rectification in low-voltage high-current super capacitor side.
Real-time Image Denoising of Mixed Poisson-Gaussian Noise in Fluorescence Microscopy Images using ImageJ

Fluorescence microscopy imaging speed is fundamentally limited by the measurement signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To improve image SNR for a given image acquisition rate, computational denoising techniques can be used to suppress noise. However, common techniques to estimate a denoised image from a single frame are either computationally expensive or rely on simple noise statistical models. These models assume Poisson or Gaussian noise statistics, which are not appropriate for many fluorescence microscopy applications that contain quantum shot noise and electronic Johnson–Nyquist noise, therefore a mixture of Poisson and Gaussian noise. In this paper, we show convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on mixed Poisson and Gaussian noise images to overcome the limitations of existing image denoising methods. The trained CNN is presented as an open-source ImageJ plugin that performs real-time image denoising (within tens of milliseconds) with superior performance (SNR improvement) compared to the conventional fluorescence microscopy denoising methods. The method is validated on external datasets with out-of-distribution noise, contrast, structure, and imaging modalities from the training data and consistently achieves high performance (> 8 dB) denoising in less time than other fluorescence microscopy denoising methods.
Chemical composition and antifungal activity of oil extracted from leaves turmeric (Curcuma longa)

Turmeric rhizomes are commonly used in the culinary, pharmaceutical, herbal medicine, and beverage industries. On the contrary, turmeric leaves are underutilized. The aims of this study were to extract the essential oil from turmeric leaves, characterize the chemical composition of the oil, and determine its antifungal activities against aflatoxin-producing fungi. Steam distillation was used to extract the essential oil from turmeric leaves. The properties of the oil were identified using GC-MS. Antimicrobial activities against Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus were determined. Spores of the fungi were inoculated into potato dextrose agar plates supplemented with various quantities of turmeric leaves essential oil and incubated at 30°C for 7 days. The oil's primary constituents were α-phelandrene(46.70 %), followed by α-terpinolene (17.39 %), 1,8-cineole (8.78 %), benzene (4.24 %), and 2-β pinene (3.64 %). At low (<1%) concentrations, the oil delayed mycelia formation and at high concentrations it significantly inhibit fungal growth (at 1%) and completely inhibit colony formation (at 2%) Additionally, the result show that turmeric leaves oil can inhibited fungus growth at the lowest concentration (0.25 %) when compared to the control over a seven-day incubation period.
NASCAP-2K Spacecraft Charging Models: Algorithms and Applications

Nascap-2K is being developed as a replacement for the NASCAP/GEO spacecraft charging code. Currently implemented are an Object Definition Toolkit (OTk), a Boundary Element Method (BEM) charging analysis module, and a user interface for setting up problems and displaying results. Integration of Nascap-2K with the DynaPAC (Dynamic Plasma Analysis Code) code is nearly complete. DynaPAC will be used to study volume potentials, particle trajectories, denser plasmas, thruster plumes, and complex plasma processes. This paper outlines some of the details of the BEM charging analysis, and presents examples of a typical geosynchronous charging calculation, and charging of the STEREO spacecraft in the solar wind. 1 10260 Campus Point Drive, Mail Stop 1360, San Diego CA 92121 2 Hanscom Air Force Base, MA 01731 3 Marshall Space Flight Center, AL 35812 INTRODUCTION The NASCAP/GEO code, used worldwide for surface charging analysis of geosynchronous spacecraft, was developed during the period 1976-1984. Since that time there have been huge advances in computer capabilities, software tools, software design, mathematical analysis techniques, and user expectations. Plus, we have advanced our knowledge of the space environment, the interactions between space plasma and spacecraft surface materials, and the algorithms to simulate spacecraft charging phenomena. Clearly, a more advanced code is needed for detailed charging analysis. Nascap-2K is being developed as a successor to NASCAP/GEO. The Air Force Research Laboratory and the NASA Space Environment Effects Program are funding the Nascap-2K effort. Currently implemented are: (1) an Object Definition Toolkit (written in Java); (2) an analysis module (written in C++ and using the Boundary Element Method (BEM)) for calculating surface charging in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit, Solar Wind or other tenuous plasma environments; (3) a graphical interface (written in Java) for setting up problems and examining results; and (4) a new GridTool program (Java) for building a DynaPAC grid. All information is stored in the database of the DynaPAC code, or as XML. DynaPAC (written in Fortran and C) is an existing finite element code that solves potentials and tracks particles in the space external to a spacecraft model using a flexible set of plasma treatments. DynaPAC features arbitrarily nested grids to provide good spatial resolution, and strictly continuous electric fields for accurate particle tracking. Nascap-2K’s geometric models and BEM charging results are accessible to DynaPAC’s modules, so that external potentials and particle trajectories can be calculated. We plan to use the DynaPAC synergy to extend the range of applicability of Nascap-2K to denser plasma environments such as found in low-earth or polar orbits, or resulting from thruster plumes.
The application of acoustic pyrometry to gas temperature measurement and mapping

CODEL have developed a system which allows accurate temperature measurement, reliably and continuously, with the facility to produce high resolution temperature maps. This process, which is rugged and non-contact, is known as acoustic pyrometry. A detailed study of the internal temperature profiles can give a previously unseen picture of the inside of the operating furnace. Acoustic pyrometry uses the velocity of sound in the gases within the furnace to calculate the temperature. By using an array of acoustic transducers placed around the enclosure, mean temperatures along a variety of paths can be determined and from that data a temperature profile map computed.
MMW Radiometric Image Feature Extraction for Security Inspection

Millimeter-wave (MMW) radiometric imaging system is widely used in the field of military and civil affairs. It can be used to detect concealed objects hidden under clothing. Based on MMW radiation imaging method and morphology theory, we presented a complex morphology filter to do the image pretreatment. Then used the Canny operator to extract features from concealed objects. The results show that the morphology algorithm can improve the quality of radiometric images. Meanwhile, Canny algorithm can detect the edges of object well.
Modelling Work-Trip Mode Choice Decisions in Two-Worker Households

This paper proposes that the theoretically more appropriate approach for modelling mode choice decisions for the journey to work by workers residing in two-worker households is through the development of a choice model at the household level that takes into account the decisions of both workers. There are at least two reasons for this. First, in the majority of cases the model estimation data comes from household travel surveys, which have the household as the sampling unit and not the individual worker. The majority of households in urban areas these days have two or more workers. Thus once a household is selected into the sample all its working members are necessarily selected as well. The idea of a random sample therefore holds at the level of the household and not the individual worker. Second, workers from the same household in the long run select modes for their journeys to work so as to minimize their combined disutility to travel as opposed to independently minimizing their respective individual disutilities. The household model thus treats the alternatives available to the household workers as a "modal bundle" with the two household workers, after intra-household bargaining, selecting the modal bundle that minimizes their combined total disutility to travel. An empirical test of both household and individual choice models is conducted and the household model found to give more precise predictions.
Factors Influencing Automobile Firms' Eco-Innovation Orientation

Abstract: An eco-innovation is any innovation that reduces environmental damage. Even though eco-innovating is a key trend in industry today, relatively little research has been conducted on its implications for the automobile industry. In this article, the attitude toward the environment while innovating is analyzed using the SEM (Structural Equation Model) technique, applied to a data set of 223 Spanish automotive companies. Results of a statistical analysis with this data set show that companies which focus on processes and products when innovating tend to be more environmentally oriented and tend to highlight the importance of information sources more than those which do not have a focus on process and product innovation. Further, our results show that companies which see market information sources (coming from suppliers, clients, competitors, and external consultants) as important in the process of innovation and development of new products and markets are also more environmentally oriented. The consistency in our findings suggests that companies which look for more operational flexibility, increased production capacity, reduced labor costs per unit, or reduced energy consumption per unit when innovating are also more prepared to adopt an environmental orientation. These results have important managerial implications for firms that are trying to go greener as it highlights the variables that should be considered in their effort to be more environmentally oriented and the key elements to lead companies from innovation toward eco-innovation. Learning from this study will help managerial decision-making. The variety of variables analyzed allows practitioners to discover conclusions relevant to the engineering management field.
Wnt5A Signaling Blocks Progression of Experimental Visceral Leishmaniasis

Visceral Leishmaniasis, caused by L. donovani infection is fatal if left untreated. The intrinsic complexity of visceral leishmaniasis complicated further by the increasing emergence of drug resistant L. donovani strains warrants fresh investigations into host defense schemes that counter infections. Accordingly, using a mouse model of experimental visceral leishmaniasis we explored the utility of host Wnt5A in restraining L. donovani infection, using both antimony sensitive and antimony resistant L. donovani strains. We found that Wnt5A heterozygous (Wnt5A +/-) mice are more susceptible to L. donovani infection than their wild type (Wnt5A +/+) counterparts as depicted by the respective Leishman Donovan Units (LDU) enumerated from the liver and spleen harvested from infected mice. Higher LDU in Wnt5A +/-mice correlated with increased level of plasma gammaglobulin, liver granuloma and disorganization of splenic germinal centers. Progression of infection in mice by both antimony sensitive and antimony resistant strains of L. donovani could be prevented by activation of Wnt5A signaling as evident from the lowered LDU and gammaglobulin level, and intactness of splenic germinal centers through intravenous administration of rWnt5A prior to L. donovani infection. Wnt5A mediated blockade of L. donovani infection correlated with the preservation of splenic macrophages and activated T cells, and a TH1 like cytokine thrust. Taken together our results indicate that depletion of Wnt5A promotes susceptibility to visceral leishmaniasis and revamping Wnt5A signaling in the host is able to curb L. donovani infection irrespective of antimony sensitivity or resistance and mitigate the progression of visceral leishmaniasis.