Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MRSA and enterobacteria of one health concern in wild animals undergoing rehabilitation

The presence of contaminated animals in wildlife rehabilitation centers poses a threat for both animals and humans that come into contact with them or the contaminated environment. The aim of this study was to assess the presence of Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), as well as studying the biofilm formation capacity of these isolates, Yersinia enterocolitica, Salmonella enterica and Campylobacter spp. in wild animals from a rehabilitation center. During a two-year period, feces were collected from animals that were admitted to a wildlife rehabilitation center (n=324 samples). The pathogens were isolated from 51 (15.7%) animals of different species of mammals, birds and reptiles. Forty isolates (12.3%) were identified as S. aureus, of these, 32 (9.9%) were identified as MRSA and 72.5% were able to form biofilm. Y. enterocolitica was found in five mammals (5.1%), three reptiles (21.43%) and two birds (0.94%). Salmonella and Campylobacter were isolated from one bird each (0.67% and 0.67%, respectively). A wide diversity of animal species in rehabilitation centers, including birds, mammals and reptiles, can carry MRSA and enterobacteria of one health concern and eliminate in the feces. The presence of these pathogens in the gastrointestinal tract of wild animals admitted to a wildlife rehabilitation center shows the importance of microbiological monitoring of animals at the time of their admission and reinforces the need for specific hygienic-sanitary care.
Real-Time Energy Management for Microgrid With EV Station and CHP Generation

A microgrid scenario that consists of electric vehicle (EV) station, combined heat and power (CHP) co-generation, main power grid, and external natural gas station, as well as thermal energy storage water tank is considered in this paper. By jointly considering the uncertainty of real-time electricity price, electricity and heat demands and EVs’ behaviours, the EVs’ batteries are used as energy storage adjusters to reduce the time-averaged operation cost, which includes energy acquiring cost from main power grid, the natural gas cost for CHP generation and heat only generation. We propose a real-time energy management algorithm for EV based microgrid by adopting Lyapunov stochastic optimization technique which optimizes the microgrid average cost without knowing future price, demands and other system information. Furthermore, our approach can accommodate a wide spectrum of characteristics of EVs, including the independent charging/discharging action, dynamic charging energy limits, and lifetime-guaranteed battery. Lastly, extensive simulations are provided to demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can outperform the other three alternatives.
A DCM High-Frequency High-Step-Up SEPIC-Based Converter With Extended ZVS Range

A discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) high-frequency high-step-up single ended primary inductor converter (SEPIC)-based converter with extended zero voltage switching (ZVS) range is presented in this article. With the incorporation of some components on conventional SEPIC, the proposed converter achieves better performances such as high voltage gain, low voltage stress, and ZVS. The additional components form a resonant cell which enables the switches to work in ZVS, and switching loss is reduced accordingly. In order to achieve ZVS, the converter is designed to work in DCM. Due to inclusion of the resonance stage, traditional pulse width modulation (PWM) or pulse frequency modulation (PFM) control method is unable to regulate the output characteristics and maintain ZVS of the power switches at the same time. Therefore, a hybrid control method is proposed in this article to guarantee ZVS within a specific load range. According to this hybrid control method, the ZVS range is extended effectively. GaN switches and planar magnetic components are also used. Working principles and steady-state analysis are presented in detail. A 1-MHz 36-W prototype with 10 voltage gain has been designed to demonstrate theoretical analysis. Efficiency obtained is up to 91.8% at full load. Experimental results show good agreement with theoretical analysis.
A Novel Soft Robotic Hand Design With Human-Inspired Soft Palm: Achieving a Great Diversity of Grasps

Soft robotic hands and grippers are increasingly attracting attention as robotic end effectors. Compared with their rigid counterparts, they are safer for human-robot and environment-robot interactions, easier to control, and more compliant, and they cost and weigh less. Design studies of soft robotic hands have focused mostly on the soft fingers and bending actuators. However, the palm is also an essential part in grasping. In this work, we propose a novel design for an inexpensive soft humanoid hand with pneumatic soft fingers and a soft palm. The configuration of the soft palm is based on a modular design that can be applied to actuate different kinds of existing soft fingers. The splaying of the fingers, bending of the whole palm, and abduction and adduction of the thumb are implemented by the palm. Moreover, we present a new design of soft finger, called the hybrid-bending soft finger (HBSF), that can both bend in the grasping axis and deflect in the side-to-side axis, achieving human-like motion (Figure 1). The functions of the HBSF and soft palm are evaluated both in simulation, using the Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA) framework, and experimentally. Six finger designs with 1-11 longitudinal segments are analyzed. The versatility of the soft hand is evaluated and demonstrated experimentally by its grasping of objects according to Feix's taxonomy. The results demonstrate a great diversity of grasps, with 31 of the 33 grasp types of the taxonomy performed successfully with the proposed design, showing promise for grasping a large variety of objects with different shapes and weights.
"It's like my kid came back overnight": Experiences of trans and non-binary young people and their families seeking, finding and engaging with clinical care in England.

Background Trans and non-binary children and young people in England, UK struggle to gain access to affirming clinical care, despite the international research evidence pointing toward this best practice approach. Concurrently, they are subject to constant discussion in the UK national media and politics, where many negative assumptions are made about their needs, experiences and clinical provision. Their journey to seek appropriate care has not yet been documented. Aims We trace the experiences of trans and non-binary children and youth and their families in their decision to seek, searches for and experiences with affirmative and non-affirmative clinical input for help with their gender. Method 27 dyadic, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with trans and non-binary children and young people and their parents from 13 families. Results The process of seeking support via National Health Service clinical routes in England, UK is beset with lengthy waiting lists, issues with geographical inaccessibility, a lack of relevant clinical knowledge, and a failure to recognize the value of family expertise. Family doctors provide contraceptive hormones in lieu of proper access to puberty blocking or gender affirming hormones, and most families resort to private care they can ill afford. Discussion Training in gender identity and gender dysphoria is recommended for both family doctors, and children's mental health services. Gender identity development services could be decentralized, with local hubs offering more accessible support.
Influence of fractal and multifractal morphology on the wettability and reflectivity of crystalline-Si thin film surfaces as photon absorber layers for solar cell

Crystalline Si films incorporated with Al are important for applications in microelectronics and solar cells. In this paper, we report on the morphology of crystalline Si surfaces in Al/amorphous-Si bilayer thin films under ion beam irradiation at 100 °C. Micro-Raman and transmission electron microscopy studies show that best crystallization is achieved at a fluence of 1 × 1012 ions cm−2. The contact angle of Si surfaces (after chemically etched unreacted Al), referred to as absorber surfaces, decreases with increasing ion fluence. These surfaces are hydrophobic in nature and the hydrophobicity decreases with increasing ion fluence. Fractal and multifractal analysis of atomic force microscopy images, along with system energy/unit cell and Laplace pressure calculations, supports our observations. Moreover, the calculated multiple scattering cross sections of light, along with reflectivity measurements, indicate that absorber surfaces of best crystalline films have the lowest reflectivity. The present results suggest that such surfaces having low optical reflectance and a hydrophobic nature can be used as photon absorber layers for advanced solar cell devices.
Factors influencing the choice of studying at UAE universities: an empirical research on the adoption of educational marketing strategies

ABSTRACT This study empirically examines different factors that influence students to select universities in the UAE. The primary data were collected based on a survey of students at two public universities – United Arab Emirates University and Zayed University, as well as three private universities – New York University, Abu Dhabi University, and Alain University. The data were analyzed using an ANOVA test, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using SPSS and Smart PLS software. This study found high reliability and validity of the scale under five dimensions, which determine the student’s choice of the university. The findings show that several factors, such as the academic reputation, grants and funding, location and proximity, facilities and services, promotional and marketing channels, drive students’ choices for studying at universities in UAE. This finding will help the administrators of private and public universities in the UAE, in particular, and other regional and international universities, in general, address the growing competition among the institutions of higher education. It will also help policymakers to design effective policies and strategies to make the UAE an international education hub.
Formulation and Evaluation of Domperidone Nanoemulsions for Oral Rout

The aim of the present study is to formulate, evaluate and characterize the nanoemulsion of Domperidone a poorly water-soluble anti-emetic drug. Domperidone powder is white or almost white powder, photosensitive, practically insoluble in water, slightly soluble in ethanol and in methanol; soluble in dimethylformamide. It is used as an antiemetic for the short-term treatment of nausea and vomiting of various etiologies. Solubility studies were conducted to select the oil, surfactant and cosurfactant. Phase diagrams were constructed by aqueous phase titration method. Formulations were selected from the phase diagrams. The formulations were characterized for particle size, Polydispersity index (PDI), zeta potential and in vitro drug release. All the formulations were in nanoscale and Formula 1 (which contain anise oil as oil phase ,mixture of Surfactant Tween 80 and cosurfactant (ethanol) at ratio 1:1 in addition to double distilled water as aqueous phase in ratio 1:6:3 respectively ) was the selected formula depending on particle size, PDI, zeta potential and in vitro drug release. The Formula 1 has the best ratio because it gives the smallest nanoemulsion globule size (Particle size Average 20.81nm) and the best homogenicity (lowest PDI 0.266) and highest stability (higher zeta potential -33.9). The selected formula gives accepted physical and chemical properties. Keywords :Nanoemulsion, Domperidone.
Evaluation of the Interaction with a Digital 3D Testimony

Conversations with Holocaust survivors are an integral part of education in German schools and universities as well as part of the German memory culture. The goal of interactive stereoscopic digital Holocaust testimonies is to preserve the effects of meeting and interacting with these contemporary witnesses as faithfully as possible. These virtual humans are non-synthetic, i.e., there exists no underlying system, which extrapolates from recorded data to synthesize and generate new answers. This means that immersion-breaking difficulties common to synthetic virtual humans, such as the audio-visual uncanny valley, can be prevented. Issues resulting from technical constraints, technological barriers to entry or errors, machine and human alike, during the design and creation of the application cannot, however, be ruled out. Therefore, I conducted a preliminary study to evaluate how people perceive this first German-speaking digital interactive 3D Holocaust testimony. I investigated how the study participants perceived the technical and semantic quality of recording and display, the difficulties in using and interacting, the accuracy and relevance of the answers given as well as the authenticity and emotiveness of the virtual contemporary witness. In this paper, I detail how the study was set up, the results of the survey, and my analysis of the data.
A New Modulation Recognition Method Based on Wavelet Transform and High-order Cumulants

In order to improve the recognition performance of digital modulated signals under low signal-to-noise ratio, this paper proposes a new method that combines high-order cumulants and wavelet transform to extract transient features, and the recognition of six kinds of modulation signals is realized through the neural network classifier. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve good performance under low signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, only three key features are selected in this method, which greatly reduces the complexity of the algorithm. Furthermore, the effects of sample rate, carrier frequency and symbol rate on recognition performance are analyzed and simulated for the sake of better recognition performance.
Uniform boundary observability with Legendre-Galerkin formulations of the 1-D wave equation

We study the boundary observability of the 1-D homogeneous wave equation when using a Legendre-Galerkin semi-discretization method. It is already known that spurious high frequencies are responsible for its lack of uniformity with respect to the discretization parameter [ 4 ] which may prevent convergence in the approximation of the associated controllability problem. A classical remedy is to filter out the highest frequency components but this comes with a high computational cost in several space dimensions. We present here three remedies: a spectral filtering method, a mixed formulation (already used in the context of finite element method [ 14 ]) and a Nitsche's method. Our numerical results show that the uniform boundary observability inequalities are recovered. On the other hand, surprisingly, none of them seem to provide the trace (or direct) inequality uniformly, a property used to prove the convergence of the numerical controls [ 11 ]. However, our numerical tests suggest that convergence of the numerical controls is ensured when the uniform observability inequality holds.
DWES: A Dynamic Weighted Evaluation System for Scratch based on Computational Thinking

Scratch is a programming environment, which is widely adopted as the first language to enter the programming world. Since Scratch projects are rich in multimedia resources, it can be time-consuming to judge them by hand, requiring manual execution with the understanding of each project. Auto-judgment tools come into being, they can rapidly evaluate the project in some way. Unfortunately, the existing tools are too rigid and they ignore the diversity of Scratch projects. To address this issue, we propose a new dynamic weighted evaluation system (DWES). First, we define a new computational thinking (CT) evaluation criteria from eight aspects. Second, based on the proposed criteria, we present an analysis tool that automatically assesses the CT skills of the learners’ projects. Third, considering the characteristics of projects, we dynamically adjust the evaluation results according to types, so that a single standard is no longer applied roughly to all. This process is data-driven, we consider the CT performance and scripts of projects. We prove the rationality of the evaluation criteria from the aspect of program complexity. Through the correlation analysis between DWES CT scores and experts’ ratings, we find that compared with Dr. Scratch, the correlation coefficient has increased.
Merging Naive Bayes and Causal Rules for Text Sentiment Analysis

Trad itional machine learning sentiment analysis models are d ifficult to achieve good classification results from small sample data. This paper proposes to merging naive Bayes and causal rule(MNBACR) for small sample data sentiment analysis scenarios. This model is based on the causal analysis theory, and introduce the causal inference algorithm into the field of text sentiment analysis. The causal inference algorithm extracts the causal ru les of Chinese texts, and the causal rules can be used as the features of the naive Bayes algorithm to predict the sentiment polarity of small sample texts. In experiments, the model in this paper is evaluated on financial news datasets which have a small number for sample, and the results show that the proposed method achieves the best performance compared to the existing state-of-the-art models on the small sample data onto sentiment analysis
Assembly Part Positioning on Transformable Pin Array Fixture by Active Pin Maximization and Joining Point Alignment

Designing and installing jigs and fixtures for new products are very costly tasks. In order to rapidly respond to frequent product changes in a manufacturing system, we developed a transformable pin array fixture system including reconfiguration planning software that finds the optimal position for mounting an assembly part and automatically generates a pin height control code. We first classified main fixturing quality factors such as type of contact, distance between a pin and a joining point, and part shape. We then formulate the part positioning problem as an alignment problem between the joining point set and the pin point set in the xy plane in consideration of the fixturing quality factors. A car door trim assembly module was used to verify the proposed method. Finite-element analysis results showed that in a car door trim assembly process such as ultrasonic welding and screwing, relocating an assembly part at the optimal position reduces its deformation. Note to Practitioners—Jigs and fixture systems are the fundamental manufacturing elements that are used for ensuring assembly quality. Traditionally, manufacturers have produced a small variety of products in massive quantities using dedicated jig and fixture systems. However, these dedicated workholding systems do not fit for the Today’s rapidly changing market. In order to enhance the reconfigurability of these systems, we propose a transformable pin array-based part fixturing system including part position optimization. Due to the system complexity, the assembly quality can be lower using the transformable fixtures than the conventional fixtures. Therefore, it is further necessary to develop a cost-effective reconfigurable fixture while preserving the assembly quality for the better chance of its industrial implementation.
Minimally Invasive Plate Osteosynthesis versus Intramedullary Nailing for Fixation of Humeral Shaft Fractures in Adults

Introduction: The two methods of treatment of humeral shaft fractures, namely minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis (MIPO), and antegrade intramedullary nailing (IMN) are reported as satisfactory procedures. Objective: To compare the clinical and radiological results of MIPO and IMN techniques in surgical treatment of mid humeral shaft fractures. Patients and methods: From March 2017 to July 2018, a prospective study on 60 patients with closed unilateral mid- humeral shaft fractures were surgically treated with MIPO or IMN. The intraoperative outcomes including operation time, bleeding volume, and the postoperative outcomes (clinically and radiologically) were recorded. The Constant-Murley scores were used for assessment of function of shoulder joint and Mayo score was used for measurement of elbow joint function. Complications in both groups have been reported. The follow-up duration ranged from 6 to 12 months with a mean duration of 6.7 months. Results: For group 1 having MIPO technique, the average operative time was 90.3 min (range 50–110), while mean blood loss was 167 ml (range 120–200). In group II patients (interlocking humeral nail), the average time of operation was 100.1 min (range 65–120), and mean blood loss was 118 ml (range 90–150). The mean Constant-Murley shoulder score was 86.95±15.7 in MIPO group and 88.75±13.7in IMN group. The mean Mayo Elbow Performance score in MIPO and IMN groups was 96.5 ± 5.87 and 95.8 ± 6.77, respectively. Radiologic bony union was achieved in 29 out of 30 patients in MIPO group and in 28 out of 30 in IMN group. All the wounds in both groups healed primarily. There was no iatrogenic radial nerve palsies in both groups. Shoulder impingement was found in 2 patients in IMN group. There was no statistically significant difference between two groups in all indexes mentioned above. Conclusion: Both the two methods were effective; however, MIPO method might be better for recovery of shoulder function and might reduce the nonunion rate.
Study of pure and Ag-doped TiO2 nanoparticles for photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most basic materials in our daily life that has wide applications as a whitening agent and an excellent photocatalyst material. Other noticeable applications include dye-sensitized solar cells, sunscreen and UV blocking pigments, cosmetics, paint, paper, food additive and flavor enhancer. Metal doping enhances the photocatalytic activity of nanoparticles. Therefore, we have prepared pure and Ag-doped TiO2 nanoparticles using Ti-(IV)-isopropoxide as precursor. The resulting materials were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and UV-Visible spectroscopy. The XRD results showed the different structural phases and crystallite size of the nanoparticles. The band gap of the photocatalysts decreased by subsequent addition of the dopant. Further, the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) was carried out for both pure and Ag doped TiO2 nanoparticles under sunlight upto 90 minutes. The degradation of MB dye was observed to be directly related to the radiation time.