Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changing Requirements and Mental Workload Factors in Mobile Multi-Locational Work

Working in multiple locations creates continuously changing physical, virtual and social settings for mobile employees. This paper shows, by exploring locally and globally moving employees, that changing environments arouse varying perceptions of both well-being and stress. The identification of mental workload factors is necessary both for working in and managing mobile, multi-locational work.
Design of hydraulic output Stirling engine

A hydraulic output system for the RE-1000 free piston stirling engine (FPSE) was designed. The hydraulic output system can be readily integrated with the existing hot section of RE-1000 FPSE. The system has two simply supported diaphragms which separate the engine gas from the hydraulic fluid, a dynamic balance mechanism, and a novel, null center band hydraulic pump. The diaphragms are designed to endure more than 10 billion cycles, and to withstand the differential pressure load as high as 14 MPa. The projected thermodynamic performance of the hydraulic output version of RE-1000 FPSE is 1.87 kW at 29/7 percent brake efficiency.
Determining and Modeling Asphalt Concrete Response (ACRe)

In road engineering research and design the principles of material mechanics have not yet become a standard tool. In this contribution a project aimed at applying these principles to asphalt concrete is presented. Attention is paid to the differences between the standard test procedures and those based on mechanics considerations, presenting examples of the disturbances that can occur to illustrate the need for mechanically sound testing. The general approach in the ACRe project is introduced, showing the material model utilised and the parameters that have to be determined. The physical meaning of the model parameters is mentioned the tests used for the model parameter determination, uniaxial tension and compression tests and four-point shear tests, are introduced. The uniaxial compression test is discussed in more detail, to illustrate the approach used in the test programme. The results from this test are also presented, as well as the way in which a general expression for the compressive strength of the material was determined on the basis of these results. Finally, an example of the application of the model for damage predictions in road engineering constructions is presented. In this example two different pavement structures are analysed, illustrating that this kind of analyses can show the different damage patterns that will occur. In current day road engineering design approaches for every structure the same location is considered normative. From observations in practise it is known that this is not the case and the differences observed in the simulations agree rather well with these observations.
Diseño y validación de un ensayo de minisecuenciación múltiple para detectar polimorfismos asociados con Síndrome Metabólico

Introducción: es importante identificar los polimorfismos de interés clínico en patologías complejas como el Síndrome Metabólico. Por esto, las metodologías para su evaluación deben estar diseñadas y validadas correctamente, esto permite optimizar recursos y tiempo en la genotipificación y detección correcta de los alelos presentes en los individuos. Objetivo: diseñar y validar una PCR múltiple, seguida de detección por minisecuenciación, para la genotipificación de ocho polimorfismos de nucleótido simple ubicados en el gen del Receptor Beta 3-Adrenérgico (rs4994 y rs4998), gen de la Apolipoproteina A5 (rs3135506 y rs2075291), gen de la Adiponectina (rs1501299 y rs2241766) y gen del Receptor Activador de la Proliferación de los Peroxisomas tipo gamma (rs1801282 y rs1800571), asociados con el síndrome metabólico. Materiales y métodos: se diseñaron 24 cebadores para la amplificación y detección de ocho polimorfismos de nucleótido sencillo ubicados en cuatro genes candidatos a estar asociados con el síndrome metabólico, usando el software Primer3®. Dieciséis fueron diseñados para amplificar los polimorfismos y ocho para detectarlos por minisecuenciación. Las estructuras secundarias entre los cebadores se verificaron con el software Autodimer. Los polimorfismos se amplificaron simultáneamente y los fragmentos amplificados se acoplaron a las sondas diseñadas para detectar por minisecuenciación el alelo presente, por medio de bases marcadas con fluorocromos. Finalmente, los alelos fueron detectados por electroforesis capilar en un analizador genético ABI 310 y se interpretaron con el software GeneMapper®. La validación del multiplex se realizó genotipando 20 muestras de individuos, cada uno de ellos autorizó este procedimiento por medio del consentimiento informado. Resultados: se obtuvieron los perfiles genéticos de los 20 controles genotipados, a partir de la amplificación múltiple, seguida de minisecuenciación, diseñada y validada para detectar los ocho polimorfismos. Conclusión: se diseñó y validó un ensayo para la detección simultánea de los polimorfismos, ubicados en cuatro genes asociados con el Síndrome metabólico. Los cuales pueden ser empleados como referencia para futuros estudios poblacionales.
Hybrid Forecast and Control Chain for Operation of Flexibility Assets in Micro-Grids

Studies on forecasting and optimal exploitation of renewable resources (especially within microgrids) were already introduced in the past. However, in several research papers, the constraints regarding integration within real applications were relaxed, i.e., this kind of research provides impractical solutions, although they are very complex. In this paper, the computational components (such as photovoltaic and load forecasting, and resource scheduling and optimization) are brought together into a practical implementation, introducing an automated system through a chain of independent services aiming to allow forecasting, optimization, and control. Encountered challenges may provide a valuable indication to make ground with this design, especially in cases for which the trade-off between sophistication and available resources should be rather considered. The research work was conducted to identify the requirements for controlling a set of flexibility assets—namely, electrochemical battery storage system and electric car charging station—for a semicommercial use-case by minimizing the operational energy costs for the microgrid considering static and dynamic parameters of the assets.
Multipactor discharge on a dielectric

This paper proposes a novel theory of a single-surface multipactor discharge on a dielectric, such as an RF window. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we obtain the susceptibility diagram, applicable to a wide range of materials, in terms of the RF electric field and of the DC electric field that may result from dielectric charging. The electron multiplication mechanism assumes realistic yield curves of secondary electrons, including distributions of emission velocities and angles for these electrons. The susceptibility diagram thus constructed allows an immediate assessment of the range of RF power over which multipactor may be expected to occur. A simple analytic theory which corroborates the simulation results is presented.
Vesicular and Stealth Vesicular Drug Delivery – A Review

Vesicular systems (liposomes), one of several potential novel drug delivery systems, provide an advanced technology for delivering active compounds to the site of action, and numerous formulations are currently in clinical use. Liposome technology has developed from typical vesicles to sterically stabilised vesicles, which produce long-circulating liposomes by varying the lipid content, size, and charge of the vesicle. Several compounds, such as glycolipids, have been used to create liposomes with changed surfaces. The addition of the synthetic polymer poly-(ethylene glycol) (PEG) in liposome composition was a crucial milestone in the creation of long-circulating liposomes. PEG on the liposomal carrier's surface has been found to increase blood circulation time while decreasing mononuclear phagocyte system uptake (Stealth Liposomes). As a consequence of this technique, a vast variety of liposome formulations encapsulating active compounds have been developed, all of which have excellent target efficiency and activity. Stealth liposomes can also be actively targeted with monoclonal antibodies or ligands thanks to a synthetic alteration of the terminal PEG molecule. This article focuses on vesicular drug delivery as well as stealth technology and presents preclinical and clinical data for the most common liposome formulations, as well as discussing developing developments in this promising technology.
Evaluation of Cultural Similarity in Playlist Generation

ABSTRACT Choosing appropriate songs that satisfy one’s needs is often frustrating, tiresome and ineffective due to the increasing number of music collections and their sizes. Successive songs in playlists should fit the situation, our mood or at least have common features. Consequently, there is a need to develop solutions that would enrich our experience of listening to music. In this paper, musical similarity has been studied at the cultural level in the playlist generation process. Also, an author’s program designed for testing different playlists will be described. It is used to perform an experiment examining quality of playlists created using a cultural similarity model. 1. INTRODUCTION In their interactions with music people always form personal opinions. Even if not musically trained, people form views about the artists, rhythm, musical style etc very quickly [1]. In this paper, cultural similarities between particular artists are studied. Musical similarity has been studied so far from the score level, the audio level, and the cultural level. The outcome of this research has been presented at various conferences, particularly at annual International Conferences on Music Information Retrieval – ISMIR. A number of papers exist concerning musical similarity measurement based on audio signal and music classification [5-7]. There is also a lot of research about playlist generation based on these measurements [7-9]. Similarity between certain pairs of artists can be perceived as greater than others. Before considering various approaches, we need to examine some problems connected with artists similarity mentioned in [11]. There, it is pointed out that subjective judgment of the similarity between pairs of artists may vary with individual’s mood and life experience. As discussed in [14], subjective similarity is often asymmetric, mean that we usually compare less known artists to more known ones and not the other way round. For example if we had to answer a question who Tony Banks is similar to, we would intuitively point Phil Collins. But if one asked who Phil Collins was similar to, very few people would point out Tony Banks. Additionally, variability is another problem. Namely, a lot of artists undergo changes during their careers and may include multiple styles within a single album. Trying to define a single distance between such artists seems to be
Characterization of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Viruses in Zambia-Implications for the Epidemiology of the Disease in Southern Africa

The livestock industry supports livelihood and nutritional security of at least 42% of people in the Southern African Development Community region. However, presence of animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease poses a major threat to the development of this industry. Samples collected from FMD outbreaks in Zambia during 2015–2020, comprising epithelial tissues samples (n = 47) and sera (n = 120), were analysed. FMD virus was serotyped in 26 samples, while 92 sera samples tested positive on NSP-ELISA. Phylogenetic analysis revealed notable changes in the epidemiology of FMD in Zambia, which included: (i) introduction of a novel FMDV SAT-3 (topotype II) causing FMD cases in cattle in Western Province; (ii) emergence of FMDV serotype O (topotype O/EA-2) in Central, Southern, Copperbelt, Western, Lusaka Provinces; and (iii) new outbreaks due to SAT -2 (topotypes I) in Eastern Zambia. Together, these data describe eight different epizootics that occurred in Zambia, four of which were outside the known FMD high-risk areas. This study highlights the complex epidemiology of FMD in Zambia, where the country represents an interface between East Africa (Pool 4) and Southern Africa (Pool 6). These changing viral dynamics have direct impacts on FMD vaccine selection in the SADC region.
Quorum placement on wide-area networks

Content distribution networks are the dominant technology for distributing shared media on today's Internet. There are several types of content for which these systems have been proven highly successful: static databases, streaming media, online gaining. At the same time this architecture is not appropriate for other types of applications such as transactional databases that require both strong consistency and wide area replication. One scalable technique that can cope with these requirements is to deploy quorum systems on wide area networks. The most important drawback of this approach comes from the performance penalties that one has to pay when accessing data over the wide area. This thesis makes several steps towards addressing this performance problem. First, it presents approximation algorithms for deploying quorum systems to approximately minimize network delay or network congestion. Second, it presents several heuristics for balancing the impact server load and network delay have on client response times and overall throughput. Third, it shows that the techniques presented here can be effectively used to improve performance through both simulation and emulation of real quorum systems protocols on several wide area network topologies.
Effect of Slope Length on Erosion from Low Slopes

ABSTRACT SOIL loss (A) is generally accepted as being propor-tional to slope length (A) to some power A = a Am. Presently used values of the exponent are based on data for slopes of 3 percent and higher. This study, using simulated rainfall, produced erosion data from plots 23, 46, 91, and 813 m long on a slope of 0.2 percent. The analysis results in a recommendation of m = 0.15 for slopes less than 0.5 percent.
Higher Serum Leptin Levels are Associated with a Reduced Risk of Sarcopenia but a Higher Risk of Dynapenia Among Older Adults

Background Leptin plays an important role in regulating the energy homeostasis of fat and muscle. Paradoxical findings existed between serum leptin levels and muscle health conditions. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationship between serum leptin levels and the risk of sarcopenia or dynapenia among older adults. Methods Adults aged 65 and older living in the community were recruited at annual health checkups. Body composition, gait speed, and handgrip strength were examined. The cutoff values of muscle mass and strength to define sarcopenia and dynapenia were based on the consensus by the Asia Working Group of Sarcopenia in 2019. Serum leptin level was measured by an immunoassay. Results Four hundred sixty participants (55.65% females) were enrolled. There were 16.08% and 23.91% with sarcopenia and dynapenia, respectively. Higher serum leptin levels were positively associated with muscle and fat mass but negatively associated with handgrip strength and gait speed for both sexes. In the logistic regression models adjusted for various confounders, a higher serum leptin level was associated with an increased risk of dynapenia with dose-response effects among both male and female participants (odds ratio [OR]=3.74, 95% confidence interval [CI]= 0.99–14.17; OR= 3.32, 95% CI=1.03–10.74, respectively), and a positive trend existed in both genders (p for trend=0.040 and 0.042, respectively). In contrast, a higher leptin level was associated with a reduced risk of sarcopenia with dose-response trends for both sexes (OR= 0.06, 95% CI=0.01–0.48; OR= 0.26, 95% CI=0.06–1.17, respectively) in models of multivariate logistic regression analyses, and a negative trend existed in both genders (p for trend = 0.002 and 0.023, respectively). Conclusion A positive trend existed between the serum leptin level and the dynapenia risk, whereas it revealed a negative trend in the serum leptin level and sarcopenia risk in both male and female elderly individuals. The biological mechanisms underlying its negative association with muscle strength but its positive association with muscle mass warrants further investigation.
FACTS Concept and General System Considerations

This chapter contains sections titled: Transmission Interconnections Flow of Power in an AC System What Limits the Loading Capability? Power Flow and Dynamic Stability Considerations of a Transmission Interconnection Relative Importance of Controllable Parameters Basic Types of FACTS Controllers Brief Description and Definitions of FACTS Controllers Checklist of Possible Benefits from FACFS Technology In Perspective: HVDC or FACTS This chapter contains sections titled: References ]]>
Plant Disease Detection: A Survey

Agriculture is an important part in the human lives and economy of the countries. Agriculture based countries like India are greatly dependent on their agricultural outcome for feeding the large population. Crop yields plays a major factor in the economy of every country. Agricultural production and economic development are closely connected. Moreover, agriculture provides the vital food to feed all living creatures on earth. Plant diseases are a significant threat to farmers, food production and economic well-being of the country. Significant research in this domain is required to protect the vital resource of food. This paper studies/reviews/surveys the different areas of this computer vision problem, the challenges that exists for developing a robust plant-disease detection system, which can be utilized to plant diseases.
Dependence of nonlinear phase shift on cavity length of SOA for all-optical signal processing

The cavity-length dependence of the nonlinear-phase-shift of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) phase shifters was experimentally investigated for a symmetric-Mach-Zehnder-type wavelength-converter for the first time. Studies of 42-GHz-cross-phase-modulation of SOAs showed that the phase-shift increased almost proportionally with active region length.
Online Cross-Coupling and Self Incremental Inductances Determination of Salient Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines

The presence of saliency/anisotropy in a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) is essential to track the rotor position when using high frequency signal injection based sensorless control. At high frequency d-q incremental inductances become dominant over the d-q normal (chord) inductances. In addition when load is applied to the machine cross-coupling inductance arise since the saliency/anisotropy angle, which is synchronised with the rotor position at no and light load applications, is delayed from the actual rotor position. To estimate accurately the rotor position, cross-coupling and self incremental inductances have to be known at various operating points. In this paper online inductances determination technique based on the Goertzel algorithm is proposed to compensate for the position error. Analytical interpretation and simulation results are shown to validate the proposed technique.
Predicting the Cochlear Dead Regions Using a Machine Learning-Based Approach with Oversampling Techniques

Background and Objectives: Determining the presence or absence of cochlear dead regions (DRs) is essential in clinical practice. This study proposes a machine learning (ML)-based model that applies oversampling techniques for predicting DRs in patients. Materials and Methods: We used recursive partitioning and regression for classification tree (CT) and logistic regression (LR) as prediction models. To overcome the imbalanced nature of the dataset, oversampling techniques to duplicate examples in the minority class or to synthesize new examples from existing examples in the minority class were adopted, namely the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE). Results: The accuracy results of the 10-fold cross-validation of the LR and CT with the original data were 0.82 (±0.02) and 0.93 (±0.01), respectively. The accuracy results of the 10-fold cross-validation of the LR and CT with the oversampled data were 0.66 (±0.02) and 0.86 (±0.01), respectively. Conclusions: This study is the first to adopt the SMOTE method to assess the role of oversampling methods on audiological datasets and to develop an ML-based model. Considering that the SMOTE method did not improve the model’s performance, a more flexible model or more clinical features may be needed.
Permanent Magnet Tracking Position Sensor

In view of the disadvantages of traditional position sensor, a novel permanent magnet tracking position sensor is proposed. The hall component is used to convert the magnetic signal reflecting the shaft velocity and position into an electrical signal by the construction and optimization of magnetic field. And then the resolver-to-digital conversion is carried out by arctangent so as to obtain the signals of shaft position and velocity. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i4. 2335 Full Text: PDF
Observational Study of Nisarg Cyclone Winds using Phased Array Doppler Sodar at Atigre, Kolhapur, India

One of the most important parameters in meteorology is the mean wind profile in the tropical cyclone boundary layer. The signature of the Nisarg cyclone is reported in the Phased Array Doppler Sound Detection and Ranging (SODAR) data installed at the Center for Space and Atmospheric Science (CSAS), Sanjay Ghodawat University, Kolhapur (16.74° N, 74.37° E; near India's western coast). The vertical profile of wind speed and wind direction measured from the sodar system clearly reveals the signature of Nisarg cyclone during 2- 3 June 2020. Our analysis revealed that, the maximum mean wind speed was 17 m/s on 3rd June 2020 at 10:00 IST. It also shows the change in the wind direction from southwest to southeast on 2nd June 2020 and 3rd June 2020. Daily high-resolution reanalysis in the domain, 0-25°N, 65-110°E, during the period from 31st May-5th June 2020 shown the variation in atmospheric pressure of the Nisarg cyclone from 1000 to 1008 hPa, sea surface tremperature (SST) between 30 and 31°C, outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) varied between 100 and 240 Wm−2, wind speed between 3 and 15 m/s and low values of vertical wind shear (VWS) was observed to the north of the track Nisarg. These findings could aid in better understanding and forecasting in this region. The present results are initial measurements of sodar system.