Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inductive Design Exploration Method with Active Learning for Complex Design Problems

The design of multiscale materials and products has necessitated an inductive and robust design approach to ensure satisfying the performance goals for complex engineering problems. Inductive design exploration method is a performance-driven design approach that explores feasible design spaces while considering the effect of uncertainty that leads to performance variability. However, the existing design method suffers from high computational costs for pre-defined sample data, which sacrifices the accuracy of solution spaces. In this study, we present an improved implementation of the inductive design exploration method by applying the active learning algorithm that is mainly used in machine learning techniques. The purpose of this study is to minimize the sampling effort while maintaining reasonable accuracy in the exploration of design spaces, thereby alleviating computational burden. The capabilities of the improved method are highlighted and demonstrated via a design problem of the blast resistant sandwich panel.
Distribution and population structure of the smooth‐hound shark, Mustelus mustelus (Linnaeus, 1758), across an oceanic archipelago: Combining several data sources to promote conservation

Abstract Sharks play a key role in the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems. More ecological information is essential to implement responsible management and conservation actions on this fauna, particularly at a regional level for threatened species. Mustelus mustelus is widely found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and catalogued as “Vulnerable” by the IUCN European assessment. In this study, data on the distribution and population structure of this species across the islands of the Canarian archipelago, located along an east to west gradient in the north‐eastern Atlantic, were collected by taking advantage of “Local Ecological Knowledge,” in terms of sightings in coastal waters and long‐term imprints on the local gastronomic heritage, and decadal fisheries landings. Both sources of quantitative data (sightings and fisheries landings) demonstrated that adults of M. mustelus has a significantly larger presence in the eastern and central, than in the western islands of the archipelago. This is also reflected on local gastronomic legacies, with a larger number of recipes in the eastern and central islands. Adult smooth‐hound sharks were significantly more observed in sandy and sandy‐rocky bottoms, with individuals seen throughout the entire year, whereas juveniles aggregate on very shallow waters in spring and summer. Such aggregations require a special management strategy, as they play a key role in critical life stages; these sites should be protected from human perturbations. We also suggest a temporal fishing ban between April and October, when individuals tend to concentrate on nearshore waters. Because of the large differences in presence of this shark among the Canary Islands, management of the species should be adapted to the specific peculiarities of each island, rather than adopting a management policy at the entire archipelago‐scale. Overall, this study sets the basis for further investigation to promote conservation of this vulnerable shark in the study region.
New and Recent Results for Thermoelectric Energy Conversion in Graded Alloys at Nanoscale

In this article, we review the main features of nonlocal and nonlinear heat transport in nanosystems and analyze some celebrated differential equations which describe this phenomenon. Then, we present a new heat-transport equation arising within the so-called thermomass theory of heat conduction. We illustrate how such a theory can be applied to the analysis of the efficiency of a thermoelectric energy generator constituted by a Silicon–Germanium alloy, as the application and new results for a nanowire of length L=100 nm, are presented as well. The thermal conductivity of the nanowire as a function of composition and temperature is determined in light of the experimental data. Additionally, the best-fit curve is obtained. The dependency of the thermoelectric efficiency of the system on both the composition and the difference of temperature applied to its ends is investigated. For the temperatures T=300 K, T=400 K, and T=500 K, we calculate the values of the composition corresponding to the optimal efficiency, as well as the optimal values of the thermal conductivity. Finally, these new results are compared with recent ones obtained for a system of length L=3 mm, in order to point out the benefits due to the miniaturization in thermoelectric energy conversion.
Fighting the Hydra

In the past 25 years, the United Nations has sanctioned 28 rebel groups in 13 civil wars. Have the UN sanctions been effective in meeting the goal of conflict reduction? In this article, we argue that UN sanctions are effective to the extent that they can constrain and weaken some rebel groups. But this constraining effect can only occur when UN sanctions curtail rebel groups’ ability to adapt. For less adaptable groups, UN sanctions can trigger a causal chain of depressed rebel income, territorial losses, and battlefield defeats that leads to conflict reduction. This adaptability is the key to the understanding of UN sanctions’ effectiveness in conflict reduction, as rebel groups often engage in illegal and criminal economic activities and many of them are ‘Hydra-like’, being able to shift their income sources in response to sanction measures. As evidence of how UN sanctions can trigger these conflict dynamics, we first perform negative binomial regression on all civil war cases. We then proceed to provide more detailed evidence for our causal chain by conducting time-series intervention analysis on two sanctioned rebel groups: UNITA in Angola and al-Shabaab in Somalia. Our work is the first systematic quantitative analysis of UN sanctions’ effects on rebel groups, and the results have implications for the viability of economic coercion as a means to intervene into civil conflicts.
Obese customers’ fitness goal disclosure on social media: exploring weight-loss image sharing on emotions and healthy lifestyle aspirations

Purpose Obesity is today’s most neglected, yet blatantly visible, public health problem. This study aims to examine the role of social media and goal-directed behavior in motivating healthy lifestyle intentions for customers experiencing obesity. It investigates the distinct roles of self-conscious emotions (shame and pride) and weight-transformational posts shared by others on social media as moderators of these relationships. Design/methodology/approach The conceptual model uses the goal-directed behavior theory and social comparison theory, tested using data collected from 804 obese customers in Fiji through an experimental design. Findings Weight-loss transformation posts by others on social media, elicit distinct emotions for obese customers. Obese customers who felt guilt and shame due to shared weight-loss transformation posts showed a stronger association between goal disclosure and healthy lifestyle intention. In addition, the association between goal disclosure and healthy lifestyle intention is conditionally mediated by goal commitment, specifically for those obese customers that elicited guilt over shame due to shared weight-loss transformation posts by others on social media. Research limitations/implications Despite the adoption of an experimental design using a fictional stimulus being a commonly used method in marketing studies, external validity issues are likely. Also, this study examines obese customer behavior relating to Facebook. In addition, data collection for this study has been done from a single country perspective. Therefore, caution needs to be exercised when generalizing the findings of this study. Practical implications The findings assist businesses and marketers in the health and fitness industry to better leverage social media and goal-directed behavior and understand the emotions of obese customers to undertake data-driven precision marketing strategies. Originality/value The findings provide novel insights into goal disclosure and commitment, electronic word-of-mouth on social media platforms, self-conscious emotions and healthy lifestyle intentions for customers experiencing obesity.
ANALYSIS OF TOOLS USED FOR TEACHER EVALUATION PROCESS AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL: A DOCUMENT ANALYSIS APPROACH

The prime aim of this research was to analyze the tools used for the teacher evaluation process in public and private universities of Lahore. The research was qualitative in its nature and follows an interpretive research paradigm. The researcher used the document analysis technique for the analysis of documents. The tools were collected by visiting the universities' concerned departments for analysis. All collected tools were reviewed and analyzed against the criteria set by four experts from the qualitative domain. It was identified that teacher evaluation tools of the private sector universities were more comprehensive and detailed and self-developed as compared to the public universities. The public sector universities were using only single-page tools. It was also pointed out that the tools of the public sector universities had very limited aspects of the teacher’s teaching, while private universities’ tools had more aspects and were exhaustive. This article might provide the source material for future researchers and policymakers to ponder the area of teacher evaluation too.
M3DGAF: Monocular 3D Object Detection With Geometric Appearance Awareness and Feature Fusion

The object detection task in autonomous driving scenario is usually completed by a complex visual sensor system, such as the LiDAR sensor, the stereo sensor, and the monocular sensor. Recent progress in autonomous driving leverages a monocular sensor to achieve a highly efficient 3D object detection task with geometric constraints. These detectors improve with the explicit geometry projection, which can build the bridge between the 2D image plane and the 3D world space. However, they tend to focus on optimizing depth estimation and ignore the equally important 3D properties of orientation and 3D dimension. In this work, we propose a Geometric Appearance Awareness (GAA) module to improve the estimation of orientation. Specifically, a GAA module is proposed to obtain the geometry-guided appearance feature, which can be used to estimate reliable orientation. Furthermore, we design a Sample-aware Feature Fusion (SFF) head in the 3D dimension regression branch. This head dynamically deals with the uniqueness of different samples for learning 3D dimension. We evaluate our method on the KITTI dataset, and achieve significant improvements in the 3D object detection task. Compared with the latest method, our approach obtains a 1.08 improvement for the metric of ${\mathrm {AP}}_{{3}{D}}$ on the hard level and 1.53/3.41/5.79 improvements for the metric of APBEV under the easy/moderate/hard settings, respectively.
Analysis of Peripheral Blood Basophils in Pediatric Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Basophils are the least abundant circulating leukocytes, and their immunological role has not yet been completely elucidated. There is evidence supporting their immunomodulatory role in several pathological settings; recently, studies in both experimental models and humans suggested that basophil homeostasis may be altered in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Here, we first assessed circulating basophils in children affected with pediatric SLE (pSLE). In this cross-sectional study, circulating basophils were enumerated by fluorescence-based flow cytometry analysis in children affected with pSLE, in addition to children suffering from juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or non-inflammatory/non-rheumatic conditions. This study included 52 pediatric patients distributed in these three groups. We observed a statistically significant reduction of peripherally circulating basophils in children with pSLE compared to the other two groups of patients. This preliminary study is consistent with the available studies in adult patients with SLE showing a reduced number of circulating basophils. However, further research is needed to draw final conclusions on basophils’ homeostasis in pSLE, in addition to their correlation with the disease activity and concomitant therapies.
The Clinical Application Value of the Prognostic Nutritional Index for the Overall Survival Prognosis of Patients with Esophageal Cancer: A Robust Real-World Observational Study in China

Esophageal cancer is a kind of cancer with high morbidity and mortality, which is accompanied by a profound poor prognosis. A prognostic nutritional index, based on serum albumin levels and peripheral lymphocyte count, has been confirmed to be significantly associated with various cancers. This study was aimed at exploring the prognostic significance of PNI in the overall survival prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer. As a real-world study based on the big database, clinical data of 2661 patients with esophageal cancer were evaluated retrospectively, and the individuals were randomly divided into training and testing cohorts. In these two cohorts, patients are classified into a high-risk group (PNI < 49) and a low-risk group (PNI ≥ 49). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to analyze the independent risk factors for the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients by using the Cox proportional hazards regression model. In this study, whether in the training cohort or the testing cohort, according to the univariate analysis, gender, tumor size, tumor grade, T stage, N stage, M stage, TNM stage, and PNI were significantly correlated with overall survival. Furthermore, the multivariate analysis showed that gender, T stage, N stage, M stage, TNM stage, and PNI were independent prognostic risk factors for esophageal cancer. PNI can be regarded as an independent prognostic factor combined with gender, T stage, N stage, M stage, and TNM stage, and it might be a novel reliable biomarker for esophageal cancer.
Symmetrical Three-Vector-Based Model Predictive Control With Deadbeat Solution for IPMSM in Rotating Reference Frame

This paper proposes a model predictive control based on three voltage vectors for an interior permanent-magnet synchronous motor in a rotating reference frame. The proposed method can obtain the reference voltage vector quickly by predicting only one voltage vector during one sampling period using the characteristics of the deadbeat control. In addition, to obtain better steady-state performance, the optimal vector duration ratios can be obtained from the cost function to minimize the error between the predicted reference voltage vector and the synthesis vector by using the switching sequence relationship of a symmetrical three vector, which is different from applying a single voltage vector in the conventional finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC). To verify the proposed method, the experimental results are compared with the conventional FCS-MPC and two-vector-based MPC.
Online Genetic-Fuzzy Forward Controller for a Robot Arm

The robot is a repeated task plant. The control of such a plant under parameter variations and load disturbances is one of the important problems. The aim of this work is to design Genetic-Fuzzy controller suitable for online applications to control single link rigid robot arm plant. The genetic-fuzzy online controller (forward controller) contains two parts, an identifier part and model reference controller part. The identification is based on forward identification technique. The proposed controller it tested in normal and load disturbance conditions. Kywords: Genitic fuzzy, Robot control, on line control, Model reference Control, Adaptive Fuzzy control.
Game theoretic analysis of supply chain based on mean-variance approach under cap-and-trade policy

In recent years, carbon emission problem occurred by carbon dioxide as one of the main greenhouse gases, has become the focus due to its great influence on human life. With the increase of consumers’ low‐carbon consciousness, this paper studies the supply chain which consists of a single supplier and a single manufacturer in presence of market low‐carbon preference. First, we establish the mean‐variance analysis model. Second, we study the optimal decisions of channel members considering the risk factor in three situations: traditional supply chain without emission reduction, individual emission reduction by manufacturer and supply chain collaborative emission reduc‐ tion. Finally, the equilibrium results are demonstrated by numerical studies. The results show that chain members’ profits are not only affected by their own risk‐aversion level, but also by other chain member’s risk aversion level. More important is that there exist the optimal carbon emission reduction level and profits in system collaborative emission reduction. The research makes operation mechanism of low‐carbon supply chain clearer and provides a theoretical reference for supply chain members on pricing and investment strategy of emission reduction. © 2018 CPE, University of Maribor. All rights reserved.
Performance Evaluation of a Second-Order Lever Single Axis Solar Tracking System

This article presents a novel single axis solar tracking system to enable more solar radiation striking on the photovoltaic (PV) panel. The working principle is based on second-order lever principle. The single axis movement is carried out by balancing the mass of water together with the part mass of the PV panel on one side (left) of the fulcrum and the mass of the PV panel on the other side (right) of the fulcrum. Here the necessity of an external motor for axial movement of the PV panel is avoided. The design and performance of the proposed second-order lever single axis solar tracking system is studied for a period of 90 days (from January 2022 to March 2022). The proposed 20 Wp system prototype model is compared with the conventional single axis solar tracking (CSAST) system of the same rating. The working principle of the proposed system along with the operation of peripheral circuitry and gadgets are discussed. Finally, the percentage of increase in the solar power output in comparison with the CSAST system is estimated along with techno-economic analysis.
A New Possible Cut-Off of Cytokeratin 19 mRNA Copy Number by OSNA in the Sentinel Node of Breast Cancer Patients to Avoid Unnecessary Axillary Dissection: A 10-Year Experience in a Tertiary Breast Unit

Simple Summary This manuscript aims to investigate the features of patients with metastatic sentinel lymph node (SLN), evaluated by OSNA, and to predict which patients have a high risk of positive ALND. The finding of the present study suggests a new cut-off of CK19 mRNA copy number in the sentinel lymph node useful to personalize surgical treatments and avoid unnecessary axillary surgical treatments. Abstract (1) Background: The main discriminant in breast cancer prognosis is axillary lymph node status. In a select cohort of patients, axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) may be safely spared. This study aimed to determine a new possible cut-off of cytokeratin (CK) 19 mRNA copy number in the SLN to predict cases at high risk of positive ALND. (2) Methods: Clinical records of 1339 patients were retrospectively reviewed and were separated into two groups according to the axillary status (negative: ALNs− and positive ALNs+). Receiver operative characteristic (ROC) curves were used to identify a new optimal cut-off of CK19 mRNA copy number in SLN; (3) Results: Large tumor size and high grade were found mostly in ALNs+. Results from the ROC analyses, with an AUC of 82.1%, identified a new cut-off (9150 CK19 mRNA copies) showing 94% sensitivity, 67.3% specificity, 61.2% positive, and 95.3% negative predictive values; (4) OSNA remains the most-important intra-operative tool to identify patients who can benefit from ALND but with the traditional cut-off, many patients undergo needless ALND. The results of the present study suggest a new cut-off helpful to personalize surgical treatment and avoid unnecessary invasive procedures.
Parameters Optimization of CNC Machining using Taguchi Methodology

Metal cutting operations still represent the largest class of manufacturing operations where turning is the most commonly employed material removal process and there are lots of studies to investigate this complex process in both academic and industrial world. Predicting the better cutting condition during turning is of great importance as it helps in getting the Surfaces quality before machining starts. The major indication of surfaces quality on machined parts is surface roughness. Again, optimization of cutting parameters is one of the most important elements in any process planning of metal parts as economy of machining operation plays a key role in gaining competitive advantage. Control parameters being consider in this thesis are spindle speed, feed rate and depth of cut. After experimentally turning sample work pieces using the selected orthogonal array and parameters, this study expected to produce an optimum combination of controlled parameter for the surface roughness. In this work, Taguchi Design is used to identify the optimal combination of turning parameters to minimize the surface roughness. Turning experiments are carried out according to Taguchi orthogonal array L9 for various combinations of three parameters: cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut. For each experiment run, the surface roughness Ra and time is measured, recorded and analysed using Taguchi method.
Correlations study and clustering from SPI experiences in small settings

Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiatives have been applied in a wide set of organisations including very small entities (VSE). In fact, this kind of organisations is facing several hurdles when overarching a SPI initiative. In this context, the ISO/IEC 29110 has been used as a lightweight reference model for steering VSEs in their SPI initiatives. The inherent uncertainty behind the SPI curtains blocks the organisations in their investments. Due to these reasons, we need to identify relationships and similarities in order to predict whether a SPI will succeed or not. We propose the use of Self‐Organising Maps for identifying patterns from these SPI studies. The aim of this paper is to identify correlations among SPI studies and to discover patterns from them.
Design, Fabrication, and Performance Test of a New Type of Soft-Robotic Gripper for Grasping

This investigation presents a novel soft-robotic pneumatic gripper that consists of three newly proposed soft actuators. The newly proposed soft actuators adopt a composite structure of two kinds of pneumatic networks which can work independently and play their respective roles in grasping. The design, analyses, and fabrication of the proposed soft actuators are introduced systematically, and then an experimental system is built to examine the output characteristics of the soft actuator. Compared with the conventional single pneumatic network-based soft actuator, the newly proposed one combines the advantages of the two pneumatic networks, and it employs a larger output force and retains desired bending deformation ability at the same time. The grasping performance test results show that the new soft gripper constituted by the proposed soft actuators has high reliability and stability whether in pinching or in enveloping grasping, and it is also competent for grasping heavier or irregular objects, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the newly proposed soft actuator, and giving it a good and wide application prospect.