Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer Response to the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology-based Self-service Beauty Specialty Store: Moderating Effects of Consumer Traits

Introduction. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) refers to wireless system consisted of reader devices and tags. The reader device emits radio waves and receives signals back from the RFID tag, which is attached to the product and stores its information (Finkenzeller, 2010). RFIDbased retail technologies increase an efficiency of shopping processes as well as offering novel shopping experiences to customers (Melià-Seguí et al., 2013). Several beauty retailers are experimenting with RFID technology in the context of a self-service specialty store. For example, a multinational cosmetic brand Innisfree, has opened the self-service stores embracing RFID-based retail technologies: An “interactive shelving display” shows product information (e.g., ingredients, color options) on the digital shelf; and a “smart table” displays video tutorials (‘how to use’), recommended items to purchase together, and customer reviews on the digital screen of the table when the RFID-chipped product is brought close to or put on the screen. A RFID-based self-checkout counter enables a quick checkout by putting the items in a ‘deep hole’ of the counter, which reads the RFID chips of all items at once. As the brick-and-mortar retail shifts towards a more digital experience, the self-service store leveraging RFID-based retail technologies increase functionalities (i.e., usefulness, easiness) as well as entertainment (i.e., enjoyment, newness) in retail experiences during the in-store customer journey. Despite the beauty specialty retailers’ increasing adoption of RFID-based retail technologies in the selfservice store venue, this is an underexplored area of research.
Intrinsic Performance of Monte Carlo Calibration-Free Algorithm for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

The performance of the Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm for calibration-free LIBS was studied on the example of a simulated spectrum that mimics a metallurgical slag sample. The underlying model is that of a uniform, isothermal, and stationary plasma in local thermodynamical equilibrium. Based on the model, the algorithm generates from hundreds of thousands to several millions of simultaneous configurations of plasma parameters and the corresponding number of spectra. The parameters are temperature, plasma size, and concentrations of species. They are iterated until a cost function, which indicates a difference between synthetic and simulated slag spectra, reaches its minimum. After finding the minimum, the concentrations of species are read from the model and compared to the certified values. The algorithm is parallelized on a graphical processing unit (GPU) to reduce computational time. The minimization of the cost function takes several minutes on the GPU NVIDIA Tesla K40 card and depends on the number of elements to be iterated. The intrinsic accuracy of the MC calibration-free method is found to be around 1% for the eight elements tested. For a real experimental spectrum, however, the efficiency may turn out to be worse due to the idealistic nature of the model, as well as incorrectly chosen experimental conditions. Factors influencing the performance of the method are discussed.
Flare Irradiance Spectral Model (FISM) use for space weather applications

A downhole tool containing instruments and a pulser is landed within a string of drill pipe. The pulser has a pulser body and an orifice on a lower end. A piston slides within a bore in the body and has a signal poppet on a lower end. In an extended position, the signal poppet extends into and obstructs the orifice to reduce the flow of drilling fluid. In an open position, the signal poppet does not obstruct the orifice to increase the flow of drilling fluid. A bidirectional solenoid valve is located above the piston and has upper and lower electromagnetic coils and an axially moveable rod. The rod is movable between a closed position in an opening in the body and an open position away from the opening. The rod is moved to both positions in response to the instruments which sends signals to the coils. The mud pulser also has an on/off flow switch which is actuated by the commencement of mud circulation. Initially, the rod is in the closed position. The instruments take various measurements which are communicated through the pulser to the surface in the form of mud pulses. A mud pulse is generated when a coil is energized to move the rod to the open position. This forces the piston and signal poppet into the extended position to restrict mud flow. The rod is moved to the closed position when the other coil is energized. The signal poppet creates pulses which are detected at the surface.
A Study of Consumers’ Perceptions of Take-Out Food before and after the COVID-19 Outbreak: Applying Big Data Analysis

This study explored changes in consumers’ perceptions of take-out food before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic using big data collected from social media. Using “take-out food” as a keyword, 18,544 search results were found in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, compared to 20,718 search results in 2021. These keywords were analyzed using text mining, semantic network analysis, CONCOR analysis, and sentiment analysis, respectively, to understand consumers’ perception of take-out food. Using text mining, in 2019, “dining-out” was the most frequent search term associated with take-out food, followed by packing, famous restaurant, family, delicious, menu, and available. In 2021, “dining-out” was again the most popular keyword, followed by packing, famous restaurant, delivery, family, delicious, available, and Corona. A semantic network analysis showed that, in 2019, four categories emerged: delicious, meat, satisfaction, and lunchbox. The same analysis showed that, in 2021, the categories were delicious, meat, good, and home meal. These findings suggest that, after COVID-19, take-out food began to be recognized as a daily meal that can replace home-cooked meals. According to the sentiment analysis, the number of positive keywords decreased by 4.03% after COVID-19, while the number of negative keywords increased at the same rate; regarding the increase in negative keywords, such as sadness, disgust, and fear, since the emergence of COVID-19, consumers’ anxiety about eating out due to the virus was observed. This study can be useful by providing core data and an analysis method necessary for food service companies’ business activities and decision making related to take-out amid consumers’ rapidly changing needs for the dining-out environment caused by COVID-19.
A 68-Year-Old Woman with a Remote History of Breast Cancer Presenting with Low Back Pain to a Chiropractic Clinic in Hong Kong with Imaging Findings Consistent with a Vertebral Hemangioma and Vertebral Metastatic Lesions

Patient: Female, 68-year-old Final Diagnosis: Vertebral metastasis Symptoms: Low back pain Medication:— Clinical Procedure: Magnetic resonance imaging • positron emission tomography-computed tomography Specialty: Chiropractic • Oncology • Radiology Objective: Rare disease Background: Patients commonly visit chiropractic clinics for treatment for low back pain, which is often due to injury or degenerative spinal conditions. Rarely, serious underlying pathology may be identified. This report describes a 68-year-old woman with a remote history of breast cancer presenting with low back pain to a chiropractic clinic in Hong Kong with imaging findings consistent with vertebral hemangioma and vertebral metastatic lesions. Case Report: A 68-year-old woman with a history of breast cancer status after chemotherapy and mastectomy 20 years prior presented to a chiropractor with an acute exacerbation of chronic low back pain with lower extremity pares-thesia. She previously visited her general practitioner and underwent radiography, which supported diagnoses of degenerative lumbar spondylosis and hemangioma of the fifth lumbar vertebra. Given the patient’s worsening status and previous cancer, the chiropractor ordered lumbar magnetic resonance imaging at the initial visit, consistent with multilevel spinal metastasis. The chiropractor referred the patient to an oncologist who performed positron emission tomography/computed tomography, which suggested breast cancer recurrence and metastasis. The greatest hypermetabolic activity was evident within the level of the suspected vertebral hemangioma, suggesting this finding which initially appeared innocuous on plain radiography contained underlying metastasis. Conclusions: This case illustrates that when patients fail to respond to treatment for low back pain, clinical referral should be undertaken for investigations to identify possible serious underlying pathology.
The generalized adequacy coefficient and its application in strategic decision making

The adequacy coefficient is a very useful technique that provides a more complete formulation than the Hamming distance in decision making problems. In this paper, we suggest a generalization by using generalized and quasi-arithmetic means. As a result, we will get the generalized ordered weighted averaging adequacy coefficient (GOWAAC) and the Quasi-OWAAC operator. These new aggregation operators generalize a wide range of particular cases such as the generalized adequacy coefficient (GAC), the weighted generalized adequacy coefficient (WGAC), the ordered weighted averaging adequacy coefficient (OWAAC), the ordered weighted quadratic averaging adequacy coefficient (OWQAAC), and others. We study different families and properties of these aggregation operators. We also analyze the unification point with distance measures and we find that in these situations, the GOWAAC and the Quasi-OWAAC become the Minkowski ordered weighted averaging distance (MOWAD) operator and the Quasi-OWAD operator, respectively. Finally, we also develop an application of the new approach in a strategic decision making problem about selection of strategies.
High-precision Penning-trap mass spectrometry at SHIPTRAP and PENTATRAP for neutrino physics research

In neutrino physics, a variety of experiments aim for the determination of the neutrino mass by means of the beta-decay and electron-capture spectra, while a detection of the neutrinoless double-electron capture would reveal the Majorana nature of neutrinos. However, a lack of knowledge on the total decay energy (Q-value) of these processes constrains present neutrino experiments. To this end, high-precision measurements of the Q-values are obligatory. In order to find suitable nuclides for neutrinoless double-electron capture experiments, a determination of the Q-values by direct Penning-trap mass-ratio measurements on 106Pd/102Ru, 106Cd/106Pd, 144Sm/144Nd and 156Dy/156Gd with a relative precision of a few 10E−9 were performed for the first time at SHIPTRAP using the Time-of-Flight Ion-Cyclotron-Resonance (ToF-ICR) detection technique and the multiresonance phenomenon in 156Dy was discovered. A novel Phase Imaging Ion-Cyclotron-Resonance detection technique was developed being substantially faster and providing ca. 40-fold gain in resolving power in comparison with the presently used ToF-ICR technique. The novel Penning-trap mass spectrometer PENTATRAP aims for direct mass-ratio measurements with a relative precision better than 10E−11, which is required for the beta-decay and electron-capture experiments. In this context, the PENTATRAP Control System was developed in order to maximize the efficiency of the measurement process.
Accumulation of evidence during decision making in OCD patients

Decision-making often entails the accumulation of evidence. Previous studies suggested that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) process decision-making differently from healthy controls. Both their compulsive behavior and obsessive thoughts may influence the evidence accumulation process, yet the previous studies disagreed on the reason. To address this question, we employed a probabilistic reasoning task in which subjects made two alternative forced choices by viewing a series of visual stimuli. These stimuli carried probabilistic information toward the choices. While the OCD patients achieved similar accuracy to the control, they took longer time and accumulated more evidence, especially in difficult trials in which the evidence strength was low. We further modeled the subjects' decision making as a leaky drifting diffusion process toward two collapsing bounds. The control group showed a higher drifting rate than the OCD group, indicating that the OCD group was less sensitive to evidence. Together, these results demonstrated that the OCD patients were less efficient than the control at transforming sensory information into evidence. However, their evidence accumulation was comparable to the healthy control, and they compensated for their decision-making accuracy with longer reaction times.
Effectiveness of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation for Enhanced Recovery After Total Hip Replacement Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using a novel neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) device for enhanced recovery after total hip replacement surgery. Methods Sixty patients undergoing total hip replacement for osteoarthritis of the hip were randomized and divided into 2 groups: 1 group received postoperative treatment with the NMES device, and the other group did not receive NMES. The primary outcome measures were postoperative pain, lower limb swelling, and length of stay (LOS) postsurgery. Secondary outcomes included wound drainage at 24 hours and acceptability by the intervention of the device. Results Data from 60 participants were analyzed (NMES (n = 30), control group (n = 30)). Patients in the NMES group demonstrated a general trend of beneficial postoperative pain, calf swelling, and average length of stay from postoperative to discharge. However, wound drainage largely remained static for both groups. The overall comfort rate of the device was 93.3%. Conclusions The results of this study suggest that the gekoTM NMES device is partly useful for enhanced recovery after total hip replacement surgery. In addition, the device should be considered tolerable and safe. A larger study is required with this device in the future to determine its effectiveness on compelling data.
Aspects of data assimilation peculiar to space weather forecasting

Data assimilation in space weather forecasting is necessary but differs in important respects from terrestrial weather forecasting. These differences arise in part from the relative sparsity of data in space weather and from relatively direct driving of space weather phenomena. They present opportunities for space weather forecasting to add new data assimilation techniques to those developed in terrestrial weather forecasting.
Robust Gain-Scheduling Path Following Control of Autonomous Vehicles Considering Stochastic Network-Induced Delay

This paper concerns the robust gain-scheduling control issue for autonomous path following systems with stochastic network-induced delay. Firstly, to effectively approximate the highly nonlinear tire dynamics, the linear fractional transformation formulations are employed to describe the tire cornering stiffness with a norm-bounded uncertainty. Secondly, by taking the data dropout and delay encountered in signal computation and transmission into account, a more generalized lumped delay form is proposed to unify the time-varying data dropout and network-induced delay. Moreover, a Markovian process is presented to describe the lumped delay as a stochastic distribution. Thirdly, to address the issue of varying vehicle velocity, a linear parameter varying model is established to capture vehicle lateral behaviors. Based on the stochastic stability theory, a new robust gain-scheduling path following control method is proposed for the autonomous vehicles. Finally, the experimental study is presented to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical investigations on path following control of autonomous vehicles, and results validate the superior performance of the proposed method compared with existing works.
HOMOTOPY PERTURBATION METHOD FOR SOLVING FLOW IN THE EXTRUSION PROCESSES

In this paper, the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) is considered for finding approximate solutions of two-dimensional viscous flow. This technique provides a sequence of functions which converges to the exact solution of the problem. The HPM does not need a small parameters in the equations, but; the perturbation method depends on small parameter assumption and the obtained results. In most cases, it ends up with a non-physical result, so homotopy perturbation method overcomes completely the above shortcomings. HPM is very convenient and effective and the solutions is compared with the exact solution.
The active core microbiota of two high-yielding laying hen breeds fed with different levels of calcium and phosphorus

The nutrient availability and supplementation of dietary phosphorus (P) and calcium (Ca) in avian feed, especially in laying hens, plays a vital role in phytase degradation and mineral utilization during the laying phase. The required concentration of P and Ca peaks during the laying phase, and the direct interaction between Ca and P concentration shrinks the availability of both supplements in the feed. Our goal was to characterize the active microbiota of the entire gastrointestinal tract (GIT) (crop, gizzard, duodenum, ileum, caeca), including digesta- and mucosa-associated communities of two contrasting high-yielding breeds of laying hens (Lohmann Brown Classic, LB; Lohmann LSL-Classic, LSL) under different P and Ca supplementation levels. Statistical significances were observed for breed, GIT section, Ca, and the interaction of GIT section x breed, P x Ca, Ca x breed and P x Ca x breed (p < 0.05). A core microbiota of five species was detected in more than 97% of all samples. They were represented by an uncl. Lactobacillus (average relative abundance (av. abu.) 12.1%), Lactobacillus helveticus (av. abu. 10.8%), Megamonas funiformis (av. abu. 6.8%), Ligilactobacillus salivarius (av. abu. 4.5%), and an uncl. Fusicatenibacter (av. abu. 1.1%). Our findings indicated that Ca and P supplementation levels 20% below the recommendation have a minor effect on the microbiota compared to the strong impact of the bird’s genetic background. Moreover, a core active microbiota across the GIT of two high-yielding laying hen breeds was revealed for the first time.
Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics

In part I of these lecture notes, I introduce the basic tools of non equilibrium statistical mechanics: linear response, Brownian motion, Langevin equation, (Pauli) master equation. Part II is devoted to a derivation of quantum master equations from the Schrodinger equation, and to some of their applications to quantum optics and to Brownian motion. Finally, in part III, I examine more recent developments: the Crooks and Jarzynski equalities and the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem.
COVID-19 masks: A barrier to facial and vocal information

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have become used to wearing masks and have experienced how masks seem to impair emotion and speech recognition. While several studies have focused on facial emotion recognition by adding images of masks on photographs of emotional faces, we have created a video database with actors really wearing masks to test its effect in more ecological conditions. After validating the emotions displayed by the actors, we found that surgical mask impaired happiness and sadness recognition but not neutrality. Moreover, for happiness, this effect was specific to the mask and not to covering the lower part of the face, possibly due to a cognitive bias associated with the surgical mask. We also created videos with speech and tested the effect of mask on emotion and speech recognition when displayed in auditory, visual, or audiovisual modalities. In visual and audiovisual modalities, mask impaired happiness and sadness but improved neutrality recognition. Mask impaired the recognition of bilabial syllables regardless of modality. In addition, it altered speech recognition only in the audiovisual modality for participants above 70 years old. Overall, COVID-19 masks mainly impair emotion recognition, except for older participants for whom it also impacts speech recognition, probably because they rely more on visual information to compensate age-related hearing loss.
Non‐parametric estimation of population size from capture–recapture data when the capture probability depends on a covariate

Summary. In capture–recapture experiments the capture probabilities may depend on individual covariates such as an individual's weight or age. Typically this dependence is modelled through simple parametric functions of the covariates. Here we first demonstrate that misspecification of the model can produce biased estimates and subsequently develop a non‐parametric procedure to estimate the functional relationship between the probability of capture and a single covariate. This estimator is then incorporated in a Horvitz–Thompson estimator to estimate the size of the population. The resulting estimators are evaluated in a simulation study and applied to a data set on captures of the Mountain Pygmy Possum.
An Improved Algorithm of Drift Compensation for Olfactory Sensors

This research mainly studies the semi-supervised learning algorithm of different domain data in machine olfaction, also known as sensor drift compensation algorithm. Usually for this kind of problem, it is difficult to obtain better recognition results by directly using the semi-supervised learning algorithm. For this reason, we propose a domain transformation semi-supervised weighted kernel extreme learning machine (DTSWKELM) algorithm, which converts the data through the domain and uses SWKELM algorithmic classification to transform the semi-supervised classification problem of different domain data into a semi-supervised classification problem of the same domain data.
Heterozygous Loss of KRIT1 in Mice Affects Metabolic Functions of the Liver, Promoting Hepatic Oxidative and Glycative Stress

KRIT1 loss-of-function mutations underlie the pathogenesis of Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM), a major vascular disease affecting the central nervous system (CNS). However, KRIT1 is also expressed outside the CNS and modulates key regulators of metabolic and oxy-inflammatory pathways, including the master transcription factor FoxO1, suggesting a widespread functional significance. Herein, we show that the KRIT1/FoxO1 axis is implicated in liver metabolic functions and antioxidative/antiglycative defenses. Indeed, by performing comparative studies in KRIT1 heterozygous (KRIT1+/−) and wild-type mice, we found that KRIT1 haploinsufficiency resulted in FoxO1 expression/activity downregulation in the liver, and affected hepatic FoxO1-dependent signaling pathways, which are markers of major metabolic processes, including gluconeogenesis, glycolysis, mitochondrial respiration, and glycogen synthesis. Moreover, it caused sustained activation of the master antioxidant transcription factor Nrf2, hepatic accumulation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), and abnormal expression/activity of AGE receptors and detoxifying systems. Furthermore, it was associated with an impairment of food intake, systemic glucose disposal, and plasma levels of insulin. Specific molecular alterations detected in the liver of KRIT1+/− mice were also confirmed in KRIT1 knockout cells. Overall, our findings demonstrated, for the first time, that KRIT1 haploinsufficiency affects glucose homeostasis and liver metabolic and antioxidative/antiglycative functions, thus inspiring future basic and translational studies.