Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rethinking PLCs: Industrial Ethernet for Large-Scale Real-Time Distributed Control Applications

Many research facilities rely on PLCs to automate large slow systems like vacuum or HVAC, where price, availability and reliability matter. The dominant architecture consists of local units of controllers/modules (programmed in IEC61131-3 languages), which operate mostly autonomously from a SCADA layer. While some vendors provide low-level stacks to encourage growth of their ecosystems, PLC programming remains largely within a closed, proprietary world. In this paper, we introduce a different way of thinking about PLC hardware. Working with the open stacks intended for the design of new EtherCAT (Beckhoff)/Powerlink (B&R) modules, we built an abstract C++- API to control the existing ones. These industrial Ethernet busses can be propagated using standard network hardware, so any RT-Linux system can now control any PLC module from anywhere in our facility using high-level languages (C++, LabVIEW). This way, PLC modules are seamlessly integrated into our distributed TANGO-based control system. PC-PLC interfaces are no longer needed; or in the case of traditionally implemented subsystems, trivial.
Human Crowdsourcing Data for Indoor Location Applied to Ambient Assisted Living Scenarios

In the last decades, the rise of life expectancy has accelerated the demand for new technological solutions to provide a longer life with improved quality. One of the major areas of the Ambient Assisted Living aims to monitor the elderly location indoors. For this purpose, indoor positioning systems are valuable tools and can be classified depending on the need of a supporting infrastructure. Infrastructure-based systems require the investment on expensive equipment and existing infrastructure-free systems, although rely on the pervasively available characteristics of the buildings, present some limitations regarding the extensive process of acquiring and maintaining fingerprints, the maps that store the environmental characteristics to be used in the localisation phase. These problems hinder indoor positioning systems to be deployed in most scenarios. To overcome these limitations, an algorithm for the automatic construction of indoor floor plans and environmental fingerprints is proposed. With the use of crowdsourcing techniques, where the extensiveness of a task is reduced with the help of a large undefined group of users, the algorithm relies on the combination of multiple sources of information, collected in a non-annotated way by common smartphones. The crowdsourced data is composed by inertial sensors, responsible for estimating the users’ trajectories, Wi-Fi radio and magnetic field signals. Wi-Fi radio data is used to cluster the trajectories into smaller groups, each corresponding to specific areas of the building. Distance metrics applied to magnetic field signals are used to identify geomagnetic similarities between different users’ trajectories. The building’s floor plan is then automatically created, which results in fingerprints labelled with physical locations. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieved comparable floor plan and fingerprints to those acquired manually, allowing the conclusion that is possible to automate the setup process of infrastructure-free systems. With these results, this solution can be applied in any fingerprinting-based indoor positioning system.
On similarity waves in compacting media

Compaction generally refers to the relative motion of fluid with respect to the deformable surroundings in a two-phase system. It has many geophysical and engineering applications, including liquefaction, formation of magma chamber, genesis of igneous rocks, foam drainage, and flow in sediments. In this paper, we followed McKenzie’s two-phase flow formulation (1984) to study the flow through a porous medium, which is a commonly used model for compaction study. Using the same approach as Barcilon and Lovera (1989), we studied the wave solution with and without melting effect, under the assumption that the ambient porosity is small. Similarity waves were of particular interest here. We discussed the necessary conditions for a specific class of similarity waves to exist, followed by the general behavior of such waves and numerical determination of the solution for several cases. Parametric studies were also carried out to investigate the dependence of the solution on factors such as the melting rate, the density ratio, and the permeability of the solid matrix, etc.
Program Konversi Citra Notasi Balok Menjadi Notasi Angka

The Image Conversion Program of Music Notation being Numeric Notation is a character recognition system that accepts input in form of music notation image that produces an output of a DOCX file containing the numeric notation from the input image. Music notation has notation value, ritmic value and written with a music stave. The system consists of four main processes: preprocessing (grayscale and thresholding), notation line segmentation, notation character segmentation, and template matching. Template matching is used to recognize the music notation that obtained after segmentation. The recognition process obtained by comparing the image with the template image that has been inputted before to the database. This system has 100% success rate on segmentation of the character and success rate 38,4843% on the character recognition with template matching.
Congenital Megaprepuce: Literature Review and Surgical Correction

Congenital megaprepuce (CMP) is a type of buried penis characterized by extensive redundancy and ballooning of the inner prepuce as a result of preputial stenosis and phimosis. The malformation typically presents with difficulty voiding, often requiring manual expression of stagnant urine. Multiple techniques have been reported for the treatment of CMP with varying levels of positive outcomes. The authors provide a review of published literature, in addition to describing the procedure and results of our surgical technique in three children aged eleven months, two years, and twelve years. The literature review was conducted using PubMed with keywords “congenital megaprepuce,” “megaprepuce,” “buried penis,” “CMP,” and “correction. ” Results were then differentiated based on presence or absence of true congenital megaprepuce and the surgical correction thereof. Regarding our cases, all patients completed the procedure with excellent cosmesis and without complication. Our technique is shown to provide consistent, excellent esthetic outcome across a wide range of ages and may be replicated by others.
Sketching as a Tool for Efficient Networked Systems

Today, computer systems need to cope with the explosive growth of data in the world. For instance, in data-center networks, monitoring systems are used to measure traffic statistics at high speed; and in financial technology companies, distributed processing systems are deployed to support graph analytics. To fulfill the requirements of handling such large datasets, we build efficient networked systems in a distributed manner most of the time. Ideally, we expect the systems to meet service-level objectives (SLOs) using the least amount of resource. However, existing systems constructed with conventional in-memory algorithms face the following challenges: (1) excessive resource requirements (e.g., CPU, ASIC, and memory) with high cost; (2) infeasibility in a larger scale; (3) processing the data too slowly to meet the objectives. To address these challenges, we propose sketching techniques as a tool to build more efficient networked systems. Sketching algorithms aim to process the data with one or several passes in an online, streaming fashion (e.g., a stream of network packets), and compute highly accurate results. With sketching, we only maintain a compact summary of the entire data and provide theoretical guarantees on error bounds.
Prevalence of some foodborne microorganisms in meat and meat products

This study was conducted on 140 random samples of fresh beef and meat products viz: minced meat, luncheon and sausage (35 for each), collected from different shops at El-Kaliobia Governorate, to evaluate their bacteriological profile. The bacteriological examination of fresh beef and meat products minced meat, sausage and luncheon revealed that the mean values of APC, Enterobacteriaceae, coliform and Staphylococcus counts were 8.34×104±0. 10 ×104; 2.14×102±0.97×102; 1.25×102±0. 13 ×102 and 2.36×10 2±0.12 ×102 for fresh beef samples; 8.03×104 ±0.12×104; 2.02×102 ±0.76×102; 0. 89×102 ±0.06 ×102 and 2.67×102 ±0.11×102 for minced meat samples; 6.74×104 ±0. 28 ×104; 1.85×102 ±0.64×102; 0. 73×102 ±0.08 ×102 and 1.9×102 ±0.11 ×102 for sausage samples and 5.85×104 ±0.24×104 ;1.69×102 ±0.70×102 ;0.71×102 ±0.07×102 and 1.68×102±0.11×102, for luncheon samples. Further, 21 isolates of E.coli were isolated from examined meat samples represented as 5(14.3%) from fresh beef with serotypes 2 O55:H7,1 O125:H18,1 O111: H4 and 1 O26:H11 ; 8(22.9%) from minced meat with serotypes 3 O55:H7, 2 O125:H18, 1 O111:H4, 1 O26:H11 and 1 untyped; 6 (17.1%) from sausage with serotypes 2 O55:H7, 1 O125:H18, 1 O111:H4 , 1 O26:H11 and one untyped and 2 (5.7%) from luncheon samples with serotypes O55:H7 . In addition, 25 isolates of Coagulase positive S. aureus were isolated from examined meat samples represented as 6 (17.1%) from fresh beef; 9 (25.7%) from minced meat; 7 (20.0%) from sausage and 3(8.6%) from luncheon samples. Meanwhile, Salmonella serovars were not detected from all examined meat samples.
Gene expression associated with indicated faster growth of crossbreeding in
 Sinocyclocheilus grahami

In this study, pure‐breeding and crossbreeding of Sinocyclocheilus grahami were established to test heterosis and expression of growth‐related genes which were examined in the first‐generation (F1). Genetic distances results showed that Muyang river (M) and Sanbaimu reservoir (S) populations had smaller interspecific distances (genetic distance: 0.000) while larger distances were shown to other two populations (0.024 of Jiuzhai vauclusian spring [J] and 0.044 of Chenglong vauclusian spring [C]). Full‐sib families were created by using the Muyang river population as females: MM, MS, MJ and MC. Growth performance had significant differences between each group of F1 hybrids; the fastest growth group was shown in MJ while the slowest was in MS. For growth‐related genes, the fast growth group of MJ hybrids showed significantly higher levels of ghrelin expression in strong expression tissues of the intestine and liver. Among the four combinations, mRNA levels of insulin‐like growth factor I (IGF‐I) were the highest expression in MJ hybrids than others in all tested tissues. Myostatin b and somatostatin1 (SST1) were strongly expressed in the brain and MJ hybrids showed relatively lower expression level. In the muscle, slow growth group of MS hybrids showed extremely higher expression levels of these two genes, especially SST1 gene. In conclusion, associating growth with growth‐related genes expression indicated faster growth of crossbreeding in S. grahami and can make a contribution to commercial fish production in the future.
Using the visual denotations of image captions for semantic inference

Semantic inference is essential to natural language understanding. There are two different traditional approaches to semantic inference. The logic-based approach translates utterances into a formal meaning representation that is amenable to logical proofs. The vector-based approach maps words to vectors that are based on the contexts in which the words appear in utterances. Real-valued similarities are used in place of logical inferences. We introduce the notion of the visual denotation of an utterance, which is the set of images that it describes. This notion borrows the abstract concept of a denotation of an utterance as the set of possible worlds in which the utterance is true from the logic-based approach, and instantiates possible worlds as images. In this dissertation, we also show how visual denotations can be created for descriptions of everyday entities and events. Additionally, we demonstrate that visual denotations can be used as a new model of semantic similarity, and that this model is better at identifying entailment relations between descriptions of images than traditional distributional similarities. In order to do this, we create an image caption corpus consisting of captions and images depicting everyday actions. This corpus has a number of useful features that would assist in investigating everyday events and the different ways in which they can be described. We use the captions in the corpus as the starting point for producing caption fragments with larger visual denotations. We accomplish that by creating a denotation graph, a subsumption hierarchy over the captions that links captions and the images that depict them, that also allows for the visualization and navigation of the image caption corpus in an intuitive manner.
Invariant Unscented Kalman filtering : A Parametric formulation study for Attitude Estimation

The invariant unscented Kalman filtering (IUKF), relies on a geometrical-based constructive method for designing filters dedicated to non-linear state estimation problems while preserving the physical invariances and systems symmetries. This can be achieved by using a geometrically adapted correction term based on an invariant output error. In this article, a special formulation of the attitude and heading estimation problem derives the invariant IUKF so that state and sigma-points are considered as a transformation group parameterization. The specific interest of this formulation is that only the invariant errors between the predicted state and the sigma-points must be known to determine the predicted outputs errors. As this is already computed during the prediction step, the computation complexity to find the covariance matrix of the invariant state estimation is greatly reduced.
GLOBAL, NATIONAL AND LOCAL FRAMES ON ECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Some of the most visible developments in the current political economy are shrouded in rhetoric. Across the border, a failed nation tries to bleed India by thousand cuts, but then denies that there are no terrorist camps in Pakistan. The US attacks Iraq for sheer control of a geography rich in resources but attributes the attack to control of chemical weapons, terrorism, and restoring ethnic and regional balance. In India, political leaders and bureaucrats have robbed the national economy by thousands of failed and non-existent projects; but then, escape the wrath of public by resorting to the rhetoric of growth or the formulaic denial of involvements. The rhetoric of denial is at worst when it comes to admitting that the development propagated by globalization and world economy is unsustainable and climate change is an inevitable consequence of this process. Trans-generic equity of economy and ecology was the point of concern in the Rio de Janerio Summit, 1992. Alarming carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, and climate change, and attendant greenhouse effects were the focus of Kyoto Protocol 1997. However, consensus on environmental action plans still eludes us and is marred by divisions of developed and developing nations.
Lessons learned from two years of K-MOOC experience

ABSTRACT In October 2015, Korea launched its first massive open online course (MOOC) program entitled K-MOOC. This study analyzes the K-MOOC learner data provided by the National Lifelong Learning Agency. The data include the 272 courses implemented between 26 October 2015, and 31 August 2017 and the participants who took the said courses. The number of participants in the K-MOOC courses in the same period stands at 289,163. The average completion rate of K-MOOC was 9.3%. It is not far below the average completion rate of MOOCs in general, which is known to be 10% or lower. A comparison between Korea’s K-MOOC and the United States’ edX, which consists of similar courses to the former, shows that the most visible difference between the two lies in the average number of participants per course. An average K-MOOC course is taken by 1,063.1 participants, whereas an average edX course serves 15,341.5 participants. Moreover, there were 91% of participants who accessed the K-MOOC courses from their host country, whereas it was 29% for edX.
An Investigation into how Brands in the Sharing Economy can deliver Exceptional Customer Experiences

Every day we deal with customer experience, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, we often value our positive experiences and detest those negative experiences as a customer. The inspiration for this research stemmed from the authors own experience as a customer within the economy, but also the authors experience as a professional attempting to contribute to the experiences had by customers, prospective clients and individuals within the marketplace. In addition, the sharing economy represents a complex marketplace, one which seeks to bring dispersed groups of customers together to create economic opportunity. The author recognises that this disruptive marketplace represents a new opportunity for the delivery of customer experience. By bringing multiple stakeholders to a single transaction, through a digital channel, the sharing economy is creating new experiences, new customers and ultimately, new opportunities to delight. There are surely components of customer experience which can be leveraged for the greater good of every stakeholder in the sharing economy. Businesses can increase profit, providers are afforded economic opportunity on underutilised assets and last but by no means least, customers can begin to live in an experience economy where their personal experiences are the priority. This paper examines those components of customer experience in greater detail. Through qualitative research, the author proposes a conceptual model for consideration by sharing economy businesses. Furthermore, the research finds that customer experience represents a complex array of touchpoints, and that businesses must prioritise the experience at each touchpoint to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. Finally, despite significant gaps in the current literature, the researcher has made several recommendations and suggestions for future research into customer experience in the sharing economy.
Genetic Clearness Novel Strategy of Group I Bacillus Species Isolated from Fermented Food and Beverages by Using Fibrinolytic Enzyme Gene Encoding a Serine-Like Enzyme

Fibrinolytic enzyme gene (fibE) is widely conserved among Bacillus spp. belonging to group I species. This is encoding a serine-like enzyme (FibE) secreted in extracellular medium. This present work aims to assess the molecular usefulness of this novel conserved housekeeping gene among group I Bacillus spp. to identify and discriminate some related strains in traditional fermented food and beverages in Republic of Congo. First of all 155 isolates have been screened for enzymatic activities using caseinolytic assays. PCR techniques and nested PCR method using specific primers and correlated with 16S RNA sequencing were used. Blotting techniques have been performed for deep comparison with molecular methods. As a result B. amyloliquefaciens (1), B. licheniformis (1), B. subtilis (1), B. pumilus (3), B. altitudinis (2), B. atrophaeus (1), and B. safensis (3) have been specifically identified among 155 isolates found in fermented food and beverages. Genetic analysis and overexpression of glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) fused to mature protein of FibE in Escherichia coli BL21 and TOP10 showed 2-fold higher enzymatic activities by comparison with FibE wild type one. Immunodetection should be associated but this does not clearly discriminate Bacillus belonging to group I.
On-Site Calibration-Based Estimation Method of Forward Seabed Elevation Using Forward Scan Sonar

This paper addresses a novel calibration-based estimation method to measure the forward seabed elevation (FSE) where an area illuminated by forward scan sonar (FSS) for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The conventional method measures the FSE using one or two down-facing single-beam sonars; this method can, however, cause errors. In order to accurately measure the FSE, a sensor capable of measuring the 2D space of the seabed is needed, such as FSS. The method proposed in this work consists in estimating the FSE by analyzing the acoustic beam distribution characteristics of FSS. A novel FSS beam distribution model is proposed, which simplifies beam distribution characteristics. Then, on-site calibration is conducted to estimate the parameters of this model. Based on the estimated model, templates can be generated and compared with FSS data acquired at the experiment in order to estimate geometrical information at the FSE. The FSE of the best matched template is the estimated FSE of the FSS data acquired in the experiment. In order to verify the performance of the proposed method, experiments using an UUV were carried out in an indoor water tank. We also verified that the proposed method performed well even when there were objects on the seabed.
Evaluation of in vitro activity of iclaprim in combination with other antimicrobials against pulmonary pathogens: a pilot study

In this pilot study, the in vitro antimicrobial activity of iclaprim, a diaminopyrimidine, tested in combination with other antimicrobials against recent and common Gram-positive and Gram-negative respiratory pathogens, was examined by the checkerboard method. The range of minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for iclaprim against all bacteria tested in the study was 0.03 to >128 µg ml−1. Iclaprim exhibited synergy with sulfamethoxazole against 11 of the 16 bacterial strains tested, with mean fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI) values of 0.2–0.5. Synergy with sulfamethoxazole was demonstrated against all Gram-positive bacteria and selected Gram-negative bacteria. Neither synergy nor antagonism was observed for combinations of iclaprim with ampicillin, meropenem, tetracycline, levofloxacin, aztreonam, piperacillin/tazobactam, colistin, cefepime or gentamicin against any of the bacterial strains tested. The significant reduction in the MIC values observed with the combination of iclaprim and sulfamethoxazole demonstrates that this regimen could be effective against common Gram-positive and selected Gram-negative respiratory bacteria.