Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Path planning to expedite the complete transfer of distributed gravel piles with an automated wheel loader

This study introduces expedite the complete transfer of distributed gravel piles with an automated wheel loader. The wheel loader scoops the gravel and unloads it onto the bed of a truck. The total mileage for the repeated scooping and unloading work is reduced. The complicated optimal task is divided into three simple, organized subjects and different appropriate algorithms are used for each subject. A method is proposed that interactively selects the appropriate scooping points, unloading points, and appropriate path for the varying shape of the gravel pile until all gravel piles have been scooped up. To expedite the complete transfer of distributed gravel piles, the deep reinforcement learning model, trained via simulation, can be used in practice by implementing as part of the proposed methods. This paper describes these issues and the proposed methods. The performance of the actual application is demonstrated in terms of the calculation time and the feasibility of the simulations. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Machine learning to explain printability induced by rheology additives

With the continuous growth of extrusion bioprinting techniques, ink formulations based on rheology modifiers are becoming increasingly popular, as they enable 3D printing of non-printable biologically-favored materials. However, benchmarking and characterization of such systems are inherently complicated due to the variety of rheology modifiers and differences in mechanisms of inducing printability. This study tries to explain induced printability in formulations by incorporating machine learning algorithms that describe the underlying basis for decision-making in classifying a printable formulation. For this purpose, a library of rheological data and printability scores for 180 different formulations of hyaluronic acid solutions with varying molecular weights and concentrations and three rheology modifiers were produced. A feature screening methodology was applied to collect and separate the impactful features, which consisted of physically interpretable and easily measurable properties of formulations. In the final step, all relevant features influencing the model’s output were analyzed by advanced yet explainable statistical methods. The outcome provides a guideline for designing new formulations based on data-driven correlations from multiple systems.
PREVENTION OF OCCUPATIONAL RISKS IN GEOTECHNICAL DRILLING WORKS THROUGH VIRTUAL REALITY TRAINING

The architecture, engineering, construction and operations industry has high accident rates as a result of characteristics of the construction site and work activities, the heavy machinery used and a lack of safety culture. In particular, geotechnical drilling worksites involve the use of high-powered machinery and workers are exposed to different risks when using them. However, risk prevention training courses are not well-specialised for this type of work. There is a lack of adequate learning content specific to drilling works, meaning the heavy machinery, how to use it and how to prevent accidents due to these drilling tasks are poorly understood. Therefore, this research explores the potential of virtual reality technology as a tool for analysing the risks associated with geotechnical drilling works and as complementary training content to traditional courses. A specific use case, a geotechnical drilling machine is modelled in 3D and integrated into a realistic virtual reality environment where the movements of the machine are recreated, in addition to interactions so that workers can simulate the geotechnical drilling process, identify risks and prevent accidents, and, moreover, be trained in best practices for machinery usage, according to previous real-world experiences from senior workers.
Thermal Deformation Analysis of Automotive Disc Brake Squeal

Automotive disc brake squeal has been a major concern in warranty issues and a challenging problem for many years. A variety of tools have been developed which include both experimental studies and numerical modelling technique to tackle the problem. The aim of this project is to develop a validated thermo-mechanical finite element model considering both the mechanical structural compliance and thermal effects in the dynamic instability of a disc brake system leading to squeal. A key issue in the process is to investigate the structural deformation of the brake components due to the combined effect of thermal expansion and contact loading between pad and disc when subjected to temperature change during a typical braking cycle. A new methodology is introduced whereby a fully coupled transient thermo-mechanical analysis is carried out to provide the temperature and contact distributions within the brake before executing an instability analysis using the complex eigenvalue method. A case study is carried out based on a typical passenger car brake as it undergoes a partial simulation of the SAE J2521 drag braking noise test. The actuation pressure, coefficient of friction and vehicle travelling speed are all considered to derive the temperature dependent contact pressure distributions making allowance for the “rotating heat source” effect. An experimental investigation using a brake dynamometer is also carried out to measuring the squealing noise and thermal deformation which leads to a validation of the results predicted by the numerical modelling. It is demonstrated that the fully coupled thermo-mechanical FE model enhances understanding of the time dependent non-linear contact behaviour at the friction interface. This, in turn, demonstrates the fugitive nature of brake squeal through the system eigenvalues that appear and disappear as a function of temperature throughout the braking period. Parametric studies on the geometrical effect and materials of brake components determine the contribution of each of these factors to brake squeal. The approach therefore can be use as a predictive tool to evaluate disc brake squeal using finite element method.
Temperature-compensated strain measurement of full-scale small aircraft wing structure using low-cost FBG interrogator

Recently, health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) are being studied to monitor the real-time condition of aircrafts during flight. HUMSs can prevent aircraft accidents and reduce inspection time and cost. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are widely used for aircraft HUMSs with many advantages such as light weight, small size, easy-multiplexing, and EMI immunity. However, commercial FBG interrogators are too expensive to apply for small aircrafts. Generally the cost of conventional FBG interrogators is over $20,000. Therefore, cost-effective FBG interrogation systems need to be developed for small aircraft HUMSs. In this study, cost-effective low speed FBG interrogator was applied to full-scale small aircraft wing structure to examine the operational applicability of the low speed FBG interrogator to the monitoring of small aircrafts. The cost of the developed low speed FBG interrogator was about $10,000, which is an affordable price for a small aircraft. 10 FBG strain sensors and 1 FBG temperature sensor were installed on the surface of the full-scale wing structure. Load was applied to the tip of the wing structure, and the low speed interrogator detected the change in the center wavelength of the FBG sensors at the sampling rate of 10Hz. To assess the applicability of the low-cost FBG interrogator to full-scale small aircraft wing structure, a temperature-compensated strain measurement algorithm was verified experimentally under various loading conditions of the wing structure with temperature variations.
Habitat selection by a predator of rodent pests is resilient to wildfire in a vineyard agroecosystem

Abstract Conservation of uncultivated habitats can increase the potential for ecosystem services in agroecosystems, but these lands are also susceptible to wildfires in the arid western United States. In Napa Valley, California, abundant rodent pests and an interest in integrated pest management have led wine producers to use nest boxes to attract Barn Owls (Tyto furcata) to winegrape vineyards. The viability of this practice as a method to control rodent pests depends heavily on the amount of hunting effort that Barn Owls expend in vineyards, which is known to be influenced by the amount of uncultivated land cover types surrounding the nest box. Wildfires burned nearly 60,000 ha of mainly urban and uncultivated lands surrounding Napa Valley in 2017, altering Barn Owl habitats. We compared GPS tracking data from 32 Barn Owls nesting in 24 individual nest boxes before and after the fires to analyze their hunting habitat selection. Owls with burned areas available to them after the fires had home ranges that shifted toward the fires, but selection was not strongly associated with burned areas. Though there was some spatial use of burned areas, selection of land cover types was similar for birds before and after the fires and in burned and unburned areas. The strongest selection was for areas closest to the nest box, and most recorded locations were in grassland, though selection indicated that owls used land cover types in proportion to their availability. Overall, habitat selection was resilient to changes caused by wildfires. These results are important for farmers who use nest boxes as a means of rodent control, which may be affected after dramatic disturbance events, especially as wildfires increase in the western United States.
Scientific Value of Including an Atmospheric Sample as part of Mars Sample Return.

The Perseverance rover is meant to collect samples of the martian surface for eventual return to Earth. The headspace gas present over the solid samples within the sample tubes will be of significant scientific interest for what it reveals about the interactions of the solid samples with the trapped atmosphere and for what it will reveal about the martian atmosphere itself. However, establishing the composition of the martian atmosphere will require other dedicated samples. The headspace gas as the sole atmospheric sample is problematic for many reasons. The quantity of gas present within the sample tube volume is insufficient for many investigations, and there will be exchange between solid samples, headspace gas, and tube walls. Importantly, the sample tube materials and preparation were not designed for optimal Mars atmospheric gas collection and storage as they were not sent to Mars in a degassed evacuated state and have been exposed to both Earth's and Mars' atmospheres. Additionally, there is a risk of unconstrained seal leakage in transit back to Earth, which would allow fractionation of the sample (leak-out) and contamination (leak-in). The science return can be improved significantly (and, in some cases, dramatically) by adding one or more of several strategies listed here in increasing order of effectiveness and difficulty of implementation: (1) Having Perseverance collect a gas sample in an empty sample tube, (2) Collecting gas in a newly-designed, valved, sample-tube-sized vessel that is flown on either the Sample Fetch Rover (SFR) or the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL), (3) Adding a larger (50-100 cc) dedicated gas sampling volume to the Orbiting Sample container (OS), (4) Adding a larger (50-100 cc) dedicated gas sampling volume to the OS that can be filled with compressed martian atmosphere.
Sea ice concentration estimation techniques using machine learning: an end-to-end workflow for estimating concentration maps from SAR images

Sea ice concentration is an important metric used to characterize polar sea ice behavior. Understanding this behavior and accurately representing it is of critical importance for climate science research, and also has important uses in the context of maritime navigation. An end-to-end workflow for generating learned concentration estimation models from synthetic aperture radar data, trained on existing passive microwave data, is presented here. A novel objective function was introduced to account for uncertainty in the passive microwave measurements, which can be extended to account for arbitrary sources of error in the training data, and a recent set of in-situ observations was used to evaluate the reliability of the chosen passive microwave concentration estimation model. Google Colaboratory was used as the development platform, and all notebooks, training data, and trained models are available on GitHub. This chapter is an overview of the most interesting aspects of this investigation, and a detailed report is also available on GitHub.
Fusion Energy Research for ITER and Beyond

Abstract The achievement in the last two decades of controlled fusion in the laboratory environment is opening the way to the realization of fusion as a source of sustainable, safe and environmentally responsible energy. The next step towards this goal is the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which aims to demonstrate net fusion energy production on the reactor scale. This paper reviews the current status of magnetic confinement fusion research in view of the ITER project and provides an overview of the main remaining challenges on the way towards the realization of commercial fusion energy production in the second half of this century.
Application of liquid phase deposited silicon dioxide to metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor and amorphous silicon thin-film transistor

Liquid phase deposited silicon dioxide (LPD-SiO/sub 2/) is applied to crystalline Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor as the gate insulator. It is demonstrated that slow states exist at the Si/SiO/sub 2/ interface which cause hysteresis in the capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics. These slow states can be removed effectively by post-metallization-anneal. By means of C-V measurement and infrared absorption spectroscopy, it is concluded that the slow states are originated from the residual water or hydroxyl molecules in LPD-SiO/sub 2/. The LPD-SiO/sub 2/ is also applied to fabricate amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film transistor (TFT) based on a new self-aligned process. The performance of this device is comparable to those of thin film transistors employed other kinds of SiO/sub 2/, i.e., thermal, plasma, vacuum evaporation, etc., as the gate insulator. The bias-stress measurement shows that the threshold voltage shift is dominated by charge trapping in the gate insulator.
Microstrip Phase Inverter Using Interdigital Strip Lines and Defected Ground

Abstract—A new wide-band microstrip phase inverter is reported in this paper. Interdigital striplines, defected ground and via holes are used to obtain 180◦ phase shift. The structure is simple and can be realized with ordinary microwave integrated circuit (MIC) fabrication process. The bandwidth is enhanced largely. A lumped-element model of the phase shifter is devised. The fabricated phase inverter has a bandwidth of 105.6% (2.065–6.682 GHz), with 1 dB insertion loss and a phase deviation less than 10◦.
An overview of the ongoing challenges in SARS-CoV-2 global control

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a severe global pandemic with major public health issues. Public health sectors implemented several control strategies, such as social distancing, hygienic measures, and the development of anti-viral drugs and vaccines. However, the situation is still critical due to several challenges facing the global control strategy. SARS-CoV-2 has undergone several mutations that will drive viral evolution, which might impact the virus’s transmissibility and pathogenicity and the immune escape and development of resistance to therapeutics. Moreover, although the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have approved several vaccines, however, some vaccines, especially vector-based vaccines, have rarely induced severe fatal side effects. These side effects led to widespread doubts about the safety of the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) vaccines, which in turn dragged a certain proportion of the public from getting vaccinated. This review highlights some of the ongoing challenges in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, including side effects of the developed vaccines, potential mechanisms for the development of thrombocytopenia, and the clinical impacts of the emerged SARS-CoV-2 variants on the pathogenesis of the virus and vaccine efficacy. Additionally, we discuss the comorbidity and the potential role of gastrointestinal microbiota in controlling SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we shed light on the substantial collateral health damage and unprecedented economic disaster caused by the lockdown.
Planter Depth Control: II. Empirical Testing and Plant Responses

ABSTRACT PLANTING depth control innovations are needed to improve the reliability of performance of no-tillage planters and drills. Four depth control designs were empirically evaluated with grain sorghum and corn crops in two different field conditions. An experimental no-tillage planter opener was used with each depth control. The field surface undulations were characterized prior to planting. Wheat stubble had higher frequency undulations than sorghum stubble. Stubble type affected mean planting depth and caused a shift in frequency distributions of planting depths for front and linked wheels. Dual rear presswheels malfunctioned by sinking into loosened soil and produced deeper and the most variable planting depths. Dual front depth control wheels gave significantly more variable planting depths than the side wheels and linked wheels at the highest applied downpressure. The best choice for depth control remains undecided between traditional wide dual side wheels and narrow experimental linked front-rear wheels. These results generally agree with simulation results from Part I of this series of papers
A wideband channel model applicable to mobile satellite systems at L- and S-band

In the near future, mobile satellite systems (MSS), providing worldwide voice and data communications are to come into service. As the demand for these services and the requirement for higher data rates and quality of service increases, the effects of the wideband mobile satellite propagation channel become more critical with respect to the overall system link budget. There is an increasing need to be able to accurately model the channel in order to optimise the design of radio mobile satellite systems. A wideband channel model has been developed based on the philosophy as the RACE ATDMA model. The model is of the tapped delay type, comprising a transversal filter structure with equidistant time shifted taps. The model parameters have been derived from the measurement campaign, and defined by a small number of discrete taps, where each tap is described by its complex time-varying amplitude including its statistical distribution and corresponding Doppler spectrum. A typical example is included of the tap amplitudes and statistical distributions from the measured data and the respective Doppler spectrum for the first tap (direct path) and the second tap (first multipath echo) in the model for the urban environment at 45/spl deg/ elevation angle. Additionally, the model has been validated against independent results published from the DLR measurement campaign.
Comparison of treatment outcomes of surgery and radiotherapy, including concurrent chemoradiotherapy for stage Ib2-IIb cervical adenocarcinoma patients: a retrospective study

Objective The study compared the treatment outcomes of surgery versus radiotherapy, including concurrent chemoradiotherapy, in stage Ib2–IIb cervical adenocarcinoma patients in Japan. Methods Of 57,470 patients diagnosed with stage I–IV cervical cancer from January 2001–December 2011, 1,932 patients with stage Ib2–IIb cervical adenocarcinoma were initially treated by surgery or radiotherapy. The primary endpoint was 5-year overall survival (OS) in all and 614 propensity score-matched (PSM) patients (307 per group). We compared OS and prognosis factors based on age, primary stage, and treatment arm. Results In Japan, >80% (n=1,573) of stage Ib2–IIb cervical adenocarcinoma patients underwent surgery. The 5-year OS of surgery vs. radiotherapy groups were 82.1% (n=704) vs. 79.7% (n=59) (hazard ratio [HR]=1.494; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.826–2.702; p=0.181) for stage Ib2, 76.6% (n=239) vs. 66.7% (n=54) (HR=1.679; 95% CI=0.986–2.858; p=0.053) for stage IIa, and 71.1% (n=630) vs. 58.9% (n=246) (HR=1.711; 95% CI=1.341–2.184; p<0.001) for stage IIb. In 614 PSM patients balanced for age and carcinoma stage Ib2–IIb, the 5-year OS of surgery vs. radiation groups was 73.0% (n=307) vs. 65.5% (n=307) (HR=1.394; 95% CI=1.044–1.860; p=0.023). In multivariable analysis, age (HR=1.293; 95% CI=1.045–1.601; p=0.018), treatment arm, radiotherapy (HR=1.556; 95% CI=1.253–1.933; p<0.001), and stage IIb (HR=1.783; 95% CI=1.443–2.203; p=0.018) were independent prognosis factors for 5-year OS in stage Ib2–IIb adenocarcinoma patients. Conclusion Age (>65 years), treatment arm (radiotherapy), and stage IIb significantly affect OS in cervical adenocarcinoma patients. Surgery may be considered for <65-year-old patients with stage IIb adenocarcinoma.
Physicochemical studies on starch isolated from Egyptian wheat cultivars

In the current study, starch was isolated from two Egyptian wheat cultivars, namely, Wheat Durum BeniSuef 1 and Bread Wheat Misr 1. The isolated starches were subjected to versatile physicochemical study, comprising, proximate analyses (contents of ash, moisture, protein, total carbohydrates), total organic matter (TOM), total organic carbon (TOC), undesired elemental content (chromium, nickel, arsenic, lead and cadmium), nutritive elemental content (sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, manganese, iron, cobalt, copper, zinc and selenium), other elements (molybdenum, tin and antimony), amylose, amylopectin, pH value, water binding capacity (WBC), total hydrolysable carbohydrates, swelling power and solubility. Spectral studies including Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and X-Ray diffraction pattern of the isolated starches were thoroughly envisaged.
Combining ability and heterosis for yield and quality traits in pea (Pisum sativum L.)

Increase pea yield and quality traits are essential goalsin any breeding program. This study was carried out during three winter growing seasons of 2018/ 2019, 2019/ 2020, and 2020/ 2021 on pea using diallel mating design (4×4) without reciprocals at Fac. Agric. , Zagazig Univ., Egypt. Analysis of variance showed significant and highly significant mean squares for all the studied traits of genotypes, except the TSS trait, which had insignificant. Parent Master B (P2) showed positive and significant general combining ability (GCA) effects for pod number/ plant, 100-seed weight, and yield/ plant and parent Entsar 2 (P4) for plant height, plant dry weight, pod length, pod diameter, and seed number/pod. The pea cross Little Marvel (P3) × Entsar 2 (P4) had the highest values of mean and desirable effects of specific combining ability (SCA) for yield/ plant and pod number/ plant. Additive gene action was controlled plant height, plant dry weight, pod length, pod diameter, seed number/pod, pod number/plant, TSS, and protein content, while nonadditive controlled the rest characters. Cross Cambados (P1) × Little Marvel (P3) exhibited positive and significant SCA effects for branch number, plant dry weight, pod length, seed number/pod, and TSS. Positive and significant heterosis values were recorded in crosses P3 × P4 andP2 × P3 for yield/ plant and pod number/ plant. Therefore, these genotypes could be used in the future program to improve pea yield.