Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Grid-Shaped Microstrip Traveling Wave Antenna With Selective Differential Feeding Networks for CM-Level Position Detection Systems

In this paper, a near-field ultrahigh-frequency radio frequency identification (RFID) system, which has cm-level 2-D positioning precision, is proposed. The system consists of a grid-shaped microstrip traveling wave antenna (TWA) and four-port switched differential feeding networks. To selectively form tag-read sections, opposite directional currents (ODCs) are used. To introduce a microstrip TWA for cm-level 2-D positioning, the influence of $H_{z}$ fields in microstrip TWAs is theoretically analyzed. In addition, to utilize field reinforcement and achieve precise 2-D localization, a grid-shaped microstrip TWA with four-port selective switched differential feeding networks is proposed and investigated. The proposed antenna and feeding network were fabricated on FR-4 substrates. The simulated and measured results demonstrate that precise 2-D tag positioning is achieved using the proposed system utilizing ODC along two selected adjacent microstrip lines in the TWA.
Size effect on effective work function in high-k metal gate MOSFET

Effective work function is the one of main parameters to determine threshold voltage in high-k metal gate (HKMG) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). This paper reported the relationships between the effective metal work function and gate length in HKMG MOSFET for the first time. The decrease of gate length induces an increment of metal gate's effective work function, which is caused by fact that the filling thickness of the work function metal layer in gate stack becomes thinner with the decrease of gate length. Thus, there is less Al migrates to metal/ high-k interface to form dipoles.
Have you permission to answer this phone?

The new frontier of biometrie authentication exploits wearable sensors. At present, there is no need of special equipment. Both cameras of increasing resolution, and MEMS-based sensors (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) are ubiquitously embedded in everyday mobile communication devices, especially smartphones. This makes their use economically attractive, and the investigation of the new provided possibilities increasingly widespread. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate the possibility to control the access to a smartphone by recording and processing the dynamic signals produced by the simple gesture of lifting the phone, possibly in connection with further biometric information provided by ear recognition. In this respect, it continues and extends a previous work, by performing new experiments on a more challenging dataset.
On the Accuracy of Equivalent Antenna Representations—A Case Study

The accuracy of two equivalent antenna representations, near-field sources and far-field sources (FFSs), is evaluated for an antenna installed on a simplified platform. We show that the accuracy of the installed far-field and surface current for the investigated weakly scattering platform depends strongly on the configurations associated with the equivalent antenna representation. The root-mean-square error for the installed far-field error varies between 4.4%–8.4% for the considered configurations of near-field equivalent representations installed on the investigated platform. When using FFSs, the design parameters have an even larger influence of the achieved accuracy. There is also a varying accuracy depending on the type of numerical method used. Based on the results, some recommendations on the choice of subdomain for the equivalent antenna representation are given associated with the platform. In industrial antenna applications, the accuracy in determining, e.g., installed far-fields and antenna isolation on large platforms is critical. Equivalent representations can reduce the fine-detail complexity of antennas and thus give an efficient numerical description to be used in large-scale simulations. The results, in this paper, highlight to antenna designers and system engineers the accuracy challenges associated with the use of equivalent antenna representations.
Alternating direction method of multipliers in optimal control of systems of systems

This paper investigates the usage of a distributed algorithm — the alternative direction method of multipliers — for control of system of systems, i.e. control of a complex system comprising large number of distributed and partially autonomous subsystems. The control algorithm is based on parametrization and decomposition of the central optimization problem into local optimization problems specific to individual subsystems, while taking into account the coupling constraints that link them. Local problems are solved offline using multi-parametric optimization methods, whereas the coordination problem is solved online at every sampling step and the optimal solution is applied to the system at hand in a receding horizon fashion. The method solves the optimal control problem online iteratively while exploiting the control system structure. The efficiency of the method is tested on a number of generated distributed optimization problems modeling large systems of systems.
NudgeEntrance: Domestic intervention to change hand washing behaviour

Hands are primary vectors of many communicable diseases because they come in contact with a variety of surfaces and fluids. Acute diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory diseases can be prevented by washing hands at appropriate times. This habit is essential for households of urban low-income groups since their surroundings are a hotbed for pathogens. The effect of hand washing is also acknowledged by experts and the world health organisation (WHO). We propose a design based intervention employing behaviour change principles suitable for such households. The goal of the intervention was to nudge people to wash hands at appropriate times via self reflection. Our intervention induces self reflection through reminders and channel factors. We measured hand washing frequency to evaluate the change in behavior, and further investigated this habit through interviews. Results of our study indicate that channel factors bring significant change in hand washing behaviour than reminders.
RWBD: Learning Robust Weighted Binary Descriptor for Image Matching

Binary descriptors are drawing increasing interest as they enable faster processing in a lower memory footprint, which are suitable to large-scale and real-time vision applications. However, the performance of most existing binary descriptors tends to be inferior to those of the competing floating-point descriptors. In this paper, by considering each bit might contribute differently to the robustness and distinctiveness, a novel binary descriptor based on binary weights learning is proposed, referred to as a robust weighted binary descriptor (RWBD). Technically, each bit of RWBD is built upon difference tests of pairwise complementary information sampling with varying Gaussian kernels, leading to a more informative and robust description. Furthermore, RWBD imposes different emphases on all bits utilizing the learned binary weights, which can significantly improve the discriminative power and preserve the fast matching advantage. Extensive experiments on the publicly challenging benchmarks, including image matching and object recognition data sets, clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
An End to End Tactile Cyber Physical System Design

We describe design and implementation of an end to end Tactile Cyber Physical System (TCPS). We begin with proposing a generic architecture for TCPSs. We then describe a typical system in which a robotic arm at one end of the network replicates the posture of a human hand at the other end with a tactile glove. For the human operator end, we design a tactile glove having Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors for motion capture and vibrotactile actuators for tactile feedback. On the teleoperator end, we use a PhantomX reactor robotic arm with force sensors and design an inverse kinematic engine for this. We also provide a mechanism for visual feedback using a USB camera on the teleoperator end. We describe in detail the hardware and software designs of the tactile glove and the controller board for the robot. We also detail the industrial design of the tactile glove. We perform detail experiments to characterize the tactile glove, robotic arm and round-trip delay of the TCPS implementation.
Investigation of surface charge distribution and its influence on characteristics of dielectric barrier discharge

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) with a broad range of technological applications is a hot topic in the field of gas discharge. In recent years, the dynamic distribution of surface charges on the dielectric barrier has been known as an important influence factor on the discharge characteristics of DBD. In this paper, a measurement system of surface charge dynamic distribution based on Pockels effect was established. Surface charge distribution and surface charge quantity in different gaseous environment were measured. A quantitative criterion was summarized and used to analyze the uniformity of surface charge distribution, which is quite useful for determining the transition from filamentary discharge to homogeneous discharge. The dispersibility of surface charge density and its influence on discharge features were researched quantitatively. In addition, the observations of the single pulse current shape and the surface charge distribution image were used to investigate the uniformity of surface charge density distribution and its influence on discharge uniformity under high-frequency voltage.
The Effect of Oral Administration PUFAs on Oxidative Stress in Patients Infected by Helicobacter pylori with Dyspeptic Symptom

Objective: Helicobacter pylori is a main etiological parameter in chronic active gastritis, gastric duodenal ulcers and gastric malignancy. Particular polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) play roles in inhibitory effect on bacterial propagation. Therefore, this study investigated the protective effects of PUFAs against oxidative stress in patient infected with H. pylori with dyspeptic symptom.Methods: This study is a double blind clinical trial whose target population was 34 patients infected with H. pylori with dyspeptic symptom. Patients were divided into two groups. The first group was treated with standard therapy without supplement (control), and the second group was treated with Standard Therapy and PUFAs supplement, ω-3, ω-6 and ω-9 (case group) for 2 weeks. Two biopsies from Antrum and body of stomach of all patients were collected before and after the treatment. The biopsy samples were used for quick urease test and measurement of Superoxide Dismutase, Glutathione Peroxidase, and total antioxidant capacity.Results: In gastric mucosa mean levels of total capacity antioxidant were significantly increased in case group comparing with control group. Also, the mean of superoxide dismutase enzyme activity and glutathione peroxidase activity increased significantly in case group compared with control group (p value <0.001). Conclusion: The findings revealed that administration of PUFAs supplement can increase total antioxidant capacity and activity of antioxidant enzymes in patients infected with H. pylori.
Sequence-to-Sequence Models for Emphasis Speech Translation

Speech-to-speech translation (S2ST) systems are capable of breaking language barriers in cross-lingual communication by translating speech across languages. Recent studies have introduced many improvements that allow existing S2ST systems to handle not only linguistic meaning but also paralinguistic information such as emphasis by proposing additional emphasis estimation and translation components. However, the approach used for emphasis translation is not optimal for sequence translation tasks and fails to easily handle the long-term dependencies of words and emphasis levels. It also requires the quantization of emphasis levels and treats them as discrete labels instead of continuous values. Moreover, the whole translation pipeline is fairly complex and slow because all components are trained separately without joint optimization. In this paper, we make two contributions: 1) we propose an approach that can handle continuous emphasis levels based on sequence-to-sequence models, and 2) we combine machine and emphasis translation into a single model, which greatly simplifies the translation pipeline and make it easier to perform joint optimization. Our results on an emphasis translation task indicate that our translation models outperform previous models by a large margin in both objective and subjective tests. Experiments on a joint translation model also show that our models can perform joint translation of words and emphasis with one-word delays instead of full-sentence delays while preserving the translation performance of both tasks.
The antimicrobial action of polyaniline involves production of oxidative stress while functionalisation of polyaniline introduces additional mechanisms

Polyaniline (PANI) and functionalised polyanilines (fPANI) are novel antimicrobial agents whose mechanism of action was investigated. Escherichia coli single gene deletion mutants revealed that the antimicrobial mechanism of PANI likely involves production of hydrogen peroxide while homopolymer poly(3-aminobenzoic acid), P3ABA, used as an example of a fPANI, disrupts metabolic and respiratory machinery, by targeting ATP synthase and causes acid stress. PANI was more active against E. coli in aerobic, compared to anaerobic, conditions, while this was apparent for P3ABA only in rich media. Greater activity in aerobic conditions suggests involvement of reactive oxygen species. P3ABA treatment causes an increase in intracellular free iron, which is linked to perturbation of metabolic enzymes and could promote reactive oxygen species production. Addition of exogenous catalase protected E. coli from PANI antimicrobial action; however, this was not apparent for P3ABA treated cells. The results presented suggest that PANI induces production of hydrogen peroxide, which can promote formation of hydroxyl radicals causing biomolecule damage and potentially cell death. P3ABA is thought to act as an uncoupler by targeting ATP synthase resulting in a futile cycle, which precipitates dysregulation of iron homeostasis, oxidative stress, acid stress, and potentially the fatal loss of proton motive force.
Modified High-Efficiency LLC Converters With Two Split Resonant Branches for Wide Input-Voltage Range Applications

This paper proposes a novel modified <italic>LLC</italic> converter with two split resonant branches for wide input-range applications. It can operate in low-gain (LG) mode or medium-gain (MG) mode. The voltage gain of MG mode is 1.5 times that of LG mode, while they have same range of voltage gain <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> $M_{{\rm{tank\_range}}}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, i.e., the ratio of maximum voltage gain to minimum one. Therefore, the input voltage can be regulated in a wide range by operating the converter in different modes. To achieve the transition between modes, the required <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M_{{\rm{tank\_range}}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of the proposed converter is as low as 1.5, resulting in lower magnetizing current and higher efficiency within the entire operation range. Smooth transition can be achieved by adjusting the duty cycles of switches gradually. The proposed <italic>LLC</italic> converter with primary dual-bridge is analyzed in detail as an example. To verify the theoretical analysis and performance of proposed solution, a 1-kW 400-V output prototype with input voltage ranging from 80 to 200 V is built, tested, and compared with two existing full-bridge <italic>LLC </italic> converters. Analysis and experimental results indicate that smaller volume of transformers, reduced rectifying diodes, and higher overall efficiency are achieved with the proposed converter.
Biofeedback Sensors in Electronic Games: A Practical Evaluation

In the electronic games industry, many ways of testing a new game are used in order to determine some aspects of the game, such as fun, replay value and immersion. One way to evaluate these characteristics is through the use of sensors, more specifically the ones that measure player's biophysiological variables, called biofeedback sensors. The purpose of this study is to perform a practical evaluation of the use of biofeedback sensors, when employed to know the behavior of the player in different genres of games. More precisely, an experiment with three biofeedback sensors (Electrocardiography, Electrodermal Activity Sensor, and Electromyography) was conducted to verify the suitability of these sensors in identifying the player's emotions according to the genre of the game. The results showed that intense emotions, like the ones felt in horror or action games, are more detectable in general, but they are more notable when using the Electrocardiography sensor.
Research on optimization method of convolutional nerual network

With the improvement of computers' computation and storage performance, the deep learning technology, especially the convolutional neural network (CNN) has been widely used in many fields such as Computer Vision (CV), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). CNNs have become the state-of-the-art technique in many vision tasks, such as image classification, object detection, etc. But the deep CNNs may make part of the kernels too thin by using parameterized convolution kernel to extract features. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to optimize CNNs by calculating the similarity coefficient between the feature maps. Experimental results showed that this method improved the training speed and the detecting speed with the accuracy been ensured.
A high-accuracy capacitance-to-time converter for capacitive sensors

A switched-capacitor (SC) capacitance-to-time (C/T) converter used for differential capacitive sensors with improved accuracy is presented in this paper. Using three rather than two time intervals, the circuit can remove the influences of the propagation delay of the comparator the channel charge injection and clock feedthrough due to analog switches, and the finite gain of the op-amp in principle. Then the proposed circuit can perform C/T conversion with high precision. Performances of the proposed circuit are simulated by HSPICE using 0.18 micrometers CMOS process parameters. Simulated results have demonstrated that the gain error is 0.00057 % and the maximum nonlinear error is about 0.0015 % of the full scale. It is also shown that a high-accuracy C/T converter can be realized even when a low-gain amplifier is used. The circuit can relax the restriction on the design of a comparator and an op-amp even for high conversion accuracy. As a result, the power consumption of the circuits can be also reduced.
Glide-Symmetric All-Metal Holey Metasurfaces for Low-Dispersive Artificial Materials: Modeling and Properties

We study the wave propagation between two glide-symmetric metallic plates drilled with periodic rectangular holes. A mode-matching method is proposed in order to derive efficiently the dispersive properties of these periodic structures. The method takes advantage of the higher symmetry of the structure reducing the computational cost by enforcing boundary conditions on the field on only one of the two surfaces. Physical insight on specific symmetry properties of Floquet harmonics in glide-symmetric structures is also gained. The code is validated with commercial software assessing its accuracy when varying the most influential/critical parameters. We confirm the potential of glide-symmetric structures to tune the effective refractive index. Specifically, we demonstrate that glide-symmetric structures with rectangular shapes can be employed to synthesize anisotropic refractive indexes with a large band of operation, which makes such metasurface structures applicable for the realization of ultrawideband planar lenses.
Connectivity in fMRI: Blind Spots and Breakthroughs

In recent years, driven by scientific and clinical concerns, there has been an increased interest in the analysis of functional brain networks. The goal of these analyses is to better understand how brain regions interact, how this depends upon experimental conditions and behavioral measures and how anomalies (disease) can be recognized. In this paper, we provide, first, a brief review of some of the main existing methods of functional brain network analysis. But rather than compare them, as a traditional review would do, instead, we draw attention to their significant limitations and blind spots. Then, second, relevant experts, sketch a number of emerging methods, which can break through these limitations. In particular we discuss five such methods. The first two, stochastic block models and exponential random graph models, provide an inferential basis for network analysis lacking in the exploratory graph analysis methods. The other three addresses: network comparison via persistent homology, time-varying connectivity that distinguishes sample fluctuations from neural fluctuations, and network system identification that draws inferential strength from temporal autocorrelation.
Effects of transportation stress on quality and sensory profiles of Nile tilapia fillets

This study evaluated pre-slaughter stress and its influence on the stress indicators, quality characteristics and sensory characteristics of Nile tilapia fillets. To this end, two experiments were conducted: (1) two transportation times (60 and 240 min), with a density of 200 kg m−3, were compared to control treatment fish (in which the fish were removed from the net cage and immediately euthanized); and (2) two transportation densities (100 and 400 kg m−3), transported for 180 min, compared with control treatment fish. In experiment 1, the transportation time of 60 min resulted in higher levels of serum cortisol and plasma glucose compared to the transportation time of 240 min and the control. Fish fillets transported for 240 min had higher water-holding capacity, less water loss by pressure and higher levels of juiciness compared to fish transported for 60 min. Color, pH and water loss during cooking were not affected by transportation time. In experiment 2, transportation densities of 100 and 400 kg m−3 did not significantly affect the stress indicators nor the instrumental quality parameters of the fillets, but fish transported at 400 kg m−3 showed better visual acceptance by panellists.
Plausible cloth wrinkling for captured mesh sequences

Cloth modeling has become an important research topic in com puter graphics, as garments are ubiquitous in virtual environments used in mov ies or games. While recent studies can successfully capture the general shape o f cloth as well as a continuous cloth motion, they usually lose high frequency deta ils such as wrinkles or folds. This work provides a method of recovering high freque ncy details for captured cloth animation sequences without any aids of additio nal information. The method analyzes the stretch/shrinkage tensor fields in 4D sp ace-time domain for the original cloth animation sequences. Based on the assump tion of cloth developability, the stretch/shrinkage information is utilized to recover fold shapes and directions. Finally, a space-time consistent deformation method is applied to recover the high frequency folds. The work is generally applic able to most of the cloth capture methods applied either on scanned point cloud s r video sequences.