Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intelligent Deep Learning based Pothole Detection and Reporting System

Road maintenance is crucial to prevent accidents due to potholes. Manual assessment of the road condition is a difficult task as it is a tedious process and requires lot of manpower. Thus, there is an increasing requirement for an automatic pothole identification system. In this paper, a solution is proposed to detect the potholes on roads automatically using the deep learning algorithms. Three deep learning namely, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask RCNN) and You Only Look Once (YOLOv3) are trained and tested with a dataset. The results of the three models are compared using evaluation metrics. This system also assembles hardware components for reporting the potholes in order to take actions for their repair and maintenance and warns the presence of potholes to drivers.
A4/A46 BATHEASTON/SWAINSWICK BYPASS.

This paper describes the design and construction of the 4.3km-long Batheaston/Swainswick Bypass, near the city of Bath; it includes three route maps. Previously, tourists driving to Bath from London and South East England could only approach the city via narrow, congested roads. After more than 50 years of planning, a consultation process in 1985, a hard-fought public inquiry in 1990, and a #5M battle with road protesters, the bypass was finally opened to traffic in May 1996, four months early. It combines bypasses of Batheaston on the A4 and Swainswick on the A46, but a proposed, more direct component, the A36, was lost at the public inquiry. The design objectives were to produce a scheme with minimal effects on the natural and built environments. The scheme was not only environmentally sensitive, but also had to cross the River Avon twice, and pass through two major landslips. Its visual intrusion was minimised by putting 1.7km of the route in a diaphragm-walled cutting, whose cost was reduced considerably by using value engineering and Peck's observational method. 130 weeks was allowed for the road construction, which began in 1994. The most important engineering works were the construction of a viaduct over the River Avon, and the construction of the diaphragm walls and the excavation between them.
Productivity and financial characteristics of herds that produce milkfat with different concentration of unsaturated fatty acids using a stochastic farm model

The objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of dairy farms with different concentrations of unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) in milkfat using a stochastic farm model. Daily phenotypic cow performance was simulated using an exponential function including terms for milk, fat, protein and live weight, and a third order orthogonal polynomial of milkfat UFA concentration. Daily and yearly feed requirements were estimated from metabolisable energy requirements for maintenance, lactation, pregnancy and growth. Two groups of farms were simulated: (1) Average UFA farms (30 farms, milkfat UFA concentration = 30.04 g/100g milkfat) and (2) High UFA farms (30 farms, milkfat UFA concentration = 35.99 g/100g milkfat). Each farm was 140 ha and had 386 cows, a replacement rate of 18% and a spring calving between 20 July and 10 September. The simulation was replicated 1,000 times. High UFA farms produced significantly (P < 0.05) less milkfat (338 vs 502 kg/ha) and milksolids (692 vs 927 kg/ha) than Average UFA farms. This resulted in High UFA farms having lower (P < 0.05) gross farm income ($3815 vs $5075 /ha) and cash operating surplus ($-331 vs $598/ha) than Average UFA farms. This highlights the need to develop a payment system that rewards concentration of UFA in milkfat.
Inlet fuel injection in a mach 12 shape-transitioning scramjet

A Rectangular-to-Elliptical Shape Transitioning (REST) scramjet inlet designed for fight at Mach 12 was simulated with and without hydrogen fuel injection along the body-side compression surface, to investigate the feasibility of inlet injection in a practical scramjet configuration. The observed flowfields show that at an equivalence ratio of 0.3, the fuel jets cannot escape the body-side boundary layer, and have little effect on inlet flow structures. Because of this turbulent boundary layer, fuel mixing efficiency is greater than 80% by the end of the inlet. Combustion is observed in the near-constant area section near the end of the inlet, with a fuel-based combustion efficiency of 52%. Inlet drag increased less than 6%, showing that inlet fuelling provides efficient mixing and combustion on the body side of the engine, thermal compression of the remaining flow, and provides a pilot for fuel injected further downstream, without significantly increasing engine losses.
Featureless Blood Pressure Estimation Based on Photoplethysmography Signal Using CNN and BiLSTM for IoT Devices

Continuous blood pressure (BP) acquisition is critical to health monitoring of an individual. Photoplethysmography (PPG) is one of the most popular technologies in the last decade used for measuring blood pressure noninvasively. Several approaches have been carried out in various ways to utilize features extracted from PPG. In this study, we develop a continuous systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) estimation mechanism without the need for any feature engineering. The raw PPG signal only got preprocessed before being fed to our model which mainly consists of one-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network. We evaluate the resulting SBP and DBP value by the root-mean-squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). This study addresses the effectiveness of the model by outperforming the previous feature engineering-based methods. We achieve RMSE of 11.503 and 6.525 for SBP and DBP, respectively, and MAE of 7.849 and 4.418 for SBP and DBP, respectively. The proposed method is expected to substantially enhance the current efficiency of healthcare IoT (Internet of Things) devices in BP monitoring using PPG signals only.
Two plus one is almost three: a fast approximation for multi-view deconvolution

Multi-view deconvolution is a powerful image-processing tool for light sheet fluorescence microscopy, providing isotropic resolution and enhancing the image content. However, performing these calculations on large datasets is computationally demanding and time-consuming even on high-end workstations. Especially in long-time measurements on developing animals, huge amounts of image data are acquired. To keep them manageable, redundancies should be removed right after image acquisition. To this end, we report a fast approximation to three-dimensional multi-view deconvolution, denoted 2D+1D multi-view deconvolution, which is able to keep up with the data flow. It first operates on the two dimensions perpendicular and subsequently on the one parallel to the rotation axis, exploiting the rotational symmetry of the point spread function along the rotation axis. We validated our algorithm and evaluated it quantitatively against two-dimensional and three-dimensional multi-view deconvolution using simulated and real image data. 2D+1D multi-view deconvolution takes similar computation time but performs markedly better than the two-dimensional approximation only. Therefore, it will be most useful for image processing in time-critical applications, where the full 3D multi-view deconvolution cannot keep up with the data flow.
Non-English Majored Students’ Use of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies with Technology-Enhanced Language Learning Tools

Abstract: Technology has become an integral part in language education in general and English language teaching and learning in specific. Accordingly, the use of technology enhanced language learning (TELL) tools in English language learning has become common as they can improve the knowledge retention and increase engagement. The study aims at unravelling the employment of TELL tool based English vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) among non-English majored students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH). The participants were a cohort of 240 first-year and second-year students answering the questionnaires and 20 students in responding the semi-structured interview questions. The SPSS was utilized to process the qualitative data in terms of descriptive statistics and T-Test, while the content analysis approach was employed for qualitative data analysis. The results showed that the participants employed the TELL tool based English VLS at a high level. Additionally, it is noticeable that second-year students utilized the TELL tool based English VLS more often than their first-year students. Keywords: English vocabulary, strategies, TELL tools.
HCI SOA Enhancement for EDNMOS with Metal Field Plate

This paper discusses Hot-Carrier Injection (HCI) for extended-drain nMOSFET (EDNMOS) with Metal Field Plate (MFP). The HCI linear-region drain current degradation is compared between a typical EDNMOS with MFP, and a typical EDNMOS without MFP. The difference in HCI linear-region drain current degradation is described using Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) simulations that show the magnitude of the electric field and impact ionization at the drain to gate edge region. Additionally, the HCI Safe-Operating Area (SOA) is simulated from the Aging HCI silicon data using an AgeMOS model. It is shown from the HCI SOA that there are improvements in the HCI reliability operating boundary for the EDNMOS with MFP as compared to the EDNMOS without MFP, especially in the switch (i.e. high Vd and low Vg) region.
Analysing Activity for Future Systems

Future systems pose special challenges that preclude many standard forms of work analysis for identifying the cognitive demands of those systems. Yet identifying the cognitive demands of future systems early during development is critical for system effectiveness. In this paper we demonstrate that Cognitive Work Analysis offers an approach for capturing the cognitive demands of future systems. Specifically, we illustrate the kinds of cognitive models that result from conducting a Cognitive Work Analysis of a future system called Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C). These models characterise the cognitive activity of AEW&C in terms of: the work domain, decision making, and mental strategies. We also discuss actual and potential applications of these analyses for team and interface design and we show how we have applied this approach to design a team for AEW&C.
Composition, Structure and Properties of Thin Coatings from Carbide Electrodes based on TiCN, TIB2, WC and B4C, Produced on Titanium Alloys by Electrical Spark Deposition with Low Impuls Energy

The present work presents the results of comparative studies of electrospark coatings obtained on titanium alloy Ti6Al4V from tungsten and multicomponent hard alloys, and those with nano-additives. The coatings were applied on a device with a vibrating electrode with low pulse energy - up to 0.07 J. The influence of the energy regimes and the depositing electrode materials on the thickness, composition, structure, hardness of the obtained coatings has been studied. It has been found that through the coatings the microhardness of the coated titanium surfaces increases 2.5 to 4 times. The phase composition, structure, hardness of the coatings were given as indicators for determining the wear resistance of the surface coatings. The results allow to evaluate and select the appropriate electrode materials and the optimal energy for ESD of coatings with increased durability.
Cascaded LPF/BSF with Stepped Impedance Loop Resonator for RF Applications

In this paper a microstrip based low-pass filter (LPF) cascaded with band stop filter (BSF) structure is presented. Usually, microstrip filters are designed as stepped impedance resonators. The size of microstrip filter depends on the order of filter and its length is decided by the wavelength. Here the stepped impedance resonator is modified into square loop with impedance variation. Different energizing techniques are studied and optimized. The filter with embedded band-stop structure with closed loop structure designed at 1.5 GHz center frequency and is fabricated on an FR4 epoxy substrate and validated experimentally using Field fox Analyzer.
From Future Orientation to Readiness for Reentry: An Exploratory Study of Prelease Cognitions of Incarcerated Men

The literature suggests that individual characteristics of offenders are related to cognitive patterns before their release from prison. Empirical evidence shows that such cognitions can influence the extent to which offenders take an active role in rehabilitation. Given that many studies upon which these conclusions are made are dated, qualitative, or use bivariate analyses, it is unclear how salient, strong, and significant these associations are. Therefore, the aim of this exploratory study is to identify the factors that are associated with two prelease cognitions, future orientation and readiness for release, and to investigate whether future orientation is associated with greater involvement in structured activities. This study uses survey data collected from a sample of 503 people incarcerated in medium-security prisons in South Carolina in the United States. Ordered logistic regression models reveal that idleness, marital status, and drug dependence are associated with future orientation, while idleness, engagement in work and education, age, marital status, sentence phase, and mental health issues are related to readiness for release. Negative binomial regression shows that future orientation is associated with more extensive involvement in structured activities. Overall, the study concludes that while inmates are generally future-oriented, they are less confident that they are prepared for release from prison. The limitations of this study, including low scale reliabilities for key variables and a substantial amount of missing data, are also discussed.
Inertial sensors in the motor assessment of Parkinson's Disease in patients who underwent Pallidotomy

Parkinson's Disease is a neurodegenerative disorder with a great global impact and, despite recent advances, it still needs improvement in the methods for assessing motor alterations. This study aimed at evaluating a system (hardware and software) capable of accurately quantifying tremor in patients with Parkinson's disease that underwent pallidotomy. The Mean Absolute Value (MAV) of the involuntary activity of three patients that underwent pallidotomy surgery - in the pre and postoperative scenarios- was evaluated. The Mean Absolute Value of involuntary activity obtained through the suggested device (TREMSEN) showed a good correlation with the clinical findings, as well as with the findings already described in previous studies. The present study showed that MAV alterations were always positively related to tremor, or negatively related to bradykinesia and rigidity, or possibly both. A tendency towards greater tremor influence on the MAV than bradykinesia and rigidity was also observed. The positive correlation among the values measured by the TREMSEN device and the patients´ clinical result opens doors for the future application of technology, such as accurate and objective assessment of motor disorders, continuous monitoring and remote monitoring.
Analysis on a Novel Concatenated Code for Optical Transmission Systems

A novel RS(255,239)+BCH(3860,3824) concatenated code with 7.70% redundancy for long-haul optical transmission systems is constructed and analyzed through the theoretical analysis of the relevant concatenated code. The simulation analysis shows that the novel concatenated code, compared with the RS(255,239)+CSOC(k0/n0=6/7,J=8) code in ITU-T G.75. 1, has a lower redundancy and better error-correction performance. In addition, the net coding gain (NCG) of the novel concatenated code is respectively more 0.44dB and 0.47dB than that of BCH(3860,3824)+ BCH(2040,1930) code and RS(255,239)+CSOC(k0/n0 =6/7, J=8) code in ITU-T G.75. 1 at the third iteration for the bit error rate (BER) of 10-12. As a result, the novel concatenated code can be better suitable for long-haul optical transmission systems.
Double heterojunction bipolar transistors using AlGaInP/GaAs/GaInP

The first Al0.18Ga0. 34In0.48P/GaAs/Ga0.52In0. 48P double heterojunction bipolar transistors grow by metal organic vapour phase epitaxy are reported. They exhibit a current gain of 110 at high collector-emitter voltage and a small offset voltage of 30mV. The addition of Al to the emitter has not adversely affected the quality of the emitter-base interface.
Effect of Supplementary Methionine on Feather Growth and Related Indicators of Pigeon Squabs

We assessed the effect of health sand dietary supplementation with methionine (Met) on White King pigeons. Paired pigeons (n = 180) were fed one of five diets; group T1 received no added Met, while T2, T3, T4 and T5 received 30, 60, 90 and 120 g of supplemental DL-Met/kg, respectively. Each treatment was replicated three times with 24 pairs in each replicate. The results showed that supplementary Met had a minor effect on the length of the fourth primary wing feather in 28-day-old squabs ( p >0.05), but the length of 14-day-old squabs in T2 was significantly longer ( p= 0.010). Dietary Met had a minor effect on Wnt-7a and fibroblast growth factor receptors-2 (FGFR-2 ) mRNA levels in 28-day-old squabs ( p >0.05). The IGF-1 concentration in plasma was highest in T4 and lowest in T2 ( p =0.012), but there was no difference between T1, T2 and T5 ( p >0.05). In the chest muscle, the expression of IGF-1 in T3 and T4 was higher than in T1 ( p =0.172 and 0.015, respectively). In the leg muscle, IGF-1 mRNA level was higher in T4 and T3, and lower in T2 ( p >0.05). The results indicate that the optimal Met supplement for increasing fourth primary wing feather length was 30 g/kg Met in health sand, and the feathers were the longest in 14-day-old squabs. Adding 90 g/kg Met to health sand can improve the concentration of IGF-1, which is important for growth performance of pigeon squabs.
A novel high-Q LTCC stripline resonator for millimeter-wave applications

We have implemented a novel high-Q low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) stripline resonator by including air cavities in the LTCC substrate for millimeter-wave applications. This new resonator presents Q-factor of 290 and total loss of 0.03 dB/mm at 34.8 GHz, and they are improved by 138% and 58%, respectively, compared to the conventional one. Its dielectric loss is analyzed as small as 0.0003 dB/mm at the resonant frequency, and that improved by a factor of 120 compared to the conventional one.
Artificial intelligence-controlled pole balancing using an Arduino board

Automation Process (AP) is an important issue in the current digitized world and, in general, represents an increase in the quality of productivity when compared with manual control. Balance is a natural human capacity as it relates to complex operations and intelligence. Balance Control presents an extra challenge in automation processes, due to the many variables that may be involved. This work presents a physical balancing pole where a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent can explore the environment, sense its position through accelerometers, and wirelessly communicate and eventually learns by itself how to keep the pole balanced under noise disturbance. The agent uses RL principles to explore and learn new positions and corrections that lead toward more significant rewards in terms of pole equilibrium. By using a Q-matrix, the agent explores future conditions and acquires policy information that makes it possible to maintain stability. An Arduino microcontroller processes all training and testing. With the help of sensors, servo motors, wireless communications, and artificial intelligence, components merge into a system that consistently recovers equilibrium under random position changes. The obtained results prove that through RL, an agent can learn by itself to use generic sensors, actuators and solve balancing problems even under the limitations that a microcontroller presents.
Use of stream functions for the computation of currents in thin circuits determination of the impedances

We compute the currents appearing in a circuit of very small thickness when a voltage is applied to its ends or when it is put into an inductive electric field. The discretization of the problem uses stream functions and then there is only one scalar variable related to each node of the mean surface of the circuit; the computation is very fast. Moreover, it is immediately usable to deduce the global current which appears and then it is very easy to obtain the circuit impedance.
Trends in inertial systems technology for high accuracy AUV navigation

Medium accuracy inertial systems of the 1 nautical mile per hour class, enjoyed significant acceptance in the market for land survey systems in the early 1970's-prior to the introduction of GPS. This occurred because such systems could be implemented with software that capitalized on "zero velocity updates" (ZUPTS) which enabled the resultant system to achieve real-time navigation accuracies of a few meters over several hours of operation. "ZUPTS" are realized by simply bringing a land vehicle to a stop or, in the case of a helicopter, by hovering across a fixed point on the ground. Those initial inertial survey systems were large, heavy, expensive and required substantial power. Since the technology has changed dramatically, these systems have become highly suitable as the core of the navigation and control suite for small submersibles. The paper will discuss and illustrate the trend in inertial technology, from that of gimbaled spinning wheel gyro based systems initially employed for surveying, to the ring laser gyro based systems available today and the next generation of systems employing fiber optic gyros. Performance obtainable with these medium grade inertial systems will also be presented as a function of the quality of zero velocity updates. Realization of zero velocity updates by different means will also be a topic of discussion.