Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of fuzzy sliding mode controller for decoupled induction motor drive

Robust control of a decoupled induction motor drive is attempted in this paper. Sliding Mode Controller and Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller are designed for the speed loop of the drive. The design steps for both the controllers are laid down clearly. Only four fuzzy rules, and Center-ofSums defuzzification technique are used in the fuzzy controller for simplicity reasons. The performance of the fuzzy sliding mode controller has been evaluated, through simulation studies, with respect to the sliding mode controller in order to establish its suitability for induction motor drive.
Blood Pressure, Nutritional Status and Physical Activity Level Affect the Health Related Quality of Life of Oldest Old?

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of blood pressure control, nutritional status and physical activity level on the health-related quality of life of the very elderly hypertensives in the Brazilian Midwest. Methods: Cross-sectional study with 41 patients (age > 80 years) at a reference center for the treatment of hypertension. Anthropometric and blood pressure data were collected. The participants answered the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 item Short Form Health Survey (SF 36) and questions about lifestyle habits. The data were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test, the t-test, the chi-square test and the Mann-Whitney-U test. The significance level was set at 5% and the confidence interval at 95%. The study was approved by the Institution’s Ethics Committee. Results: Nutritional status and blood pressure did not affect the SF 36 scores. The score for quality of life based on physical aspects was higher in men than in women (p = 0.044). The very elderly who are physically active had better scores for functional capacity on the SF 36 (p = 0.007). Social, emotional and mental health domains yielded the highest scores for quality of life. Conclusion: Blood pressure control and nutritional status did not influence health-related quality of life of very elderly hypertensive. Men have a better quality of life related to the physical aspects, and physically active individuals have a better health-related quality of life related to functional capacity.
Severity and Dimensions of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Family Accommodation: OCD severity and Family Accommodation

Background and Objectives: Family accommodation (FA) refers to ways in which family members assist the patient in the performance of rituals, compulsions, avoidance of anxiety provoking situations, or modification of daily routines to assist a relative with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The purpose of this study was to study the association between the family accommodation and dimensions of obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD). Methods: The study was included 45patients and their family members, Yale brown Obsessive-Compulsive scale (YBOCS) was used to assess the severity of OCD in patients and Dimensional Yale brown ObsessiveCompulsive scale (DYBOCS) was used to identify the severity of different dimensions in OCD patients family members were assessed on Family Accommodation Scale for Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder – Self Rated version (FAS-SR) for understanding accommodation level in family. A Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the association between variables. Results: FA was found to be highly present in the family of patients with OCD. On the DYBOCS we found the dimension of cleaning and washing were prevalent and highly correlated with FA. Conclusion: The findings suggested that the family accommodation is very common in families of OCD patients and strongly associated with symptom severity of few specific dimensions.
Breath Acetone Based Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring System for Diabetes Using SVM

A novel method for monitoring blood glucose level based on the respective change in the acetone concentration of the diabetic patient is designed and tested with laboratory prepared acetone gas samples. The results discussed here are impressive and promise a possibility of non-invasive breath acetone based blood Glucose monitoring system which reduces the number of blood samples to be analysed each day for precise monitoring of blood glucose level. Support Vector Machine a powerful regression tool is used for principal component analysis. A Volatile Organic Component sensor by FIGARO is used to monitor the acetone concentration in the simulated gas samples. The classification is done in to two groups and the results are visually interpreted from the graph generated by the computer that is integrated with the data acquisition unit using a serial communication port. Sensing element in is a thin strip of tin oxide.
DETERMINING THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE INTENTION TO PURCHASE LUXURY FASHION BRANDS OF YOUNG CONSUMERS

Bu calismanin amaci genc tuketicilerin luks markalari satin almasina etki eden faktorleri tanimlamaktir. Kapsamli bir literatur taramasiyla beraber; girdi faktorler olarak statu tuketimi, benlik algilamasi netligi, benzersizlik ihtiyaci, sosyal tuketim motivasyonlari, luks markalara karsi tavir ele alinirken, satin alma niyeti cikti faktor olarak irdelenmistir. Akran baskisinin moderator etkisi de ayrica incelenmistir. Arastirmanin modeli ve gelistirilen hipotezlere dayanarak, calismada kantitatif bir yontem kullanilmistir. 400 anket arastirma hipotezlerini test etmek uzere kullanilmistir. Arastirma hipotezlerini test ederken SPSS 20 ve AMOS kullanilarak yapisal esitlik analizinden yararlanilmistir. Bulgulara gore, statu tuketimi ve yaratici secim (benzersizligin bir boyutu) sosyal tuketim motivasyonlarini etkilerken benlik algilamasi netligi, populer olmayan tercih ve benzerligi onleme sosyal tuketim motivasyonlarini ve satin alma niyetini etkilememektedir. Benlik algilamasi netligi ve sosyal tuketim motivasyonlari arasi iliskide akran baskisi moderator bir faktordur. Sosyal tuketim motivasyonlari luks bir markaya karsi olan tutumu etkilerken pozitif tutumlar luks markayi satin alma niyetini arttirmaktadir.
On digital front-runners and late-comers: Analyzing issue competition over digitization in German subnational elections

Abstract Despite the sweeping societal and economic transformation brought about by digitization, it has remained a relatively marginal topic in elections, with parties having few incentives to signal commitment to digitization. Why then would parties start to do so? We address this question by examining party manifestos from German subnational elections in the period between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis contributes to the research on issue competition by looking at why parties engage with the topic of the digitization even though it has neither become politicized nor salient, at present. We find, first, that parties emphasize digitization more in regions belonging to the mid-tier in terms of their degree of digital modernization. Second, parties with more resources and greater ideological compatibility signal more commitment to digitization. Finally, electoral success of the Pirate Party as a credible challenger has been followed by greater emphasis on digitization, especially among the ideologically closest competitors.
Trade liberalization and Primary Commodity Prices Empirical Evidence from Select Tropical Crops in Kerala, India.

Trade liberalization and Primary Commodity Prices Empirical Evidence from Select Tropical Crops in Kerala, India. Brigit Joseph, Doctoral Student Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 110 067 brigitjnu@yahoo.com Abstract Agriculture sector in India underwent unprecedented policy changes in 1990’s. These policy measures were expected to have significant impact, among others, on integrating domestic commodity markets with world market. This paper undertakes an empirical verification of above hypothesis with respect to select plantation crops in Kerala (India), known historically for plantation agriculture by estimating Engle and Granger Error-Correction model. Period wise analysis reveals that markets were integrated even before liberalization except in cardamom, and the extent of integration got accentuated in post reform period in all the crops. Moreover, the estimated short run and long run elasticity coefficient implies that increased extent of integration or transmission of world price to domestic market was mainly on account of short-run rather than long –run.
Valuing biodiversity protection: Payment for Environmental Services schemes in Lao PDR

Abstract The design of a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) scheme that involves setting a ‘pseudo market price’ per unit of environmental service requires the estimation of demand and supply. This paper presents the results of discrete choice experiments aimed at estimating the demand for environmental and social services generated by a wildlife protection PES scheme in two protected areas in Lao PDR. The discrete choice experiments targeted international tourists sampled at Vientiane airport and the urban Lao population sampled in Vientiane City as potential buyers of the environmental and social services provided by the PES scheme. The survey was customised to a developing country context to address diversity in respondents' literacy levels, language limitations of the interviewers, socio-cultural conventions, and limited trust in confidentiality and anonymity of the survey process. The marginal benefits of the environmental services so estimated were used to inform the development of a PES scheme.
The Influence of Pipeline Diameter Variation on the Mixing Volume

This paper summarizes the development of the study on the mixing volume when variations of the line diameter exist. And the influence of changing pipelines'diameter is analyzed. Then,according to the analysis on the formula of theory about diffusion and empirical formula of Austin-Palfrey,a new model for estimating mixing volumes arising in batch transportation in multi-product pipelines is presented. This new mathematical model involves in computing the variations of the line diameter as well as injection and/or withdrawal of products.
On Voice Activated Information RetrievalSystem

Speech Recognition (SR) is a process that transcribes speech into text using a computer. Speech recognition system is a speech-to-text conversion wherein the output of the system displays text corresponding to the recognized speech. A step towards a more natural, “human-like” communication between machines and users in need of information is represented by the introduction of speech language technologies into Information Retrieval system. The integration of the Information Retrieval system (IR) and the Automatic speech recognition (ASR) system degrades the performance. The failure to recognize a keyword in continuous speech may drastically affect the performance of the IR system. The proposal is to build an ASR system that is trained to identify the word we pronounce in restricted domain. Then for each of the recognized word, the system is expected to find the match which is then extracted by the IR system.
Practical Microarchitectural Attacks from Integrated GPUs

Dark silicon is pushing processor vendors to add more specialized units such as accelerators to commodity processor chips. Unfortunately this is done without enough care to security. In this paper we look at the security implications of integrated Graphical Processor Units (GPUs) found in almost all mobile processors. We demonstrate that GPUs, already widely employed to accelerate a variety of benign applications such as image rendering, can also be used to “accelerate” microarchitectural attacks (i.e., making them more effective) on commodity platforms. In particular, we show that an attacker can build all the necessary primitives for performing effective GPU-based microarchitectural attacks and that these primitives are all exposed to the web through standardized browser extensions, allowing side-channel and Rowhammer attacks from JavaScript. These attacks bypass state-of-the-art mitigations and advance existing CPU-based attacks: we show the first end-to-end microarchitectural compromise of a browser running on a mobile phone by orchestrating our GPU primitives. While powerful, these GPU primitives are not easy to implement due to undocumented hardware features. We describe novel reverse engineering techniques for peeking into the previously unknown cache architecture and replacement policy of the Adreno 330, an integrated GPU found in many common mobile platforms. This information is necessary when building shader programs implementing our GPU primitives. We conclude by discussing mitigations against GPU-enabled attackers.
The Efficacy of an Online Cognitive Assessment Tool for Enhancing and Improving Student Academic Outcomes

With technology at the fingertips of most undergraduate students, it has been difficult for instructors to fully engage students in the classroom, which has resulted in the creation of several innovative assessment platforms, such as mTuner. mTuner integrates several cognitive learning strategies within an assessment, with the goal of actually enhancing learning, as opposed to just measuring it. In the current study, students’ level of engagement and performance with mTuner were compared to their final multiple-choice paper and pencil exam mark to determine the efficacy of mTuner in achieving improved learning outcomes. Results indicated that students had high performance scores on the mTuner assessment despite their limited engagement in the cognitive learning features, putting to question mTuner’s facilitation of long-term learning. Implications and future recommendations of mTuner implementation in educational environments are discussed.
The Pharmacy-based Cost Group Model: Application in the Czech Health Care System

The risk adjustment model currently used does not adequately compensate insurers for predictable differences in individuals’ health care expenditures in the Czech Republic. It then leads to financial inequality in the redistribution of funds to the insurance companies and causes their financial problems. This study introduces a PCG model as another method for risk adjustment and determines to what extent the predictive performance of the model can be improved when applied to Czech data. We analyze 10% of population sample in the Czech Republic in years 2011 and 2012. Our results confirm the appropriateness of the PCG model for the Czech environment. When the PCG variables are added to the demographic model, R value of the prediction model increases from 2.03% to 13.87%. JEL Classification I13, I18,
Techniques for Adaptive Navigation of Multi-Robot Clusters

Sensor based navigation techniques are those that alter the path being followed based on realtime sensor readings. They are often used in scalar fields, which are regions with a scalar quantity of interest, such as temperature or concentration level, associated with every point in the field. An example of sensor based navigation in a scalar field is using a set of measurements from a distributed group of robots in order to estimate the gradient of a field; driving in the direction of the gradient leads the group to the maximum value in the field, a point that often has practical value. In previous work, researchers in the Santa Clara University Robotic Systems Laboratory have proposed multirobot sensor based controllers to move to maximum points, minimum points, and along field contour lines. This thesis work contributes to this work, presenting work performed with other researchers in the Lab to navigate ridges, trenches, and saddle points. Simulations have verified that these techniques can track field features with a minimal amount of steady state error. The complete set of primitive controllers was then used as a basis for an application controller that used a state machine architecture to switch between the primitive controllers in order to execute complex tasks. Four different applications were demonstrated in simulation using this method: ridge control with recovery, moving from one local maximum to another, mapping the contours around a maximum, and traveling to a designated location while staying above a particular scalar value. These controllers were successfully demonstrated in simulation under a number of ideal conditions. Future work is proposed in order to extend the capabilities of this technique and to improve robustness.
Instituting a Value-Added Assessment System in Ohio: The Professional Development Implications from the Perspective of the District Value-Added Specialists

Although much has been written about the various value-added models from a statistical point of view, there is a considerable lack of literature related to the professional development implications of value added once a particular model has been chosen. This study illuminates and describes some of the professional development implications related to Ohio’s scale up of its educational value-added assessment system from the perspective of those responsible for teaching its implications to others at the local level— the District Value-Added Specialists. Six research questions were explored using a survey instrument that was developed by the researcher. The results were reviewed and discussed. The practical implications of instituting a value-added assessment model include using value-added data with other forms of data in order to improve instructional practices. Suggestions were provided specific to Ohio’s value-added scale-up and its impact on educators.
Civil Society and the Democratic Peace

We theorize that three distinct structures of democratic constraint explain why more democratic dyads do not engage in military conflict with each other. We build on earlier theories that focused on electoral and horizontal accountability. We add a new dimension—the social accountability provided by an active civil society. Using several new measures from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data set, we stringently test these explanations. We find social accountability to be the strongest and most consistent predictor of nonbelligerence in dyads, that horizontal accountability is still important, but that the independent role of electoral accountability has been somewhat overstated. However, we do find that social and electoral accountability work strongly together, to make for an even greater effect. The finding is robust to a range of specifications and in the face of controls for contending theories that challenge the democratic peace (e.g., the capitalist and territorial peace theories).
Accuracy and Effect Upon Clinical Workload of the MS-2 Urine Screen and Antibiotic Susceptibility System

A total of 794 midstream urine specimens were screened using the Abbott MS-2 system, and the results were compared with those obtained by routine plating methods. Sensitivity of detection of ≥105 colony-forming units per milliliter (CFU/mL) for urinary pathogens was 96.5%; lowering of the detection threshold to ≥104 CFU/ml decreased sensitivity to 93.8%. Specificity was 92.5%. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed on 122 freshly isolated gram-negative and grampositive bacteria using the MS-2 system, and the results were compared with those of microdilution MIC methodology. For gram-positive isolates, full accord of results was found in 84.3% and essential accord in 94.8% of isolates tested. For gram-negative isolates, full accord was found in 89.0% and essential accord in 96.0% of isolates tested. Workload studies indicated a technical time savings of 24% with use of the automated MS-2 instrument.
A Development of Supply Performance Indicator in a Water Distribution System Using Fuzzy Sets and a PDA Model

The water distribution system is an infrastructure system supplying water to urban areas. Since it has a great influence on the quality of life and financial aspect of customers, the performance evaluation of the system for an efficient management and operation is essential. Until now, most of the suggested performance indicators for the system are based on the available demand and pressure at demand nodes obtained from the hydraulic simulation. However, those performance indicators based on the hydraulic simulation may not consider the actual usability of water for customers properly. Therefore, in this study, the application of fuzzy functions along with the available demands at demand nodes, which are obtained from the hydraulic simulation, from the various points of view, makes us possible to evaluate the system performance by depending on the set value of the variables. For this purpose, we use a PDA model, which can simulate various abnormal operation conditions and suggest two performance indicators: the possible water supply range indicator (PWSRI) for the water supply performance evaluation for an individual demand node and the possible water supply indicator for the entire system (PWSIES). The suggested method and indicators are applied to the real water distribution system of A-city in Korea to verify the applicability.
Multi-Scale Semantic Model for Unsupervised Object Segmentation

It is difficult to segment instances of object classes accurately unsupervised in images, because of the complexity of structures, inter-class differences, background interference and so on. A multi-scale semantic model method is proposed to overcome the disadvantages existing in most of the relative methods. This method uses generative model to deal with the objects obtained by multi-scale segmentations instead of whole image, and calculates kinds of visual features to mine the topic information of every object. In the segmentation process, a semantic correlative function of every segment block based on KL divergence is built up and minimized to select the object correct regions. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Is a College Degree Still Worth It

“In recent years, students have been paying more to attend college and earning less upon graduation—trends that have led many observers to question whether a college education remains a good investment,” the report states. The authors analyzed the earnings since the 1970s of workers with bachelor’s degrees, workers with associate’s degrees, and workers with high school diplomas to determine that college remains a good investment.