Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural and kinematic analysis of lifting and folding mechanism of mobile shutter

Abstract. The use of certain mechanisms in the construction of mobile platforms ensures that the products to be transported are loaded in the transport means without damaging them. This paper presents the structural and kinematic analysis of the lifting and folding mechanism of the mobile shutter of a commercial vehicle for transporting packed or containerised products. The structural analysis allows determining the structural groups (multipolar), which are the basis for realizing the mechanism for lifting and folding the shutter. The kinematic analysis consists in determining the kinematic parameters of all elements of the mechanism, the parameters underlying the kinetostatic calculation of the mechanism (determining the reactions in the kinematic couplings as well as the driving forces in the hydraulic cylinders). In order to highlight the kinematic parameters, the variation diagrams of the angular velocities and accelerations of the component elements were drawn. The kinematic analysis of the mechanism provides useful information regarding the lifting speed of the platform and, implicitly, the loaded material. A high-speed causes damage to the cargo loaded, and a small one causes a long loading time.The mathematical modeling of the mechanism was accomplished using Mathcad software. This mathematical modeling provides manufacturers with theoretical results that can be applied in practice for optimal sizing of the mechanism. The kinematic analysis made by simulation enables proper dimensioning of the elements of the mechanism, so that in the key positions the shutter is at the same level as the platform (in the maximum lifting position), or at the ground level, in the lower position, with the platform lowered for loading. This mechanism was actually used by INMA Bucharest to design and manufacture technological trailers for loading and transporting packed/containerised food products, trailers for transporting furniture, household appliances, and so on.
The role of mast cells and mast cell mediators in the development of atopic dermatitis in a mouse model

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a complex, often lifelong allergic disease affecting around 10 % of both dogs and humans. The hallmark symptom is severe pruritus, causing a lowered quality of life. Mast cells (MCs) are known to play an important part of the immunopathogenesis, promoting a faulty T helper cell type 2 (Th-2) response which follows by a production of specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies towards environmental allergens (Ag). To further investigate the role of MCs and its mediators in the progression of AD, a low-calcemic vitamin D3 analog (MC903) was used to induce AD-like symptoms locally on the ears of two different knock-out (KO) mouse strains. The first strain was Wsh-/- mice deficient in MCs. The second strain was mice deficient in mouse mast cell protease 4 (mMCP-4-/-), a homolog to the human and canine MC chymase (MCC). The hypothesis was to observe an increase in inflammatory parameters following MC903-treatment, such as migration of inflammatory cells, higher amount of inflammatory mediators and clinically observed ear thickening. Thereby, MC903 would be proven to induce a functioning AD animal model. The results showed that daily topical MC903 application on the left ear induced changes mimicking AD macroscopically, microscopically and biochemically, including a Th-2 response represented by associated cytokines. No changes were seen in the vehicle-treated ears (treated with ethanol) used as an internal control. The epithelial cell-derived thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) appeared to be an important cytokine in promoting the skin inflammation since the amount of TSLP was markedly high locally in the MC903-treated ears. In MC-deficient mice, TSLP-levels were significantly lower, thus implicating a central role of MCs in this model. Although the presence of MCs caused higher levels of both TSLP and interleukin 33 (IL-33) after MC903-treatment, the clinical appearance in Wsh+/- mice was milder compared to mice lacking MCs. This indicates that MCs do promote the AD-like skin inflammation caused by MC903, but at the same time prohibit the inflammation from being too excessive. The results from a small in vitro study performed as a part of this study, proved that MC903 also activates MCs directly to degranulate. The MCC homolog mMCP-4 did on the contrary only contribute to the lowering of IL-33 levels, most likely through cleavage of the cytokine by mMCP- 4, therefore no apparent role of MCC could be observed. In the cleavage study of TSLP, a more rapid cleavage of TSLP was mediated by tryptase than chymase. Thus, as a continuation of this study, the investigation of the role of tryptase in the MC903-induced AD-model would be of high interest. In conclusion, MC903 application induced an AD-like local inflammation, thus showing that the method provides a functioning AD-model. MCs contribute to disease progression through cytokine production, but have at the same time a limiting role in the course of inflammation.
Częstotliwość występowania chorób układu nerwowego w populacji osób powyżej 65 roku życia

Introduction. The most frequent diseases of people aged 60 or over are the diseases of cardiovascular system, musculoskeletal disorders and metabolic diseases. In the case of long-lived people the biggest risk is posed by acute inflammation and infections (e.g. pneumonia, flu) as well as the consequences of falls and broken bones. Among many factors, that significantly affect psychophysical capacity of these people, there should be mentioned health factors (e.g. diseases, some systems and organ disorders). This group also comprises nervous system disorders such as: vascular diseases, dementia and extrapyramidal disorders. Aim. The aim of this work was to assess the incidence rate of the nervous system disorders and their influence on the psychophysical condition of people aged 65 or over. Material and Methods. We conducted the study in the Clinic of Geriatrics Bydgoszcz, Poland. Participants included 127 patients hospitalized due to disease process. The criterion used for the selection of research participants was their age. They were divided into three subgroups in accordance with the subperiods distinguished by UNO (United Nations Organization): 65-74 (early old age), 75-89 (advanced old age), 90 and more (longevity). The scale used in the research is the standard scale that is most frequently used in nursing and clinic practice both in Poland and worldwide. We used the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) scale to assess everyday activities, Timed UpG4(3):96–101)
Consumer Satisfaction and Profitability: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

This paper uses panel data estimations to examine the link between customer satisfaction and profitability. In so doing it controls for the existence of firm-specific effects which may impact on overall performance and thus gives a more rigorous estimate of the relationship between these two variables. The use of a dynamic estimation also provides important insights into issues relating to causality.
Study on Antifungal activity of Artemisia L. extract in Compared with Tryptophan against trichophytonmentagrophytes

Dermatophytosis or ringworm is a clinical condition caused by fungal infection of the skin in humans, pets such as cats, and domesticated animals such as sheep and cattle. The genus Artemisia (Asteraceae) comprises over 400 species, many of which have an aromatic, bitter taste. These herbs have been used worldwide in folk medicine since ancient times. They have been used as tonics, antimalarials, antihelmintics, and antidiabetics, and in treating wounds, bronchitis, ulcers, and tuberculosis in traditional Anatolian medicine. 40 male Wistar rats (200±20 g and 9-weeks aged) were selected for the study. Rats were randomly divided into four equal groups: 1- normal controls; 2- infected rats received no treatment; 3infected rats treated with tryptophan and 4- infected rats treated with Artemisia extract. After 12 weeks, blood samples were taken from retro-orbital plexus for cultivate in the mycobiotic agar medium. Data obtained from measurement of colonies diameter showed that there is significant difference in groups which have received different doses of amino acid and herbal extract (P<0.05). Also, it has been shown that the efficacy of high doses of amino acid is more than low doses so can state that it act as dose dependently. But in compared with group 4, herbal extract showed better antifungal activity against trichophytonmentagrophytes.The strong effects of the essential oils of Artemisia are probably due to the high amount of terpenoids and flavonoids especially α-thujone content.
Reviewing and reframing the influence of relative age on ADHD diagnosis: beyond individual psycho(patho)logy

ABSTRACT Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a debated phenomenon and the link between schooling and the occurrence of ADHD diagnoses is worth critical scrutiny. This paper contributes to the academic debate by providing a literature review of the evidence on the influence of relative age effect (RAE) on being diagnosed with ADHD. Firstly, the review presents a general cross-national trend of a positive association between relative age and the probability of being diagnosed with ADHD compared with peers, thus showing that the younger-in-class children are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. Secondly, this paper outlines and presents discussion on the suggested explanations of the phenomenon as depicted in the literature reviewed. Finally, the paper proceeds to provide alternative frameworks for the explanation of the RAE on ADHD diagnosis that consider the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which the phenomenon takes place.
Brain Hemodynamic Intermediate Phenotype Links Vitamin B12 to Cognitive Profile of Healthy and Mild Cognitive Impaired Subjects

Vitamin B12, folate, and homocysteine are implicated in pivotal neurodegenerative mechanisms and partake in elders' mental decline. Findings on the association between vitamin-related biochemistry and cognitive abilities suggest that the structural and functional properties of the brain may represent an intermediate biomarker linking vitamin concentrations to cognition. Despite this, no previous study directly investigated whether vitamin B12, folate, and homocysteine levels are sufficient to explain individual neuropsychological profiles or, alternatively, whether the activity of brain regions modulated by these compounds better predicts cognition in elders. Here, we measured the relationship between vitamin blood concentrations, scores at seventeen neuropsychological tests, and brain activity of sixty-five elders spanning from normal to Mild Cognitive Impairment. We then evaluated whether task-related brain responses represent an intermediate phenotype, providing a better prediction of subjects' neuropsychological scores, as compared to the one obtained considering blood biochemistry only. We found that the hemodynamic activity of the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was positively associated (p value < 0.05 cluster corrected) with vitamin B12 concentrations, suggesting that elders with higher B12 levels had a more pronounced recruitment of this salience network region. Crucially, the activity of this area significantly predicted subjects' visual search and attention abilities (p value = 0.0023), whereas B12 levels per se failed to do so. Our results demonstrate that the relationship between blood biochemistry and elders' cognitive abilities is revealed when brain activity is included into the equation, thus highlighting the role of brain imaging as intermediate phenotype.
Empathy in Institutionalized Adolescents With Callous-Unemotional Traits

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with impaired distress recognition, possibly leading to suboptimal empathy development. Evidence stems from computerized task results, having little in common with day-to-day experiences. We assessed institutionalized adolescents’ empathic accuracy in their ability to infer staff members’ emotions, using Ecological Momentary Assessment. A sample of 55 adolescents reported perceived levels of distress and anger in staff, 4 times per day over the course of 8 days. CU traits were assessed with the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory, and data were submitted to multilevel regression analyses. All adolescents well identified anger and distress; high CU adolescents even overestimated both anger and distress intensities. Our ecological data suggest that in real-life situations, cognitive empathy skills may compensate for high CU adolescents’ distress recognition impairment. However, this compensatory process results in the perception of excessively negative emotions.
Exposure to potentially traumatic events in young Swiss men: associations with socio-demographics and mental health outcomes (alcohol use disorder, major depression and suicide attempts)

ABSTRACT Background and objective: The aims of this study were to estimate the lifetime and 12-month prevalence of exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) in young men in Switzerland and to assess factors and mental health outcomes associated with such events. Method: Data were drawn from the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors (C-SURF), encompassing 5,223 young men. Exposure to PTEs was assessed using the Post-traumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS), Trauma History Questionnaire (THQ) and Life Event Checklist (LEC). Results: Lifetime prevalence of PTEs was 59.4%, with 37.3% reporting multiple types of events. Twelve-month prevalence was 31.2%, with 12.7% reporting multiple types of events. Low education level of participants, high maternal education, family affluence below average, and not living with biological parents were associated with a higher risk of having experienced one or more PTEs in one’s lifetime. Low education level of participants and high maternal education were also related to exposure to one or more PTEs over the past 12 months. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that PTE exposure was directly associated with all assessed mental health outcomes. The strongest relationship was found between exposure to multiple types of PTEs and suicide attempts (adjusted OR 4.9 [95% CI: 2.9–8.4]). Conclusions: These results indicate that having experienced one or multiple types of PTEs is common in Swiss young men. Efforts should be intensified to reduce exposure to PTEs and prevent and treat resulting problematic mental health outcomes in young adults. HIGHLIGHTS • Exposure to PTEs is common among young Swiss men. • Education level of participants and of their mothers, family affluence and living arrangements are associated with PTE exposure. • PTE exposure is associated with AUD, MD and suicide attempts. • Efforts should be intensified to reduce exposure to PTEs and to prevent and treat resulting problematic mental health outcomes in young adults.
Software and Hardware Enhancement of Convolutional Neural Networks on GPGPUs

Article history: Received: 30 November, 2017 Accepted: 05 February, 2018 Online: 08 March, 2018 Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have gained attention in recent years for their ability to perform complex machine learning tasks with high accuracy and resilient to noise of inputs. The time-consuming convolution operations of CNNs pose great challenges to both software as well as hardware designers. To achieve superior performance, a design involves careful concerns between exposing the massive computation parallelism and exploiting data reuse in complex data accesses. Existing designs lack comprehensive analysis on design techniques and decisions. The analytical discussion and quantitative proof behind the design criterion, such as choosing proper dimensions to parallelize, are not well studied. This paper performs a series of qualitative and quantitative studies on both the programming techniques and their implications on the GPU architecture. The observations reveal comprehensive understanding on the correlation between the design techniques and the resulting performance. Based on the analyses, we pinpoint the two major performance bottlenecks of CNN on GPGPU: performing computation and loading data from global memory. Software and hardware enhancements are proposed in this paper to alleviate these issues. Experimental results on a cycle-accurate GPGPU simulator have demonstrated up to 4.4x performance enhancement when compared with the reference design.
Leitura do institucionalismo organizacional a partir da teoria do organizar de Karl Weick

Resumo O objetivo central deste artigo é evidenciar as possibilidades de uso da teoria do organizar de Karl Weick como microfundamento para o institucionalismo organizacional, considerando que essa abordagem da ação se mostra mais adequada do que aquelas predominantes nos estudos institucionalistas. Partindo do pressuposto de que a ação em organizações se orienta por ordens institucionais abrangentes que não estão desconectadas da interação social e dos processos de construção de sentidos, propõe-se a integração entre o institucionalismo organizacional e a teoria do organizar como base para a análise de processos organizativos. Por meio de revisão das denominadas “ondas” da teoria neoinstitucional em organizações, aborda-se a relação entre o organizar, a construção de sentidos e as instituições. Além de apresentar uma síntese da trajetória do institucionalismo organizacional, destacam-se deslocamentos epistemológicos observados no âmbito desse corpo teórico ao longo do tempo. Por fim, apresentam-se as potenciais contribuições do uso da teoria do organizar (WEICK, 1979) como microfundamento teórico adequado para a análise institucional de estratégias e práticas empregadas para a manutenção de organizações.
Cellular V2X in Unlicensed Spectrum: Harmonious Coexistence with VANET in 5G systems

With the increasing demand for vehicular data transmission, limited dedicated cellular spectrum becomes a bottleneck to satisfy the requirements of all cellular vehicle-to-everything (V2X) users. To address this issue, unlicensed spectrum is considered to serve as the complement to support cellular V2X users. In this paper, we study the coexistence problem of cellular V2X users and vehicular ad-hoc network~(VANET) users over the unlicensed spectrum. To facilitate the coexistence, we design an energy sensing based spectrum sharing scheme, where cellular V2X users are able to access the unlicensed channels fairly while reducing the data transmission collisions between cellular V2X and VANET users. In order to maximize the number of active cellular V2X users, we formulate the scheduling and resource allocation problem as a two-sided many-to-many matching with peer effects. We then propose a dynamic vehicle-resource matching algorithm (DV-RMA) and present the analytical results on the convergence time and computational complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing approaches in terms of the performance of cellular V2X system when the unlicensed spectrum is utilized.
Labor Market Frictions and Optimal Monetary Policy

We study the properties of optimal monetary policy in an environment of nominal wage rigidity and unemployment. We show that nominal wage rigidity increases the sacrifice ratio, and therefore reduces the effectiveness of sacrificing employment in order to stabilize inflation. It follows that in response to higher nominal wage rigidity, it is optimal to allow for smaller fluctuations of unemployment at the expense of larger inflation fluctuations.
Differential effectiveness of two anxiety induction procedures in youth and older adult populations

In this study, we tested in older and younger adults the efficacy of two well-known procedures to experimentally induce anxiety: a) Velten self-statements combined with music; b) film scenes. We extended the pre- vious findings in this field to the understudied area of mood induction in older adults. Fifty-seven older adults and 94 college students were random- ly assigned to one of the experimental conditions or to a control group. Results indicated that both procedures were effective, according to a series of ANOVAs for several self-report, physiological, and behavioral measures. Likewise, the highest effect sizes were observed for the Velten procedure (g = .81 vs. g = .71), and the effects were significantly higher in younger (g = 1.0 in the Velten condition) than in older adults (g = .62), Q = 4.25, 2(1), p = . 0392. Both procedures were effective to induce inducting anxiety in both age groups, especially the Velten procedure in younger adults. Therefore, Velten self-statements combined with music may be very useful anxiety induction procedure for further research in controlled situa- tions of emotions across the life-span.
Relationship between fungal community and physico-chemical characteristics in the Hokersar Wetland, Kashmir Himalayas

Relative effect of some physico-chemical parameters of water on the occurrence of water borne fungi was studied in a high altitudinal wetland. The number of conidial fungal species was enumerated in water samples collected monthly during the period of March 2008-February 2009. There was marked seasonal fluctuation in the occurrence number of individuals in each species. The maximum number of individuals was found during summer to early autumn, while there was a decline in the number of individuals during late autumn and early winter seasons. Principal component analysis showed a high inverse relationship between number of fungal species and pH and dissolved oxygen, while abundance was positively related to temperature, nitrate nitrogen and total phosphorus clustered together. Finally, it seems from the results that fungal communities are more influenced by the seasonal variation. More studies should be carried out to elucidate the effects of water variables on the community structure of fungi in other water systems in Kashmir Himalayas. Key words: water borne fungi, water systems, fungal species, seasonal variation.
USING FEW TEACHING ASSISTANTS

In order to encourage students to participate in online learning forums, prompt responses to their questions are essential. To answer students’ online questions, teaching assistants are assigned to manage discussions and answer questions in online learning forums. To minimize the response time, many teaching assistants may be needed to interact with learners. We investigated the trade-off between the request-response time and the cost of labor for handling the requests since this has become a challenging and important issue for education managers. In this study, a queuing-based model is proposed to construct the relationship between response time and the human resource requirement in a learning forum. In addition, an experiment using students in a Computer Science Introduction course at a vocational high school was conducted to verify the model and determine the average number of assistants required so that the students’ questions can be answered within an acceptable time interval, providing valuable information for managing online discussion forums for educational purposes. Finally, the participants’ perceptions were investigated using a questionnaire revised from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to identify whether feelings of the perception-of-usefulness and the perception-of-satisfaction during the response wait time showed significant differences when the number of teaching assistants was reduced. The results revealed no significant difference in learners’ perceptions after reducing the number of teaching assistants. It confirms that using the model to predict the number of required teaching assistants is highly reliable, and effective in reducing labor costs without jeopardizing student satisfaction.