Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Permutation flow shop energy-efficient scheduling with a position-based learning effect

Severe environmental problems have made green scheduling an emerging research hotspot. In this paper, a permutation flow shop energy-efficient scheduling problem that considers multiple criteria is investigated. The aim is to find the optimal job processing sequence and conveyor speed that minimise both the makespan and total energy consumption. In addition to two types of common criteria, namely, machine-based criterion (i.e. sequence-dependent setup time) and energy-based criteria (including both the transportation time control strategy and machine shutdown strategy), a human-based criterion (i.e. a position-based learning effect) is introduced. A bi-objective programming model is developed, and a multi-objective iterated greedy (MOIG) is designed to reach the Pareto front of the model. Considering that there are two types of decisions in the model (i.e. job sequence and conveyor speed), two algorithm alternatives are designed based on the job sequence and conveyor speed, respectively. Meanwhile, an acceptance criterion with advantages in terms of the convergence speed and solution diversity is proposed. Existing algorithms, including NSGA-II and MOEA/D, are introduced to evaluate the performance of the MOIG. The results emphasise the efficiency of the MOIG. Overall, the model and MOIG effectively improve the green efficiency of enterprises and can reasonably control operating costs.
Design of a Construction Safety Training System using Contextual Design Methodology

In the U.S., the majority of construction companies are small companies with 10 or fewer employees (BLS, 2004). The fatality rate in the construction industry is high, indicating a need for implementing safety training to a greater extent. This research addresses two main goals: to make recommendations and design a safety training system for small construction companies, and to use Contextual Design to design the training system. Contextual Design was developed by Holtzblatt (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1998) in an effort to address the challenge of designing new systems. Ethnographic in nature, the Contextual Design methodology requires field data collection, requirements analysis, model building, visioning and story boarding, and prototyping. A sample of 12 participants consisting of 7 tradespersons, 3 forepersons, and 2 owners/ managers, was selected for data collection. The data was analyzed based on the Contextual Design approach and a training system prototype was designed. The results of this study are recommendations for safety in small construction companies, a low fidelity paper prototype of the training system, and recommendations on future use of Contextual Design for developing training systems.
The Design and Use of High-Speed Transmission Line Links for Global On-Chip Communication

As transistors approach the limits of traditional scaling, computer architects can no longer rely on the increase in density and core frequency to improve the overall system speed. Additionally, attempts to improve performance often result in disproportionately increased power and energy consumption. However, the increased performance and maximum frequency of the transistor allows us to build high-speed circuits specifically for on-chip communication. By incorporating the improving and emerging high-speed circuit technologies into the microprocessor design, it is possible to decrease the power and energy consumption, while simultaneously increasing system performance. This thesis focuses on exploiting and analyzing the architectural opportunities provided by incorporating high-speed communication circuits, specifically on-chip transmission lines and simple high-speed transceivers. In broad terms, the transmission lines are used for a globally shared-medium on-chip interconnect, providing a low-latency, low-energy, packet-relayfree point-to-point link. Even a simple interconnect design can provide more than sufficient performance for smallto medium-scale chip multiprocessors. Additionally, with simple optimizations exploiting benefits of a TLL shared-medium bus, it is possible to mitigate scalability limitations, and provide performance and energy benefits for larger-scale systems. For example, an atomic, low-latency bus provides opportunities to change the cache coherence substrate and optimize Boolean data communication. This thesis will present and evaluate a number of these optimizations, and provide a final recommended design, showing performance and energy benefits with larger scale systems.
Lebensraum’s Tropical Turn

Abstract In 1981 the ATF, FBI, and U.S. Customs Service agents arrested a group of American and Canadian White nationalists as they were on their way to overthrow the government of Dominica. Although seemingly improbable, the event is important because it illustrates the hegemonic nature of the relationship between the United States and Caribbean countries and, also, the globalization of White nationalist violence. In this paper I show that extant theory on White nationalism can be used to explain the White nationalist plot. In particular, I invoke the concept of Lebensraum and the fact that White nationalists espouse multiple objectives—in addition to racism—to explain their intent to subvert a Black country and to live there.
An outsourcing model for lead users: an empirical investigation

Product development costs have been increasing constantly over the past few decades. Outsourcing some or all of the new product development (NPD) activities to external parties is increasingly becoming a popular option in the quest to reduce costs. Lead users (LUs), a special group of users that experience needs earlier than the public, have been identified as an important source of innovative ideas. In this article, we explore and compare the cost impact of outsourcing activities to LUs relative to in-house NPD. Using survey data from 376 European manufacturers, we show that LUs’ impact on cost reduction is higher than that achieved through higher performing in-house NPD teams. The unique attributes of LUs make them a favourable outsourcing partner of NPD activity that can help reduce costs whilst increasing an organisation's innovative ability. The reduction in costs is a combination of the information sharing benefits achieved through in-house NPD and the outsourcing of NPD activities to LUs.
Cloud-Edge-End Intelligence for Fault-Tolerant Renewable Energy Accommodation in Smart Grid

Smart grid integrates the distributed energy resources such as renewable energy with massive information to facilitate the flow of energy in the industries. The renewable energy accommodation is one of the key issues to achieve the energy efficiency in smart grid, which is difficult to obtain dynamic optimal policies due to the intermittency of renewables. To capture statuses of renewable energy for decision-making, large amounts of information in heterogeneous forms are collected by massive end devices deployed in smart grid. Such information not only provides fruitful features for existing learning based algorithms but also incurs high computation complexity. Besides, such heterogeneous data may also contain missing values, which may result in wrong policies by existing algorithms. In this article, a novel cloud-edge-end orchestrated computing scheme is proposed to efficiently repair missing values and obtain optimal policies in two separate layers. In the first layer, deep learning based algorithms deployed can perceive the characteristics and repair the missing values. In the second layer, deep reinforcement learning based algorithms are employed to obtain optimal policies. Simulations on the real power grid dataset illustrate the effectiveness of proposed fault-tolerant renewable energy accommodation algorithm.
Feet and legs tracking using a smart rollator equipped with a Kinect

Clinical evaluation of frailty in the elderly is the first step to decide the degree of assistance they require. Advances in robotics make it possible to turn a standard assistance device into an augmented device that may enrich the existing tests with new sets of daily measured criteria. In this paper we use a standard 4 wheeled rollator, equipped with a Kinect and odometers, for biomechanical gait analysis. This paper focuses on the method we develop to measure and estimate legs and feet position during an assisted walk. The results are compared with motion capture data, as a ground truth. Preliminary results obtained on four healthy persons show that relevant data can be extracted for gait analysis. Some criteria are accurate with regards to the ground truth, eg. foot orientation and ankle angle.
Analysis on the interaction between image quality and optical Q based on NIIRS for remote sensing systems

The relationship between image quality and optical Q is sensitive to the system design parameters such as modulation transfer function (MTF), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and ground sampled distance (GSD). In this paper, two concepts about Q and NIIRS for remote sensing imager quality analysis and design are presented, and each part physics mean in model and formula are illustrated separately, the influence of Q on the image quality of remote sensing system is specific analyzed, the system performance of Q = 1 and Q = 2 of remote sensing base on NIIRS are compared, the interaction between remote sensing image quality and Q is obtained based on NIIRS by image simulations and comparing with each other simulation results, the optimum design of remote sensors are mainly discussed. Finally, a method to improve the image quality scale is posed for remote sensing systems, the image quality scale of remote sensing systems can be improved by increasing along-scan sampling. Comparisons with preliminary results show that the interaction between image quality and Q is very sensitive to the system design parameters although more validation experiments are needed.
Methodology on extracting compact layout rules for latchup prevention in deep-submicron bulk CMOS technology

An experimental methodology to find area-efficient compact layout rules to prevent latchup in bulk complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) is proposed. The layout rules are extracted from the test patterns with different layout spacings or distances. A new latchup prevention design by adding the additional internal double guard rings between input/output cells and internal circuits is first reported in the literature, and its effectiveness has been successfully proven in three different bulk CMOS processes. Through detailed experimental verification including temperature effect, the proposed methodology to extract compact layout rules has been established to save silicon area of CMOS ICs but still to have high enough latchup immunity. This proposed methodology has been successfully verified in a 0.5-/spl mu/m nonsilicided, a 0.35-/spl mu/m silicided, and a 0.25-/spl mu/m silicided shallow-trench-isolation bulk CMOS processes.
Automated Vessels Detection on Infant Retinal Images

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is a common retinal neovascular disorder of premature infants. It can be characterized by inappropriate and disorganized vessel. This paper present a method for blood vessel detection on infant retinal images. The algorithm is designed to detect the retinal vessels. The proposed method applies a Lapalacian of Gaussian as a step-edge detector based on the second-order directional derivative to identify locations of the edge of vessels with zero crossings. The procedure allows parameters computation in a fixed number of operations independent of kernel size. This method is composed of four steps : grayscale conversion, edge detection based on LOG, noise removal by adaptive Wiener filter & median filter, and Otsu's global thresholding. The algorithm has been tested on twenty infant retinal images. In cooperation with the Digital Imaging Research Centre, Kingston University, London and Department of Opthalmology, Imperial College London who supplied all the images used in this project. The algorithm has done well to detect small thin vessels, which are of interest in clinical practice.
High-aspect-ratio photolithography for MEMS applications

High-aspect-ratio photolithography using a commercially available positive photoresist and a conventional contact mask aligner with standard UV light source is described. A multiple coating process is developed to obtain a photoresist thickness up to 23 /spl mu/m while maintaining a smooth photoresist surface. Intimate contact between the mask and wafer is found to be most critical for high-resolution photolithography. Vacuum contact is found to be well-suited for this purpose. Additionally, edge bead removal is found to be of significant importance for intimate contact between the mask and the substrate. Prebake, exposure, and development conditions are optimized for resolution and aspect ratio. Maximum prebake temperature still allowing the photoresist to be developed is found to be the optimal temperature for obtaining high resolution. Prebake time distribution is optimized for avoiding residual stress in the photoresist, as well as maintaining high resolution, when multiple coating is applied. Minimum linewidth and spacing of 3.5 /spl mu/m and 2.5 /spl mu/m, respectively, and a maximum aspect ratio of 7.7 have been achieved in a photoresist thickness of 23 /spl mu/m. Postbake improves the chemical resistance to subsequent processes, for example, electroless nickel plating using the photoresist as a mold. However, postbake also causes pattern distortion, which can be severe at times. Therefore, optimal process and design conditions for minimizing the pattern distortion have been studied.
Complications after appendectomy in patients with treated appendicitis: results from a retrospective study.

BACKGROUND This study was designed to provide additional insights into the incidence of appendectomy complications in patients with appendicitis. METHODS A total of 619 patients who underwent appendectomy for appendicitis between 2014 and 2020 were recruited. Preoperative patient data and details of postoperative complications were collected. Comparisons between simple and complex appendicitis were obtained via univariate and multivariate analyses of the outcomes. RESULTS Simple and complex appendicitis was diagnosed in 192 and 427 patients, respectively. Twenty-eight patients with simple appendicitis developed complications, and 14 of these were infectious complications. In patients with complex appendicitis, 65 patients developed complications, and 55 of these were infectious complications. Infectious complications were identified as the largest proportion of complications. The significant risk factor for infectious complications in simple appendicitis was American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade [odds ratio (OR) =7.843, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.987-30.955, P=0.003]. ASA grade (OR =1.992, P=0.032) and positive bacterial culture (OR =4.019, 95% CI: 1.809-8.933, P=0.001) were significantly related to infectious complication in complex appendicitis. CONCLUSIONS This study showed that appendectomy is not always a routine operation with few complications. There was a relatively high rate of complications in patients with appendicitis, which were mostly infectious complications. A higher ASA grade correlated with infectious complication. In some cases of complex appendicitis, patients with positive bacterial culture may have had a greater risk of infectious complications.
A novel maximum power point tracking control for photovoltaic power system under rapidly changing solar radiation

This paper proposes a novel MPPT control algorithm for a digitally implemented photovoltaic power system under rapidly changing solar radiation. The method of the MPPT control algorithm can be classified into two categories: perturb and observe (P&O) and incremental conductance (IncCond). In comparing the P&O and IncCond algorithms, the dynamic and tracking characteristic of the IncCond algorithm is better than P&O algorithm under rapidly changing solar radiation. But in the case of digital implementation, the InCond algorithm has an error on the decision of maximum power operation point (MPOP). To solve this problem, this paper proposes a improved IncCond algorithm, which can determine the MPOP under rapidly changing solar radiation by inserting a test signal in the control input. By simulation and experimentation, the validity of the proposed control algorithm is proved.
Internal Damage Detection of Composite Structures Using Passive RFID Tag Antenna Deformation Method: Basic Research

This manuscript deals with the detection of internal cracks and defects in aeronautical fibreglass structures. In technical practice, it is problematic to accurately determine the service life or MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of composite materials by the methods used in metallic materials. The problem is mainly the inhomogeneous and anisotropic structure of composites, possibly due to the differences in the macrostructure during production, production processes, etc. Diagnostic methods for detecting internal cracks and damage are slightly different, and in practice, it is more difficult to detect defects using non-destructive testing (NDT). The article deals with the use of Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology integrated in the fibreglass laminates of aircraft structures to detect internal defects based on deformation behaviour of passive RFID tag antenna. The experiments proved the potential of using RFID technology in fibreglass composite laminates when using tensile tests applied on specimens with different structural properties. Therefore, the implementation of passive RFID tags into fibreglass composite structures presents the possibilities of detecting internal cracks and structural health monitoring. The result and conclusion of the basic research is determination of the application conditions for our proposed technology in practice. Moreover, the basic research provides recommendations for the applied research in terms of the use in real composite airframe structures.
INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE USE AFTERMANDATORY ADOPTION

This research seeks to identify factors that influence high school students’ software usage. Students in our study have been observed to vary with respect to their use of a specific software application, Geometer’s Sketchpad®. The use of Geometer’s Sketchpad® is mandatory in Geometry class. However, some students have voluntarily expanded their use of the tool to other classes (for example, Biology class) and to non-school related activities (for example, landscape design). The original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model proposed by Davis (1986, 1989) and the numerous extensions of TAM (Hartwick and Barki, 1994; Karahanna and Straub, 1999; Venkatesh and Davis, 2000) have been used to model computer and software adoption and acceptance. Most of the research in this area examines computer acceptance in voluntary settings, although a few studies have looked at acceptance in mandatory settings (Rawstorne, et al., 1998, 2000). Our research will investigate if the TAM2 model can be adapted to explain (and later to predict) innovative use of a software application by high school students when the initial use of the application is mandatory. We define innovative use as “voluntarily expanding the use of a software application to new tasks and new settings after mandatory adoption for a specific task in a specific setting”.
Design of an Ultra-Wideband Power Divider with Good In-Band Performance and Sharp Roll-Off Skirt

ABSTRACT In this article, a novel ultra-wideband power divider is presented. To achieve ultra-wideband performance and a sharp roll-off skirt, the parallel coupled lines and a short-circuited line are introduced on each side of the coupled three-line microstrip structure. Through even- and odd-mode analysis, the analytical design equations for this proposed power divider are obtained. A prototype power divider is designed and fabricated to demonstrate the performance of the proposed power divider. The simulated and measured results show that the proposed power divider has achieved the predicted features within the specified 3.1–10.6-GHz ultra-wideband range.
Local Recurrence of Melanoma Is Higher After Wide Local Excision Versus Mohs Micrographic Surgery or Staged Excision: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. BACKGROUND Complete removal of melanoma is a primary goal of excision, and local recurrence is one measure to evaluate the efficacy of surgical technique. OBJECTIVE To compare published local recurrence rates for melanoma treated with Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) or staged excision versus wide local excision (WLE). METHODS AND MATERIALS Search of 6 databases identified comparative and noncomparative studies that reported local recurrence rates after MMS, staged excision, or WLE for melanoma. Random-effects meta-analysis was used to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence interval (CI) from comparative studies and event rates from noncomparative studies. RESULTS Of the 71 studies included (16,575 patients), 12 were comparative studies (2,683 patients) and 56 were noncomparative studies (13,698 patients). Comparative studies showed increased recurrence after WLE compared with MMS or staged excision (odds ratio [OR], 2.5; 95% CI, 1.4–4.6) and compared with MMS alone (OR, 3.3; 95% CI, 1.8–5.9). Pooled data from comparative and noncomparative studies showed a local recurrence rate of 7% after WLE (95% CI, 5%–11%), 3% after staged excision (95% CI, 2%–4%), and less than 1% after MMS (95% CI, 0%–1%). Statistical heterogeneity was moderate to high. CONCLUSION Local recurrence of melanoma is significantly lower after MMS (<1%) and staged excision (3%) compared with WLE (7%).
A framework for identification of high-value customers by including social network based variables for churn prediction using neuro-fuzzy techniques

Customer churn has become a significant problem and is one of the prime challenges that many in the services industry are facing. While all kinds of churn lead to incur loss, the loss of low-value customers will be naturally less damaging than the loss of loyal and high-value ones. So companies need to build a churn prediction model for their high-value customers. In this paper, a two-phase framework for prediction of high-value customer churn has been proposed. Phase 1 is the identification phase which takes into account social-network based variables of customers in identifying the high-value ones. The data of an identified high-value customer is used as the input for Phase 2 to prepare the churn prediction model. Data of a major telecommunication company has been used to implement the framework. The customers were clustered by using K-means algorithm. After ranking clusters, the top-cluster was selected according to clusters ratings. The data belonging to the top cluster is used in churn prediction model building phase. In this phase, two neuro-fuzzy techniques, namely the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and the locally linear neuro-fuzzy (LLNF) have been applied together with locally linear model tree (LoLiMoT) learning algorithm on churn data. A new algorithm has been devised for comparing these methods with the most widely used neural networks such as multi layer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF) networks. Results of comparison indicate that the neuro-fuzzy techniques perform better than neural network models and they are a good candidate for churn prediction purposes.