Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Cold Storage on Saffron Flowers Shelf Life and Dried Stigma Quality

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a valuable crop in Iran and worldwide. Due to a rising production rate of saffron flowers and limitation of harvesting time, the best storage conditions should be determined. In this research, saffron flowers were harvested at semi-bloom form stage, and placed in plastic baskets, in two different thickness accumulations (10 and 15 cm). The flowers were stored at 0, 4, 8 and 21 ˚C for after 2, 4, 7, 14 and 21 days. During storage period, weight loss percentage was calculated. In addition, the stigmas were separated from the styles and dried in an oven at 60 o C. Bioactive compounds such as crocin, picrocrocin and safranal, and coliform enumeration were evaluated. The result indicated that weight loss percentage increased with increasing storage thickness, temperature and storage duration; however bioactive compounds reduced. The crocin and picrocrocin content were registered 298.73 and 100, respectively, when flowers were stored at 0 o C for 21 days. These values at 8 o C and 21 o C were not in the standard range; therefore these temperatures were not found suitable for flower storing. Although coliform contamination increased during storage days, the value was acceptable after 7 days. According to the results, it is recommended to store saffron flowers in basket with 10 cm Thickness Accumulation (TA) at 0 o C for 7 days.
A MODEL-BASED METHODOLOGY FOR SIMULTANEOUS PROCESS DESIGN AND CONTROL FOR CHEMICAL PROCESSES

This paper presents a new model-based methodology for integration of process design and control (IPDC) for chemical processes. The proposed systematic model-based methodology does not have difficulties in handling complex problem formulations with larger number of variables and constraints. The methodology is organized in four hierarchical stages based on a decomposition of the general optimization problem into four sub-problems: (1) pre-analysis stage, (2) steady-state analysis stage, (3) dynamic analysis stage, and (4) evaluation stage. The objective of each stage is to define the search space and enumerate (and/or generate) a set of promising candidates. In each subsequent stage, the search space is reduced until in the final stage only a small number of candidates need to be evaluated. Therefore, while the problem complexity increases with every subsequent stage, the dimension and size of the problem is reduced. The application of the methodology is highlighted through an ethylene glycol production process. The preliminary results show that the new methodology is able to find the optimum conversion of EO at the minimum operating cost and residence time by considering the operability aspects in a simple and systematic manner.
Health risk assessment of non-potable domestic water supplies in the Netherlands

Dual water supply systems were installed in several newly built housing estates in the Netherlands in the late1990s. These residential homes were provided with both drinking water and separately with so-called household water for toilet flushing, laundry and the garden tap. Household water was produced by limited treatment from a variety of sources and had a lower quality than drinking water. No legislation for (the quality of) this type of water was present at the time and the Dutch government appointed six of these estates as pilot projects. Four pilot projects were intensively monitored for toxicological and microbiological safety as well as microbiological stability during a period of almost 16 months. Specific incidents such as cross connections between drinking water and household water and observations of viruses and pathogenic protozoa in treated water demonstrated that some of these systems were microbiologically unsafe. Furthermore certain household waters had a relatively high biofilm formation potential leading to growth of Legionella sp. and Aeromonas and complaints from customers about the smell and colour of the household water. In nearly all cases concentrations of heavy metals and organic pollutants were below drinking water standards, hence the toxicological risk caused by chemical substances was not significant. Based on the results of this study the Dutch government decided to discourage the production and distribution of household water on a large scale. At present all projects owned by water companies in the Netherlands have been terminated by replacing household water with drinking water.
Transmission system expansion planning by simulated annealing

This paper presents a simulated annealing approach to the long term transmission expansion planning problem which is a hard, large scale combinatorial problem. The proposed approach has been compared with a more conventional optimization technique based on mathematical decomposition with a zero-one implicit enumeration procedure. Tests have been performed on three different systems. Two smaller systems for which optimal solutions are known have been used to tune the main parameters of the simulated annealing process. The simulated annealing method has then been applied to a larger example system for which no optimal solutions are known: as a result an entire family of interesting solutions have been obtained with costs about 7% less than the best solutions known for that particular example system.
How augmented reality affected academic achievement in K-12 education – a meta-analysis and thematic-analysis

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of augmented reality (AR) applications on K-12 students’ academic achievement through meta-analysis and thematic analysis. 40 samples from 35 articles published between 2006 and 2020 were used to examine the impact of AR on academic achievement and to explore the effects of differences in grade level, academic subject, duration of the experiment, and sampling methods. The research results showed that (1) AR has a medium effect on K-12 students’ academic achievement (g = 0.437) according to the Thalheimer and Cook’s effect size classification. (2) academic subject and duration of experiment as moderator variables have a significant influence on whether AR application will enhance K-12 students’ academic achievement, and (3) the advantages of AR in K-12 education include enhancing interest and motivation, offering vivid resources, providing an interactive environment, and improving attention. The disadvantages include integrated method limitations, system function shortcomings, and the causing of physical discomfort problems. The advantages and disadvantages show why AR application has a medium effect on K-12 students’ academic achievement.
A Literature Survey of Recent Advances in Chatbots

Chatbots are intelligent conversational computer systems designed to mimic human conversation to enable automated online guidance and support. The increased benefits of chatbots led to their wide adoption by many industries in order to provide virtual assistance to customers. Chatbots utilise methods and algorithms from two Artificial Intelligence domains: Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. However, there are many challenges and limitations in their application. In this survey we review recent advances on chatbots, where Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language processing are used. We highlight the main challenges and limitations of current work and make recommendations for future research investigation
The effect of government R&D subsidies on corporate R&D investment in South Korea: verification using meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Whether public R&D subsidies complement or substitute private R&D investment has long been a subject of debate. Also, the results of previous studies on whether R&D subsidies are effective for large corporations or more effective for SMEs have been mixed. This study analyses research studies in Korea over the past 20 years and provides comprehensive conclusions on these controversies. As a methodology, firstly, meta-analysis is performed to synthesise the results of previous studies. Secondly, more sophisticated effect sizes are estimated by meta-regression analysis, and then panel analysis is performed to confirm robustness. The results indicate that government R&D subsidies have a positive (+) additionality effect on corporate R&D investment. It is also found that the additionality effect is larger when R&D subsidies are provided to SMEs rather than large enterprises. Analysis by time showed a negative (−) effect appears initially, and the trend improved over time to a positive (+) effect. The results of this study can be used as primary data for verifying the economic feasibility of the government R&D supports and setting the basic direction for the R&D subsidy policy in the future.
Clinical Considerations in Orthodontically Forced Eruption for Restorative Purposes

For restorations on teeth involving invasion of the supracrestal tissue attachment (biological width), as well as for lack of ferrule effect, crown lengthening is required for long-term periodontal health and success of the restoration. In the same fashion, site development is often necessary prior to implant placement in order to provide optimal peri-implant soft and hard tissue architecture conducive to future esthetics and function. Orthodontic extrusion, also known as forced eruption, has been developed and employed clinically to serve the purposes of increasing the clinical crown length, correcting the periodontal defect, and developing the implant site. In order to provide comprehensive guidance on the clinical usage of this technique and maximize the outcome for patients who receive the dental restoration, the currently available literatures were summarized and discussed in the current review. Compared to traditional crown lengthening surgery, forced eruption holds advantages of preserving supporting bone, providing improved esthetics, limiting the involvement of adjacent teeth, and decreasing the negative impact on crown-to-root ratio compared to the traditional resective approach. As a non-invasive and natural technique capable of increasing the available volume of bone and soft tissue, forced eruption is also an attractive and promising option for implant site development. Both fixed and removable appliances can be used to achieve the desired extrusion, but patient compliance is a primary limiting factor for the utilization of removable appliances. In summary, forced eruption is a valuable treatment adjunct for patients requiring crown lengthening or implant restorations. Nonetheless, comprehensive evaluation and treatment planning are required for appropriate case selection based upon the known indications and contraindications for each purpose; major contraindications include inflammation, ankylosis, hypercementosis, vertical root fracture, and root proximity. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the long-term stability of orthodontically extruded teeth and the supporting bone and soft tissue that followed them.
Improved power converter line synchronisation using an adaptive Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)

The problem of line synchronisation for grid connected power converters where the grid is weak or comes from a remote area power supply with poor frequency governing, is now well recognised. Such supplies can suffer a significant amount of line voltage distortion due to notches caused by power device commutation and/or low frequency harmonic content. This distortion can easily corrupt the output of a conventional zero crossing detector. In this paper a method of filtering the incoming supply voltage using a recursive discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is presented. This filter shows a high degree of noise immunity but produces a phase shift between the incoming supply voltage and filtered output voltage when the time window of the DFT does not match the system period. Two methods of compensating for this phase shift are presented based on tracking the drift in the phase predicted by the recursive DFT. The first method makes a deadbeat adjustment to the time window (thereby changing the sampling rate) while the second approach calculates the phase error based on the linear phase response of the DFT. These compensation algorithms can correct for discrepancies of at least 25% between the DFT time window and the system period, and can track grid frequencies with slew rates as high as 40 Hz/sec with negligible phase shift between the line voltage input and the filtered output waveforms.
Solid Oxide Cell Electrode Nanocomposites Fabricated by Inkjet Printing Infiltration of Ceria Scaffolds

The enhancement of solid oxide cell (SOC) oxygen electrode performance through the generation of nanocomposite electrodes via infiltration using wet-chemistry processes has been widely studied in recent years. An efficient oxygen electrode consists of a porous backbone and an active catalyst, which should provide ionic conductivity, high catalytic activity and electronic conductivity. Inkjet printing is a versatile additive manufacturing technique, which can be used for reliable and homogeneous functionalization of SOC electrodes via infiltration for either small- or large-area devices. In this study, we implemented the utilization of an inkjet printer for the automatic functionalization of different gadolinium-doped ceria scaffolds, via infiltration with ethanol:water-based La1−xSrxCo1−yFeyO3−δ (LSCF) ink. Scaffolds based on commercial and mesoporous Gd-doped ceria (CGO) powders were used to demonstrate the versatility of inkjet printing as an infiltration technique. Using yttrium-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) commercial electrolytes, symmetrical LSCF/LSCF–CGO/YSZ/LSCF–CGO/LSCF cells were fabricated via infiltration and characterized by SEM-EDX, XRD and EIS. Microstructural analysis demonstrated the feasibility and reproducibility of the process. Electrochemical characterization lead to an ASR value of ≈1.2 Ω cm2 at 750 °C, in the case of nanosized rare earth-doped ceria scaffolds, with the electrode contributing ≈0.18 Ω cm2. These results demonstrate the feasibility of inkjet printing as an infiltration technique for SOC fabrication.
Reflected Wave Reduction Based on Time-Delay Separation for the Plane Array of Multilayer Acoustic Absorbers

This paper presents a control technique for reducing the reflection of acoustic signals for the plane array of multilayer acoustic absorbers underwater. In order to achieve this, a plane array of multilayer acoustic absorbers is proposed to attenuate low-frequency noise, with each unit consisting of a piezoelectric transducer, two layers of polyvinylidene fluorides and three layers of the acoustic window. Time-delay separation is used to find the incident and reflected acoustic signals to achieve reflected sound reduction. Experimental comparison of the attenuation rate of the reflected acoustic signal when performing passive and active controls is considered to verify the effectiveness of the time-delay separation technique applied plane array absorbers. Experiments on the plane array of smart skin absorbers confirmed that the reduction of reflected acoustic signals makes it suitable for a wide range of underwater applications.
Safety Assessment of a Steel Frame Using LRFD and SBRA Methods

Powerful computers on each designer’s desk, improvements in simulation technique, and advances in the reliability assessment theory make it possible to consider a transition from prescriptive concepts, such as partial factor design (PFD), to fully probabilistic concepts applicable in design practice, such as the feasible simulation-based reliability assessment (SBRA) method. Using a pilot example, the main differences between the PFD assessment procedure and SBRA procedure are demonstrated and described. Attention is focused on the substance of individual steps starting with the assignment (including a representation of loading, mechanical, and geometrical properties of the structure and characteristics of imperfections) and concluding the comparison with safety limits expressed vis-a-vis PFD by a ratio of demand and capacity (to be less than 1.0) and regarding SBRA by comparing the probability of failure Pf and design (target) probability Pd , i.e., Pf < Pd . The potential, efficiency, and advantages of .
Comparison of polarization handling methods in coherent optical systems

The authors compare three polarization handling methods in coherent optical systems. These methods are: endless polarization control, polarization diversity, and data-induced polarization switching. These methods are also compared with active, data-synchronous polarization switching. It is seen that endless polarization control is potentially the most powerful candidate, however, the choice of polarization control devices remain questionable. Polarization diversity is as versatile as polarization control and is potentially the fastest method; however, it yields lower receiver sensitivity. Endless control or a well-designed diversity receiver should be used for coherent trunk systems. Data-induced polarization switching is restricted to frequency-shift-keying (FSK) systems. It promises a loss span similar to that of diversity, but is far simpler, which makes it recommendable for FSK distribution systems. >
Digital communications using self-phased arrays

A new technique for full duplex digital communications using adaptive phase conjugation is presented. The technique is based on mixing the RF signal to an intermediate frequency where it can be easily processed, and filtering the phase of the IF signal to separate the geometry phase and the message phase. A 6 GHz microstrip retrodirective antenna array was built, together with the signal IF processing needed for full duplex operation. The measured RCS values of a circular array are much flatter and are 0 to -5 dB up to /spl plusmn/80/spl deg/. Two way digital communications at a baud rate of 78 kbits/sec was also demonstrated with BER <10/sup -6/ for SNRs around 10 dB. The application areas are in high-performance digital mobile telecommunications for commercial and military applications.
Seasonal distribution of inhaled allergens in allergic asthma patients with or without allergic rhinitis

Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Qingdao University, Yantai, Shandong 264000, China; Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Laishan Branch of Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Qingdao University, Yantai, Shandong 264000, China; Department of Allergy, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Qingdao University, Yantai, Shandong 264000, China; Shandong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases, Yantai, Shandong, China; Department of Oto-Rhino Laryngology, Upper Airways Research Laboratory, Ghent University and Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium; Division of ENT Diseases, CLINTEC, Karolinska Institute, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden.
The Transformer Fault Diagnosis Method Based on Improved Support Vector Machine

Aiming at the fault diagnosis problem, the transformers fault diagnosis method is proposed based on improved support vector machine. The optimum parameters setting are got by the particle swarm optimization. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method of this paper has the good classification performance, the high reliability, effective and feasible. Keywords: support vector machine, fault diagnosis, particle swarm, classification
An improved FD-TD full wave analysis for arbitrary guiding structures using a two-dimensional mesh

A novel finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) formulation is proposed for the efficient analysis of arbitrary waveguiding structures. In contrast to the conventional FD-TD eigenvalue formulation, which requires a three-dimensional mesh for adequately formed resonator sections, this method utilizes advantageously a two-dimensional mesh for analyzing the full-wave dispersive characteristic of guided structures. This leads to a significant reduction in CPU time and storage requirements. Numerical examples are presented for bi- and unilateral finlines with finite metallization thickness and for a pair of coupled shielded dielectric guides. The theory is verified by comparison with results obtained by other methods. <<ETX>>
Enhanced Antibacterial and Antioxidant Properties of Chitosan Films Blended with Gallic Acid and Incorporated with Thymol Silver Nanoparticles

In the present study, an attempt has been made to build and evaluate Chitosan+Glycerol/Gallic acid/Thymol-silver nanoparticles or chitosan blended (C+G/GA/T-SNPs) film to significantly improve antioxidant and antibacterial activity for accelerated wound healing. Methanolic Gallic acid is used for the first time in antibacterial chitosan control (C+G) films. All developed films, compounds was Thymol and Gallic acid and their synthesized Thymol silver nanoparticles (T-SNPs) and Gallic acid silver nanoparticles (GA-SNPs) were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD), Zeta potential (ZP), Dynamic light scattering (DLS), and UV-Vis spectroscopy. T-SNPs and GA-SNPs are rod and spherical in shape and were sufficient to reduce, capped, and stabilize. T-SNPs and GA-SNPs were measured Dynamic Light scattering and found to be 123.2 nm and 121.1 nm with surface charges of -19.7 and -20.3 respectively. The incorporation of methanolic Gallic acid and T-SNPs into chitosan films, as predicted, effectively enhanced antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. The antimicrobial activity of Thymol, T-SNPs and C+G/GA/T-SNPs film showed more zone of inhibition than Gallic acid, GA-SNPs and C+G film. The elasticity, texture and folding endurance of the C+G film and C+G/GA/T-SNPs films have been substantially improved. The ecological quality of the generated C+G and C+G/GA/T-SNPs film was determined by the assessment of soil degradation and water degradation parameters. These findings lead to the conclusion that the C+G/GA/T-SNPs film produced with Gallic acid and T-SNPs can improve wound healing. Keywords: Chitosan, Gallic Acid, Thymol Silver Nanoparticles, Antibacterial and Antioxidant Properties.
A Postoperative Free Flap Monitoring System: Circulatory Compromise Detection Based on Visible-Light Image

Microvascular free flap surgery has been a reliable reconstruction method, but some flaps may have circulatory compromise within five to seven days of surgery. Besides, many auxiliary devices are expensive and complex to operate. Therefore, most of the medical personnel still use the manual observation. To decrease heavy workload on medical personnel, the monitoring system was developed to analyze the color variation of free flap by a visible-light camera with advantages such as fast operation, low cost, noninvasive behavior, and contactless and nonradiative operation would be also needed for patients. The proposed system was mainly comprised of a longitudinal image registration without markers and a circulatory compromise detection, which were aiming to reduce the deformation from patients’ motion and eliminate the influence of illumination variation from the surrounding, respectively. In the clinical trial, the performance assessment of image registration reveals that the average and the standard variation of dice similarity coefficient (DSC) can reach 0.959 and 0.011, respectively. The relationship among the situation of blood perfusion and the results of circulatory compromise detection at flap was summarized and shown that the detection system not only determined the moment of vascular occlusion but also the type of occlusion. In addition, vascular congestion was even detected much earlier than manual observation. Therefore, our monitoring system is expected to relieve the workload on medical personnel and could be a reliable tool for the surgeon to hold onto the chance of repairing the free flap with vascular obstruction.