Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recording performance and tribological evaluation of FIB defined tape recording heads

Aggressive growth in cartridge capacity in future generation tape drives requires amongst others, high linear recording and track densities. In order to improve the track misregistration (TMR) budget at smaller track pitches, the erase band and tolerances on the recorded track width need to be minimized. This can be achieved by "trimming" the write element to the desired track width by forming a longitudinal channel on either side of the clement on the tape bearing surface (TBS) using focused ion beam (FIB) milling. Cross-track measurements depict desired track widths with reduced forward-reverse track width asymmetry in the read-write-read head configuration. Investigation of the head/tape interface does not predict any undesirable effects. These channels capture debris and hence will reduce the recording loss, especially at higher linear recording densities, due to tape tenting over loose debris transported through the interface and near the recording elements. A conceptual channel design is presented that will further reduce debris near the recording elements during the life of the head.
System dynamic modeling of a piezoelectric hydraulic pump

A system dynamic model has been developed for assessing the performance of a piezoelectric hydraulic pump. The pump system comprises a stack actuator driven pump, four-way valve, hydraulic accumulator, and hydraulic actuator. A system of differential equations was developed that governs the electrical / mechanical / fluid coupled behavior. The system of equations was simultaneously solved using MATLAB. The results were compared to pump data for a stack actuator input of 2 MV/m at operating frequencies between 2.5 Hz and 100 Hz. Previous work comparing the model to experimental results was recently accepted for publication in a future article . The work presented below presents a review of the model and discusses additional experimental results of the pump's flow rate response under hydraulic actuator loads. The model achieved reasonable agreement with flow rate measurements when the hydraulic actuator was loaded with 62 N and 142 N of constant force. Rate effects were observed to limit the high frequency performance. These effects were attributed to fluid compressibility, check valve resistance, and self heating of the stack actuator. The model provides a design tool for evaluating bandwidth limitations and increasing pressure and flow rate.
Special Session: How much quality is enough quality? A case for acceptability in approximate designs

Approximate systems are designed to offer improved efficiency with potentially reduced quality of results. Quality of output in these systems is typically quantified in comparison to a precise result using metrics such as RMSE, MAE, PSNR, or application-specific metrics such as structural similarity of images (SSIM). Furthermore, systems are typically designed to maximize efficiency for a given minimum quality requirement. It is often difficult to determine what this quality requirement should be for an application, let alone a system. Thus, a fixed quality requirement may be overly conservative, and leave optimization opportunities on the table. In this work, we present a different approach to evaluate approximate systems based on the usefulness of results instead of quality. Our method qualitatively determines the acceptability of approximate results within different processing pipelines. To demonstrate the method, we implement three image and signal processing applications featuring scenarios of image classification, image recognition, and frequency estimation. Our results show that designing approximate systems to guarantee acceptability can produce up to 20% more valid results than the conservative quality thresholds commonly adopted in the literature, allowing for higher error rates and, consequently, lower energy cost.
Dietary Lysine Affect Carcass Characteristics and Myostatin Gene Exon 1 Region Methylation in Muscle Tissue of Broilers

Amino acids emerged in various biochemical cycles in vivo, affecting the performance and carcass characteristics of broilers. In this study, the contents of dietary lysine and their effects on carcass performance of broiler were investigated. Experimental results showed that deficient dietary lysine significantly reduced live weight, carcass weight, eviscerated yield with gihlet (EYG) and eviscerated yield (EY) of broilers. Whereas, the percentage of slaughter yield, the percentage of eviscerated yield (PEY) and the percentage of eviscerated yield with giblet (PEG) were slightly affected. Many CpG sites were found at the myostatin exon 1 region (nucleotides 2360-2980 bp). At the myostatin exon 1 region where CpG sites enriched (nucleotides 2360-2980 bp), we found significantly lower methylation rate of 18% in low-lysine group of 55-day-old broilers, compared with methylation rate of 87% in control group, which suggested the deficient dietary lysine may lead to demethylation of their original methylated sites. In muscle tissues, the exon1 hypermethylation status of myostatin gene was detected, which was negative correlated with the expression of this gene. These results suggested that methylation of this gene was a dynamic process, which plays a dominant role in regulation of gene expression for development of individuals.
Personal weaknesses recognized by high school students in the North-West of Italy

This study is part of a project aimed at supporting the weaknesses of young people who are experiencing, or are at risk of reaching, NEET condition (Not in Education, Employment or Training; aged between 15 and 29 or 34, according to different definitions). The first signs of the extreme discomfort caused by Neet condition were sought by investigating signs of weakness in high school students in the Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta and Liguria regions. Of course students as such are not Neets and the anonymity required for a survey dealing with very personal issues does not allow a longitudinal study to be carried out on the same individuals. However, the construction of a comparison base referring to a generic population, relative to the incidence of certain states of weakness (or some of their combinations), will allow for a subsequent comparison with the incidence of the same difficulties in school age for those who find themselves in a Neet situation. A survey questionnaire was administered to 931 students, an operator being present in the classrooms, shortly before the start of the pandemic. Collected results will therefore be more directly linked to school activities "in presence", even if discontinuities in teaching methods and characteristics caused by the pandemic might have brought in alterations that will need to be monitored over time.
Novel Ultra-Low-Voltage Flip-Flops: Near-Vth Modeling and VLSI Integration

This paper presents two novel ultra-low-voltage (ULV) Single-Edge-Triggered flip-flops (SET-FF) based on the True-Single-Phase-Clocking (TSPC) scheme. By exploiting the TSPC principle, the overall energy efficiency has been improved compared to the traditional flip-flop designs while providing fully static, contention-free functionality to satisfy ULV operation. At 0.5V near-Vth level in 65nm bulk CMOS technology, the proposed SET-FFs demonstrate up to 11-45% and 7-20% of energy efficiency at 0% and 100% data activity rates compared to the best known SET-FFs. The proposed SET-FF can safely operate down to 0.24V of supply voltage without corrupting rail-to-rail voltage levels at its internal nodes. The integration of proposed SET-FFs in a 320-bit parallel shift register demonstrated up to 33% of clock network power, 17-39% of register power reductions compared to the state-of-the-art and commercial standard-cells at near-Vth level. In addition to these merits, with the aid of parasitic modeling, this paper re-evaluates the vital performance metrics of SET-FFs at near-Vth voltage domain, improving their characterization accuracy and enabling the VLSI integration for commercial end-use.
Human motion recognition based on features and models selected HMM

This paper research on the motion recognition based on HMM with Kinect. Kinect provides skeletal data consist of 3D body joints with its lower price and convenience. In this work, several methods are used to determine the optimal subset of features among Cartesian coordinates, distance to hip center, velocity, angle and angular velocity, in order to improve the recognition rate. K-means is used for vector quantization and HMM is used as recognition method. HMM is an effective signal processing method which contains time calibration, provides a learning mechanism and recognition ability. Cluster numbers of K-means, structure and state numbers of HMM are optimized as well. The proposed methods are applied to the MSR Action3D dataset. Results show that the proposed methods obtain better recognition accuracy than the state of the art methods.
A 98/196 GHz Low Phase Noise Voltage Controlled Oscillator With a Mode Selector Using a 90 nm CMOS Process

A 98/196 GHz low phase noise voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with a fundamental/push-push mode selector using a 90 nm CMOS process is presented in this letter. An innovative concept of the VCO with the mode selector is proposed to switch the fundamental or second harmonic to the RF output. The VCO demonstrates a fundamental frequency of up to 98 GHz with an output power of greater than -8 dBm. The phase noise of the VCO is better than -100.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency, and its figure-of-merit is better than -186 dBc/Hz. Moreover, the output frequency of the work is up to 196 GHz with a fundamental suppression of greater than -30 dBc as the VCO is operated in push-push mode.
Real-Time On-Line Performance Diagnostics of Heavy-Duty Industrial Gas Turbines

This paper describes the results of real-time, on-line performance monitoring of two gas turbines over a period of five months in 1997. A commercially available software system is installed to monitor, analyze and store measurements obtained from the plant's distributed control system. The software is installed in a combined-cycle, cogeneration power plant, located in Massachusetts, USA, with two Frame 7EA gas turbines in Apr. 1997. Vendor's information such as correction and part load performance curves are utilized to calculate expected engine performance and compare it with measurements. In addition to monitoring the general condition and performance of the gas turbines, user-specified financial data is used to determine schedules for compressor washing and inlet filter replacement by balancing the associated costs with lost revenue. All measurements and calculated information are stored in databases for real-time and historical trending and tabulating. The data is analyzed ex post facto to identify salient performance and maintenance issues.
Designing Automated Deployment Strategies of Face Recognition Solutions in Heterogeneous IoT Platforms

In this paper, we tackle the problem of deploying face recognition (FR) solutions in heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. The main challenges are the optimal deployment of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the high variety of IoT devices (e.g., robots, tablets, smartphones, etc.), the secure management of biometric data while respecting the users’ privacy, and the design of appropriate user interaction with facial verification mechanisms for all kinds of users. We analyze different approaches to solving all these challenges and propose a knowledge-driven methodology for the automated deployment of DNN-based FR solutions in IoT devices, with the secure management of biometric data, and real-time feedback for improved interaction. We provide some practical examples and experimental results with state-of-the-art DNNs for FR in Intel’s and NVIDIA’s hardware platforms as IoT devices.
Low cost SINS/GPS integration for land vehicle navigation

The recent progress in the field of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) has made low cost inertial devices become a possible option for land navigation. However, the weak stand-alone accuracy and poor run-to-run stability of low cost inertial devices make them not usable as a sole navigation system. Even the integration of them as a supporting device into a navigation system requires non-traditional approaches and algorithms. The objective of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using this kind of low cost inertial device, specifically the Crossbow DMU-6X, integrated with GPS information, to provide the navigation capability to bridge the GPS outages for tens of seconds. A series of tests were conducted in a land vehicle. Post-processing results show that when the GPS signal is available, the position accuracy of low cost SINS/GPS integration is same as that of GPS only. With the complete loss of GPS signals, position error is shown to be less than 10 meters, after 10 seconds. From these results, we can conclude that although GPS and current low cost IMU integration cannot improve the absolute positioning accuracy, it has a high data update rate and can give motion information by SINS only when GPS is not available for a short time, such as in heavily forested areas, in urban centers, in buildings or underground.
Role of Energy Storage with Renewable Electricity Generation

Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, have vast potential to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions in the electric sector. Climate change concerns, state initiatives including renewable portfolio standards, and consumer efforts are resulting in increased deployments of both technologies. Both solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy have variable and uncertain (sometimes referred to as intermittent) output, which are unlike the dispatchable sources used for the majority of electricity generation in the United States. The variability of these sources has led to concerns regarding the reliability of an electric grid that derives a large fraction of its energy from these sources as well as the cost of reliably integrating large amounts of variable generation into the electric grid. In this report, we explore the role of energy storage in the electricity grid, focusing on the effects of large-scale deployment of variable renewable sources (primarily wind and solar energy).
Webometric study of private universities in Bangladesh

There have been substantial studies conducted on webometrics, especially on the impact of websites and the web impact factor. The present study analysed the websites of private universities in Bangladesh according to the webometrics indicator. It examines and explores the 44 private university websites in Bangladesh and identifies the number of web pages and link pages, and calculates the Overall Web Impact Factor (WIF) and Absolute Web Impact Factor (WIF). In a crosssectional study, all the websites were analysed and compared using AltaVista search engine. The websites were then ranked based on these webometric indicators. The study revealed that some private universities in Bangladesh have higher number of web pages but their link pages are very small in number, thus the websites fall behind in their Overall WIF, self link, external links and Absolute WIF. Finally, it is showed that these universities did not have much impact factor on the web and were not known internationally. The major reasons are discussed and suggestions to overcome the problems are presented.
A Multi-Agent System for Generating a Personalized Newspaper Digest

This paper describes the PZ system, an assistant system that generates a personalized newspaper digest. To cope with the manifold user interests and the dynamic nature of the newspaper domain, the system is built as a multi-agent system. Each agent models a different facet of the user’s interest. Working together in a economy where only useful agents survive, the agents learn from the feedback the users provide as they read the digest. The use of implicit feedback was found to be sufficient for generating a good digest. Experiments with simulated users and experience with real users are reported.
Empirical Evaluation of New Robust Travel Time Estimation Algorithms

Travel times are key statistics for traffic performance, policy, and management evaluation purposes. Estimating travel times from local traffic speeds collected with loops or other sensors has been a relevant and lively research area. The most widespread and arguably most flexible algorithms developed for this purpose fall into the class of trajectory methods, which reconstruct synthetic vehicle trajectories on the basis of measured spot speeds and encompass various assumptions on which speeds prevail between traffic sensors. From these synthetic trajectories, average travel times can be deduced. This paper reviews and compares a number of these algorithms against two new trajectory algorithms based on spatiotemporal filtering of speed and 1/speed (slowness). On the basis of real data (from induction loops and an automated vehicle identification system), it is demonstrated that these new algorithms are more accurate (in terms of bias and residual error) than previous algorithms, and more robust with respect to increasing amounts of missing data.
How temptation changes across time: effects of self-efficacy for self-regulated learning and autonomy support

Abstract Students often work on academic tasks in the face of an attractive alternative. In an experimental setting, we examined how students perceive temptation differently across time depending on their self-efficacy for self-regulated learning and autonomy-supportive contexts. Specifically, we focussed on how individual differences in self-efficacy for self-regulated learning interact with different autonomy-supportive contexts (provision of either choice or relevance) to predict students’ perceived temptation, affect, and performance across time. Results indicated that students low in self-efficacy for self-regulated learning perceived an increase in temptation across time, while those high in self-efficacy for self-regulated learning perceived a decrease in temptation across time. Moreover, we found that especially for students with low self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, providing choice opportunities or adding relevance to the task predicted lower temptation, higher positive affect, and lower negative affect.
From Syndemic Lesson after COVID-19 Pandemic to a “Systemic Clinical Risk Management” Proposal in the Perspective of the Ethics of Job Well Done

The syndemic framework proposed by the 2021–2030 World Health Organization (WHO) action plan for patient safety and the introduction of enabling technologies in health services involve a more effective interpretation of the data to understand causation. Based on the Systemic Theory, this communication proposes the “Systemic Clinical Risk Management” (SCRM) to improve the Quality of Care and Patient Safety. This is a new Clinical Risk Management model capable of developing the ability to observe and synthesize different elements in ways that lead to in-depth interventions to achieve solutions aligned with the sustainable development of health services. In order to avoid uncontrolled decision-making related to the use of enabling technologies, we devised an internal Learning Algorithm Risk Management (LARM) level based on a Bayesian approach. Moreover, according to the ethics of Job Well Done, the SCRM, instead of giving an opinion on events that have already occurred, proposes a bioethical co-working because it suggests the best way to act from a scientific point of view.
Fuzzy Logic Model for Equilibrium Scour Downstream of a Dam's Vertical Gate

Scour at a downstream vertical gate of a dam is investigated using a fuzzy logic inference system. The application is presented for experimental data sets. A comparison is made between a regression formulation (RM) and a fuzzy logic approach. Some restrictive assumptions for RM are discussed. Here the Takagi–Sugeno (TS) approach is used with a constant function in the consequent part of the fuzzy rules. It is demonstrated that the TS model gives a lower error than the RM. Furthermore, scatter diagrams indicate that the TS approach has superiority over the RM.
Position estimation in induction machines utilizing rotor bar slot harmonics and carrier frequency signal injection

This paper presents a simple and robust way of utilizing harmonic saliencies for the estimation of rotor position. A carrier frequency voltage excitation is used to produce a carrier frequency current, which contains the desired spatial information. A closed-loop, tracking observer is then used to estimate the rotor position. Due to its reliance on a spatial saliency and carrier frequency signal injection, the technique is very robust over a wide speed range, including low and zero speed.
Subsea applications of continuum robots

Continuum robot mechanisms generate movement by bending continuously along their length to produce a sequence of smooth curves. This contrasts with discrete robot devices, which generate movement at independent joints separated by supporting links. The two types of mechanism have very different internal structure, and hence produce very different motions. Three applications are described, all utilising the parallel bellows method of continuum construction, generating controlled spatial bending according to internal fluid pressure. The AMADEUS project is developing a dextrous underwater robot hand for grasping and manipulation tasks using continuum fingers. The FLAPS project is developing propulsion systems which replicate the mechanics of fish swimming, as well as an inspection system for confined locations utilising multiple actuator sections.
Systematic Study on Thermo-Mechanical Durability of Pb-Free Assemblies: Experiments and FE Analysis

As the ban of the Pb use in electronics products is approaching due to the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and restriction of hazardous substances (ROHS) directives, electronics companies start to deliver the products using the Pb-free solders. There are extensive databases of mechanical properties, durability properties (for both mechanical and thermal cycling), and micromechanical characteristics for Sn-Pb solders. But similar databases are not readily yet available for Pb-free solders to predict its mechanical behavior under environmental stresses. In this study, the thermo-mechanical durability of the Pb-free Sn3.8Ag0. 7Cu solder is investigated by a systematic approach combining comprehensive thermal cycling tests and finite element modeling. A circuit card assembly (CCA) test vehicle was designed to analyze several design and assembly process variables when subjected to environmental extremes. The effects of mixed solder systems, device types, and underfill are addressed in the thermal cycling tests. The thermal cycle profile consisted of temperature extremes from −55to+125° Celsius with a 15min dwell at hot, a 10min dwell at cold, and a 5–10° Celsius per minute ramp. Thermal cycling results show that Sn3.8Ag0. 7Cu marginally outperforms SnPb for four different components under the studied test condition. In addition, the extensive detailed three-dimensional viscoplastic finite element stress and damage analysis is conducted for five different thermal cycling tests of both Sn3.8Ag0. 7Cu and Sn37Pb solders. Power law thermo-mechanical durability models of both Sn3.8Ag0. 7Cu and Sn37Pb are obtained from thermal cycling test data and stress and damage analysis. The results of this study provide an important basis of understanding the thermo-mechanical durability behavior of Pb-free electronics under thermal cycling loading and environmental stresses.