Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Machine Learning Assisted Signal Analysis in Acoustic Microscopy for Non-Destructive Defect Identification

Signal processing and data interpretation in scanning acoustic microscopy is often challenging and based on the subjective decisions of the operator, making the defect classification results prone to human error. The aim of this work was to combine unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques for feature extraction and image segmentation that allows automated classification and predictive failure analysis on scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) data. In the first part, conspicuous signal components of the time-domain echo signals and their weighting matrices are extracted using independent component analysis. The applicability was shown by the assisted separation of signal patterns to intact and defective bumps from a dataset of a CPU-device manufactured in flip-chip technology. The high success-rate was verified by physical cross-sectioning and high-resolution imaging. In the second part, the before mentioned signal separation was employed to generate a labeled dataset for training and finetuning of a classification model based on a one-dimensional convolutional neural network. The learning model was sensitive to critical features of the given task without human intervention for classification between intact bumps, defective bumps and background. This approach was evaluated on two individual test samples that contained multiple defects in the solder bumps and has been verified by physical inspection. The verification of the classification model reached an accuracy of more than 97% and was successfully applied to an unknown sample which demonstrates the high potential of machine learning concepts for further developments in assisted failure analysis.
Apollo experience report: Abort planning

Definition of a practical return-to-earth abort capability was required for each phase of an Apollo mission. A description of the basic development of the complex Apollo abort plan is presented. The process by which the return-to-earth abort plan was developed and the constraining factors that must be included in any abort procedure are also discussed. Special emphasis is given to the description of crew warning and escape methods for each mission phase.
Dynamic isolation of a spacecraft science platform via momentum compensation

The dynamic isolation of a two degree of freedom inertially stabilized science platform from the spacecrft basebody is examined. The important implications of a momentum compensated platform for pointing performance and cost are discussed, and the concept of a new system called the Integrated Platform Pointing and Attitude Control Subsystem utilizing the above property is presented. The results established in this paper are demonstrated by a computer simulation.
DISCRETE-TIME POISSON CHANNEL: CAPACITY AND SIGNALLING DESIGN

The discrete-time Poisson (DTP) channel models a wide range of optical communication channels. The channel capacity and capacity-achieving distributions are generally unknown. This thesis addresses system design of DTP channels and presents novel contributions to the capacity of DTP channel, properties and closed-form expression of the capacity-achieving distribution under peak and average constraints, signalling design, and sum-capacityachieving distributions of DTP multiple access channel (MAC) with peak amplitude constraints. Two algorithms are developed to compute the channel capacity of DTP channel as well as the capacity-achieving distribution with average and peak amplitude constraints. Tight lower bounds based on input distributions with simple forms are presented. Non-uniform signalling algorithms to achieve the channel capacity are also demonstrated. Fundamental properties of capacityachieving distributions for DTP channels are established. Furthermore, necessary and sufficient conditions on the optimality of binary distributions are presented. Analytical expressions for the capacity-achieving distributions of the DTP channel are derived when there is no dark current and when the dark current is large enough. A two-user DTP multiple access channel model is proposed and it is shown that the sum-capacity-achieving distributions under peak amplitude constraints are discrete with a finite number of mass points.
Heat storage of PCM inside a transparent building brick : Experimental study and LBM simulation on GPU

The domestic and commercial buildings are currently becoming the major sector that consumes the biggest share of the energy in many countries, for example in France. Various researches have been carried out in order to reduce the energy consumption and increase the thermal comfort of builds. Among all the possible approaches, the latent heat storage technology distinguishes itself because of its excellent heat storage ability which can be used to efficiently reduce the discrepancy between the energy consumption and supply. In one of our project, we intend to integrate a type of transparent brick filled with phase change material (PCM) into the buildings' wall design. The PCM inside the brick undergoes the solid-liquid phase change. This dissertation addresses the important issues of the melting process inside the brick. In this dissertation, a non-intrusive experimental method was proposed to improve the existing experiment technique. The particle image velocimetry (PIV) and the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) were coupled to investigate the natural convection and the temperature distribution. Because there was no thermocouple installed inside the brick, the melting process was thus considered to be less impacted. The results showed that this experimental design has a promising future, yet still needs to be improved. Two sets of efficient numerical simulations were also presented in this dissertation. The simulations were based on the thermal lattice Boltzmann method (TLBM), where the natural convection got solved by the LBM and the temperature equation was solved by the finite difference scheme. The enthalpy method was employed to simulate the phase change. Both the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional configurations were successfully simulated. Moreover, the simulation programs were specifically developed - using the C language - to be run on the graphic processing unit (GPU), in order to increase the simulation efficiency. The simulation results demonstrated a good agreement with our experimental results and the published analytical results.
Student.world : a solution to pragmatic waste?

The internet has become crucial to the everyday life of most people and organisations. The amount of information accessible via the internet is rapidly increasing, so it becomes more and more difficult to find meaningful and useful Information. Information that is not meaningful to the receiver can be referred to as information waste. This paper examines different forms of information waste and how they can be identified. A special focus is laid on information that is subjectively useful to the receiver. Various tools for detecting different forms of information waste are drawn from literature and some new tools are added. The elaborated tools and criteria are compared to the ones used by the social media websites Facebook and student.world in order to identify a potential solution to information waste on the pragmatic layer. Supervisors:
A Natural Triglyceride from the Methanol Root Extract of Cyphostemma Adenocaule (Steud. Ex A. Rich.) Wild & R.B.Drumm

<p><i>Cyphostemma adenocaule </i>(Steud. ex A. Rich.) is one of the specie plant that belongs to the family vitacea. In this study, Trilinolein was isolated and characterized from the methanol root extract of the plant. Column chromatography over silica gel granules as the stationary phase and eluted with a mobile phase mixture of n-Hex-EtA; EtA-CHCL3 and CHCL<sub>3</sub>-MeOH with gradient increasing polarity, followed by a second column using saphadex-LH20 and 100% MeOH as stationary and mobile phase vehicle respectively. TLC was developed with EtA 15: CHCL3<sub> </sub>8: MeOH 4: H<sub>2</sub>O 1 as solvent system; sprayed with 10% H<sub>2</sub>SO<sub>4 </sub>,Vanillin-sulphuric acid, and/ or Polyethylene glycol PEG and heat for spot detection and confirmation of bioactive principles. Compound CA1 was obtained and purified with CHCL3 to give a yellow semi-solid compound (0.23g). The <sup>1</sup>H-NMR spectra showed 9 different signals; a signal peak of a glycerol (-C<b>H<sub>2</sub></b>OCOR-) moiety on the first α-C chain and on the third αʹ-C at 4.143-4.187ppm and 4.296-4.325ppm respectively, while that of a β glycerol (-C<b>H</b>COR-) at 5.286ppm. Signals of an allylic methylene group at 2.023-2.035ppm, Olefenic hydrogen group at signal peak of 5.362ppm and a diallylic methylene group at signal 2.790ppm were also observed. In the <sup>13</sup>C NMR spectra of compound CA1, 57 carbon atoms where observed, multiple signals overlapping at a range of 14.13-34.21ppm corresponding to the aliphatic CH3 (<b>C18</b>), CH2 (<b>C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C15, C16, and C17</b>) and allylic (<b>C8, C14</b>) carbon atoms. Signals at 127.90-130.24ppm were assigned to the olefienic C atoms (<b>C9, C10, C12</b>, and <b>C13</b>) while signal of 172.87ppm and 173.32ppm were assigned to the carbonyl (<b>C</b>=O) carbon atoms (<b>C1 </b>and<b> C2</b>) respectively (Table 2). </p> <p>Analysis with DEPT-135, H-H COSY, HMBC and HSQC assignments of CA1 augments assignment of signals made for CA1 from <sup>1</sup>H-NMR and <sup>13</sup>C-NMR and corresponded to that of Trilinolein <u>(<a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/#query=C57H98O6">C<sub>57</sub>H<sub>98</sub>O<sub>6</sub></a>, </u>MW 879.4 g/mol). The isolated compound was positive for the acrolein test for triglycerides; fat & oil and had an IC<sub>50</sub> of 46. 08µg/ml radical scavenging activity. </p>
A comparative analysis of detection techniques for Salmonella in surface water

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DETECTION TECHNIQUES FOR SALMONELLA IN SURFACE WATERS By Matthew T. Flood Surface waters provide a challenge for pathogen det ection due to changing environmental conditions and microbial populations that may affec t method chemistry. Due to the importance of these pathogens with regard to human health, rap id detection and screening of water samples is necessary to determine the risks of potential pa thogens present at any given time. The ANSR assay, using Nicking Enzyme Amplification Reaction (NEARTM) technology, originally developed for food safety, was tested for its effec tiv ness in detecting Salmonella in surface waters. The main objective of this study was to det ermine if the ANSR assay is appropriate for detection of Salmonella in surface waters and comparable to the current cu lture-based industry standard USEPA 1682 method. These methods were test ed by comparing their ability to detect seeded and naturally-occurring Salmonella in surface waters from around Michigan and northern Ohio. The ANSR assay and the USEPA 1682 method found 84.4 % and 31.4% of samples positive for naturally-occurring Salmonella, respectively. The ANSR assay has shown the ability to detect Salmonella in surface waters at least as well as the USEPA 168 2 method, but because of its much higher potential for false positives an d its low precision and accuracy rates, it should be used in conjunction with other detection methods to confirm positive results. This assay shows potential for use as a rapid screening tool f or surface water samples in order to prioritize in depth testing at sites, however what appears to be false-positives will need to be reduced. Copyright by MATTHEW T. FLOOD 2014
71.5: Stencil‐FSC Method for Color Break‐Up Suppression and Low Power Consumption in Field‐Sequential LCDs

Field sequential color liquid crystal displays (FSC‐LCDs) are still facing a serious artifact, color break‐up (CBU), which degrades image quality. Consequently, we propose the “Stencil‐FSC” method, applying local color‐backlight dimming technology to FSC‐LCDs with a 240 Hz field rate which not only suppresses CBU efficiently but also enhances the contrast ratio of images in using ultralow average power consumption. The Stencil‐FSC method was demonstrated on a 32‐inch FSC‐ LCD and effectively suppressed CBU, resulting contrast ratio of more than 5,500:1, and average power of less than 45 Watt.
Bringing Materiality into Thinking about Digital Literacy

This chapter makes a critical intervention in studies and practices of digital literacy. Drawing upon the insight that artifacts do have politics (Winner 1980) and that humans and objects continuously co-constitute and shape one another’s agential capacities (Orlikowski 2007), I argue that to become digitally literate also implies an awareness of digital technologies’ material dimension, i.e. their technological affordances, economic embedding, and societal, environmental as well as embodied effects and repercussions. After a brief walk-through of key advances in thinking about literacy, the chapter homes inn on the notion of critical digital literacies to conceptually back the further inquiry.
Multi-turn Dialogue Model Based on the Improved Hierarchical Recurrent Attention Network

SUMMARY When considering the multi-turn dialogue systems, the model needs to generate a natural and contextual response. At present, HRAN, one of the most advanced models for multi-turn dialogue problems, uses a hierarchical recurrent encoder-decoder combined with a hierarchical attention mechanism. However, for complex conversations, the traditional attention-based RNN does not fully understand the context, which results in attention to the wrong context that generates irrelevant responses. To solve this problem, we proposed an improved hierarchical recurrent attention network, a self-attention network (HSAN), instead of RNN, to learn word representations and utterances representations. Empirical studies on both Chinese and English datasets show that the proposed model has achieved significant improvement.
Evaluating quality in health promotion: The EQUIHP

Since the beginning of the 1990s, much effort has been devoted to developing methods and instruments for quality assurance in the field of health promotion. The systematic use of such tools has been found to improve the quality of planning of health promotion projects and to make possible the identification of best practice projects and policies. Building on the experience of such tools, the European Quality Instrument for Health Promotion (EQUIHP) has been developed as the first European consensus tool, facilitating the assessment and improvement of quality in health promotion. The aim has been to obtain more uniformity in quality indices and to facilitate cross-national comparisons and collaboration in enhancing quality in health promotion projects. This paper presents the aims and the structure of the EQUIHP, and guidelines of using the instrument.
Associations Between Cerebral Morphology and Objective Memory Performance in Patients With Subjective Cognitive Decline

Background: Previous studies reported subjective cognitive decline (SCD) linked to underlying the biomarker of early AD pathology. There is a lack of studies on whether structural brain changes and how cerebral morphology in association with verbal and visuospatial episodic memory performance.Method: We combined VBM and SBM analysis for evaluating structural alterations in gray matter atrophy and cortical thickness among individuals with SCD, MCI, AD and normal controls and investigated the associations between cerebral morphology and AVLT-H, BVMT-R performance in the whole samples and SCD, respectively. Results: No significant regional gray matter volume atrophy and cortical thickness differences were found between SCD and normal controls. We found that immediate recall in verbal learning performance was significantly correlated with the loss of bilateral hippocampus volume in SCD group, furthermore, attention capacity (SDMT) was positively correlated with bilateral hippocampus atrophy and AVLT-IR in individuals with pre-MCI cognitive status.Conclusions: Our results found hippocampal atrophy links much closer with verbal memory than visuospatial memory and immediate recall in verbal learning test was probably the primary deficit and maybe influenced by the attention capacity.
The whole box'n'dice of traffic calming experiences in local government

Traffic calming, often referred to as local area traffic management (LATM), is a field of local government practice that is often applied more as art than science. In the 1980s and early 1990s there was a great deal of activity in the field and practitioners were regularly innovating and pushing the boundaries for the benefit of the whole profession. More recently this has been happening much less such that many would say it is now more difficult for local government engineers to effectively learn and benefit from each other's experiences. As a means of combating this situation and promoting good practice in the field of local area traffic management, this paper provides a comprehensive update on recent local government experiences in Australia and New Zealand. It presents the findings of extensive research and consultation undertaken in late 2006 with input received from more than 150 local governments. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E215943.
Dynamic Ride-Sharing and Optimal Fleet Sizing for a System of Shared Autonomous Vehicles

Shared autonomous (fully-automated) vehicles (SAVs) represent an emerging transportation mode for driverless and on-demand transport. Early actors include Google and Europe’s CityMobil2, who are seeking early pilot deployments in low-speed settings. This work seeks to understand SAVs’ potential for U.S. urban areas via multiple applications across the Austin, Texas, network. This work describes advances to existing agent- and network-based SAV simulations by enabling dynamic ride-sharing (DRS, to pool multiple travelers with similar origins, destinations and departure times in the same vehicle), optimizing fleet sizing, and anticipating profitability for operators in settings with no speed limitations on the vehicles and at adoption levels below 10 percent of all personal trip-making in the region. Results suggest that DRS reduces total service times (wait times plus in-vehicle travel times) and travel costs for SAV users, even after accounting for extra passenger pick-ups, drop-offs and non-direct routings. While the base-case scenario (serving 56,324 person-trips per day, on average) showed that a fleet of SAVs allowing for DRS may result in vehicle-miles traveled that exceed person-trip miles demanded (due to anticipatory relocations of empty vehicles, between trip calls), it is possible to reduce overall VMT as trip-making intensity (SAV membership) rises and/or DRS users become more flexible in their trip timing and routing. Finally, these simulation results suggest that a private fleet operator paying $70,000 per new SAV could earn a 19% annual (long-term) return on investment while offering SAV services at $1.00 per mile of a non-shared trip (which is less than a third of Austin’s average taxi cab fares).
Effects of Lactobacillus plantarum BCC65951 inoculation in Napier Pakchong 1 silage on in vitro rumen degradability and growth performance of Brahman cattle

Background: Napier grass Pakchong 1 is used as a fodder crop in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, its fermentation for silage production is challenging owing to the low dry mass content and epiphytic lactic acid bacteria. Here, Lactobacillus plantarum BCC65951 (LAB) inoculation was tested for impact on silage fermentation and use. Silage was prepared with or without inoculation of LAB and stored for 180 days prior to analysis.Results: Gas production at 4-24 h was significantly higher in LAB group (P=0.001). Therefore, the result implied the faster ruminal degradation of LAB, especially during the first 24 h. LAB-inoculated silage exhibited greater levels of lactic acid and in vitro rumen degradability compared to control silage, and significantly lower pH and acetic acid content. To investigate the effect of LAB inoculation on animal performance, ten Brahman bulls were fed on control or LAB-inoculated silage in a crossover experimental design. Animals fed with LAB-inoculated silage had significantly higher voluntary roughage intake and greater average daily body weight gain than those fed with control silage.Conclusions: Results from this study revealed the beneficial effect of Napier Pakchong 1 ensiled with L. plantarum BCC65951 inoculation, both on the fermentative quality of the silage and also the performance of animals fed with the inoculated silage.
OIE expert surveillance panel on equine influenza vaccine composition, OIE, Paris, 4 April 2019

Field data Equine influenza virus infections were confirmed in both vaccinated and unvaccinated horses. Although some vaccines were updated in line with the 2004 recommendations, the current vaccines do not contain the virus strains from the two clades recommended for optimum protection. The detection of virus in a quarantine facility illustrates the continuing risk of the international spread of influenza by infected vaccinated horses.
A Database of Selected Marine Diesel Engines for Diagnostic Needs

The article describes an electronic database of selected marine piston combustion engines created for diagnostic purposes. The database was made for vessels of the biggest Polish shipowner. It is used for archiving and comparing measured parameters of diagnosed engines with model parameters. To facilitate the search for and use of required data, they have been collected and catalogued. For this purpose the database has been prepared by using a computer program included in the Microsoft Office suite. The database search relies on the details concerning the type of vessel. The fields displayed include such items as the year and place of construction, the parameters of the ship, flag, etc. For each vessel special forms are available for main and auxiliary engines, enabling easy and quick check of the necessary parameters during operation of the engine. The database contains parameters of the main propulsion and auxiliary engines, as well as model characteristics to help determine the diagnostics, prognosis and genesis.