Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Steady state and generalized state space averaging analysis of the series resonant converter

This paper proposes a generalized state space averaging modeling instead of using the small ripple hypothesis to obtain the small signal modelling for the resonant converter. As well, this work covered the investigation of both the steady state analysis and the generalized state space averaging modelling effectively for the series resonant converter worked under zero voltage switching conditions. The proposed method and the steady state of the converter are analysed and simulated using MATLAB SIMULINK. It was found that the transfer function of the voltage by controlling the duty ratio D can make the needs of the control possible.
Engendering Students’ Epistemic Agency in a Mathematics Class at a University in South Africa

This article draws on the notion of epistemic agency to illustrate how the enactment of shared epistemic agency is enabled or hindered in a mathematics classroom for student teachers. I used data from an ethnographic study that was conducted in a third-year class of mathematics for educators. Data was drawn from verbal interactions that took place between mathematics student teachers, and between student teachers and myself as their lecturer, as they worked on class tasks. A narrative mode of analysing data was employed to synthesise data from critical incidents, while excerpts of these incidents represented data. From this analysis, I argue that, with extended wait time by a facilitator, students’ disposition of epistemic virtues and vices may enable or hinder enactment to epistemic agency, respectively. In article, those vices presented themselves as epistemic stinginess, prejudices against answers by peers and epistemic disclaimer. The epistemic virtues were presented as impartiality and intellectual courage. I further suggest that the recommended wait time of 1–3 during classroom questioning and answering should be extended for classes where epistemic practices are encouraged.
Effect of stacking sequence on the structural ordering and phase formation in the sequentially deposited copper zinc tin sulfide thin films

In this work, we have synthesized the copper zinc tin sulfide (CZTS) thin films using a two‐step process, that is, sequential evaporation and sulfurization. Copper (Cu), zinc sulfide (ZnS) and tin (Sn) were used as precursors and their stack sequence was varied to deeply investigate the impact of stack orders on the Cu/Zn disorder and phase. Each stack variation was subjected to sulfurization at 520°C, 550°C and 580°C. CZTS thin films with soda‐lime glass (SLG)/ZnS/Sn/Cu stack order exhibited kesterite structure and all the samples exhibited tetragonal crystal structure with preferred CZTS orientations. Order parameter Q obtained from Raman analysis showed significant variation with the change in stack order, which describes the Cu/Zn disorder in the system, implying its substantial dependence on the stacking sequence. The stack order SLG/ZnS/Sn/Cu had near stoichiometric composition while other sequences had Zn in excess and were Cu deficient. Morphological analysis showed a visible bifurcation of surface modification and growth due to stack order variation. Atomic force microscopy studies suggested that stack order and sulfurization temperature can be used as a tuning factor to vary the surface roughness. An optical band gap of 1.54 eV was obtained for stack order SLG/ZnS/Sn/Cu subjected to sulfurization temperature at 580°C. Broad asymmetric peak shape was obtained from photoluminescence (PL) measurement and analysis showed the shift of PL maxima toward lower energy, suggesting the increase in antisite disorder.
Effect of Humidity and Temperature on the Impedances and Voltage of Al/Gr-Jelly/Cu-Rubber Composite-Based Flexible Electrochemical Sensors

Here we present the fabrication of graphene and jelly (superabsorbent polymer) electrolyte composite-based shockproof flexible electrochemical sensors (Al/Gr-Jelly/Cu) and their properties under the effect of humidity and temperature. A layer of graphene mixed in jelly electrolyte was drop-casted onto porous rubber substrates between preliminary fixed aluminum (Al) and copper (Cu) electrodes followed by rubbing-in. It was observed that the graphene and jelly mixture was mechanically soft and flexible, similar to jelly. Electrically, this mixture (graphene and jelly) behaved as a flexible electrolyte. It was observed that under the effect of humidity ranging from 47 to 98%, the impedances of the sensors decreased by 2.0 times on average. Under the effect of temperatures ranging from 21 to 41 °C the impedances decreased by 2.4 times. The average temperature coefficient of impedances was equal to −0.03 °C−1. The electrochemical voltage generated by the flexible jelly electrolyte sensors was also investigated. It was found that the initial open-circuit voltages were equal to 201 mV and increased slightly, by 5–10% under the effect of humidity and temperature as well. The short-circuit currents under the effect of humidity and temperature increased by 2–3 times. The Al/Gr-Jelly/Cu electrochemical sensors may be used as prototypes for the development of the jelly electronic-based devices.
Employee-Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Employee Pro-Environmental Behavior (PEB): The Moderating Role of CSR Skepticism and CSR Authenticity

Despite the substantial attention given to pro-environmental behavior (PEB) by academicians, practitioners, and policymakers, few studies have investigated how employee-perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects employees’ PEB. Moreover, though the concept of PEB has been found to elicit a wide range of positive benefits for employee behaviors and attitudes, it has rarely been applied to the context of the manufacturing sector. Underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT) and the attitude-behavior-context (ABC) theory, the present study investigates the impact of employee-perceived CSR on employees’ PEB through the moderating roles of employee–CSR skepticism and employee–CSR authenticity. The convenience sampling technique was used to select employees from Pakistani manufacturing firms to participate in the study’s survey. Analysis results of data from 235 respondents across 115 manufacturing firms suggest that employee-perceived CSR positively drives employees’ PEB. In addition, the findings offer valuable insights on employee–CSR skepticism and employee–CSR authenticity. Specifically, CSR skepticism weakens the link between perceived CSR and PEB, while CSR authenticity strengthens this link. By providing implications and limitations, the present study discusses that organizations can convey the message of their credible, genuine, and authentic CSR efforts to their employees for social, economic, and environmental wellbeing. The study’s discussions and conclusions are presented.
Analysis of Student Readiness in E-Learning-Based Ecological Learning

In the 21st century, learning does not have to be in the real class. In this condition, teachers and students must be able to communicate and adapt to the development of information technology (IT). It is expected that teachers and students must be able to master the use of IT or the internet in e-learning. The purpose of this study was to determine the readiness of students in e-learning-based ecological learning. This approach is a quantitative approach with the type of research being descriptive. The method and design of survey research. The sample of this research is the total population of 340 students. The research instrument is a closing questionnaire, which is the result of adaptation from Tuntirojanawong research. In this study, the data collection was a questionnaire through the website: Aceh Online Learning System: (SpadaAceh). The statistics used for the analysis of the questionnaire data are mean and standard deviation. The results of the study on the student readiness variable include 5 (five) indicators namely technology access (mean 3.52), technology skills (mean 3.51), learning ability (mean 3.65), time management skills (mean 3.51), and learning motivation (mean 3.51). The five indicators fall into the category "Ready but need a few improvements". It can be concluded that readiness students through technology access, technology skills, learning abilities, time management skills, and learning motivation are ready but needs a few improvements
Neutrophils Culture in Collagen Gel System

Neutrophils (Neu) migrate rapidly to damaged tissue and play critical roles in host defense and tissue homeostasis, including the intestinal epithelia injuries and immune responses. Although their important roles in these diseases, they are challenging to study due to their short life span and the inability to cryopreserve or expand them in vitro. Moreover, the standard cell culturing on plastic plates (two-dimensional (2D) cultures) does not represent the actual microenvironment where cells reside in tissues. In this study, we developed a new three-dimensional (3D) culture system for human and mouse peripheral blood Neu, which is made of hydrogel. The Neu showed much better cell integrity and less cell debris in the 3D culture system compared to that in 2D culture system. Moreover, the 3D culture system was more suitable for the observation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) stimulated by the classical stimulation phorbol ester (PMA), and other damage associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) such as Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)/ATP, interleukin-1 β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) than the 2D culture system. Moreover, NETs phenomenon in 3D culture system is similar to that in vivo. In addition, the 3D culture system was evaluated to co-culturing Neu and other parenchymal cells, such as colon mucosal epithelial cell lines. In conclusion, the 3D culture system could maintain better properties of Neu than that in 2D culture system and it may reduce the gap between in vitro an in vivo experimentations.
Task-RM: A Resource Manager for Energy Reduction in Task-Parallel Applications under Quality of Service Constraints

Improving energy efficiency is an important goal of computer system design. This article focuses on a general model of task-parallel applications under quality-of-service requirements on the completion time. Our technique, called Task-RM, exploits the variance in task execution-times and imbalance between tasks to allocate just enough resources in terms of voltage-frequency and core-allocation so that the application completes before the deadline. Moreover, we provide a solution that can harness additional energy savings with the availability of additional processors. We observe that, for the proposed run-time resource manager to allocate resources, it requires specification of the soft deadlines to the tasks. This is accomplished by analyzing the energy-saving scenarios offline and by providing Task-RM with the performance requirements of the tasks. The evaluation shows an energy saving of 33% compared to race-to-idle and 22% compared to dynamic slack allocation (DSA) with an overhead of less than 1%.
Semantic Distance and the Alternate Uses Task: Recommendations for Reliable Automated Assessment of Originality

ABSTRACT Semantic distance is increasingly used for automated scoring of originality on divergent thinking tasks, such as the Alternate Uses Task (AUT). Despite some psychometric support for semantic distance – including positive correlations with human creativity ratings – additional work is needed to optimize its reliability and validity, including identifying maximally reliable items (objects) for AUT administration. We identify a set of 13 AUT items based on a systematic item-selection strategy (belt, brick, broom, bucket, candle, clock, comb, knife, lamp, pencil, pillow, purse, sock). This item-set resulted in acceptable reliability estimates and was found to be moderately related to both human creativity ratings and a creative personality factor (Study 1). These results replicated in a new sample of Participants (Study 2). We conclude with the following recommendations for reliable and valid assessment of AUT originality using semantic distance: 1) make choices based on theoretical/practical considerations, 2) administer (some or all of) the 13 items from this study; 3) if other items must be used, avoid compound words as AUT items (e.g., guitar string); 4) include as many AUT items as time permits; 5) instruct participants to “be creative”; and 6) address fluency confounds that conflate idea quantity and quality (e.g., via max scoring).
Control of Time Delay Systems:Brief Review

Time delays are present in the system dynamics either due inherently in system model or may enter as a direct consequence of the finite capabilities of information processing and data transmission among various parts of the system. They may arise from inherent physical phenomenon like mass transport flow or transmission network either in observation or control loop. Further, they may be introduced intentionally due to certain design considerations. Systems incorporating delays in system model or in the control loops are known as Time Delay Systems. In such systems, the rate of change of several physical variables not only depends upon the current state but also depends upon the past history or delayed information. This paper presents review of different control strategies for the delay systems. Index Terms — Time delay, Delay differential equation, Control Strategies .
Moving Food Assistance into the Digital Age: A Scoping Review

One of the most basic needs globally, food assistance refers to the multitude of programs, both governmental and non-governmental, to improve food access and consumption by food-insecure individuals and families. Despite the importance of digital and mobile Health (mHealth) strategies in food insecurity contexts, little is known about their specific use in food assistance programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to address that gap by conducting a scoping review of the literature. Keywords were defined within the concepts of food assistance and digital technology. The search included relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature from 2011 to 2021. Excluded articles related to agriculture and non-digital strategies. PRISMA guidelines were followed to perform a partnered, two-round scoping literature review. The final synthesis included 39 studies of which most (84.6%) were from the last five years and United States-based (93.2%). The top three types of articles or studies included text and opinion, qualitative research, and website, application, or model development (17.9%). The top three types of digital tools were websites (56.4%), smartphone applications (20.5%), and chatbots (5.1%). Nineteen digital features were identified as desirable. Most tools included just one or two features. The most popular feature to include was online shopping (n = 14), followed by inventory management, and client tracking. Digital tools for individual food assistance represent an opportunity for equitable and stable access to programs that can enhance or replace in-person services. While this review identified 39 tools, all are in early development and/or implementation stages. Review findings highlight an overall lack of these tools, an absence of user-centered design in their development, and a critical need for research on their effectiveness globally. Further analysis and testing of current digital tool usage and interventions examining the health and food security impacts of such tools should be explored in future studies, including in the context of pandemics, where digital tools allow for help from a distance.
APIVADS: A Novel Privacy-Preserving Pivot Attack Detection Scheme Based on Statistical Pattern Recognition

Advanced cyber attackers often “pivot” through several devices in such complex infrastructure to obfuscate their footprints and overcome connectivity restrictions. However, prior pivot attack detection strategies present concerning limitations. This paper addresses an improvement of cyber defence with APIVADS, a novel adaptive pivoting detection scheme based on traffic flows to determine cyber adversaries’ presence based on their pivoting behaviour in simple and complex interconnected networks. Additionally, APIVADS is agnostic regarding transport and application protocols. The scheme is optimized and tested to cover remotely connected locations beyond a corporate campus’s perimeters. The scheme considers a hybrid approach between decentralized host-based detection of pivot attacks and a centralized approach to aggregate the results to achieve scalability. Empirical results from our experiments show the proposed scheme is efficient and feasible. For example, a 98.54% detection accuracy near real-time is achievable by APIVADS differentiating ongoing pivot attacks from regular enterprise traffic as TLS, HTTPS, DNS and P2P over the internet.
The co-mutation of EGFR and tumor-related genes leads to a worse prognosis and a higher level of tumor mutational burden in Chinese non-small cell lung cancer patients

Background Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in China. The clinicopathologic features and genetic profile of Chinese lung cancer patients need to be investigated. This study evaluated the gene mutation profile, analyzed the frequency of concurrent genes in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, and determined its prognostic value. Methods We collected the clinical data from 151 initially diagnosed patients NSCLC. Tumor samples underwent targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS). Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results Among the 151 participants, the mutational profile revealed alterations in 29 genes, where TP53 (37.09%) and EGFR (30.46%) exhibited the highest mutation rates. Mutations in the EGFR gene were most prevalent (40%) in adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and were only present in 8.8% of participants with squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). The most frequently mutated genes in LUAD patients were TP53 (47%), followed by KRAS (11.7%). In all 39 participants with EGFR mutations, TP53, KRAS, PIK3CA, APC, and FBXW7 were also mutated. Those with only EGFR mutation appeared to have a better prognosis; however, the difference was not statistically significant. Tumor mutational burden (TMB) was roughly significantly increased in patients who harbored EGFR and other mutant driver genes, compared with only EGFR mutant patients. The TMB value was significantly higher in those with P53 mutation than in P53 wild-type patients. Conclusions We described the genetic profiles of NSCLC and compared the difference in genetic profiles between LUAD and LUSC. The concomitant genetic alterations might be a poor prognostic factor for patients with EGFR mutation, and TMB might be prognostically related to the co-mutations of EGFR and other genes.
DisGUVery: A Versatile Open-Source Software for High-Throughput Image Analysis of Giant Unilamellar Vesicles

Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs) are cell-sized aqueous compartments enclosed by a phospholipid bilayer. Due to their cell-mimicking properties, GUVs have become a widespread experimental tool in synthetic biology to study membrane properties and cellular processes. In stark contrast to the experimental progress, quantitative analysis of GUV microscopy images has received much less attention. Currently, most analysis is performed either manually or with custom-made scripts, which makes analysis time-consuming and results difficult to compare across studies. To make quantitative GUV analysis accessible and fast, we present DisGUVery, an open-source, versatile software that encapsulates multiple algorithms for automated detection and analysis of GUVs in microscopy images. With a performance analysis, we demonstrate that DisGUVery’s three vesicle detection modules successfully identify GUVs in images obtained with a wide range of imaging sources, in various typical GUV experiments. Multiple pre-defined analysis modules allow the user to extract properties such as membrane fluorescence, vesicle shape and internal fluorescence from large populations. A new membrane segmentation algorithm facilitates spatial fluorescence analysis of non-spherical vesicles. Altogether, DisGUVery provides an accessible tool to enable high-throughput automated analysis of GUVs, and thereby to promote quantitative data analysis in GUV research.
Analytical Expression for Line Voltage THD of Three-Phase Staircase Modulated Multilevel Inverters

In this article, a simple closed-form analytical expression for the line-voltage total harmonic distortion (LTHD) of three-phase staircase-modulated (SCM) multilevel inverters (MLI) is proposed. The revealed expression is valid for any conventional MLI topology with arbitrary number and parity of voltage levels. The proposed formulation is presented as an analytic function of the number of voltage levels (N) and the phase switching angles (PSA); thus, it is suited to MLIs of equal voltage source supply and of any topology. This function may be employed for accurate LTHD calculation and optimization. The results are verified against LTHD calculations and optimizations, obtained numerically from previous works. Both processor in loop (PIL)- and controller + hardware in loop (C-HIL)-based real-time experimental validations are included as well. A downloadable file containing the Maple and MATLAB functions of the proposed expression are also provided.
Modelling of PBX-115 Using Kinetic CHEETAH and the DYNA Codes

Abstract : PBXW-115, a highly non-ideal explosive tailored for underwater effects and composed of 43% ammonium perchlorate, 25% aluminium, 20% RDX and 12% HTPB binder, has been studied using Kinetic CHEETAH (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory CHEETAH 2.0 code), the three-term "Ignition and Growth" Model incorporated into the explicit finite element hydrocode LSTC-DYNA, and the CPeX Reactive Model based on the small divergent detonation theory of Wood and Kirkwood in DYNA2D. This report firstly focuses on a series of simulations performed using Kinetic CHEETAH based on the Wood-Kirkwood detonation theory using a pressure exponent of 2 in the pressure-dependent rate law. It was found that CHEETAH could predict the trend of the detonation velocity as a function of charge diameter, but overestimated the detonation velocities. The agreement was improved with further parameter adjustment, by decreasing the pressure exponent in the rate law from 2.0 to 1.0, and then 0.5. The reaction zone widths over a wide range of charge radius were also computed. Attention was then turned to hydrocode modelling, with particular interest in developing reactive models for PBXN-111 and PBXW-115 (Aust). Both the "Ignition and Growth" Model and the CPeX Model were calibrated against the experimentally observed dependence of detonation velocity on charge diameter in unconfined charges of both PBXW-115 (Aust) and US PBXN-111. These two reactive models were validated by comparing their predictions against experimental data for detonation of charges confined in 2.5 mm and 3 mm thick brass. The Ignition and Growth Model was then applied successfully to the simulation of aquarium tests. Finally, to test whether the two models using parameters derived from small-scale tests can be applied to large-scale devices, these two models were applied to the simulation of mid-scale underwater tests of PBXW-115 (Aust), and comparisons with available data are made.