Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smart Cities as Hubs: a use case from Biotechnology

Smart city platforms operate as central points of access for locally collected data. The smart city hub (SCHub) introduces a new concept that aims to homogenize data, service, human and material flows in cities. A proof of concept is based on non-typical data flows, like the ones that are collected by biotechnological activities, like Diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). NCDs are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths globally. Most of the diet related NCDs are related to the gut microbiome, the microbial community that resides in our gastrointestinal tract. The imbalance or loss of microbiome diversity is one of the main factors leading to NCDs by affecting various functions, including energy metabolism, intestinal permeability, and brain function. Gut dysbiosis is reflected in altered concentrations of Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs), produced by the gut microbiota. A microcapsule system can play the role of a sensor that collects data from the local community and transmits it to the SCHub in order for the doctors to receive the appropriate patients information and define the appropriate treatment method; for the city to process anonymized information and measure community's health in diet terms. A prototype with a biosensor that correlates the amount of gut SCFAs with gut microbiome functional capacities is presented in this paper, together with the use-case scenario that engages the SCHub.
Changes in physico-chemical properties of soil as influenced by conservation agriculture in rice based cropping system of Chhattisgarh

An investigation was carried out at Department of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Agriculture, IGKV, Raipur, Chhattisgarh during the year 2015-16 in an Inceptisol field for two consequtive years with three crops viz. rice wheat and cow pea in kharif, rabi and summer season, respectively to evaluate the effect of adoption of conservation agriculture practice on soil phyico-chemical properties and organic matter content. The experiment consisted of five tillage practices which were applied in main plot with and without residue under two different crop establishment methods i.e. transplanting and direct seeding. Two different weed management methods were also tested in combination with tillage treatments compared with weedy check. Results indicated that tillage systems namely conventional tillage and zero tillage had no significant effect on soil pH and EC at end of the two-year experiment. Similarly, interaction effects of tillage management x weed management did not have significant effect on soil pH and EC value. Soil organic carbon (SOC) was recorded higher at surface layer (0-5 cm) at end of twoyear experiment and its concentration decreased with increasing depth. Among different tillage management systems evaluated, zero tillage (ZT) found significantly higher SOC compared to conventional tillage (CT) at surface layer (0-5 cm) and 10-15 cm soil depth. Overall, tillage systems had significant effect on SOC at end of two-year experiment regardless of soil depths. However, tillage management x weed management did not have significant effect on SOC. At the completion of experiment, ZT with and without residue had higher organic carbon (SOC) than CT.
LOCAL GEOLOGY EFFECTS ON STRONG GROUND MOTION DURING THE BAM EARTHQUAKE

The influence of local geologic and soil conditions on the intensity of ground shaking is addressed in this study. The amplification of the ground motion due to local site effects resulted in severe damage to dwellings in the Bam area during the 2003 Bam Earthquake. A unique set of strong motion acceleration recordings was obtained at the Bam station. Although the highest peak ground acceleration recorded was the vertical component (nearly 1g), the longitudinal component (fault parallel motion) clearly had the largest maximum velocity as well as maximum ground displacement. Subsurface geotechnical and geophysical (down the hole) data in three different sites have been obtained and are used to estimate the local site condition on earthquake ground motion in the area. Seismic site response analyses have been conducted considering the properties of the soil deposits using both equivalent linear and nonlinear approaches. It is shown that thick alluvium deposits amplified the ground motion and resulted in significant damage in residential buildings in the earthquake stricken region. The response spectra of the motion showed strong amplification during propagation of waves from the base to the surface. The observed response spectra are shown to be above the NEHRP building code design requirements, especially at high frequencies. Introduction The powerful earthquake of December 26, 2003 almost destroyed the city of Bam. City of Bam is located in the southeastern part of Iran. The magnitude of the earthquake was Mw 6.6 (USGS), its epicenter was close to City of Bam in Kerman province, and the focal depth was estimated to be 8-10 km. The city had a population of around 150,000 prior to the earthquake. The earthquake destroyed almost 70 percent of the conjugated cities of Bam and Baravat and the historical castle of Arg-e-Bam. The earthquake left about 27,000 people dead and about 50,000 persons injured. The intensity of the earthquake has been estimated to be VIII on the modified Mercally scale and the causative compression fault had an N-S trend. The influence of local geologic and soil conditions on the intensity of ground shaking and earthquake damage has been recognized for many years. Local site conditions can profoundly influence all of the important characteristics of strong ground motion: amplitude; frequency content; and duration. The extent of their influence depends on the geometry and material properties of the subsurface materials, on site topography, and on the characteristics of the input motion. Previous earthquakes such as Kobe (1995), 1 Research Assistant, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B9, Email: mrayhani@engga.uwo. ca 2 Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B9, Email: helnaggar@eng.uwo. ca
Deciles’ Average Income as a Variable to Anchor Politicians’ Wage

We propose deciles average income, deficit and natural resource rents as objective variables to measure politicians’ economic performance. We begin by reviewing the literature linking politicians and their institutional choices to the macroeconomic environment. To continue, we review the relation between those macroeconomic variables and income percentiles. In order to evaluate how well they sum up politicians’ performance, we then use the variables previously reviewed to throw a generalized least squares estimation from panel data in a set of countries. Our results point towards the possibility of using those variables to anchor an incentive contract for politicians.
Creating an Annotated Corpus for the Analysis of Causal Relations

— In this paper, we report the results of our investigation of the characteristics of in-text causal relations. First, we designed causal relation tags. With our designed tag set, three annotators annotated 750 newspaper articles. Then, using the annotated corpus, we investigated the causal relation instances from three viewpoints: (1) cue phrase markers, (2) part-of-speech information
ROBSUST ESTIMATION OF TIRE-ROAD FRICTIONS AND CONTACT FORCES

This paper uses a robust second order differentiator to build up an estimation scheme allowing to identify the tire road friction. The estimations are produced in three steps as cascaded observers and estimator. The rst produces estimations of velocities. The second estimate the tire forces (vertical and longitudinal ones) and the last reconstruct the friction coef cient. The actual results show effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. Index TermsSliding modes, nonlinear observers, high order sliding modes, robust state and tire forces estimation.
Analysis of Genetically Regulated Gene Expression identifies a trauma type specific PTSD gene, SNRNP35

PTSD has significant genetic heritability; however, it is unclear how genetic risk influences tissue-specific gene expression. We used brain and non-brain transcriptomic imputation models to impute genetically regulated gene expression (GReX) in 9,087 PTSD-cases and 23,811 controls and identified thirteen significant GReX-PTSD associations. The results suggest substantial genetic heterogeneity between civilian and military PTSD cohorts. The top study-wide significant PTSD-association was with predicted downregulation of the Small Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein U11/U12 Subunit 35 (SNRNP35) in the BA9 region of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in military cohorts. In peripheral leukocytes from 175 U.S. Marines, the observed PTSD differential gene expression correlated with the predicted blood GReX differences for these individuals, and deployment stress downregulated SNRNP35 expression, primarily in Marines with post-deployment PTSD. SNRNP35 is a subunit of the minor spliceosome complex and SNRNP35 knockdown in cells validated its functional importance in U12-intron splicing. Finally, mimicking acute activation of the endogenous stress axis in mice downregulated PFC Snrnp35 expression.
Interspecies metabolite transfer in a co-culture of Dehalococcoides and 1 Sulfurospirillum leads to rapid and complete tetrachloroethene 2

20 Microbial communities involving dehalogenating bacteria assist in bioremediation of areas 21 contaminated with chlorinated hydrocarbons. To understand molecular interactions between 22 dehalogenating bacteria, we co-cultured two bacterial species dechlorinating chloroethenes: 23 Sulfurospirillum multivorans , dechlorinating tetrachloroethene (PCE) to cis -1,2-dichloroethene ( c DCE) 24 and Dehaloccoides mccartyi strains BTF08 or 195, transforming PCE via c DCE to ethene. The 25 interaction of these bacteria cultivated with lactate as electron donor and PCE as electron acceptor 26 was investigated using growth studies, metabolite analysis, microscopy, isotope fractionation and 27 proteomics. Co-cultures exhibited more than 3-fold higher PCE to ethene dechlorination rates than D. 28 mccartyi pure cultures. S. multivorans provided hydrogen, acetate and the reductive dehalogenase 29 cobamide cofactor to D. mccartyi . While D. mccartyi 195 dechlorinated c DCE in the presence of 30 norpseudo-B 12 produced by S. multivorans , cDCE dechlorination by D. mccartyi BTF08 depended on 31 the supply of 5,6-dimethylbenzimidazole for producing functional cobamides. Co-cultures were 32 characterized by the formation of aggregates and electron microscopy revealed an extracellular matrix 33 enabling cell-to-cell contact. D. mccartyi showed an unusual barrel-like morphology, probably 34 dependent on down-regulation of cell division gene expression, as observed in the co-culture 35 proteome. Only the reductive dehalogenases PteA and VcrA were found in the proteomes of D. 36 mccartyi BTF08 during dehalogenation of PCE to ethene.
Role of Pedalium murex in the enhancement of growth, metabolism and immunity of Labeo rohita (Hamilton, 1822) fingerlings

The effect of dietary ethanolic extract of Pedalium murex (Bada Gokshru) on growth, metabolism and hemato immunological parameters of an Indian Major Carp, Labeo rohita fingerlings were studied. Fishes were fed with an experimental diet containing four graded levels (0.0, 0.06, 0.08 and 0.1 g/100 g diet) of Pedalium murex. Net weight gain, specific growth rate (SGR) and food conversion ratio significantly (p < 0.05) improved in Pedalium murex fed fish. Still the highest weight gain and specific growth rate (SGR) were recorded in 0.08 g/100 gm Pedalium murex supplemented diet. The increase in digestive enzymes (i.e. protease, amylase and lipase) supported the results of the increase in growth of treatment level 0.08 g/100 gm. Whereas, the enzymes of protein metabolism were found the increased in herbal extract supplemented group as compared to control. Further, the haematological parameters such as packed cell volume (PCV), haemoglobin (Hb) and erythrocytes (RBC) were not significantly different in Pedalium murex supplemented diets fed fish. A significant (P < 0.05) proliferation of the leukocytes (WBC) and improvement in respiratory burst activity was observed. The results of this study proved the significant role of ethanolic extract of Pedalium murex in on growth, metabolism and immunity defence mechanism of Labeo rohita fingerlings.
Towards to extraction of nanodispersed noble metals from natural black graphite shales

A theoretical approach based on the density functional theory and the pseudopotential method was applied to consider diffusion and accumulation of Au, Pt, and Pd in graphite. It is shown that Pt atoms migrate easily inside graphite. They can stop at structure defects and accumulate there, attracting each other and forming plate clusters. Atoms of gold do not penetrate into graphite but link with
Evaluation of ultra-precision milling strategies for micro lens array mould inserts for the replication by injection-compression moulding

Micro lens arrays (MLA) are broadly used in a multitude of optical applications, whereas increasingly extended areas need to be structured. Furthermore, growing quantities of microoptical components require microand nano-replication techniques, such as injection moulding and injection compression moulding. Therefore, ultra-precision milling strategies for manufacturing of mould inserts have been evaluated regarding applicability, surface quality and processing time. Different milling strategies were investigated regarding processing time and resulting surface quality. Single flute diamond milling tools were used to mill the mould cavities in nickel-phosphorus (NiP) coating deposited on tooling steel. The experiments were conducted on a 5-axis ultra-precision milling machine and qualitative results regarding observed effects of the different strategies were evaluated. The achieved surface qualities were analysed and quantified using white light interferometry. Methods of ring, radial or spiral milling strategies showed different failure modes and shortcomings such as stepping, pin residues or long processing times. Using a method, where a specifically designed milling tool was immersed in a single step into the bulk material, best results were achieved and the processing time for each lens was reduced to a minimum. The quality of the MLA could be further increased by immersing the milling tool in a defined angle. It was observed, that the centering and radius of the diamond of the milling tool was a major factor. Conclusively, the results show that high quality tooling in combination with the applied milling strategy enables significant improvements in quality and costs.
A SOFT MODEL-ORDER SUBSPACE BASED SPEECH ENHANCEMENT ALGORITHM

Subspace based schemes for noise suppression rely on decomposition of the noisy signal space into a signal (+noise) subspace and a noise subspace. Existing schemes are derived under the assumption that the dimensions of these subspaces are known with certainty, although in practice they must be inferred from the noisy data. We derive in this paper a subspace based enhancement scheme which takes into account the uncertainty of the subspace dimensions. The structure of the resulting estimator turns out to be similar to existing schemes, but the gain functions applied to the components in the signal subspace are now dependent on the likelihood that the signal subspace has a certain dimension. Simulation experiments with speech signals degraded by synthetic and natural noise sources show performance improvements of 0.3–1.6 dB in segmental SNR as compared to traditional schemes.
Dependency of shear behavior of unsaturated base course material on experimental conditions

Geographically, there are numerous materials encountered in engineering practice whose behavior is not consistent with the principles and concepts of classical, saturated soil mechanics [1]. Such as in Hokkaido, Japan, which is the snowy cold region, the decrease in the bearing capacity of pavement structure arising from the increase in the degree of saturation at base course is often observed in the snow-melting seasons. The degree of saturation of pavement rises due to the inflow of thaw water or thawing of ice lenses, and as a result, the bearing capacity of the base course temporarily degrades during the thawing season. Therefore, to evaluate the deformation strength characteristics of unsaturated base course materials, which are suffered from seasonal fluctuation in the degree of saturation at real foundations, is of great significance. However, the mechanical behavior of unsaturated base course materials which has maximum particle size of almost 40 mm has not been clarified by laboratory element tests enough so far. This is because laboratory element tests for unsaturated soils with large-size specimens are quite time-consuming due to the ceramic disk with very low permeability usually used in the test apparatus for unsaturated soils. Recently, Nishimura et al. [2] performed some kinds of laboratory element tests for unsaturated soils using a cellulose filter, and were able to confirm the validity of using this filter as a substitute for a ceramic disk and thus shorten the testing time. On the another hand, In our studies [3], based on the usefulness of membrane filters, we proposed testing methods adopting pressure membrane method with a medium-size specimen, which are highly useful in water retention tests and triaxial compression tests in terms of the reduction of total testing time. This paper presents an experimental study to examine the change in the mechanical behavior of base course layer caused by seasonal fluctuation in the degree of saturation from the viewpoint of the deformation-strength characteristic of base course materials under saturated and unsaturated conditions.
Neuro Fuzzy Classification based Traffic Sentiment Research

Sentiment analysis has become the hot area of research in recent years. Less work is done in the field of transportation. In this paper, Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) is used for feature selection and Neuro Fuzzy Classification algorithm is designed for Traffic Sentiment Analysis (TSA). It is seen from the results that, the proposed Neuro Fuzzy Rule Mining (NFRM) algorithm yields better performance when compared to the Apriori Algorithm (ARMA) and Fuzzy Rule Mining Algorithm (FRMA) in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and time
PRISMA: A Publish-Subscribe and Resource-Oriented Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks

—PRISMA is a resource-oriented publish/subscribe middleware for WSN, which the main goals are to provide: (i) programming abstraction through the use of REpresentational State Transfer (REST) interfaces, (ii) services, encompassing asynchronous communication, resource discovery and topology control, (iii) runtime support through the creation, configuration, and execution of new applications in WSN, and (iv) QoS mechanisms to meet applications constraints. This paper describes PRISMA architecture, its implementation in the Arduino platform, and a preliminary evaluation.
WIRSING SYSTEMS AND RESULTANT INEQUALITIES

We define the Mahler measure of f(X) = a0(X−ξ1) · · · (X−ξt) ∈ C[X] by M(f) = |a0| ∏t i=1 max(1, |ξi|). A polynomial f ∈ Z[X] is called primitive if its coefficients have gcd 1 and if its leading coefficient is > 0. The minimal polynomial of an algebraic number ξ is the primitive irreducible polynomial f ∈ Z[X] with f(ξ) = 0. We define the Mahler measure M(ξ) of an algebraic number α to be the Mahler measure of its minimal polynomial. Algebraic numbers are always supposed to belong to C. We choose for every algebraic number ξ of degree t over Q an ordering of its conjugates ξ, . , ξ.
Paideia and the semiotics of educating for democracy

Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} This paper was sparked by comments made by President of Russia Vladimir Putin about the weakness of democracy. It considers the millennia-old notion of paideia and its ancient aspiration towards autonomy as virtues which are necessary for democracy to prevail in the face of authoritarianism. Paideia or the educational instigation of culture is particularly well described by Werner Jaeger. Cornelius Castoriadis has related insights into how democratic culture can be enhanced and defended. After discussing paideia the paper enlists the semiotics of John Poinsot, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Deely as an epistemological basis from which the workings of paideia and the possibilities of autonomy might be assessed. The conclusion discusses education theorist Gert Biesta's concerns with character, democracy, politics and autonomy. It suggests that Biesta's notion of subjectification implies a semiotic process of mind which invokes the need for a modern paideia designed to oppose the supposed present deterioration in liberal democracy and its replacement by ‘traditional' values which is advocated by Mr Putin.
A Prospective Randomized Comparative Study of the Clinical Performance of I-Gel and LMA classic Supraglottic Airway Devices in Nonparalysed Anaesthetized Adults Undergoing Elective Surgical Procedures

Background and Aim: Several clinical studies have been performed on supraglottic airway devices to check for the advantages over the latest versions. Comparison of classic LMA (cLMA) and i-gel is yet to be explored further to optimize the use of airway devices. Methodology: A prospective randomized study was conducted for two years in a tertiary care hospital. Selected 60 patients were divided equally into two groups, C-LMA (group 1) and i-gel (group 2). Both devices were compared with respect to ease of insertion, number of attempts for insertion, airway leak pressure, hemodynamic changes and complications. Results: There was no observed statistical significance in both the groups regarding age, sex, body weight, ease of insertion, number of attempts, basal heart rate, SBP, DBP, MAP, SpO2 and adverse effects. The mean time duration of insertion was 23.2 ± 7.14 in cLMA and 16.67 ± 4.2 in i-gel which was statistically significant (p=0.001). Airway leak pressure was significantly higher in i-gel group (p=0.001) in the present study. Conclusion: Both the devices are safe and good in performance with respect to ease of insertion, hemodynamic changes and pharyngolaryngeal morbidity. Mean time duration was less for i-gel which is easier method to perform. A significant gastric insufflation was low in i-gel over c-LMA.