Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrôle des vibrations par amortisseur semi-actif

RESUME: Ce memoire fait partie du developpement d’un systeme permettant de faire le controle des oscillations sur les pales d’eoliennes. Etant donne la forme generale du projet, le systeme pourrait etre utilise sur n’importe quelle structure flexible. Un banc d’essai a ete realise precedemment afin de tester une solution. La structure vibrante est une simple plaque metallique. Elle est attachee d’un cote a un excitateur, representant le vent, n’imposant pas un deplacement, mais une force. De l’autre, elle est guidee en translation via un coulisseau, lui-meme relie a un ressort et a un amortisseur. L’idee est d’utiliser un amortisseur semi-actif, permettant de controler la force de l’amortisseur en temps reel. Plusieurs strategies de controle ont ete testees afin de valider l'utilisation de cette technologie. Un modele simplifie du banc d'essai a ete developpe. Le but de ce modele est de s'executer en temps reel, pour pouvoir etre utilise dans une strategie de controle. -- Mot(s) cle(s) en francais : vibration, amortissement, electro-rheologique, eolienne, banc d’essai. -- ABSTRACT: This dissertation is part of the development of a system that would allow one to control vibrations on wind turbine blades. In consideration of the general state of the project, the system could also be used on any flexible structure. A bench test has been made previously to test a solution. The structure is a simple vibration plate. It is attached on one end to a driver, representing the wind, imposing a force but not a displacement. On the other end, it is guided in translation with a slide, itself bound to a spring and a damper. The idea is to use a semi-active damper, allowing one to control the damper force in real time. Several control strategies have been tested, to validate the use of this technology. A simplified model has been developed. The goal of this model is to be used in real time, to be part of a control strategy. -- Mot(s) cle(s) en anglais : vibration, damping, electrorheologic, wind turbine, bench test.
Active non-line-of-sight human pose estimation based on deep learning

Non-Line-of-Sight technology is to image objects that are hidden from the camera's view. It has a wide range of application prospects in robotic vision, national defense, remote sensing, medical imaging, and unmanned driving. Active Non-Lineof- Sight imaging mainly relies on time-resolved optical impulse responses. The Non-Line-of-Sight imaging system emits ultra-short light pulses to illuminate the diffuse reflection wall, and uses ultra-fast time-resolved single-photon detectors to collect multiple reflected photon information, thereby obtaining information in the hidden scene. Finally, various reconstruction algorithms are used to reconstruct the hidden scene. However, most of the existing reconstruction algorithms have the problems of slow reconstruction speed and fuzzy reconstruction results, especially in the aspect of human pose estimation. In this article, we describe a method of active Non-Line-of-Sight human pose estimation based on deep learning. In order to solve the problem of lack of deep learning data, we simulate large amounts of pseudo-transient images for the network, including various complex actions: walking, jumping, turning, bending back and forth, rotating, using the confocal Non-Line-of-Sight imaging model. And then we train the simulated transient images using light cones Transformation and U-net coding and decoding network structure. Finally, we examine the performance of our method on synthetic and experimental datasets. The prediction results show that our method can not only estimate the pose of real measured non-view human pose data, but also significantly improve the quality of reconstruction.
Molecular characterization of sub-frontal recurrent medulloblastomas reveals potential clinical relevance

Background Single recurrence in the sub-frontal region after cerebellar medulloblastoma (MB) resection is rare and the underlying molecular characteristics have not been specifically addressed. Methods We summarized two such cases in our center. All five samples were molecularly profiled for their genome and transcriptome signatures. Results The recurrent tumors displayed genomic and transcriptomic divergence. Pathway analysis of recurrent tumors showed functional convergence in metabolism, cancer, neuroactive ligand–receptor interaction, and PI3K-AKT signaling pathways. Notably, the sub-frontal recurrent tumors had a much higher proportion (50–86%) of acquired driver mutations than that reported in other recurrent locations. The acquired putative driver genes in the sub-frontal recurrent tumors functionally enriched for chromatin remodeler-associated genes, such as KDM6B, SPEN, CHD4, and CHD7. Furthermore, the germline mutations of our cases showed a significant functional convergence in focal adhesion, cell adhesion molecules, and ECM–receptor interaction. Evolutionary analysis showed that the recurrence could be derived from a single primary tumor lineage or had an intermediate phylogenetic similarity to the matched primary one. Conclusion Rare single sub-frontal recurrent MBs presented specific mutation signatures that might be related to the under-dose radiation. Particular attention should be paid to optimally covering the sub-frontal cribriform plate during postoperative radiotherapy targeting.
A compact dual port UWB-MIMO/diversity antenna for indoor application

A compact printed quadrant shaped monopole antenna is introduced in this paper as a good prospect for ultra wideband- multiple-input multiple-output (UWB-MIMO) system. The proposed MIMO antenna comprises two perpendicularly oriented monopoles to employ polarization diversity. An open circuit folded stub is extended from the ground plane of each radiating element to enhance the impedance bandwidth satisfying the UWB criteria. Two ‘L’ shaped slots are further etched on the radiator to provide good isolation performance between two radiators. The desirable radiator performances and diversity performances are ensured by simulation and/or measurement of the reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, realized peak gain, envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain, mean effective gain (MEG) ratio and channel capacity loss (CCL). Results indicate that the proposed antenna exhibits 2.9–11 GHz 10 dB return loss bandwidth, mutual coupling <−20 dB, ECC < 0.003, MEG ratio ≈ 1, and CCL < 0.038 Bpsec/Hz, making it a good candidate for UWB and MIMO diversity application.
Adherence to Oxidative Balance Scores is Associated with a Reduced Risk of Breast Cancer; A Case-Control Study

Abstract We aimed to examine whether anthropometric indices, dietary factors, and nutrient intakes of women with and without breast cancer (BrCa) are associated with the oxidative balance score (OBS). This case-control study was carried out among 253 patients with BrCa and 267 healthy subjects aged >18 years. The OBS was calculated by using the following 13 dietary and non-dietary anti- and prooxidant components: dietary antioxidants (selenium, fiber, β-carotene, vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate), dietary prooxidants (iron and saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids), and nondietary anti- (physical activity) and prooxidants (smoking and obesity). The binary logistic regression was used to determine the association OBS with BrCa. After adjusting for potential confounders in the final model, there was evidence that the odds of BrCa decreased with increasing categories of the OBS (OR = 0.53, 95% CI 0.28 − 0.98; P-trend = 0.021). When we made stratified analysis by menopausal status, OBS was inversely associated with odds of BrCa in premenopausal women after adjusting for potential confounders. No significant association was found between OBS and odds of BrCa among post-menopausal women. Our data suggest that OBS scores were associated with decreased BrCa risk in the overall population.
Framework Design, Parallelization and Force Computation in Molecular Dynamics

We have performed constant temperature two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of a binary Lennard-Jones material, representing an idealized metallic alloy or a material containing a specified fraction of an additive atomic species. Differences in the interatomic potentials between the atomic species can lead to clustering of the alloy atoms. An exponential distribution of cluster size is obtained as time approaches infinity. For sufficiently strong attractions the distribution of cluster sizes becomes nearly independent of the force and the attained maximum cluster size reaches a saturation level.
Power Electronic Solution for Dust Emission from Thermal Power Plant

In thermal power stations, flue gases are let to the atmospheric air through the chimney. This exhaust gas contains some toxic elements like Suspended Particle Matter (SPM), SOX, NOX, Mercury etc. It causes air pollution in the atmosphere and affects the human beings and aquatic lives. The allowable limit of this flue gas dust emission to the atmosphere is about 50 mg/m3. In order to separate this dust particle from the flue gas, Electrostatic Precipitators (ESP) are used to collect those unwanted suspended particles before passing them to chimney. ESP requires high efficiency to extract those dust and hence, High-Frequency High Voltage (HFHV) power supply is applied to increase the efficiency of the collecting electrode of the electrostatic precipitator. The HFHV power supply provides a significant reduction in the size and weight of the complete ESP installation.
COVID-19’s silver linings: exploring the impacts of work–family enrichment for married working mothers during and after the COVID-19 partial lockdown in Ghana

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship suggests that women have disproportionately been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic amidst lockdowns and school closures which have altogether increased women’s caregiving burden, unpaid housework and stress levels. Notwithstanding its negative impacts, this article argues that the lockdowns and school closures related to COVID-19 also had beneficial outcomes for some working mothers who had to combine work and family roles. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 39 married working mothers in both formal and informal employment, we find that these women during and after the partial lockdowns in urban Ghana, experienced various outcomes of work-to-family enrichment (increased time spent with family, self-rated improved sleep health, financial security), family-to-work enrichment (reduced family demands, improved work performance and output) and a mix of both (cultivation of life skills, greater personal satisfaction and happiness). Applying a role expansionist framework, we show the ‘positive side’ of the pandemic for married working mothers who had to juggle work and family demands.
Biosorption studies of methylene blue dye using NaOH-treated Aspergillus niger-filled sodium alginate microbeads

Abstract The effectiveness of NaOH-functionalized Aspergillus niger-filled sodium alginate microbeads on methylene blue (MB) removal was investigated in this study. First of all, Aspergillus niger biomass was obtained, then functionalized using sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Lastly, the composites were prepared by dispersing NaOH-treated-Aspergillus niger in sodium alginate gel. The cross-linked composite microbeads in a 3% CaCl2 solution were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared-attenuated total reflection (FTIR-ATR) spectroscopy, atomic force microscope (AFM), and scanning electron microscope (SEM). FTIR-ATR results indicated that the hydroxyl, amine, and carboxyl groups on the surface of the composite beads acted as binding sites. It was determined that the biosorption of MB occurred via the electrostatic interactions, Van der Waals interactions, π-π interactions, and H-bonding between functional groups and dye molecules. SEM and AFM analyses proved the presence of adsorbed dye molecules on the surface. Besides, optimum conditions were determined by examining the effects of different physicochemical parameters on biosorption. The maximum biosorption capacity of microbeads was obtained as 322.6 mg/g in pH = 7 at 25 °C. Moreover, various isotherms were used, including Freundlich, Langmuir, Dubinin-Radushkevich, and Harkins-Jura. The Langmuir model was found to be the best feasible when the correlation coefficients were taken into account. Biosorption followed the pseudo-second-order kinetic and occurred exothermically and spontaneously. This study indicates that NaOH-treated Aspergillus niger-filled sodium alginate microbeads are promising material as a biosorbent.
QD fiber amplifier using a fiber coupler with a PbS QD-film

A semiconductor QD fiber amplifier (SQDFA) is proposed and theoretically researched. The fiber amplifier makes use of a tapered twin SMF coupler and a PbS QD-film is coated on the surface of it. In the tapered region, QDs will be excited by the evanescent wave of a pump and produce a gain on signal. The fiber coupler is properly designed to ensure a desired power ratio of the output signal. Using a 1530-nm signal and a 980-nm pump, an optical gain of about 8 dB is achieved with a gain efficiency of 3.48dB/cm. This SQDFA has unique advantages including suppression to the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), simple fabrication and lower insertion loss and thus has a great potential in fiber communication systems.
Quantifying geomorphological evolution from 10Be denudation rates: Insights from high‐resolution depth profiles, topsoils, and stream sediments (Strengbach CZO, France)

A rare dataset of in‐situ 10Be from high‐resolution depth profiles, soils, rock outcrops, and stream sediments is combined with geochemical analysis and modelling of regolith evolution to understand the variability of denudation rates in a mountain watershed (Strengbach critical zone observatory). High‐resolution depth profiles are key to detect the presence of mobile regolith and to highlight how it affects the critical zone evolution. The modelling of regolith evolution and 10Be concentrations along depth profiles allow us to estimate both the cosmic ray exposure age (19 kyr) and the mean denudation rate (22 mm kyr−1) of the regolith without any steady‐state assumption on 10Be concentrations. Comparison with maximum denudation rates inferred from topsoil samples collected from the surface of the depth profiles and calculated using the temporal steady‐state assumption of 10Be concentrations highlights an overestimation of denudation by a factor of two. Maximum spatially averaged denudation rates determined from stream sediment samples also likely overestimate denudation rates by a factor of two. These biases are significant for investigating the geomorphological evolution and we propose a method to correct denudation rates using the inherited 10Be concentrations and the cosmic ray exposure age deduced from the high‐resolution depth profiles. A key result is also that a steady state of 10Be concentrations and a steady state of regolith thickness are two different equilibrium states that do not necessarily coincide. The comparison between locally corrected and spatially averaged denudation rates indicates that the watershed geomorphology is not in a topographic steady state but is modulated by regressive fluvial erosion. Nonetheless, our study demonstrates that even in a watershed where the steady‐state assumption of 10Be concentrations is not verified, the spatial variations of in‐situ 10Be concentrations in sediments still carry qualitatively relevant information on the geomorphological evolution of landscapes.
Concrete damage analysis based on higher-order beam theories using fracture energy regularization

Abstract This paper presents the numerical damage analysis of concrete structures using higher-order beam theories based on Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). The concrete constitutive relation is modeled using continuum damage mechanics based on a modified Mazars concrete damage model, in which both the tensile and compressive softening behaviors are regularized with classical fracture energy methodology. An expression is proposed to estimate the characteristic length in higher-order beam theories, to prevent mesh dependency. Both softening constitutive laws and fracture energy calculations are obtained according to Model Code 2010. To assess the efficiency of the proposed model, three classical benchmark quasi-static experiments are taken for validation. From the comparison between numerical and experimental results, the proposed CUF model using continuum damage mechanics can present 3D accuracy with low computational costs and reduce the mesh dependency.
Enhanced Model-Based Predictive Control System Based on Fuzzy Logic for Maintaining Thermal Comfort in IoT Smart Space

: Researchers have reached a consensus on the thermal discomfort known as the major cause of sick building syndrome, which hurts people’s health and working efﬁciency greatly. As a result, the thermal environment satisfaction is important and thus many studies have been dedicated to thermal comfort over the past few decades. Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) is one of the globally used standards to express users’ comfort satisfaction with the given thermal moderate environments. It has been widely used in most of the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems to maintain this standard of thermal comfort for occupants of buildings. However, the PMV model is developed on indoor experimental data without taking into account conditions of outdoor space, which greatly affects the performance of the existing HVAC systems and varies with the seasons. In this paper, an enhanced Model-based Predictive Control practical system for maintaining the indoor thermal comfort is demonstrated, including a multiple linear regression predictive model and an innovative fuzzy controller considering both the PMV index and the outdoor environment conditions. To verify the usability of the designed system, an Internet of Things (IoT) smart space prototype was chosen and experimentally tested in a building in Jeju, Korea. Moreover, thermal comfort regulation performances using the proposed approach have been compared with the existing one. The results of our work indicate that the proposed solution is capable of optimizing the thermal comfort condition according to seasonality and outperforms the conventional approaches in different performance indexes.
Polyphonic Piano Transcription with a Note-Based Music Language Model

This paper proposes a note-based music language model (MLM) for improving note-level polyphonic piano transcription. The MLM is based on the recurrent structure, which could model the temporal correlations between notes in music sequences. To combine the outputs of the note-based MLM and acoustic model directly, an integrated architecture is adopted in this paper. We also propose an inference algorithm, in which the note-based MLM is used to predict notes at the blank onsets in the thresholding transcription results. The experimental results show that the proposed inference algorithm improves the performance of note-level transcription. We also observe that the combination of the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) and recurrent structure outperforms a single recurrent neural network (RNN) or long short-term memory network (LSTM) in modeling the high-dimensional note sequences. Among all the MLMs, LSTM-RBM helps the system yield the best results on all evaluation metrics regardless of the performance of acoustic models.
The influence of culture on innovation in multinational organisations: Evidence from the oil and gas industry

Culture is believed to play an important role in innovation processes and the innovativeness of organisations. In order to quantitatively measure this influence, in this thesis the relationships between the dimensions of Hofstede's cultural model and the innovativeness of business units located around the world in the oil and gas industry are explored. Underpinning this study is a re-examination of data from a survey conducted by the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2012 to measure the innovation-related behaviors of business units around the world. This study also examines the influence of cultural distance between the country of the responding organisation's headquarters and the country of the responding business unit, and assesses how this distance affects innovative output. The results show several ways in which geographic and cultural differences impact how innovation happens within and between different parts of the world.
Mental health disparities in solitary confinement

Harsh prison conditions have been widely examined for their effects on the mental health of incarcerated people, but few studies have examined whether mental health status exposes individuals to harsh treatment in the penal system. With prisoners confined to their cells for up to 23 hours each day, often being denied visitors or phone calls, solitary confinement is an important case for studying harsh treatment in prisons. Routinely used as punishment for prison infractions, solitary confinement may be subject to the same forces that criminalize the mentally ill in community settings. Analyzing a large administrative data set showing admissions to solitary confinement in state prison, we find high rates of punitive isolation among those with serious mental illness. Disparities by mental health status result from the cumulative effects of prison misconduct charges and disciplinary hearings. We estimate that those with serious mental illness spend three times longer in solitary confinement than similar incarcerated people with no mental health problems. The evidence suggests the stigma of dangerousness follows people into prison, and the criminalization of mental illness accompanies greater severity of incarceration.
Developmental ecosystems of study abroad in a turbulent time: an Australian-Chinese’s experience in multilingual Hong Kong

ABSTRACT The experiences of participants in disrupted study abroad (SA) programs have been largely overlooked in the literature, especially when it comes to experiences outside the norm. To fill this gap, this research explores the experience of an Australian university student taking part in an exchange program in Hong Kong (HK) during a turbulent period when HK was under sociopolitical tension, which was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We tracked the student’s experiences over six months through five monthly reflective journals and a postprogram interview. The qualitative data were analysed using a narrative approach, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (EST) framework was adopted to interpret the results. The student’s narrative demonstrated a progressive story structure: although it was a special historical time when mobility to HK was undesirable, the participant counterintuitively perceived HK as an ideal location for his future career because of his SA experience. Framed by EST, the study discusses the individual’s development in relation to a multilevel SA ecology (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chronosystems) and the student’s agentic responses at the individual level. The study offers policy and practical implications for multicultural education, particularly in the post-COVID era, when cross-border mobility has been facing unprecedented challenges.