Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of changing reference equations for spirometry interpretation in Thai people.

Background Use of different spirometry reference equations can lead to misinterpretation of spirometry results. Currently, no study has been carried out to determine if there is any discordance between the interpretation of spirometry data using the Global Lungs Initiative (GLI) 2012, the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), the Knudson, and the Siriraj reference equations in Thai people. Therefore, this study aimed to determine differences and agreements regarding spirometry results using the GLI2012, NHANES III, Knudson, and Siriraj reference equations in a Thai population. Methods A retrospective study was carried out using 2,492 spirometry results from Thai people (age ranged 8-80 years old) who were referred by their physicians for spirometry testing at the Lung Health Center, Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital, Chiang Mai, Thailand between January 2005 and December 2015. The spirometry results were interpreted using four reference equations. Respiratory function patterns were classified as normal, spirometric restriction, obstruction, or mixed defect. The severity of abnormal patterns were classified as mild, moderate, moderately severe, severe or very severe. A Nominal Analysis of Variance (NANOVA) test was used to analyze differences in diagnosis and classification for the degree of severity. The Kappa statistic was used to determine agreements of spirometry results between four reference equations. Results The differentiation in both spirometry diagnosis and the severity classification were significant across the four reference equations (P<0.001). However, the levels of agreement among the four reference equations were moderate to good (Kappa values ranged from 0.56 to 0.77 for the diagnosis and 0.67 to 0.82 for the severity). Conclusions The results of this study suggest that the use of the GLI2012, NHANES III, Knudson, and Siriraj reference equations alters the interpretation of spirometry data in this population of Thai adults.
A review of modelling and optimisation techniques for district heating systems

This article provides an extensive survey on the modelling and optimisation of district heating systems (DHSs) focused on the heat distribution network. For this purpose, the major components of a DHS have been described and discussed, and their modelling has been briefly reviewed, including numerical simulation models for heat sources, end‐users, and especially the distribution network. The main deterministic and heuristic optimisation techniques are briefly described. Additionally, a single‐objective and multiobjective optimisation problem is generally formulated, and the main optimisation criteria for the design and operation of the distribution network are synthesised and analysed. The state of the art in DHS optimisation has been also reviewed and categorised. Finally, some recommendations for future developments were included.
Compiling Gallina to go for the FSCQ file system

Over the last decade, systems software verification has become increasingly practical. Many verified systems have been written in the language of a proof assistant, proved correct, and then made runnable using code extraction. However, due to the rigidity of extraction and the overhead of the target languages, the resulting code’s CPU performance can suffer, with limited opportunity for optimization. This thesis contributes CoqGo, a proof-producing compiler from Coq’s Gallina language to Go. We created Go′, a stylized semantics of Go which enforce linearity, and implemented proofproducing compilation tactics from Gallina to Go′ plus a straightforward translation from Go′ to Go. Applying a prototype of CoqGo, we compiled a system call in the FSCQ file system, with minimal changes to FSCQ’s source code. Taking advantage of the increased control given by CoqGo, we implemented three optimizations, bringing the system call’s CPU performance to 19% faster than the extracted version. Thesis Supervisor: Nickolai Zeldovich Title: Associate Professor Thesis Supervisor: M. Frans Kaashoek Title: Charles Piper Professor
Nutrition for a Lifetime: Childhood Nutrition

Obesity rates among children have increased significantly in the past 3 decades. Childhood obesity is an early risk factor for adult morbidity and mortality, contributing to long-term health problems such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and osteoporosis. Diet and lifestyle strategies taught at an early age may impact future obesity rates in children. This column reviews childhood nutrition issues that relate to overweight and obesity and provides ways in which the family and the school can work toward healthier eating and lifestyle habits in children. Recommendations for optimal bone health during childhood will also be discussed.
Modeling of the Phase Detector of a Synchronous-Reference-Frame Phase-Locked Loop Based on Second-Order Approximation

Grid inverters need a synchronization algorithm to connect with the grid which is often a phase-locked loop (PLL). Conventionally, small-signal models are used to tune such PLL and to assess stability in steady state; however, they can misjudge the dynamic behaviors, in particular, during large phase perturbation due to grid faults. To address this issue, a more accurate model of PLL-based synchronization of the grid inverter with second-order approximation terms valid not only for the steady state but also for phase transients has been developed in this paper. Stability criterion based on the developed model has been proposed to assess the harmonic stability during phase perturbations. The model accuracy and the effectiveness of the stability criterion have been comprehensively evaluated and validated by simulation and experiments.
Linguistic Theory in Approaches to Written Error in US Composition: History and Current Directions

We trace significant shifts over the last forty years in the assumptions about language, language relations, and language learning made by US composition scholars to understand written error through their use of specific theories and findings of scholarship in linguistics, and we explore the implications of these shifts for the teaching of writing. We identify three sets of assumptions with monolingualism, and a fourth set with a break from monolingualist assumptions and an alignment with those associated with translingualism and plurilingualism. Examples from student writing are used to illustrate the implications of these different assumptions for the teaching of writing.
Evidence for the involvement of protein lysine methylation in the response of sensitive and tolerant Arabidopsis species to cadmium stress

The mechanisms underlying the response and adaptation of plants to excess of trace elements are not fully described. Here, we analyzed the importance of protein lysine methylation for plants to cope with cadmium. We analyzed the effect of cadmium on lysine-methylated proteins and protein lysine methyltransferases (KMTs) in three Arabidopsis species. Arabidopsis thaliana and A. lyrata were used as cadmium-sensitive models and compared with three populations of A. halleri with different properties of accumulation and tolerance to cadmium. Immunoblotting, protein mass spectrometry, and gene expression analysis showed that the expression of some lysine-methylated proteins and genes coding KMTs is regulated by cadmium. Using a genetic screening, we showed that nine A. thaliana mutants interrupted in KMT genes have a tolerance to cadmium that is significantly different from that of wild-type seedlings. We further characterized two of these mutants, one was knocked-out in the calmodulin lysine methyltransferase gene and displayed increased tolerance to cadmium, the other was interrupted in a KMT gene of unknown function and showed a decreased capacity to cope with cadmium. Together, our results showed that the fine-tuned regulation of non-histone proteins by lysine methylation has a role in the response of Arabidopsis plants to cadmium stress.
Nanoscale Hierarchically Porous Metal–Organic Frameworks: Facile Synthesis, Mechanism Research, and Application

Hierarchically porous metal–organic frameworks (H-MOFs) with nanoscale size can endow them with desired properties in promising applications. However, there has been little research focusing on the nanoscale H-MOFs until now. Herein, a simple and versatile synthetic strategy has been developed to rapidly prepare nanoscale hierarchically porous ZIF-67 (NH-ZIF-67) crystals through employing an organic amine as bifunctional modulator. The as-synthesized nanoscale NH-ZIF-67 exhibited tunable porosity and excellent thermal stability. The formation mechanism of the nanoscale H-MOFs was disclosed by mesoscopic dynamics simulation. Specifically, the introduced organic amine modulator not only accelerated the nucleation of crystals but also served as a structure directing agent (SDA) to fabricate the hierarchically porous structure. Furthermore, in comparison to microporous ZIF-67, the attained NH-ZIF-67 sample exhibited enhanced adsorption performance in the capture of malachite green and toluene. The rapid synth.
Closed-Form Algebraic Solutions for Angle-of-Arrival Source Localization With Bayesian Priors

This paper considers the problem of angle-of-arrival (AOA) source localization with Bayesian priors. Extending the so-called pseudolinear estimator (PLE) for AOA localization to the Bayesian framework results in the Bayesian PLE (BPLE). Similar to the PLE, the BPLE suffers from severe bias problems despite enjoying the inherent stability and computational simplicity of a closed-form least-squares estimator. Bayesian priors make bias compensation for the BPLE much more challenging than the PLE. We present a bias analysis for the BPLE from which two direct bias compensation methods are developed. As an alternative to direct bias compensation, a new approach with superior estimation performance and low computational complexity is then proposed by exploiting jointly the use of instrumental variables and 2-D unscented (or cubature) transformation. The resulting estimator, referred to as the bias-compensated Bayesian weighted instrumental variable estimator, enjoys the desirable properties of negligible bias and mean-squared error on par with the computationally demanding an iterative maximum a posteriori estimator. The comparative simulation studies are presented to corroborate the performance advantages of the proposed estimators.
Gaussian processes for information-theoretic robotic mapping and exploration

This thesis proposes a framework for autonomous robotic mapping, exploration, and planning that uses Gaussian Processes (GPs) to model high-dimensional dense maps and solve the problem of infinite-horizon planning with imperfect state information. Robotic exploration is traditionally implemented using occupancy grid representations and geometric targets known as frontiers. The occupancy grid representation relies on the assumption of independence between grid cells and ignores structural correlations present in the environment. We develop an incremental GP occupancy mapping technique that is computationally tractable for online map building and represents a continuous model of uncertainty over the map spatial coordinates. The standard way to represent geometric frontiers extracted from occupancy maps is to assign binary values to each grid cell. We extend this notion to novel probabilistic frontier maps computed efficiently using the gradient of the GP occupancy map and propose a mutual information-based greedy exploration technique built on that representation. A primary motivation is the fact that high-dimensional map inference requires fewer observations, leading to a faster map entropy reduction during exploration for map building scenarios. The uncertainty from pose estimation is often ignored during current mapping strategies as the dense belief representation of occupancy maps makes the uncertainty propagation impractical.
Sequential Cascade Electrocatalytic Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to C–C Coupled Products

Cascade catalytic processes perform multistep chemical transformations without isolating the intermediates. Here, we demonstrate a sequential cascade pathway to convert CO2 to C2+ hydrocarbons and oxygenates in a two-step electrocatalytic process using CO as the intermediate. CO2 to CO conversion is performed by using Ag, and further conversion of CO to C–C coupled products is performed with Cu. Temporal separation between the two reaction steps is accomplished by situating the Ag electrode upstream of the Cu electrode in a continuous flow reactor. Convection–diffusion simulations and experimental evaluation of the electrodes individually are performed to identify optimal conditions. With the upstream Ag electrode poised at −1 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode in a flow of CO2-saturated water in aqueous carbonate buffer, over 80% of the CO can be converted on the downstream Cu electrode. When the Ag electrode is on, a supersaturation of CO is achieved near the Cu electrode, which leads to a relative .
A Modified Benders Decomposition for Chance-Constrained Unit Commitment with N-1 Security and Wind Uncertainty

As renewable wind energy penetration rates continue to increase, one of the major challenges facing grid operators is the question of how to control transmission grids in a reliable and a cost-efficient manner. The stochastic nature of wind forces an alteration of traditional methods for solving day-ahead and look-ahead unit commitment and dispatch. In particular, the variability of wind generation increases the risk of unexpected overloads and cascading events. To address these questions, we present an N-1 Security and Chance-Constrained Unit Commitment (SCCUC) that includes models of generation reserves that respond to wind fluctuations and models of tertiary reserves that respond to single component outages. We formulate the SCCUC as a mixed-integer, second-order cone problem that limits the probability of failure. We develop a Benders decomposition algorithm to solve the problem to optimality and present detailed case studies on the IEEE RTS-96 three-area and the IEEE 300 NESTA test systems. The case studies assess the economic impacts of contingencies and various degrees of wind power penetration and demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the algorithm.
Structured Big Data Management System Supported Cross-Domain Query

We design a structured big data management system which can deal with large-scale structured datasets and supports the cross-domain collaborative query. The system employs the HDFS as the storage layer. And it realizes a scheduling engine in reference with the splitting technology of the massive parallel processing (MPP) database. Using this engine, tasks can be split and distributed to different sub-nodes for parallel execution. Through cross-domain querymodule, users can execute SQL commands on the datasets of different datacenters or network domains. Meanwhile, the system supports the distributed deployment, so as to reduce the construction cost by making full use of existing software and hardware resources and equipments. We test the system functions and performance on a 80 nodes cluster, and compares with Hive. The result suggested that system performance is improved by 2-3 times than Hive and the function designed can be performed correctly.
Prevention of Ochratoxin A (OTA) Production in Coffee Beans Using Natural Antifungal Derived from Solanum indicum L. Green Berries

This study was aimed to find out an alternative to synthetic fungicides used in the control of fungi development in crops including coffee. The antifungal was extracted from green berries of Solanum indicum L. and its effect on the behavior of three Aspergillus species Ochratoxin A (OTA) producers (Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus carbonarius and Aspergillus ochraceus) was evaluated on a coffee-agar medium. The results show a reduction of growth with the increase of the antifungal content in the medium. Indeed, on the medium without antifungal, the growth rate has reached 90 mm within only 3 days of incubation for the three strains tested, while no growth was observed for A. niger and A.carbonarius from 8% of antifungal in the medium and for A. ochraceus, at 10% of antifungal in the medium even after 7 days of incubation. However, the total inhibition of OTA was observed from 8% of antifungal in the medium for these three strains of Aspergillus. Indeed, the amounts of OTA produced on the coffee-agar medium without antifungal were 0.005, 1.63 and 0.108 µg/mL respectively for A. niger, A. carbonarius and A. ochraceus, while from 8% of antifungal fraction in the medium, no detectable OTA amount was observed for the three strains tested after 7 days of incubation. The phytochemical screening of this antifungal fraction revealed compounds including flavonoids, carotenoids and saponins. These results suggest the use of this antifungal fraction as an alternative to synthetic fungicides for the control of fungi development and OTA production in coffee beans.
Automatic Cache Aware Roofline Model Building and Validation Using Topology Detection

The ever growing complexity of high performance computing systems imposes significant challenges to exploit as much as possible their computational and memory resources. Recently, the Cache-aware Roofline Model has gained popularity due to its simplicity when modeling multi-cores with complex memory hierarchy, characterizing applications bottlenecks, and quantifying achieved or remaining improvements. In this short paper we involve hardware locality topology detection to build the Cache Aware Roofline Model for modern processors in an open-source locality-aware tool. The proposed tool also includes a set of specific micro-benchmarks to assess the micro-architecture performance upper-bounds. The experimental results show that by relying on the proposed tool, it was possible to reach near-theoretical bounds of an Intel 3770K processor, thus proving the effectiveness of the modeling methodology.
Temperature Dependent Flow Properties of Powder Injection Moulding Compounds

Abstract The temperature dependent flow properties of highly filled polymer compounds intended for production of hard-metal parts by powder injection moulding (PIM) technology were studied. The pure binder based on polyethylene, ethylene and butyl acrylate block copolymer and paraffin, and its compounds with hard-metal carbide powder (up to 55 vol. %) were prepared by melt mixing at 180˚C. The flow properties were investigated at the temperature range from 140˚C to 200˚C using capillary rheometer operating flow at a constant piston speed. The measure of temperature sensitivity of PIM compounds, activation energy of shear flow, decreases with powder loading and shear rate. The Arrhenius relation for these materials is only valid in the stable flow region. At the temperatures above 170˚C the compounds filled with 45 vol. % carbide powder and higher exhibit an unstable flow of pressure oscillations type at the shear rates above 103 s-1. The onset of pressure oscillations is strongly affected by temperature. The relation between critical shear stress for the onset of pressure oscillations and temperature is non-linear.
Print-and-play: a new paradigm for the nearly-instant aerospace system

Nanosatellites, in particular the sub-class of CubeSATs, will provide an ability to place multiple small satellites in space more efficiently than larger satellites, with the eventual expectation that they will compete against some of the roles played by traditional large satellites that are expensive to launch. In order to do this, it is necessary to decrease the weight and volume without decreasing the capabilities. At the same time, it is desirable to create systems extremely rapidly, less than a week from concept to orbit. The Air Force has been working on a concept termed "CubeFlow" which will be a web-based design flow for rapidly constructible CubeSAT systems. In CubeFlow, distributed suppliers create offerings (modules, software functions, for satellite bus and payloads) meeting standard size and interface specifications, which are registered as a living catalog to a design community within the web-based CubeFlow environment. The idea of allowing any interested parties to make circuits and sensors that simply and compatibly connect to a modular satellite carrier is going to change how satellites are developed and launched, promoting creative exploitation and reduced development time and costs. We extend the power of the CubeFlow framework by a concept we call "print-and-play. " "Print-and-play" enriches the CubeFlow concept dramatically. Whereas the CubeFlow system is oriented to the brokering of pre-created offerings from a "plug-and-play" vendor community, the idea of "print-andplay" allows similar offerings to be created "from scratch," using web-based plug-ins to capture design requirements, which are communicated to rapid prototyping tools.
Process Design Kit and Design Automation for Flexible Hybrid Electronics

High-performance low-cost flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) are desirable for applications such as internet of things (IoT) and wearable electronics. Carbon-nanotube (CNT) thin-film transistor (TFT) is a promising candidate for high-performance FHE, because of its high carrier mobility, superior mechanical flexibility, and material compatibility with low-cost printing and solution-processes. Flexible sensors and peripheral CNT-TFT circuits, such as decoders, drivers and sense amplifiers, can be printed and hybrid-integrated with thinned (<50µm) silicon chips on soft, thin, and flexible substrates for a wide range of applications from flexible displays to wearable medical devices. Here we report: 1) process design kit (PDK) to enable FHE design automation for large-scale FHE circuits, and 2) solution-process proven intellectual property (IP) blocks for TFT circuits design, including Pseudo-CMOS [1] flexible digital logic and analog amplifiers shown in Figure 1.