Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proof of concept of diffuse optical tomography using time-of-flight range imaging cameras

Diffuse optical tomography is an optical technique to create 3-dimensional images of the inside of highly scattering material. Research groups around the world have been developing imaging systems using various source-detector arrangements to determine optical properties of biological tissue with a focus on medical applications. In this paper we investigate whether a range imaging camera can be used as a detector array. We used time-of-flight range imaging cameras instead of the conventional source-detector array used by others. The results provided in this paper show reconstructed images of absorption and reduced scattering of an object submerged in a tissue simulating phantom. Using the ranging camera XZ422 Demonstrator and the NIRFAST software package, we reconstructed 2D images of a 6 mm metal rod submerged in the centre of a 5 cm deep tank filled with 1% Intralipid TM . We have shown for the first time that range imaging cameras can replace the traditional detectors in diffuse optical tomography.
Some Approaches to Calibration of Age in Odontocetes Using Layered Hard Tissues

Current methods in determining age of odontocetes rely upon untested assumptions. The relationship between layering and absolute age requires calibration. To achieve this goal, five approaches are suggested: (1) the establishment of a reference collection for known-age, minimum known-age. and time-marked samples; (2) the construction of developmental series of layered hard tissues representing individuals from various taxonomic and geographical stocks; (3) the tagging and recovery of wild animals that have been time-marked; (4) an extended program of multiple time-marking and extraction of teeth of live-captive animals; and (5) the study of layered hard tissues in conjunction with clinical records of specimens treated with fluorescent antibiotics. Pilot programs using these approaches are in various stages of implementation at the Southwest Fisheries Center, La Jolla.
Development of design competences for international team-based cyber physical systems

During the last decennia new product categories have been and are being developed, that have embedded real-time technologies for sensing and controlling the environment, using ambient technologies. These technologies are based on Ubiquitous Technologies (UT) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Generally such systems include sensors, data transmitters, data processing units and actors. At the same time more traditional products often have been upgraded with intelligence incorporated. Our indoor and outdoor environment is becoming increasingly smart to enable providing services. In the same time we observe increasing globalisation and complexity of societal structures, communication, economy and politics [1]. Such developments affect the life settings of society and individuals. An important consequence is that coming industrial designers will therefore have an increasing responsibility for applying the new technologies and for taking care of ethical issues. Obviously Design Education Institutes (DEI) have to cope with such developments. This paper presents our findings how multi-x student teams can be prepared to investigate societal problems, how to develop the individual competences and feeling of responsibility towards such issues in their future professional life, to realise concrete artefacts that can contribute to solving such problems, and how to implement such finding in a concrete educational curriculum.
Analysis of probe and pump waves interaction in the Brillouin gain scattering by changing the pulse power distribution shape

Spatial resolution is a topic of special interest in the distributed fiber sensing field. The influence of the probe-pulse shape in the interaction between the pulsed light and the continuous wave laser in a pump-probe system is presented. Also this study has the purpose of improving the spatial resolution of the measurement without losing stability in the Brillouin gain Scattering (BGS). Besides it is showed how the backscattering Brillouin gain is affected by inducing variations on the final value of the BGS intensity. Theoretical analysis of the probe pulse in the Brillouin shift and intensity values using sinc, triangular and saw tooth shapes around the phonon lifetime are presented; and also considerations and conclusions are explained. For additional information about the paper, please contact galindezca@unican.es
Antecedents and Consequences of Performance Management Outsourcing

This research intended to examine the main factors that influence the decisionmaking of performance management outsourcing that is increasing globally, and to scrutinize the cost cutting effects that result from the performance management outsourcing. Fist we looked at the correlation between the company specificity of performance management, HR involvement, outsourcing of performance management of competing companies, the size of the company, and the implementation of performance management outsourcing. Then we performed regression analyses and it was found that company specificity and the behavior of competing companies statistically have a meaningful relationship with the decision-making of the performance management outsourcing. Moreover, the cost-cutting effects that result from the outsourcing of performance management were found to decrease gradually. In this paper, we examined the outsourcing of performance management in Korean companies. Specifically, we examined the antecedents and consequences of performance management outsourcing. Outsourcing means performing certain functions and skills or activities of a company by consigning such part to an outside company, and is a concept that is being contrasted to the in-house financing of business activities, technology, and raw materials. Discussions concerning the definition of outsourcing are being unfolded in various ways, where in the beginning it was applied centrally to the information service but its concept was gradually extended to cover other areas. The broad sense of outsourcing means the external financing of business skills or resources, and the narrow sense of outsourcing means that the service provider is responsible for the performance of all stages of business from planning and designing to managing and operating. 2. Literature Review
Transport stress causes damage in rats' liver and triggers liver autophagy

Transport stress would do great economic damage to animal husbandry. To discover the mechanism of this problem, this study aims to explore the damage and the autophagy level after transport stress in Sprague Dawley (SD) ratsÂÂ liver. Our previous work has successfully built a stable transport stress model. This study repeated transport stress rats model; detected bodyweight, rectal temperature and Serumbiochemical indexes. The results showed significantly difference between stress group (SG) and control group (CG), suggested the model was successfully built. Histological observation showed that the ratÂÂs liver in SG was obviously damaged. Autophagy-related indicator LC3was evaluated by immunohistochemistry test, andwas accumulated within the central vein of liver where autophagy was triggered. RT-PCR analysis of gene expression during transport stress showed that themRNAlevel ofmTOR, Beclin-1 and LC3were significantly decreased. These results suggested that transport stress induced systemic reaction in rats, caused liver damage, and triggered autophagy. The mechanism of this autophagy process may be regulated by the low expression ofmTORinstead ofBeclin-1. This study is the first demonstration of autophagy in liver in transport stress. It lays the theoretical foundation for the future research and new drugs development.
The economics of orphan drugs: the case of osteosarcoma treatment

There is still an unmet need for intensified research into health economic evaluation models of orphan drugs. In the first part of the paper some main issues related to the limits of cost-effectiveness in rare diseases are developed. In order to investigate the theoretical aspect in practice, a cost-effectiveness analysis has been performed to a new drug in osteosarcomas.Osteosarcomas are rare tumors: approximately 750 to 900 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States, of which 400 arise in children and adolescents younger than 20 years of age. In the second part of the paper the cost-effectiveness of mifamurtide as add-on treatment to standard chemotherapy for the high grade resectable non metastatic osteosarcoma, compared to standard chemotherapy alone has been evaluated by using a Markov model. The horizon was lifetime and the perspective of the Italian National Health Service has been applied. The undiscounted results show that the ICER for mifamurtide added on maintenance chemotherapy over maintenance chemotherapy alone is € 32,111per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY). When discounting is included, the ICER changes to € 73,151 per QALY. The primary reason that discounting (of the outcomes) has a significant effect on the ICER is that the majority of the treatment costs are incurred within the first two years of the model but the clinical outcomes are obtained throughout the whole time horizon and thus discounting the outcomes (benefits) reduces the QALY difference between the treatments which adversely affects the cost-effectiveness of mifamurtide. The Probabilistic Sensitivity show that at a WTP threshold of €£50,000 around 76.4% of the iterations were below this limit (undiscounted), but only 19.4% when discounted. 19.4% of the iterations were below this limit. However, the value of € 73.151 per QALY gained seems to be relatively low when compared to the ICER of orphan drugs already marketed and reimbursed in Europe.
Gugelmann galaxy: an unexpected journey through a collection of Schweizer Kleinmeister

GLAM institutions all over the world are digitizing their collections. As the number of items in such a collection amounts to tens or even hundreds of thousands, providing comprehensible access and presentation becomes increasingly difficult. At the same time, a steadily growing amount of this data is openly available. This gives rise to various projects approaching the hidden treasures in these collections with computational tools. The project presented here, Gugelmann Galaxy, lets the user explore an entire collection of digitized images and their textual metadata in an immersive three-dimensional cloud, whose configuration can be rearranged according to different criteria. The project questions traditional models of categorization and curating and implements alternative approaches prototypically.
Oscillatory subglacial drainage in the absence of surface melt

The presence of strong diurnal cycling in basal wa- ter pressure records obtained during the melt season is well established for many glaciers. The behaviour of the drainage system outside the melt season is less well understood. Here we present borehole observations from a surge-type valley glacier in the St Elias Mountains, Yukon Territory, Canada. Our data indicate the onset of strongly correlated multi-day oscillations in water pressure in multiple boreholes strad- dling a main drainage axis, starting several weeks after the disappearance of a dominant diurnal mode in August 2011 and persisting until at least January 2012, when multiple data loggers suffered power failure. Jokulhlaups provide a tem- plate for understanding spontaneous water pressure oscilla- tions not driven by external supply variability. Using a sub- glacial drainage model, we show that water pressure oscilla- tions can also be driven on a much smaller scale by the inter- action between conduit growth and distributed water storage in smaller water pockets, basal crevasses and moulins, and that oscillations can be triggered when water supply drops below a critical value. We suggest this in combination with a steady background supply of water from ground water or englacial drainage as a possible explanation for the observed wintertime pressure oscillations.
Data mining in traditional sports talent training program decision making

Operation mechanism for cooperation and communication among multiple private colleges has been studied and explored by taking cooperation and communication among computer majors in part of private colleges in Zhuhai area as research object and by taking research on cultivation mode of computer application-oriented talents among various colleges as topic. Based on this, cooperation and co-construction of private colleges in teacher team, teaching material construction, laboratory construction and construction of practice training base etc. as well as resource integration and sharing mode etc. have been explored and then make a series of innovation practice and research.
Gabor Filter Selection and Computational Processing for Emotion Recognition

CrowdEmotion produce software to measure a person's emotions based on analysis of microfacial expressions using a machine learning algorithm to recognize which features correspond with which emotions. The features are derived by applying a bank of Gabor filters to a set of frames. CrowdEmotion needed to improve the accuracy, processing speed and cost-efficiency of the tool. In particular they wanted to know if a subset of the bank of Gabor filters was sufficient, and whether the image filtering stage could be implemented on a GPU. A framework for choosing the optimum set of Gabor filters was established and ways of reducing the dimensionality of this were interrogated. Taking a subset of Local Binary Patterns was found to be fully justified. Meanwhile choosing a gridding pattern is open to interpretation; some suggestions were made about how this choice might be improved.
A general circuit topology of multilevel inverter

A generalized circuit topology of multilevel voltage source inverters which is based on a direct extension of the three-level inverter to higher level is proposed. The circuit topologies up to five-level are presented. The proposed multilevel inverter can realize any multilevel pulsewidth modulation (PWM) scheme which leads to harmonic reduction and provides full utilization of semiconductor devices like GTOs, especially in the high power range where high voltage can be applied. The capacitor voltage balancing problem is discussed and a circuit remedy for such a problem is given. <<ETX>>
Synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes: effects of active metals, catalyst supports, and metal loading percentage

The effects of active metals, catalyst supports, and metal loading percentage on the formation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were studied. In particular, iron, cobalt, and nickel were investigated for SWNTs synthesis. Iron was found to grow better-quality SWNTs compared to cobalt and nickel. To study the effect of catalyst supports, magnesium oxide, silicon oxide, and aluminium oxide were chosen for iron. Among the studied supports, MgO was identified to be a suitable support for iron as it produced SWNTs with better graphitisation determined by Raman analysis. Increasing the iron loading decreased the quality of SWNTs due to extensive agglomeration of the iron particles. Thus, lower metal loading percentage is preferred to grow better-quality SWNTs with uniform diameters.
Synthesis, Antimicrobial Activity and Molecular Modelling of Aminolysed Derivative of Poly(ethyleneterephthalate)

The increasing demand and use of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) in different applications have led to serious concern for our environment. Poly(ethylene terephthalate) has to be recycled to compounds of significant importance by chemical or mechanical method to reduce the hazards created by this non-biodegradable waste. In this report, we have prepared bis(2-aminoethyl terephthalamide) (BAET) from aminolysis of PET in presence of ethylene diamine. The basic characterization of the compound was done by using FTIR, UV-visible spectroscopy, NMR and thermal analysis studies. In addition to this, the antimicrobial approach of the compounds obtained through recycled PET was examined which showed broad spectrum antibacterial and anti-fungal property. The present study also includes molecular docking of synthesized compound with the target protein GlcN-6-P synthase which explains a promising activity of this compound as an antimicrobial agent. In silico study reveals that BAET had high affinity towards the target protein by showing good binding energy ranging between -8.55 to -7.45 kcal/mol-1. Compound BAET has very closed interactions with target protein's Cys300, Gly301, Ser303, Leu601, Glu488, Ser349, Ser347, Gln348, Lys603, Ser401, Ala400, Leu601 and Glu488.
Is Small Really Beautiful? Explaining Different Unemployment Performances within the Euro-Zone

This article asks why unemployment performance in small countries in European Monetary Union has been superior to that in large EMU countries. Within a model of monopolistic competition, it is shown that a possible answer is a beggar-thy-neighbor policy by the small countries. When dropping the real balance effect from a standard model of monopolistic competition, it is found that a monopoly trade union setting wages for a large economy cannot insuence employment and output by changing nominal wages. A trade union in a small country which is in a monetary union with a large country, on the other hand, can increase output and employment by wage restraint.
Eye-Openers from Re-Processing of Oil Sands Seismic Data

Summary It has been shown that density is the acoustic property that is most closely correlated with reservoir properties of interest in oil sands development, such as saturation, shale content and porosity (e.g. Gray, 2011). Estimates of density can be extracted via amplitude versus offset (AVO) techniques applied to wide-angle seismic data. Modern 3D seismic data acquired over oil sands plays typically has sufficient shot-receiver offset to produce incident angles of the seismic wave that allow the extraction of density from it. In order to do this, we have reprocessed our seismic data with the express purpose of optimizing the wide angles for the extraction of density. In doing so, we have encountered several eye-openers that have caused us to re-think how and why certain processes are applied to the data. These eye-openers are the subject of this paper.
Millennial and sub-millennial scale climatic variations recorded in polar ice cores over the last glacial period

Abstract. Since its discovery in Greenland ice cores, the millennial scale climatic variability of the last glacial period has been increasingly documented at all latitudes with studies focusing mainly on Marine Isotopic Stage 3 (MIS 3; 28–60 thousand of years before present, hereafter ka) and characterized by short Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events. Recent and new results obtained on the EPICA and NorthGRIP ice cores now precisely describe the rapid variations of Antarctic and Greenland temperature during MIS 5 (73.5–123 ka), a time period corresponding to relatively high sea level. The results display a succession of abrupt events associated with long Greenland InterStadial phases (GIS) enabling us to highlight a sub-millennial scale climatic variability depicted by (i) short-lived and abrupt warming events preceding some GIS (precursor-type events) and (ii) abrupt warming events at the end of some GIS (rebound-type events). The occurrence of these sub-millennial scale events is suggested to be driven by the insolation at high northern latitudes together with the internal forcing of ice sheets. Thanks to a recent NorthGRIP-EPICA Dronning Maud Land (EDML) common timescale over MIS 5, the bipolar sequence of climatic events can be established at millennial to sub-millennial timescale. This shows that for extraordinary long stadial durations the accompanying Antarctic warming amplitude cannot be described by a simple linear relationship between the two as expected from the bipolar seesaw concept. We also show that when ice sheets are extensive, Antarctica does not necessarily warm during the whole GS as the thermal bipolar seesaw model would predict, questioning the Greenland ice core temperature records as a proxy for AMOC changes throughout the glacial period.
Comparison of Multicarrier PWM Strategies for Five-level Z-Source Diode-Clamped Inverter for On-Grid Renewable Energies Applications

Multilevel Z-source inverters have been proposed as a solution for HV applications. This type of inverters decreases the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and has a good performance for different applications such as Flexible AC Transmission Systems, power quality improvement and connecting renewable energy resources to the network. This paper compares several alternative carrier disposition PWM strategies for a five-level Z-source diode-clamped inverter. These strategies are simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. The simulation results illustrate that using Phase Disposition (PD) method, the voltage THD decreases considerably. Also, Alternative Phase Opposition Disposition (APOD) method increases the voltage magnitude more than PD method. Both methods can be effectively used for connecting renewable energy sources to the power grid.
Inspired Preparation of Zinc Oxide Nanocatalyst and the Photocatalytic Activity in the Treatment of Methyl Orange Dye and Paraquat Herbicide

As the need to use green chemistry routes increases, environmentally friendly catalytic processes are a demand. One of the most important and abundant naturally occurring catalysts is chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the first recognized catalyst; it is a reducing agent due to its electron-rich structure. The effects of spinach on the preparation of zinc oxide nanoparticles and the photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange and paraquat in sunlight and under a UV lamp and photocatalytic degradation in sunlight were studied. Different parameters of the catalytic preparation process and photocatalytic degradation process were studied. Characterization of differently prepared samples was carried out using different analytical techniques such as XRD, SEM, and EDX and finally the photocatalytic activity towards decomposition of methyl orange and paraquat.
Influence of waterpipe smoking on cardiac autonomic function at rest and following high-intensity anaerobic exercise

Background: Waterpipe (WP) smoking has been linked to reduced birth weight, genetic damage, and respiratory and cardiovascular disease, possibly via enhanced exposure to carbon monoxide and volatile aldehydes. Objective: The effect of long-term WP smoking on cardiac autonomic function at rest and following exercise was investigated. Methods: Twenty males volunteered and were divided into two groups: WP smokers (WPS) and non-smokers (NSmk). Heart rate variability (HRV) at rest and following (10 mins) Wingate test was examined. Additionally, heart rate recovery (HRR) at 1 (HRR1), 2 (HRR2) and 5 mins (HRR5) post-Wingate test were considered. Results: At rest, the WPS group exhibited a significantly greater heart rate and lower standard deviation of RR intervals. The WPS group experienced a significantly greater peak heart rate while the post-Wingate recovery of HRV, HRR1, and HRR2 were similar between groups. In contrast, HRR5 for the WPS group was significantly greater than for the NSmk group. Conclusions: Long-term WP smoking resulted in an altered resting cardiac autonomic state exemplified by reduced overall HRV, specifically, a decline in vagal activity and/or relative increase in sympathetic activity that may persist during anaerobic exercise but not during early recovery.