Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stubs and Slits Loaded Partial Ground Plane Inspired Hexagonal Ring-Shaped Fractal Antenna for Multiband Wireless Applications: Design and Measurement

A multiband hexagonal ring-shaped fractal antenna with stubs and slits loaded partial ground plane has been presented in this manuscript. The proposed antenna is compact in size 24 × 30 × 1.6 mm3 and exhibits enhanced bandwidth, gain, and reflection coefficient. Measured results exhibit that the proposed antenna resonates with impedance bandwidth (S11 ≤ −10 dB) in the frequency ranges 1.0–2.75 GHz, 4.74–8.70 GHz, 11.04–12.76 GHz, 14.97–16.62 GHz, and 19.70–22.0 GHz. These frequency ranges cover distinct wireless standards such as 1800 MHz 2G spectrum of GSM band (1.71–1.88 GHz), LTE 2300/LTE 2500 (2.3–2.4 GHz/2.5–2.69 GHz), RFID/Bluetooth (2.4 GHz), 5G spectrum band (5900–6400 MHz) adopted by European Union, Long Term Evolution (LTE) band 46 (5150–5925 MHz), RFID (5.4 GHz), WLAN (5.15–5.35 and 5.72–5.85 GHz), Wi-MAX (5.25–5.85 GHz), FSS (11.45–11.7/12.5–12.75 GHz), defence systems (14.62–15.23 GHz), aeronautical radio navigations (15.43–17.3 GHz), and fixed/mobile satellite communications (19.7–20.1 GHz and 20.2–21.2 GHz). The proposed antenna reveals the positive value of peak realized gain with almost omnidirectional radiation patterns in Eand H-planes for all the resonant frequency bands. The performance of proposed antenna has been realized by using HFSS V13 simulator based on FEM (Finite Element Method), and the results are compared with the experimental results which are in good agreement with each other.
Semi-Supervised Classification of Images for Post-Earthquake Building Damage Assessment

Post-earthquake damage surveys currently require teams of domain experts to visually inspect buildings to determine their safety, which is slow and subjective. Efforts to automate the process using computer vision have been limited due to the time and resource cost of labeling earthquake survey images. In this project I use pseudo-labeling to take advantage of large numbers of unlabeled reconnaissance images available on the web in a semi-supervised learning approach. I investigate the effects of changing the start-epoch of pseudo-labeling during training. Results show that prediction accuracy improved by up to 5% on a test set from the unlabeled data, although improvement is sensitive to the accuracy of the base model.
Experimental Assessment of the Impact of Sonication Parameters on Necrotic Lesions Induced in Tissues by HIFU Ablative Device for Preclinical Studies

We have designed and built ultrasound imaging-guided HIFU ablative device for preclinical studies on small animals. Before this device is used to treat animals, ex vivo tissue studies were necessary to determine the location and extent of necrotic lesions created inside tissue samples by HIFU beams depending on their acoustic properties. This will allow to plan the beam movement trajectory and the distance and time intervals between exposures leading to necrosis covering the entire treated volume without damaging the surrounding tissues. This is crucial for therapy safety. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of sonication parameters on the size of necrotic lesions formed by HIFU beams generated by 64-mm bowl-shaped transducer used, operating at 1.08 MHz or 3.21 MHz. Multiple necrotic lesions were created in pork loin samples at 12.6-mm depth below tissue surface during 3-s exposure to HIFU beams with fixed duty-cycle and varied pulse-duration or fixed pulse-duration and varied duty-cycle, propagated in two-layer media: water-tissue. After exposures, the necrotic lesions were visualized using magnetic resonance imaging and optical imaging (photos) after sectioning the samples. Quantitative analysis of the obtained results allowed to select the optimal sonication and beam movement parameters to support planning of effective therapy.
Asset-Based Insights on Designing Fitness Promotion Techs in Boston’s Low-SES Neighborhoods

The disproportionate burden of obesity among low-socioeconomic status (SES), Black, and Latinx households underscores the ever-increasing health disparities in the United States. This epidemic can be prevented by prioritizing physical activity interventions for these populations. However, many technology-based physical activity interventions were designed for the individuals rather than for the individuals amidst their social environment. In this position paper, I report my eight-year research and technology designs processes. Although this research was not specifically guided by asset-based design principles, assets consistently emerged during the in-depth fieldwork. They include family relationships and caregiving communities. These assets appeared to influence the motivation to engage with health technologies and also enhance family physical activity self-efficacy. However, since my studies were not guided by asset-based design principles, some key assets may not be sufficiently identified. By participating in this workshop, I seek to collaboratively explore how to support communities to identify their assets and also how to translate assets into technology designs towards enhancing health equity. Asset-Based Perspectives on Physical Activity Promotion Techs in Boston’s Low-SES Neighborhoods
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF SEISMIC SOIL-FOUNDATION-STRUCTURE INTERACTION IN MASONRY BUILDINGS FOUNDED ON CAVITIES

Historical urban centers are often characterized by cavity systems beneath the foundations or underground stories of masonry buildings. This may have an impact on the expected damage induced by earthquake excitations. This paper presents the nonlinear dynamic analysis of a historical multistory building made of stonemasonry loadbearing walls and horizontal diaphragms, taking into account the complex interaction between the foundation system and soil. The aim of this research is to evaluate whether and how the presence of an underground floor and cavity influences the Soil-Foundation-Structure (SFS) interaction. Dynamic analyses of 2D SFS models were performed with the finite difference method (FDM), by varying geotechnical and structural properties such as the soil stratigraphy, the basement depth and the number of building stories. The main results of 234 dynamic linear elastic analyses are presented in a dimensionless format. A new equivalent wave parameter was properly defined to take into account the presence of underground level and cavities in SFS interaction. Relationships between the most important parameters controlling the interaction phenomena are proposed. Since the geometric layouts considered in this study are rather recurrent in the Italian and European built heritage, the proposed procedure might be widely extended to comparable cases.
Audio Style Transfer

Recently, CNNs have been successfully applied to neural style transfer for images. However, not as much research has been done on neural style transfer for audio. In this paper, I experiment with a baseline CNN, as well as a more complex GAN architecture to see how it performs in this ﬁeld. GANs seem to hold a lot of promise, but takes signiﬁcantly longer to train.
Convolutional Neural Networks for American Accented English Region Localization and Analysis

Accent classiﬁcation has important applications in the development of voice-activated devices, as well as in ethnolinguistic research. This project is aimed at developing a model that can successfully classify accented varieties of North American English. Through our project, we applied a 2-layer Convolution Neural Network (CNN) to Mel-frequency cepstral coefﬁcient (MFCC) graphs of 1,368 recordings of a standardized English text being read. We predicted that the models would be able to perform better on datasets that had been constrained to have equitable class distributions, given the same data augmentation preprocessing. Overall, we found that models trained on class-constrained datasets performed better than non-constrained counterparts, with a observed difference of 10-15% for both accuracy and micro F1 scores. Additionally, the confusion matrices of the models corroborate demographic realities for early 20th century America.
Evidence of stock connectivity, hybridization, and misidentification in white anglerfish supports the need of a genetics‐informed fisheries management framework

Understanding population connectivity within a species as well as potential interactions with its close relatives is crucial to define management units and to derive efficient management actions. However, although genetics can reveal mismatches between biological and management units and other relevant but hidden information such as species misidentification or hybridization, the uptake of genetic methods by the fisheries management process is far from having been consolidated. Here, we have assessed the power of genetics to better understand the population connectivity of white (Lophius piscatorius) and its interaction with its sister species, the black anglerfish (Lophius budegassa). Our analyses, based on thousands of genome‐wide single nucleotide polymorphisms, show three findings that are crucial for white anglerfish management. We found (i) that white anglerfish is likely composed of a single panmictic population throughout the Northeast Atlantic, challenging the three‐stock based management, (ii) that a fraction of specimens classified as white anglerfish using morphological characteristics are genetically identified as black anglerfish (L. budegassa), and iii) that the two Lophius species naturally hybridize leading to a population of hybrids of up to 20% in certain areas. Our results set the basics for a genetics‐informed white anglerfish assessment framework that accounts for stock connectivity, revises and establishes new diagnostic characters for Lophius species identification, and evaluates the effect of hybrids in the current and future assessments of the white anglerfish. Furthermore, our study contributes to provide additional evidence of the potentially negative consequences of ignoring genetic data for assessing fisheries resources.
Anthracite combustion kinetics study by thermal analysis

The effect of heating rate on anthracite pyrolysis and combustion process was investigated by thermal analysis curves(TG-DSC),the isoconversional method and Malek method were applied to determine the most probable mechanism function of each stage,and the anthracite kinetics model was also established.The results indicate that the higher heating rate,the lower weight loss rate at the same temperature,the burnout temperature is also higher.With increasing heating rate,the ignition characteristic changes from hetero-homogeneous ignition to heterogeneous ignition.At the lower heating rates,a part of carbon is oxidated accompanied with pyrolysis before the carbon ignition temperature,the oxidation reaction is the controlling step,and the mechanism obeys the retraction balls model function.When the heating rate increases,before the carbon ignition temperature it follows the SB(m,n) mode function with coal pyrolysis rate controlling.The combustion in carbon surface and a part of internal area follows the cylindrical symmetry three-dimensional diffusion model and the stable phase of combustion followed the RO(n) mode function.
TPR domain coding gene ST2 may be involved in regulating tillering and fertility in rice

A decrease in the tiller number and male sterility will lead to a decline in the rice yield. Therefore, it is significant to study the molecular mechanism of controlling the tiller number and regulating the male reproductive development. The mutant st2 (single tiller 2) was induced by ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS) in the indica maintainer line Xinong 1B and showed single tillering and male sterility. I2-KI staining showed that the st2 pollen was aborted. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation underlined that the anther of st2 became smaller, the wax of the epidermis reduced, the inner wall shrank and the Ubisch body decreased, the pollen collapsed, and the germination pore developed abnormally. The genetic analysis discovered that the trait was controlled by a single recessive nuclear gene located on chromosome 3. LOC_Os03g05540 encoding a tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) domain was identified as the candidate gene by sequencing. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis indicated that ST2 was highly expressed in the stem apical meristem (SAM) and the initial stage of meiosis during the anther development. The subcellular localisation indicated that ST2 is a nuclear and plasmic localisation protein. The homology analysis demonstrated that ST2 was evolutionarily conserved. These results laid a foundation for further study of the ST2 function.
VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT AS A TOOL TO MITIGATE AND MANAGE SEISMIC RISK IN OLD URBAN AREAS

This paper is focused on the application of a seismic vulnerability assessment approach to obtain largescale risk and damage scenarios using the historic city centre of Coimbra, in Portugal, as a case study. The aim of creating those scenarios, built for different macroseismic intensities, was to develop and discuss a decision supporting tool for the operational management of seismic crisis. The primary objectives of this work included the use of seismic vulnerability assessment results obtained from the analysis of 803 old masonry buildings located in the historic city centre of Coimbra and the subsequent creation of large-scale damage and loss scenarios resorting to a Geographic Information System (GIS) tool. In a second phase, these loss scenarios were used to outline possible evacuation routes with different levels of accessibility, as well as to identify and rank on a probabilistic basis the areas of the historical city centre of Coimbra more prone to be isolated after a seismic event. Finally, the impact resulting from the application of a seismic retrofitting strategy is evaluated and discussed through the comparison between preand post-retrofitting scenarios.
A Dialogue Policy with Conversation State Embeddings (NLP)

The purpose of this project is to develop a deep learning model capable of predicting an appropriate agent action in response to a history of dialogue turns, where the dialogue is modeled as a sequence of human and agent actions. Each dialogue turn consists of an utterance and semantic metadata such as the action type, entities detected in the utterance, and the overall dialogue state which includes the current user intent and a set of "slot" values which are recorded and updated over the course of the conversation and used to fulfil the user’s goals. The input to our model is an encoded sequence of dialogue state features, i.e. the encoded conversation history. The output is a probability distribution over all agent action types.
Fabrication and Testing of Re-entrant Auxetic Samples and Sensor Numerically and Experimentally

Auxetic structures (negative Poisson’s ratio) are a group of materials which expand (contract) under tensile (compression) longitudinal loading. In this work, the effect of re-entrant auxetic structure geometry on Poisson’s ratio were investigated under large tensile loading experimentally and numerically and showed that the location and stiffness of rotation joints are two new important parameters affecting the value of Poisson’s ratio. Poisson's ratio increases as the rotation joints tighten and move away from the center of the structure. Therefore, by changing the location and stiffness of the rotation joints, it will be easy to obtain re-entrant auxetic structures with different Poisson's ratios, which makes it possible to build piezoresistant auxetic sensors with different sensitivities. A highly sensitive, stretchable piezoresistant auxetic sensor made of silicon rubber and chopped carbon fibers is proposed for low strain values. The main feature of this sensor is its high sensitivity for strains less than 6%, which previous works have been unable to detect this range of strains. Shifting strain is the value of strain in which the Poisson's ratio of the structure changes from negative to positive. The provided auxetic sensor performs exceptionally well until the shifting strain and then performs as conventional sensors. This improvement in sensing performance is about 150% (in terms of gauge factor).
Multi-Label Waste Classification with Data Augmentation

Introduction Our project aims to use transfer learning in order to classify different types of waste. We were motivated to do this with the ultimate goal of improving the efficiency of waste management systems, eventually reaching the point where people do not need to sort their waste, and an autonomous system can process it according to what type of waste it is. The end goal is to have a model that distinguishes recyclable waste from garbage, and labels recycling according to five classes, which are described below in the dataset section. Such a model could be used either in waste management facilities or in households to help educate people on what can and cannot be recycled. The input to the algorithm is a set of images, and the output is predictions corresponding to one of six classes of waste. We utilized transfer learning from a well-known neural network architecture called DenseNet121 [15], which has enabled us to take advantage of a model trained on a wealth of data, which benefits us as our dataset is comparatively small (2,527 images before data augmentation). We also utilized data augmentation in an attempt to improve our accuracy.
Help me help you: E2E ASR use case-speciﬁc optimization with user-provided data

Today’s ASR systems often commit errors that any human with domain knowledge could correct in seconds, for example, transcribing “asymptotic” as “awesome topic”. Such errors are particularly likely in newly-favored end-to-end (E2E) systems trained on paired speech and text data [Zheng et al., 2021]. Yet, end-users with such knowledge complain that they have few ways to participate in improving these systems, and often lack the specific data format (paired audio and text) to do so. We instead imagine a world where users have accessible tools to make feasible improvements to a transcription model customized to their needs. For example, a professor might provide a link to a textbook to improve a model’s expertise. A religious leader live-streaming services might provide a link to her YouTube channel, so the model can pre-identify challenging utterances.
The Role of Agricultural Extension in Diffusion and Adoption of Biological Control Methods for Tomato Growers in Villages of Matrouh Governorate

This research aimed to define the role of agricultural extension in the process of Diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers in Matrouh Governorate, Egypt, and also to define the relationship between their role in agricultural extension in Diffusion and adopting biological Control methods for tomato growers and some independent variables . The research was conducted in Matrouh Governorate using a random sample of 323 farmers, representing 16% of the total research cohort amounting to 2050 farmers; the data were collected using a questionnaire in September 2019. Data wereanalyszed using a statistical program, arithmetic mean, and the simple correlation coefficient of Pearson (r). The results are also presented in tabular form using frequencies and percentages.The main results of the research are as follows:the majority of farmers (82.97%) stated that the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers was low, while 15.17% said that agricultural extension plays an intermediate role and 1.86% said it played a key role.There is a positivecorrelation at the 0.01 level of significance between the level of farmers' adoption of biological control methods as an dependent variable and each of the following independent variables: participation in local development organizations, social participation, satisfaction with life in the region, and attitudes towards agricultural innovations; and there is a positive correlation at the 0.05 level of significance with the levels of modernization and farmers' education.
The Harmony of Instructional Communication in the Classroom

This study aimed to analyze 1) the forms of politeness-based instructional communication in building social harmony in the classroom. This study was done to senior high school and vocational school students in Singaraja town through several techniques, recording, observation, interview, and documentation (photos). The results showed that the forms of instructional communication that can build social harmony in the classroom were: 1) verbal appreciation, 2) verbal reminder, 3) motivation in the form of an invitation, 4) giving examples, 5) persuasive metaphor, and 6) ability to cooperate. Keywords—communication, instruction, social harmony
Changes of Carbonyl Stress Parameters in Rats with Diabetes and Rhabdomyolysis

Aim: To investigate the changes of carbonyl stress parameters in rats with combined streptozotocin induced diabetes (STZD, hyperglycemia model) and glycerol stimulated rhabdomyolysis (RM, oxidative stress mode l). Methodology: RM was induced by glycerol injection and confirmed by changes of heme oxygenase activity, creatine kinase activity, total heme, creatinine, uric acid, urea and bilirubin. STZD was induced by streptozotocin injection and proved by increasi ng of glucose levels. Carbonyl stress development was determined by total aldehyde levels, TBARS, protein CO group levels, N(6) Carboxymethyllysine and low - molecular - weight SH groups in blood plasma and liver tissue. Results: A significant increase of carb onyl stress parameters was recorded in RM and STZD rat groups compared with their relative control levels. In animals subjected to the combined induction of
Sub-pixel Sensitivity Variations and their Effects on Precision Aperture Photometry

The response of pixels in CCDs and CMOS arrays is not uniform; physical aspects of pixel structure can create non-uniform electric fields within a pixel and the diffusion of carriers tends to blur pixel boundaries. It has previously been shown that the sub-pixel response can vary by up to 50% across a pixel, with more light being detected near the center and less around the edges. This intra-pixel response function (IPRF) can have significant effects on the aperture photometry of under-sampled PSFs, like those found in the Kepler and TESS exoplanet hunting missions. Knowledge of the IPRF can be used to correct for systematic variations in photometric measurements introduced by the sub-pixel variations in response. Additionally, in systems for which the optical PSF is not well defined, knowledge of the IPRF can allow for extraction of the optical PSF. Presented here are the results of the direct measurement of the IPRF of a thinned, back-illuminated CCD of the same model used on the NASA Kepler mission. The experimental setup used to measure the IPRF is discussed in detail. Measurements of the IPRF were made at various wavelengths, then combined to create an “effective IPRF” for the broad spectral bandpass filter used for collecting the scientific data of interest. This effective IPRF was then utilized in a model to study the effects of the IPRF on time series aperture photometry. The effects of spacecraft jitter and drift on aperture photometry were also investigated. Such results are relevant for exoplanet searches using the photometric detection technique as implemented in the Kepler and TESS missions.
Anthropometric Measures of Obesity to Predict Mortality using Edmonton’s Obesity Staging System, among Young Sudanese Females at Khartoum Locality, Sudan

Obesity is considered a serious health hazard. It predisposes the individual to many disorders, such as diabetes and heart disease, it shortens the life span, and it complicates childbirth and surgery. This study was a cross-sectional study conducted in health centers at Khartoum locality during November 2018January 2019; aimed to predict mortality among a young female Sudanese population enrolled in health centers.