Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time‐wave velocity analysis for early earthquake damage detection in buildings: application to a damaged full‐scale RC building

An algorithm for time velocity analysis of building response is presented, which identifies the wave velocity of vertically propagating waves through the building and detects their changes. The algorithm is intended for use in SHM systems for rapid assessment of the structural health and integrity following an earthquake. The velocities are identified by an interferometric algorithm, which involves least squares fit of pulses in impulse response functions. An important feature of this method is that it is not sensitive to the effects of soil–structure interaction. The algorithm is applied to a 12‐story RC building in Los Angeles, lightly damaged by the San Fernando 1971 earthquake. The results of the time velocity analysis are critically compared with results of analysis of input power, interstory drift, and instantaneous frequency. The identified average vertical wave velocity was initially ~140 m/s for the NS and ~110 m/s for the EW response and reduced by ~26% and 32%, respectively. The detected reduction of the fundamental frequency of vibration was larger (~44% for the NS and 48% for the EW response). The difference is interpreted to be due to softening of the soil–foundation system, to which the identified frequency of vibration is sensitive. The change was larger in the lower half of the building (~31% for the NS and ~37% for the EW response) as compared with the upper half (~24% for the NS and ~27% for the EW response), consistent with the observed damage. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Polymorphisms CYP2R1 rs10766197 and CYP27B1 rs10877012 in Multiple Sclerosis: A Case-Control Study

Background Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease. Low vitamin D levels have been reported to be a risk factor for MS, and genetic variances could be implicated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of MS with rs10766197 polymorphism of CYP2R1 gene and rs10877012 polymorphism of CYP27B1 gene. The second aim was to analyse whether these polymorphisms are associated with the severity of the progression of MS. Material and Methods. In a case-control study, we included 116 MS patients and 226 controls, all of whom were Mexican Mestizo. MS was diagnosed by McDonald criteria (2017). A complete neurological evaluation was performed to evaluate the severity of disease progression. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH) vitamin D] levels were measured by ELISA. Single nucleotide polymorphisms rs10766197 of CYP2R1 gene and rs10877012 SNP of CYP27B1 gene were genotyped by real-time PCR. Results Serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels were lower in MS patients than in controls (p = 0.009). No differences were observed between serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels of MS patients with severe progression compared to low progression (p = 0.88). A higher frequency of the A allele of CYP2R1 rs10766197 was observed between MS patients and controls (p = 0.05). No differences were observed in the frequency of T allele of CYP27B1 rs10877012 (p = 0.65). In subanalysis, patients with GA + AA genotypes of CYP2R1 rs10766197 had an increased risk of MS compared to controls (p = 0.03). No increased risk was observed in GT + TT genotypes of CYP27B1 rs10877012 (p = 0.63). No differences were observed in allele frequencies of either polymorphism between patients with severe vs. low disease progression. Conclusion Lower serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels were observed in MS patients than in controls, although these levels were not associated with disease progression. Carriers of GA + AA genotypes of CYP2R1 rs10766197 had an increased risk of MS. None of these polymorphisms was associated with severe progression of MS.
The generalized unit commitment problem

The authors formulate a generalized version of the unit commitment problem that can treat minimum up- and down-time constraints, power flow constraints, line flow limits, voltage limits, reserve constraints, ramp limits, and total fuel and energy limits on hydro and thermal power generating units. They propose an algorithm for this problem, based on Lagrangian decomposition, and demonstrate the algorithm with reference to a simple model system. >
Habitat deterioration despite protection: long-term declines of littoral area of fishponds in Czech nature reserves

Fishponds play a key role in current pondscapes in many developed countries. Their littoral areas, supporting multiple ecosystem functions including the maintenance of aquatic and riparian biodiversity, have been adversely affected by the move shift towards more intensive aquaculture and widespread eutrophication in the middle 20th century. To counteract these changes, many fishponds received some protection, but its long-term efficiency has not been studied. Here we focus on the role of conservation status in protecting the area of littoral areas of fishponds in Czechia between the years 1950 and 2019. We found that the conservation status of these fishponds did not prevent habitat deterioration in most of the fishponds, especially during the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, we detected no significant effects of the reserve establishment year, fishpond area and conservation target on the littoral areas. This suggests that the conservation measures are insufficient across fishpond reserve types. We attribute the negative trends to persisting high fish stocks, especially of common carp, and eutrophication resulting from additional feeding, pond manuring, and ongoing nutrient inputs from the pond catchments. Sediment dredging and high grazing pressure by waterfowl in some reserves can further aggravate the situation. We conclude that effective protection of the littoral areas requires a paradigm shift towards less intensive fish stock management, more frequent summer drainage, and effective reduction of all nutrient inputs to increase the water quality. Such measures can help recover the littoral areas and the associated biota. Graphical abstract Highlights Littoral vegetation in ponds supports high biodiversity but often lacks protection. We evaluated long-term changes in the littoral areas of fishponds in Czechia. The areas decreased markedly in both protected and unprotected ponds since 1950. Reserve duration, fishpond area and conservation target did not affect the trends. Changes in fishpond management are recommended for littoral area recovery.
AUTOMATIC SHEEP BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS USING MASK R-CNN

The issue of sheep welfare during live exports has triggered a lot of public concern recently. Extensive research is being carried out to monitor and improve animal welfare. Stocking density can be a critical factor affecting sheep welfare during export and its impact can be monitored through sheep behaviour, position, group dynamics and physiology. In this paper we demonstrate the application of the instance segmentation method Mask R-CNN to support sheep behaviour recognition. As an initial step, two typical behaviours standing and lying are recognized under different group sizes in pens over time. 94%+ mAP was achieved in the validation set demonstrating the effectiveness of the method on identifying sheep behaviours. Further data analysis will provide available space requirements for additional sheep allocation and daily behaviour monitoring to detect abnormal cases which will aim to improve the health and wellbeing of sheep on ships.
Dynamic sexual offense risk assessment using the VRS-SO with indeterminate sentenced men

Indeterminate detention (ID) is a high stakes sanction reserved for exceptionally high risk-high need (HRHN) persons who are deemed to pose an undue risk to public safety. It is one of the most extreme measures that is routinely taken by justice systems to manage sexual violence risk and prevent sexual and violent recidivism. Naturally, risk assessment is most frequently employed as a mechanism to keep dangerous people in custody; but seldom is risk assessment viewed as a possible ticket out for men with an ID designation who have made substantive risk changes and whose risk can be safely managed in the community. This article features applications of a dynamic sexual violence risk assessment and treatment planning tool, the Violence Risk Scale-Sexual Offense version (VRS-SO), with ID individuals and other HRHN men, to assess risk in a dynamic manner to inform risk management efforts and release decisions. VRS-SO data on an ID sample are presented along with clinical illustrations of dynamic risk assessment. Several propositions are made with supporting data from VRS-SO normative research with treated sexual offending samples regarding the use of dynamic tools with ID men and the perils and pitfalls of relying solely on static measures. Ultimately, dynamic risk instruments can be used to track progress and monitor risk change over multiple assessments to inform release and reintegration decisions with ID persons. In this regard, dynamic assessment has the potential to help, rather than hinder, reintegration of ID sentenced persons and can inform safe, fair, and humane decisions.
Sanitary practices associated with animal welfare in the control of mastitis in the dairy herd

Agricultural practices are a powerful tool with health management contributing to the improved performance of production of animal welfare. The study aimed to verify that farming practices are important tools in the control of bovine mastitis and the degree of knowledge of the producers with respect to the practices. Guided visits were carried out the rural properties, when they were distributed educational materials and tools, made from recyclable material, used in the management of sanitary practices related to animal welfare. To evaluate the physiological profile were collected biological samples such as: blood, feces and milk, and for assessing the sanity and animal welfare were used a questionnaire. Blind 20 cows were selected for a total of 79 rooms of which breast; 36 rooms were negative to the CMT, but 12 were of these were positive to Staphylococcus and microbiology microorganism of higher occurrence. Animal welfare was compromised by the incidence of Subclinical Mastitis, infestation of flies and the absence of prophylactic measures. It is concluded that the use of good agricultural practices is a suitable tool associated with the animal welfare and important in the identification of bovine mastitis, and a lack of information and knowledge regarding best practices, especially in relation to preventive management.
Evaluation of the transient energy function method for on-line dynamic security analysis

The transient energy function (TEF) method is a direct method of power system transient stability analysis. While research work on the subject continues, questions have been raised regarding potential applications of the method for online dynamic security analysis (DSA). Some of the problems are investigated, and solutions for problems arising in the use of TEF in DSA, based on tests using real utility data, are suggested. A prerelease version of a TEF program called DIRECT (version 2.9) was used in the tests. The results indicate that TEF does have a place in DSA in conjunction with other available DSA methods. >
Kebijakan Kurikulum Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka di Perguruan Tinggi

Tulisan ini merupakan hasil penelitian lapangan terkait pengembangan kurikulum Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka di Perguruan Tinggi. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Rumusan masalah dalam penelitian adalah bagaimana konsep dasar pengembangan kurikulum di perguruan tinggi dan bagaimana pengembangan kurikulum Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka di Perguruan Tinggi. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian adalah Toeri Merdeka Belajar. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pengembangan kurikulum di perguruan Tinggi merupakan sebuah keharusan, ditengah perkembangan teknologi, dan kemajuan dunia industri, serta tuntutan kerja.
Inter-module state-of-charge balancing and fault-tolerant operation of cascaded H-bridge converter using multi-dimensional modulation for electric vehicle application

This study presents a method for module-level state-of-charge (SOC) balancing and fault-tolerant operation of the cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter-based battery energy storage system for electric vehicle (EV) application. The proposed methods are based on the multi-dimensional pulse-width modulation (MD-PWM) strategy. It is shown that the proposed methods are conveniently integrated with the PWM generation algorithm. A conceptual design of modular battery pack (or micro-pack) system using lithium-ion cells for the CHB converter is described to show its feasibility for EV application. A brief review on the MD-PWM strategy and a detailed explanation on the method to integrate the inter-module SOC balancing and fault-tolerant control with the PWM generation are presented. Experimental results from the laboratory setup of a five-level CHB converter driving an induction motor with a battery system consisting of six 52.8 V 60 Ah (16 lithium-ion cells in series) modules are presented to verify the system operation for fault-tolerant control and the proposed SOC balancing method. The results demonstrate the need of SOC balancing, and efficacy of the proposed methods in achieving fault-tolerant as well as SOC-balanced operation to prolong the system operation.
Accumulation of TERT in Mitochondria Shows Two Opposing Effects on Apoptosis

Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) is a protein that catalyzes the reverse transcription of telomere elongation. TERT is also expected to play a noncanonical role beyond telomere lengthening since it localizes not only in the nucleus but also in mitochondria, where telomeres do not exist. Several studies have reported that mitochondrial TERT regulates apoptosis induced by oxidative stress. However, there remains controversy about whether mitochondrial TERT promotes or inhibits apoptosis, mainly due to the lack of information on changes in the TERT distribution in individual cells over time. Here we simultaneously detected apoptosis and TERT localization after oxidative stress in individual HeLa cells by live-cell tracking. This tracking revealed that the stress-induced accumulation of TERT in mitochondria caused apoptosis but that the accumulation positively correlated with the time until cell death. The results suggest a new model in which mitochondrial TERT has two opposing effects at different stages of apoptosis: it predetermines apoptosis at the first stage of cell-fate determination but also delays apoptosis at the second stage. Because these distinct effects respectively support both sides of the controversy regarding the role of mitochondrial TERT in apoptosis, our model integrates two opposing hypotheses. Furthermore, detailed statistical analysis of TERT mutations, which have been predicted to inhibit TERT transport to mitochondria, revealed that these mutations suppress apoptosis independent of the mitochondrial localization of TERT. Together, these results indicate that the non-canonical functions of TERT affect a wide range of pathways.
U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 through 1997

Abstract : Narrative summary data produced by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been obtained and analyzed for all 8,436 U.S. civil registered rotorcraft accidents which occurred from mid-1963 through 1997. This analysis was based on the NTSB's assignment of each mishap into one of 21 first event' categories. The number of U.S. civil registered rotorcraft as recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the same period has also been obtained. Taken together, these data indicate the civil rotorcraft accident rate (on a per 1,000 registered rotorcraft basis) has decreased by almost a factor of 10 (i.e., from 130 accidents per 1,000 rotorcraft in 1964 to 13.4 per 1,000 in 1997). Analysis of the mishap data indicates over 70% of the rotorcraft accidents were associated with one of the following four NTSB 'first event' categories: 2408 Loss of engine power (28.5%); 1,322 In-flight collisions with objects (15.7%); 1,114 Loss of control (13.2%); 1,083 Airframe/component/system failure or malfunction (12.8%).
Thermally actuated microprobes for a new wafer probe card

A new type of MEMS microprobe was designed and fabricated which can be used for a nest generation wafer probe card. A prototype MEMS probe card consisting of an array of microprobes individually actuated by bimorph heating to make contact with the test chip was also fabricated. This probe card is called the CHIPP (Conformable, HIgh-Pin count, Programmable) card and can be designed to contact up to 800 I/O pads along the perimeter of a 1-cm/sup 2/ chip with a microprobe repeat distance of approximately 50 /spl mu/m. Microprobes for a prototype CHIPP probe card have been fabricated with a variety of cantilever structures including Al-SiO/sub 2/, W-SiO/sub 2/ and Al-Si bimorphs, and with the resistive heater placed either inside or on the surface of the cantilever. Ohmic contacts between tips and bond pads were tested with contact resistance as low as 250 m/spl Omega/. The deflection efficiency varies from 5.23-9.6 /spl mu/m/mW for cantilever lengths from 300-500 /spl mu/m. The maximum reversible deflection is in the range of 280 /spl mu/m. The measured resonant frequency is 8.16 kHz for a 50/spl times/500 /spl mu/m device and 19.4 kHz for a 40/spl times/300 /spl mu/m device. Heat loss for devices operating in air was found to be substantially higher than for vacuum operation with a heat loss ratio of about 2/1 for a heater inside the structure, and 4.25/1 for a structure with the heater as an outer layer of the cantilever.
Burnt Forest Estimation from Sentinel-2 Imagery of Australia using Unsupervised Deep Learning

Massive wildfires not only in Australia, but also worldwide are burning millions of hectares of forests and green land affecting the social, ecological, and economical situation. Widely used indices-based threshold methods like Normalized Burned Ratio (NBR) require a huge amount of data preprocessing and are specific to the data capturing source. State-of-the-art deep learning models, on the other hand, are supervised and require domain experts knowledge for labeling the data in huge quantity. These limitations make the existing models difficult to be adaptable to new variations in the data and capturing sources. In this work, we have proposed an unsupervised deep learning based architecture to map the burnt regions of forests by learning features progressively. The model considers small patches of satellite imagery and classifies them into burnt and not burnt. These small patches are concatenated into binary masks to segment out the burnt region of the forests. The proposed system is composed of two modules: 1) a state-of-the-art deep learning architecture for feature extraction and 2) a clustering algorithm for the generation of pseudo labels to train the deep learning architecture. The proposed method is capable of learning the features progressively in an unsupervised fashion from the data with pseudo labels, reducing the exhausting efforts of data labeling that requires expert knowledge. We have used the realtime data of Sentinel-2 for training the model and mapping the burnt regions. The obtained F1-Score of 0.87 demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.
Power scaling of cladding-pumped Er,Yb-doped fiber lasers at 1.5 μm

An efficient double-clad erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber laser pumped by two high-power diode-stacks at 975nm is reported. Using a simple external cavity configuration at one end of the fiber and the 3.6% Fresnel reflection from a cleaved fiber end facet at the opposite end of the fiber to provide the necessary feedback for lasing, we obtained a maximum output power of 159W at 1565nm in a beam with beam quality factor (M2) ~1.9 for 466W of launched pump power. The corresponding slope efficiency with respect to launched pump power was 34%. The maximum output power was limited by the available pump power. A strategy for increasing the output power and improving the beam quality based on the use of a double-clad fiber design with a helical-core trajectory is considered.
Is There Any Effect of Symmetry on Velocity of the Four Swimming Strokes?

The different characteristics of the four swimming strokes affect the interplay between the four limbs, acting as a constraint to the force produced by each hand and foot. The purpose of this study was to analyze the symmetry of force production with a varying number of limbs in action and see its effect on velocity. Fifteen male swimmers performed four all-out bouts of 25-m swims in the four strokes in full-body stroke and segmental actions. A differential pressure system was used to measure the hands/feet propulsive force and a mechanical velocity meter was used to measure swimming velocity. Symmetry index was calculated based on the force values. All strokes and conditions presented contralateral limb asymmetries (ranging from 6.73% to 28% for the peak force and from 9.3% to 35.7% for the mean force). Backstroke was the most asymmetric stroke, followed-up by butterfly, front crawl, and breaststroke. Kicking conditions elicited the higher asymmetries compared with arm-pull conditions. No significant associations were found between asymmetries and velocity. The absence of such association suggests that, to a certain and unknown extent, swimming may benefit from contralateral limb asymmetry.
Enhanced Sensitivity of Microcantilever Surface Stress Sensor

In this paper a novel L-shape microcantilever that is more sensitive in compare of traditional rectangular microcantilever is proposed. In traditional microcantilever surface stress sensor a slight momentum is induced by distributed area stress lead to a slight deformation. In contrast, the proposed sensor substitution the slight momentum with concentrated point force in lateral direction on the tip of the microcantilever. This lead to, mechanically amplifies of the influence of area stress and more displacement. In addition, it has been theoretically proved that proposed microcantilever sensor with same lateral area in compare with traditional microcantilever surface stress sensor can be 2 to 100 orders more sensitive. The proposed L-shape microcantilever configuration of sensor could be incorporated in most of the microfabrication processes. However in this paper we use a low cost fabrication method based on polymeric microcantilever with metal piezoresistive detection.
A Fast Spiking Neural Network Accelerator based on BP-STDP Algorithm and Weighted Neuron Model

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are inspired from biological brains and have demonstrated great energy efficiency on hardware computing platforms. However, it is a challenge to implement an online training algorithm on SNN hardware to adapt to the realistic cognitive applications. Besides, the accuracies of SNN adopted rate-based coding scheme are highly depend on the number of coding timesteps, resulting in the long data processing time and massive power consumption. In this brief, a multilayer online training SNN accelerator based on spike-timing-dependent plasticity based back-propagation (BP-STDP) algorithm is carried out. To speed up the spike processing, a weighted neuron model is proposed according to the characteristics of BP-STDP training algorithm. In addition, the training module can reuse the integrate and fire arithmetic unit circuits in hidden layer neuron module, which can significantly reduce the hardware overheads. The proposed accelerator is verified on the Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA under 100Mhz clock frequency for the application of handwritten digit recognition. The proposed accelerator achieves a 95.3% recognition accuracy rate while consuming 0.27 ms for recognizing one image, and 1.22 ms for training one image. Compared with the software implementation, the proposed accelerator demonstrates $41.87\times $ training speedup and $56.96\times $ recognizing speedup.