Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis and design of sinusoidal quadrature RC-oscillators

Modern telecommunication equipment requires components that operate in many different frequency bands and support multiple communication standards, to cope with the growing demand for higher data rate. Also, a growing number of standards are adopting the use of spectrum efficient digital modulations, such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). These modulation schemes require accurate quadrature oscillators, which makes the quadrature oscillator a key block in modern radio frequency (RF) transceivers. The wide tuning range characteristics of inductorless quadrature oscillators make them natural candidates, despite their higher phase noise, in comparison with LC-oscillators. This thesis presents a detailed study of inductorless sinusoidal quadrature oscillators. Three quadrature oscillators are investigated: the active coupling RC-oscillator, the novel capacitive coupling RCoscillator, and the two-integrator oscillator. The thesis includes a detailed analysis of the Van der Pol oscillator (VDPO). This is used as a base model oscillator for the analysis of the coupled oscillators. Hence, the three oscillators are approximated by the VDPO. From the nonlinear Van der Pol equations, the oscillators’ key parameters are obtained. It is analysed first the case without component mismatches and then the case with mismatches. The research is focused on determining the impact of the components’ mismatches on the oscillator key parameters: frequency, amplitude-, and quadrature-errors. Furthermore, the minimization of the errors by adjusting the circuit parameters is addressed. A novel quadrature RC-oscillator using capacitive coupling is proposed. The advantages of using the capacitive coupling are that it is noiseless, requires a small area, and has low power dissipation. The equations of the oscillation amplitude, frequency, quadrature-error, and amplitude mismatch are derived. The theoretical results are confirmed by simulation and by measurement of two prototypes fabricated in 130 nm standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The measurements reveal that the power increase due to the coupling is marginal, leading to a figure-of-merit of -154.8 dBc/Hz. These results are consistent with the noiseless feature of this coupling and are comparable to those of the best state-of-the-art RC-oscillators, in the GHz range, but with the lowest power consumption (about 9 mW). The results for the three oscillators show that the amplitudeand the quadrature-errors are proportional to the component mismatches and inversely proportional to the coupling strength. Thus, increasing the coupling strength decreases both the amplitudeand quadrature-errors. With proper coupling strength, a quadrature error below 1° and amplitude imbalance below 1% are
Influence of Accounting Records on Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia

Accounting is crucial to business management. Thus, the study sought to examine the influence of accounting records on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Malaysia. The study adopted the descriptive research design. The target population consisted of SME owners based in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The target population was 850 participants. The data gathering tools consisted of questionnaires. The study results showed that accounting records was found to be satisfactory in explaining the performance and can explain 40.1% of the variations in the performance of SMEs. It was found that accounting records is positively and significantly related to performance (β=.2154, p=0.008). The study concluded that accounting records positively influence the performance of small and medium enterprises in Malaysia. Accounting records keeping are crucial for decision making and similarly assists in improving business performance and productivity for reliable business performance. Increasing accounting records leads to a considerable benefit that will accrue to an entity as a whole in the long run as it will lead to increased processing power, timely generation of reports and general reduction of associated operating costs. The research recommended that SMEs should ensure they use accounting records regularly. SME owners should ensure that proper and specific organizational documents are kept since they are vital for decision making. SME owners should embrace appropriate accounting records keeping techniques to attain success in their financial performance. It is suggested that the cost of operating a sound accounting system must be reduced to motivate its adoption in businesses. Extra efforts must be allocated to accounting records for the effective performance of businesses. Keywords: Accounting Records, Performance, Small and Medium Enterprises, Malaysia
Electronic Textile Antennas and Radio Frequency Circuits for Body-Worn Applications

A novel class of embroidered textile radio frequency (RF) circuit and antennas is presented. They are based on a new class of highly conductive metal-coated polymer fibers (e-fibers) and are used to realize a variety of wearable RF electronics woven into daily garments. The subject e-fibers are composed of high strength and flexible polymer core, typically 10μm in thickness, and covered with a 2μm thick metallic coating. Computerized embroidery machinery and high density stitching was employed to achieve high conductivity and precise fabrication of the e-fiber textiles woven into regular clothing. Using this process, prototype textile antennas and RF circuits were “printed” onto garments and evaluated. Their RF characteristics were measured in off-body (free-standing) and on-body configurations. It is demonstrated that the textile antennas exhibit excellent RF performances, nearly as good as conventional copper antennas. This is in addition to their excellent mechanical strength and flexibility. Importantly, the textile antennas can be inconspicuously woven into clothing, without affecting comfort, fashionality, and washability. Consequently, various textile-based conformal and wearable antennas and sensors were designed and measured for communications, medical sensing, and RF energy harvesting applications. Overall, the proposed conductive textile-based antennas and RF circuitries provide solutions to future RF functionalized and fashionable garments for wearable
Estimation of pathological tremor from recorded signals based on adaptive sliding fast Fourier transform

Pathological tremor is an approximately rhythmic movement and considerably affects patients’ daily living activities. Biomechanical loading and functional electrical stimulation are proposed as potential alternatives for canceling the pathological tremor. However, the performance of suppression methods is associated with the separation of tremor from the recorded signals. In this literature, an algorithm incorporating a fast Fourier transform augmented with a sliding convolution window, an interpolation procedure, and a damping module of the frequency is presented to isolate tremulous components from the measured signals and estimate the instantaneous tremor frequency. Meanwhile, a mechanism platform is designed to provide the simulation tremor signals with different degrees of voluntary movements. The performance of the proposed algorithm and existing procedures is compared with simulated signals and experimental signals collected from patients. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution could detect the unknown dominant frequency and distinguish the tremor components with higher accuracy. Therefore, this algorithm is useful for actively compensating tremor by functional electrical stimulation without affecting the voluntary movement.
A Data-driven Energy Estimation based on the Mixture of Experts Method for Battery Electric Vehicles

: Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are an immediate solution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, BEVs are limited in their range by the battery capacity. An accurate estimation of BEV’s range and its energy consumption have become a signiﬁcant factor in eliminating customers “range anxiety”. To over-come range anxiety, advanced algorithms can predict the remaining capacity, estimate the range and inform the driver. Algorithms need to consider various inﬂuencing factors for their range estimation. A crucial part for an accurate range estimation is the energy consumption modeling itself. Thus, machine learning-based approaches are highly investigated which are able to learn nonlinear relations between relevant features and the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach for the energy estimation of BEVs by utilizing ensemble learning to achieve a feature-speciﬁc estimation. In this paper, we trained neural networks on different road types independently. We improve the overall estimation by combining models via the mixture of experts method compared to a monolithic trained neural network. The results demonstrate that specialized neural networks for the energy estimation of BEVs are beneﬁcial for the energy estimation. This approach contributes to reducing range anxiety and therefore helping toward elevated adoption of BEVs.
BTDEC: Blockchain-Based Trible Data Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem with Fine-Grained Access Control for Personal Data

– In an AI-driven era, data the board is reliant on security confirmation and open commerce. A standard data-sharing organization stage is important in the current data-sharing courses of action, and clients transmit their information to a cloud server for limitation and dispersion. Customers, on the other hand, would lose control of their data the instant it was sent off the server, making security and insurance a major worry. Even though data encryption and access control are regarded as cutting-edge innovations for storing individual data on cloud servers, they only go so far. Regardless, it continues to depend heavily on an external source of validity, the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). To tackle this challenge, they combined blockchain, 3DES ciphertext technology, ECC, and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). This research focuses on BTDEC, a Blockchain-based Trible Data Elliptic Curve Crypto System for Personal Data. The data holder encrypts the sharing data and saves it on IPFS in this customer-driven way, boosting the decentralization of the arrangement. The standardized data area and unscrambling key will be coupled utilizing 3DES with ECC, and the data owner will disseminate his data-related information and send on keys to data customers using blockchain, according to the built-up confirmation method. The data may only be downloaded and interpreted by the data client whose credits fulfill the confirmation conditions. BTDEC enables the data owner to deny a particular data client at the individual dimension without affecting others, providing him fine-grained network access over his data. When obtaining data, the ciphertext phrase search is almost usually utilized to secure the data customer's security. They investigated BTDEC's security and recreated our technology on the EOS blockchain, proving the concept's validity. Meanwhile, they investigated the limitation and overhead and determined that BTDEC performed well.
Extending the Scaling Limit of Silicon Channel Transistors Through hhk-Silicene Monolayer: A Computational Study

Conventional bulk silicon is approaching its physical limit in the continued scaling of field-effect transistors (FETs). To extend the scaling limit of silicon-FETs, 2-D silicon semiconductors are highly desired because of the atomic thickness and mature CMOS-compatibility. By employing the hybrid honeycomb-kagome (hhk)-silicene monolayer as transport channel, we study the performance of sub-5-nm p- and n-type FETs based on <italic>ab initio</italic> quantum transport simulations. The hhk-silicene pFET (nFET) can be scaled down to 2-nm (3 nm) gate length (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${L}_{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) with performances fulfilling the high-performance requirements of International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) for 2028 horizon. Besides, with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${L}_{g}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> scales down to 3 nm, the subthreshold swing (SS) of the hhk-silicene FETs still can break the thermal limit of 60 mV/dec. The subthermal switches of hhk-silicene FETs benefit from the relatively isolated bands near the Fermi level. This work reveals the great potentials of hhk-silicene for ultrascaled and steep-slope FETs in future.
Keep It Up: In-session Dropout Prediction to Support Blended Classroom Scenarios

: Dropout prediction models for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have shown high accuracy rates in the past and make personalized interventions possible. While MOOCs have traditionally high dropout rates, school homework and assignments are supposed to be completed by all learners. In the pandemic, online learning platforms were used to support school teaching. In this setting, dropout predictions have to be designed differently as a simple dropout from the (mandatory) class is not possible. The aim of our work is to transfer traditional temporal dropout prediction models to in-session dropout prediction for school-supporting learning platforms. For this purpose, we used data from more than 164,000 sessions by 52,000 users of the online language learning platform orthografietrainer.net. We calculated time-progressive machine learning models that predict dropout after each step (completed sentence) in the assignment using learning process data. The multilayer perceptron is outperforming the baseline algorithms with up to 87% accuracy. By ex-tending the binary prediction with dropout probabilities, we were able to design a personalized intervention strategy that distinguishes between motivational and subject-specific interventions.
Vacuum Fluctuation in 2 × 13 Herringbone Milking Parlour in Dependence on Vacuum Control Method

Abstract Vacuum fluctuation was measured using three different vacuum control methods. Firstly, the use was made of a control valve delivered by the manufacturer; then, an additionally installed frequency converter was used. Lastly, a frequency converter fitted with the stabilisation device prototype was used. First, control sensitivity according to ISO was measured in all the three alternatives. Then, vacuum fluctuation during milking was measured. To conduct the measurements under objectively identified conditions, another measurement was conducted with air feed during milking being replaced with a precisely defined variable flow rate. The conducted measurement confirmed the fact that when the frequency converter is used, vacuum fluctuation in stabilised condition is at the same level as when the control valve is used. If there are sudden changes in flow rate and the frequency converter is used, vacuum fluctuation increases. The proposed stabilisation device prototype can reduce the fluctuation in small milking plant but it is not suitable in large milking parlours.
The Relationship between Cognitive Functions and Psychopathological Symptoms in First Episode Psychosis and Chronic Schizophrenia

Impairments in cognitive functions are one of the main features of schizophrenia. A variety of factors can influence the extent of cognitive deficits. In our study, we examined the severity of cognitive deficits at different stages of the disease and the relationship between psychopathological symptoms and cognitive functions. We recruited 32 patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP), 70 with chronic schizophrenia (CS), and 39 healthy controls (HC). Psychopathological symptoms were evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and cognitive functions were measured with the MATRICS Cognitive Consensus Battery (MCCB). Cognitive deficits were present in both FEP and CS participants. CS individuals had lower overall scores and poorer working memory; however, clinical variables appeared to play a significant role in these scores. In FEP, disorganization correlated negatively with verbal and visual learning and memory, social cognition, and overall score; negative symptoms negatively correlated with social cognition. In CS participants, disorganization correlated negatively with speed of processing, reasoning, problem solving, and overall score; negative symptoms were negatively correlated with speed of processing, visual learning, memory, and overall score; positive symptoms were negatively correlated with reasoning and problem solving. Our findings indicate that psychopathological symptoms have a significant impact on cognitive functions in FEP and CS patients.
Effect of Coconut Oil-Based Cutting Fluid on Cutting Performance during Turning with Minimal Fluid Application

In the present work, an attempt was made to use vegetable oil as cutting fluid during minimal fluid application to make the process more environment friendly. Coconut oil was selected as the vegetable oil in this study considering its availability, physical properties, and lubricating ability. The effect of newly formulated coconut oil-based emulsified cutting fluid on cutting performance during turning of hardened AISI 4340 steel with the minimal fluid application was investigated. It was observed that the coconut oil-based cutting fluid offered better cutting performance in terms of tool wear, surface roughness, cutting force, cutting temperature, and tool chip contact length when compared to mineral oil-based cutting fluid and raw coconut oil. It was also observed that the percentage of concentrate in the cutting fluid was to be maintained as 30% to achieve better cutting performance. The use of coconut oil-based cutting fluid holds promise as an environment friendly alternative for mineral oil-based cutting fluid.
High extinction ratio thermo-optic based reconfigurable optical logic gates for programmable PICs

In this paper, a new scheme is proposed to realize reconfigurable and multifunction optical logic gates (XOR, XNOR, NAND, and OR) using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer with a tunable thermo-optic phase shifter (TOPS). The reconfigurable optical logic gates are realized by tuning the phase of an optical signal using TOPS without changing the physical device structure. The logical input “0” or “1” is considered corresponding to the phase of the optical signal at TOPS. The logical output of the proposed device depends on the light intensity at output ports. The device is designed on silicon on insulator (SOI) platform and the simulation result shows that the on–off extinction ratio is greater than 37 dB at 1550 nm and >25 dB for the C-band. Moreover, it has a low insertion loss of 0.09 dB at a wavelength of 1550 nm and <0.8 dB for the C-band window. The proposed optical logic gates can be a promising logical device for programmable photonic integrated circuits.
The fastskin revolution: From human fish to swimming androids

The story of fastskin swimsuits reflects some of the challenges facing the impact of technology in post-modern culture. Introduced in 1999 and ratified for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, fastskin swimsuits were touted as revolutionising competitive swimming. Ten years later, they were banned by the world’s swimming regulatory body FINA (the Federation Internationale de Natation), with the ban taking effect from January 2010 (Shipley 2009). The reason was the controversy caused by the large number of world records that were broken by competitors wearing polyurethane swimsuits, the next generation of the original fast skin suits. These suits were deemed to be providing an artificial advantage by increasing buoyancy and reducing drag. This had been an issue ever since they were introduced, yet FINA had approved the suits and, thereby, unleashed an unstoppable technological revolution of the sport of competitive swimming. Underlying this was the issue about its implications of the transformation of a sport based on the movement of the human body through water without the aid of artificial devices or apparatus. This article argues that the advent of the fastskin has not only transformed the art of swimming but has created a new image of the swimmer as a virtual android rather than a human fish. In turn, the image of the sport of swimming has been re-mapped as a technical artefact and sci-fi spectacle based on a radically transformed concept of the swimming body as a material object that has implications for the ideal of the fashionable body.
Snake Robots for Surgical Applications: A Review

Although substantial advancements have been achieved in robot-assisted surgery, the blueprint to existing snake robotics predominantly focuses on the preliminary structural design, control, and human–robot interfaces, with features which have not been particularly explored in the literature. This paper aims to conduct a review of planning and operation concepts of hyper-redundant serpentine robots for surgical use, as well as any future challenges and solutions for better manipulation. Current researchers in the field of the manufacture and navigation of snake robots have faced issues, such as a low dexterity of the end-effectors around delicate organs, state estimation and the lack of depth perception on two-dimensional screens. A wide range of robots have been analysed, such as the i²Snake robot, inspiring the use of force and position feedback, visual servoing and augmented reality (AR). We present the types of actuation methods, robot kinematics, dynamics, sensing, and prospects of AR integration in snake robots, whilst addressing their shortcomings to facilitate the surgeon’s task. For a smoother gait control, validation and optimization algorithms such as deep learning databases are examined to mitigate redundancy in module linkage backlash and accidental self-collision. In essence, we aim to provide an outlook on robot configurations during motion by enhancing their material compositions within anatomical biocompatibility standards.
Advances in vaccine delivery strategies to promote effective immunization

Vaccinations are one of the most successful initiatives of the new era in the public health sector. Different types of vaccines are available nowadays depending on the antigen used and the methods of delivery and administration. Conventional vaccines are produced from dead, attenuated, or inactivated pathogens. The antigen activates the body’s immune system to recognize the foreign body as a threat and kill the virus in question. Antigen proteins can be administered directly, naturally, to strengthen the immune response along with the adjuvant. However, safety and efficacy remain the two main issues in conventional vaccine production. Therefore, new vaccine formulations have been introduced to target the antigen at the worksite, reduce toxicity, increase the bioavailability of active compounds, and prolong release time, thus improving therapeutic efficacy and safety. Loading the antigen into different delivery platforms such as lipid vesicles, nanoparticles, microparticles, microemulsions, virus-like particles, embedding complex agents, and cyclodextrins is a promising current vaccine strategy. The current review focused on the most recent research on vaccine delivery systems and briefly described the design and development of the COVID-19 vaccine uploaded to these carriers. This paper also discusses the current situation and future scenarios in the field of vaccine production. © 2022. Bazigha K. Abdul Rasool et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License