Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The intelligent classroom: competent assistance in the physical world

How can we make robotic systems that physically interact and cooperate with people in interesting ways? Such systems will be useful to people because they understand the tasks they are to be used for and can figure out to help out in them. I refer to such systems (both robotic and purely electronic) as competent assistants : systems that are able to aid a user in his work because they understand what that work is. This dissertation describes a competent assistant that advances the state of the art for physical interaction: the Intelligent Classroom, a prototype automated lecture facility that serves as its own audio/visual assistant. The Classroom domain provides an interesting level of interaction and also exhibits many of the interesting challenges of mobile autonomous robotics research. Key contributions of this research include: • Techniques for connecting the low-level sensors and actuators to a plan-recognizing symbolic execution system. • Demonstrating how a good level of intentional cooperative interaction can be achieved without explicitly reasoning about goals. • A voice-operated slide-advancing system. Jabberwocky uses speech-recognition results to determine what slide a speaker wishes to discuss, allowing a speaker to dynamically change his presentation to suit the needs of his audience.
Application of metabolomics to the analysis of ancient organic residues

The grape is arguably one of the oldest cultivated products in human history and the analysis of its main product, wine, reveals clues to trade and associations of previous civilizations. In ancient times, wine was stored in clay amphorae, which, if not properly sealed with resin or pitch allowed the wine to wick into clay matrices, dry, and polymerize producing insoluble, intractable materials that may remain within the matrix for several thousand years. Presently, identification of wine residue is based upon the extraction of these polymeric materials from the ceramic matrix and analyzing/identifying the chemical fingerprints. Two main biomarkers have historically been employed for the identification of wine residue: tartaric and syringic acids. In some cases, the presence of one of these biomarkers has been designated as the confirmatory signature of wine often leading to false positives as amphorae were re-used in antiquity. Herein, a novel approach utilizing metabolomics has been applied to archaeological objects in order to further mine possible biomarkers for a more accurate assessment of the original foodstuff. An untargeted metabolic profiling method was combined with a targeted analytical method resulting in the successful validation of eight representative biomarkers in two separate archaeological sites.
Recommendations for condition monitoring and condition assessment facilities for transformers

Transformer on-line condition monitoring has been the subject of significant research and development over the past few years and it is becoming increasingly important that monitoring can be easily and safely applied to a transformer at whatever point in its lifetime. The brochure considers the benefits of possible standardisation of the interface between monitoring systems and the transformer with the aim to provide a guide to the specification of a transformer intended to be "condition monitoring ready". (0 refs.)
A bottom-up assembly of vascularized bioartificial constructs using ECM based microscale modules

A BOTTOM-UP ASSEMBLY OF VASCULARIZED BIOARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTS USING ECM BASED MICROSCALE MODULES by: RAMKUMAR TIRUVANNAMALAI ANNAMALAI August 2014 Advisor: Dr. Howard Matthew Major: Biomedical Engineering Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Tissue engineering aims to create functional biological tissues to treat diseases and damaged organs. A primary goal is to fabricate a 3D construct that can promote cell-cell interaction, extra cellular matrix (ECM) deposition and tissue level organization. Accomplishing these prerequisites with the currently available conventional scaffolds and fabrication techniques still remains a challenge. To reproduce the full functionality there is a need to engineer tissue constructs that mimic the innate architecture and complexity of natural tissues. The limited ability to vascularize and perfuse thick, cell-laden tissue constructs has hindered efforts to engineer complex tissues and organs, including liver, heart and kidney. The emerging field of modular tissue engineering aims to address this limitation by fabricating constructs from the bottom up, with the objective of recreating native tissue architecture and promoting extensive vascularization. Here, we report the elements of a simple yet efficient method for fabricating vascularized tissue constructs by fusing biodegradable microcapsules with tunable interior environments. Parenchymal cells of various types, (i.e. trophoblasts, vascular smooth muscle cells, hepatocytes) were suspended in glycosaminoglycan (GAG) solutions (4%/1.5% chondroitin
Design and Development of Autonomous Uninhabited Air Vehicles at ITB: Challenges and Progress Status

An uninhabited air vehicle has found diverse applications for both civil and military missions. To achieve the stated mission, the vehicle needs to have a certain level of autonomy to maintain its stability following a desired path under embedded guidance, navigation and control al- gorithm. To meet the increasingly more stringent operation requirements, the UAVs rely less and less on the skill of the ground pilot and progressively more on the autonomous capabilities dictated by a reliable onboard computer sys- tem. A model helicopter was proposed and used as a fly- ing test-bed for the purpose of developing the autonomous capability. The ability of the helicopter to operate in the hovering mode makes it an ideal platform for a step-by-step autonomous capability development. On the other hand, a small helicopter exhibits not only increased sensitivity to control inputs and disturbances, but also a much richer dy- namics compared to conventional UAVs including: higher bandwidth, hybrid modes, non-holonomic, under-actuation, multi-input-multi-output, and non-minimum phase. These factors make model helicopters, as a flying robot, more diffi- cult to control. The paper addresses the challenge of build- ing an autonomous aerial system using a mini scale rotor- craft. The enabling technology building blocks were iden- tified and a development scheme was proposed based on available resources. Recent progresses were reported in the modeling, design and development of embedded robust con- trol system for autonomous helicopter.
Prevalence and associated factors of cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: cervical cancer is the second commonest disease of women in Ethiopia. Even though, some studies were conducted to assess the prevalence and associated factors of cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia, a variation in reported prevalence across the studies were observed. The aim of this study was to determine the pooled prevalence estimate and associated factors of cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia. Methodology: A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed based on published and gray literatures between 2010 and 2019. Articles were evaluated using Joanna Briggs Institute database guidelines by two independent authors. The pooled prevalence estimate was calculated using MedCalc software-version 19.0. 7 and the pooled odd ratios for predictors was calculated using RevMan software version 5.3. A meta-analysis using a mantel Hansen variance random-effects model was performed to assess the amount of variation in between studies. The report was depicted descriptively using pooled estimated prevalence and odd ratios using tables and plots. Result: From 124 retrieved data, 10 full text articles were eligible for the review. The pooled prevalence estimates of cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia using random-effect model was 15.7%, 95%CI (10.8, 21.3%). Statistically significant heterogeneity between studies was detected (I 2 =94.35% (p<0.0001). Among all associated factors measured: numbers of life time sexual partners >1, OR=0.40, 95% Cl (0.21,0.27), being HIV positive, OR=0.41,95%CI(0.21,0.75), having history of STI,OR=1.99,95% CI (1.02,3.87), women getting widowed, separated or divorced), OR=0.32, 95% CI(0.14,0.75),income <1000birr, OR=1.78, 95% CI (1.19,2.65) and women had experience of contraceptive use, OR=2.32, 95% CI (1.75,3.43) were had statistical significant association with cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia Conclusion: The pooled prevalence estimate of cervical cancer among women in Ethiopia was high. There was a variation of cervical cancer reports across studies. Reporting of this information in a consistent manner is important for researchers to enhance future studies and also useful for policymakers and practitioners for better understanding of the burden of cervical cancer in Ethiopia for prevention, diagnosis, and early treatment of the disease. Trial registration: This systematic review for registration in PROSPERO was retrospectively registered on June 20,2019.
An Information-Theoretic Characterization of Morphological Fusion

Linguistic typology generally divides synthetic languages into groups based on their morphological fusion. However, this measure has long been thought to be best considered a matter of degree. We present an information-theoretic measure, called informational fusion, to quantify the degree of fusion of a given set of morphological features in a surface form, which naturally provides such a graded scale. Informational fusion is able to encapsulate not only concatenative, but also nonconcatenative morphological systems (e.g. Arabic), abstracting away from any notions of morpheme segmentation. We then show, on a sample of twenty-one languages, that our measure recapitulates the usual linguistic classifications for concatenative systems, and provides new measures for nonconcatenative ones. We also evaluate the long-standing hypotheses that more frequent forms are more fusional, and that paradigm size anticorrelates with degree of fusion. We do not find evidence for the idea that languages have characteristic levels of fusion; rather, the degree of fusion varies across part-of-speech within languages.
PWiseGen: A Genetic Algorithms-based Framework for Pairwise Test Set Generation

Pairwise testing is a combinatorial testing approach that can be used to reduce the number of test cases dramatically for a software system. It specializes in the type of testing where the outcome of a system depends on the combination of several input parameters. This technique is widely used when there is not enough time to try out all possible combinations of the input parameters involved, because that would be very time consuming. The purpose of pairwise testing technique is to avoid testing all possible value combinations that a system can receive, and to preferably take a representative sample of test cases that captures all pairs of input values. This selection of test cases should be made carefully with some thought; for example, by combining input parameter values intelligently we may be able to parallelize executions and achieve a reduction of the test case set, which translates into a reduction of testing time. Studies have shown that the generation of the least number of test cases for pairwise testing is an NP-complete problem. This is the reason why one of the problems that I wanted to address in this thesis is to find a way to generate the least amount of test cases possible for pairwise testing. Currently, there are several algorithms that can generate test cases for pairwise testing; however, a few have optimum results considering the number of test cases generated. In this research I propose PWiseGen – an approach based on genetic algorithms – that shows competitive results compared with other existing algorithms. Although there is existing work on genetic algorithms to solve the problem of generating the test cases for pairwise testing, there are no tools or open-source code available. That’s why another of the problems that I wanted to address in this research is the lack of a tool based on genetic algorithms capable of generating test cases for pairwise testing, where one could adjust its configuration, extend its capabilities, or override some of its default behavior, given that genetic algorithms can have many different ways of performing its internal operations. PWiseGen is designed to serve as a framework, in which one can make
Experimental control of compressible OA209 dynamic stall by air jets

The experimental investigation of constant blowing air jets as Fluidic Control Devices (FCDs) for helicopter dynamic stall control is described. A carbon fibre airfoil of constant OA209 cross-section was fitted with a pneumatic system to deliver dry compressed air as jets for flow control at total pressures of up to 10 bar. The experiment used porthole jets of radius 1% chord, positioned at 10% chord and with spacing 6.7% chord. The positive dynamic stall control effects were demonstrated at Mach 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 for deep dynamic stall test cases with the best test cases reducing the pitching moment peak after the main stall by 84%, while increasing the mean lift over one pitching cycle by 37%. The conclusions from the experiments are supported by 3D URANS computations of the pitching airfoil with flow control using the DLR-TAU code.
Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records

Abstract : On December 4, 2007 Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the reputed Emir of al-Qa'ida's Islamic State of Iraq (151), claimed that his organization was almost purely Iraqi, containing only 200 foreign fighters. Twelve days later, on December 16, 2007, Ayman al-Zawahiri urged Sunnis in Iraq to unite behind the 151. Both statements are part of al-Qa'ida's ongoing struggle to appeal to Iraqis, many of whom resent the ISI's foreign leadership and its desire to impose strict Islamic law. In November 2007, received the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point nearly 700 records of foreign nationals that entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. The data compiled and analyzed in this report is drawn from these personnel records, which was collected by al-Qa'ida's Iraqi affiliates, first the Mujahidin Shura Council (MSC) and then the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The records contain varying levels of information on each fighter, but often include the fighter's country of origin, hometown, age, occupation, the name of the fighter's recruiter, and even the route the fighter took to Iraq. The records were captured by coalition forces in October 2007 in a raid near Sinjar, along Iraq's Syrian border. Although there is some ambiguity in the data, it is likely that all of the fighters listed in the Sinjar Records crossed into Iraq from Syria. The Sinjar Records' existence was first reported by The New York Times' Richard Oppel, who was provided a partial summary of the data. The Combating Terrorism Center is pleased to make the Sinjar Records publicly available for the first time. The purpose of this initial assessment of the Sinjar Records is to provide scholars access to this unique data, in the hope that their scholarship will complement and compete with our own.
Typology of Innovative Behavior of Entrepreneurs as a Development Potential of the Region

The article presents the results of a sociological study the aim of which is to study the innovative behavior of entrepreneurs in the region. The research objectives included the study of the concept of “innovative behavior of entrepreneurs”, the formation and justification of a typological model of innovative behavior, the definition and study of the components of the model (personal and social innovative orientation), the determination of the characteristics of the social types of entrepreneurs on the basis of the constructed model. The methodological basis of the study is the framework of factor analysis, typological analysis, as well as modern concepts of innovative behavior and entrepreneurship. As a result of the study, the operationalization of the concept of “innovative behavior of young entrepreneurs” is developed, the methods of factor analysis that allow constructing factor models and studying social types of entrepreneurs based on a typology and typological analysis are considered. The hypothesis of the existence of social types of innovative behavior of entrepreneurs, in which the dominant factors are personal and social innovative orientation, is confirmed. The analysis of social types is presented, the prospects for further research to increase the development potential of the region are shown.
Different Methods Preventing Interactions Problems in Hydraulic Systems

The design of an airplane hydraulic system concerns the sizing of pipes, pumps and related supply pressure regulation devices. The design of system and subsystems must be performed in an integrated form: in fact different configuration choices regarding each subsystem can appreciably affect the pumps sizing and the system stability. The work highlights the interactions between the design choices concerning both the generation/power regulation and the users in all the aspects important for the operation of the complete system outlining the design of a defined hydraulic system of an airplane. To this end the dynamic simulation models (with associated calculation programs) capable of analyzing the behavior of the complete system have been made; employing it a series of investigations was carried out, aiming to analyze the dynamic behavior of different configurations of the system in similar operating conditions. Particularly, the present work regards the comparison between two different methods/devices capable of preventing major interactions by limiting the actuation speed in aiding load conditions. The above mentioned methods concerns the implementation of a ramp generator in the control law of the critical users or the employment of control servovalves having a reduced spool stroke acting in the aiding load conditions. In conclusion, the paper compares the advantages and shortcomings of the two solutions (reduced spool stroke and ramp generator); as it is usual in these cases, the cheaper solution is not necessarily the best one, in terms of actuation rate control capability. The present work focuses all the considerations regarding the design activities
Signal integrity issues in high-speed wireline links: analysis and integrated system solutions

This work focuses on the basic signal integrity issues of high-speed wireline links. It bridges the gap between optimum system design and circuit design for such links by: (1) understanding the effects of the system parameters on the bit error rate (BER), (2) introducing circuit architectures for the realization of systems that minimize the BER, and (3) demonstrating integrated circuit prototypes that verify the solutions. First, we develop a theory that analytically relates the data link BER to the system characteristics, e.g., the channel response, the pre-amplifier bandwidth, and the transmitter clock jitter. We generate the BER contours to find the optimum receiver bandwidth as well as the optimum sampling point and its associated timing margin. We also develop the theory of the data-dependent jitter (DDJ), which is a significant component of the timing jitter in high-speed links. We provide an analytical distribution function for the DDJ of an arbitrary linear time-invariant system and include the impact of the DDJ on the BER. Second, we propose a bandwidth enhancement method for wideband amplifiers. This is useful for the realization of high-speed links in technologies that suffer from large parasitic components. The method leverages two-port broadband matching to enable amplifier stages to achieve their maximum gain-bandwidth product. We demonstrate a 10Gb/s CMOS 0.18um amplifier with this technique that has 2.4 times the bandwidth improvement over a design that does not apply the technique. Third, we develop an eye-opening monitor (EOM) that enables full integration of adaptive equalizers. The EOM evaluates the signal eye diagram quality and reports a quantitative measure, which is correlated to the signal integrity. We demonstrate a prototype in 0.13um standard CMOS that operates up to 12.5Gb/s and has 68dB error dynamic range. Finally, we introduce an instantaneous clockless demultiplexer for burst-mode communication applications. We propose a clockless finite state machine that recovers and demultiplexes the received burst of data instantaneously. The architecture consists of a combinational logic structure and a bit-period-delayed feedback loop. We demonstrate a 1:2 clockless demultiplexer based on this concept in SiGe BiCMOS technology that operates at 7.5Gb/s.
Accuracy of Computed Equations for Predicting the Resting Energy Requirements in Patients with Generalized Secondary Peritonitis

Nutritional support is central to prompt treatment of patients with generalized secondary peritonitis (GSP). These patients desperately need a simple and aﬀordable solution to evaluate their daily energy need.Objective: to determine accuracy of estimating the Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) in GSP patients.Materials and methods. Study design: a prospective, single center study. The inclusion criteria: diagnosed GSP and stay at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Three treatment arms were formed. The ﬁrst arm included all patients (n=61), the second arm included patients capable to breath spontaneously and adequately (n=29), and the third arm included patients on artiﬁcial ventilation (n=32). Reference values of REE were calculated by Indirect Calorimetry (IC) method using Engstrom Carestation Lung Ventilator and Metabolic (General Electric,USA). Six equations were used to predict REE values: Ideal Body Weight multiplied by 25 (IBWX25); Actual Body Weight multiplied by 25 (ABWX25); J. A. Harris, F. Benedict (HB); HB with corrective ratio 1.25 (HBX1.25); C. Ireton-Jones, 1992 (IJ); PennState, 2003 equation, in modiﬁcation (PS). SPSS Software Package was used for statistical analysis of the results. The zero hypothesis was rejected at P<0.05. Results. In patients with GSP, the REE value determined by means of Indirect Calorimetry method was equal to 25.78±1.37 kcal/kg/day. If compared with Indirect Calorimetry results, predictive accuracy of calculation equations in the second and third arm, respectively, were as follows: IBWX25: 30 and 0%, HB: 36.7 and 9.9%, HBX1.25: 49.9 and 45.5%, IJ: 51.8 and 53.2%, ABWX25: 63.4 and 60.6%, PS (as determined in patients on mechanical ventilation only): 42.4%. Conclusion. Indirect Calorimetry method is the only accurate way of REE evaluation in GSP patients. ABWX25 and IJ showed the highest predictive accuracy. IBWX25 and HB had the lowest predictive accuracy.