Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Composite Bending Box Section Modal Vibration Fault Detection

One of the primary concerns with Composite construction in critical structures such as wings and stabilizers is that hidden faults and cracks can develop operationally. In the real world, catastrophic sudden failure can result from these undetected faults in composite structures. Vibration data incorporating a broad frequency modal approach, could detect significant changes prior to failure. The purpose of this report is to investigate the usefulness of frequency mode testing before and after bending and torsion loading on a composite bending Box Test section. This test article is representative of construction techniques being developed for the recent NASA Blended Wing Body Low Speed Vehicle Project. The Box section represents the construction technique on the proposed blended wing aircraft. Modal testing using an impact hammer provides an frequency fingerprint before and after bending and torsional loading. If a significant structural discontinuity develops, the vibration response is expected to change. The limitations of the data will be evaluated for future use as a non-destructive in-situ method of assessing hidden damage in similarly constructed composite wing assemblies. Modal vibration fault detection sensitivity to band-width, location and axis will be investigated. Do the sensor accelerometers need to be near the fault and or in the same axis? The response data used in this report was recorded at 17 locations using tri-axial accelerometers. The modal tests were conducted following 5 independent loading conditions before load to failure and 2 following load to failure over a period of 6 weeks. Redundant data was used to minimize effects from uncontrolled variables which could lead to incorrect interpretations. It will be shown that vibrational modes detected failure at many locations when skin de-bonding failures occurred near the center section. Important considerations are the axis selected and frequency range.
Development of A Multi-Client Student Attendance Monitoring System

A multi-client student attendance student monitoring system was developed. The attendance system consists of the client and the server. The core functions of the client device are verifying student’s identity for attendance recording and monitoring their presence in class. Haar-feature based cascade classifier for object detection and the Scale Invariant Feature Transform Technique (SIFT) technique were implemented for the face authentication process. This paper highlights a full-fledge system architecture with face-based identification implemented on the Raspberry Pi 2 board as the client alongside with RFID authentication for initial identification. The system also has webpage integration for system management. The accuracy achieved was 84% for face verification and 75% for face recognition. The experimental result showed that the recognition rate was affected by inconsistency of wearing glasses, distance between the face and the webcam, lighting condition and the environmental background. A database was setup to store attendance and student information. It is supported with a web application to view, update and analyze the attendance data
Barriers to modelling sustainable transport

Sustainable transport is a malleable and changing concept which needs addressing before the questions of shortfalls in current modelling practice in addressing these issues can reasonably be assessed. It is tempting to take one of the simplest definitions available: In a global context any economic or social development should improve, not harm, the environment (Newman and Kenworthy, 1998). This does of course beg the question as to what comprises improvement and indeed what comprises harm, let alone the other interrelated issues not deemed to be either economic or social. Exploring the implied platform of assumed agreement on these issues is a productive and useful way of communicating what is at stake and why. Conflicting and inconsistent perspectives abound, as do assertions made in the spirit of hope rather than substantiable fact. It should be noted that transport, communications and mobility are rarely (if ever) used or provided for their own sake. This is the classic 'transport is a derived demand' stance, which evades such issues as travel tourism, leisure activities that involve exercise or scenery changes and even the revealed preferences of travellers. In communications the enormous response to text messaging as a means of interchange with intrinsic pleasure is demonstrated daily by younger and younger people. The pure derived demand stance can be adjusted to reconcile these and many other points, but it is more constructive to accept that aspects of mobility, communications and transport are indeed undertaken for their own sake in a range of areas. This is important, as the playing down of these three concepts as simply derived demands leads to the assumption that substitution is far more likely to occur than has yet proved to be thecase in practice. It also means that the assumptions on which modelling is based may not be entirely appropriate. There are many more examples where implied assumptions are made that affect what is built in to models of urban and activity systems. The scope of a model is determined by the scaleof representation, the complexity of the actors and processes, and the mechanisms deployed to represent interactions between these parties. In essence a model may be regarded from a top down view as a process of radical simplification to allow these interactions to be represented and exercised,and from a bottom up view where the entities modeled (people, vehicles, land use parcels, etc) are progressively represented in greater and greaterdetail. The top down view leads directly to scenario building to represent the interactions at the broadest level of different instruments. Any form of simplification and synthesis of models pertaining to sustainability will have strong influences from the cultural or disciplinary background(s)of the proponents, as differences that are not understood, valued, or appreciated are more readily collapsed if specialist understanding is not to hand.
De novo transcriptome assembly and hepatic gene expression analyses in overfed and ad libitum fed Muscovy and Pekin ducks and their reciprocal inter-specific Mule and Hinny hybrids

Background Common Pekin and Muscovy ducks and their intergeneric hinny and mule hybrids have different abilities for fatty liver production. RNA-Seq analyses from the liver of these different genetic types fed ad libitum or overfed would help to identify genes with different response to overfeeding between them. However RNA-seq analyses from different species and comparison is challenging. The goal of this study was develop a relevant strategy for transcriptome analysis and comparison between different species. Results Transcriptomes were first assembled with a reference-based approach. Important mapping biases were observed when heterologous mapping were conducted on common duck reference genome, suggesting that this reference-based strategy was not suited to compare the four different genetic types. De novo transcriptome assemblies were then performed using Trinity and Oases. Assemblies of transcriptomes were not relevant when more than a single genetic type was considered. Finally, single genetic type transcriptomes were assembled with DRAP in a mega-transcriptome. No bias was observed when reads from the different genetic types were mapped on this mega-transcriptome and differences in gene expression between the four genetic types could be identified. Conclusions Analyses using both reference-based and de novo transcriptome assemblies point out a good performance of the de novo approach for the analysis of gene expression in different species. It also allowed the identification of differences in responses to overfeeding between Pekin and Muscovy ducks and hinny and mule hybrids.
Dual-sensor fusion for seamless indoor user localisation and tracking

Indoor localisation based on ubiquitous WLAN has exhibited the capability of being a cheap and relatively precise technology and has been verified by many successful examples. Its performance is subject to change due to multipath propagation and changes in the environment (people, building layouts, antenna characteristics etc.) which cannot be easily eliminated. This thesis addresses the automatic localisation of indoor user and proposes solutions for both positioning and seamlessly tracking a user using WLAN technology in addition to image sensing. By fusing these modalities we obtain better performance than using them individually. A fusion function designed to merge both analysis results into one semantic interpretation of user location is presented. Also a tracking approach based on an adaptive function that converts times between locations into probabilities and employs a Viterbi-based solution is proposed. An indoor localisation algorithm is described which is based on the creation of a database of WLAN signal strengths at pre-chosen calibration points (CPs). The need for fewer CPs than in standard methods is achieved due to the use of a novel interpolation algorithm, based on the specification of robust range and angle-dependent likelihood functions that describe the probability of a user being in the vicinity of each CP. The actual location of the user is estimated by solving a system of equations with two unknowns derived for a pair of CPs. Different pairs of CPs can be chosen to make several estimates which can then be combined to increase the accuracy of the estimate. The effectiveness of the fusion and the tracking approaches is evaluated on a very challenging dataset throughout a university building. Results that are presented demonstrate high accuracy that can be achieved. The methods are compared to several competing localisation methods and are shown to give superior results. The potential usefulness of this work is envisaged in a range of ambient assisted living applications including lifelogging and as an assistive technology for the memory or the visually impaired.
Reinforcement learning and optimal control methods for uncertain nonlinear systems

of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy REINFORCEMENT LEARNING AND OPTIMAL CONTROL METHODS FOR UNCERTAIN NONLINEAR SYSTEMS By Shubhendu Bhasin August 2011 Chair: Warren E. Dixon Major: Mechanical Engineering Notions of optimal behavior expressed in natural systems led researchers to develop reinforcement learning (RL) as a computational tool in machine learning to learn actions by trial and error interactions yielding either a reward or punishment. RL provides a way for learning agents to optimally interact with uncertain complex environments, and hence, can address problems from a variety of domains, including artificial intelligence, controls, economics, operations research, etc. The focus of this work is to investigate the use of RL methods in feedback control to improve the closed-loop performance of nonlinear systems. Most RL-based controllers are limited to discrete-time systems, are offline methods, require knowledge of system dynamics and/or lack a rigorous stability analysis. This research investigates new control methods as an approach to address some of the limitations associated with traditional RL-based controllers. A robust adaptive controller with an adaptive critic or actor-critic (AC) architecture is developed for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with disturbances. The AC structure is inspired from RL and uses a two pronged neural network (NN) architecture – an action NN, also called the actor, which approximates the plant dynamics and generates appropriate control actions; and a critic NN, which evaluates the performance of the actor, based on some performance index.
Efficient anonymous biometric matching in privacy-aware environments

OF DISSERTATION EFFICIENT ANONYMOUS BIOMETRIC MATCHING IN PRIVACY-AWARE ENVIRONMENTS Video surveillance is an important tool used in security and environmental monitoring, however, the widespread deployment of surveillance cameras has raised serious privacy concerns. Many privacy-enhancing schemes have been recently proposed to automatically redact images of selected individuals in the surveillance video for protection. To identify these individuals for protection, the most reliable approach is to use biometric signals as they are immutable and highly discriminative. If misused, these characteristics of biometrics can seriously defeat the goal of privacy protection. In this dissertation, an Anonymous Biometric Access Control (ABAC) procedure is proposed based on biometric signals for privacy-aware video surveillance. The ABAC procedure uses Secure Multi-party Computational (SMC) based protocols to verify membership of an incoming individual without knowing his/her true identity. To make SMC-based protocols scalable to large biometric databases, I introduce the k-Anonymous Quantization (kAQ) framework to provide an effective and secure tradeoff of privacy and complexity. kAQ limits systems knowledge of the incoming individual to k maximally dissimilar candidates in the database, where k is a design parameter that controls the amount of complexity-privacy tradeoff. The relationship between biometric similarity and privacy is experimentally validated using a twin iris database. The effectiveness of the entire system is demonstrated based on a public iris biometric database. To provide the protected subjects with full access to their privacy information in video surveillance system, I develop a novel privacy information management system that allows subjects to access their information via the same biometric signals used for ABAC. The system is composed of two encrypted-domain protocols: the privacy information encryption protocol encrypts the original video records using the iris pattern acquired during ABAC procedure; the privacy information retrieval protocol allows the video records to be anonymously retrieved through a GC-based iris pattern matching process. Experimental results on a public iris biometric database demonstrate the validity of my framework.
Finite element analysis and experimental investigation of tyre characteristics for developing strain-based intelligent tyre system

This thesis reports an investigation into the relationships between the tyre strain feature and tyre operating conditions based on finite element analysis and experiments for the development of a strain-based intelligent tyre system, which could estimate the tyre operating characteristics for optimising vehicle dynamics control and improving vehicle safety. A 175/505R13 tyre is adopted as the subject of this study. An efficient and effective material property determination procedure is developed for investigating the rubber and reinforcement material properties by experiment. Considering the possibility of the absence of tyre composite profile due to proprietary protection by tyre manufacturer, a novel imagebased method is developed to capture the tyre geometry feature from the tyre product cut cross-section. Both the 2D and 3D finite element tyre models are created in the commercial finite element code ABAQUS. The generated finite element tyre models are validated with experimental data and then adopted to construct the comprehensive relationship between tyre strain feature and tyre operating characteristics. Experimental validation of these estimation models are implemented based on a custom designed test system. Finally, some recommendations are presented for improving the capability of the finite element tyre model and the strain-based intelligent tyre test system.
AC 2008-710: AN INNOVATIVE FRESHMEN ENGINEERING COURSE TO IMPROVE RETENTION

An IC card for preventing undesirable writing and falsification of data, the IC card including a second connector for connecting a writing control signal line required to write data disposed on a second side of the IC card body opposite the first side of the IC card body on which a first connector is disposed. When the IC card is connected to the system only through the first connector, writing of data cannot be performed. When data is written, a writing control signal line is directly connected to a data writing control signal line of the second connector by a connection cable.
Arbitrarily oriented biaxially anisotropic media: Wave behavior and microstrip antennas

This dissertation explores the electromagnetic behavior of arbitrarily oriented biaxially anisotropic media. An overview of wave behavior in biaxially anisotropic (or simply biaxial) media is presented. The reflection and transmission behaviors of electromagnetic waves from half-space and two-layer isotropic-biaxial interfaces are studied. The reflection and transmission coefficients are used in the formulation of eigenvector dyadic Green’s functions. These Green’s functions are employed in full-wave analyses of rectangular microstrip antennas printed on biaxial substrates. The general characteristics of electrically biaxially anisotropic (biaxial) media are presented including permittivity tensors, optic axes, orientation of the medium, and birefringence. After a detailed discussion of wave propagation, wave behavior at isotropicbiaxial interfaces is investigated. The reflection and transmission of electromagnetic waves incident upon half-space and two-layer interfaces, at which the waves may be incident from either the isotropic region or the biaxial region, are investigated. The biaxial medium considered may be aligned with the principal coordinate system or may be arbitrarily oriented. Critical angle and Brewster angle effects are analyzed for the half-space case. Once the wave behavior is well understood, the eigenvector dyadic Green’s function is presented for two-layer geometries involving isotropic and biaxially anisotropic media. The symmetrical property of the dyadic Green’s function is derived and used to generate an unknown Green’s function from a known Green’s function for the two-layer geometry of interest. This new Green’s function is used to model rectangular microstrip antennas. Following the investigation of reflection and transmission, rectangular microstrip antennas are analyzed using the eigenvector dyadic Green’s function and the method of moments. Galerkin’s method is used to evaluate current distributions on gap-fed dipole antennas and probe-fed patch antennas. The resulting current distributions are used to compute antenna parameters such as input impedance, resonant length and principal polarization radiation patterns. For the patch antennas, impedance bandwidth and cross-polarization patterns are also investigated. Results are presented for biaxially anisotropic substrates of varying thickness, permittivities, and orientations, providing the understanding of the complex behaviors of microstrip antennas printed on biaxially anisotropic substrates. ARBITRARILY ORIENTED BIAXIALLY ANISOTROPIC MEDIA: WAVE BEHAVIOR AND MICROSTRIP ANTENNAS By Jennifer Warzala Graham B.S. Syracuse University, 2000 M.S. Syracuse University, 2004 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Graduate School of Syracuse University May 2012 Copyright © Jennifer Warzala Graham May 2012 All Rights Reserved
Plan-based plan recognition models for the effective coordination of agents through observation

Our research is aimed at providing agents with the ability to use observations of actions taken by others not only to recognize current actions but also to infer ongoing plans and goals, a process called plan recognition. Once our agents can recognize the plans and goals of others, they can then employ a number of techniques for coordinating their planned actions with those of others. Multi-agent coordination has typically been performed using explicit communication between agents. Plan recognition offers several potential advantages over explicit communication however, including lower communication overhead, higher reliability, greater information content, and robustness in the face of agents who are not forthcoming about their plans. On the other hand, it also has potential disadvantages, including the fact that agents need to know how other agents act in pursuit of their goals, that actions might not be accurately observable or might support multiple possible plans, and that inferring the plans of others can be more time consuming than being told explicitly by them. In this research, we have developed a probabilistic plan recognition model called a plan recognition network (PRN) and a computational system called ASPRN (Automated Synthesis of Plan Recognition Networks) that can automatically construct a PRN from a plan model. PRNs provide an observing agent with a wide range of inferred information and handle the uncertainty associated with plan recognition and observations in a natural, robust manner. We demonstrate that plan recognition can be done in a competitive, real-time, simulated environment such that plan recognizing agents win up to 90% of the time, despite the inherent overhead and uncertainty of the recognition process. Our experiments reveal that even though PRNs provide numeric information, they may currently be more amenable to symbolic reasoning method than decision-theoretic approaches. Other experiments highlight that waiting for plan recognition information to become more certain before acting upon it reduces coordination performance because of the delay before imitation of coordination activities. Analysis of our experiments also highlights that the temporal distribution of observations while performing plan recognition has a distinctly negative impact upon the observing agent's ability to effectively coordinate as the distribution is pushed later toward the end of plan execution. Lastly, our experiments show us that coordinating agents can take advantage of plans with early plan disambiguation points and that plans with late plan disambignation points may hinder effective plan recognition-based coordination.
Evaluating the Role of Autologous Platelet-Rich-Plasma in The Treatment of Dry Eye Disease

Background: Platelets are irregularly shaped, non-nucleated cytoplasmic bodies derived from fragmentation of megakaryocyte precursors. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the role of autologous platelet-rich-plasma (PRP) as a monotherapy versus artificial tears (Hyaluronic acid) use for better management of dry eye disease. Patients and Methods: A prospective clinical randomized trial study was conducted on 62 patients with moderate to severe dry eye disease (Schirmer`s test outcomes of 5.5 mm or lower). Patients had been recruited from the Outpatient Clinics of Ophthalmology Department in Zagazig University Hospital during the period from February 2020 to January 2021. They were divided into two equal groups; group A was treated with PRP and group B was treated with artificial tears. Results: There was a significant decrease regarding ocular surface disease index (OSDI) in both groups after treatment, but the improvement was more significantly in PRP group compared to artificial tears group. There was a significant increase in tear break-up time (TBUT) in PRP group only after treatment; although, there was an increase in TBUT in artificial tears group but without statistical significance. There was a significant increase in BCVA in both groups after treatment, but the improvement was more significantly in PRP group compared to artificial tears group. Conclusion: PRP is an interesting alternative therapy in symptomatic dry eye.