Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modular Integration of a Passive RFID Sensor With Wearable Textile Antennas for Patient Monitoring

An integration and modularization solution for a passive computational radio frequency identification (RFID) module is proposed for wireless patient monitoring. In the proposed integrated configuration, all the electronic components are encapsulated within the cavity of a textile antenna. This forms a compact protected embodiment suitable for concealment in a hospital garment, with the aim of being unobtrusive to older patients. In addition, modularization of the sensor and textile antenna is introduced through a convenient snap-on attachment method for the computational RFID module. This is in harmony with simple assembly techniques and facilitates maintenance. Importantly, the resulting customizable configurations, for example, in terms of antenna form factor and materials, can be tailored to suit application requirements, such as performance and disposability. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed wireless wearable sensor can operate with an antenna broadside gain of 2.74 dBi within a wide bandwidth extending over 893–964 MHz to support seamless worldwide operation across the ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands. The wearable sensor embodiment characterized in the context of a monitoring system attains excellent performance in terms of received signal strength, data read rate, and batteryless operational range.
Birth-death modeling of deep bed filtration: sectional analysis

Stochastic models, namely, the second-order, pure birth process and the linear, birth-death process, have been employed in conjunction with the Carman-Kozeny equation to simulate the performance of the deep-bed filter in terms of the pressure drop dynamics under a constant flow condition. These models take into account the blockage of pores by suspended particles and/or scouring of deposited particles; the filter bed is assumed to be composed of several compartments. The present models appear to represent the majority of the available experimental data.
Influence of Selenium Nanoparticles on The Effects of Poisoning with Aflatoxins

| The present study was undertaken for the induction of hepatotoxicity by aflatoxicosis and ameliorating their toxic effects in rats by selenium nanoparticles (Se-NPs). Biochemical parameters of all treated rats detected that aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) caused a significant decrease in total protein values and electrophoretic patterns, increase in levels of AST and ALT enzymes and decrease in urea. Aflatoxin B1 induced a marked elevation of TNF-α and IL-6 activities and decreased levels of iron, TIBC, UIBC and transferrin. The inflammation caused by AFB1 lead to elevation of hepcidin and, decrease in erythropoietin (EPO) hormones. These changes were improved by administration of SeNPs to aflatoxicated rats and associated with successful degradation of aflatoxins residues in liver tissues. While, the administration of high dose of Se-NPs (0.5 mg/kg) to aflatoxicated rats resulted in a significant elimination of AFB1 from liver tissues than the low dose (0.3 mg/kg). Hence, it was concluded that Se-NPs can be administrated to the animal for improving the health status from adverse effects of the aflatoxicosis.
Clinical presentations and management of COVID-19 infected children seen in a district health facility in Kambia, northern Sierra Leone

Studies reporting the clinical presentations of COVID-19 in children in sub-Saharan Africa are few, especially from resource-constrained countries. This case series reports the demographic and clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in children seen at a district hospital in Sierra Leone. This is a report of nine COVID-19 paediatric cases managed at a secondary level hospital in Kambia District, Northern Sierra Leone. Each child was detected by contact tracing after an infected adult was identified by the COVID-19 response team. The clinical symptoms at presentation, clinical courses, and treatments instituted and patient outcomes are discussed in the context of the facilities available at a typical West African district hospital. Nine out of 30 individuals with confirmed COVID-19 infection who presented to the hospital from 24 April to 20 September 2020 and who were admitted to the isolation center of the hospital were in the paediatric age group. The mean age (SD) and median (IQR) of the children were 69.0 ± 51.7months and 84.0 (10.5, 108.0) months, respectively; five (55.6%) were males. The children were asymptomatic or only had mild illnesses and none required intranasal oxygen or ventilatory support. In the five symptomatic children, the most common symptoms were fever (40%) and cough (40%). All children had normal haemoglobin, platelet and white blood cell (WBC) count. Four children had a positive malaria test and were treated with a complete course of anti-malaria medications. No child received steroid or had specific anti-COVID-19 treatment. All children stayed in the isolation center for 14 days and were re-tested for COVID-19 two weeks after initial diagnosis. No complications have been reported in any of them since discharge. The proportion of children among COVID-19 infected cases seen in a rural community in Sierra Leone was 30%. Fever was the most common symptom and malaria was confirmed in 40% of the infected children. This has significant implication on the diagnosis of COVID-19 in malaria-endemic settings and on how best to manage children who present with fever during the COVID-19 pandemic.
NOMA-2000 Versus PD-NOMA: An Outage Probability Comparison

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an emerging technique promising to accommodate the increasing data rate requirements of next generation networks. In power-domain (PD) NOMA, this challenge is addressed by allocating two or more users on each orthogonal resource block while assigning significantly different power levels to all users. Recently, an interesting alternative to conventional PD-NOMA has been NOMA-2000 where multiple access is done using two sets of orthogonal waveforms. In this letter we make a comparison of these two NOMA schemes based on their outage probabilities where the analytical expressions are derived without any simplifying assumption about the statistical dependencies caused by the presence of more than one user signal in each resource block. These derivations are validated by computer simulation results, which appear in tight agreement with the analysis and corroborate the claim that NOMA-2000 may significantly outperform PD-NOMA under realistic channel conditions and with different overload factors.
Exploring Applications of STT-RAM in GPU Architectures

Use of modern GPUs has been extended from traditional 3D graphic processing to computing acceleration of many scientific, engineering, and enterprise applications. In modern GPUs, on-chip memory capacity keeps increasing to support thousands of chip-resident threads. For example, a large register file is needed in order to efficiently process highly-parallel threads in single instruction multiple thread (SIMT) fashion, and a large shared memory is often implemented to allow data sharing among the threads on the chip. On-chip memory capacity of GPUs, however, is highly constrained by large memory cell area and high static power consumption of conventional SRAM implementation. In this work, we propose to utilize the emerging multi-level cell (MLC) spin-transfer torque RAM (STT-RAM) technology to implement register file and shared memory in GPUs. Compared to SRAM, MLC STT-RAM (or MLC-STT) has a much smaller cell area as well as ultra-low standby power, thanks to the non-volatility of MLC-STT technology. Hence, the footprint and leakage power of the implemented memory components are substantially reduced. Moreover, in light of asymmetric performance of soft and hard bits of a MLC-STT cell, we propose a dynamic data remapping strategy in register file and shared memory implementations that allows a flexible tradeoff between the memory access time and the available capacity: frequently-accessed data is always mapped to the fast rows built with the soft bits of the MLC-STT cells while the slow rows composed of the hard bits are used only when a larger capacity is critically needed. We also develop a novel rescheduling scheme to minimize the waiting time of the issued warps to access register banks in the register file, which is induced by the long writeback operations through the reordering of the issued warps. Finally, an early termination technology is also applied to save the write energy of the shared memory if the bits of the memory do not flip. Experimental results on benchmarks of ISPASS2009, Rodinia, Parboil, and CUDA show that on average, MLC-STT register file can achieve 3.28% system performance improvement, 9.48% energy reduction, and 38.9% energy efficiency improvement compared to conventional SRAM-based design. Meanwhile, MLC-STT shared memory leads to 3.45% system performance improvement, 49.3% energy reduction, and 116% energy efficiency improvement.
Exciton–phonon interaction in molecular crystals with noncorrelated couplings between excited states and lattice vibrations

On the example of a simple model of molecular crystal with cubic symmetry and with only one molecule per elementary cell, we consider the system of interacting Frenkel singlet excitons and crystal lattice phonons. Coupling of excited states is included in the terms of the Hamiltonian which are diagonal and off-diagonal with respect to the exciton operators. The linear constant of interaction between the phonons and the quantum-mechanical current of transition of a crystal from its ground to its excited state is taken into account as well. It is shown that the joint consideration of several exciton–phonon interaction constants leads to renormalization of the exciton band and of the dipole moment of transition. Green’s function and its mass operator are obtained. The proposed calculational method and the obtained formulas can be useful for the study of energy spectrum and optical properties of specific crystalline systems, when considering the problems of transfer of excitation energy in crystals, as well a.
Nucleation kinetics of the formation of low dimensional calcium sulfate dihydrate crystals in isopropyl alcohol medium

Calcium sulfate dihydrate, constituted as uniform crystals of low dimensions, is a potential biomaterial for clinical applications like bone graft substitution and drug delivery. In this work, isopropyl alcohol has been used as a solvent to obtain low dimensional calcium sulfate dihydrate crystals from calcium nitrate ‐ sulfuric acid system. Reactants in 0.5 molar concentration at ambient conditions generated uniform rod‐shaped crystals of length 3–5 µm. Analysis using X‐ray Diffractometry and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry showed the material to be well crystallized, phase‐pure calcium sulfate dihydrate.
Spinel ZnFe2O4 nanoparticle-decorated rod-like ZnO nanoheterostructures for enhanced gas sensing performances

Spinel ZnFe2O4 nanoparticle-decorated rod-like ZnO nanoheterostructures have been successfully synthesized via a facile, one-pot and environmentally friendly low-temperature hydrothermal strategy. The structural and composition information about the obtained ZnFe2O4/ZnO nanoheterostructures has been examined by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Considering the promising gas sensor applications, we have investigated the gas sensing performances of the ZnFe2O4/ZnO nanoheterostructures for detecting several common reducing volatile organic pollutants including n-butanol, ethanol, acetone, methanol and formaldehyde. The gas sensing measurement results demonstrated that the fabricated ZnFe2O4/ZnO nanoheterostructure sensor displayed high response, quick response/recovery characteristics, and good reproducibility for these tested gases, and good selectivity for n-butanol, revealing its promising application as a gas sensor for detecting these polluting gases and selectively detecting n-butanol. It is interesting to find that the ZnFe2O4/ZnO nanoheterostructure sensor exhibited much enhanced gas sensing performances compared with the pristine ZnO sensor. The excellent gas sensing performances can be attributed to the unique 1D rod-like nanostructures and the formation of the heterojunctions at the ZnFe2O4/ZnO interfaces. It is expected that the current synthesis methodology can be extended to fabricate other rod-like ZnO based nanoheterostructures, such as CuO/ZnO and SnO2/ZnO, for a wide application range including chemical sensors, photocatalysis and optical devices.
Optimization of Energy Production in Oklahoma: A Variant of an Evolutionary Algorithm of Multi-Objective Optimization

A preliminary performance assessment of the well-known NonDominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II and one of its variants to optimize the electrical power production in the state of Oklahoma is presented in this paper. Such variant has a chaotic model to generate the initial population. Solar, wind and natural gas power systems, the first two renewable energies, are considered in the problem of interest. Three conflicting objectives are optimized: (1) power production, (2) production costs and (3) CO2 emissions. The spacing metric is computed to compare the performance of both variants. The obtained results suggest that the chaotic model for the initial population does not improve the performance of the original algorithm in this particular multi-objective optimization problem.
E-business capabilities and innovation performance: The mediating effect of knowledge management strategies

The aim of this paper is to analyze the mediating effect of the knowledge management strategies on the relationship between e-business capabilities and innovation performance. The research model was tested with a sample of 102 firms belonging to IT intensive sectors, located in an emerging country that is a regional leader in terms of e-business adoption. Structural equations by the consistent partial least squares method were used. The main result indicates that only the personalization strategy has a partial mediating effect. In conclusion, e-business capability alone is insufficient for achieving a superior innovation performance. This finding also helps consolidate the incipient study perspective that understands knowledge management not as an antecedent variable which becomes indispensable for e-business adoption, but as an organizational factor that intervenes a posteriori and which is focused on achieving an effective use of all the knowledge resulting from the digital operation of the business.
Simulation and modelling of MOFs for hydrogen storage

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have received significant attention in recent years both from academia and industry since this new class of nanoporous materials has many potential advantages over traditional nanoporous materials in gas storage and separation applications. Hydrogen storage has been one of the most widely investigated applications of MOFs and recent experimental studies have shown that several MOFs are promising for hydrogen storage at low temperatures and moderate pressures. It is not practical to test every single MOF in the laboratory for hydrogen storage using experimental methods due to the very large number of existing MOF materials in the literature. Efforts to estimate the hydrogen storage performance of MOFs using molecular simulations and theoretical modelling play a very important role in identifying the most promising materials prior to extensive experiments. We review the current state of the art in molecular simulations and modelling of MOFs for hydrogen storage, compare experimental measurements and simulation predictions for hydrogen uptake of widely studied MOFs, discuss the main reasons for the discrepancy between experiments and simulations, and address the importance of developing theoretical models to predict the hydrogen storage performance of MOFs based on structural properties of materials prior to computationally demanding molecular simulations.
ALUMINUM STRESS INHIBITS ACCUMULATION OF PHOSPHORUS IN ROOT APICES OF ALUMINUM-SENSITIVE BUT NOT ALUMINUM-RESISTANT BRACHIARIA CULTIVAR

ABSTRACT The phosphorus (P) content of whole roots and root apices has been reported to increase under aluminum (Al) stress, particularly in Al-sensitive plant varieties. We investigated the impact of Al toxicity on the P content of root apices of two tropical forage cultivars of the Brachiaria genus, grown in Al-containing low-ionic-strength nutrient solutions. Exposure to Al did not affect apical P concentrations in Al-resistant B. decumbens cv. Basilisk. In contrast to previous results obtained with other plant species, however, it caused a 70% decline in the apical P content of Al-sensitive B. ruziziensis cv. Common, despite the simultaneously increasing P levels in older root portions. This effect was largely due to a reduced accumulation of organically bound P, because less than 7% of the P in root apices was in the inorganic form in either species or treatment. The P content of root apices might be a useful indicator for evaluating the resistance of Brachiaria cultivars to prolonged Al stress.
The Hybridity in the Rites of Passage among the Ewe Ethnic Society in the Kumasi Metropolis

This study investigated the rites of passage of the Ewe ethnic society in the Kumasi Metropolis. It discusses the influence of the Asante host culture’s rites of passage on the Ewe ethnic society’s culture resulting in the hybridity of culture as a result of migration. The study was driven in a purely qualitative study with descriptive study as the study design. Thirty (30) study participants consisting of chiefs, elders in the traditional court and the elderly in the study area. Personal interviews and focus group discussions were the data collection tools used for collecting the data for the study. The findings of the study revealed that the Ewe cultural practices exhibited in the Kumasi metropolis is as a result of hybridity. The study contends that as the Ewes play their culture alongside the host culture-Asante culture, they consciously and unconsciously fuse and or substitute their indigenous culture which has virtually merged or replace their culture. Keywords : Value, Rites of Passage, Acculturation, Enculturation, Ethnicity, Cultural Hybridity DOI: 10.7176/JCSD/62-01 Publication date: October 31 st 2020
Study of humic acid adsorption on nanofiltration membranes by contact angle measurements

Membrane fouling is a major problem, which extent depends on the respective natures of the solute and membrane material. Membrane surface characterization under different fouling conditions may help in understanding the fouling mechanism. Such characterization was performed for the case of humic substances filtered on two nanofiltration membranes, using special contact angles measurements. The measured contact angles allowed the calculation of polar and non-polar contributions to the surface energy of dry, hydrated and fouled membranes. The results reveal significant differences in the two membrane behaviours and information about the way that fouling material may be adsorbed on membrane surface. Le colmatage des membranes est un probleme majeur dont l'ampleur depend des natures respectives des solutes et du materiau membranaire. Dans cette etude, les mecanismes de colmatage ont ete determines par la mesure de proprietes de surface de membranes a differents stades de colmatage. Ceci a ete realise dans le cas de la nanofiltration de substances humiques. Des mesure d'angles de contacts de membranes seches, hydratees et colmatees ont permis de calculer les contributions polaire et non-polaire a l'energie de surface des membranes. Les resultats font ressortir differents mecanismes d'hydratation et d'adsorption pour les deux membranes testees.
Effects on Embryo Transfer in Patients with Hydrosalpinx Pretreated with Different Treatments: A Network Meta-Analysis

： Hydrosalpinx can affect the success of embryo transfer (ET). We made a network meta-analysis (NMA) to compare the effects of five hydrosalpinx pretreatments of ET, including salpingectomy, hydrosalpinx aspiration, interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy, proximal tubal occlusion and salpingostomy. This study was based on data-set available from the published studies. The relevant studies were retrieved from Cochrane Library, PubMed and Embase from the inception to January 2017. Data was extracted from cohort studies and the combination of direct and indirect evidence was conducted to assess odds ratio (OR) and surface under the cumulative ranking curves (SUCRA) values of the effects of five hydrosalpinx pretreatments of ET. Thirteen eligible cohort studies were included in this NMA. The results of this NMA demonstrated that compared with the control group (without any treatment), salpingectomy and hydrosalpinx aspiration had comparatively higher ongoing pregnancy rate and implantation rate, interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy had comparatively higher implantation rate. In addition, the cluster analysis revealed that salpingectomy and interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy had better effects on ET. Taken together, this NMA suggested that salpingectomy and interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy had better effects on embryo transfer in patients with hydrosalpinx. impact our results. But, to make our study more reliable, we performed a cluster analysis of the eight outcome measures to draw a conclusion. Moreover, in this study, a comprehensive comparison of salpingectomy, hydrosalpinx aspiration, interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy, tubal occlusion and salpingostomy proximal in the treatment of hydrosalpinx before IVF-ET had been performed, so it has a certain clinical significance. On the basis of our results, we concluded that salpingectomy and interventional ultrasound sclerotherapy had better effects on embryo transfer in patients with hydrosalpinx. However, there is a need for further study as these interventions continue to evolve and are improved in the treatment of hydrosalpinx.
Tracing Effects of Covid-19 Over Small and Medium Enterprises

In this paper, we describe an ongoing project to assess the liquidity risk of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a network. In doing so we try to mimic the tracing applications that have been done to Covid-19. We built a simple artefact under the shape of a method called LUC (Liquidity for Unstructured Collaborations) to (1) collect data that has been encrypted by using multiple keys, (2) store the data in a shared ledger and (3) extract the required information concerning the credit risk of each user while respecting the conditions for the zero-knowledge proof. We see this solution as well-adapted for firms performing unstructured collaboration and we see our service as complementary concerning a trusted company, in the same way, the Covid-19 tracing application collects weak signals and then send patients to doctors for official testing.