Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Empirical Study on Innovation Excellence Framework in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions Based on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model

The purpose of this study is to develop the Innovation Excellence Framework in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyze the structural relationships of latent constructs namely, Objectives & Strategy, Change Management, Best Practices, Resource Management and Innovation. A total of nine hypotheses have been put forward to test the relationships amongst these constructs of innovation excellence. Partial least squares structural equation modelling technique was used for empirically assessing the model. The data was collected from a survey that yielded 467 usable questionnaires through cluster and stratified sampling technique on the specified universities. The findings revealed that all the hypothesized relationships are significant at t-value > 1.96, two-tailed test by using 5000 bootstrap samples except for the relationship of Objectives and Strategy towards Innovation which resulted a non-significant relationship.
Safety-Aware Hierarchical Passivity-Based Variable Compliance Control for Redundant Manipulators

This article presents a hierarchical passivity-based compliance controller that exploits robot redundancy and aims at achieving an impedance behavior with a time-varying stiffness on all the priority levels. Unfortunately, this gives rise to certain control actions that lead to the loss of the safety-critical passivity feature. To deal with this problem, we employ the concept of virtual energy tanks that keep track of the passivity violating energy in the system, ensuring that it remains bounded. This restores the passivity in the system, which guarantees the stable interaction with any passive environment. Furthermore, we augment our controller with an additional safety layer, which ensures that the energy injected through the tank into the system remains below a safe limit, defined based on the maximum kinetic energy allowed in the system. Finally, our approach is validated in terms of performance during task execution and safety both in simulations and on real-robot hardware.
Structural Investigation of the Interaction Mechanism between Chlorogenic Acid and AMPA Receptor via In Silico Approaches

Chlorogenic acid (CGA), an important metabolite in natural plant medicines such as honeysuckle and eucommia, has been shown to have potent antinociceptive effects. Nevertheless, the mechanism by which CGA relieves chronic pain remains unclear. α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isooxazolpropionic acid receptor (AMPAR) is a major ionotropic glutamate receptor that mediates rapid excitatory synaptic transmission and its glutamate ionotropic receptor AMPA type subunit 1 (GluA1) plays a key role in nociceptive transmission. In this study, we used Western blot, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assay, and the molecular simulation technologies to investigate the mechanism of interaction between CGA and AMPAR to relieve chronic pain. Our results indicate that the protein expression level of GluA1 showed a dependent decrease as the concentration of CGA increased (0, 50, 100, and 200 μM). The SPR assay demonstrates that CGA can directly bind to GluA1 (KD = 496 μM). Furthermore, CGA forms a stable binding interaction with GluA1, which is validated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The binding free energy between CGA and GluA1 is −39.803 ± 14.772 kJ/mol, where van der Waals interaction and electrostatic interaction are the major contributors to the GluA1–CGA binding, and the key residues are identified (Val-32, Glu-33, Ala-36, Glu-37, Leu-48), which play a crucial role in the binding interaction. This study first reveals the structural basis of the stable interaction between CGA and GluA1 to form a binding complex for the relief of chronic pain. The research provides the structural basis to understand the treatment of chronic pain and is valuable to the design of novel drug molecules in the future.
Towards an Instant Collaboration Environment: Designing Ambient Interfaces for Social Awareness and Collaboration

For geographically separated designers, moving into collaboration is sometimes distracting because it requires complex negotiation between colleagues. This research explores the practicability of moving from social awareness of remote colleagues into physical collaboration in an instant but unobtrusive way. A framework of "Instant Collaboration" has been proposed with characteristics identified, and a demonstrational prototype is implemented to examine the computability and usability of the proposed framework.
Finite-time velocity-free trajectory tracking control for a stratospheric airship with preassigned accuracy

Abstract This paper concentrates on the trajectory tracking problem for a stratospheric airship subject to underactuated dynamics, unmeasured velocities, modeling inaccuracies and environmental disturbances. First, a coordinate transformation is performed to solve the underactuated issue, which simultaneously permits a priori assignment of the tracking accuracy. Second, a finite-time observer is integrated into the control structure to offer the exact information of unmeasured velocities and uncertainties in an integral manner. Then, by combining the backstepping technique with the method of adding a power integrator, a new output-feedback control strategy is derived with several salient contributions: (1) the airship’s position errors fall into a predetermined residual region near zero within a finite settling time and stay there, while all the closed-loop signals maintain bounded during operation; and (2) no artificial neural networks and filters are adopted, resulting in a low-complexity control property. Furthermore, the presented method can be extended readily to a broad range of second-order mechanical systems as its design builds upon a transformed system model. Rigorous mathematical analysis and simulations demonstrate the above theoretical findings.
Digital governance mechanisms and principles that enable agile responses in dynamic competitive environments

ABSTRACT Being an agile company today is no longer just about timely recognition of early signs of change in order to defend an existing competitive position but rather being able to perpetually transition between a series of short-lived, temporary competitive advantages. While traditional IT governance approaches have lent themselves well to extracting value from a long-lasting competitive advantage, they can become a liability if agile companies need to continuously reinvent themselves in pursuit of a new, “transient” competitive advantage. To that end, a temporal dimension of IT governance (when and how fast to decide) becomes as important as its structural (who decides what) and procedural (how to decide) aspects. In this paper, we adopt a “ternary” view on governance and build on the extant literature in IS, strategy, and organisation design as well as exemplar case studies to explore how traditional approaches to IT governance structures, processes, and relational mechanisms are altered to improve sensing, deciding, and responding capabilities in turbulent business environments. These mechanisms are then summarised into four digital governance principles to guide future research and practice. Those principles are: 1) disciplined autonomy, 2) IS-Business convergence, 3) permeable boundaries, and 4) incremental financial commitment including fast experimentation.
Are Virulence and Antibiotic Resistance Genes Linked? A Comprehensive Analysis of Bacterial Chromosomes and Plasmids

Although pathogenic bacteria are the targets of antibiotics, these drugs also affect hundreds of commensal or mutualistic species. Moreover, the use of antibiotics is not only restricted to the treatment of infections but is also largely applied in agriculture and in prophylaxis. During this work, we tested the hypothesis that there is a correlation between the number and the genomic location of antibiotic resistance (AR) genes and virulence factor (VF) genes. We performed a comprehensive study of 16,632 reference bacterial genomes in which we identified and counted all orthologues of AR and VF genes in each of the locations: chromosomes, plasmids, or in both locations of the same genome. We found that, on a global scale, no correlation emerges. However, some categories of AR and VF genes co-occur preferentially, and in the mobilome, which supports the hypothesis that some bacterial pathogens are under selective pressure to be resistant to specific antibiotics, a fact that can jeopardize antimicrobial therapy for some human-threatening diseases.
Stiffness Degradation Law of Prestressed Concrete Beams under Equivalent Fatigue Loads

With the increase in bridge operation life and the effect of vehicle load, the property of bridge especially the reciprocating effect of heavy-load traffic, which endangers the safety of bridge operation, will be degraded. To further clarify the relationship between the stiffness and fatigue damage under heavy traffic, six prestressed concrete fatigue test beams were designed and manufactured. The equivalent fatigue load was determined by the statistics of traffic flow data. On the basis of the fatigue damage principle, the fatigue failure form and crack development of test beams under equivalent fatigue load were analysed. The constant-amplitude fatigue test method was employed to analyze the section stiffness degradation law and the member stiffness degradation law under equivalent fatigue load. Results demonstrate that the final failure mode of the test beam is the bending failure, which starts from the fatigue fracture of the longitudinal tensile steel bars at the bottom of the beam. With increased fatigue loading times, the stiffness of the test beams exhibits a threestage decay trend of “fast–gentle–fast”. The equivalent fatigue load accelerates the initial stiffness degradation of the prestressed beam, and the bridge design by the normal operating load is conservative. The section stiffness, which is characterized by the prestressed reinforcement strain, correlates best with the member stiffness of the beam. The proposed method provides a certain reference for the design, detection, and early warning of damage of bridge structures.
Family and Work Lives of Lesbians in China: Implications for the Adult Worker Model

This article examines the ways in which lesbians explore opportunities and navigate constraints in their family and work lives in urban China. It not only reveals Chinese lesbians’ difficulties in gaining equal access to the labour market and developing their desired family lives, but also discusses possible ways of enhancing the applicability of the adult worker model for sexual minority women. Previous research has indicated a shift from the male breadwinner model to the adult worker model, suggesting that both men and women are expected to join the labour market, and that women should not carry all the care responsibilities within the family. However, the model largely overlooks the interplay of gender and sexuality factors in shaping work and family lives. This article adopts a qualitative mixed-methods approach, including interviews with 20 Chinese lesbians and social media analysis, to examine lesbians’ experiences of taking part in the family as adults and in the wider economy as workers. It shows how gender norms, heteronormativity, and policy intersect in generating obstacles for Chinese lesbians to thrive as respectable adult workers. This has important implications for attempts to improve the adult worker model to fit better with people’s diverse work/family needs.
A Non-Monotonic Precipitation Response to Changes in Soil Moisture in the Presence of Vegetation

In many parts of the world, humans rely on afternoon rainfall for their water supply. However, it is not fully understood how land surface properties influence afternoon precipitation. In fact, disagreement remains regarding the relative prevalence of “wet-soil advantage” regimes, in which wet soils receive more precipitation than do dry soils, and “dry-soil advantage” regimes, in which the opposite occurs. Recent studies have proposed that the permanent wilting point (PWP) soil moisture threshold influences the location and organization of convective clouds. Motivated by this work, we investigate how changes in soil moisture relative to the PWP affect the timing and amount of surface rainfall, as well as how this response depends on the presence or absence of vegetation. This investigation is carried out by conducting several series of high-resolution, idealized numerical experiments using a fully coupled, interactive soil-vegetation-atmosphere modeling system. From these experiments, a new soil moisture-precipitation relationship emerges: in the presence of vegetation, simulations with moderately dry soils, whose initial liquid water content slightly exceeds the PWP, generate significantly less surface precipitation than do those with the driest or wettest soils. This result suggests that simulated “wet-soil advantage” and “dry-soil advantage” regimes may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, insofar as extremely wet and extremely dry soils can both exhibit an “advantage” over moderately dry soils. This non-monotonic soil moisture-precipitation relationship is found to result from the PWP’s modulation of transpiration of water vapor by plants. In the absence of vegetation, a wet-soil advantage occurs instead in these idealized simulations.
Distributed Control for Wind Farm Power Output Stabilization and Regulation

Modern power systems are characterized by an increasing penetration of renewable energy generating units. These aim to reduce the carbon emissions in the environment by replacing conventional energy generating units which rely on fossil fuels. In this new power systems composition, wind generators (WGs) dominate, being one of the largest and fastest-growing sources of renewable energy production. Nevertheless, their unpredictable and highly volatile power output hinders their efficient and secure large-scale deployment, and poses challenges for the transient stability of power systems. Given that, we identify two challenges in the operation of modern power systems: rendering WGs capable of regulating their power output while securing transient stabilization of conventional synchronous generators (SGs). This dissertation makes several contributions for effectively dealing with these major challenges by introducing new distributed control techniques for SGs, storage devices and state-of-the-art (SoA) WGs. Initially, this dissertation introduces a novel nonlinear control design which is able to coordinate a storage device and a SG to attain transient stabilization and concurrent voltage regulation on their terminal bus. Thereafter, it proposes control designs that SoA WGs can adopt to effectively regulate their power output to meet local or group objectives. In this context, the first control design is a decentralized nonlinear energy-based control design, that can be employed by a wind double-fed induction generator (DFIG) with an incorporated energy storage device (namely a SoA WG) to regulate its power output by harnessing stored energy, with guaranteed performance for a wide-range of operating conditions. Recognizing that, today, albeit wind farms (WFs) are comprised of numerous WGs which are sparsely located in large geographical areas, they are required to respond rapidly and provide services to the grid in an efficient, reliable and timely fashion. To this end, this dissertation proposes distributed control methods for power output regulation of WFs comprised of SoA WGs. In particular, a novel distributed control design is proposed, which can be adopted by SoA WGs to continuously, dynamically and distributively self-organize and control their power outputs by leveraging limited peer-to-peer communication. By employing the proposed control design, WGs can exploit their storage devices in a fair load-sharing manner so that their total power output tracks a total power reference under highly dynamical conditions. Finally, this dissertation proposes a distributed control design for wind DFIGs without a storage device, the most common type of WGs deployed today. With this control design, wind DFIGs can dynamically, distributively and fairly self-dispatch and adjust the power they extract from the wind for the purpose of their total power tracking a dynamic reference. The effectiveness of the control designs proposed in this dissertation is illustrated through several case studies on a 3-bus power system and the IEEE 24-bus Reliability Test System.
Reanalysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial on Promoting Influenza Vaccination in General Practice Waiting Rooms: A Zelen Design

In 2014–2015, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) assessing the effect of an advertising campaign for influenza vaccination using posters and pamphlets in general practitioner (GP) waiting rooms. No effect of the intervention could be demonstrated, but the immunization uptake increased in both arms of the study. In 2019, we deepened the investigations explaining the increased uptake conducting a registry-based 4/2/1 cluster RCT designed by Zelen with two extra years of follow-up of the study cohort. The study population included 23,024 patients eligible to be vaccinated who were registered with 175 GPs. The main outcome remained the number of vaccination units delivered per study group. Data were extracted from the SNIIRAM warehouse claim database for the Lille-Douai district (northern France). No difference in vaccination uptake was found in the Zelen versus the control group of the initial RCT. Overall, the proportion of vaccinated patients increased in the cohort from 51.4% to 70.4% over the three years. Being vaccinated the previous year was a strong predictor of being vaccinated in a subsequent year. The increase in vaccination uptake, especially among people older than 65, can be explained by a cohort effect. Health promotion and the promotion of primary health care may play an important role in this increase.
Patent research front mining of GaN semiconductor based on the LDA model

This paper aims to identify and analyze research front topics of GaN semiconductor. The research method was to mine and identify topics based on GaN patent data by using the LDA model and topic intensity index. Finally, through experiments, we obtained and analyzed 4 research front topics. The results provided informatics support for revealing the research status and trend of GaN semiconductor.
Can Weight Loss Improve the Cardiovascular Outcomes of Patients with Obesity and Obstructive Sleep Apnea?

Cardiovascular events are the primary cause of mortality in patients with obstructive sleep apnea and obesity. The rising prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea in recent decades has been linked to increasing rates of obesity. Obstructive sleep apnea has also been linked with many different cardiovascular diseases including coronary artery disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertension, and atrial fibrillation. Obesity is an increasing health concern globally, in part because obesity complications such as hypertension, diabetes, and obstructive sleep apnea increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. More than 10% weight loss may be required to prevent or reverse obesity complications. Treatment approaches to obesity include nutritional therapy, exercise therapy, pharmacotherapy, and surgical therapies. This review intends to identify the effects of weight loss on cardiovascular outcomes in patients with obesity and obstructive sleep apnea. Despite the strong association between cardiovascular diseases and obstructive sleep apnea, randomized trials have failed to demonstrate that treatment of obstructive sleep apnea reduces cardiovascular events, even in patients with established cardiovascular diseases. Weight loss in patients with obstructive sleep apnea improves HbA1c, systolic blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides, but thus far no changes in cardiovascular events have been shown. The combination of weight loss with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) appears more beneficial than either treatment in isolation. Large well-controlled trials in patients with obstructive sleep apnea to assess the effects of different weight reduction programs on cardiovascular disease are still needed.
Synthesis, Toxicity Assessment, Environmental and Biomedical Applications of MXenes: A Review

MXenes are a family of two-dimensional (2D) composite materials based on transition metal carbides, nitrides and carbonitrides that have been attracting attention since 2011. Combination of electrical and mechanical properties with hydrophilicity makes them promising materials for biomedical applications. This review briefly discusses methods for the synthesis of MXenes, their potential applications in medicine, ranging from sensors and antibacterial agents to targeted drug delivery, cancer photo/chemotherapy, tissue engineering, bioimaging, and environmental applications such as sensors and adsorbents. We focus on in vitro and in vivo toxicity and possible mechanisms. We discuss the toxicity analogies of MXenes and other 2D materials such as graphene, mentioning the greater biocompatibility of MXenes. We identify existing barriers that hinder the formation of objective knowledge about the toxicity of MXenes. The most important of these barriers are the differences in the methods of synthesis of MXenes, their composition and structure, including the level of oxidation, the number of layers and flake size; functionalization, test concentrations, duration of exposure, and individual characteristics of biological test objects Finally, we discuss key areas for further research that need to involve new methods of nanotoxicology, including predictive computational methods. Such studies will bring closer the prospect of widespread industrial production and safe use of MXene-based products.
Modelling and robust control of an unmanned coaxial rotor helicopter with unstructured uncertainties

A complete methodology for an unmanned coaxial rotor helicopter with unstructured uncertainties was proposed to achieve high-accuracy tracking performance from modelling to robust control. An integrative approach was introduced to systematically construct a whole dynamic model. The key parameters were selected carefully after iteratively being checked by empirical coefficients to decrease the budget and risk of programme. Moreover, a new control scheme is proposed to simultaneously incorporate six inputs to control six states based on the investment of singularity value responses and the general rule of relative gain array. Coprime factor uncertainty model is considered to represent a class of unstructured uncertainties, such as unmolded actuator dynamics and unpredicted interferences between two rotors. Furthermore, the H ∞ loop-shaping control was proposed to apply the control design of the coaxial rotor helicopter to manage complicated uncertainties and multivariable coupling. Finally, simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller design in the step response of the closed loop. The stable closed-loop plant is achieved and the tolerant size of unstructured uncertainty is up to 36.09%. Good step responses and satisfied decoupling were also investigated in detail.