Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural Coefficients and Life-Cycle Cost

As transportation agencies search for relief from highly strained budgets, a recent study from National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) shows that hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavements can be designed approximately 18.5% thinner using the 1993 AASHTO Design Guide for flexible pavements. This savings is the result of recalibrating the asphalt layer coefficient. The previously recommended layer coefficient, used by the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT), of 0.44 comes from the AASHO Road Test, which took place near Ottawa, Illinois from 1958 to 1960. The recalibrated average layer coefficient of 0.54 was determined by utilizing performance and traffic data from test sections at the NCAT Test Track, and reflects advancements made in HMA materials and construction over the last 50 years. While the direct savings of 18.5% HMA thickness is obvious, the savings in initial construction and life cycle costs are not as straightforward. However, there will always be a savings in the initial cost and user delay costs because thinner pavements are cheaper to build and take less time to construct. The economic benefits of changing to the new layer coefficient will vary depending upon what layer coefficient an agency is currently using. A survey of state transportation agencies found that there is little consistency in the layer coefficients used across the nation. Many states use different coefficients for varying types of mix or use a different coefficient beyond a certain depth of HMA, while others use the same value regardless of mix type or depth. This inconsistency between the states does not seem to follow a particular trend (e.g., higher values in the southern portion of the country). The wide array of layer coefficients used across the nation suggests that this value needed to be revisited, and has lead many states toward implementing mechanistic-empirical design systems. This paper describes the recalibration efforts at the NCAT Test Track followed by a discussion of life-cycle costs related to using a new structural coefficient. Data from the survey of state agencies are also presented relative to the new NCAT findings and life-cycle cost analysis.
Healthcare worker resilience during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A qualitative study of primary care providers in India

Abstract Since 2020, the world saw a myriad of creative health‐care policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article studied the experience of rural primary care providers (PCPs) in India deputized for COVID‐19 care in urban areas. In‐depth interviews were conducted with PCPs (n = 19), who served at COVID‐19 facilities. Lack of epidemic management and intensive tertiary care experience, limited and inadequate training, and fear of infection emerged as the primary sources of distress, in addition to absent systemic mental health support and formalized recognition. Even so, resilience among the respondents emerged as a result of encouragement from their families, peers, and mentors through various means including social media, and from individual recognition from communities and local governments. Rural PCPs expressed an eagerness to serve at the frontlines of COVID‐19 and demonstrated indomitable spirit in the face of an acutely understaffed health system, growing uncertainty, and concerns about personal and family health. It is imperative to reconfigure health‐care education and continuing professional development, and equip all health‐care professionals with mental health support and the ability to deal with public health emergencies and build a more resilient health workforce.
Control and Performance of Wind Turbine Generators based on Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines Feeding a Diode Rectifier

Permanent magnet based wind generators are one of the more promising technologies. This paper presents a simple strategy for controlling the speed and power of the wind turbine generator (WTG), connected to the grid though a diode-rectifier converter, which is less expensive but more reliable than IGBT back-to-back converter. The paper details an implementation allowing maximum power point tracking and low voltage ride through requirements. Detailed models are presented and explained. The performance of the WTG under variable wind conditions and extreme contingency, i.e. a three-phase to ground short circuit on the ac bus, is investigated. The proposed control strategy has the advantages of low parameter sensitivity and fast response speed. The paper demonstrates the WTG has excellent performances in both system normal state and contingency.
LUT-Based Optimization For ASIC Design Flow

Look-up Table (LUT) mapping and optimization is an important step in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) design. The effectiveness of LUT synthesis improved dramatically in the last decades, thanks to optimization and mapping innovations naturally tailored for FPGAs. In this paper, we develop a new LUT-based optimization flow that is tailored for the synthesis of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) rather than FPGAs. We enhance LUT mapping to consider the literal/AIG cost of LUT nodes. We extend traditional Boolean methods to simplify and re-shape LUT-networks, targeting the best AIG/mapped-network implementation, after decomposition. Intuitively, literal-driven LUT packing behaves as a powerful fanin-bound node elimination, unveiling higher-order Boolean simplification opportunities. We embed our proposed LUT-based optimization flow, area oriented, in a commercial synthesis tool. Using our methodology, we improve 12 of the best area results in the EPFL synthesis competition. Employed in a commercial EDA flow for ASICs, our LUT optimization reduces area by 1.80%, total negative slack by 0.39%, and switching power by 1.72%, after physical implementation, at 5% runtime cost.
Phase-Delay-Type Artificial Dielectrics

Abstract : The report is based on a survey of the literature on phase-delay artificial dielectrics to examine their suitability for multiple-beam antennas for satellite communications. The conclusions are that arrays of conducting discs appear to be suitable for such application because they can be used with circularly polarized fields and can be built with a desirable index of refraction, in the neighborhood of 1.5. A review of theoretical and measured results is presented, with formulas and curves permitting selection of parameters and permitting determination of the effect of tolerances and of frequency variation. No information was found on the inherent loss of such a medium. In the appendix, digests of 27 selected papers on the subject are presented.
Using an Artificial Intelligence Based Chatbot to Provide Parent Training: Results from a Feasibility Study

Online parenting training programs have shown to be effective. However, no studies on parent training programs delivered through chatbots have been reported yet. Aim. This study aims to assess the feasibility of delivering parenting skills through a chatbot. Methods. A sample of 33 parents completed a pilot feasibility study. Engagement, knowledge, net-promoters score and qualitative responses were analyzed. Results. A total of 78.8% of the sample completed the intervention. On average, participants remembered 3.7 skills out of the 5 presented and reported that they would recommend the chatbot to other parents (net promoter score was 7.44; SD = 2.31 out of 10). Overall, parents sent a mean of 54.24 (SD = 13.5) messages to the chatbot, and the mean number of words per message was 3. Main themes parents discussed with the chatbot included issues regarding their child’s habits, handling disruptive behaviors, interpersonal development, and emotional difficulties. Parents generally commented on the usefulness of the intervention and suggested improvements to the chatbot’s communication style. Conclusions. Overall, users completed the intervention, engaged with the bot, and would recommend the intervention to others. This suggests parenting skills could be delivered via chatbots.
A Wiener Model Identification for Creep and Vibration Linear and Hysteresis Nonlinear Dynamics of Piezoelectric Actuator

The piezoelectric actuator exhibits both linear dynamics of creep and vibration and nonlinear dynamics of hysteresis. The model identification from experiments can compensate uncertainties in the model and get a satisfactory model for the control. Block-oriented nonlinear model is suitable for modeling this kind of linear and nonlinear hybrid dynamics. In this study, a Wiener model identification method for the piezoelectric actuator is proposed to model the linear and nonlinear dynamics together from the data. The model is called two-linear(linear+linear)-nonlinear (TLN) Wiener model, where two additive linear dynamic models are used to identify the creep and vibration dynamics, and a nonlinear dynamic model is followed to identify the hysteresis nonlinear features. The TLN-Wiener model is parameterized using Laguerre functions and Prandtl-Ishlinskii (PI) model, and the model identification algorithm is proposed. The experiments on piezoelectric actuators show that the TLN-Wiener model identification method can model the creep, vibration and hysteresis dynamics. The method is applicable to model the rate-dependency dynamics of the piezoelectric actuator.
Biomechanical analysis of human movement in the function of sports traumatology

Moderni pristup dijagnostici ljudskog kretanja, za potrebe medicinskih, kao i raznih sportskih primjena, bazira se na laboratorijskim biomehanickim mjerenjima i analizama. Eksperimentalni podaci obuhvacaju prostorne kinematicke velicine, silu reakcije podloge i visekanalnu povrsinsku elektromiografiju (EMG). Inverznim dinamickim pristupom ostvaruje se matematicka procjena unutarnjih sila i momenata sila u zamisljenim sredistima zglobova. Prikazan je postupak u okviru suvremeno opremljenog laboratorija na Kinezioloskom fakultetu gdje se mogu mjeriti i biomehanicki analizirati razlicite kretne strukture. Postupak je ilustriran primjerom iz sportske traumatologije gdje je u prvom redu namjera procijeniti funkciju koljenskog zgloba u cilju poboljsane dijagnostike i lijecenja. Tu kombiniramo mjerenja hoda sa specificno dizajniranim testovima. Opisani pristup (uz nedostatak jos nekih metoda kao sto su, u prvom redu, mjerenje potrosnje kisika i pedobarografija) predstavlja „ state-of-the-art“ metodologiju analize ljudskog kretanja za cije je ucinkovito koristenje bitna inter-disciplinarna suradnja lijecnika specijalista sa biomehanicarima: kineziolozima i tehnickim strucnjacima.
SeaSpider: automated information gathering on vessel movements in support of marine intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance

SeaSpider is an R&D tool to investigate the development of a software agent that would aid an operator in gathering information about marine vessels from public sources on the Internet. This information would supplement sensor information used for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and to complete the Recognized Maritime Picture (RMP). Specifically, SeaSpider is fine-tuned to search for, extract, integrate, and display information about locations (ports), dates and times, and activities (arrival, in berth, departure). One module manages World Wide Web (WWW) searches and retrieves the web pages; another module extracts relevant ship activities, integrates them and populates a database; a third module retrieves information from the database in response to user-generated queries. In this paper, the SeaSpider concept is introduced, the design details of the prototype are presented, and performance is analyzed, with a view towards future research.
Finding Similar Tweets in Health Related Topics

Social networks have become a very important means to facilitate the creation and sharing of information. They also provide real-time information on sales, marketing, politics, natural disasters, and crisis situations, among others. In this work, we investigate neural models for text similarity that can be used to: 1) determine if messages are related or not with a disease, 2) group similar messages to those that we have already captured, analyzed or stored, and 3) find similarity indices between messages using different learning algorithms. Our results show that we can achieve 90 % accuracy on the task of classifying which of two tweets is more similar to a sample tweet.
Two-stage soft-switched converter for the electrolyser application

An ‘electrolyser’ is part of a renewable energy system (RES), which breaks water down into hydrogen and oxygen gases by passing an electric current through water. A dc-to-dc converter is needed to couple the electrolyser to the system dc bus of the RES. This study proposes a two-stage soft-switched high-frequency transformer isolated dc-to-dc converter for this application. A zero-voltage transition boost converter is used as the front stage followed by an inductor-capacitor-inductor (LCL)-type series resonant converter (SRC) with a capacitive output filter. Since the boost converter maintains almost a constant bus voltage, the LCL SRC can operate with zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the specified supply and load variations. A systematic design procedure is given followed by a detailed personal simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (PSPICE) simulation and experimental results for the designed 2.4 kW converter cell to show the performance of the proposed converter configuration.
Digital/web‐based technology in purchasing and supply management: a UK study

Purpose – To date little is known about the actual level of utilisation of digital/web‐based interaction technologies in purchasing and supply management (SM) in the UK. This paper seeks to address this gap in the extant knowledge through empirical research in a UK setting. It examines the level of usage, the uses, the perceived benefits, and future perspective on the use, of web‐based technology in purchasing and SM.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical survey of UK‐based organisations was undertaken. Information simultaneously collected on the buyer‐supplier relationship orientation of the firms in the sample was used to test the proposition that the use of web‐based technology leads to stronger collaborative relationships with suppliers.Findings – Data obtained from 156 valid responses indicated that six in every ten organisations use web‐based technology to support purchasing and SM activities, but that the usage is lower in small to medium‐sized enterprises. The main uses reported are for commun.
Acceptability Analysis of Parking Charges Based on Structural Equation Model

Parking charges is a widely used and effective means to improve parking demand management. Based on the structural equation theory, the model about the influence factors related to the acceptability of parking charges was established. Eight factors were selected for the modeling, including problem perception, willingness, perceived effectiveness, perceived benefits, perceived freedom, perceived fairness, social norms and accountability. And a survey of two charging schemes was undertaken in Nanjing concerning influence factors of the acceptability. Model verification and path coefficient test were conducted based on the established structural equation model by AMOS. It is indicated that the most significant factors affecting the acceptability of parking charges measure are perceived effectiveness and willingness. Finally, according to the conclusions, the suggestions of improving acceptability of parking charges were presented.
Swing-up Control of Inverted Pendulum Using Pseudo-State Feedback

Swing-up control, that is the transfer of a pendulum from a pendant state to the inverted one, is a good laboratory experiment of optimal control theory for non-linear control systems. The optimal control can be determined by the maximum principle and obtained as a function of time. Since the control is, however, determined in a feedforward fashion, the control is not robust to disturbances and uncertainties of the system, and the transfer of the state of the pendulum is not assured. In the paper, a robust swing-up control using a subspace projected from the whole state space is proposed. Based on the projected state space or pseudo-state, the control input is determined depending on the partitioning of the state as a bang-bang type control. The control algorithm is applied for a new type of pendulum (TI Tech pendulum), and the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control are examined by experiments.
Compact MIMO antenna for LTE 2500 and UWB applications

This letter presents a compact multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) ultrawideband (UWB) antenna, and this MIMO antenna consists of two coplanar waveguide ‐fed monopole antenna elements and an improved ground‐plane. These two antenna elements are symmetrically arranged on a FR4 substrate with dimensions 33.8 × 29 × 0.8 mm3. The improved ground‐plane has several ground stubs and windows, and they are applied as decoupling structure to improve the isolation as well as impedance matching. Simulation and measurement are used to study the antenna performance, results show that the antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth of 2.2–10.6 GHz with |S11| ≤ −9 dB, low mutual coupling of less than −12 dB and −17 dB over the range of 2.5–4.2 GHz and 5.6–10 GHz, respectively, and LTE 2500 and UWB operation bands can be covered successfully. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:2046–2049, 2015
Surveying and fast detection of Ralstonia solanacearum bacterium in some Egyptian governorates

Naturally infected potato plants showing bacterial wilt symptoms were collected from different habitats and used for isolation of R. solanacearum pathogen. Also, isolation was carried out from soil, water canals, weeds and some other common crops (Pepper, Tomato, Banana, Snap Bean, Corn, Eggplant, Onion, Cabbage and Clover). All isolates showed typical and atypical morphological growth of R. solanacearum on Selective Medium South Africa medium (SMSA). Out of suspected 321 isolates of R. solanacearum, only 209 isolates were positive when identified using Immunofluorescence antibody stain test (IFAS) while the rest were negative. When these 209 isolates were identified again by growing on SMSA medium, only 194 isolates were positive as typical forms of R. solanacearum while the rest15 isolates appeared as atypical forms of R. solanacearum. Selected sixty-six isolates of those identified as typical or atypical forms of R. solanacearum were tested for their virulence. Results indicate that all tested 66 isolates could infect potato plants (cv. Spunta), where disease severity (DS %) ranged between 26.4% 100 % when incubated for 20 days. In this respect, MktT-17 (Menofia EL Kawady typical tuber isolate) isolate was the highest infective one. While, the least infective isolate was BhhaWa-53 (Beheira – Kom Hamada atypical – water) isolate, at the same period of incubation. Also, the rest of other isolates were infective and caused bacterial wilt symptoms below 98.4% and over 28.0%. All atypical forms of R. solanacearum isolates were less infective than the typical forms which were more virulent in this respect. Also, all sixty-six tested isolates of typical or atypical R. solanacearum were infective and caused bacterial wilt symptoms of tomato plants (cv. Ponto) which reached 100%DS but they differed in the time of incubation. The typical isolates were more virulent and fast in their infection on tomato plants (cv. Ponto). The highest DS% on tomato plants (cv. Ponto) was recorded with the typical R. solanacearum isolate MktT-17 (Menofia EL Kawady typical tuber) to be 100% at 4 days of incubation period. While, the lowest DS% was recorded with MmtOB-47 (Menofia Om saber – typical – other common crop – Banana) isolate where it recorded 100% DS at 10 days of incubation period. Moreover, the fastest atypical form of R. solanacearum was GhzaS-55 (Gharbia Kafr el Zayat atypical Soil) isolate which causing 100% wilt DS on tomato plants (cv. Ponto) at 9 days of incubation period while, the slowest atypical ones were BhhaS-56 (Beheira – Kom Hamada atypical soil), GdaS-62 (Giza Wardan – atypical soil) and GHzaOT-64 (GharbiaKafr el zayat atypicalother common crop Tomato) isolate which caused 100% wilt DS on tomato plants (cv. Ponto) at 15 days of incubation period.
Behavior Change Apps for Gestational Diabetes Management: Exploring Desirable Features

ABSTRACT Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has considerable and increasing health effects as it raises both the mother’s and offspring’s risk for short- and long-term health problems. GDM can usually be treated with a healthier lifestyle, such as appropriate dietary modifications and engaging insufficient physical activity. While telemedicine interventions requiring weekly or more frequent feedback from health care professionals have shown the potential to improve glycemic control amongst women with GDM, apps without extensive input from health care professionals are limited and have not shown to be effective. We aimed to improve the efficacy of GDM self-management apps by exploring desirable features in a review. We derived six desirable features from the multidisciplinary literature and we evaluated the state of implementation of these features in existing GDM apps. The results showed that features for increasing competence to manage GDM and for providing social support were largely lacking.
Association Between the General Practitioner Workforce Crisis and Premature Mortality in Hungary: Nationwide Evaluation of Health Insurance Data from 2006 to 2014

The workforce crisis of primary care is reflected in the increasing number of general medical practices (GMP) with vacant general practitioner (GP) position, and the GPs’ ageing. Our study aimed to describe the association between this crisis and premature mortality. Age-sex-standardized mortality for 18-64 years old adults were calculated for all Hungarian GMPs annually in the period from 2006 to 2014. The relationship of premature mortality with GPs’ age and vacant GP position were evaluated by standardized linear regression controlled for list size, urbanization, geographical location, clients’ education, and type of the GMP. The clients’ education was the strongest protective factor (beta=-0175; p<0.001), followed by urban residence (beta=-0.149; p<0.001), and the bigger list size (beta1601-2000=-0.054; p<0.001; beta2001-X=-0.096; p<0.001). The geographical localization influenced significantly also the risk. Although, GMP with a GP aged older than 65 years (beta=0; p=0.995) did not affected the risk, GP vacancy was associated with higher risk (beta=0.010; p=0.033), but the corresponding number of attributable cases was 23.54 for 9 years. The vacant GP position is associated with significant but hardly detectable increased risk of premature mortality without considerable public health importance. Nevertheless, employment of GPs aged more than 65 does not impose premature mortality risk elevation.