Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Generation of Concentration Gradients by a Outer-Circumference-Driven On-Chip Mixer

The concentration control of reagents is an important factor in microfluidic devices for cell cultivation and chemical mixing, but it is difficult to realize owing to the characteristics of microfluidic devices. We developed a microfluidic device that can generate concentration gradients among multiple main chambers. Multiple main chambers are connected in parallel to the body channel via the neck channel. The main chamber is subjected to a volume change through a driving chamber that surrounds the main chamber, and agitation is performed on the basis of the inequality of flow caused by expansion or contraction. The neck channel is connected tangentially to the main chamber. When the main chamber expands or contracts, the flow in the main chamber is unequal, and a net vortex is generated. The liquid moving back and forth in the neck channel gradually absorbs the liquid in the body channel into the main chamber. As the concentration in the main chamber changes depending on the pressure applied to the driving chamber, we generated a concentration gradient by arranging chambers along the pressure gradient. This allowed for us to create an environment with different concentrations on a single microchip, which is expected to improve observation efficiency and save space.
Marketing Investigation: Customer Relationship Management and Innovation to Improve Competitive Advantage and Business Performance

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between customer relationship management (CRM) and competitive advantage and to analyze the role of innovation capabilities in mediating CRM with a competitive advantage. In addition, it examines the role of competitive advantage on retail business performance. The study was conducted on retail companies in Indonesia using a quantitative approach, and responses from 255 retail owners/managers were obtained via the random sampling method. The analysis technique used is structural equation modeling (SEM) using SmartPLS software. The research findings reveal that retail competitive advantage can be achieved through the implementation of customer-oriented CRM. CRM is also able to support innovation capabilities, which will further increase competitive advantage. It is important for retail companies to strengthen the implementation of customer relationship management in order to achieve business performance because CRM is proven to increase the ability of innovation and competitive advantage of retail companies. Research on a broader type of company is needed to provide a better level of generalization.
Advanced Gust Load Alleviation using Dynamic Control Allocation

Active control techniques play a key role in today’s aircraft developments to reduce structural loads during gust encounter and thereby enable highly fuel-eﬃcient aircraft designs. The performance of such gust load alleviation (GLA) systems, however, is often limited by physical limitations in the actuation system. In this paper, a novel GLA control approach is presented which exploits actuator redundancies to avoid performance degradations when individual actuators are driven to their limits or become faulty. To that end, a baseline controller for damping loads-dominating aeroelastic modes is extended with a dynamic control allocation system for handling constrained actuators. Thereby, virtual control inputs, generated for a targeted aeroelastic mode control, are distributed to the actual control inputs in an optimal way. To do so, a convex optimization problem is formulated which is solved in real time with the goal to minimize performance degradations due to actuator constraints. The eﬀectivity of the presented GLA controller is experimentally validated on a highly ﬂexible wing in a wind tunnel considering diﬀerent actuator constraints and gust excitations at multiple airspeeds.
A Systematic Literature Review of Multi-Criteria Analysis Model Methods on Sustainability Weighting for Ethanol Plant

The sustainability weighting is crucial as it is practically implemented into sustainability evaluation, especially in industrial development. Sustainability is about the interconnection between three aspects of sustainability impact such as economic impact, environmental impact, and social impact. Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) model play important roles to measure the weighting for each impact according to the scenario and criteria selected based on scientific rules and robust statistical methods. However, there were insufficient studies on the existing literature sustainability weighting model from MCA method for the ethanol plant. Hence, the present paper demonstrates a systematic literature review of MCA model methods on sustainability weighting for the ethanol plant. There are two steps involved in systematic literature reviews: formulation of the research question and systematic searching strategies consisting of identification, screening, eligibility, quality appraisal, data abstraction and analysis. The review is based on leading databases; Scopus – ScienceDirect, Springer, Taylor and Francis, and one supporting database – Google Scholar. From the review, the preferable MCA weighting model for sustainability evaluation of ethanol plants is ‘integrated Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)’ rather than ‘standalone AHP’. The paper offered a significant contribution to the body of knowledge and sustainability evaluation purposes.
Questions on the effects of roughness and its analysis in non-equilibrium flows

The prediction of turbulent flows over rough surfaces is important for many applications in engineering and in the natural sciences. Since the resolution of the roughness requires significant computational resources, most modelling approaches rely on the related concepts of ‘equivalent sand-grain roughness’ and ‘wall similarity’. While the validity of these concepts is well established for zero-pressure-gradient boundary-layers and for channel flows, such is not the case for non-equilibrium conditions. This raises a number of important questions, some of which are discussed in this paper. We also suggest some possible paths to answering these questions.
A Review of Intelligent Sensor-Based Systems for Pressure Ulcer Prevention

Pressure ulcers are a critical issue not only for patients, decreasing their quality of life, but also for healthcare professionals, contributing to burnout from continuous monitoring, with a consequent increase in healthcare costs. Due to the relevance of this problem, many hardware and software approaches have been proposed to ameliorate some aspects of pressure ulcer prevention and monitoring. In this article, we focus on reviewing solutions that use sensor-based data, possibly in combination with other intrinsic or extrinsic information, processed by some form of intelligent algorithm, to provide healthcare professionals with knowledge that improves the decision-making process when dealing with a patient at risk of developing pressure ulcers. We used a systematic approach to select 21 studies that were thoroughly reviewed and summarized, considering which sensors and algorithms were used, the most relevant data features, the recommendations provided, and the results obtained after deployment. This review allowed us not only to describe the state of the art regarding the previous items, but also to identify the three main stages where intelligent algorithms can bring meaningful improvement to pressure ulcer prevention and mitigation. Finally, as a result of this review and following discussion, we drew guidelines for a general architecture of an intelligent pressure ulcer prevention system.
Groove gap waveguide as an alternative to rectangular waveguide for H-plane components

A comparative study between groove gap waveguide (GGW) technology and classical H-plane rectangular waveguide (RWG) technology is presented by evaluating their performance in the implementation of a narrow-band filter at the V-band. A filter with the same specifications has been manufactured and measured for each technology. Measured responses are compared and a re-assembling robustness test is carried out. The GGW filter presents a better response and remains completely invariant to the re-assembling process, which is shown to affect notably the RWG filter response. Remarkable low insertion loss of only 1.5 dB (cavities equivalent quality factor higher than 800) is obtained for the GGW filter.
Novel Structure Oriented Compact Model and Scaling Rule for Next Generation Power Semiconductor Devices

Power electronics is one of the key technologies to realize a low emission society. Semiconductor power devices, which are the main components of power electronics instruments, are expected to improve in power loss. A lot of research and development have been done especially for IGBTs (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), which are widely used for over 600V class rated voltage, such as EV (Electric Vehicle) and HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle). The annual demand for IGBTs is around 2.5 billion dollars annually in 2012, accounting for about 8% of the semiconductor market for Power Management. Its application range has rapidly expanded, from IH (Induction Heating) cookers, inverter air conditioners, and also high voltage DC transmission (HVDC) devices on behalf of several hundred megawatts of Thyristor. Its market is growing at an annual rate of more than 10%. Devices using new materials such as Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide as the next generation power devices have been prototyped. But Silicon devices, including the Silicon IGBTs are considered to be the mainstream for the next few decades due to its material cost and ease of processing. In the development of IGBT application systems, such as inverters, circuit simulation is used to improve its electrical efficiency and estimate heat loss and noise. A mathematically formulated model called the compact model that reproduces the characteristics of the IGBT, is used in the circuit simulation. But current IGBT compact models do not achieve enough accuracy, especially for latest trench-gate IGBT. In this study, accurate compact model development for the trench gate IGBT was achieved for the first time in the world by analyzing in detail the principle operation of the IGBT. The compact model represents high precision characteristics of the device in the simple formula and device structure parameters. This model has been published as a "Quasi-2D MOS-ADE" model. In addition, in the analysis of the compact model, the newly discovered "Scaling Principle" as well as CMOS technology was also present in the power devices. The possibility to realize the miniaturization of next-generation power devices was demonstrated. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the background and purpose of the study is reviewed. Discuss on the detail the operating mechanism of the IGBT, in particular, the preparation for the construction of the model starts from Chapter 3. In Chapter 3, a new mathematical expression for the trench-gate IGBT based on the operation of the semiconductor device physics, was established as a compact model. This model makes possible the representation of potential and carrier distribution of the Cathode side with high accuracy. In this model, the current flows are assumed to be separated into
Guidelines for transients are in need of revision

Although considerable knowledge has been built-up over the years, the design of various hydroelectric plants, particularly pumped-storage plants, has not always made full use of this knowledge. Mathematical instabilities, which could be resolved by experienced experts, and real physical unavoidable instabilities, make software application by experts not educated and experienced in subject extremely dangerous: bad things can happen if one can't distinguish inaccurate unrealistic results from reasonable good ones. Additionally, in a number of cases there is considerable evidence that already published guidelines, recommendations and standards have not be consistently applied. As a consequence, vital parameters relating to overall safety and sustainable operation which could have been based on the experience and knowledge of designers and equipment suppliers have been neglected. For instance, contrary to certain common working assumptions, the minimum pressure in a draft tube cannot be any constant pressure to fit the complex flow conditions at the exit of the runner. When such realities are combined with pump-turbine "S" instability there is a further increase in the risk of damages and accidents. Rather, a more realistic set of procedures must be applied. What makes such considerations particularly vital is that pumped-storage plants have such excellent potential for further exploitation as they represent a potentially significant environmentally clean load that may help compensate for power variations in the grid and the need to limit wind power output. Energy storage – if well designed and operated – has a great potential for making the overall system and market more efficient and reliable. It is not an exaggeration to say that pumped storage systems could substitute for up to 50% of nuclear and coal generating plants. They are easily manageable and impressively can be 75 – 85% efficient across the energy storage cycle. This work maintains that some crucial technical areas have lost the benefit of valuable experience and knowledge that has accrued in more than 100 years. The poorly coordinated transfer of practical and theoretical experience appears to be the root cause of this loss. The consequences are an unstable market and investment climate, and a greater frequency of accidents, higher inefficiency and the need for more common troubleshooting; yet many of the same problems which have appeared in recent years can be expected to continue to occur with distressing regularity if appropriate steps are not taken. The required and organized multidisciplinary transfer of experience is a major and challenging task, but one that needs to be undertaken by nonpartisan organisations. It is imperative that decisions to achieve this goal be made now. There is a clear and pressing need to plan, finance and implement a variety of long-term initiatives.
A Novel Deep Learning Approach Using Contextual Embeddings for Toponym Resolution

This article describes a novel approach for toponym resolution with deep neural networks. The proposed approach does not involve matching references in the text against entries in a gazetteer, instead directly predicting geo-spatial coordinates. Multiple inputs are considered in the neural network architecture (e.g., the surrounding words are considered in combination with the toponym to disambiguate), using pre-trained contextual word embeddings (i.e., ELMo or BERT) as well as bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory units, which are both regularly used for modeling textual data. The intermediate representations are then used to predict a probability distribution over possible geo-spatial regions, and finally to predict the coordinates for the input toponym. The proposed model was tested on three datasets used on previous toponym resolution studies, specifically the (i) War of the Rebellion, (ii) Local–Global Lexicon, and (iii) SpatialML corpora. Moreover, we evaluated the effect of using (i) geophysical terrain properties as external information, including information on elevation or terrain development, among others, and (ii) additional data collected from Wikipedia articles, to further help with the training of the model. The obtained results show improvements using the proposed method, when compared to previous approaches, and specifically when BERT embeddings and additional data are involved.
Analysis of the Efficiency of the U.S. Ethanol Industry 2007

In 2007, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) conducted a survey of US ethanol production plants to provide an assessment of the current US ethanol industry. The survey covers plant operations in both corn dry mills and wet mills. In particular, it includes plant type, ownership structure, capacity, feedstocks, production volumes, coproducts, process fuel and electricity usage, water consumption, and products transportation and distribution. This report includes a summary and analysis of these results.
Genome-Wide Identification of Stress-Associated Proteins (SAPs) Encoding A20/AN1 Zinc Finger in Almond (Prunus dulcis) and Their Differential Expression during Fruit Development

Stress-associated proteins (SAPs) are zinc finger proteins involved in the regulation of various stresses in a variety of plant species. A total of nine PdSAP genes were identified in Prunus dulcis. Phylogenetic and synteny analyses were performed to analyze the homology and evolutionary relationship of PdSAP genes. The functions of PdSAP genes were assessed by further analyses, including cis-regulatory elements, gene duplication, gene ontology, gene structure, subcellular localization, and motif pattern. This study found that PdSAP genes were unevenly distributed on chromosomes 2, 3, 6, and 7. Phylogenetic analysis of PdSAP genes with Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa suggested that six subgroups have a similar pattern of AN1 and A20 domains in each subgroup. PdSAP genes lacked duplicated blocks. The majority of PdSAP genes were localized in the nucleus region. Three hormonal and five stress cis-regulatory elements were found in the upstream promoter region of the PdSAP gene family. RNA-seq analysis revealed differential gene expression of PdSAP genes at days 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, and 37 of fruitlet development after flowering. This study identifies the SAP genes in P. dulcis and also provides insights into the expression of PdSAP genes in abnormal fruitlets with diapause atrophic growth at various developmental stages.
Utility of 3T MRI in Women with IB1 Cervical Cancer in Determining the Necessity of Less Invasive Surgery

Simple Summary 3T MRI can estimate more precisely the tumor volume of early cervical cancer than physical examination. Women with IB1 cervical cancer, which is invisible on 3T MRI, have no parametrial invasion so that parametrectomy can be skipped or minimized. Vagina invasion or lymph node metastasis is rare in these women so that vaginectomy or lymph node dissection can be performed less aggressively. Therefore, less invasive surgery can be one of the treatment options if IB1 cervical cancer is invisible on 3T MRI. Abstract Purpose: Cervical cancer that is invisible on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may suggest lower tumor burden than physical examination. Recently, 3 tesla (3T) MRI has been widely used prior to surgery because of its higher resolution than 1.5T MRI. The aim was to retrospectively evaluate the utility of 3T MRI in women with early cervical cancer in determining the necessity of less invasive surgery. Materials and methods: Between January 2010 and December 2015, a total of 342 women with FIGO stage IB1 cervical cancer underwent 3T MRI prior to radical hysterectomy, vaginectomy, and lymph node dissection. These patients were classified into cancer-invisible (n = 105) and cancer-visible (n = 237) groups based on the 3T MRI findings. These groups were compared regarding pathologic parameters and long-term survival rates. Results: The cancer sizes of the cancer-invisible versus cancer-visible groups were 11.5 ± 12.2 mm versus 30.1 ± 16.2 mm, respectively (p < 0.001). The depths of stromal invasion in these groups were 20.5 ± 23.6% versus 63.5 ± 31.2%, respectively (p < 0.001). Parametrial invasion was 0% (0/105) in the cancer-invisible group and 21.5% (51/237) in the cancer-visible group (odds ratio = 58.3, p < 0.001). Lymph node metastasis and lymphovascular space invasion were 5.9% (6/105) versus 26.6% (63/237) (5.8, p < 0.001) and 11.7% (12/105) versus 40.1% (95/237) (5.1, p < 0.001), respectively. Recurrence-free and overall 5-year survival rates were 99.0% (104/105) versus 76.8% (182/237) (p < 0.001) and 98.1% (103/105) versus 87.8% (208/237) (p = 0.003), respectively. Conclusions: 3T MRI can play a great role in determining the necessity of parametrectomy in women with IB1 cervical cancer. Therefore, invisible cervical cancer on 3T MRI will be a good indicator for less invasive surgery.
NeoFace: Development of face detection and recognition engine

These years, great expectations are being held of biometrics authentication with faces, in view of increasing vicious crimes and terrorist threats. This paper describes a new face detection and recognition engine NeoFace developed at NEC from a technical point of view. For face detection, eye candidate detection and face determination by generalized learning vector quantization are combined to achieve high speed and high performance. For face recognition, two key technologies, the perturbation space method and adaptive regional blend matching, have been developed to reduce the adverse effects of pose changes, facial expression changes, wearing glasses and so on.
An enhanced possibilistic programming approach for reliable closed-loop supply chain network design

Most of current logistics network design models in the literature typically assume that facilities are always available and absolutely reliable while in practice, they are always subject to several operational and disruption risks. This paper proposes a reliable closed-loop supply chain network design model, which accounts for both partial and complete facility disruptions as well as the uncertainty in the critical input data. The proposed model is of mixed integer possibilistic linear programming type that aims to minimise simultaneously the total cost of opening new facilities and the expected cost of disruption scenarios. An enhanced possibilistic programming approach is proposed to deal with the epistemic uncertainty in input data. Furthermore, the p-robustness criterion is used to limit the cost of disruption scenarios and protect the designed network against random facility disruptions. Several numerical experiments along with sensitivity analyses on uncertain parameters are conducted to illustrate the significance and applicability of the developed model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed solution approach. Our results demonstrate that operational and disruption risks considerably affect the whole structure of the designed network and they must be taken into account when designing a reliable closed-loop logistics network.
Relationship Between Peer Attachment and Adolescent Positive Well-Being with Gender as the Moderating Factor in Malaysia

Identifying protective factors that could influence the positive well-being of adolescents is important as positive development view emphasizes the possibility of adolescents developing positive traits based on their strengths, positive qualities, and supportive environments. This study examines the relationship between peer attachment with positive adolescent well-being and the role of gender as a moderator for links between peer attachment with positive adolescent well-being. A total of 400 7th Grade students from government schools in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and state of Selangor were involved in this study. Adolescent positive well-being and peer attachment were measured using the Positive Youth Development Scale and Inventory of Peer and Parent Attachment. The results show that peer attachment was predictor of adolescent positive well-being. The study also found that gender moderated the relationship between peer attachment and adolescent positive well-being. This study provides information on factors that can help the positive development of adolescents. Identifying these factors will provide insight on events or experiences that will increase the occurrence of positive outcomes and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes.