Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intermittently-visual Tracking Experiments Reveal the Roles of Error-correction and Predictive Mechanisms in the Human Visual-motor Control System

Prediction mechanism is necessary for human visual motion to compensate a delay of sensory-motor system. In a previous study, “proactive control” was discussed as one example of predictive function of human beings, in which motion of hands preceded the virtual moving target in visual tracking experiments. To study the roles of the positional-error correction mechanism and the prediction mechanism, we carried out an intermittently-visual tracking experiment where a circular orbit is segmented into the target-visible regions and the target-invisible regions. Main results found in this research were following. A rhythmic component appeared in the tracer velocity when the target velocity was relatively high. The period of the rhythm in the brain obtained from environmental stimuli is shortened more than 10%. The shortening of the period of rhythm in the brain accelerates the hand motion as soon as the visual information is cut-off, and causes the precedence of hand motion to the target motion. Although the precedence of the hand in the blind region is reset by the environmental information when the target enters the visible region, the hand motion precedes the target in average when the predictive mechanism dominates the error-corrective mechanism.
ALPI Setup as the SPES Accelerator of Exotic Beams

The SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) project for a national exotic beam facility in Legnaro includes pivotal upgrades of the existing superconducting linac ALPI (Acceleratore Lineare Per Ioni), to make it appropriate as the RIB (Radioactive Ion Beam) accelerator. The new injector, consisting of an Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR)-type charge breeder and a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ), will be described. Upgrade measures in ALPI to improve beam transmission and final energy, and handle low-intensity RIB will be explained, with the aim of increasing transmission to T > 90%, Ef by ~ 20%, reaching 10 MeV/u for the reference beam 132 Sn.
Dynamics of localized plasmonic excitation excited by pure propagating surface plasmon source at different positions

The remote excitation based on the propagating surface plasmons (PSP) is becoming increasingly extensive. Here, we study the dynamics of the localized surface plasmons (LSP) remotely excited by PSP on the gold film using the finitedifference time-domain numerical simulations method. The results show that the spectra of LSP excited by PSP change along with its excitation location, showing a unique phenomenon that the spectra exhibit a redshift tendency compared to the LSP excited by the traditional laser source. By comparing with the dynamics of LSP excited by a laser source, the unique near-field characteristics of that excited by PSP can be obtained. Furthermore, we find that the dephasing time of LSP excited by the PSP is longer than by the traditional laser source. We believe the results of this study can be used to improve the efficiency of remote catalytic reactions and provide new ways to prolong the dephasing time.
Dielectric-filled slotline bowtie antenna for breast cancer detection

An ultra-wideband dielectric-filled antenna has been designed for the purpose of breast cancer detection. The antenna geometry is a modified version of a slotline bowtie hybrid, which is immersed in a dielectric medium, and fed with an integrated ultra-wideband balun. Simulations were performed on both the balun and the antenna separately. The antenna had a simulated time domain near-field beamwidth of 32/spl deg/. A return loss of 10 dB was obtained from 2.5 to 9 GHz, and 5 dB from 1 to 10 GHz. Both bandwidths were slightly smaller than simulated. A prototype was constructed and feasibility tests were performed on tumour models immersed in a breast phantom material. Measurements demonstrate detection of a 7 mm diameter tumour at a depth of 4 cm from the aperture.
Towards Connecting Online Interfacing and Internal Core Business Processes

Nowadays, organisations tend to do more business online by enabling their business processes to interact with customers, suppliers, etc., via different online channels. On the other hand, their core business processes, such as production, engineering, etc., may still stay inside the organisation. As a consequence, this makes an organisation rely on the collaboration between these two types of business processes to conduct its business, and this collaboration brings issues like multiple instance correlation, process view, and process evolution, to the business process management (BPM) of the organisation. This paper reports our research in progress on these issues. It firstly identifies the requirements to fully support such collaboration, and then presents a framework to illustrate how the collaboration can be facilitated using latest BPM technologies. This framework provides a reference architecture to incorporating online interfacing and internal core business processes.
Instrumentation for In-Flight SSME Rocket Engine Plume Spectroscopy

This paper describes instrumentation that is under development for an in-flight demonstration of a plume spectroscopy system on the space shuttle main engine. The instrumentation consists of a nozzle mounted optical probe for observation of the plume, and a spectrometer for identification and quantification of plume content. This instrumentation, which is intended for use as a diagnostic tool to detect wear and incipient failure in rocket engines, will be validated by a hardware demonstration on the Technology Test Bed engine at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Hex Turbofan Engine

Looking into the future of aviation for commercial aircrafts there are various viable options for engine and associated propulsion technologies. The team had to eliminate some of the possible solutions. Superconducting electric motors were alleviated considering weight factors and lack of technology readiness to fly long range commercial jets. Even prop-fans were eliminated considering its limitation on stalling speed of fan and higher noise levels. To avoid such problems we went ahead with an integrated Turbofan engine.
Customer‐Supplier Partnerships in the IT Market

A new approach, employed by ICL, to the delivery of information technology in the manufacturing market is described. This is based on the principle of assisting companies to gain significant competitive advantage by moving to “world class” status. The ways in which this can be achieved are described, but it is essentially based on customer‐supplier partnerships.
TreeSke: A Structural-Lossless Skeleton Extraction Method for Point Cloud Data of Canopy Woody Materials

Background: Skeletons extracted from point clouds of woody materials present canopy structural features (e.g., the inclination angle of branches) for simulating canopy interception and understory solar radiation distribution. However, existing methods cannot easily capture structure-lossless skeletons of woody organs from tree point-cloud data. To fulfill this goal, we proposed a distance-weighted method, named the TreeSke method, to iteratively contract the point cloud of canopy woody materials to their median-axis skeleton. After heuristically searching the local point set, we pointwise-extracted the tightened weights to obtain the coarse skeleton. Then, we thinned the skeleton of woody organs and optimized it by a noise filtering and re-centering process. Results: The proposed method was verified on six simulated tree models that have reference skeletons and two field-collected datasets at the plot level. The results show that the TreeSke-extracted skeletons were with higher location accuracy than using the other two tested methods. The mean offset distance, the RMSE of the offset distance, and the Hausdorff distance between the extracted and reference skeletons were less than 0.04 m, less than 0.06 m, and less than 0.11 m, respectively. Conclusions: The extracted skeletons by the TreeSke method could nearly integrally depict the structural features of woody materials. The proposed method showed robust for noisy points and outliers, while missing data would reduce the skeleton integrity and cause deformation errors. From the extracted skeletons, users can extract the inclination-angle features of canopy woody materials, which are useful for simulating most eco-hydrological processes.
Linear credibility models based on time series for claim counts

In this paper, several models for longitudinal analysis of claim frequencies are presented. These models are fitted to a large panel data set relating to a major Spanish insurance company. Credibility theory is then used to update the individual claim frequencies. The results are compared and the consequencies of increasing the strength of dependence are clearly visible.
SOC Estimation of a Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery Used in Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles—Comparative Study of Accuracy and Robustness Performance Based on Statistical Criteria. Part II: SOC Estimators

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the accuracy of three state of charge (SOC) estimators of a rechargeable Li-ion SAFT battery based on two accurate Li-ion battery models, namely a linear RC equivalent electrical circuit (ECM) and a nonlinear Simscape generic model, developed in Part 1. The battery SOC of both Li-ion battery models is estimated using a linearized adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF), a nonlinear adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) and a nonlinear and non-Gaussian particle filter estimator (PFE). The result of MATLAB simulations shows the efficiency of all three SOC estimators, especially AEKF, followed in order of decreasing performance by AUKF and PFE. Besides, this result reveals a slight superiority of the SOC estimation accuracy when using the Simscape model for SOC estimator design. Overall, the performance of all three SOC estimators in terms of accuracy, convergence of response speed and robustness is excellent and is comparable to state of the art SOC estimation methods.
Real-time violent action detector for elevator

This paper presents a new critical event detection method simplified for an embedded appliance mounted on an elevator car. We first define that the critical event is unusual action such as violent action, counteraction, etc, and introduce the violent action degree(VAD). We use an optical flow based method to analyze the current state of the motion through an ITV(Industrial TeleVision) camera. After motion analysis, we calculate a normalized statistical value, which is the VAD. The statistical value is the multiple of the optical flow direction variance, the optical flow magnitude variance, and optical flow area. Our method calculates the statistical value variance and normalize it by the variance. At last we can detect critical event by thresholding the VAD. Then we implement this method on an embedded appliance. The appliance has an A/D converter with special designed frame buffer, a 400MIPS high performance micro processor, dynamic memory, and some flash ROM. Since we need to process the method 4Hz or faster to keep the detection performance, we shrink the images into 80 by 60 size, adopt the recursive correlation method, and analyze optical flows. The special designed frame buffer enables us for capturing sequencial two images at any time. After that we achieve about 8Hz processing performance on it. Our method detects 80% of critical events where at most 6% of false acception.
One-Dimensional Viscoelastic Simulation of Ice Behaviour in relation to Dynamic Ice Action

The goal of this work was to simulate the behaviour of ice under cyclic loading. The linear viscoelastic Kelvin, Maxwell and Burgers models were implemented in Matlab by means of The Boltzmann superposition principle. This method was verified using cases which could be represented by analytical solutions. During the extensive sensitivity analysis carried out, it was determined that the ratio n/(f? ) influences the shape of the strain response curve in a creep test for all of the models considered in this study. With the knowledge of parameter n/(f? ), preliminary conclusion on the result of the test can be drawn. The change of the second modulus is defined by the Kelvin unit which determines the delayed elastic deformations. The time required for these deformations to fully developed is given by 5? 2. The changes in the value of the second modulus occurs only before this value is attained. However in linear viscoelastic Burgers model, this change is relatively small . This is because the Maxwell unit in the Burger model has a major influence on the shape of the stress-strain curves. Available literature was used to obtain the input parameters for Burgers model for ice. They were obtained by calibration of the model data with the experimental data presented therein by producing a best fit curve. Since this study utilized a non-linear model to replicate the experimental data, it was also used to compare the results of a linear model with a non-linear model. The region conforming to the delayed elastic deformation was not represented accurately by the linear model. Uniaxial cyclic compression test performed at UNIS was modeled using the linear viscoelastic Burgers model using the scaled down input parameters obtained through calibration with fresh ice creep test to enable their application to this case. The viscoelastic model was unable to completely agree with the findings from the test carried out at UNIS.
Integrated control system of transverse flow CO2 laser and its application

Aiming to the special high power CO2 laser surface treatment, the paper developed the integrated control system based on S7-200 PLC of transverse flow CO2 laser. The selection of key technology and components, detection and control of signals, integrated control of complete circuit, technology of human machine interface and process control of system have been researched. Double closed loop power control system was realized, so that the stability of the laser power was in ±2%. Also, the giving power can be controlled by the laser controller or by the processing machine, thus, the users can control the laser more efficiently when processing. A series of experiments have been performed on 5kW transverse flow CO2 laser, the output laser power was stable at discharge current of 9A for 8 hours, and the maximal power was 5.42 kW. The new type of transverse flow CO2 Laser with Integrated Control System has been applied for special laser cladding with power-modulating on the metallic surface of the oil industry production.
A performance measurement system for SMEs taking part in Quality Award Programmes

This work aims to contribute to the understanding of performance measurement systems (PMSs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) taking part in Quality Award Programmes. The paper proposes a framework to classify PMSs and shows how it can be used to study the PMSs adopted by a group of leading Italian SMEs. The purpose of this paper is not to represent the level of development of PMSs in SMEs, but rather to use the collected data to identify the improvement path these systems have in their implementation in SMEs taking part in Quality Award Programmes. The framework does not intend to provide a normative or prescriptive model, but rather to propose a more comprehensive and descriptive reference that can be used to evaluate PMSs in SMEs.
Inductor-less piezoelectric transformer electronic ballast for linear fluorescent lamp

This paper presents a cost-effective piezoelectric transformer based ballast circuit that is designed to drive a linear fluorescent lamp without dependence on any magnetic devices. This innovative circuit uses a radial vibration mode piezoelectric transformer or Transoner(R) to replace the inductor and the capacitors of the resonant tank portion in conventional electronic ballast circuits in order to effectively reduce the component number and cost. By fully utilizing the characteristics of the radial vibration mode piezoelectric transformer, the switches of the ballast circuit can work in a ZVS (zero-voltage switching) condition thus significantly reducing the turn-on switching losses when compared to a hard-switching topology. In addition, the inherent input capacitance of the radial vibration mode piezoelectric transformer enhances circuit operation by serving as a turn-off snubber for the half-bridge switches. This decreases turn-off voltage spiking thus reducing the turn-off losses for the half-bridge switches of the proposed circuit. Through these innovative circuit techniques, the proposed circuit provided 32-watts of power at commendable efficiency of around 90% when utilizing a standard 110-volt 60-Hz line as the power source and a 4-foot 40-watt linear fluorescent lamp as a load.
A Theoretical Framework on the Resource Industry: From the Value of Resource in Economy

For researches on the relation between natural resource and economy, the concept of (natural) resource industry is a crucial element. However there is scarcely any theoretical study on the connotation and denotation of resource industry. We hold that the characteristics of resource industry stem from its attributive adjective – (natural) resource, which should be deeply analyzed in order to learn the appropriate meaning of resource industry. On this account, we focus on the theoretical framework of resource industry, by taking the concept of natural resource value as a starting point, and then presenting two definitions of resource industry to meet the different requirements of relative researches. This paper would lay the foundations for the analysis and evaluation of resource industry economy, and establish a more explicit perspective for the empirical studies of the relationship between resource and economy, such as the validation of Natural Resource Curse Hypothesis.
Application of a fuzzy multilevel multiobjective production planning model in a network product manufacturing supply chain

This article formulates a novel fuzzy multilevel multiobjective production planning model for a supply chain under a fuzzy environment. An efficient two-phase interactive solution procedure is developed to obtain a good solution that maximizes the total supply chain profit and the satisfactory degree. The proposed solution procedure, modified from Sakawa et al.’s interactive fuzzy programming approach, can be easily adopted by practitioners. Through a negotiation case study, a well-known network product manufacturing supply chain in Taiwan is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and aptness of the proposed model and the solution procedure, as compared with Sakawa et al.’s method with only one objective at the manufacturer level. Finally, several important findings and managerial implications are drawn from the results of this study.
Potential Sequential Exposures to 2-Butoxyethanol After Use of a Hard-Surface Cleaner

ABSTRACT Professional workers and consumers frequently use hard-surface cleaning products and these products may contain glycol ethers (GEs), such as 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE). Governmental agencies have set exposure limits for some chemicals used in cleaning products and these exposure limits have been used as guides to protect human health. The study objectives were to determine realistic inhalation exposures for professional workers performing multiple, sequential cleaning tasks and compare the exposures to the acute reference exposure level (REL), which California established for 2-BE. The ConsExpo model was acceptable for evaluating exposure based on a comparison of its predictions to experimentally measured 2-BE vapor concentrations from hard-surface cleaning. The typical worker exposure was predicted for a cleaning scenario consisting of three bathrooms and three kitchens (or three bedrooms) in a 1-h period. This exposure scenario would not be expected to result in significant health consequences because the predicted exposure was much lower than the REL. The predicted chronic and aggregate exposures were also acceptable. This analysis identified two important variables that affect inhalation exposure: cleaners should be used with adequate ventilation and wet wiping towels should be properly disposed so that they are not a source of continuing exposure.
Optical low-coherence reflectometry (OLCR) for dimensional monitoring of sheet-grown silicon

We report cross-sectional thickness and flatness measurements for edge-defined film-fed growth (EFG) solar silicon using optical low coherence reflectometry (OLCR). The measurement accuracy is ±1.5 μm with the sensor head positioned 1 cm away from the EFG silicon under test. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Study of Electronic Information Engineering Development in Network-Based Manufacturing Environment

This research takes the construction of characteristics specialty of electronic information and technology at Oxbridge College, KUST as the subject to study how to program specialty distinct from that of other Universities. Based on the necessity of the characteristics specialty, this paper defines what is called characteristics specialty, sets forth the target, the approach, the plan and procedures about how to cultivate the characteristics and presents some issues to be studied.
A new formula for effective dielectric constant in multi-dielectric layer microstrip structure

A simple expression of effective dielectric constant for a microstrip on a multi-layered substrate is derived with the quasi-TEM assumption and the superposition of partial capacitance. Our method for a single-layer substrate provides a difference of within 2.32% compared to full-wave simulation. For the double layer case, our results are less than 2.2% different with an enhanced spectral domain technique and 1.6% with a variation method.
Comparison of Kurtosis and Fourth Power Detectors with Applications to IR-UWB OOK Systems

On-off keying (OOK) is one of the modulation schemes for non-coherent impulse radio Ultra-wideband systems. In this paper, the utilization of the kurtosis detector (KD) and fourth power detector (FD) receivers for OOK signaling is introduced. We investigate the effect of integration interval and the optimum threshold on the performance of energy detector (ED), KD and FD receivers. The semi analytic expression of BER is obtained by using generalized extreme value distribution function for KD and FD receivers. From performance point of view, the simulation results show that FD receiver outperforms KD and ED receivers. In contrast, the sensitivity to the optimum threshold is greatly reduced in KD receiver compared to ED and FD receivers.