Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vibration Extraction Using Rolling Shutter Cameras

Measurements of vibrations, such as sound hitting an object or running a motor, are widely used in industry and research. Traditional methods need either direct contact with the object or a laser vibrometer. Although computer vision methods have been applied to solve this problem, high speed cameras are usually preferred. This study employs a consumer level rolling shutter camera for extracting main frequency components of small vibrations. A rolling shutter camera exposes continuously over time on the vertical direction of the sensor, and produces images with shifted rows of objects. We utilize the rolling shutter effect to boost our capability to extract vibration frequencies higher than the frame rate. Assuming the vibration amplitude of the target results in a horizontal fronto-parallel component in the image, we compute the displacement of each row from a reference frame by our novel phase matching approach in the complex-valued Shearlet transform domain. So far the only way to process rolling shutter video for vibration extraction is with the Steerable Pyramid in a motion magnification framework. However, the Shearlet transform is well localized in scale, location and orientation, and hence better suited to vibration extraction than the Steerable Pyramid used in the high speed video approach. Using our rolling shutter approach, we manage to recover signals from 75Hz to 500Hz from videos of 30fps. We test our method by controlled experiments with a loudspeaker. We play sounds with certain frequency components and take videos of the loudspeaker’s surface. Our approach recovers chirp signals as well as single frequency signals from rolling shutter videos. We also test with music and speech. Both experiments produce identifiable recovered audio.
Feasibility, Tolerance, and Quality of Life for Hypofractionation Versus Conventional Fractionation for Post-mastectomy Radiotherapy in Indian Patients

Introduction: The international standard for post-operative radiotherapy for breast cancer delivers hypofractionated radiotherapy. However, many centers in India still follow the longer conventional schedule probably because of paucity of large prospective trials in Indian patients on the same and apprehension regarding tolerance of high dose per fraction in the said population. We aimed to test the feasibility of hypofractionation in our setting and compared the toxicities and the quality of life in patients receiving conventional and hypofractionated radiotherapy. Materials and methods: Eighty histopathologically proven women of non-metastatic carcinoma breast who underwent modified radical mastectomy were assigned to receive 50 Gray/25 fractions/five weeks or 40 Gray/15 fractions/three weeks. Patients were assessed for the following toxicities - radiation dermatitis, radiation pneumonitis, dysphagia, skin fibrosis, lymphedema, shoulder stiffness, and brachial plexopathy, during radiation and at treatment completion and then at first, third, and sixth-month follow-up. Health-related quality of life was assessed using the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer core quality of life questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) and breast cancer-specific quality of life questionnaire (QLQ-BR23) at treatment completion and then at first, third, and sixth-month follow-up. Results and conclusion: We had a mean follow-up of 12.78 months. All the assessed toxicities and quality of life scores were comparable between the two arms at all time points of evaluation (p>0.05); 40 Gray in 15 fractions over three weeks is feasible and as safe as the five-week schedule with comparable quality of life. Hypofractionation can be practiced as a routine for post-mastectomy breast cancer patients as this shorter radiotherapy schedule is convenient and cheaper for the patients with no compromise on normal tissue toxicity or quality of life.
Designing interaction with consumer products in a multisensory virtual reality environment

In the domain of industrial product development, products have been traditionally communicated to final users by means of technical drawings, sketches and physical prototypes. Recently, companies have tended to develop digital versions of products, which can be used with the purpose of communicating a new product to users, and also with the aim of allowing users to evaluate the product and its variants before its physical construction. Virtual prototyping is a relatively recent practice used in various industrial domains, which aims at anticipating a product that does not exist in reality yet. This practice can be used for evaluating the aesthetic quality of a product, its functional features and also its ergonomic and usability aspects. Current virtual reality technology well supports the implementation of effective virtual prototypes. In fact, one can touch, move, manipulate, and operate the virtual prototypes of products, such as household appliances, electronic devices, etc., with a good degree of realism. In order to do this, the interaction with virtual prototypes is multimodal and multisensory, and is often based on the combination of visual, haptic and auditory modalities. This paper shows how virtual prototypes can be used instead of physical artefacts or mock-ups for the communication of a new product or of variants of an existing product, and for the preliminary evaluation of its usage. The effectiveness of this practice is proved by tests performed by users.
Super-twisting adaptive sliding mode control with not-overestimated gains : application to an electropneumatic actuator

A novel super-twisting adaptive sliding mode control law is derived using Lyapunov function technique. The both drift uncertain term and multiplicative perturbation are assumed to be bounded with unknown boundaries. The proposed approach consists in using dynamically adapted control gains that ensure the establishment, in a finite time, of a real second order sliding mode. The efficacy of the proposed super-twisting control algorithm is evaluated through its application to position control of an electropneumatic actuator.
Evidence for a Global Slowdown in Seafloor Spreading Since 15 Ma

The rate of ocean‐crust production exerts control over sea level, mantle heat loss, and climate. Different strategies to account for incomplete seafloor preservation have led to differing conclusions about how much production rates have changed since the Cretaceous, if at all. We construct a new global synthesis of crust production along 18 mid‐ocean ridges for the past 19 Myr at high temporal resolution. We find that the global production rate during 6–5 Ma was only 69%–75% of the 16–15 Ma interval. The reduction in crust production is mostly due to slower seafloor spreading along almost all ridge systems. While the total ridge length has varied little since 19 Ma, some fast‐spreading ridges have grown shorter and slow‐spreading ridges grown longer, amplifying the spreading‐rate changes. Our production curves represent a new data set for investigating the forces driving plate motions and the role of tectonic degassing on climate.
Soft actuator using sponge units with constrained film and layer jamming

Purpose This paper aims to propose a soft actuator that combines a sponge-based actuating structure and a layer-jamming-based stiffness-improving structure in a cavity. Design/methodology/approach The proposed soft actuator consists of film-constrained sponge units (FCSUs) and jamming layers. The FCSUs in the proposed soft actuator bend under vacuum pressure, causing bending deformation of the entire actuator. The jamming layers are strongly coupled through friction under vacuum pressure, increasing the stiffness of the entire actuator. The performance of the proposed soft actuator was examined by measuring its stiffness, bending deformation and response performance. A four-finger soft robotic gripper was proposed based on the proposed soft actuator. Findings Through experiments, it was shown that the proposed soft actuator exhibited acceptable bending deformation, stiffness and response. Moreover, the proposed four-finger soft gripper could effectively grasp objects in daily life. Originality/value In this study, the authors proposed a novel bending actuator (with a volume of approximately 43.2 cm3) based on FCSUs and jamming layers. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to combine a sponge-based actuating structure and a layer-jamming structure in a cavity to achieve simultaneous change in actuation and stiffness. The soft actuator exhibited good bending deformation and high stiffness simultaneously under vacuum pressure. Consequently, it could be used effectively to fabricate soft grippers.
A new analog/digital CAD model for sub-halfmicron MOSFETs

In order for a model to be suitable for analog circuit simulation, a good accuracy and continuity in current and its derivatives in all operation regimes are required. As demonstrated in this paper. Our new model called MASTAR (Model for Analog and digital Simulation of mos TrAnsistoRs) perfectly satisfies these requirements. The gain in circuit CAD accuracy when using MASTAR as opposed to a conventional digital model is also demonstrated by comparison with data measured on test circuits. The validity of MASTAR has been confirmed on 4 generations of CMOS technologies : CMOS 1 /spl mu/m, 0.7 /spl mu/m. 0.5 /spl mu/m and recently also 0.35 /spl mu/m, with 20 nm, 15 nm, 12 nm and 8 nm gate oxides, respectively. It is worth noting that the first two are single-gate processes and the last two dual-gate ones. MASTAR works with 19 parameters per transistor. The total number of parameters for a given technology (geometrical dependencies included) is: 33 for a surface-channel and 32 for a buried-channel process. Among them there are 31 (30 for buried channel) physically based parameters and only 2 fitting ones. <<ETX>>
Parental experiences of home phototherapy for neonatal hyperbilirubinemia

Newborns with hyperbilirubinemia have traditionally received phototherapy in hospital. Hospital stays for infants, however, may negatively affect parent–infant bonding and induce anxiety and feelings of powerlessness in mothers. This study examined parent’s experiences of providing phototherapy to their neonates at home instead. A descriptive qualitative study based on 15 interviews (8 mothers and 7 fathers) with parents of 8 children who had been randomised to home phototherapy was conducted during spring 2018 in Örebro county, Sweden. Inductive content analysis was used. The overall experience of home phototherapy was positive, and five categories were identified describing their experiences: continuing life at home, adjusting to having a newborn, feeling secure, experiencing parenthood and accessing information. The findings support the use of home phototherapy. Parents felt secure at home with their infants and emphasised the importance of clear information and round-the-clock access to hospital staff.
Ready for Relationships Education? Primary school children’s responses to a Healthy Relationships programme in England

ABSTRACT Children’s experience of harm and abuse has a profound impact on their health and well-being. In response, school-based prevention programmes have been developed and delivered by external organisations with the aim of improving children’s awareness and understanding of forms of harm and abuse which may affect them, encouraging them to seek help if needed. In September 2020, Relationships Education became statutory within the primary school curriculum in England and this ratification is likely to increase demand for externally delivered classroom-based programmes, which address the broad range of topics to be covered within this field. However, evidence is required to understand the impact and acceptability of such programmes. This paper presents qualitative findings from a larger mixed-methods study. Focus group discussions with 29 children explored their responses to one Healthy Relationships programme delivered to primary school children aged 10 and 11 in England. Analysis focuses specifically on responses to the topics of sexual abuse prevention and help-seeking. Children’s widespread support for the programme indicates that topics are relevant and the opportunity to explore these issues is valued. However, for effective programme implementation, schools and parents need to be prepared, and prevention messages should continue to be embedded throughout children’s school lives.
Alcohol use disorder relapse factors: an exploratory investigation of craving, alcohol dependence severity, and meaning in life

Abstract For decades predictors of alcohol use disorder (AUD) relapse have been studied, and around 40 different clinical and demographic relapse determinants have been identified. This paper aims to investigate the relationship of two of these AUD relapse factors, namely craving and meaning in life (MiL). We hypothesized that greater meaning in life would be associated with lower cravings and lower relapse rates. An AUD subsample of 81 patients within a clinical population that participated in ongoing exploratory research on religious/spiritual factors related to substance use disorders was followed up to 1 year. Craving (as measured with the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale) and meaning in life (as measured with the Meaning in Life Questionnaire- presence subscale) measures were assessed at baseline and relapse was assessed at 6- and 12-month follow up. Main effects and the interaction between craving and meaning in life in predicting alcohol relapse (with relapse defined as ‘any alcohol use’ and ≥ 3 consecutive days of drinking) were calculated/subject of analyses. We also investigated the relationship between relapse and alcohol dependence severity as measured with the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire. Baseline craving and dependence severity were related to relapse, but there were no associations between meaning in life and levels of craving or alcohol relapse. Our findings suggest a need for additional research on characterizing the Meaning in Life concept.
Si-CMOS-MEMS Technology for Inertial Sensors

Chip‐scale inertial sensing technologies have received significant attention in recent years for a number of civilian and military applications. In this research, Si‐CMOS‐MEMS inertial sensors toward high resolution are developed. In order to meet the low noise specification, the proof mass is thickened by including silicon substrate as parts of the device. A chip‐scale substrate thinning process is being developed to provide a uniform device thickness of 50 µm. The thinned CMOS chip will then be bonded to a handle substrate using solder bonding with electroplating technology and subjected to front side CMOS release process using advanced oxide etch (AOE) and Si DRIE to create the CMOS‐MEMS structures. The silicon is also incorporated in the suspension of devices, which will improve long‐term stability. Fig. 1 shows a 5mm x 5mm Si‐CMOS‐MEMS chip along with a simplified cross section of the process. This chip includes three axis accelerometers, a z‐axis gyroscope and two axis magnetometers with all on‐ chip interface circuitry. Fig. 2(a) and (b) show SEM pictures of released lateral accelerometers. The y‐axis accelerometer has a stress release frame to investigate the impact of stress with respect to bias stability. The measured resolution for the accelerometer is 0.25 mg/rt Hz and is currently limited by flicker noise from the on‐chip circuitry. Fig. 2(c) and (d) shows a z‐axis gyroscope and an x‐axis magnetometer. The measured coupling drive resonant frequencies of gyroscope are 11.05 kHz and 11.86 kHz for in‐phase and anti‐phase modes while driving only in the anti‐phase mode. The measured quality factor for the gyroscope is about 593 in ambient. The gyroscope serves as a test structure to gauge the process variations. A model is developed to extract the process variations based on the drive frequency responses of the gyroscope. Fig. 1: (a) A Si‐CMOS‐MEMS chip on a dime (b) Si‐ CMOS‐MEMS process (c) Top views Si‐ CMOS‐MEMS Devices (c) (b) (b) Fig. 2: SEM images of different Si‐ CMOS‐ MEMS devices (a) (b) Accelerometers (c) Gyroscope (d) Magnetometer. (a) (c)
Multidisciplinary R&D project success in small firms: The role of multiproject status and project management experience

R&D projects in small biotechnology firms frequently involve knowledge from multiple technical fields and research in different problem domains. An increase in project knowledge scope, defined as the number of technical fields an R&D project covers, can be challenging for resource‐constrained small firms. These firms often rely primarily on their principal investigators (PIs), who act as heavyweight project managers in guiding project ideas to successful R&D outcomes. PIs also work concurrently on multiple projects, a strategy to promote learning across projects. To better understand how small firms PIs manage projects with high knowledge scope, our research assembles and analyzes a data set of 1374 R&D projects conducted by 933 small firms in the context of U.S. Small Business Administration awards. Results, after accounting for endogeneity, suggest a negative association between project knowledge scope and project success, which we measured using patent forward citation counts. We also find that a PI's multiproject status negatively moderates (i.e., amplifies) this association, while project management experience positively moderates (i.e., weakens) it. A follow‐up post hoc analysis suggests that a shared problem domain is a key contingency for the moderation effects of both multiproject status and project management experience. Taken together, our research offers insights on how to effectively manage R&D projects in resource‐constrained small firms.
Energy Efficient Design of a Jet Pump by Ensemble of Surrogates and Evolutionary Approach

Energy systems working coherently in different conditions may not have a specific design which can provide optimal performance. A system working for a longer period at lower efficiency implies higher energy consumption. In this effort, a methodology demonstrated by a jet pump design and optimization via numerical modeling for fluid dynamics and implementation of an evolutionary algorithm for the optimization shows a reduction in computational costs. The jet pump inherently has a low efficiency because of improper mixing of primary and secondary fluids, and multiple momentum and energy transfer phenomena associated with it. The high fidelity solutions were obtained through a validated numerical model to construct an approximate function through surrogate analysis. Pareto-optimal solutions for two objective functions, i.e., secondary fluid pressure head and primary fluid pressure-drop, were generated through a multi-objective genetic algorithm. For the jet pump geometry, a design space of several design variables was discretized using the Latin hypercube sampling method for the optimization. The performance analysis of the surrogate models shows that the combined surrogates perform better than a single surrogate and the optimized jet pump shows a higher performance. The approach can be implemented in other energy systems to find a better design.
The LIMSI 1995 Hub3 System

In this paper we report on the LIMSI recognizer evaluated in the ARPA 1995 North American Business (NAB) News Hub 3 benchmark test. The LIMSI recognizer is an HMM-based system with Gaussian mixture. Decoding is carried out in multiple forward acoustic passes, where more refined acoustic and language models are used in successive passes and information is transmitted via word graphs. In order to deal with the varied acoustic conditions, channel compensation is performed iterativel y, refining the noise estimates before the first three decoding passes. The final decoding pass is carried out with speaker-adapted models obtained via unsupervised adaptation using the MLLR method. In contrast to previous evaluations, the new Hub 3 test aimed at improving basic SI, CSR performance on unlimited-vocabulary read speech recorded under more varied acoustical conditions (b ackground environmental noise and unknown microphones). On the Sennheiser microphone (average SNR 29dB) a word error of 9.1% was obtained, which can be compared to 17.5% on the secondary microphone data (average SNR 15dB) using the same recognition system.
Design of on-chip monitoring circuits for clock delay and temperature

As devices continue to scale, Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) variations tend to have a bigger impact on circuit performance. The ability to measure this impact provides essential knowledge about the circuit’s current performance and opens the door to compensation techniques. Off-chip measurement circuits are usually of limited bandwidth and load the measured circuit, thus affecting the measurement result. Onchip circuits on the other hand have the potential for high bandwidth and, if designed well, have small area and can be incorporated into different parts of the chip. For this project a delay and temperature measurement circuit is designed. The delay measurement circuit relies on a method called Code Density Test (CDT), a statistical method which involves counting the number of asynchronous edges that occur within the relative delay of two synchronous clocks. The temperature measurement circuit converts temperature to a delay which can then be measured by the CDT circuit. Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Charles G. Sodini Title: LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering Thesis Supervisor: Jeremy Walker Title: IC Design Engineer, Analog Devices Thesis Supervisor: Andrew Lewine Title: IC Design Engineer, Analog Devices
Recognition of Human Inner Emotion Based on Two-Stage FCA-ReliefF Feature Optimization

Currently, there is a growing interesting in emotion recognition. Representation of emotional states is a very challenging issue. Considering the calculation cost and generalization capability for practical application, a series of features which contain common time and frequency domain are extracted from physiological signals to represent different emotional states. To reduce feature dimensionality and improve the emotion recognition accuracy, a two-stage feature optimization method based on feature correlation analysis (FCA) and ReliefF algorithm is proposed to select critical features. Firstly, FCA is employed to analyze the redundancy between features, then ReliefF is adopted to analyze the correlation between features and categories, and the optimal feature subset is obtained using the two-stage FCA-ReliefF feature optimization method. Support vector machine is employed as the classifier to evaluate classification performance in this investigation. The effectiveness of the method which is proposed is validated by testing on two publicly available multimodal emotion datasets, Augsburg Biosignal Toolbox (AuBT) and Database for Emotion Analysis Using Physiological Signals (DEAP). Compared with recent similar reported studies, the method developed in this research for emotion recognition is stable and competitive, and its accuracy reaches to 98.40% (AuBT) and 92.34% (DEAP).