Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS MADRID , 2-7 SEPTEMBER 2007 EAR CANAL IMPEDANCES OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS – INVESTIGATIONS WITH SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENTS

Acoustic impedance measurements of the human ear canal enable us to understand the function of the middle and the inner ear as well as to recognize possible dysfunctions. Additionally, the ear canal impedance is an important parameter which has to be taken into account when hearing aids are adjusted. Hearing aids for infants, children, and adults are all fitted using only a few standardized couplers (i.e. 2 ccm coupler (IEC 60126). The measurement of individual real-ear-to-coupler differences (RECD) is required since these couplers yield insufficient data as far as children are concerned. However, couplers suitable for different age groups can be developed for an improved fitting process if the knowledge about ear canal impedances and the ear canal volumes of infants and children is increased. Two different methods to obtain ear canal impedances will be discussed in this article. The first one is a classic measurement technique in which a one-microphone-impedance probe is used. Different coupling techniques have been tested with regard to repeatability and measurement uncertainty. Later on, the impedance probe is tested on adults and on children. The second method is the simulation of the ear canal impedance using FEM (Finite-ElementMethod). The required CAD-models are generated with the help of CT-scans (computed tomography) of young children and adults. INTRODUCTION The acoustic measurement of impedances on the human ear canal is nowadays often used to identify possible dysfunctions of the middle and inner ear. Special couplers are used to emulate the input impedance and the residual volume of the ear canal with the inserted hearing aid in the fitting process. By adjusting for the individual hearing loss, the ear canal impedance plays a vital role in avoiding mismatches, which could result in a device that is either too loud or to quiet for the patient. When it comes to fitting processes of hearing aids for children and infants, the commonly used couplers do not emulate the childlike ear canal sufficiently. Besides the smaller residual volume for children, the resonance frequencies are also shifted towards higher frequencies. This causes high uncertainties in the fitting process of hearing aids for the auditory system of children influencing the children’s linguistic development. Additionally, infants are not able to give any feedback on their hearing aid adjustments; therefore, an objective assessment method is inevitable. Hence, detailed data on the ear canal impedance of children has to be gained and is the main focus of this work. Two different techniques to determine ear canal impedances are proposed. Measurement and simulation results are going to show that even data from very young infants can be achieved. With the help of this data the fitting process for hearing aids of children can be significantly improved.
Labor Taxes and Decision about FDI in the EU

This paper analyzes the relationship between tax variables and foreign direct investments. There are many studies with analysis of influence of corporate income tax, but only few with focus on individual taxation and social security contributions. The analysis is done for the decision if do FDI or do not do and about decision about amount of FDI. On the decision about realization of FDI has impact GDP per capita of home and partner country and distance between countries. GDP per capita of home country increase probability of location of FDI, GDP per capita and distance decrease the probability of the location of FDI in the partner country. Based on the results, on the amount of FDI have positive impact GDP variables and other variables - e.g. differences in corporate tax rate. Negative impact has distance between countries. The impact of social security payment is not obvious, because it differs based on the fact of average wage of employee (for higher than average earnings the relationship is negative, for average earnings the relationship is positive).
A Study on How Newlyweds Handle the Difference with Parents on Wedding Arrangements and Its Implication for Services in Hong Kong

This research examined the literature review of wedding preparation’s challenges and its developmental tasks of family transition under family life cycle. Five interviewees were invited to share their experiences on the differences with their parents in regard to wedding preparations and coping strategies. Some coping strategies and processes were highlighted for facilitating the family to achieve the developmental tasks during the wedding preparation. However, those coping strategies and processes may only act as the step and the behavior, while “concern towards parents” was found to be the essential element behind these behaviors. In addition to pre-marital counseling, a developmental group was suggested to develop under the framework of family life cycle and its related coping strategies on working with the newlyweds who encountered intergenerational differences in regard to their wedding preparations. Keywords—Coping strategies, difference, family life cycle, developmental tasks, wedding preparation.
Unsupervised learning eigenstate phases of matter

Supervised Learning has been successfully used to produce phase diagrams and identify phase boundaries when local order parameters are unavailable. Here, we apply unsupervised learning to this task. By using readily available clustering algorithms, we are able to extract the distinct eigenstate phases of matter within the transverse-field Ising model in the presence of interactions and disorder. We compare our results to those found through supervised learning and observe remarkable agreement. However, as opposed to the supervised procedure, our method requires no strict assumptions concerning the number of phases present, no labeled training data, and no prior knowledge of the phase diagram. We conclude with a discussion of clustering and its limits.
The Role of Information Sharing in Modulating the Effect of Financial Access on Inequality

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of information sharing in modulating the effect of financial access on income inequality in 48 African countries for the period 2004–2014. Information sharing is proxied with private credit bureaus and public credit registries. All dynamics of financial development are taken into account, namely: depth (money supply and liquid liabilities), efficiency (at banking and financial system levels), activity (from banking and financial system perspective) and size. The empirical exercise is based on interactive Generalised Method of Moments. It can be established from the findings that: first, a threshold of 18.072 percentage coverage of public credit registries is needed to counteract the unconditional positive effect of banking system efficiency. Secondly, on the role of private credit bureaus in financial depth, both the unconditional and the conditional effects are negative, implying a negative synergy. Overall, the findings show that, contingent on the type of financial development dynamic, credit registries broadly play their theoretical role of decreasing financing constraints in order to ultimately reduce inequality.
A 2.6 GS/s 8-Bit Time-Interleaved SAR ADC in 55 nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents an eight-channel time-interleaved (TI) 2.6 GS/s 8-bit successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) prototype in a 55-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process. The channel-selection-embedded bootstrap switch is adopted to perform sampling times synchronization using the full-speed master clock to suppress the time skew between channels. Based on the segmented pre-quantization and bypass switching scheme, double alternate comparators clocked asynchronously with background offset calibration are utilized in sub-channel SAR ADC to achieve high speed and low power. Measurement results show that the signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of the ADC is above 38.2 dB up to 500 MHz input frequency and above 31.8 dB across the entire first Nyquist zone. The differential non-linearity (DNL) and integral non-linearity (INL) are +0.93/−0.85 LSB and +0.71/−0.91 LSB, respectively. The ADC consumes 60 mW from a 1.2 V supply, occupies an area of 400 μm × 550 μm, and exhibits a figure-of-merit (FoM) of 348 fJ/conversion-step.
Eroding the monolingual monolith

Australian schools are increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse places, and yet, the monolithic weight of the “monolingual mindset” (Clyne, 2008) still hulks at the centre of Australian education systems. Despite this, there is increasing recognition of the value of multilingualism, and the importance of incorporating students’ home languages and multilingual abilities into teaching and learning. Teachers, teacher educators and curriculum developers seek guiding principles for multilingual approaches and examples of effective strategies which can be adapted and translated for diverse educational contexts. This paper suggests some principles which support effective multilingual pedagogy, illustrated with examples from students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EALD) and their teachers in two South Australian secondary schools. At a foundational level, a multilingual stance underpins the success of multilingual pedagogies. Attention to both vertical and horizontal dimensions of multilingualism (Heugh, 2018) is central to effective multilingual pedagogy. Additionally, the expertise of both students and teachers must be recognised and specified. Multilingual students are experts in using and managing their multilingual repertoires for interaction and learning, while teachers are responsible for learning design, teaching school literacies, and maintaining a supportive learning environment. A key to success is that multilingual pedagogies are developed from and respond to students’ existing multilingual practices. It is hoped that these principles can help extend discussion around the use of multilingual resources and translanguaging practices in school-based learning, and give impetus to collaboration engaging students, teachers and researchers in action research and development of multilingual pedagogies. In this way, Australian education might begin to emerge from the shadow of the monolingual monolith.
On the Properties of Infective Flooding in Low-Duty-Cycle Networks

Broadcasting information in a network is an important function in networking applications. In some networks, as wireless sensor networks or some ad-hoc networks it is so essential as to dominate the performance of the entire system. Exploiting some recent results based on the computation of the eigenvector centrality of nodes in the network graph and classical dynamic diffusion models on graphs, this paper derives a novel theoretical framework for efficient information broadcasting in mesh networks with low duty-cycling without the need to build a distribution tree. The model provides lower and upper stochastic bounds with high probability. We show that the lower bound is very close to the theoretical optimum and that a preliminary implementation provides results that are very close to the lower bound on classical graph models.
An Empirical Lab Study Investigating if Higher Levels of Immersion Increase the Willingness to Donate

Technological innovations have a growing relevance for charitable donations, as new technologies shape the way we perceive and approach digital media. In a between-subjects study with sixty-one volunteers, we investigated whether a higher degree of immersion for the potential donor can yield more donations for non-governmental organizations. Therefore, we compared the donations given after experiencing a video-based, an augmented-reality-based, or a virtual-reality-based scenery with a virtual agent, representing a war victimized Syrian boy talking about his losses. Our initial results indicate that the immersion has no impact. However, the donor's perceived innovativeness of the used technology might be an influencing factor.
Space and Social Capital: The Degree of Locality in Entrepreneurs' Contacts and its Consequences for Firm Success

Social capital is valuable for entrepreneurs starting a business. Although many small businesses are located at the entrepreneurs' dwelling, little is known about entrepreneurs' local ties and their relevance for firm success. Distinguishing between local and non-local social capital, this contribution looks at the following: (1) The availability of local social capital (2) The relation between social capital and local social capital, and characteristics of firms and entrepreneurs (3) The relation between social capital and local social capital and firm performance Analysing data from the Survey of the Social Networks of Entrepreneurs, which contains information on entrepreneurs and their networks in 141 Dutch neighbourhoods, this study finds a positive relation between social capital and firm performance.
FABRICATION AND TESTING OF SCAFFOLDS FOR CELL GROWTH FROM IONIC LIQUID SOLUBILIZED FIBROIN A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering BY MANEESH

Gupta, Maneesh. M.S. in Engineering, Department of Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering, Wright State University, 2007. Fabrication and Testing of Scaffolds for Cell Growth from Ionic Liquid Solubilized Fibroin. The advent of tissue engineering has spurred research into developing materials to act as scaffolds for tissue growth. These scaffolds require materials capable of mimicking the in vivo conditions so that tissues can be grown effectively in vitro. Silk is an attractive biomaterial for use in tissue engineering applications because of its slow degradation, excellent mechanical properties, and biocompatibility. The major objective of the research in this thesis is to demonstrate a simple method to cast films directly from silk fibroin dissolved in an ionic liquid. The films cast from the silk ionic liquid solution were found to support normal keratinocyte proliferation and differentiation. The versatility of the silk ionic liquid solutions and the ability to process large amounts of silk into materials with controlled surface topography directly from the dissolved silk ionic liquid solution make it an interesting material for a wide variety of tissue engineering applications.
Optimal Sizing of Storage Elements for a Vehicle Based on Fuel Cells, Supercapacitors, and Batteries

To achieve a vehicle-efficient energy management system, an architecture composed of a PEM fuel cell as the main energy source and a hybrid storage system based on battery banks and supercapacitors is proposed. This paper introduces a methodology for the optimal component sizing aiming at minimizing the total cost, achieving a cheaper system that can achieve the requirements of the speed profiles. The chosen vehicle is an urban transport bus, which must meet the Buenos Aires Driving Cycle, and the Manhattan Driving Cycle. The combination of batteries and supercapacitors allows a better response to the vehicle’s power demand, since it combines the high energy density of the batteries with the high power density of the supercapacitors, allowing the best absorption of energy coming from braking. In this way, we address the rapid changes in power without reducing the global efficiency of the system. Optimum use of storage systems and fuel cell is analyzed through dynamic programming.
Optical observations of radio jets

Optical observations of the radio jet galaxies 3C 66 B, 3C 31, NGC 315, and 3C 449 are reported. Optical counterparts to the inner regions of the radio jets are seen in 3C 66 B and 3C 31, and upper limits are set for optical jets in the other two.
Staged Two Beam Acceleration Beam Line Design for the AWA Facility

Two beam acceleration is a candidate for future high energy physics machines and FEL user facilities. This scheme consists of two independent electron accelerators operating synchronously. High-charge, 70 MeV bunch trains in the drive accelerator are injected from the rf photoinjector into decelerating structures to generate a few hundred MW of rf power. This rf power is transferred through an rf waveguide to accelerating structures that are used to accelerate the witness beam in an otherwise independent second accelerator and beam line. Staging refers to the sequential acceleration (energy gain) in two or more structures on the witness beam line. A kicker was incorporated on the drive beam line to accomplish a modular design so that each accelerating structure can be independently powered by a separate drive beam. Simulations were performed in OPAL to model the two beam lines. Beam sizes at the center of the structures was minimized to ensure good charge transmission. The resulting design will be the basis for proof of principle experiments that will take place at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) facility.
Employed but Still Unhappy ? On the Relevance of the Social Work

In the modern welfare state, people who cannot make a living usually receive financial assistance from public funds. Accordingly, the so-called social work norm against living off other people is violated, which may be the reason why the unemployed are so unhappy. If so, however, labour market concepts based on the notion of promoting low-paid jobs that are subsidised if necessary with additional payments would appear far less favourable. It could be that people are employed, but still unhappy. Using German panel data, this paper examines the relevance of the social work norm and finds a significant disutility effect of living off public funds. Although this is true for employed people as well, the results show that the individual is generally better off having a job that requires additional assistance, than having no job at all. On the other hand, such policies as the recent German labour market reforms can trigger undesired side-effects, if policy-makers ignore the issue of the social work norm. “We have established a functioning low-wage sector, and, in terms of social benefits, we have placed special emphasis on incentives to take up employment. ” (Gerhard Schröder, World Economic Forum Davos, Jan 28 2005) JEL Classification Codes: I31, J38, J60
Fast Virtual Prototyping for Embedded Computing Systems Design and Exploration

Virtual Prototyping has been widely adopted as a cost-effective solution for early hardware and software co-validation. However, as systems grow in complexity and scale, both the time required to get to a correct virtual prototype, and the time required to run real software on it can quickly become unmanageable. This paper introduces a feature-rich integrated virtual prototyping solution, designed to meet industrial needs not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of ease, rapidity and automation of modelling and exploration. It introduces novel methods to leverage the QEMU dynamic binary translator and the abstraction levels offered by SystemC/TLM 2.0 to provide the best possible trade-offs between accuracy and performance at all steps of the design. The solution also ships with a dynamic platform composition infrastructure that makes it possible to model and explore a myriad of architectures using a compact high-level description. Results obtained simulating a RISC-V SMP architecture running the PARSEC benchmark suite reveal that simulation speed can range from 30 MIPS in accurate simulation mode to 220 MIPS in fast functional validation mode.
Experimental investigations of crater formation on granular bed subjected to an air-jet impingement

The crater formation on granular particle beds is important for engineering applications, chemical and process industries as well as for an explanation of related natural phenomena. In this article, experimental studies on the formation of a crater and the subsequent movement of granular particles are carried out. Granular beds consisting of mono-dispersed or poly-dispersed spherical glass-beads are subjected to an air-jet impingement. The impinging air-jet causes creation of craters of various sizes and shapes (such as saucer shape, parabolic shape, parabolic shape with an intermediate region, U shape, and craters with conical slants with a curved bottom surface). The experimental observations reveal two predominant regimes, categorized based on the crater stability, namely, a stable regime or an unstable regime. The mechanisms for the crater formation such as viscous erosion, diffused gas eruption, bearing capacity failure, and diffusion driven flow or combination of them are identified. It is observed that the steady-state depth of a crater increases linearly with an increase in the air-jet flow-rate. The temporal growth of crater depth shows logarithmic variation for a given flow rate. A regime map of the observed crater shapes is presented.
Flurbiprofen and enantiomers in ophthalmic solution tested as inhibitors of prostanoid synthesis in human blood.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to assess the selectivity and potency of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drag (NSAID), flurbiprofen, and its enantiomers in their inhibition of cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1 ) and cyclooxygenase-2(COX-2). An assay was used with freshly drawn, heparinized human whole blood, incubated with 25 μM calcium ionophore A23187 during 60 min to produce thromboxane B2 (TXB2) by activity of COX-1 in platelets. Incubation with E. coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) during 24 hr produced prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) by induction of COX-2 in monocytes, suppressing any possible contribution of COX-1 activity by the addition of acetylsalicylic acid. Concentration inhibition curves were determined with racemic, S(+), and R(-) flurbiprofen in final concentrations ranging from 10-3 to 10-10 M. The stereoselectivity of S(+) flurbiprofen vs. R(-) flurbiprofen, expressed as the reciprocal of the ratio of the concentrations giving 50% inhibition (IC50), is 340 for COX-1 and 56 for COX-2. The selectivity .
Input ResultImage Database Visual Context Local Color Transfer Restoration

We present an image restoration method that leverages a large database of images gathered from the web. Given an input image, we execute an efficient visual search to find the closest images in the database; these images define the input’s visual context. We use the visual context as an image-specific prior and show its value in a variety of image restoration operations, including white balance correction, exposure correction, and contrast enhancement. We evaluate our approach using a database of 1 million images downloaded from Flickr and demonstrate the effect of database size on performance. Our results show that priors based on the visual context consistently out-perform generic or even domain-specific priors for these operations.
Aalborg Universitet Optimization of Decommission Strategy for Offshore Wind Farms

The life time of offshore wind farm is around 20 years. After that, the whole farm should be decommissioned which is also one of the main factors that contribute to the high investment. In order to make a costeffective wind farm, a novel optimization method for decommission is addressed in this paper. Instead of abandoning the foundations after the wind farm is running out of its life cycle, the proposed method can make good use of the existing facilities so that the cost of energy (COE) can be reduced. The results show that 12.93% reduction of COE can be realized by using the proposed method.