Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing analytical tools to impact U.Va. football performance

Data analytics has permeated the sports world, but the funds needed to employ data scientists dedicated exclusively to programs at the collegiate level are hard to come by. As a result, Division I football programs are currently not using data analytics and technology to their full potential. This project aims to use technology and data analytics to enhance the performance of the University of Virginia Football program and serves as a continuation of the efforts of previous U.Va. Systems Engineers to bring U.Va. 's program to the technological forefront of college programs. This paper outlines ongoing efforts involving supplementation to analyses currently being done by the program while also introducing new methods to aid the U.Va. coaching staff. Building upon the previously identified “Three Pillars of Data Analytics” for U.Va. Football, this multi-faceted project includes an analysis of how players' practice performance corresponds to in-game performance, the validation of a previously built 4th down decision tool delivered last year as a means to aid in difficult in-game decision making, and the development of an automated tool to classify offensive play formations using computer vision. These efforts aim to help the coaching staff optimize practice schedules, provide them with data-driven decision-making aids to be used in-game, and increase opponent scouting capabilities while also saving the labor required to do so.
The l z ( p ) * Person-Fit Statistic in an Unfolding Model Context

Although person-fit analysis has a long-standing tradition within item response theory, it has been applied in combination with dominance response models almost exclusively. In this article, a popular log likelihood-based parametric person-fit statistic under the framework of the generalized graded unfolding model is used. Results from a simulation study indicate that the person-fit statistic performed relatively well in detecting midpoint response style patterns and not so well in detecting extreme response style patterns.
A Challenge Set for French -> English Machine Translation

We present a challenge set for French --> English machine translation based on the approach introduced in Isabelle, Cherry and Foster (EMNLP 2017). Such challenge sets are made up of sentences that are expected to be relatively difficult for machines to translate correctly because their most straightforward translations tend to be linguistically divergent. We present here a set of 506 manually constructed French sentences, 307 of which are targeted to the same kinds of structural divergences as in the paper mentioned above. The remaining 199 sentences are designed to test the ability of the systems to correctly translate difficult grammatical words such as prepositions. We report on the results of using this challenge set for testing two different systems, namely Google Translate and DEEPL, each on two different dates (October 2017 and January 2018). All the resulting data are made publicly available.
A polypropylene mesh modified with poly-ε-caprolactone nanofibers in hernia repair: large animal experiment

Purpose Incisional hernia repair is an unsuccessful field of surgery, with long-term recurrence rates reaching up to 50% regardless of technique or mesh material used. Various implants and their positioning within the abdominal wall pose numerous long-term complications that are difficult to treat due to their permanent nature and the chronic foreign body reaction they trigger. Materials mimicking the 3D structure of the extracellular matrix promote cell adhesion, proliferation, migration, and differentiation. Some electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds provide a topography of a natural extracellular matrix and are cost effective to manufacture. Materials and methods A composite scaffold that was assembled out of a standard polypropylene hernia mesh and poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) nanofibers was tested in a large animal model (minipig), and the final scar tissue was subjected to histological and biomechanical testing to verify our in vitro results published previously. Results We have demonstrated that a layer of PCL nanofibers leads to tissue overgrowth and the formation of a thick fibrous plate around the implant. Collagen maturation is accelerated, and the final scar is more flexible and elastic than under a standard polypropylene mesh with less pronounced shrinkage observed. However, the samples with the composite scaffold were less resistant to distracting forces than when a standard mesh was used. We believe that the adverse effects could be caused due to the material assembly, as they do not comply with our previous results. Conclusion We believe that PCL nanofibers on their own can cause enough fibroplasia to be used as a separate material without the polypropylene base, thus avoiding potential adverse effects caused by any added substances.
Discrepancies in the Evidence and Recommendation Levels of Pregnancy Information in Prescription Drug Labeling in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and Korea.

OBJECTIVE To compare the evidence-of-risk and recommendation levels of new drugs' label information in pregnancy among US, UK, Japan, and Korea. Despite the importance of drug labels in guiding decisions, officially approved prescribing information in drug labels is often inconsistent across countries and contains misleading content. Women are unintentionally exposed to drugs during early stages of unplanned or unrecognized pregnancies when treated for medical conditions. METHODS We selected 81 drugs approved in all 4 countries mentioned above from 2008 to 2016. Evidence level was classified into five categories ("Definite," "Probable," "Possible," "Unlikely," and "Unclassified"), and recommendation level was classified into four categories ("Contraindicated," "Cautious," "Compatible," and "Unclassified"). We calculated kappa coefficient with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to estimate the agreement of each category. RESULTS For evidence level, "Unclassified" was the highest in Japan (33.3%), while representing a much smaller proportion in US (2.5%), UK (6.2%), and Korea (6.2%; p < 0.01). For recommendation level, "Contraindicated" was the lowest in US (9.9%), while it was greater in UK (50.6%), Japan (50.6%), and Korea (42.0%; p < 0.01). Korea-UK presented substantial agreement for both evidence-of-risk (kappa = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.67-0.94) and recommendation level (kappa = 0.64, 95% CI: 0.46-0.82), while Korea-Japan and Korea-US were in fair or moderate agreement. CONCLUSIONS Label information in pregnancy was discrepant among the four countries. Discrepancies in labeling information among countries may cause confusion to patients and healthcare professionals alike. To better assist healthcare professionals and patients in the use of prescription drugs, global harmonization of safety information is needed to minimize confusion with potential risk.
GLADNet: Low-Light Enhancement Network with Global Awareness

In this paper, we address the problem of lowlight enhancement. Our key idea is to first calculate a global illumination estimation for the low-light input, then adjust the illumination under the guidance of the estimation and supplement the details using a concatenation with the original input. Considering that, we propose a GLobal illumination Aware and Detail-preserving Network (GLADNet). The input image is rescaled to a certain size and then put into an encoder-decoder network to generate global priori knowledge of the illumination. Based on the global prior and the original input image, a convolutional network is employed for detail reconstruction. For training GLADNet, we use a synthetic dataset generated from RAW images. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method over other compared methods on the real low-light images captured in various conditions.
Synthesis of Biomaterials Utilizing Microfluidic Technology

Recently, microfluidic technologies have attracted an enormous amount of interest as potential new tools for a large range of applications including materials synthesis, chemical and biological detection, drug delivery and screening, point-of-care diagnostics, and in-the-field analysis. Their ability to handle extremely small volumes of fluids is accompanied by additional benefits, most notably, rapid and efficient mass and heat transfer. In addition, reactions performed within microfluidic systems are highly controlled, meaning that many advanced materials, with uniform and bespoke properties, can be synthesized in a direct and rapid manner. In this review, we discuss the utility of microfluidic systems in the synthesis of materials for a variety of biological applications. Such materials include microparticles or microcapsules for drug delivery, nanoscale materials for medicine or cellular assays, and micro- or nanofibers for tissue engineering.
Effects of inclusion of sorghum distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) in diets for growing and finishing pigs.

The effects of sorghum distillers dried grains with solubles (sorghum-DDGS) in growing pig diets on growth performance and carcass quality were investigated. A total of 204 animals of 13.9±2.60 kg body weight (BW) were allocated into two dietary treatments, a conventional diet (C) and a diet containing sorghum-DDGS (DDGS). DDGS inclusion levels used were 150 g kg-1 in pigs from 14-40 kg BW, 300 g kg-1 from 40-80 kg BW and 350 g kg-1 from 80 kg BW to slaughter. Animals’ body weight, feed intake, backfat thickness (BF) and loin depth (LD) were measured throughout the study. Protein, fibre and fat content of sorghum-DDGS were approximately three times-fold those of the whole grain. During the nursery period, feed intake and final BW tended to be lower in the group of pigs fed DDGS compared to the piglets fed C diet (871.4 g d-1 and 30 kg vs 951.1 g d-1 and 31 kg). During the growing period no differences were found on growth performance between treatments. Pigs fed sorghum-DDGS showed higher BF than pigs fed C diet (10.96 mm vs 9.80 mm, p<0.001). No differences were found on LD and carcass weight and yield between treatments. Thus, although 150 g kg-1 of sorghum-DDGS in nursery diets tended to reduce growth performance, inclusion rates up to 300-350 g kg-1 during the finishing phase did not affect it, but led to fatter carcasses.
Landmark-Based 3D Face Reconstruction from an Arbitrary Number of Unconstrained Images

In this paper, we propose a novel method for reconstructing 3D faces from 2D images. The method is characterized in three aspects. (i) It utilizes only geometric cues in the input images, i.e., 2D facial landmarks. (ii) It works for an arbitrary number of unconstrained images, both single and multiple images. (iii) It can effectively exploit complementary information in multiple images of varying poses and expressions. The method is implemented based on cascaded regression in shape space. We have evaluated the method on three databases and observed from the experimental results that (i) the reconstruction error is reduced as more images of different poses are used, (ii) the proposed method can obtain comparable reconstruction results by using state-of-the-art automated methods to detect the 2D landmarks, and (iii) the proposed method is robust to variations in facial expressions and image qualities.
Memristive Crossbar Memory Lifetime Evaluation and Reconfiguration Strategies

Among the emerging technologies and devices for highly scalable and low power memory architectures, memristors are considered as one of the most favorable alternatives for next generation memory technologies. They are attracting great attention recently, due to their many appealing characteristics such as non-volatility and compatibility with CMOS fabrication process. But beside all memristor advantages, their drawbacks including manufacturing process variability and limited read/write endurance, could risk their future utilization. This paper will evaluate the impact of reliability concerns in lifetime of memristive crossbars and will present the design basis of two proposed reconfiguration approaches in memristive crossbar-based memories, in order to extend the system lifetime by utilizing available resources in an intense way and without need of failure recovery. It is observed that the adaptive reconfiguring approach can improve the crossbar reliability and extend its lifetime up to 65 percent in comparison with non-adaptive reconfiguration strategy.
Comparison of in vitro digestibility and chemical composition among four crop straws treated by Pleurotus ostreatus

Objective The effects of Pleurotus ostreatus on the feed utilization of broad bean stalks (BBS), rape straw (RS), paddy straw (PS), and corn stalk (CS) was examined. Methods The four roughages were co-cultured with Pleurotus ostreatus. The chemical composition; enzyme activities of laccase, carboxymethylcellulase (CMCase) and xylanase; carbohydrate and protein fractions (based on The Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System [CNCPS]) were assessed at different days after inoculation (7, 14, 21, 28 d) and un-inoculated roughages (control, 0 d). The digestibility of nutrient components and the gas production of roughage with various incubation times were monitored at 0, 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and 72 h using an in vitro ruminal fermentation method. Results A higher CMCase activity (0.1039 U/mL) and earlier time to peak (14 d) were detected in Pleurotus ostreatus cultured with CS (p<0.05). Significantly, the incubation length-dependent responses of cumulative gas production were observed from 24 to 72 hours post fermentation (p<0.05), and these incubation length-dependent effects on cumulative gas production of PS and CS appeared earlier (24 h) for PS and CS than those (48 h) for BBS and RS (p<0.05). The fast-degradable carbohydrate (CA) content for all four roughages significantly increased over time (p<0.05). Nonetheless, increased degradation efficiency for CA treated with Pleurotus ostreatus was detected at both 21 and 28 days of incubation (p<0.05). With the exception of PS (p<0.05), there were no significant difference among the roughages (p>0.05) in slowly-degradable carbohydrate (CB2) at different incubation times (p<0.05). Conclusion Assessment of the alterations in chemical composition, CNCPS system fractions, and the fermentation kinetics after biological pretreatment may yield a valuable database for evaluating the biological pretreatment of Pleurotus ostreatus in ruminant feed.
Dynamic Scheduling in a Many-Server, Multiclass System: The Role of Customer Impatience in Large Systems

Problem definition: We study optimal scheduling of customers in service systems, such as call centers. In such systems, customers typically hang up and abandon the system if their wait for service is too long. Such abandonments are detrimental for the system, and so managers typically use scheduling as a tool to mitigate it. In this paper, we study the interplay between customer impatience and scheduling decisions when managing heterogeneous customer classes. Academic/practical relevance: Call centers constitute a large industry that has a global spending of around $300 billion and employs more than 15 million people worldwide. Our work focuses on improving call center operations, which can reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. Mathematically, customer patience is typically modeled as exponentially distributed for tractability. Our work makes inroads into relaxing this restrictive assumption to allow modeling more realistic call center situations. Methodology: We use heavy traffic–motivated asym.
Novel shunt-less filters for grid-connected transformerless photovoltaic applications

The existing ground leakage current suppression methodologies are effective when Photovoltaic (PV) arrays' stray capacitors are small (in several nano-Farads). In such case, the High Frequency (HF) content of the inverter's Common-Mode (CM) noise is dominating the ground leakage current Root-Mean-Square (RMS) value. However, when the PV parasitic capacitors are large (in several micro-Farads), which is realistically the case with higher power ratings (i.e. Po > 5 kW); the grid CM noise is the major contributor to the ground leakage current. In fact, this makes the existing approaches for leakage current suppression ineffective. Therefore, this paper proposes novel filter topologies for transformerless grid-connected PV applications with a novel CM control scheme that suppress the ground leakage current when the PV parasitic capacitors are large. These filters are termed as Shunt-less filters. Additionally, the proposed topologies are equivalent to well-established filters, such as LCL, LLCL and LCL-LrCr. This fact makes the selection of their parameters as conventional filters. The theoretical analyses are validated with a 10 kW / 240 Vrms grid-tied PV system. The results have demonstrated that the proposed control scheme can reduce the ground leakage current RMS value from 1.8 A to 60 mA.
Experimental investigation of wireless energy harvesting with a Bluetooth low energy sensing unit

In this presentation, we introduce an experimental demonstration for wireless energy harvesting application. Bluetooth low energy (BLE) unit connected to an array of sensors is used in conjunction with the proposed RF wireless rectenna. The rectenna is composed of a circularly polarized spiral antenna and a microstrip RF voltage doubler rectifier. The scheme shows a constant voltage charge of a super-capacitor (0.1pF) within the voltage limits of optimum BLE operation. The temperature and humidity sensing system was tested in real operation for more than 20 hours. The delivered voltage was maintained over 2.7 V that corresponds to the proper operating voltage of the BLE.
Economic Aspects of Multi-Source Demand-Side Consumption Optimization in the Smart Home Concept

Current energy consumption trends lead to rapidly growing consumption of local renewable energy sources. Such installations bring new requirements on energy consumption profiles. Due to the massive multiplication of the results, one of the most interesting elements of the power grid, in this respect, is formed by households. Smart profiling of household energy consumption may be crucial for the adaptability of the global grid. In this article, we present the design and usage of a demand-side, consumption profiling system named the Priority-driven Appliance Control System (PAX). We describe the main features of the PAX system and show its application using real-world data. The main benefits are presented as direct economic assets in connection with various household energy sources (energy grid and photovoltaic panels) and efficient usage with regard to government energy grants.
The evolution and application of enzymes in the animal feed industry: the role of data interpretation

ABSTRACT 1. Enzymes have been used commercially for nearly 40 years and save significant costs through sparing of expensive nutrients but the mechanism by which this is achieved is still debated. 2. The research focused on non-starch polysaccharidase (NSPase) enzymes is used as an example of where greater progress could have been made if the details of the work had been described more fully and the analysis of the data generated had been broader in scope and more critical. 3. Lack of standardisation of the details presented in the materials and methods has been identified as a significant barrier to meaningful retrospective analysis and thus limits advances in the understanding of the mode of action of these enzymes. 4. The identity of the enzyme employed and its activity is often lacking, and more importantly the purity is rarely disclosed. Contaminant activities which are neither listed nor assayed could play a significant role in the responses observed. 5. The dose optimum of most enzymes is often considerably higher than that employed in most studies. Thus studies claiming synergy between two ‘activities’ should ensure that the response is not related to each enzyme simply augmenting the dose of just one activity in the finished feed. This is a common problem, and coupled with the lack of factorial experiments to justify the presence of each enzyme in a multi-enzyme product, it is not surprising that there is still debate as to whether single or multi-enzymes are best suited poultry rations. 6. The three proposed mechanisms for NSPases (viscosity, cell wall and prebiotic) are discussed, and along with their strengths and weaknesses it is suggested that a re-evaluation of each is needed. Viscosity may have to be re-evaluated as being a function not only of the cereal being fed, but of the age of the animal as well. The cell wall theory as described is poorly modelled in vitro and hence the validity of these data is questioned. The prebiotic theory may need significant modification as it appears that the quantities of oligomers produced are insufficient to generate the additional volatile fatty acids (VFA)’s reported. It is likely that all three mechanisms play a role in the responses observed, but the prebiotic mechanism probably plays by far the most important part in low viscosity diets. 7. Future research would be improved if it considered all potential mechanisms when designing a trial. Significant failings are apparent as a result of adherence to tenets in explanation of the results. Most importantly, it should be emphasised that a hypothesis is there to be tested, not defended.
Promoting Change from the Outside: Directing Managerial Attention in the Implementation of Environmental Improvements

Regulatory agencies, auditing firms, and supply chain partners externally promote change in firms. To this end, they commonly employ two different and somewhat contradictory intervention approaches. One approach uses punitive tactics to coerce firms to change, while the other approach uses supportive tactics to encourage change. Using the context of government agencies promoting environmental improvements in firms, we examine whether such punitive (e.g., regulatory inspections with possible sanctions) and supportive (e.g., environmental assistance, improvement recommendations) tactics can be administered in a complementary manner. Using a unique and novel longitudinal data set collected from two state-level environmental agencies in Minnesota, we analyze over 1,000 supportive environmental improvement (EI) projects in combination with intermittent (but currently uncoordinated) punitive tactics. One key finding from our research is that the timing, severity, and relatedness of punitive tactics is critical .
Improved Battery SOC Estimation Accuracy Using a Modified UKF With an Adaptive Cell Model Under Real EV Operating Conditions

Electric vehicles (EVs) require reliable and very accurate battery state-of-charge (SOC) estimation to maximize their performance. A commonly used estimation technique, the extended Kalman filter (EKF), provides an accurate estimate of the SOC. However, EKF has some limitations, such as it assumes the knowledge of the statistics of the process noise and measurement noise is available, which practically cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, an adaptive equivalent-circuit model is proposed and used for SOC estimation. The proposed model is based on a common cell model with adaptive parameters tracking feature implemented using an artificial neural network controller embedded within the model. A variant of the EKF, namely the unscented Kalman filter (UKF), is used to achieve more accurate estimates of the SOC with a relatively fast convergence speed. The UKF uses the unscented transform to obtain the statistics of the process noise covariance. Furthermore, the autocovariance least-squares technique is used to estimate the measurement noise covariance by accounting for possible correlation in the measurement innovations, which enhances the accuracy of the estimate. Derivation of the proposed method followed by experimental verification is presented in this paper.