Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probing the Impact of Reduced DC Capacitor Size in Variable Speed Drive Loads on Voltage Stability of the Distribution Network at High PV Penetration

The Variable Speed Drives (VSD) are anticipated to replace the Induction Motors (IM) by 50%, in 2020, in developed cities of Europe [1]. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate VSD loads while analyzing voltage stability studies in the distribution network with high PV penetration. The collective load response from VSD loads tend to slow the rate of change of node voltages of distribution system, during the PV ramping events. However, this dynamic load characteristic of VSD is dependent on its capacitor size. Meanwhile, there is trend for reducing the capacitor size in VSD load at equipment level. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of reducing DC capacitor size in VSD load, on voltage stability of distribution system during PV ramping events. For the investigation, the paper involves United Kingdom General Distribution System (UKGDS) where load is modeled with combination of static load, IM, and VSD. It is determined that the maximum PV penetration reduces from 80% to 50% when the capacitor size in VSD is lowered from $360\mu F/kW$ to $25\mu F/kW$ respectively. Furthermore, the increased VSD penetration could delay and even avert the voltage collapse from PV ramping events during grid contingency condition. It is revealed that the minimum VSD penetration required to avert instability during such condition, even at 100% PV penetration, increases from 50% to 65% when the capacitor size of VSD is reduced from $360\mu F/kW$ to $25\mu F/kW$ respectively.
File systems deserve verification too!

File systems are too important, and current ones are too buggy, to remain unverified. Yet the most successful verification methods for functional correctness remain too expensive for current file system implementations-we need verified correctness but at reasonable cost. This paper presents our vision and ongoing work to achieve this goal for a new high-performance flash file system, called BilbyFs. BilbyFs is carefully designed to be highly modular, so it can be verified against a high-level functional specification one component at a time. This modular implementation is captured in a set of domain specific languages from which we produce the design-level specification, as well as its optimised C implementation. Importantly, we also automatically generate the proof linking these two artefacts. The combination of these features dramatically reduces verification effort. Verified file systems are now within reach for the first time.
A General Equivalent Circuit Model for a Metal/Organic/Liquid/Metal System

A general equivalent circuit model for the metal/organic semiconductor (OSC)/liquid/metal system is presented. Each circuital element, representative of a physically observable phenomenon associated with the device working principle, is analyzed and discussed. Two case studies of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of devices featuring NaCl (concentration of 0.1 M) and MilliQ water as liquid are reported, showing that both cases can be considered as a particular case of the general model presented in this paper. Experimental verification of the two practical cases is achieved by performing measurements onto electrodes coated by either an n-type or a p-type OSC deposited by sublimation or drop casting, respectively. The good agreement with the experimental data makes our model a useful tool for the characterization and failure analysis of electronic devices, such as water-gated transistors, electrophysiological interfaces, fuel cells, and others electrochemical systems.
Twitter versus Facebook: Comparing incivility, impoliteness, and deliberative attributes

Using two quantitative methods, this study sought to understand whether user-generated posts would vary in frequency of incivility, impoliteness, and deliberative attributes on Twitter versus Facebook. A quantitative content analysis (N = 1458) revealed that posts responding to the White House’s tweets were significantly more uncivil and impolite and less deliberative than responses to White House Facebook posts. Also, comments on posts that concerned sensitive topics (such as same-sex marriage) were more uncivil, impolite, and deliberative than comments regarding less sensitive topics (such as technology). An experiment (N = 198) showed that people were more deliberative when responding to White House Facebook posts, compared with White House tweets, but no differences were found for incivility and impoliteness. Results suggest that both the varying affordances of the two platforms and the fact that the two sites may attract different types of people might explain these results.
Resource Allocation for SVC Streaming Over Cooperative Vehicular Networks

Video streaming over vehicular networks has considerable benefits for both road safety and entertainment. In this paper, the scalable video coding over cooperative vehicular networks is investigated to improve the performance of video streaming services. We formulate a joint optimization problem to answer questions about the number of video layers that should be transmitted for each vehicle, the selection of relay vehicles to assist destination vehicles, and the assignment of radio resources to direct and cooperative communications. We decouple the problem into two subproblems, i.e., the quality of service (QoS)-driven resource allocation (QoSRA) subproblem and the layer selection (LS) subproblem. We solve the QoSRA subproblem by converting it into a generalized maximum concurrent flow problem, and propose a tabu search-based metaheuristic algorithm for the LS subproblem. The simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed scheme and provide some insight into the tradeoff between system performance and computation complexity.
Implementation of Personalized Scenic Spots Route Recommendation System

Many route recommendation algorithms have been presented recently, and it is necessary to consider users' personalized preferences in the recommendation. In this paper, we build a personalized spots route recommendation system based on scenic spots around Xiamen University in order to make personalized recommendations for users. The system mainly consists of two parts, which are the construction of system and the implementation of personalized route recommendation algorithm. In the experiment, we analyze the efficiency of two algorithms and compare the recommended routes with each other under different user preferences or different constraints.
Potential Deoxycytidine Kinase Inhibitory Activity of Amaryllidaceae Alkaloids: An In Silico Approach

Background: Plants of the Amaryllidaceae family have been under intense scrutiny for the presence of a couple of alkaloidal secondary metabolites with endued cytotoxic activity, such as pancratistatin (1), 7-deoxypancratistatin (2), narciclasine (3), 7-deoxynarciclasine (4), trans-dihydronarciclasine (5), and 7-deoxy-trans-dihydronarciclasine (6). Nevertheless, preclinical evaluation of these alkaloids has been put on hold because of the limited quantity of materials available from isolation. Aim: To explore the underlying cytotoxic molecular mechanisms of the Amaryllidaceae alkaloids (1–6) and to assess their absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) profiles using chemoinformatic tools. Materials And Methods: AutoDock 4.0 software along with different in silico chemoinformatic tools, namely PharmMapper, Molinspiration, MetaPrint2D, and admetSAR servers, were used to assess the drugability of the Amaryllidaceae alkaloids (1–6). Results: Deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) (PDB: 1P60) was predicted as a potential target with fitting score of 5.574. In silico molecular docking of (1–6) into dCK revealed good interactions, where interesting hydrogen bonds were observed with the amino acid residues—Gly-28 and Ser-35—located in the highly conserved P-loop motif. This motif plays a special role in dCK function. Contrary to (1), in silico pharmacokinetic results have shown good absorption and permeation and thus good oral bioavailability for (2–6). Conclusion: The in silico docking data have proposed that the reported cytotoxic activity of the Amaryllidaceae alkaloids (1–6) could be mediated through dCK inhibition. In addition, the ADMET profile of these alkaloids is promising and thus (1–6) could be candidates for future drug development.
Wearable-based Mediation State Detection in Individuals with Parkinson's Disease

One of the most prevalent complaints of individuals with mid-stage and advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) is the fluctuating response to their medication (i.e., ON state with maximum benefit from medication and OFF state with no benefit from medication). In order to address these motor fluctuations, the patients go through periodic clinical examination where the treating physician reviews the patients' self-report about duration in different medication states and optimize therapy accordingly. Unfortunately, the patients' self-report can be unreliable and suffer from recall bias. There is a need to a technology-based system that can provide objective measures about the duration in different medication states that can be used by the treating physician to successfully adjust the therapy. In this paper, we developed a medication state detection algorithm to detect medication states using two wearable motion sensors. A series of significant features are extracted from the motion data and used in a classifier that is based on a support vector machine with fuzzy labeling. The developed algorithm is evaluated using a dataset with 19 PD subjects and a total duration of 1,052.24 minutes (17.54 hours). The algorithm resulted in an average classification accuracy of 90.5%, sensitivity of 94.2%, and specificity of 85.4%.
Cross-cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Simplified-Chinese Version of Neck Bournemouth Questionnaire for Patients in Mainland China

Study Design. A prospective study. Objective. The aim of this study was to develop and assess the internal reliability and structure validity of a simplified Chinese version of the Neck Bournemouth Questionnaire (SC-NBQ) for evaluation of patients with nonspecific neck pain (NP) in mainland China. Summary of Background Data. The NBQ has been cross-culturally translated into several languages with good internal consistency and construct validity to evaluate low back pain and NP. However, the NBQ has been not translated or validated for Chinese-speaking patients. Methods. The SC-NBQ was developed by standard cross-translation procedures, and completed by 106 patients with nonspecific NP, along with other self-reported questionnaires, including the Neck Disability Index (NDI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Functional Rating Index (FRI), and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). The internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity of the SC-NBQ were determined. Results. The NBQ was successfully translated into Chinese. All patients completed the SC-NBQ twice, and the other instruments. Score distribution demonstrated that there was no floor or ceiling effects of the SC-NBQ. Cronbach &agr; coefficient (&agr; = 0.89) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC = 0.97) showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. A good construct validity was shown by strong correlation with HADS (r = 0.75), NDI (r = 0.82), FRI (r = 0.90) and SF-36 physical functioning (r = 0.75), and bodily pain (r = 0.75) subscales. Conclusion. The SC-NBQ demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity, and may be used for the evaluation of NP in Chinese-speaking patients. Level of Evidence: 2
Intrusion detection systems vulnerability on adversarial examples

Intrusion detection systems define an important and dynamic research area for cybersecurity. The role of Intrusion Detection System within security architecture is to improve a security level by identification of all malicious and also suspicious events that could be observed in computer or network system. One of the more specific research areas related to intrusion detection is anomaly detection. Anomaly-based intrusion detection in networks refers to the problem of finding untypical events in the observed network traffic that do not conform to the expected normal patterns. It is assumed that everything that is untypical/anomalous could be dangerous and related to some security events. To detect anomalies many security systems implements a classification or clustering algorithms. However, recent research proved that machine learning models might misclassify adversarial events, e.g. observations which were created by applying intentionally non-random perturbations to the dataset. Such weakness could increase of false negative rate which implies undetected attacks. This fact can lead to one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities of intrusion detection systems. The goal of the research performed was verification of the anomaly detection systems ability to resist this type of attack. This paper presents the preliminary results of tests taken to investigate existence of attack vector, which can use adversarial examples to conceal a real attack from being detected by intrusion detection systems.
Genetic analysis of resistance to stripe rust in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum)

Stripe rust, caused by the fungal pathogen Puccinia striiformis Westend. f. sp. tritici Eriks, is an important disease of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) worldwide and there is an indication that it may also become a serious disease of durum wheat (T. turgidum L. var. durum). Therefore, we investigated the genetic architecture underlying resistance to stripe rust in adapted durum wheat germplasm. Wheat infection assays were conducted under controlled conditions in Canada and under field conditions in Mexico. Disease assessments were performed on a population of 155 doubled haploid (DH) lines derived from the cross of Kofa (susceptible) and W9262-260D3 (moderately resistant) and on a breeding panel that consisted of 92 diverse cultivars and breeding lines. Both populations were genotyped using the 90K single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) iSelect assay. In the DH population, QTL for stripe rust resistance were identified on chromosome 7B (LOD 6.87–11.47) and chromosome 5B (LOD 3.88–9.17). The QTL for stripe rust resistance on chromosome 7B was supported in the breeding panel. Both QTL were anchored to the genome sequence of wild emmer wheat, which identified gene candidates involved in disease resistance. Exome capture sequencing identified variation in the candidate genes between Kofa and W9262-260D3. These genetic insights will be useful in durum breeding to enhance resistance to stripe rust.
Comparative Study of Back Propagation Neural Network and Support Vector Machine to Classify Hypertension Gene Sequences from Relative Codon Frequency

In this work, relative codon frequency has been considered to specify gene sequences. Implementing BPNN and SVM hypertension gene sequences have been categorized from others. A single gene sequence has been converted into 19 dimensional feature vector and then the Back Propagation Neural Network and Support Vector Machine have been trained using the feature vectors of all gene sequences. Since relative frequencies are not dependent on lengths, sequences with various lengths are used here. Accuracy rates of Support Vector Machine and Back Propagation Neural Network have been compared using different no. of samples at the training and testing phase. In this experiment, the accuracy rate has been increased proportionally with the size of samples. It is found that in most of the cases, BPNN is better than SVM
Effects of V2H Integration on Optimal Sizing of Renewable Resources in Smart Home Based on Monte Carlo Simulations

This paper investigates optimal sizing of rooftop PV, wind turbine (WT), and battery storage system (BSS) in smart home (SH) with a plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) considering vehicle-to-home (V2H) and home-to-grid operations. The proposed idea is to use a rule-based home energy management system (HEMS) along with the Monte Carlo simulations and particle swarm optimization to find the optimal sizes of renewable resources and BSS by minimizing the annual cost of household electricity. The probabilistic behaviors of wind speed, irradiance, temperature, load and electricity rate, as well as the availability of PEV are considered for the input data generation. Detailed simulations and sensitivity analyses are performed to investigate the impacts of shiftable loads, V2H integration, battery charge/discharge rates, designated maximum daily export energy and maximum PV, and WT and battery capacity limits on the annual and levelized costs of electricity. Our analyses reveal the possibility of eliminating BSS altogether in SH with PEV with some reduction in annual electricity cost.
Stability Analysis With Considering the Transition Interval for PWM DC-DC Converters Based on Describing Function Method

The nonlinearity of the switching process in DC–DC converters can result in the inaccuracy and invalidation of traditional stability criterion based on linear modeling, which is very harmful in practice, especially for the DC-DC converters with high stability requirements. In this paper, the describing function method is adopted for the modeling of switching process, namely, pulse width modulation (PWM), in DC–DC converters, and the describing function of the PWM is derived in detail. Considering the nonlinear items in the obtained describing function of PWM, the selection of the parameters in these nonlinear items are first provided and proved in this paper. With the obtained describing function, the stability of the PWM DC–DC converter can be analyzed exactly. Taken a PWM boost converter as an example, the nonlinear model based on describing function and the linear model are established, respectively; furthermore, the stability analysis based on these two kinds of models are carried out. Comparing with the traditional linear stability criterion, the simulation and experimental results validate the effectiveness and accuracy of the stability analysis based on describing function method. Furthermore, the transition interval of the PWM DC–DC converter from a stable region to an unstable region can be determined exactly by the proposed stability analysis method, which is helpful to determine the stability margin in real engineering applications. Therefore, this paper provides a practical stability analysis method for PWM DC–DC converters.
The effect of resistance training on the anxiety symptoms and quality of life in elderly people with Parkinson's disease: a randomized controlled trial

ABSTRACT Objective: To assess the effects of resistance training on the anxiety symptoms and quality of life in patients with Parkinson's disease. Methods: Thirty-five elderly patients were randomly divided into two groups: 17 patients in the control group and 18 in the intervention group. All patients maintained standard pharmacological treatment for Parkinson's disease, but the intervention group participated in a 24-week resistance training program. The anxiety symptoms were assessed through the Beck's Anxiety Inventory, and quality of life by the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire–39. Results: There was a significant reduction in anxiety level and increase in quality of life after 24 weeks of resistance training. Conclusion: The results of the present study indicate that resistance training is an effective intervention in the reduction of anxiety symptoms and improves the quality of life in elderly people with Parkinson's disease.
Optimization and Lead Selection of Benzothiazole Amide Analogs Toward a Novel Antimycobacterial Agent

Mycobacteria remain an important problem worldwide, especially drug resistant human pathogens. Novel therapeutics are urgently needed to tackle both drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and difficult-to-treat infections with nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Benzothiazole adamantyl amide had previously emerged as a high throughput screening hit against M. tuberculosis (Mtb) and was subsequently found to be active against NTM as well. For lead optimization, we applied an iterative process of design, synthesis and screening of several 100 analogs to improve antibacterial potency as well as physicochemical and pharmacological properties to ultimately achieve efficacy. Replacement of the adamantyl group with cyclohexyl derivatives, including bicyclic moieties, resulted in advanced lead compounds that showed excellent potency and a mycobacteria-specific spectrum of activity. MIC values ranged from 0.03 to 0.12 μg/mL against M. abscessus (Mabs) and other rapid- growing NTM, 1–2 μg/mL against M. avium complex (MAC), and 0.12–0.5 μg/mL against Mtb. No pre-existing resistance was found in a collection of n = 54 clinical isolates of rapid-growing NTM. Unlike many antibacterial agents commonly used to treat mycobacterial infections, benzothiazole amides demonstrated bactericidal effects against both Mtb and Mabs. Metabolic labeling provided evidence that the compounds affect the transfer of mycolic acids to their cell envelope acceptors in mycobacteria. Mapping of resistance mutations pointed to the trehalose monomycolate transporter (MmpL3) as the most likely target. In vivo efficacy and tolerability of a benzothiazole amide was demonstrated in a mouse model of chronic NTM lung infection with Mabs. Once daily dosing over 4 weeks by intrapulmonary microspray administration as 5% corn oil/saline emulsion achieved statistically significant CFU reductions compared to vehicle control and non-inferiority compared to azithromycin. The benzothiazole amides hold promise for development of a novel therapeutic agent with broad antimycobacterial activity, though further work is needed to develop drug formulations for direct intrapulmonary delivery via aerosol.
Cooperative Problem-Based Learning to Develop 21st Century Skills among Secondary School Students through STEM Education

The pressing challenges in this new millennia in science and technology demand 21st century skills to be imparted at school level. To achieve this, conventional teaching approach is no more relevant to be applied by teachers. This paper reports how Cooperative Problem-Based Learning (CPBL) was introduced to secondary school teachers and students in STEM education to learn the concept and awareness of Low Carbon Society (LCS). A pilot project with 2 secondary schools in Johor among 12 teachers and on CPBL were conducted in two high schools in Johor. A qualitative research design was utilized to investigate the progress of students for each stage of CPBL as they acquired the 21st century skills. It was found that CPBL successfully ensuring an active, integrated and constructive learning process for students that will be a key for STEM Education in schools