Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Terahertz Spectroscope Using CMOS Camera and Dispersive Optics

There is a need to reduce the cost and size of functional terahertz devices, in order to expedite this notoriously underutilized frequency band toward practical applications. Electronic integrated circuits (ICs) are extremely useful to this end, as they provide a means to achieve miniaturization and mass production, leveraging the foundries and techniques that have made digital electronics ubiquitous. Although integration of terahertz systems is expected to diminish performance and functionality, the increased number and availability of devices is likely to compensate for such disadvantages. In this work, we develop a terahertz-range spectroscope that combines a CMOS terahertz camera with custom-machined reflective optics. It is noted that the individual pixels of the camera employ incoherent detection, and hence a single pixel is not able to differentiate distinct frequencies. For this reason, the reflective optics are designed to split a terahertz beam into its constituent frequencies, and target each to a different position on the terahertz camera’s focal plane array. The required frequency-scanning functionality is provided by a corrugated reflective optic that operates in a manner similar to a curved diffraction grating. The developed spectroscope is experimentally validated, and its functionality agrees closely with simulation. This work provides a pathway to a new generation of compact, low-cost, all-electronic terahertz spectrometers that employ mass-producible silicon ICs for all active components.
Coherent Plane-wave Compounding with Double-Stage Delay Multiply and Sum Beamforming in Ultrasound Imaging: Simulation Study

Plane-wave imaging (PWI) is a best way to improve the frame rate in ultrasound imaging. However, due to the lack of transmit focus in PWI, the image quality is poor. A novel coherent plane-wave compounding (CPWC) was proposed to handle this issue, but the increased plane waves (PWs) reduced the frame rate. Thus, we combine a novel Double-Stage Delay Multiply and Sum (DS-DMAS) beamformer, which is shown to be better to improve the image quality, with plane-wave compounding to analyze the performance in terms of resolution and contrast. The simulation tests are carried out to show that applying DS-DMAS beamformer can achieve better results even if the number of transmitted PWs are decreased.
CRAM: Robust Medium Access Control for LPWAN using Cryptographic Frequency Hopping

Low power wide area networks (LPWANs) are being applied in many Internet of Things applications around the globe. These technologies offer economic coverage of wide areas, while retaining low power operation. LoRaWAN is a key technology in this space, with a world-wide presence and millions of devices deployed in the field. Despite this early success, recent research has shown that LoRa performs poorly in dense deployments with a high degree of contention. Furthermore, LoRa is not robust against selective jamming attacks. In this paper, we propose CRAM: a cryptographic frequency hopping MAC protocol designed for the LoRa physical layer that reduces contention by fairly exploiting all available frequency space, while making it significantly more difficult to perform selective jamming. Our evaluation shows that CRAM significantly reduces contention, thereby dramatically increasing scalability and reliability in comparison to the standard LoRa protocol.
A Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Native Ads in WeChat Moment

Currently, a growing number of enterprises are delivering native Ads on social media, yet the Ads experiences are not as good as expected, on which there are very few studies reported previously to perform theoretical and systematic analysis. To resolve the aforementioned issue and fill the theoretical gap, in this study, through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), an empirical study on WeChat Moment was performed to identify the combination of conditions that brings brilliant Ads experiences, verify the relationships of complementation, substitution and inhibition among multiple conditions, and provide guidance to enterprises on creating ad-delivery strategies with improved brand experiences, based on the features of Wechat platform (perceived precision, perceived interactivity and perceived intrusiveness) and self-concept congruence. In this study, the current Ads experience theories are theoretically enriched and developed, and QCA applications in journalism & communications and advertising are expanded; Practical suggestions regarding enterprises' native ads delivery strategies in Wechat moment are given.
Generalized Cyclic Pursuit: An Estimator-Based Model-Reference Adaptive Control Approach

The paper proposes an estimation and control method about sustaining the motion of a group of autonomous agents under the Generalized Cyclic Pursuit (GCP) laws, where formation patterns can be formed by assigning eigenvalues of the system to be marginally stable. In the present paper, a Linear Quadratic Estimator (LQE), used to estimate the absolute position based on information exchange, is coupled with a Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) to sustain the motion of agents and thus maintain the desired patterns in the presence of uncertainties and noise. Simulation results are provided to verify the proposed approach in area coverage applications.
IEEE 1588 for Clock Synchronization in Industrial IoT and Related Applications: A Review on Contributing Technologies, Protocols and Enhancement Methodologies

Precise time synchronization becomes a vital constituent due to the rigorous needs of several time-sensitive applications. The clock synchronization protocol is one of the fundamental factors that can define the quality of communication. Our study starts with a brief discussion on the application domain of precise time synchronization and comes with an in-depth study of the synchronization with the main focus on the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP). We have compared the well-known synchronization techniques and conclude that the PTP is the most appropriate answer to robust clock synchronization though challenges are there that requires thoughtful efforts and modification in the current version. The working mechanism and main components of the PTP network are discussed. We have established a testbench using commercially available devices and development boards to evaluate the PTP performance under different configurations. Major sources of synchronization error and other aspects contributing to precision are examined. This paper discussed numerous approaches that could enhance the performance of the PTP protocol. Structures for PTP based wireless clock synchronization required by advanced applications has also been discussed. In the end, paper focuses on the main industrial application areas in which PTP plays an important role, including WLAN, optical data centers, Smart grid, IEC 61850, etc. We conclude the paper by identifying the future trends and research directions for PTP based clock synchronization.
A Review on Cyber Physical System Attacks: Issues and Challenges

Recent advancement of cyber physical systems open doors to various safety measures, threats, attacks and vulnerabilities are such major key challenges now days. The globally adoption of cyber physical systems basically forms a basis for cyber social attack in order to breakdown secure channel and control actions. Hence loopholes and vulnerabilities in trending cyber physical systems are targeted to make systems unstable and unsafe state. The subjection of CPSs causes new critical issues for research and academics. However expeditious growth of CPS devices a question marks on security, integrity and confidentiality. The paradigm which forms basis for CPS are Smart phones, Defense System, Meteorology, Big data, Smart Technologies and Smart Vehicles. The purpose and analysis behind this paper to find out security issues and challenges of CPSs. Comparison of various cyber physical attacks and analysis on several parameters has been done. Key noted issues are results of cyber attacks, CPS attack traceability and the review on communication security architecture.
Data Annotation and Multi-Emotion Classification for Social Media Text

In recent years, sentiment or emotion analysis has become a key research area due to its vast potential applications in getting insights from social media comments, marketing, political science, psychology, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. Emotion analysis deals with identifying the emotions in any given data such as text, speech, or image. The current work proposes to identify and associate social media text to multiple emotions with varying degrees. The data collection and annotation process employed in the proposed work is a combination of manual and semi-supervised annotation method where each tweet is mapped to a six dimensional emotion vector. Totally six human emotions such as happy, sad, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear are considered for emotion-tagging. Word mover‘s distance (WMD) based on twitter word embeddings (word2vec) is proposed to develop a labelled dataset in the current work. A set of classifiers is developed on the labelled dataset to identify emotions at the tweet-level in any given text data. In the current work, KNN, tree-based, and neural network classifiers are developed.
Interact With Me: An Exploratory Study on Interaction Factors for Active Physical Human-Robot Interaction

In future robotic applications in environments such as nursing houses, construction sites, private homes, etc, robots might need to take unpredicted physical actions according to the state of the users to overcome possible human errors. Referring to these actions as active physical human-robot interactions (active pHRI), in this letter, the goal is to verify the possibility of identifying measurable interaction factors that could be used in future active pHRI controllers, by exploring and analyzing the state of the users during active pHRI. We hypothesize that active physical robot actions can cause measurable alterations in the physical and physiological data of the users, and that these measurements could be interpreted with users’ personality and perceptions. We design an experiment where the participant uses the robot to play a visual puzzle game, during which, the robot takes unanticipated physical actions. We collect physiological and physical data, as well as outcomes of two state-of-the-art questionnaires on the perceptions of robots, CH-33 and Godspeed Series Questionnaires (GSQ), and a pre-experiment personality questionnaire, to relate the collected data with the users’ perceptions and personality. The experiment outcomes show that we can extract a few factors related to personality, perception, physiological, and physical measurements. Even though we could not draw very clear correlations, these outcomes give fundamental insights for the design of novel pHRI experiments.
Nonlinear model and control validation of a tilting quadcopter

In this paper, a deep analysis of a quadcopter with tilting rotors is proposed. An exhaustive mechanical study is provided for several configurations of the aerial vehicle, allowing nonlinear mathematical equations that are obtained using the Newton-Euler approach, resulting in over actuated systems. A control scheme is proposed and validated numerically and in real time to stabilize the system. Some ROS nodes are developed, to convert the Simulink™ control diagrams into C++ code, in order to implement the control algorithms easily into the embedded system of the developed quadcopter prototype with tilting rotors.
Pursuit-evasion Game for Nonholonomic Mobile Robots With Obstacle Avoidance using NMPC

In this work, non-cooperative competitive games between two unmanned ground robots using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) while incorporating obstacle avoidance techniques are studied. The objective of the first player (pursuer) is to minimize the relative distance and orientation between itself and the second player (evader) while avoiding obstacles, whereas the evader does the opposite. The Pursuit-Evasion Game (PEG) being a typical class of a differential game is formulated as a zero-sum game with two homogeneous players in five different game scenarios. The objective function of each player is formulated as a double optimization problem and is solved separately using NMPC techniques. The optimal trajectory of each player is computed iteratively by considering the best response of the opponent player. The level of information is assumed to be symmetric. Simulations of various scenarios show the winning possibility of each player.
Memristor-CNTFET based Ternary Full Adders

Recently multilevel systems are one of the hottest topics in the digital electronics field. Multi-level logic (MVL) overcomes the issues of interconnections. The ternary system is a promising system where the implementation complexity is low and more information can be stored compared to the binary logic system. In this paper, 4-bit adder has been implemented with CNTFETs and memristors using three different methods; carry-ripple adder, carry-skip adder and carry-lookahead adder. A comparative study between the three adders is introduced in terms of the average power and delay. The adders have been validated with SPICE simulations using VTEAM memristor and Stanford CNTFET transistor models. The carry-lookahead adder (CLA) shows 10x better power-delay product compared to carry ripple and carry-skip adders. The power and temperature variations are studied on the designed circuits.
Shadow-based Hand Gesture Recognition in one Packet

The ubiquity of wirelessly connected sensing devices in IoT applications provides the opportunity to enable various types of interaction with our digitally connected environment. Currently, low processing capabilities and high energy costs for communication limit the use of energy-constrained devices for this purpose. In this paper, we address this challenge by exploring the new possibilities highly capable deep neural network classifiers present. To reduce the energy consumption for transferring continuously sampled data, we propose to compress the sensed data and perform classification at the edge. We evaluate several compression methods in the context of a shadow-based hand gesture detection application, where the classification is performed using a convolutional neural network. We show that simple data reduction methods allow us to compress the sensed data into a single IEEE 802.15. 4 packet while maintaining a classification accuracy of 93%. We further show the generality of our compression methods in an audio-based interaction scenario.
Cluster Detection and Maintenance in Mobile Wireless Network Users

Clustering plays a major role in the connectivity of nodes in a mobile ad-hoc wireless network. Due to the mobility of nodes, topology of the network becomes dynamic. Clustering in these flat networks help in managing the overall connectivity of the network. In this paper, we propose a cluster maintenance scheme in a dynamically varying network topology. The network is modeled as an evolving weighted graph. Based on the structural and geographical similarity of nodes, clusters will be formed. An incremental approach is proposed for cluster maintenance using the geographical location and mobility pattern of nodes. The results show that this clustering scheme is effective in mobile ad-hoc networks.
Design and Analysis of Planar Array with Horn Antenna Beams

The planar array antennas are widely used in the communication systems. Planar array antennas consist of many numbers of microstrip patch antennas that give high directionality and high gain. The symmetrical patterns are provided with low sidelobes and directional beams. The horn antennas are used in large antenna structures. The elements are not resonated so, they can operate over wide ranges of frequency. These horn antennas are less weight, high directionality and high gain which will also reduce the multipath effects. For transmission and reception of microwave signals, horn antennas are mainly used. In the horn antenna, we have an E plane and H plane for getting high directionality. Horn antennas are available in pyramidal and conical forms. Horn antennas have less gain which approximately equals directivity. Therefore, the planar array antenna structure along with the horn gives high efficiency and high directionality.
Knowledge Enrichment by Fusing Representations for Malware Threat Intelligence and Behavior

Security engineers and researchers use their disparate knowledge and discretion to identify malware present in a system. Sometimes, they may also use previously extracted knowledge and available Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) about known attacks to establish a pattern. To aid in this process, they need knowledge about malware behavior mapped to the available CTI. Such mappings enrich our representations and also helps verify the information. In this paper, we describe how we retrieve malware samples and execute them in a local system. The tracked malware behavior is represented in our Cybersecurity Knowledge Graph (CKG), so that a security professional can reason with behavioral information present in the graph and draw parallels with that information. We also merge the behavioral information with knowledge extracted from the text in CTI sources like technical reports and blogs about the same malware to improve the reasoning capabilities of our CKG significantly.
Safety and early outcomes after intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke patients with prestroke disability

Background There are limited data on intravenous thrombolysis treatment in ischemic stroke patients with prestroke disability. Aim We aimed to evaluate safety and outcomes of intravenous thrombolysis treatment in stroke patients with prestroke disability. Methods We analyzed 88,094 patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis, recorded in the Safe Implementation of Treatments in Stroke (SITS) International Thrombolysis Register between January 2003 and December 2017, with available NIHSS data at stroke-onset and after 24 h. Of them, 4566 patients (5.2%) had prestroke disability, defined as a modified Rankin Scale score of 3–5. Safety outcome measures included Symptomatic Intracerebral Hemorrhage, any type of parenchymal hematoma on 24 h imaging scans irrespective of clinical symptoms, and death within seven days. Early outcome measures were 24-h NIHSS improvement (≥4 from baseline to 24 h). Results Patients with prestroke disability were older, had more severe strokes, and more comorbidities than patients without prestroke disability. When comparing patients with prestroke disability with patients without prestroke disability, there was however no significant increase in adjusted odds for symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (adjusted odds ratio 0.83 (95% CI 0.60–1.15) (absolute difference in proportion 1.17% vs. 1.27%)) or for parenchymal hemorrhage (adjusted odds ratio 0.96 (0.83–1.11) (7.51% vs. 6.34%)). The prestroke disability group had a significantly lower-adjusted odds ratio for a 24-h NIHSS improvement (adjusted odds ratio 0.79 (0.73–0.85) (45.95% vs. 48.45%)) and a higher adjusted odds ratio for seven-day mortality (aOR 1.40 (1.21–1.61) (10.40% vs. 4.93%)). Conclusions Intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke patients with prestroke disability was not associated with an increased risk of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage or parenchymal hemorrhage. Prestroke disability was however associated with a higher risk of early mortality compared to patients without prestroke disability.
An Evaluation of Students Addiction to Mobile Devices at a South African University

Mobile technology has undoubtedly become an integral part of every user's life. The adoption of mobile technology in the education sector has brought about a concept of mobile learning. This allows easier teaching and learning processes, communication and sharing of information among students and lecturers. The over-reliance on mobile devices by students is likely to lead to addiction. There has been limited research focusing on determining the addiction of students towards mobile usage within teaching and learning. Additionally, some lecturers find it difficult to accommodate mobile technologies within the lecture rooms. This study explored how the mobile ownership and usage by students could be attributed to mobile addiction within teaching and learning. A quantitative case study research approach was considered. Students at a selected university were engaged through an online questionnaire. Results show that students are addicted to their mobile devices. Students are always having and utilizing mobile devices for both learning and communication purposes. The total hours spent on mobile devices and common usage of mobile devices for academic purposes indicate some levels of addiction by students. Institutions of higher learning have seen the benefits in mobile phone usage and ownership, and this has forged the incorporation of these devices in teaching and learning.
Inequality in Health Services for Internal Migrants in China: A National Cross-Sectional Study on the Role of Fund Location of Social Health Insurance

On-the-spot settlements of medical bills for internal migrants enrolled with a social health insurance program outside of their residential location have been encouraged by the Chinese government, with the intention to improve equality in healthcare services. This study compared the use of health services between the internal migrants who had local health insurance coverage and those who did not. Data (n = 144,956) were obtained from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey. Use of health services was assessed by two indicators: visits to physicians when needed and registration (shown as health records) for essential public health services. Multi-level logistic regression models were established to estimate the effect size of fund location on the use of health services after controlling for variations in other variables. The respondents who enrolled with a social health insurance scheme locally were more likely to visit physicians when needed (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.18, 95% CI = 1.06–1.30) and to have a health record (AOR = 1.47, 95% CI = 1.30–1.65) compared with those who enrolled outside of their residential location: a gap of 3.5 percentage points (95% CI: 1.3%–5.8%) and 6.1 percentage point (95% CI: 4.3%–7.8%), respectively. The gaps were larger in the rural-to-urban migrants than those in the urban-to-urban migrants (AOR = 1.17, 95% CI = 0.93–1.48 for visiting physicians when needed; AOR = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.54–0.93 for having a health record). The on-the-spot medical bill settlement system has yet to fully achieve its proposed potential as inequalities in both medical and public health services remain between the internal migrants with and without local health insurance coverage. Further studies are needed to investigate how on-the-spot settlements of medical bills are implemented through coordination across multiple insurance funds.