Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gentle stroking elicits somatosensory ERP that differentiates between hairy and glabrous skin

Abstract Here we asked whether, similar to visual and auditory event-related potentials (ERPs), somatosensory ERPs reflect affect. Participants were stroked on hairy or glabrous skin at five stroking velocities (0.5, 1, 3, 10 and 20 cm/s). For stroking of hairy skin, pleasantness ratings related to velocity in an inverted u-shaped manner. ERPs showed a negativity at 400 ms following touch onset over somatosensory cortex contra-lateral to the stimulation site. This negativity, referred to as sN400, was larger for intermediate than for faster and slower velocities and positively predicted pleasantness ratings. For stroking of glabrous skin, pleasantness showed again an inverted u-shaped relation with velocity and, additionally, increased linearly with faster stroking. The sN400 revealed no quadratic effect and instead was larger for faster velocities. Its amplitude failed to significantly predict pleasantness. In sum, as was reported for other senses, a touch’s affective value modulates the somatosensory ERP. Notably, however, this ERP and associated subjective pleasantness dissociate between hairy and glabrous skin underscoring functional differences between the skin with which we typically receive touch and the skin with which we typically reach out to touch.
An integrated architecture for multi-hop infrastructure wireless networks

Rapid growth in wireless networks has resulted in a growing need for fast and ubiquitous connectivity. Most networks deployed currently are single hop access point (AP) networks, where the end user is connected to an AP if it is within communication range of the AP. While such networks are popular and have been deployed extensively, the inherent low range of Wi-Fi networks limits their coverage. Again, high deployment costs of high speed wired networks do not allow single hop networks to provide ubiquitous and cheap connectivity. Recently, a highly viable solution to the above problem has appeared in the form of multihop infrastructure networks (MINs). A MIN is a network of wireless routers connected to an AP and provides multihop coverage in an area. These networks may present a highly viable and cheap alternative to the problem of universal coverage. While the concept of MINs is exciting, deployment of such networks cannot commence without a thorough inspection of the performance, handoffs mechanisms and security considerations involved. The aim of this thesis is to provide a complete architecture for MINs and explore the various aspects that affect the performance and security of such networks. We solve the problem in a number of phases. First, we provide an analytical framework using which the end-to-end delay and throughput characteristics of the network can be predicted. This framework can then be used to predict the scalability of such networks. The model can also be used for bottleneck determination in such networks and to provide effective routing techniques. The behavior of the delay characteristics of MINs have been effectively addressed by taking both bulk traffic and single arrival traffic into consideration. The queue modeling for forwarder nodes in MINs is complicated by the fact that traditional queuing mechanisms are no longer valid as the arrival and departure processes can never be simultaneous. We propose two different approaches to queuing analysis in MINs. Secondly, we propose to provide an architecture for handoffs in MINs. This involves defining a handoff for MINs, and outlining a method to perform handoffs depending on the parameters that need to be optimized. The suggested protocols should also aim towards minimizing the delays and message overheads involved in the handoff process. Protocols have also been proposed to reduce the delay and message overheads involved in handoffs by the use of pre-authentication mechanisms. Finally, we propose a security architecture for MINs. The first part of this security architecture addresses the problem of key distribution for group communication. The second part of the security architecture allows communication between the members of a MIN by the establishment of robust key agreement protocols for node-to-node pair wise communication. These protocols can be used for ad-hoc network communication as well.
Predicting Intention to Buy Organic Food during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A multi-group analysis based on the Health Belief Model

Abstract The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected physical and psychological health of people. It also had a huge impact on their dietary choices. This study specifically attempts to determine the impact of the constructs of health belief model on consumer purchase intention of organic food in the pandemic scenario. A survey was conducted among 413 Indian organic food consumers. The proposed hypotheses are tested by employing structural equation modeling. The findings highlight those perceived benefits is an important predictor of consumers’ behavioral intention to buy organic food, followed by cues to action and perceived threats. It is also found that consumers’ age moderates the impact of perceived threat and perceived barrier on consumers’ purchase intention, with a 22% difference in model prediction. In conclusion, the health belief model is found to be one of the most suitable models to predict consumer intention toward organic food purchase during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collaborative, child-led philosophical inquiry in Religious and Moral Education

ABSTRACT Situated in the context of the Scottish Religious and Moral Education (RME) curriculum, this article considers the practice of Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) and how it supports the RME curriculum. Sharing extracts from children’s CoPI sessions, the article reflects on the ways in which ten and eleven year-old children discuss religious and theological ideas philosophically. The child-led, collaborative approach demonstrates that the children work together to create meaning. It is proposed that the RME curriculum, or the enactment of the curriculum, often misses opportunities for children to engage with philosophical ideas about religious and theological concepts, and that an explicitly dialogic, philosophical approach affords important opportunities to support children’s self-understanding in-relation with the world and others.
Deflection by simplified calculation in AS3600-2001 – on the determination of f cs

Abstract This paper describes the behaviour of reinforced concrete flexural members under sustained service loads and outlines recent developments in the design of concrete structures for the serviceability limit states, particularly with regard to deflection calculation. The simplified deflection calculation procedure specified in the Australian Standard for Concrete Structures AS3600-2001 is presented and the background to, and reasons for, the changes introduced in that Standard are explained. Particular attention is given to the calculation of the shrinkage induced tension at the extreme fibre of an uncracked cross-section (fcs) and its effects of lowering the moment required to cause cracking at the section, decreasing the tension stiffening effect and thereby increasing the deflection. A rational method for calculating the time-dependent deflection of a reinforced concrete member due to creep and shrinkage of the concrete is also presented and a proposal is made to replace the inadequate long-term deflection multiplication factor (kcs) currently specified in AS3600-2001.
Mapping Cyber-Enabled Crime: Understanding Police Investigations and Prosecutions of Cyberstalking

Stalking is one of the main types of abusive behaviour facilitated by technology. The purpose of the current study was twofold: to identify the challenges of cyberstalking investigations and prosecutions in Australia and determine how best to investigate these types of offences. A qualitative analysis of four years of interviews, focus groups and participant observations with police departments provides an overview of the cyberstalking investigative process. The findings map out the process from the initial report of the incident to the preparation of the prosecution brief. This analysis positions cyberstalking investigations as an interesting case study in the midst of increased scrutiny about the way that police investigate technology-facilitated abuse.
Effects of fresh garlic extract on Candida albicans Sessile cells, biofilms and biofilm associated genes, Flo-8 and Ndt80

Candida-associated nosocomial infections are a persistent problem which has been steadily increasing over the years. The emergence of antimicrobial resistant strains has narrowed the spectrum of effective drugs that can be utilised and indicated the need for alternative therapeutics. Garlic is a spice often studied for its unique characteristics. Most of its antimicrobial properties have been attributed to the presence of allicin, which makes up more than 70% of thiosulfinates extracted from garlic. The present study aimed to determine the effects of fresh garlic extract (FGE) towards the expression of two major biofilm genes, Flo-8 and Ndt80 produced by C. albicans that enable the morphogenesis of yeast from planktonic cells to biofilm. Minimum concentration required for FGE to inhibit C. albicans was determined through agar well and disc diffusion assay. Effect of FGE towards preformed C. albicans biofilms was evaluated at ¼× and ½× inhibitory concentrations of FGE and Amphotericin B, respectively by XTT assay. RNA from FGE-treated C. albicans was extracted, reverse transcribed and analysed by Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) to determine FGE effects towards the expression of Flo-8 and Ndt80. Inhibitory concentration of FGE was determined to be 100 mg/mL. Both genes appeared to be upregulated in the presence of FGE with a higher upregulation noted with Flo-8 (67.34 and 30.20-folds) when compared against Ndt80 (5.55 and 1.79-folds) at 5 mg/mL and 10 mg/mL, respectively. It is surmised that C. albicans upregulated these genes as a survival mechanism in the presence of FGE. The findings from this study indicate that FGE could inhibit C. albicans growth and biofilms. Further research is required to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) through broth microdilution and to understand the mechanism behind this phenomenon before it can be utilised as a potential therapeutic to combat Candida-associated nosocomial infections.
Dynamic Pricing – State-of-The-Art

Gegenstand des Dynamic Pricing ist die situative Anpassung von Angebotspreisen an im Zeitablauf variierende Rahmenbedingungen. Die hier seit einigen Jahren beobachtbare Intensivierung der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung hat es heute zu einem der methodisch fortgeschrittensten Forschungsgebiete an der Schnittstelle zwischen Operations Research, Marketing, Economics und E Commerce werden lassen. Der vorliegende Beitrag liefert zunachst eine kompakte inhaltliche Einfuhrung in die Grundlagen des Dynamic Pricing sowie in die elementaren mathematischen Modellierungsansatze. Zu ihrer Einordnung wird ein spezifischer Kriterienkatalog entwickelt. Dieser dient als Grundlage fur die anschliesende, umfassende Literaturanalyse, welche den Schwerpunkt des Beitrags bildet. Abschliesend werden mogliche kunftige Forschungspotenziale identifiziert. This paper presents a current review of the academic literature on dynamic pricing, which has evolved to one of the leading research topics at the interface between Operations Research, Marketing, Economics, and E-Commerce during the last decade. The authors begin by delivering a primer on dynamic pricing and explaining the basic model formulations. Subsequently, they develop a set of criteria which allow for the unified classification of relevant publications and serve as a basis for the extensive literature analysis. Possible future research directions are discussed as well.
Detecting and preventing attacks against web applications

The World Wide Web has evolved from a system for serving an interconnected set of static documents to what is now a powerful, versatile, and largely democratic platform for application delivery and information dissemination. Unfortunately, with the web’s explosive growth in power and popularity has come a concomitant increase in both the number and impact of web application-related security incidents. The magnitude of the problem has prompted much interest within the security community towards researching mechanisms that can mitigate this threat. To this end, intrusion detection systems have been proposed as a potential means of identifying and preventing the successful exploitation of web application vulnerabilities. The current state-of-the-art, however, has failed to deliver on the promise of intrusion detection. Misuse-based detection systems are unable to generalize to previously unknown attacks for which no signatures exist. In the context of the web, this is especially problematic in light of the wide proliferation of unique, custom-written web applications. On the other hand, anomaly-based intrusion detection systems seem well-suited for detecting attacks against web applications. Existing anomaly detection techniques, however, have heretofore proven unfeasible due to several factors: unacceptably high false positive rates, susceptibility to evasion, an inability to adapt to changes in monitored applications, and a lack of explanatory power. In this dissertation, I present WEBANOMALY, an advanced black-box anomaly detection system that accurately detects attacks against web applications with low performance overhead. WEBANOMALY addresses several of the aforementioned fundamental challenges to anomaly detection using a combination of novel techniques. In particular, the relatively high rate of false positives and lack of explanatory power is ameliorated using anomaly signatures, a technique for clustering related anomalies and classifying the type of attack they represent. The problem of local training data scarcity is addressed through the use of global knowledge bases of well-trained profiles collected from other web applications. Changes in web application behavior over time, known as concept drift, are addressed by treating the web application itself as an oracle of legitimate change. Finally, a novel framework for developing web applications that are secure by construction against many common classes of attacks is presented.
Impact of Adjacent Building on Outdoor Ventilation around a Layout of Two Buildings

The outdoor air ventilation impact of a taller building in different configurations of a layout of two adjacent buildings is presented in this paper. The critical parameters investigated are the separation distance (S) between the buildings and the ratio of height of downwind building to that of the building upwind, herein referred to as building height ratio (HR). The aim is to explore intermediate spacing distances which may engender acceptable ventilation around the buildings. A three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulation employing the Computational Fluid Dynamics technique which adopts the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equation and the realizable k-ε turbulence model was used to study the turbulent flow field around the full-scale two-building configurations. Results show that velocity ratio generally increases with height ratio, indicating that more air motion is induced at the pedestrian level as the height of the downwind building increases. For each of the height ratios, there is a spacing distance at which the velocity ratio is highest. The spacing distances at which the maximum velocity ratio occurs for the various height ratios are proposed. The dimensionless air exchange rate generally increases with height ratio, indicating that greater quantity of air from within the cavity between the buildings is exchanged with air from outside the cavity, which should result in better air quality. The findings of the study demonstrate the importance of incorporating wind data of an urban area in formulating guidelines for layout of buildings.
Design and Control of a Parallel Robot for Mold Polishing

A novel redundantly actuated parallel robot for mold polishing work is proposed. Cogging-less direct drive motors are implemented in the prototype. Instead of using conventional spherical sliding bearings, ball bearings with appropriate preload are implemented in the rolling pairs of the prototype. These mechanical parts enable fine force control for mold polishing work. The rated force of the robot perpendicular to the surface on the workpiece is 20 N with a tangential force of 5 N, which enable the robot to execute polishing tasks as well as skilled workers. In addition, the polishing velocity along the tangential direction is 60 m/min, which exceeds skilled workers’ velocity of 10 m/min. High speed feed contributes to reducing the polishing force and improving the quality of the surface of the mold. Kinematics, statics, dynamics and control of redundantly actuated parallel robot are discussed in this paper. Impedance control was implemented to the prototype for stably executing the mold polishing work.
How to Reach and Influence Both Users and Non-users of Internal Social Media Technologies

This study investigates potential barriers and supporting factors for employees’ Internal Social Media (ISM) usage intention for not only users but also the harder to reach target group of non-users. Following and extending the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB), it is assumed that ISM acceptance, superiors’ and peers’ support of ISM, superiors’ and peers’ usage of ISM, and the perceived ISM usage ability will explain employees’ usage intention. Multiple regression analyses revealed that users’ and non-users’ usage intention increases mostly with acceptance. Additionally, for users, peer usage support and behavior, as well as ISM Trainings showed to have an impact on usage intention.
Differential Evolution Immunized Ant Colony Optimization in Solving Fuzzy Economic Dispatch with Multiple Fuel Options

Economic load dispatch is an important energy planning process. In order to maximize profit, proper analysis must be conducted by the utilities to reduce the operating cost. It includes the correct selection of fuel type with respect to the required output level as different fuel type will have different price signals. Usually, a piecewise quadratic function is used to represent the multiple fuel options. In this paper, fuzzy-based technique is proposed to select the suitable fuel type. The tests involve IEEE 57-Bus system with 7 generators. The economic load dispatch with a multi-fuel problem is also optimized by using DEIANT algorithms to compute the feasible operating cost and minimizing the power loss.
Reliability evaluation of an expert system diagnostic aid for a sleep and respiration experiment

The expert system software Principal Investigator-in-a-box ([PI]) is designed to help astronauts in conducting space life science experiments outside their field of expertise. The current version of [PI] was applied to the Sleep and Respiration experiment which flew aboard STS-90 and STS-95. These are the results of a ground study to determine the efficacy of [PI] for helping astronaut surrogates with fault management of the sleep instrumentation are shown here. Thirty subjects (14 female, 16 male) were tested on two days, one with [PI] assistance and one without it. Results: [PI] assistance was not found to improve the probability of a correct detection rate of subjects, but was found to improve the probability of finding a fault. The chance of a correct detection of [PI]'s indicator lights alone was on average lower than that of the subjects studied. By decoupling the software's reliability from the subjects', [PI] only needed to be 40% reliable for subjects to correctly detect anomalies at their best. A regression analysis of the time taken to find a fault showed that [PI] was helpful for diagnostic planning tasks on the first experimental day, and for execution of diagnostic tasks on the second day. This, along with [PI]'s ability to reduce the chance of an undetected anomaly, shows that [PI]'s intelligent interface tends to regulate fault management reliability. Characteristics of how each experimental group managed the faults, such as troubleshooting steps taken, and calibrations performed and are shown and compared. Thesis Supervisor: Laurence R. Young Title: Apollo Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Melt coated flexible stainless-steel thread based co-axial triboelectric yarn nanogenerators

ABSTRACT Textiles that are smart and responsive have become the new norm in recent years. The development of smart textiles has sparked research into self-powered distributed sensors and portable wearable electronics integrated into clothing. One of the main functionalities of smart textiles is the ability to power these electronics by generating electrical energy from body movements. Since fibres, yarns, and filaments are the basic units of textiles, integrating smart functionality into these basic units is a rational approach. Herein, we report on a co-axial yarn-like triboelectric nanogenerator (Y-TENG) by utilising a scaled-up dielectric (i.e. PVDF) melt coating method to coat a flexible stainless steel thread. The average peak open-circuit voltage (Voc), peak Voc, average peak short-circuit current (Isc), and peak Isc were recorded as 3.82 V, 16.1 V, 12.96 nA, and 53.1 nA, respectively, at 700 N force and 2.11 Hz frequency.
No Alternation in Treg Frequency in Peripheral Blood of Chrmical Vitems With Long-term Mild-moderate Pulmonary Complication

Background: Regulatory T Cells (Treg) are the subgroups of lymphocytes that control inflammatory responses and regulate homeostasis processes through cellular contact and the secretion of soluble agents. We investigated the frequency of Treg in peripheral blood of sulfur mustard exposed patients with CD4, CD25, CD127, FOXP3, and CD45RA markers, compared with healthy individuals and the correlation between frequency of these cells and long-term pulmonary complications. Materials and Methods: In total, 12 sulfur mustard exposed patients and 12 healthy volunteers were invited. Clinical inspections of both groups were performed by pulmonary specialists and spyrometric‎ evaluation that pulmonary function test operators conducted. After the isolation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, the frequency of Treg cells was determined by flowcytometry. Results: The frequency of Treg cells was not significantly different in those exposed to sulfur mustard. Furthermore, there was no significant correlation between spyrometric parameters and the frequency of these cells. Conclusion: According to the current study data, there is no difference in the frequency of Treg cells between exposed patients with mild pulmonary complications and healthy volunteers. Thus, further studies are required to understand the role of these cells in the severity of pulmonary complications of these patients.