Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wearable Energy Harvesting System for Powering Wireless Devices

As the world trends towards ageing population UN (2011), there is an increasing demand and interest in using technology to increase the quality of life for elderly people. An expanding area of interest is heading towards the health care applications like wearable biometric monitoring sensors. These monitoring nodes, typically powered by batteries, have various functions like sensing & monitoring bodily functions, after which the data is wirelessly transmitted to a remote data terminal Harry et al. (2009), Philippe et al. (2009). However such applications mentioned are not new, where earlier literatures envisioned of a not too distant future where e-textiles, electronics woven together with fabrics, are omni-present Marculescu et al. (2003). With improving technology in miniaturization and wireless communication, clothing containing sensors for sensing andmonitoring bodily physiological functionsWixted et al. (2007) is becoming more common and widespread. Such devices should be unobtrusive wearable, flexible, lightweight and ideally self-sufficient.
A new gate driver circuit for improved turn-off characteristics of high current IGBT modules

In hard switching converters, power dissipation can be reduced by using high power device switching speed. However, fast turn-off of high current IGBT modules leads to high voltage transients for which the power devices have to be rated. In this paper, existing overvoltage protection schemes are briefly discussed and a new gate driver circuit with an improved trade-off between voltage transients and turn-off losses is proposed.
Simple permutations poset

This article studies the poset of simple permutations with respect to the pattern involvement. We specify results on critically indecomposable posets obtained by Schmerl and Trotter in [11] to simple permutations and prove that if σ, π are two simple permutations such that π < σ then there exists a chain of simple permutations σ^(0) = σ, σ^(1) , . , σ^(k) = π such that |σ^(i) | − |σ^(i+1) | = 1 - or 2 when permutations are exceptional- and σ^(i+1) < σ^(i) . This characterization induces an algorithm polynomial in the size of the output to compute the simple permutations in a wreath-closed permutation class.
An Ounce of Discretion Is Worth a Pound of Wit — Ergonomics Is a Healthy Choice

Objective The objective of the study was to identify the occurrence and outcome of low back ache amongst computer users and their relation to age, gender, occupation and duration of computer use. Materials and Methods A self reported questionnaire tailored from Occupational Health and Safety Act of the Ministry of Labor, Ontario, Canada was used. Results 416 participants 55.5% males and 45% females using computers for a minimum of five years with age range 22 to 59 years belonged to different occupational groups. Consecutive hours of computer work was found to be associated with work related backache or discomfort in 27.4% (n = 114) participants (16.1% male, 11.3% female). Frequent short breaks improved backache (p value <0.001) in 93 (22.4%) participants (13.2% male, 9.2% female). No significant relation was observed with the duration of computer usage or usage per day; between the two genders or occupational groups. Backache had no significance within age groups. Conclusion Our study identifies the occurrence of low back pain among those who are using computer for consecutive hours without breaks and the results suggest the need to create health awareness especially use of short breaks to minimize the risk and occurrence of low back pain. The result of this study can also be used to improve ergonomic design and standards.
A Survey on Plant Leaf Disease Identification

In this paper we present survey on the various types of leaf diseases in plants and their identification process. An identification problem deals with associating a given input pattern with one of the distinct classes. Plant leaf disease identification is a technique where leaf spot disease is identified based on its different morphological features. There are various successful identification techniques like Probabilistic Neural Network, Genetic Algorithm, Back Propagation Neural Network and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Deciding on the method for identification is often a difficult task because the quality of the results can be vary for different input data. Plant leaf disease identification has wide applications in the field of Agriculture to increase the productivity. The goal of this survey is to provide an overview of different identification techniques for plant leaf disease and gives the general approach which use these techniques.
Motion Analysis of Hexapod Robot with Eccentric Wheels

A new concept for developing hexapod robots using eccentric wheels is proposed in this work. Compared with the RHex robot, the proposed hexapod robot can greatly reduce the bumping of the robot body in both smooth ground and rocky terrain. Also, the developed hexapod robot possesses significant advantages over those with common circular wheels in traversing rocky and uneven terrain. Also, the control of the proposed hexapod robot is simple because each eccentric wheel has only one degree of freedom. This work focuses on the kinematics analysis of the proposed hexapod robot. Two types of gaits respectively named as the alternating tripod gait and the hexapod gait are proposed. With the alternating tripod gait, the robot can move continuously. But the hexapod gait is helpful in overcoming the resistant torque caused by the weight on the eccentric wheels. Besides, the effect of the eccentricity on the motion of the robot is analyzed. The proposed hexapod robot can be used to detect the gas in underground mines.
Population statistics cannot be used for reliable individual prediction

It is known that predictions about individuals from statistical data about the population are in general unreliable. However, the size of the problem is not always realised. For a number of ways of predicting information about one variable from another with which it is correlated, we compute the reliability of such predictions. For the bivariate normal distribution, we demonstrate that unless the correlation is at least 0.99, not even the sign of a variable can be predicted with 95% reliability in an individual case. The other prediction methods we consider do no better. We do not expect our results to be substantially different for other distributions or statistical analyses. Correlations as high as 0.99 are almost unheard of in areas where correlations are routinely calculated. Where reliable prediction of one variable from another is required, measurement of correlations is irrelevant, except to show when it cannot be done.
Genome rearrangements in porcine rotaviruses: biochemical and biological comparisons between a supershort strain and its standard counterpart.

Two porcine rotavirus strains (CN86 and CC86) isolated during an epidemiological survey of diarrhoea in swine in Argentina were studied because of several unique characteristics. Both these strains were isolated and cloned from the same faecal sample and the electrophoretic migration of 10 of their 11 genomic dsRNA genomic segments in polyacrylamide gels was identical, but strain CC86 had a supershort electropherotype. We analysed biochemical, serological and biological properties of both viruses. In vitro translation of genome segment 11 RNAs showed that both viruses produced a polypeptide with an apparent Mr of 26K. No differences in any of the other virus-induced proteins made in infected MA104 cells were found on one- and two-dimensional gels for either strain. In addition, the serotype and the subgroup specificities of both viruses were identical (group A, subgroup I, serotype 5). These results suggest that the rearranged strain was probably generated from the standard one and that the coding capacity of the rearranged segment was conserved. Consistent with this hypothesis, primer extension analysis revealed that the supershort strain had a rearrangement involving partial duplication of genomic segment 11. Biological studies showed differences between these viruses. The rearranged strain (CC86) produced larger plaques in monolayers of MA104 cells and outgrew the standard strain (CN86) when cells were coinfected with both viruses at different relative concentrations and different m.o. i. The possibility that large plaque formation and efficient virus replication can be influenced by the products of genomic segment 11, in addition to segment 4, is discussed.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Management of Infection after Intramedullary Nailing of Long Bone Fractures: Treatment Protocols and Outcomes

Implant related sepsis is a relatively unusual complication of intra-medullary nail fixation of long bone fractures. Depending on the extent of infection, timing of diagnosis and progress of fracture union, different treatment strategies have been developed. The aim of this review article is to collect and analyze the existing evidence about the incidence and management of infection following IM nailing of long bone fractures and to recommend treatment algorithms that could be valuable in everyday clinical practice. After searching the P u b M e d /Medline databases, 1270 articles were found related to the topic during the last 20 years. The final review included 28 articles that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Only a few prospective studies exist to report on the management of infection following IM nailing of long-bone fractures. In general, stage I (early) infections only require antibiotic administration with/without debridement. Stage II (delayed) infections can be successfully treated with debridement, IM reaming, antibiotic nails, and administration of antibiotics. Infected non-unions are best treated with exchange nailing, antibiotic administration and when infection has been eradicated with graft implantation if it is needed. Debridement, exchange nailing and systemic administration of antibiotics is the best indication for stage III (late) infections, while stage III infected non-unions can successfully be treated with nail removal and Ilizarov frame, especially when large bone defects exist.
Modeling and predicting information search behavior

This paper looks at two limitations of cognitive models of web-navigation: first, they do not account for the entire process of information search and second, they do not account for the differences in search behavior caused by aging. To address these limitations, data from an experiment in which two types of information search tasks (simple and difficult), presented to both young and old participants was used. We found that in general difficult tasks demand significantly more time, significantly more clicks, significantly more reformulations and are answered significantly less accurately than simple tasks. Older persons inspect the search engine result pages significantly longer, produce significantly fewer reformulations with difficult tasks than younger persons, and are significantly more accurate than younger persons with simple tasks. We next used a cognitive model of web-navigation called CoLiDeS to predict which search engine result a user would choose to click. Old participants were found to click more often only on search engine results with high semantic similarity with the query. Search engine results generated by old participants were of higher semantic similarity value (computed w.r.t the query) than those generated by young participants only in the second cycle. Match between model-predicted clicks and actual user clicks was found to be significantly higher for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. Potential improvements in enhancing the modeling and its applications are discussed.
RQM: A new rate-based active queue management algorithm

In this paper, we propose a new active queue management algorithm RQM based on rates of trafﬁc passing through a router instead of the buffer occupancy inside a router. Our algorithm differs from existing work in that it uses a novel way of estimating the number of active sessions without explicitly maintaining or using per-session states at the routers. We prove that our algorithm results in fair allocations of bandwidth to competing sessions, under some simplifying assumptions. Using simulations, we show that our algorithm is superior to the well-known RED and REM algorithms in many scenarios. Our algorithm performs particularly well when the number of active sessions is very high.
Using Information Delivery Manual (IDM) for Efficient Exchange of Building Design Information

In the new era of computerized building information, communication in a design and construction project demand transactions of large volume building model data containing various engineering domains, which causes increased costs in handling large data and communication problems due to poor understanding about which data should be shared. In this study, the authors converted Information Delivery Manual, which is a documentation format for capturing workflow information among AEC project participants, into an UMLbased conceptual model and then created a database schema based on it. A client-server application for browsing and editing the database was also created.
A Comparison on Intelligent Web Information Retrieval Systems

The key technology for accessing relevant data from large volume is Information retrieval. Information retrieval technology gives assurance to access large data. The major challenge of information retrieval is to find and manage all existing information in the web. So it became the elementary skill behind web search tool. Knowing the relevant information at the time of requirement is important for people. They considered information as one of the most valuable and strategic goods. But the availability of information nowadays increases tremendously, so this cause information oversupplies and results in time-consumption and difficulty in accessing relevant. Aimed to overcome these difficulties in the beginning itself several automated tools are used for searching information relevant to the user needs. The responsibility of IR is to collect and represent the information and allows retrieving the relevant information to exact problems at real time through wired or wireless devices. The intention to find as much possible as additional background information will help an information retrieval system to improve the retrieval accuracy. This scenario requires new advanced tools, which covering in a better way the various phases of the information streams and capable of surviving with the severe limitations of existing tools for information retrieval on the web. So the main intention of this research is to finding out the techniques which can improve the effectiveness of information retrieval.
Defining the Units of Competition: Influences of Perceptual Organization on Competitive Interactions in Human Visual Cortex

Multiple stimuli that are present simultaneously in the visual field compete for neural representation. At the same time, however, multiple stimuli in cluttered scenes also undergo perceptual organization according to certain rules originally defined by the Gestalt psychologists such as similarity or proximity, thereby segmenting scenes into candidate objects. How can these two seemingly orthogonal neural processes that occur early in the visual processing stream be reconciled? One possibility is that competition occurs among perceptual groups rather than at the level of elements within a group. We probed this idea using fMRI by assessing competitive interactions across visual cortex in displays containing varying degrees of perceptual organization or perceptual grouping (Grp). In strong Grp displays, elements were arranged such that either an illusory figure or a group of collinear elements were present, whereas in weak Grp displays the same elements were arranged randomly. Competitive interactions among stimuli were overcome throughout early visual cortex and V4, when elements were grouped regardless of Grp type. Our findings suggest that context-dependent grouping mechanisms and competitive interactions are linked to provide a bottom–up bias toward candidate objects in cluttered scenes.
Attention-driven auditory cortex short-term plasticity helps segregate relevant sounds from noise

How can we concentrate on relevant sounds in noisy environments? A “gain model” suggests that auditory attention simply amplifies relevant and suppresses irrelevant afferent inputs. However, it is unclear whether this suffices when attended and ignored features overlap to stimulate the same neuronal receptive fields. A “tuning model” suggests that, in addition to gain, attention modulates feature selectivity of auditory neurons. We recorded magnetoencephalography, EEG, and functional MRI (fMRI) while subjects attended to tones delivered to one ear and ignored opposite-ear inputs. The attended ear was switched every 30 s to quantify how quickly the effects evolve. To produce overlapping inputs, the tones were presented alone vs. during white-noise masking notch-filtered ±1/6 octaves around the tone center frequencies. Amplitude modulation (39 vs. 41 Hz in opposite ears) was applied for “frequency tagging” of attention effects on maskers. Noise masking reduced early (50–150 ms; N1) auditory responses to unattended tones. In support of the tuning model, selective attention canceled out this attenuating effect but did not modulate the gain of 50–150 ms activity to nonmasked tones or steady-state responses to the maskers themselves. These tuning effects originated at nonprimary auditory cortices, purportedly occupied by neurons that, without attention, have wider frequency tuning than ±1/6 octaves. The attentional tuning evolved rapidly, during the first few seconds after attention switching, and correlated with behavioral discrimination performance. In conclusion, a simple gain model alone cannot explain auditory selective attention. In nonprimary auditory cortices, attention-driven short-term plasticity retunes neurons to segregate relevant sounds from noise.
AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND ITS IMPACT ON MENTAL HEALTH OF FEMALE STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the use of social media on mental health of 10th grade female students. Eighty female secondary level government school students served as the sample of the study. A free to use questionnaire on “Effect of social media on mental health”, available on Survey Monkey website was used in the study. After ethical clearance, the researcher administered the questionnaires on the subjects. To identify the positive or negative effect of social media on mental health Chi square (x2) test was applied on the obtained data. This study identifies the relationship between social media and health threats. The finding of the study shows that social media affects the mental health of the user students. Article visualizations:
Notes and CommentsA Commodity Price Process with a Unique Continuous Invariant Distribution Having Infinite Mean

BY EUGENIO S. A. BOBENRIETH H. Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 1987, Concepción, Chile; ebobenri@udec.cl JUAN R. A. BOBENRIETH H. Departamento de Matemática, Universidad del Bío-Bío, Casilla 5-C, Concepcion, Chile; jbobenri@ubiobio.cl AND BRIAN D. WRIGHT Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 207 Giannini Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310; wright@are.berkeley. edu
Luteolin Inhibits Angiotensin II-Stimulated VSMC Proliferation and Migration through Downregulation of Akt Phosphorylation

Luteolin is a naturally occurring flavonoid found in many plants that possesses cardioprotective properties. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the effect of luteolin on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) proliferation and migration induced by Angiotensin II (Ang II) and to investigate the mechanism(s) of action of this compound. Rat VSMCs were cultured in vitro, and the proliferation and migration of these cells following Ang II stimulation were monitored. Different doses of luteolin were added to VSMC cultures, and the proliferation and migration rate were observed by MTT and Transwell chamber assays, respectively. In addition, the expressions of p-Akt (308), p-Akt (473), and proliferative cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in VSMCs were monitored by Western blotting. This study demonstrated that luteolin has an inhibitory effect on Ang II-induced VSMC proliferation and migration. Further, the levels of p-Akt (308), p-Akt (473), and PCNA were reduced in VSMCs treated with both Ang II and luteolin compared to VSMCs treated with only Ang II. These findings strongly suggest that luteolin inhibits Ang II-stimulated proliferation and migration of VSMCs, which is partially due to downregulation of the Akt signaling pathway.
Semiautomatic Segmentation of Ventilated Airspaces in Healthy and Asthmatic Subjects Using Hyperpolarized 3He MRI

A segmentation algorithm to isolate areas of ventilation from hyperpolarized helium-3 magnetic resonance imaging (HP 3He MRI) is described. The algorithm was tested with HP 3He MRI data from four healthy and six asthmatic subjects. Ventilated lung volume (VLV) measured using our semiautomated technique was compared to that obtained from manual outlining of ventilated lung regions and to standard spirometric measurements. VLVs from both approaches were highly correlated (R = 0.99; P < 0.0001) with a mean difference of 3.8 mL and 95% agreement indices of −30.8 mL and 38.4 mL. There was no significant difference between the VLVs obtained through the semiautomatic approach and the manual approach. A Dice coefficient which quantified the intersection of the two datasets was calculated and ranged from 0.95 to 0.97 with a mean of 0.96 ± 0.01 (mean ± SD). VLVs obtained through the semiautomatic algorithm were also highly correlated with measurements of forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) (R = 0.82; P = 0.0035) and forced vital capacity (FVC) (R = 0.95; P < 0.0001). The technique may open new pathways toward advancing more quantitative characterization of ventilation for routine clinical assessment for asthma severity as well as a number of other respiratory diseases.
The Challenge of Delivering Therapeutic Aerosols to Asthma Patients

The number of people with asthma continues to grow around the world, and asthma remains a poorly controlled disease despite the availability of management guidelines and highly effective medication. Patient noncompliance with therapy is a major reason for poor asthma control. Patients fail to comply with their asthma regimen for a wide variety of reasons, but incorrect use of inhaler devices is amongst the most common. The pressurised metered-dose inhaler (pMDI) is still the most frequently used device worldwide, but many patients fail to use it correctly, even after repeated tuition. Breath-actuated inhalers are easier to use than pMDIs. The rationale behind inhaler choice should be evidence based rather than empirical. When choosing an inhaler device, it is essential that it is easy to use correctly, dosing is consistent, adequate drug is deposited in both central and peripheral airways, and that drug deposition is independent of airflow. Regular checking of inhalation technique is crucial, as correct inhalation is one of the cornerstones of successful asthma management.
Building Virtual Communities: Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice

[Teachers] have no time to work with or observe other teachers; they experience occasional hit-and-run workshops that are usually unconnected to their work and immediate problems of practice. [Effective professional development cannot] be adequately cultivated without the development of more substantial professional discourse and engagement in communities of practice. — Darling-Hammond & Ball (1997)