Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of cyclic spectral analysis to gear crack assessment

With regards to the cyclostationarity of gear vibration, a novel indicator based on cyclic spectral analysis is proposed to assess localized gear damage. The cyclic spectral density of amplitude modulation and frequency modulation signals is deduced, and its properties in joint cyclic frequency-frequency domain are summarized. The ratio between the sum of cyclic spectral density magnitude along frequency axis at the cyclic frequencies of modulating frequency and 0 Hz indicates the amplitude modulation magnitude. In the analysis of gear crack simulation vibration signals, the ratio shows a monotonically increasing trend with the development of the gear crack level. It has potential to assess gearbox damage.
Empowering Women for Food and Income Security : The Case of Pigeon Pea in Malawi by Nathalie Me-Nsope and

Legume-intensified maize systems have been identified as a potential “one stop” solution to the problem of food insecurity in Malawi. Previous research has failed to examine how gender relations and intra-household dynamics may influence decisions and potential food security gains at the farm level, or how gender may impact participation, performance, and benefits at later value chain stages. We identify gender-based constraints and opportunities along the chain and their implications for household level food security and poverty. We find the decision to adopt/expand pigeon pea at the farm level; the ability to participate at the various nodes of the value chain; and control over the gains derived from value chain participation are influenced by intra-household gendered patterns of resource allocation, the gendered division of roles and responsibilities, and differential power relations in decision-making between men and women. For example, lack of transportation assets and cultural restrictions on women’s mobility limit their participation in markets, affecting their access to and control over income derived from legume sales. Our findings must be taken into account by development efforts targeting food, income, and nutrition security via the development of legume value chains. We argue that empowering women economically is essential for harvesting the potential food security and poverty reduction benefits of legume expansion and commercialization.
Effect of Bifidobacterium breve M-16V Supplementation on Fecal Bifidobacteria in Preterm Neonates - A Randomised Double Blind Placebo Controlled Trial

Background Probiotic supplementation significantly reduces the risk of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) and all cause mortality in preterm neonates. Independent quality assessment is important before introducing routine probiotic supplementation in this cohort. Aim To assess product quality, and confirm that Bifidobacterium breve (B. breve) M-16V supplementation will increase fecal B. breve counts without adverse effects. Methods and Participants Strain identity (16S rRNA gene sequencing), viability over 2 year shelf-life were confirmed, and microbial contamination of the product was ruled out. In a controlled trial preterm neonates (Gestation <33 weeks) ready to commence or on feeds for <12 hours were randomly allocated to either B. breve M-16V (3×109 cfu/day) or placebo (dextrin) supplementation until the corrected age 37 weeks. Stool samples were collected before (S1) and after 3 weeks of supplementation (S2) for studying fecal B. breve levels using quantitative PCR (Primary outcome). Secondary outcomes included total fecal bifidobacteria and NEC≥Stage II. Categorical and continuous outcomes were analysed using Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests, and McNemar and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for paired comparisons. Results A total of 159 neonates (Probiotic: 79, Placebo: 80) were enrolled. Maternal and neonatal demographic characteristics were comparable between the groups. The proportion of neonates with detectable B. breve increased significantly post intervention: Placebo: [S1:2/66 (3%), S2: 25/66 (38%), p<0.001] Probiotic: [S1: 29/74 (40%), S2: 67/74 (91%), p<0.001]. Median S1 B. breve counts in both groups were below detection (<4.7 log cells.g−1), increasing significantly in S2 for the probiotic group (log 8.6) while remaining <4.7 log in the control group (p<0.001). There were no adverse effects including probiotic sepsis and no deaths. NEC≥Stage II occurred in only 1 neonate (placebo group). Conclusion B. breve M-16V is a suitable probiotic strain for routine use in preterm neonates. Trial Registration Australia New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry ACTRN 12609000374268
Shellfish Face Uncertain Future in High CO2 World: Influence of Acidification on Oyster Larvae Calcification and Growth in Estuaries

Background Human activities have increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide by 36% during the past 200 years. One third of all anthropogenic CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans, reducing pH by about 0.1 of a unit and significantly altering their carbonate chemistry. There is widespread concern that these changes are altering marine habitats severely, but little or no attention has been given to the biota of estuarine and coastal settings, ecosystems that are less pH buffered because of naturally reduced alkalinity. Methodology/Principal Findings To address CO2-induced changes to estuarine calcification, veliger larvae of two oyster species, the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), and the Suminoe oyster (Crassostrea ariakensis) were grown in estuarine water under four pCO2 regimes, 280, 380, 560 and 800 µatm, to simulate atmospheric conditions in the pre-industrial era, present, and projected future concentrations in 50 and 100 years respectively. CO2 manipulations were made using an automated negative feedback control system that allowed continuous and precise control over the pCO2 in experimental aquaria. Larval growth was measured using image analysis, and calcification was measured by chemical analysis of calcium in their shells. C. virginica experienced a 16% decrease in shell area and a 42% reduction in calcium content when pre-industrial and end of 21st century pCO2 treatments were compared. C. ariakensis showed no change to either growth or calcification. Both species demonstrated net calcification and growth, even when aragonite was undersaturated, a result that runs counter to previous expectations for invertebrate larvae that produce aragonite shells. Conclusions and Significance Our results suggest that temperate estuarine and coastal ecosystems are vulnerable to the expected changes in water chemistry due to elevated atmospheric CO2 and that biological responses to acidification, especially calcifying biota, will be species-specific and therefore much more variable and complex than reported previously.
Biological and chemical factors of importance in the bioaccumulation and trophic transfer of persistent organochlorine contaminants in arctic marine food webs

Recent studies of arctic marine food webs have provided detailed insights regarding the biological and chemical factors that influence the bioaccumulation and trophic transfer of persistent organochlorine (OC) contaminants in aquatic systems. The present paper summarizes the recent literature with an emphasis on identifying important ecological factors for explaining variability of OC concentrations among organisms. The Arctic ecosystem has a number of unique attributes, including long food chains, reduced diversity of species, similar food webs across the entire region, and limited influence from pollution point sources. Lipid content, body size, age, gender, reproduction, habitat use, migration, biotransformation, seasonal changes in habitat conditions, feeding ecology, and trophic position have all been demonstrated to influence OC concentrations and bioaccumulation in arctic marine biota. The relative importance of each factor varies among OCs and organisms. Diet or trophic level is the dominant factor influencing OC concentrations and dynamics in seabirds and marine mammals, although biotransformation can significantly influence nonrecalcitrant OCs, such as hexachlorocyclohexane isomers. Dietary accumulation of OCs is also an important route of exposure for arctic fish and zooplankton, and biomagnification of OCs may also occur among these organisms. To date, only limited attempts have been made to model trophic transfer of OCs in the arctic marine food web. Although models developed to assess OC dynamics in aquatic food webs have included some biological variables (e.g., lipid content, feeding rate, diet composition, and growth rate), selection of processes included in these models as well as their mathematical solutions and parameterization all introduce simplification. This reduces biological validity of the models and may be particularly problematic in a highly seasonal environment, such as the Arctic Ocean.
Natural history and disease progression in Chinese chronic hepatitis B patients in immune‐tolerant phase

In view of the findings that high hepatitis B virus (HBV) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is associated with increased risk of chronic hepatitis B (CHB)–related complications, disease progression in CHB patients in the immune‐tolerant phase is uncertain. We evaluated disease progression in 57 immune‐tolerant CHB patients with high HBV DNA. Each subject underwent an initial liver biopsy. In those who remained in the immune‐tolerant phase, a follow‐up liver biopsy was performed after 5 years of follow‐up. Patients who developed elevated serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels were discontinued from the study after a follow‐up liver biopsy. Disease progression was defined as a 1‐point increase in fibrosis stage. Initial liver biopsies showed the median fibrosis stage of the study patients was 1 (range 0–1). By the end of follow‐up, 9 of the 57 patients (15.8%) had developed elevated serum ALT. In those who remained in the immune‐tolerant phase, follow‐up fibrosis stage was comparable with the initial fibrosis stage (P = 0.58). However, disease progression was greater in patients who developed elevated serum ALT when compared with those who remained in the immune‐tolerant phase (5 of 9 vs. 3 of 48, respectively, P = 0.001). The median rate of fibrosis progression of patients who remained in the immune‐tolerant phase was lower than that of patients with high serum ALT (0 U/year [range −0.40–0.20 U/year] versus 0.21 U/year [range 0–1.11 U/year], respectively, P = 0.04). Conclusion: CHB patients in the immune‐tolerant phase have mild disease. In those who remained in the immune‐tolerant phase in the present study, disease progression was minimal. However, immune‐tolerant patients who progressed to the immune clearance phase often faced disease progression. (HEPATOLOGY 2007.)
Novel approaches using semidefinite programming method for power systems state estimation

This paper is motivated by the open questions concerning effective nonlinear state estimation (SE) approaches. The basic difficulty comes from the highly nonlinear functions relating measurements and voltages defined by the AC power flow models. Today's AC power flow SE approach is, therefore, a highly non-convex problem and, as such, it is prone to convergence problems and sub-optimal solutions. We describe how two recently proposed methods overcome this problem by following a common idea of mapping the voltage space into higher dimensional space in which the problem can be posed as a convex optimization problem because the measurements can be expressed as linear functions in a higher-dimensional space. It is intriguing that the semi-definite programming (SDP)-based SE approach and the direct non-iterative method-based SE approach both employ a similar mapping of voltages into higher dimensional matrix W of voltage products at neighboring buses as new states. These recently discovered similarities are described in some detail by posing both approaches without loss of generality on a three bus system. The two methods differ significantly in their approaches to re-computing actual voltages once the voltage products are estimated. The SDP-based SE approach utilizes the structure of the mapping and states a sufficient rank one condition for matrix W to ensure the unique reconstruction of the actual bus voltages. Both methods are computationally demanding. To overcome this inherent problem, an approximate distributed SDP-based SE algorithm is proposed by performing: 1) a decomposition of the large power grid networks into much smaller clusters where extensive information exchange is not needed; and 2) by performing a Lagrangian dual decomposition-based computation and message-passing within each cluster. The accuracy of the SDP-based distributed algorithm is illustrated by comparing the results to those obtained using the SDP-based SE estimator. Advantages of the SDP-based methods when compared to today's AC power flow based SE are illustrated by showing numerical problems experienced when using the IEEE test systems.
Broadcasting efficient opportunistic network coding for multisource-multidestination scenarios

Network coding across multicast transmission can significantly reduce the number of retransmissions for wireless broadcasting. However, most of the existing network coding schemes for these scenarios base on the assumption that each source has priori knowledge of the others, which restricts the application of network coding seriously. In this paper, we propose a multi-relay opportunistic network coding (MR-OPP-NC) scheme for multisource-multidestination (MSMD) broadcasting scenarios without the above mentioned assumption. In specific, a joint network coding and opportunistic selected scheme is designed in decode-and-forward strategy. Simulation results show that the MR-OPP-NC scheme proposed outperforms the pure opportunistic relaying scheme in delay performance.
Blind channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems with repeated time-domain symbols

Cyclic prefix (CP), virtual carriers (VCs), and multiple receive antennas are conventionally used to construct the required signal and noise subspaces for subspace-based blind channel estimation approaches in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Different to the conventional approaches, this paper proposes a subspace-based blind channel estimation approach with repeated time-domain symbols. A new signal model can then be developed to generate the required noise subspace for channel estimation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed subspace-based blind channel estimation method outperforms the approach with VCs in terms of normalized mean-squared error (NMSE) under the same transmission rate.
A Neuro Fuzzy Algorithm to Compute Software Effort Estimation

Software Effort Estimation is highly important and considered to be a primary activity in software project management. The accurate estimates are conducted in the development of business case in the earlier stages of project management. This accurate prediction helps the investors and customers to identify the total investment and schedule of the project. The project developers define process to estimate the effort more accurately with the available mythologies using the attributes of the project. The algorithmic estimation models are very simple and reliable but not so accurate. The categorical datasets cannot be estimated using the existing techniques. Also the attributes of effort estimation are measured in linguistic values which may leads to confusion. This paper looks in to the accuracy and reliability of a non-algorithmic approach based on adaptive neuro fuzzy logic in the problem of effort estimation. The performance of the proposed method demonstrates that there is a accurate substantiation of the outcomes with the dataset collected from various projects. The results were compared for its accuracy using MRE and MMRE as the metrics. The research idea in the proposed model for effort estimation is based on project domain and attribute which incorporates the model with more competence in augmenting the crux of neural network to exhibit the advances in software estimation.
Evaluation of Approaches for Dimensionality Reduction Applied with Naive Bayes Anti-Spam Filters

There are different approaches able to automatically detect e-mail spam messages, and the best-known ones are based on Bayesian decision theory. However, the most of these approaches have the same difficulty: the high dimensionality of the feature space. Many term selection methods have been proposed in the literature. Nevertheless, it is still unclear how the performance of naive Bayes anti-spam filters depends on the methods applied for reducing the dimensionality of the feature space. In this paper, we compare the performance of most popular methods used as term selection techniques, such as document frequency, information gain, mutual information, X 2 statistic, and odds ratio used for reducing the dimensionality of the term space with four well-known different versions of naive Bayes spam filter.
Methodology of Sodium Sensitivity Assessment The Example of Age and Sex

This article addresses the methodology of sodium sensitivity assessment There have been reports to suggest that a high sodium intake is a cause of elevated blood pressure and trials to indicate that a reduction in sodium intake may reduce blood pressure that is already high; the implications of these findings are discussed. Many studies on sodium sensitivity suffer from what could be called the "normal probability fallacy"; without appropriate control conditions, an intervention such as sodium restriction may incorrectly be assigned to a more pronounced response in a subgroup of the study population. As an example, findings are reviewed of age and sex as determinants of a response of blood pressure to variations in sodium intake. The limited data available suggest that subjects that are older and have higher blood pressure levels seem to benefit more from a reduction in sodium intake. In addition, elderly subjects at a high dietary sodium intake may have a higher risk of developing hypertension. Findings in both honexperimental and experimental studies tend to support this view. Findings on sex differences are less consistent A systematic approach to the assessment of factors and mechanisms responsible for sodium sensitivity in some subjects is needed to determine who might benefit most Until more data are available, there is little basis to discriminate sodium-sensitive from sodium-resistant hypertensive subjects.
Are mother–child similarities in value orientations related to mothers' parenting? A comparative study of American and Romanian mothers and their adolescent children

The current study investigated similarities between mothers' and their adolescent children's individualistic and collectivistic values by analysing data from 337 American mother–adolescent dyads and 100 Romanian mother–adolescent dyads. The two countries differ in the degree of socioeconomic and political changes as well as quality of intergenerational relationships, therefore differences in the extent of shared values between mothers and adolescents were expected. Similarities in value orientations between mothers and adolescents may be a result of actual transmission processes, but it may also be due to influences from the general value context in their society, an aspect often called Zeitgeist influence or cultural stereotype. Adolescents' perception of maternal parenting behaviours was hypothesized to moderate the similarities between mothers and adolescents. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that collectivistic values were transmitted more than individualistic values and that stronger value similarities were found within biological dyads compared to randomly assigned dyads or within the peer group. Additionally, maternal acceptance and control moderated the similarities between mothers and adolescents, and associations between perceived maternal parenting and adolescents' values were revealed.
Comparative cranial ontogeny of Tapirus (Mammalia: Perissodactyla: Tapiridae)

Skull morphology in tapirs is particularly interesting due to the presence of a proboscis with important trophic, sensory and behavioral functions. Several studies have dealt with tapir skull osteology but chiefly in a comparative framework between fossil and recent species of tapirs. Only one study examined an aspect of cranial ontogeny, development of the sagittal crest (Holbrook. J Zool Soc Lond 2002; 256; 215). Our goal is to describe in detail the morphological changes that occur during the postnatal ontogeny of the skull in two representative tapir species, Tapirus terrestris and Tapirus indicus, and to explore possible functional consequences of their developmental trajectories. We compared qualitative features of the skull on a growth series of 46 specimens of T. terrestris ordered on the basis of the sequence of eruption and tooth wear, dividing the sample into three age classes: class Y (very young juvenile), class J (from young juvenile to young adult) and class A (full and old adult). The qualitative morphological analysis consisted of describing changes in the series in each skull bone and major skull structure, including the type and degree of transformation (e.g. appearance, fusion) of cranial features (e.g. processes, foramina) and articulations (sutures, synchondroses, and synovial joints). We then measured 23 cranial variables in 46 specimens of T. terrestris that included the entire ontogenetic series from newborn to old adults. We applied statistical multivariate techniques to describe allometric growth, and compared the results with the allometric trends calculated for a sample of 25 specimens of T. indicus. Results show that the skull structure was largely conserved throughout the postnatal ontogeny in T. terrestris, so class Y was remarkably similar to class A in overall shape, with the most significant changes localized in the masticatory apparatus, specifically the maxillary tuber as a support of the large‐sized permanent postcanine dentition, and correlated changes in diastemata, mandibular body, and sagittal and nuchal crests. In the nasal region, ontogenetic remodeling affected the space for the meatal diverticulum and the surfaces for the origin of the proboscis musculature. Overall, ontogenetic trajectories exhibited more negative allometric components in T. indicus than in T. terrestris, and they shared 47.83% of allometric trends. Tapirus indicus differed most significantly from T. terrestris in the allometry of postcanine toothrows, diastemata and mandibular body. Thus, some allometric trends seem to be highly conserved among the species studied, and the changes observed showed a strong functional and likely adaptive basis in this lineage of ungulates.
Big Data Analytics for System Stability Evaluation Strategy in the Energy Internet

With the significant improvements in the Energy Internet, we have witnessed the explosion of multisource energy big data, whose characteristics of vast volume, fast velocity, and diverse variety not only formulate an essential infrastructure of the Energy Internet, but also bring threats to the system's stability. In this paper, we concern with the system-level stability issues in the Energy Internet and study how to maintain a stable and healthy energy network environment. To this end, we propose a system-level stability evaluation model in the Energy Internet based on a critical energy function to explore small disturbance stability region (SDSR), where SDSR can be acquired via estimating the operational data threshold of distributed generations. The threshold is estimated based on energy consumption rather than equilibrium nodes, which applies the energy function theory and reduces the computation complexity. Moreover, in our proposed model, we add the big data approximate analytics algorithm into hyperplane fitting to optimize and analyze the SDSR. Simulation results on SDSR in a single dominant oscillation mode and multiple dominant oscillation mode have demonstrated the advantages and superiority of our proposed method over the prior schemes.