Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Video occupant detection for airbag deployment

When an airbag deploys on a rear-facing infant seat, it can injure or kill the infant. When an airbag deploys on an empty seat, the airbag and the money to replace it are wasted. We have shown that video images can be used to determine whether or not to deploy the passenger-side airbag in a crash. Images of the passenger seat, taken from a video camera mounted inside the vehicle, can be used to classify the seat as either empty, containing a rear-facing infant seat, or occupied. Our first experiment used a single, monochrome video camera. The system was automatically trained on a series of test images. Using a principle components (eigenimages) nearest neighbor classifier, it achieved a correct classification rate of 99.5% on a test of 910 images. Our second experiment used a pair of monochrome video cameras to compute stereo disparity (a function of 3D range) instead of intensity images. Using a similar algorithm, the second approach achieved a correct classification rate of 95.1% on a test of 890 images. The stereo technique has the advantage of being less sensitive to illumination, and would likely work best in a real system.
Automatic voice disorder classification using vowel formants

In this paper, we propose an automatic voice disorder classification system using first two formants of vowels. Five types of voice disorder, namely, cyst, GERD, paralysis, polyp and sulcus, are used in the experiments. Spoken Arabic digits from the voice disordered people are recorded for input. First formant and second formant are extracted from the vowels [Fatha] and [Kasra], which are present in Arabic digits. These four features are then used to classify the voice disorder using two types of classification methods: vector quantization (VQ) and neural networks. In the experiments, neural network performs better than VQ. For female and male speakers, the classification rates are 67.86% and 52.5%, respectively, using neural networks. The best classification rate, which is 78.72%, is obtained for female sulcus disorder.
Body area networks: A survey

Body Area Networks are an effective solution for communication in ubiquitous health systems. BAN's can be applied into fields of military, defense, telecomm etc. Such networks are thus being researched to provide better routing techniques in and around the body. This paper discusses architecture of BAN along with the requirements and challenges. Various routing protocols available are discussed in section V. Various routing algorithms are discussed with their limitations and advantages.
Stress model and strain energy release rate of a prescribed crack in scarf joint/repair of composite panels

An analytical model for stress distribution was derived and an analytical model for determining the strain energy release rate of a prescribed crack in a scarf joint or a bonded scarf repair of a composite panel was developed. The crack closure method was used to calculate the strain energy release rate at the crack tip after a prescribed crack was inserted at high adhesive stress locations. In the stress model, the first-order laminated plate theory was applied to the composite panels, including the following: (1) scarfed parent substrate and corresponding repair panel for a bonded scarf repair or (2) both adherend panels for a scarf joint, assuming a linear elastic adhesive. The bondline was presumed to be thin, so the adhesive stresses were presumed to be uniform through the thickness. The coupled second-order differential equations obtained via kinematics and force equilibrium were solved semi-numerically using the symbolic computational tool Maple. Finite element analyses using the commercial software ABAQUS™ were conducted for comparison purposes, and results correlated well with the developed analytical model. Experimental strain data of the bonded scarf repairs was also used to verify the developed model. It can be seen that the highest adhesive stresses occur at locations where high-stiffness plies are discontinued. The obtained strain energy release rate can be used for failure analysis if appropriate critical energy release rates in conjunction with proper mode mixture rule are used.
A Two-Point Boundary-Value Approach for Planning Manipulation Tasks

We consider the problem of planning manipulation tasks in which rigid body dynamics are significant and the rigid bodies undergo frictional contacts. We develop a dynamic model with frictional compliant contacts, and a time-stepping algorithm that lends itself to finding trajectories with constraints on the starting and goal conditions. Because we explicitly model the local compliance at the contact points, we can incorporate impacts without resetting the states and reinitializing the dynamic models. The problem of solving for the frictional forces with the Coulomb friction cone law reduces to a convex quadratic program. We show how this formulation can be used to solve boundary value problems that are relevant to process design, design optimization and trajectory planning with practical examples. To our knowledge, this paper is the first time boundary value problems involving changes in contact conditions have been solved in a systematic way.
Seasonal Variation in Volatile Oil, Polyphenol Content and Antioxidant Activity in Extract of Laurus nobilis Grown in Iran

The leaves of Laurus nobilis were collected in the middle of four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) to determine the best harvesting time for obtaining the highest oil yield, 1,8-cineole and polyphenol content and antioxidant activity. After drying the plant materials in shade, their EOs (essential oils) were obtained by hydro-distillation method. Analysis of variance showed harvesting time had significant effect on the oil yields of L. nobilis. Seventy one components were identified in the oils of L. nobilis with 1, 8-cineole (5.7%-terpinyl acetate (3.2%-13.1%), sabinene (2.3%-12.0%), beta-elemene (0.2%-17.7%) and (E)-caryophyllene (0.2%-16.9%) as the main constituents in different seasons. The predominant phenolic constituents in L. nobilis were cinnamic acid, carvacrol, quercetin and coumarin, respectively. Gallic acid, catechin, caffeic acid, chloregenic acid, p-Comaric acid and rutin were not detected in any seasons. The best antioxidant activity was in spring (268.6 μg/mL) and the lowest one was in winter (702.1 μg/mL).
Keratinocyte Growth Factor Induces Expansion of Murine Peripheral CD4+Foxp3+ Regulatory T Cells and Increases Their Thymic Output1

Keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) has been shown to reduce the incidence and severity of graft-versus-host disease by prevention of epithelial damage and by modulating alloreactivity. Since regulatory T cells (Treg) play a crucial role in immune modulation, we evaluated the effects of exogenous KGF on peripheral CD4+Foxp3+ Treg and the generation of Treg in the thymus of normal mice. A 3-day course of KGF induced a rapid selective increase in the number of highly suppressive CD4+Foxp3+ Treg. Blood Treg numbers remained elevated for >2 mo, but the frequency normalized after 2 wk due to a concomitant increase in CD4+Foxp3− T cells. Analysis of single joint TCR excision circles frequency and Ki-67 expression in peripheral blood Treg showed that the early selective increase of Treg was predominantly accounted for by peripheral expansion. Thymectomy before KGF administration did not affect the early selective increase of Treg but abrogated the late increase in CD4+ T cell numbers, thereby showing its dependence on thymic output. Collectively, these results show that KGF induces an increase in blood CD4+Foxp3+ Treg numbers via two independent mechanisms. First by selective peripheral expansion of Treg and thereafter by enhanced thymic output of newly developed Treg.
Major histocompatibility complex class I genes in primates: co‐evolution with pathogens

Summary: The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is the most polymorphic genetic system known, playing a central role in the cellular immune response to pathogens. The relationship between the MHC of humans and non‐human primates has increased our understanding of MHC evolution and how polymorphism of this gene family may have been generated. We will review MHC class I evolution in great apes and Old World and New World primates and discuss new data from the simian immunodeficiency virus/rhesus monkey animal model that demonstrate the role of MHC class I alleles in selecting for new populations of viruses. This suggests that certain pathogens co‐evolve with the MHC class I molecules they encounter in a population.
Competing in New Markets and the Search for a Viable Business Model

Prior research has examined how firms compete effectively in established markets. The current study investigates new markets and traces the activities of entrepreneurial rivals as they search for a business model. Through an in-depth, longitudinal field study of five firms in the online investing market, I induce a theoretical framework to explain how firms win the race to develop a viable business model. As the new market emerged, high performing firms enacted three strategies in sequence, which helped them get to a business model quickly and efficiency. First, executives attended to substitutes and copied from rivals. Next, they actively tested assumptions and made major resource commitments to the business model identified as most lucrative. Finally, they maintained loose links in the organizational activity system to accommodate emergent sources of value. Overall, the nature of competition among the entrepreneurial firms resembled neither intense rivalry nor collective action but rather a form of inte.
Writer identification by training on one script but testing on another

This paper deals with identifying a writer from his/her offline handwriting. In a multilingual country where a writer can scribe in multiple scripts, writer identification becomes challenging when we have individual handwriting data in one script while we need to verify/identify a writer from handwriting in another script. In this paper such an issue is addressed with two scripts: English and Bengali. Here we model the task as a classification problem, where training data contains only Bengali handwritten samples and testing is performed on English handwritten texts. This work is based on the understanding that a writer has some inherent stroke characteristics that are independent of the script in which (s)he writes. In this work, some implicit structural and statistical features are extracted, and multiple classifiers are employed for writer identification. Many training sessions are run on a database of 100 writers and the performances are analyzed. We have obtained encouraging results on this database, which show the effectiveness of our method.
A Cystic Fibrosis Epidemic Strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Displays Enhanced Virulence and Antimicrobial Resistance

ABSTRACT The Liverpool epidemic strain (LES) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a transmissible aggressive pathogen of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. We compared transcriptome profiles of two LES isolates with each other and with a laboratory and genetic reference strain (PAO1) after growth to late exponential phase and following exposure to oxidative stress. Both LES isolates exhibited enhanced antimicrobial resistances linked to specific mutations in efflux pump genes. Although transcription of AmpC β-lactamase was up-regulated in both, one LES isolate contained a specific mutation rendering the ampC gene untranslatable. The virulence-related quorum-sensing (QS) regulon of LES431, an isolate that caused pneumonia in the non-CF parent of a CF patient, was considerably up-regulated in comparison to either isolate LES400, associated with a chronic CF infection, or strain PAO1. Premature activation of QS genes was detected in isolates from both non-CF parents and the CF patient in a previously reported infection episode. LES isolates lacking the up-regulated QS phenotype contained different frameshift mutations in lasR. When fed to Drosophila melanogaster, isolate LES431 killed the fruit flies more readily than either isolate LES400 or strain PAO1, indicating that virulence varies intraclonally. The LES may represent a clone with enhanced virulence and antimicrobial resistance characteristics that can vary or are lost due to mutations during long-term colonization but have contributed to the successful spread of the lineage throughout the CF population of the United Kingdom.
Total Quality Management and Corporate Failure in Nigeria

The problem of corporate failure has continued to be of serious concern to academicians and practitioners, the world over. Of all the identified causal factors, management related factors are generally considered predominant. The search for management system that can effectively address the problem of corporate failure has led to the current interest of researchers and practitioners in total quality management (TQM). Research findings on the relationship between TQM and corporate performance have remained controversial across national boundaries and inconclusive in Nigeria. This paper investigated the relationship between identified critical success factors (CSFs) of TQM and elements of corporate performance in Nigeria, using Pearson product moment correlation technique in a 6-3 factorial design. The results of the factorial analysis showed positive and significantly high inter and intra-factorial correlation coefficient (r) among the CSFs of TQM and elements of corporate performance at p < 0.05. The hypotheses were tested by t- transformation of the correlation coefficient ( r). The results showed that implementation of the critical success factors of TQM will lead to enhanced return on investment, increase in asset base and greater market share of business organizations, and thus avert corporate failure in Nigeria.
A comparison of three fission yeast mitochondrial genomes.

The fission yeasts are members of the fungal order Schizosaccharomycetales, a candidate deep-diverging group within Ascomycota. Although a great deal of molecular information is available from Schizosaccharomyces pombe, a model eukaryote, very little is available from other members of this group. In order to better characterize mitochondrial genome evolution in this fungal lineage, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of two additional fission yeasts, Schizosaccharomyces octosporus and Schizosaccharomyces japonicus var. japonicus, was sequenced. Whereas the mtDNA of S.pombe is only 19 431 bp, the mtDNA of S.octosporus is 44 227 bp, and that of S.japonicus var. japonicus is over 80 kb. The size variation of these mtDNAs is due largely to non-coding regions. The gene content in the latter two mtDNAs is almost identical to that of the completely sequenced S.pombe mtDNA, which encodes 25 tRNA species, the large and small mitochondrial ribosomal RNAs (rnl and rns), the RNA component of mitochondrial RNaseP (rnpB), mitochondrial small subunit ribosomal protein 3 (rps3), cytochrome oxidase subunits 1, 2 and 3 (cox1, cox2 and cox3) and ATP-synthase subunits 6, 8 and 9 (atp6, atp8 and atp9). However, trnI2(cau) (C modified to lysidine) is absent in the S.octosporus mtDNA, as are corresponding ATA codons in its protein-coding genes, and rps3 and rnpB are not found in the mtDNA of S.japonicus var. japonicus. The mtDNA of S.octosporus contains five double hairpin elements, the first report of these elements in an ascomycete. This study provides further evidence in favor of the mobility of these elements, and supports their role in mitochondrial genome rearrangement. The results of our phylogenetic analysis support the monophyly of the Schizosaccharomycetales, but question their grouping within the Archiascomycota.
[Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT)].

Intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is the most advanced form of 3D-CRT. As with medical imaging, its development requires the professional activity of physicists and engineers. Recently IMRT, which uses beam intensity modulation, has been applicable to clinical radiation therapy. In practice, the IMRT plans are usually obtained using inverse planning, which derives a set of intensity-modulated beams by optimizing pre-defined objectives. IMRT has the potential to achieve a much higher degree of target conformity and/or normal tissue sparing than 3D-CRT. This new treatment technique might be very useful for clinical radiation therapy, especially for carcinoma of the head and neck, the breast and the prostate. It presented that sparing the parotid glands translates into objective and subjective improvements of xerostomia in head and neck cancer patients and the reduction of grade 2-3 late radiation morbidity of the rectum or bladder in prostate cancer patients using IMRT. But we see that no definitive studies have conclusively demonstrated the impact of IMRT on improved tumor control and decreased long-term morbidity, nor have any studies demonstrated the superiority of one particular IMRT technique. Brain, pancreas, stomach and cervix carcinoma might also be an indication for this new treatment. Although the instrumentation and methods used for IMRT QA procedures and testing are not yet well established, we have to check the QA procedures at least for machine, patient and planning soft wear. In addition, many fundamental questions regarding IMRT are still unanswered. It is an urgent problem in our radiation oncology community to establish the QA guidelines for IMRT and to have enough supply of manpower of medical physicists to facilities, which use IMRT.
Low Warpage Wafer Level Transfer Molding Post 3D Die to Wafer Assembly

In the broad-spectrum of 3D system integration technologies, stacking of die at wafer level is considered a promising and cost effective platform solution for 3D device and 2.5D interposer assembly. The 3D die-to-wafer (D2W) approach consists of a sequence of processes: D2W stacking, wafer-level die encapsulation ("wafer reconstruction") using e.g. wafer-level molding, Wafer thinning, Through Silicon Via (TSV) reveal and backside passivation, and finally the addition of a redistribution layer (RDL) and bumping or wafer level solder ball attach. The area explored in this paper is the 300mm wafer molding after D2W attachment. A major concern with this approach is the typically large wafer warpage after wafer level molding. This makes post-processing of the reconstructed wafers difficult with standard semiconductor equipment. Typical warpage after wafer molding of 775μm thick silicon combined with equal thickness of 775μm moldcap is around 8 mm. This is due to the large mismatch in coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between the materials. As a result of this large warpage, bonding the reconstructed wafer to a special carrier substrate is required to further process the wafers. This requires additional bonding and debonding equipment as well as several additional processing steps with low added value. In this paper, we will describe two different options to reduce the wafer warpage post molding. The first option is the transfer molding with exposed die. Exposed die molding reduces the amount of mold material as there is no mold compound on top of the die. It will be shown this can effectively reduce the substrate warpage to less than 1.5mm for 300mm diameter wafers. The exposed die configuration can also be used in high power application since heat sinks can be directly attached to the die backside. The second option is the transfer molding of the D2W stack together with an additional balancing wafer. The mold material is injected in a cavity formed by the stacking of the D2W and the balancing wafer. After molding, the resulting wafer warpage of the composite "D2W/W" stack is well below 200μm, compatible with semiconductor process equipment. Also important to note is the temperature independence of the warpage of this balanced stack construction. As in this approach, we can realize a direct contact between the stacked die and the balancing wafer, the balancing wafer will also act as a package-sized heat spreader. In this paper, the feasibility of Wafer Level Packaging using the transfer molding method of D2W assemblies will be demonstrated for thin mold cap, exposed die and balancing wafer approaches. The obtained experimental results are used to validate a theoretical model for predicting wafer warpage post wafer molding.
On Calibration of Three-Axis Magnetometer

Magnetometer has received wide applications in attitude determination and scientific measurements. Calibration is an important step for any practical magnetometer use. The most popular three-axis magnetometer calibration methods are attitude-independent and have been founded on an approximate maximum likelihood (ML) estimation with a quartic subjective function, derived from the fact that the magnitude of the calibrated measurements should be constant in a homogeneous magnetic field. This paper highlights the shortcomings of those popular methods and proposes to use the quadratic optimal ML estimation instead for magnetometer calibration. The simulation and test results show that the optimal ML calibration is superior to the approximate ML methods for magnetometer calibration in both accuracy and stability, especially for those situations without sufficient attitude excitation. The significant benefits deserve the moderately increased computation burden. The main conclusion obtained in the context of magnetometer in this paper is potentially applicable to various kinds of three-axis sensors.
Reducing Emergency Department overcrowding - five patient buffer concepts in comparison

Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding is a common medical care issue in the United States and other developed nations. One major cause of ED crowding are holding patients waiting in the Emergency Room (ER) for inpatient unit admission where they block critical ED resources. With input data from a hospital in Massachusetts/USA, we tested five patient buffer concepts which aim at relieving pressure of the ER. The buffers are also assumed to improve patient and staff satisfaction through their design tailored to needs in patient flow. To ensure patients safety, we performed tests with discrete event simulation in which we discovered `triage to bed time¿ reductions of up to 22% and `diversion hour¿ decreases of up to 24%. All buffers managed to run with significantly less resources than the ER. Our findings have a potential impact on hospital process flow due to clear results which offer substantial improvement of hospital organization.
Atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease: which antithrombotic treatment strategy?

Purpose of review The optimal antithrombotic therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease is controversial. The benefit of the combination of antithrombotic therapies remains debatable, and, as the bleeding risk is substantial, this calls for knowledge of the duration, and which and how many agents should be used. Recent findings The first randomized trial to challenge current recommendations of triple therapy (oral anticoagulation plus clopidogrel plus aspirin) examined patients on warfarin undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention with stent implantation. A reduced risk of any bleeding (hazard ratio 0.36) was found with combination of clopidogrel compared with triple therapy without increasing major cardiovascular events. In real-life patients, a nationwide Danish registry supported these findings, and, relative to triple therapy, no significant difference was found for recurrent myocardial infarction when adding only clopidogrel (hazard ratio 0.69) or aspirin (hazard ratio 0.96) to vitamin K antagonist. However, the latter regimen was associated with significantly increased risk of death. Summary Within 1 year after myocardial infarction and/or percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with atrial fibrillation, current consensus papers endorse use of dual antiplatelet therapy on top of oral anticoagulation. A regimen consisting of oral anticoagulation and clopidogrel (without aspirin) could provide an alternative from a benefit and safety perspective.