Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic measurements of tyre/road noise

The main contributing components of road traffic noise include noise from the tyre-road interaction; car transmission noise; engine noise; exhaust system noise; and intake system noise. Over the years considerable reductions in traffic noise have been achieved with respect to reducing engine and exhaust noise via Australian Design Rules. Tyre-road interaction noise is the dominant traffic noise source for speeds above 40-50 kilometres per hour for cars and 60-70 kilometres per hour for trucks. Tyre-road noise under most conditions is the dominant contributing factor to road traffic noise and therefore has been the focus of many studies and ongoing design of quiet, hush, low-noise pavements/road surface finishes. The option of low noise generating road surfaces becomes important if, for example, it either obviates the need to erect noise barriers, or the effective height of noise barriers can be substantially reduced. This reduces visual impact as well as other amenity issues associated with light and airflow. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214666.
Specific Detection of Viable Salmonella Cells by an Ethidium Monoazide-Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (EMA-LAMP) Method

The persistence of DNA after the cell death causes a major issue in aspects of medical or biological studies. The signal from viable bacterial cells cannot be distinguished from the dead cells in the conventional DNA-based detection methods. In the present study, the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method combined with the ethidium monoazide (EMA) treatment was applied for specific detection of viable, but not dead, Salmonella cells. For this method (EMA-LAMP), we designed a series of primers, which recognize six distinct sequences of the target invA gene conserved in Salmonella. The invA gene of the viable cells was remarkably amplified within 1 hr when as small amounts as 100 fg of DNA was subjected to EMA-LAMP. Because EMA selectively penetrated into the dead cells and bound covalently to DNA, the gene of the dead cells could not be amplified. This study offers a novel DNA-based method to distinguish the viable bacterial cells from the dead cells.
A Static Robustness Grid Using MISRA C2 Language Rules

Program robustness is the ability of software to behave correctly under stress. Measuring program robustness allows programmers to find the program’s vulnerable points, repair them, and avoid similar mistakes in the future. In this paper, a Robustness Grid will be introduced as a program robustness measuring technique. A Robustness Grid is a table that contains rules classified into categories, with respect to a program’s function names and calculates robustness degree. The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) rules will be used as the basis for the robustness measurement mechanism. In the Robustness Grid, for every MISRA rule a score will be given to a function every time it satisfies or breaches a rule. The Robustness Grid shows how much each part of the program is robust, and assists developers to measure and evaluate robustness degree for each part of a program. Keywords-Robustness; Robustness Grid; MISRA C2.
Evaluation of Antimicrobial Herbs from Nekemte District against Wound Causing Bacterial Pathogens

Many infectious microorganisms are resistant or multi exert side effects to human health. In traditional medicines, a wide range of plants are used in the treatment of wounds and other diseases. The wound healing poten some medicinal plant were traditionally used for wound treatment against wound infecting bacteria, was assessed using disc diffusion and agar well diffusion. The traditional medicinal plants were extracted using diethyl ether, methanol and water tested for their antimicrobial activities against clinically isolated bacterial that are known by attacking wound infection. All the extracts had antimicrobial activities, among which methanol extract was highly reactive all the tested organisms compar ether and aqueous extracts. Crude extracts of ferugunea (bark), B. antidyscenatrica (root), A.Rich. (root) showed various degrees of antimicrobial activity towards each standard and drug resistant microbial pathogen with mean zone of inhibition ranging from 8 mm against multidrug resistant E.coli and P.aueroginosa respectively crude extracts, methanol extract of carissa edulis inhibition 10mm against E. coli while others did not show any inhibition zone against it. The potential antibacterial activity of this medicinal plant against both gram gram-negative bacteria justifies the use of the plants as the wound healing agent. The isolation of active principle of this plant may serve as a source and lead for the synthesis of either better or novel drugs in pharmaceutical industries. Copyright@2015 STAR Journal
Social and legal approach to ancient rural family: experience of different cultures and countries

Annotation Family is one of the oldest public institutions, in which priests, medics and lawyers have showed an interest throughout the history. However in the earliest historical signs of humans one can find psychological attempts to affect a family’s prosperity and compatibility. The present work tries to carry out a brief exposition of the evolution of ancient rural families from a social and legal scope as well as the most relevant characters of the family and marriage institutions in a comparative perspective, studying different conceptions and requirements of law of marriage (basically the consent of the couple) and the influence of the religion on them. It is also made an exposition of the most relevant examples of nowadays legislations and their common legal background as well as the more important differences among the different legislations included in the study.
Is energy consumption per capita stationary? Evidence from first and second generation panel unit root tests

This paper investigates the unit root properties of energy consumption per capita of 103 high, middle and low income countries using first and second generation panel unit root tests. Our results indicate that energy consumption per capita contains stationary process in all groups of countries. This suggests that short run energy policies should be followed to sustain economic growth and to fulfill energy demand.
Electron Microscopic Study on Selected Fungal Infected Organs of Rainbow Trout and Indian Hill Trout Scanning from Central Himalaya

In the present study, fungal infected and healthy adult rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) and Indian hill trout ( Barilius bendelisis ) were examined under scanning electron microscope to investigate the pathological alterations in gill, fin, skin and eye. The gill lamellae of infected rainbow trout were found ruptured and showed structural disorganization with fusion of respiratory lamellae and reduced interlamellar space. The eyes were found to be completely covered with mycelium. Descaling, scale erosion, abrasion of the skin and sloughing off epithelium was noticed in infected fish. The fins were found to be invaded by fungal hyphae and mycelium covered the fin epidermis. Moreover, the epithelial structure of fins was lost. In conclusion, fungi primarily infected all the boundary tissues which resulted in pathological alterations and eventual mortalities.
Extramedullary Hematopoiesis of the Renal Pelvis in a Patient With Myelofibrosis.

A 57-year-old man with CALR -mutated myelo ﬁ brosis presented to our institution with new-onset fatigue and abdominal swelling. Physical exam was notable for hepatomegaly 5 cm below the right costal margin and splenomegaly 10 cm below the left costal margin. His laboratory tests revealed a white blood cell count of 0.6 K/ m L, a hemoglobin level of 6.5 g/dL, and a platelet count of 72 K/ m L. There were 28% circulating mye-loblasts in the peripheral blood. The patient was admitted for more evaluation of his pancytopenia and hepatosplenomegaly. A computed tomography (CT) scan demonstrated marked hepatosplenomegaly (Fig 1A); bilateral, enhancing perinephric soft tissue thickening that involved the pelvicalyceal urothelium and proximal ureters; and subsequent mild bilateral hydronephrosis without parenchymal invasion, suspicious for extramedullary hematopoiesis (Fig 1B). To better elucidate the nature of the enhanced perinephric soft tissue, a technetium-99m ( 99m Tc) sulfur colloid scan was performed. The 99m Tc sulfur colloid scan revealed uptake in the liver greater than the spleen and in the bilateral soft tissue thickening of the pelvicalyceal urothelium, proximal ureters, or perinephric soft tissue thickening. Multiple urine specimens were negative for carcinoma or infection. A transcutaneous not uretero-scopy
Dominant Hand Usage in Racket Sports and Detection of the Injured Regions

The aim of this study is to examine dominant hand usage and detect the injury regions in racket sports. A total of 98 athletes, of which 37 (37.8%) are female, 61 (62.2%) are male, studying at 11 different universities and attending competitions with schools teams with an average age of 21.11±1.66, height of 1.71±0.08 cm, weight of 64.92±10.85 kg, and BMI of 22.00±2.41(kg/m2) have participated in the study. When it comes to the distribution of the athletes by branches, the sample consists of 22 table tennis players, 24 badminton players, 25 tennis players and 27 squash players. The "Edinburgh Inventory Hand Preference Survey" was used as a data collection tool to determine the hand preferences of the athletes. In the determination of sports injuries suffered by athletes, the Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire was administered. There are significant differences between the lefty and righty athletes in terms of injuries in the left shoulder, left wrist and right lower leg regions when the injury regions in racket sports are compared by hand preferences (p<0.05). It is seen that the injuries that occur in right forearm, left wrist and the right upper leg regions of the athletes of racket sports differ according to branches (p<0.05). When the injury regions are examined according to hand preferences, it is seen that the injuries in the left shoulder, left wrist and lower right leg regions occur more in lefty athletes in comparison to righty athletes. When the relationship between the injury region regions and sports branches is examined, it can be argued that table tennis players suffer more frequent injuries in the left wrist compared to the players of other branches.
The Effect of Wavelet Pair Choice in the Compression of the Satellite Images

The effect of wavelet pair choice in the compression of the satellite images is studied. There is a trade-off between compression rate and perception quality. The encoding ratio is used to express the compression rate, and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) is also used for the perceptional performance. The PSNR and the encoding ratio are not matched well for the images with various wavelet pairs, but the tendency is remarkable. It is hard to find the pattern of PSNR for sampled images. On the other hand, there is a pattern of the variation range of the encoding ratio for each image. The satellite images have larger values of the encoding ratio than those of nature images (close range images). Depending on the wavelet pairs, the PSNR and the encoding ratio vary as much as 13.2 to 21.6% and 16.8 to 45.5%, respectively for each image. For Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images the encoding ratio varies from 16 to 20% while for the nature images it varies more than 40% depending on the choice of wavelet pairs. The choice of wavelet for the compression affects the nature images more than the satellite images. With the indices such as the PSNR and the encoding ratio, the satellite images are less sensitive to the choice of wavelet pairs. A new index, energy concentration ratio (ECR) is proposed to investigate the effect of wavelet choice on the satellite image compression. It also shows that the satellite images are less sensitive than the nature images. Nevertheless, the effect of wavelet choice on the satellite image compression varies at least 10% for all three kinds of indices. However, the important of choice of wavelet pairs cannot be ignored.
Mobile multi-scale vehicle detector and its application in traffic surveillance

Object detection is a major problem in computer vision. Recently, deep neural architectures have shown a dramatic boost in performance, but they are often too slow and burdensome for embedded and real-time applications such as video surveillance. In this paper, we describe a new object detection architecture that is faster than state-of-the-art detectors while improving the performance of small mobile models. Moreover, we apply this new architecture into the problem of vehicle detection, which is central to traffic surveillance systems. In more detail, our architecture uses an efficient backbone network in MobileNetV2, whose building blocks consist of depthwise convolutional layers. On top of this network, we build a feature pyramid using separable layers so that the model can detect objects at many scales. We train this network with smooth localization loss and weighted softmax loss in tandem with hard negative mining. Both training and test sets are built from recorded videos of Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang traffic or selected from DETRAC dataset. The experimental results show that our proposed solution can still achieve an mAP of 75% on the test set while using only around 3.4 million parameters and running at 100ms per image on a cheap machine.
Preparation and enhanced photocatalytic performance of one‐dimensional ZnO nanorods

One dimensional (1D) ZnO nanorods were successfully synthesized via a facile solution route by refluxing their acetate precursors in diethylene glycol medium at 160°C. The as‐prepared ZnO nanorods were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Experimental results demonstrated that the resultant products showed a 1D rod‐like hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure with diameters of about 5 nm and lengths of up to 100–200 nm. A possible growth mechanism of ZnO nanorods was tentatively proposed. Photocatalytic measurements demonstrated that the as‐prepared ZnO nanorods showed higher photocatalytic activities than the commercial photocatalyst TiO2 P25 nanoparticles. In addition, the effect of solution pH values and initial solution concentrations on the photocatalytic activities of as‐prepared ZnO nanorods was also evaluated. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 74–80, 2015
Some pros and cons of six sigma: an academic perspective

Six sigma is a powerful business strategy that employs a disciplined approach to tackle process variability using the application of statistical and non-statistical tools and techniques in a rigorous manner. This paper examines the pros and cons of six sigma in a detailed manner. This is followed by a section about the future of six sigma and its links to statistical thinking. It is believed that, although the total package may change, the applications of six sigma will continue to grow in the forthcoming years, due to the existence of sound principles of statistical thinking within the six sigma strategy.
How R & D and tax incentives influence economic growth : Econometric study for the period between 1995 and FEP WORKING

Setting targets to increase the levels of R&D, a co mp nent that is present in the political and economic agendas of the European Member States with the promotion of active tax policies, suggests that it is possible for R&D to c ause an impact on economic growth. This research work aims at understanding the influe ce of the evolution of R&D expenditures, as well as the influence of tax incen tiv s on economic growth. For that, a panel data of 15 European countries, during the per iod between 1995 and 2008, was used. The econometric study confirms the foreseen i mportance, both in this study and in the literature, of the countries’ R&D efforts and t heir impact on economic growth. The positive effect of tax incentives on economic growt h, combined with R&D levels, is highlighted and demonstrated, thus confirming a str ategic orientation towards tax policies followed by the national institutions.
Use of electronic medical records to describe general practitioner antibiotic prescribing patterns

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The computerised medical records of general practice patients can inform our understanding of antibiotic prescribing and assist in antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). The aim of this study was to describe Australian general practitioner (GP) antibiotic prescribing patterns using data extracted from electronic medical records (EMR). METHOD A descriptive analysis of patient records from 44 general practices, between 2010 and 2014, in the eastern region of metropolitan Melbourne was undertaken. RESULTS Of the 615,362 antibiotic prescriptions, cefalexin, amoxicillin–clavulanic acid, roxithromycin, doxycycline and clarithromycin were the most frequently prescribed antibiotics. Except for cefalexin, prescribing rates of the antibiotics increased in winter. Of 472,197 patients consulting a GP in one of these practices, 34.8% received an antibiotic at some point over the five years. There was a higher rate of prescribing per consultation in patients aged <20 years. DISCUSSION This study shows that it is possible to examine EMR for antibiotic prescriptions, and that a descriptive analysis can identify AMS targets.
3D Reconstruction Using a Stereo Vision System with Simplified Inter-Camera Geometry

This thesis addresses the relationship between camera configuration and 3D Euclidean reconstruction. Simulations have been conducted and have shown that when error is present, the larger rotation angle, the worse the reconstruction quality. When rotation is avoided, errors in the intrinsic parameters do not affect the 3D reconstruction in a significant way. Therefore, it is suggested to minimize or avoid rotation when constructing a stereo vision system. Once this configuration is applied, inaccurate intrinsic parameters, even without the prior information of intrinsic parameters, can also yield good reconstruction quality. The configuration of pure translation also provides a framework, which can be used to compute elements of intrinsic parameters with an additional geometry constraint. The perpendicular constraint is selected as an example. Focal length can be recovered from this constraint by assuming the principal point is the centre of the image.
Spatial and seasonal distributions of carbonaceous aerosols over China

[1] Simultaneous measurements of atmospheric organic and elemental carbon (OC and EC) were taken during winter and summer seasons at 2003 in 14 cities in China. Daily PM2.5 samples were analyzed for OC and EC by the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) thermal/optical reflectance protocol. Average PM2.5 OC concentrations in the 14 cities were 38.1 μg m−3 and 13.8 μg m−3 for winter and summer periods, and the corresponding EC were 9.9 μg m−3 and 3.6 μg m−3, respectively. OC and EC concentrations had summer minima and winter maxima in all the cities. Carbonaceous matter (CM), the sum of organic matter (OM = 1.6 × OC) and EC, contributed 44.2% to PM2.5 in winter and 38.8% in summer. OC was correlated with EC (R2: 0.56–0.99) in winter, but correlation coefficients were lower in summer (R2: 0.003–0.90). Using OC/EC enrichment factors, the primary OC, secondary OC and EC accounted for 47.5%, 31.7% and 20.8%, respectively, of total carbon in Chinese urban environments. More than two thirds of China's urban carbon is derived from directly emitted particles. Average OC/EC ratios ranged from 2.0 to 4.7 among 14 cities during winter and from 2.1 to 5.9 during summer. OC/EC ratios in this study were consistent with a possible cooling effect of carbonaceous aerosols over China.
Graphical illustration for explaining mass spectrum fingerprinting in microbial identification

Pattern recognition is commonly used for identifying an unknown entity from a set of known objects curated in a database – and find use in various applications such as fingerprint matching and microbial identification. Whether matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) or electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI MS/MS), mass spectrometry is increasingly used in identifying microbes in the research and clinical settings via speciesor strain-specific mass spectrum signatures. Although the existence of unique biomarkers such as ribosomal proteins underpins mass spectrometry-based microbial identification, absence of corresponding genome or proteome information in publicly accessible databases for a large fraction of extant microbes significantly hamper biomarker (and species) assignment. Nevertheless, the reproducible generation of species-specific mass spectrum across different growth and environmental conditions opens up the possibility of identifying unknown PeerJ PrePrints | https://dx.doi. org/10.7287/peerj.preprints. 580v2 | CC-BY 4.0 Open Access | rec: 21 Sep 2015, publ: 21 Sep 2015 P re P rin ts
The Political Economy of Pro-Poor Growth

Can the PRSP process enhance pro-poor growth in developing countries? This question is addressed in a politico-economic framework considering political distortions both on the recipient and on the donor side. It turns out that PRSP processes can be a very useful tool to enhance pro-poor growth and to raise the welfare of the poor. This is the case if the international aid organizations have all necessary information to assess the political situation in recipient countries and to select the true representatives of the poor into the process. If they do not hold this information or if bureaucratic interests and public pressure reduce their incentive to obtain or use this information, PRSPs lose their effectiveness in achieving the desired objective.
Genetic structure of European flounder Platichthys flesus: effects of both the southern limit of the species' range and chemical stress

The genetic structure of European flounder Platichthys flesus populations was analysed in the southern part of the species' distribution area, from England to Portugal; samples were collected in 5 estuaries which were chosen because of their latitudinal cline, the level of contaminants and the possibility of hypoxia: the Tamar in England; the Canche, Seine and Vilaine in France; and the Mondego in Portugal. Analysing the variability of a mitochondrial marker (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1), we observed (1) a moderately higher nucleotide diversity in the Tamar and Canche, reflecting the probable existence of a major refugium in this sector during the last glacial maximum, and (2) a reduced genetic differentiation over the whole data set. The use of 8 microsatellites underlined the maintenance of genetic diversity in the peripheral population of the Mondego, located near the southern limit of the species' range; furthermore, significant pairwise differentiations of populations including Mondego underlined the particular genetic status of this Portuguese population. The polymorphism of a candidate gene involved in energetic metabolism, AMP-desaminase isoform 1, was investigated focusing on exon 1; we found the highest heterozygosities in the more polluted populations (Seine, Tamar) and marked differentiations compared to the other group of populations (Mondego, Vilaine, Canche). The pattern of variability observed for the AMP-desaminase suggests that in chronically contaminated flounder populations, cocktails of pollutants act as selective agents directly or indirectly on this locus.