Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of H-bridge and T-Bridge Multilevel Inverters for Harmonics Reduction

This paper deals with the design of cascaded 11 level H- bridge inverter. It includes a comparison between the 11 level H-bridge and T-bridge multilevel inverter. The cascaded inverter of higher level is a very effective and practical solution for reduction of total harmonic distortion (THD). These cascaded multilevel inverter can be used for higher voltage applications with more stability. As the level is increased the output waveform becomes more sinusoidal in nature. The inverter is designed using multicarrier sinusoidal pulse width modulation technique for generating triggering pulses for the semiconductor switches used in the device. Through this paper it will be proved that a cascaded multilevel H-bridge topology has higher efficiency than a T-bridge inverter, as whichever source input voltage is provided since input is equal to the output voltage. In T-bridge inverter, the output obtained is half of the applied input, so efficiency is just half as compared to H-bridge. The output waveform is distorted and has higher THD. The simulation is performed using MATLAB /Simulink 2013 software.
Etiology, clinical profile and outcome of acute pancreatitis in a tertiary care teaching hospital in rural South India: a ten year retrospective study

Background: Acute pancreatitis is a complex condition with diverse local and systemic complications, dealt by the surgeons all over the world. There were no previous detailed studies regarding the etiology, clinical profile and outcome of acute pancreatitis in rural Kerala.Methods: This is a hospital based study by retrospective chart analysis of all acute pancreatitis cases from the past 10 years in this tertiary care centre which have clinical/ laboratory/ radiological findings suggestive of acute pancreatitis.Results: Among 436 cases studied 318 (72.9%) were males and 118 (27.1%) were females. Epigastric pain without radiation to the back (51.6%) was the most common clinical presentation. Alcohol was the most common etiological factor seen in 42.4% followed by idiopathic pancreatitis (IP) (36.9% cases) and then by gallstone/biliary pancreatitis (14.5%). Acute fluid collection was the most common local complication seen in 29.1% cases and respiratory system involvement was the most common organ involvement seen in 16.5% of cases.Conclusions: Epigastric pain without radiation to the back was the most common clinical presentation. Incidence of alcoholic pancreatitis (42.4%) and idiopathic pancreatitis (36.9%) was slightly higher in our study, which should prompt us to look with further studies for identifiable new aetiologies in the idiopathic group. This work provides the first known regional description of the etiology, clinical profile and outcome of acute pancreatitis. Due to institutional and population similarities, this may represent the status of developing countries in general. This will help in formulating a hospital policy which would be beneficial.
Segmentation of diabetic macular edema in OCT retinal images

Diabetic macular edema (DME) is one of the important reasons leading to blindness. Its pathological features are mainly manifested in the accumulation of fluid in the retina. A method for segmentation of diabetic macular edema in optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal images is proposed. Firstly, through the image preprocessing, we exclude the impact of speckle noise and blood vessels on the final segmentation results. We used the improved level set method to solve the problem of segmentation effectively and calculated the area of edema area, which provides quantitative analytic tools for clinical diagnosis and therapy. Finally, we validated the method in this study on 15 OCT retina images with DME adults. The precision, sensitivity and dice similarity coefficient (DSC) for DME segmentation are 81.12%, 86.90% and 80.05%, respectively.
A User Experience Model for Privacy and Context Aware Over-the-Top (OTT) TV Recommendations

Conventional recommender systems provide personalized recommendations by collecting and retaining user data, relying on a centralized architecture. Hence, user privacy is undermined by the volume of information required to support the personalized experience. In this work, we propose a User Experience model which allows the privacy of a user to be preserved by means of a decentralized architecture, enabling the Service Provider to offer recommendations without the need of storing individual user data. We advance the current state of the art by: i) Proposing a model of User Experience (UEx) suitable for Persona-based recommendations; ii) Presenting a UEx collection model which enhances the user privacy towards the service provider while keeping the quality of her preferences predictions; and iii) Assessing the existence of the Persona profiles, which are needed for generating and addressing the recommendations. We perform several experiments using a real-world complete dataset from a medium-sized service provider, composed of more than 14,000 unique users and 33,000 content titles collected over a period of two years. We show that our architecture, in combination with our UEx model, achieves the same or better results, compared to state-of-the-art systems, in terms of rating prediction accuracy, without sacrificing user’s privacy.
AcadEvent: Recommender system for academic events

Academic events are events that are commonly organized in an educational environment such as workshops, seminars or conferences. Finding suitable academic events for researchers, especially novice researchers, is a crucial task. However, the dissemination of information on academic events is still limited. Existing tools are inadequate to provide recommendations based on user needs as these tools have limited functions. Hence, there is a need to develop a recommender system that recommends suitable, relevant and reliable academic events to the researcher. The aim of this paper was to propose a hybrid recommender technique to assist novice researchers in finding suitable, relevant and reliable academic events. This paper presents the architecture for AcadEvent, a recommender system for academic events using a hybrid technique consisting of a search based on Tags and a User Rating. The research methodology was comprised of four stages, namely information requirements, technique development, prototype development, and evaluation. The evaluation results showed that the proposed technique offers a better performance in terms of assisting the researcher in finding suitable and relevant academic events.
Cache-timing attacks without a profiling phase

Theoretically secure cryptographic algorithms can be vulnerable to attacks due to their implementation flaws. Bernstein’s attack is a well-known cache-timing attack that uses execution times as the side-channel. The major drawback of this attack is that it needs an identical target machine to perform its profiling phase where the attacker models the cache timing-behavior of the target machine. This assumption makes the attack unrealistic in many circumstances. In this work, we present an effective method to eliminate the profiling phase. We propose a methodology to model the cache timing-behavior of the target machine by trying hypothetical cache behaviors exhaustively. Our implementation results show that the proposed nonprofiled Bernstein’s attack has comparable (and better in some test instances) performance to the original attack with the profiling phase.
The Effectiveness of Straight Line Walk Application Used on Straight-Walking Skills for Blind Students

Some studies explore the needs and problems in navigating on the blind person, the ability to walk in a straight line and avoid the tendency to veer. Difficulties that often occur from the tendency to turn is that when traveling straight on the road or open area where environmental information is not good enough to be considered a clue for the visually impaired to help them in maintaining a straight line route. The development of aids for the visually impaired in this era is growing rapidly, both tools to help navigate using global internet-based positioning system and tools to train straight walking using a compass-based system like straight line walks. The purpose of this research is to see the effectiveness of the straight line walk application for visually impaired students walking skills. This research is based on the absence of special attention from the school with the veering phenomenon that occurs in blind students, and its effect which endangers students (such as tripping, crashing into trees, and even walking towards the middle of the highway). This research used the experimental approach with SSR A-B design method. The results showed a decrease in turning distance on the three subjects after being given intervention by using the straight line walk application. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the training program using the straight line walk application can improve the skills of walking straight on blind students.
A Comprehensive Study on mmWave-Based Mobile Hotspot Network System for High-Speed Train Communications

This paper presents a comprehensive study on millimeter-wave-based mobile hotspot network (MHN) system for high-speed train (HST) communications, including system design, field trial, channel modeling based on measurement campaign, simulation, and validation. First, an overview of the MHN system and the design of an MHN enhanced (MHN-E) system including physical layer specification and single frequency network are provided. Second, the overall design of prototypes for MHN conventional (MHN-C) and MHN-E systems is presented, and then the recent experimental results of a field trial conducted at Seoul subway line 8 with the MHN-C prototype and demonstrations with the MHN-E prototype are analyzed. Third, this paper presents a measurement campaign investigating channel characteristics of a rural HST environment and a QuaDRiGa-based channel model developed based on the parameters extracted from the measurement. Finally, a computer simulation is conducted to validate the performance of the MHN-E system at high mobility of up to 500 km/h under the QuaDRiGa channel model, which suggests a good methodology for the validation of HST communication systems at the highmobility since it is impractical to be tested by real testbeds as of now. The simulation results revealed that the MHN-E system is capable of providing a broadband mobile wireless backhaul with a peak data rate exceeding 5 Gb/s at a speed of 500 km/h.
HOME I/O and FACTORY I/O : 2 Pieces of innovative PO simulation software for automation education

Since 2008, the CReSTIC of the University of Reims Champagne Ardenne (URCA), has collaborated with Real Games, a Portuguese company, within the frame of a scientific and technical partnership towards the development of innovative operative part simulation software based on the use of video game technologies (graphical and audio rendering, « game play », interactivity and attractiveness). These simulators which are a part of a type of serious games, can be connected to physical control utilities (Programmable Logic Controller, Microcontroller…) or software utilities (LabView, Matlab…) which facilitates education in automation. In this paper two new pieces of simulation software are presented, HOME I/O (the virtual house) and FACTORY I/O (the virtual factory). A survey has been conducted by users of these two softwares in 2016, together with a science of education lab (CEREP) as well as 77 bachelor’s degree, CUBGE and Engineering students from URCA. The obtained results are presented in this paper, and show the interest these digital tools have for education of Automation.
Stress distribution in fixed mandibular prostheses fabricated by CAD/CAM and conventional techniques: Photoelastic and strain gauge analyses

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the distribution of stress in complete fixed mandibular prostheses with infrastructures (IE) fabricated with different materials and techniques, under compressive force. Material and Methods A model of an edentulous mandible, which received five 4x11 mm external hexagon implants between the mental foramens, was fabricated. The groups were divided into: Group I - IE in nickel-chromium with an acrylic resin occlusal coating; Group II – IE in nickel-chromium with a ceramic occlusal coating; Group III – IE milled in zirconia with a ceramic coating. For the photoelastic methodology, 70 N axial loads were applied in three regions. Photographic images were taken and analyzed according to the number of high-intensity fringes. For the strain gauge methodology, the measurement of stresses was performed in two distinct regions. The same compression tests described earlier were then performed. The registered stress values were grouped in tables and submitted to two-factor variance analysis (ANOVA) and the Tukey test with 5% significance. Results The results of the two methodologies demonstrated smaller stress values for Group I, when compared to the other groups. Conclusions It was possible to conclude that the complete fixed prostheses, with infrastructures cast in metal and acrylic occlusal coating, demonstrated better biomechanical results. Key words:Dental implants, mandibular prosthesis implantation, biomechanics.
Design of a 360 degree obstacle detection system with haptic feedback

The i-Botics center is an initiative of the University of Twente and TNO. The main goal of the i-Botics group is to design a remote controlled robot with telepresence technologies. In this, an operator should be able to operate the robot in a remote environment, while having the sensation of being present at the robot’s location. This can be useful in situations which require human expertise but where safety of humans is not guaranteed. To be able to experience telepresence, feedback must be given to the operator. Multiple forms of feedback exist such as audio, visual and haptic feedback. This thesis is a subpart within the larger i-Botics project and contains the design of a haptic feedback system for the detection of obstacles in the surrounding area of the robot. Such a system can be useful to prevent collisions between the robot and the environment, making sure that damage to both is prevented. The research done is design oriented and focuses on the design of the obstacle detection system. The software structure for the haptic feedback system is implemented but the implementation and testing of the haptic feedback algorithm is left for future work.
Decision support systems and strategic planning: information technology and SMEs' performance

The implementation of decision support systems (DSS) is considered crucial to sustain competitive advantage because the business environment is getting more and more turbulent. Especially, small-medium enterprises (SMEs) face challenges such as the lack of conscious planning, the lack of strategic decision making and sharing information and it is difficult to increase profitability. As effective strategic management and decision-making is necessary, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is used to collect information and to support the decision makers to formulate and implement the right strategy to develop DSS. Information systems (IS) executives concentrate on technical issues and ignore the strategic plans of DSS. The aim of this paper is to examine how SISP contributes to a greater extent of profitability in SMEs. Data was collected using questionnaires to IS executives in SMEs, particularly in North Greece. The results indicate that managers should focus on implementing Situational Analysis with greater meticulousness, so that they can implement Strategy Conception and Strategy Implementation Planning with greater agility rather than now. This paper not only expands the current knowledge regarding the significance of SISP but also it enables managers to make the process better.
Development of a cholera epidemiological risk assessment framework

This report presents technical explanations and specific enumerations for a cholera risk framework developed as a part of a multi-year project funded by the Army Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program. This effort employed a novel data-conflation technology called the Framework for the Integration of Complex Urban Systems (FICUS), which uses a broad base of peer-reviewed research on established indicators of sociocultural or health-driven risk conditions of interest for intelligence or threat analysis in a given region. Researchers performed a specialized case study that incorporates results and data from previous programmatic work, including FICUS development and an existing theoretical humanitarian crisis (HC) framework. New data required for this framework included identification of conditions for contracting cholera, micro-survey data from global resources, and a digital population model that matches the survey data to existing population census data. The cholera framework research succeeded in using relevant microdata from the HC framework, then manipulating the HC framework to better inform cholera risk modeling. In general, the use of risk-analysis frameworks with FICUS is intended to produce case studies that provide non-obvious insights to the user while accounting for and reducing data gaps and uncertainties. DISCLAIMER: The contents of this report are not to be used for advertising, publication, or promotional purposes. Citation of trade names does not constitute an official endorsement or approval of the use of such commercial products. All product names and trademarks cited are the property of their respective owners. The findings of this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents. DESTROY THIS REPORT WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED. DO NOT RETURN IT TO THE ORIGINATOR. ERDC/CERL TR-19-13 iii
Esophageal squamous cell cancer susceptibility: Environmental and nutritional associations reveal a universally applicable pathogenesis scenario (Review)

Some epidemiological features, such as marked vari‐ ations of incidence between geographical regions, are unique to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The objective of this evaluation of only ESCC was to collate those factors that have quantitative and biological credibility, enabling the deduc‐ tion of an etiological hypothesis to explain this, based on facts. Worldwide, 80% of new cases arise in less developed regions and are generally not associated with alcohol or tobacco use. Abstinence was also usual in some European localities where a high incidence occurred in certain remote regions, as well as in patients with malabsorption syndromes. All had multiple micronutrient deficiencies, resulting in atrophy and chronic esophagitis that preceded clinical carcinomas. The esophagus has an extraordinarily high cell replication rate requiring higher micronutrient nutrition than other epithelia. Stable communi‐ ties worldwide, whose staple diet was maize (corn) or wheat were invariably at high risk, whereas the use of nutritious food sources resulted in an unusually low risk. The susceptibility of animals fed such diets mirrored the human situation exactly. Pertinent deficiencies identified thus far are riboflavin, nicotin‐ amide, molybdenum (Mo), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), selenium (Se) and zinc (Zn). Subclinical deficiencies of these have been shown to enhance the susceptibility of rats to ESCC. Extraordinary carcinogen exposure has only been shown in rural epidemic regions. Geologically determined poor soils yield plants vulnerable to fungal pathogens, some of which are carcinogenic to the rat esophagus. Tobacco exerts its synergistic effects on the nutritionally impaired esophagus. Nitrosamine exposure is not unusual; however, regenerative stress such as that caused by constrictions and hot drinks increase the risk. The common underlying determinant of susceptibility worldwide is chronic deficiencies of multiple micronutrients that normally maintain the integrity of the esophagus and are necessary for a number of anti‐carcinogenic mechanisms. Micronutrient fortification of staple foods appears to markedly reduce the risk.
Colorectal Cancer in Young People Kurdish in the West of Iran

Incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) in Iran has increased recently; especially the incidence of the disease in young patients is higher than expected. Aim of this study is survey on 40 young patients with CRC in Kurdish population. Between of 2010 and 2015, 40 young patients with CRC referred to Department of Radiation Oncology in Imam Reza Hospital, Kermanshah, Iran. We analyzed sex, age, type of pathology, grade tumor, patients according to the cancer diagnosis year, age distribution and overall survival. Diagrams were plotted with Microsoft Office Excel 2007. The mean age of patients at diagnosis was 32.85±5.24 years (range: 17-39 years). Twenty five (62%) patients are male. Highest and lowest number of patients about tumor site relate to rectum (60%) and ascending (2.5%). Eight patients had mucinous adenocarcinoma. Tumor grade in ten patients were moderate and 3 patients were poor. Two (5%), 5(12%), 6(15%), 7(17%), 15(38%) and 5(13%) came to our Department of Radiation Oncology in 2010,2011,2012,2013,2014 and first four months of 2015 years, respectively. We have seen increasing incidence of CRC in young Kurdish people. Year-to-year increases in its trend. So it is a serious alarm for Iran's ministry of health and specialists in this field that they have pay special attention to this problem.
Endodontic management of an unidentified foreign body in a maxillary central incisor of a HIV-positive patient

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been a focal point of investigation over the last few years. Consideration of endodontic treatment in an HIV-positive patient needs a calculated approach as the choice of materials and chemicals may influence the final result. A recent investigation showed that cases presenting with pre-operative pathology during examinations have a significantly lower prognosis after treatment. This clinical case report discusses the treatment approach of an upper left central incisor of an HIV-positive patient. The treatment approach and the outcome after a fifteenmonth follow-up period are outlined.