Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In-Town Tour Optimization of Conventional Mode for Municipal Solid Waste Collection

This study illustrates the application of a simple and efficient Solver add-in tool in Microsoft Office Excel © 2010 software for in-town tour optimization of solid waste collection. Data required for tour optimization was obtained from the municipal authority, field studies, and a digitized map of Ilorin, Nigeria while collection operation was formulated as a Traveling Salesman Problem on Excel spreadsheet. The results obtained from the optimization of ten prominent routes revealed that two empirical routes had the same tour distance as the optimized tour. However, in the remaining eight routes, the optimization process reduced tour distance by 2.04-19.27 %, tour time by 0.33-22.80 %, and fuel consumption by 1.78-20.54 %. The cost incurred in purchasing diesel is also expected to decrease by US$0.11-US$1.65/vehicle/day. Therefore, the proposed method can serve as a valuable tool for reducing some socio-economic and environmental impacts associated with solid waste collection.
Analysis and Suppression of EMI for Traction Control Unit Speed Sensors of CRH380BL Electric Multiple Unit

─ The doors of China railways high-speed 380BL-type (CRH380BL) electric multiple unit (EMU) at Changchun station in China could not be opened. It was analysed that the traction control unit (TCU) speed sensors were disturbed by the pantograph-catenary arc while lowering the pantograph. To solve this problem, firstly, the electromagnetic interference (EMI) for the second train body (02TB) of CRH380BL EMU where the pantograph-catenary is located at is tested. The results show that the intensity of EMI in space is increased significantly because of the pantograph-catenary arc. The distribution of spectrum of EMI is generally random, but the spectrum is mainly distributed in the range from 5MHz to 10MHz. Based on the test results, the coupling mechanism of EMI for the TCU speed sensor is analyzed in this paper. Then a method of nesting magnetic rings on the shielded cable is proposed for suppression of the interference. It can reduce the EMI about 8dB at the main frequency bandwidth mentioned above with 12 centimeters long Ni-Zn ferrite magnetic rings. Index Terms ─ Electromagnetic interference (EMI), interference suppression, magnetic ring, pantographcatenary arc, speed sensor.
Neue Therapieoptionen für die rezidivierte/refraktäre Erkrankung

Die erste Jahresversammlung des European Myeloma Network (EMN) versammelte 600 Teilnehmer aus ganz Europa, um über die Fortschritte in der Therapie des multiplen Myeloms (MM) zu diskutieren. In einer Sitzung zum rezidivierten und refraktären Myelom wurden neue Therapieoptionen und der optimale Zeitpunkt und Patienten-selektion für den Einsatz aufgezeigt.
Effects of a Single Prolonged Milking Interval in Cows Study of Indicators and Mediators of Inflammation, Milk Composition and Yield

A single prolonged milking interval (PMI), such as might be associated with technical failures in automatic milking systems, leads to a subsequent somatic cell count (SCC) peak in bulk tank milk. Increased SCC indicates mastitis in cows. It is generally correlated with reduced milk yield and quality, and is often used as a criterion for milk payment. Whether the transient SCC peak after a single PMI affects yield and quality is not known. The short duration of the inflammatory reaction after a PMI and its nonpathological history raise questions about the underlying immunological mechanisms and possible role of immunocompetent natural milk components. It is important to learn more about this kind of physiological inflammation to improve the interpretation of SCC and the general understanding of udder immunology. This thesis investigated the inflammatory reaction after a single PMI of 24 h at both the cow and the quarter level, and how it influences milk yield and quality. The PMI appeared to induce temporarily impaired epithelial integrity but no epithelial damage. Even so,milk yield per cow was reduced with 0.75 kg/day after the PMI, notably for up to the 10 days studied. Thus, based on the long-lasting reduction in yield and a possibly reduced milk payment due to the SCC peak, a PMI is of significant economic concern for the farmer although milk quality itself was shown not to be afflicted. The PMI caused a two-fold increase in the SCC, which then remained elevated for 2 days and was associated with an increased proportion of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) in milk. The most pronounced SCC reaction after the PMI was not seen until the udder had been emptied once. The initiation of inflammation occurred first during the PMI and elicited a systemic acute phase response of serum amyloid A (SAA), observed in blood prior to its appearance in milk. The milk showed consistently high chemotactic activity in vitro, although no increased content of the cytokines IL-1 and IL-8 was detected. The PMI induced significant alterations in the content of lactalbumin (ALA) and prolactin (PRL), in relation to the PMN reaction. ALA inhibited and PRL stimulated PMN migration, when tested in vitro. Based on the findings in this thesis, it is probable that SAA played a significant role in the inflammatory reaction after a PMI but it cannot be excluded that ALA and PRL might also have been contributing factors.
TQM and market orientation's impact on SMEs' performance

Article history: Received December 28, 2013 Accepted 28 March 2014 Available online April 3 2014 This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the impact of total quality management (TQM) as well as market orientation on organizational performance on some Iranian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some experts in city of Shiraz, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study determines that three components of market orientation including intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and responsiveness through TQM influences on organizational performance components including financial and non-financial performance as well as efficiency. In addition, TQM components including training, process management, supplier quality management, employee relationships, quality of data and reports and top management commitment influence positively on organizational performance in SMEs. © 2014 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Nuclear Plants and Emergency Virtual Simulations Based on a Low-Cost Engine Reuse

Our industrialised society comprises many industrial processes that are very important for everyone, in a wide range of fields. Activities related to these industrial processes, though, involve, in higher or lower degrees, some risk for personnel,  besides risk for the general public in some cases. Therefore, efficient training programs and simulations are highly required, to improve the processes involved, increasing safety for people. To cite an example, nuclear plants pose high safety requirements in operational and maintenance routines, to keep plants in safe operation conditions and reduce personnel exposure to radiation dose. Besides operational and maintenance in nuclear plants, there are also other situations where efficient training is required, as in evacuation planning from buildings in emergency situations. Also, rescue tasks play similar role. These apply specially for nuclear sites. Another situation that requires efficient training is security, what has special meaning for plants that involve dangerous materials, such as nuclear plants. Nuclear materials must be kept under high security level, to avoid any misuse.
Livestock Gross Margin–Dairy: An Assessment of Its Effectiveness as a Risk Management Tool and Its Potential to Induce Supply Expansion

An evaluation of the risk-reducing effectiveness of the Livestock Gross Margin–Dairy (LGM-Dairy) insurance program, using historical futures price data, predicts economically significant reductions in downside margin risk (24–41%) across multiple regions. Supply analysis based on the estimated risk reduction shows a small supply response, assuming minimal subsidization. A decomposition of the simulated indemnities into milk price and feed price components shows comovements in futures prices moderating the frequency and levels of indemnities.
Determining and Visualising E-mail Subsets to Support E-discovery

Electronic discovery (E-discovery) is a legal process for investigating various events in the corporate world, for the purpose of producing/obtaining evidence, one such example is an email communication (eg. Enron case). Investigating emails collected over a period of time, manually, is a strenuous process and the tools currently available on the market are based on simple keyword search and legal firms charge companies based on the volume of information produced by the search, which is then manually reviewed intensely. This results in significant costs for the company or in a number of cases settlement because they can’t afford the costs of E-discovery. So, there is a great need to determine, visualise and understand whether email subsets are normal or abnormal, pertinent or privileged, relevant (interesting) or immaterial in a quick time. In order to determine relevant subsets for a legal case and to gain invaluable insight in a quick time from the email communications, we propose a multi-modal and multi-level approach which will generate automated visual representations using a manual keyword search facility that will extract the most relevant information from the email data and aids in comparing two subsets of information. In this paper, we discuss the literature review carried out, initial design process, prototypes developed and the workshops conducted. As a future work, we aim to develop a full-fledged E-discovery tool that could be implemented by the organisations to investigate email communications.
Human cytomegalovirus infection in women of childbearing age throughout Fars Province - Iran: a population-based cohort study

Human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) has been described as an important etiological agent of intrauterine infection in women of childbearing age that causes congenital malformation. In the present study we examined 844 serum samples from women of child-bearing age for the presence of IgM and IgG antibodies against hCMV by Elisa technique. 764 out of 844 (93%) of the cases were seropositive for hCMV-IgG and 45 (5.4%) cases were seropositive for hCMV-IgM. An increase in the rate of IgG seroprevalance was associated with an increase in age and parity. The IgG seroprevalance rate was inversely proportional to increasing abortions. Intrestingly seasonal variation affected IgG seroprevalance. There was an increasing trend in IgM positivity rate with age in women less than 29 years. hCMV seroprevalence rate was higher in women from rural as compared to those of urban areas. Finally hCMV primary infections occured in 2.4 % of all pregnancis and it is estimated that up to 0.3% of all congenital disorders, through out Fars province, were due to hCMV. We suggest a role of child to mother hCMV transmission and sexual maturity as the most probable epidemiological factors of hCMV seroprevalence among women of child bearing age.
On uniform tail expansions of multivariate copulas and wide convergence of measures

The theory of copulas provides a useful tool for modeling dependence in risk management. In insurance and finance, as well as in other applications, dependence of extreme events is particularly important, hence there is a need for a detailed study of the tail behaviour of multivariate copulas. We investigate the class of copulas having regular tails with a uniform expansion. We present several equivalent characterizations of uniform tail expansions. Next, basing on them, we determine the class of all possible leading parts of such expansions; we compute the leading parts of copulas popular in the literature, and discuss the statistical aspects of tail expansions.
Effects of Intravitreal Anti-VEGF Therapy on the Clinical Course of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

Objectives: To demonstrate the effects of the injection of intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) on the clinical course of established bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Methods: This is a multicenter retrospective case-control study performed without any randomization or masking procedure. A total of 70 patients with BPD, including 35 cases (the IVB group) and 35 controls (the control group) were studied. Patients in the IVB group received intravitreal anti-VEGF (bevacizumab) treatment for type 1 prethreshold retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). The control group consisted of infants with BPD whose gestational age, birthweight, and gender were matched with those of the IVB group. None of the infants in the control group needed to be treated for ROP using either anti-VEGF or laser photocoagulation. Results: There was no statistically significant difference (P = 0.11) between the groups in terms of the total duration of oxygen prior to the IVB injection (65.9± 23.5 and 79.1± 33.1 days in the IVB group and control group, respectively). However, after the injection of IVB, the total duration of oxygen was significantly lower in the IVB group (mean 7 (1 70) days vs. 16 (1 98) days, P = 0.01). In 14 cases with mild BPD and their matched controls, the median time (25% 75%) for the discontinuation of oxygen therapy was 3 (2 7) days and 10 (5 15) days, respectively (P = 0.36). In 21 cases with moderate and severe BPD and their matched controls, the median time (25 75%) for the discontinuation of oxygen therapy was 14 (7 21) days and 22 (16 43) days, respectively (P = 0.024). Conclusions: Intravitreal bevacizumab injection treatment for ROP cases with BPD was found to be associated with a shorter duration of oxygen use. The results of the study not only demonstrate a pathogenic correlation between ROP and BPD through an abnormal vasculogenesis, but also raise a question regarding whether or not the systemic side effects of IVB are actually adverse.
Late-life depression in the older adults living in an institution and at home

Psychological well-being in older adults is an important issue in Geropsychology and there is increasing interest about the older adults living in the community and at home. Understanding markers of well-being associated with either living in an institution or at home would help to explore certain unique variables that make the older adults’ life difficult. Among older adults, depression decreases the quality of life and affect the individual’s lifespan significantly. However, there have been few studies investigating institution-specific or home-specific markers of depression which are the aims of the current study. The present study aims to make a comparison between 924 the older adults residing in institutions to 846 the older adults residing at home in terms of socio-demographic and health-related variables. Women living at home had higher depression scores than women in the institution. Conversely, men living in institutions were more depressed than living at home while married older adults at home have lower depression scores. Education and income are inversely associated with depression scores. As the number of illnesses increases so does the level of depression. Finally, there is a negative relationship with perceptions of prognosis and perceptions of threat regarding their medical conditions and depression. The interaction of gender, income and residence type is discussed in detail within a cultural context. Possible implications are suggested to improve the psychological well-being of older adults and the specific needs of different populations of older adults based on their residence type are addressed. Key Practitioners Message Investigating the inﬂuence of residence type (institution versus home) on the older adults’ psychological well-being helps practitioners to understand the psychological effect of the environment. Examining the association between socio-demographic variables (gender, education, income, marital status) or health-related variables (perceptions of prognosis and threat regarding their medical conditions) and late-life depression reveals individual markers in relation to depression. Older adults residing at home are more vulnerable to suffer from depression due to their difficulty in accessing health services and a tendency to disregard their health care needs. Older adults having physical illnesses had higher scores than their counterparts. Perceptions regarding physical illness might be one of the important topics for health care professionals. Perceptions about physical illness might be a focal point to explore a relationship with mental health.
Attractor and Boundedness of Switched Stochastic Cohen-Grossberg Neural Networks

We address the problem of stochastic attractor and boundedness of a class of switched Cohen-Grossberg neural networks (CGNN) with discrete and infinitely distributed delays. With the help of stochastic analysis technology, the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional method, linear matrix inequalities technique (LMI), and the average dwell time approach (ADT), some novel sufficient conditions regarding the issues of mean-square uniformly ultimate boundedness, the existence of a stochastic attractor, and the mean-square exponential stability for the switched Cohen-Grossberg neural networks are established. Finally, illustrative examples and their simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed results.
Integrated Water Sensitive Design: Opportunities and Barriers to implementation

Flooding incidences are increasingly prevalent due to climate change, weather variability, building and land use practices. One of the regions to experience recent wide-spread flooding is located in the South West region in England. This region remains prone to flooding since the significant flooding of the Somerset levels during the 2014 storms. But with the growing demand for more housing in the UK and in North Somerset in particular, it is now important to review the current building and development practices for flood resilience. The current regulations for water management in the built environment remains unclear for both new and existing development. However, this study focusses on the former and explores the potential for, and use of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) solutions in two new housing schemes in North Somerset, South West England. This study presents a brief overview of WSUD definitions and strategies, highlighting the corresponding opportunities and barriers to implementation. Then, primary research from documentary review and interviews of property development experts and the local council will be presented. The main drivers for WSUD were found to be led by the local authorities and regulatory bodies such as the Environment Agency. Key barriers include the up-front time and investment required to implement water sensitive design schemes. Also, mentioned were the maintenance cost and the health and safety implications of exposed water bodies in housing developments. The extended abstract concludes with recommendations to encourage better uptake of WSUD in future housing schemes.
3D Reconstruction: Novel Method for Finding of Corresponding Points using Pseudo Colors

This paper deals with the reconstruction of spatial coordinates of an arbitrary point in a scene using two images scanned by a 3D camera or two displaced cameras. Calculations are based on the perspective geometry. Accurate determination of corresponding points is a fundamental step in this process. The usually used methods can have a problem with points, which lie in areas without sufficient contrast. This paper describes our proposed method based on the use of the relationship between the selected points and area feature points. The proposed method finds correspondence using a set of feature points found by SURF. An algorithm is proposed and described for quick removal of false correspondences, which could ruin the correct reconstruction. The new method, which makes use of pseudo color image representation (pseudo coloring) has been proposed subsequently. By means of this method it is possible to significantly increase the color contrast of the surveyed image, and therefore add more information to find the correct correspondence. Reliability of the found correspondence can be verified by reconstruction of 3D position of selected points. Executed experiments confirm our assumptions.
Genetic Hierarchy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia: From Clonal Hematopoiesis to Molecular Residual Disease

Recent advances in the field of cancer genome analysis revolutionized the picture we have of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Pan-genomic studies, using either single nucleotide polymorphism arrays or whole genome/exome next generation sequencing, uncovered alterations in dozens of new genes or pathways, intimately connected with the development of leukemia. From a simple two-hit model in the late nineties, we are now building clonal stories that involve multiple unexpected cellular functions, leading to full-blown AML. In this review, we will address several seminal concepts that result from these new findings. We will describe the genetic landscape of AML, the association and order of events that define multiple sub-entities, both in terms of pathogenesis and in terms of clinical practice. Finally, we will discuss the use of this knowledge in the settings of new strategies for the evaluation of measurable residual diseases (MRD), using clone-specific multiple molecular targets.
Determination of ultrathin diamond films by Raman spectroscopy

The study of Raman spectra of recently predicted ultrathin diamond films (diamanes) with nanometer thickness, transformed from multilayered graphenes by the adsorption of hydrogen is presented. Here we studied the phonon spectra of diamane structures in detail by ab initio method, especially the Raman and infrared (IR) vibrational modes. In particular, two‐layered diamanes display Raman peaks near 1110, 1260, 1320, 2860 cm−1, and three‐layered diamanes have a broad region (1110–1340 cm−1) of Raman shifts and peaks near 2830–2860 cm−1. The spectra are radically distinguished from the similar spectra of one to three layered graphenes and graphane.
Delivering in‐school interventions to improve dietary behaviours amongst 11‐ to 16‐year‐olds: A systematic review

Childhood obesity is a global health concern, which has both short‐ and long‐term health consequences for the individual, and is a potential burden on health care services and the wider economy. The school environment is a setting where changes can be applied to dietary behaviours, as schools have direct and intensive contact with children. This systematic review evaluated school‐based interventions designed to improve dietary behaviours among adolescents (11‐ to 16‐year‐olds). The aims were to review types of interventions delivered, dietary behaviours targeted, and interventions' effectiveness in improving dietary behaviour and associated intervention components. Twenty‐nine school‐based interventional studies with this population were identified for review. The data were synthesized by identifying and comparing individual studies' results, intervention components, and characteristics. Interventions appeared more effective when they involved peers, used educational media to deliver health messages, increased availability of healthy foods in school, and incorporated computer‐based individualized feedback with normative information on eating behaviours. A limitation of the review was the lack of description in certain reviewed studies and the nonfeasibility of conducting a meta‐analysis owing to study heterogeneity. Future interventions with this population could consider including the aforementioned components, gender‐specific feedback, and both short‐ and long‐term follow‐ups as change may not be apparent immediately and to determine if changes are sustained.