Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peak Inhalation Air Flow and Minute Volumes Measured in a Bicycle Ergometer Test

here are many important physical and physiological factors to consider when designing, testing and certifying respiratory protective devices. In 1943, Leslie Silverman identified two of the most important factors to be the maximum rate at which air flows during each inspiration and the length of time during which this maximum air flow continues. Despite his finding, there are few papers in the literature that have actually reported the inhalation flow rate. Mostly when flow rates are reported they had been arrived at by a formula. This paper reports respiratory data measured for various respiratory protective devices (RPD) at various metabolic rates, with and without speech. As particle filters are velocity-dependent, the flow rate through the filter will dictate the overall performance of the RPD. Thus, we were specifically interested in the minute volume and the peak inhalation airflow (that is, the highest flow reached during each breath) measured at the work rates applicable to tasks performed by first responders. The data obtained for all test subjects made it possible to analyze the minute volume (VI, measured in L/min), and the peak inhalation airflow (PIAF, measured in L/min). Seven test subjects (mean age = 30.3 years, standard deviation = 13.8) participated in this study pedaling a bicycle ergometer at various work rates between 50 and 200 W. Five full-face masks with different inhalation and exhalation characteristics were used. The average minute volume inhaled was 55.3 L/min (n=203) without speech. When subjects were asked to read aloud as when talking normally, the value was significantly lower 45.1 L/min (n=203). The average PIAF without speech was 169 L/min, and with speech 266 L/min. There were also significant reductions in VI and PIAF depending on the characteristics of the respiratory protective devices. The average ratio (i.e., PIAF/ VI) in all data was 4.4 (range = 3.9 - 5.0). The high PIAF values observed in this study can have a significant impact on the performance of respirators. Thus, we perhaps need to reconsider how respiratory protective devices should be tested.
FuzzyMode Enhancement and Detection for Color Image Segmentation

This work lies within the scope of color image segmentation by pixel classification. The classes of pixels are constructed by detecting the modes of the spatial-color compactness function, which characterizes the image by taking into account both the distribution of colors in the color space and their spatial location in the image plane. A fuzzy transformation of this function is performed, based on fuzzy morphological operators specifically designed for mode detection. Experimental segmentation results, using several synthetic and benchmark images, show the interest of the proposed method.
Effect of metformin & myoinositol & life style modification in patients of polycystic ovarian disease (PCOD)

Polycystic ovarian disease (PCOD) is common endocrine disorder. Majority of young females are affected. Insulin resistance along with dysfunction of hypothalamopituitoryadrenal axis is a key etiological factor in development of all manifestations of PCOD. They present with irregular menses, infertility, obesity, Hirsutism, Acanthosis Nigricans etc. Metformin, Myoinositol & life style modification are widely accepted treatment modalities. Data suggests variable responses to these treatments. So we aimed to study efficacy of each treatment modality separately in PCOS. Here cases are diagnosed by using Rotterdam’s criteria. We recruited approx 30 cases for each group. BMI, Menstrual irregularity, infertility, Hirsutism, Acanthosis Nigricans, acne were common presenting features. Hormonal & biochemical profile was studied S.LH (Luteinizing Hormone), FSH (Follicle stimulating hormone), Serum. Prolactin levels, Serum Insulin levels. Weight loss, menstrual regularity, LH/FSH Ratio, HOMA Index were studied initially & compared all parameters after 3 months of treatment. In our study Metformin group (n=35), Myoinositol group(n=32) & for Life style modification(n=35). Our study Metformin group BMI reduced from mean 29.64 to 27.13 after 3 months Metformin treatment which is highly significant(p0.0000). LH/FSH ratio was mean 2.56,dropped to 1.70,(p0.000) after treatment, which is significant. Homa index values before treatment were mean 25.85, & after treatment it was 15.21(p0.000) highly significant. Hyperprolactinemia corrected from Mean 24.11 to16.92 to 6.27 (p0.004) found to be statistically significant. In Myoinositol group BMI was mean 26.71, after treatment it became25.6. In Life style modification group BMI before was mean 26.55 to 25.77(p). LH/FSH ratio was 2.mean & later 3 months it became 2.10,(p=001) initially, after 3 months it was-. HOMA index in this group was14.73after 3 months it was13.35. The present study gives us idea about efficacy of different modalities of treatment in PCOD cases & will be useful in patient treatment schedules.
Supporting conceptual knowledge capture through automatic modelling: A preliminary progress report

Building qualitative models is still a difficult and lengthy endeavour for domain experts. This paper discusses progress towards an automated modelling algorithm that learns Garp3 models based on a full qualitative description of the system's behaviour. In contrast with other approaches (Bridewell et al. 2008; Bratko and Suc 2004), our algorithm attempts to learn the causality that explains the system's behaviour. The algorithm achieves good results when recreating four well-established models.
Wealth Effects in the US: Evidence from the Combination of Two Surveys

In this article we investigate the role of wealth in household consumption during the period 1989-2007 using a household-level cross sectional dataset. We combine information from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Survey of Consumer Finances to build a detailed dataset for the US for this. We adopt a sample combination procedure which differs considerably from that used earlier by other researchers. When comparing our results with previous research, we find a higher elasticity of consumption with respect to income and a lower elasticity of consumption with respect to both housing wealth and, particularly, to financial wealth.
Response of stratospheric water vapor and ozone to the unusual timing of El Niño and the QBO disruption in 2015–2016

Abstract. The stratospheric circulation determines the transport and lifetime of key trace gases in a changing climate, including water vapor and ozone, which radiatively impact surface climate. The unusually warm El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event aligned with a disrupted Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) caused an unprecedented perturbation to this circulation in 2015–2016. Here, we quantify the impact of the alignment of these two phenomena in 2015–2016 on lower stratospheric water vapor and ozone from satellite observations. We show that the warm ENSO event substantially increased water vapor and decreased ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. The QBO disruption significantly decreased global lower stratospheric water vapor and tropical ozone from early spring to late autumn. Thus, this QBO disruption reversed the lower stratosphere moistening triggered by the alignment of the warm ENSO event with westerly QBO in early boreal winter. Our results suggest that the interplay of ENSO events and QBO phases will be crucial for the distributions of radiatively active trace gases in a changing future climate, when increasing El Niño-like conditions and a decreasing lower stratospheric QBO amplitude are expected.
Creating an environment for free education and technology-enhanced learning

The purpose of this paper is to present a project aimed at making knowledge publically available through opene ducational resources (OER). The focus is on open online courses which will be created by educational institutions and best practice examples offered by leading companies, with the purpose to support life-long education and enhancement of academic education with practical knowledge. The goal is to create diverse high quality educational materials in electronic format, which will be publically available. The educational material will follow basic pedagogical-didactic principles, in order to best meet the needs of the potential learners. In accordance with that a review of didactic principles that can contribute to producing OER content of excellence is given. The choice of a convenient platform, as well as the application of appropriate information technologies enable content representation in a suitable, innovative and meaningful way.
SOURCES AND MECHANISMS FOR THE ENRICHMENT OF HIGHLY REACTIVE IRON IN EUXINIC BLACK SEA SEDIMENTS

The deep basinal euxinic sediments of the Black Sea are enriched in iron that is highly susceptible to sulfidization compared to oxic/suboxic continental margin sediments in the Black Sea and oxic/dysoxic continental margin and deep-sea sediments worldwide. A mass balance treatment of iron speciation data from three deep basin sediment cores shows that this enrichment is due to a combination of (1) highly reactive iron-bearing phases (sulfides and oxides) whose ultimate source was by diagenetic mobilization from the shelf (Wijsman and others, 2001) and (2) enhanced iron reactivity in the lithogenous component of deep basinal sediments. The cause of the enhanced reactivity of lithogenous iron is problematical. Possible mechanisms include microbial oxidation of non-reactive iron silicates and the preferential deposi- tion of a fine-grained, reactive iron-enriched lithogenous component in the deep basin by the fractionation of the lithogenous flux during transport across the shelf. The application of paleoredox indicators based on iron reactivity (Degree of Pyritization, Indicator of Anoxicity) should take into account that the availability of highly reactive iron, and hence the concentration of reactive iron phases in the sediment, is controlled by a variety of chemical, physical and biological factors, some of which are not related directly to redox conditions in the water column.
Formation of the first stars

From studying the cosmic microwave background, we know our Universe started out very simple. It was by and large homogeneous and isotropic, with small fluctuations that can be described by linear perturbation theory. In stark contrast, the Universe today is highly structured on a vast range of length and mass scales. In the evolution towards increasing complexity, the formation of the first stars marks a primary transition event. The first generation of stars, the so-called Population III (or Pop. III) build up from truly metal-free primordial gas. They have long been thought to live short, solitary lives, with only one massive star forming per halo. However, in recent years this simple picture has undergone substantial revision, and we now understand that stellar birth in the early Universe is subject to the same complexity as star formation at present days. In this chapter, I review the current state of the field. I begin by introducing the basics concepts of star-formation theory and by discussing the typical environment in which Pop. III stars are thought to form. Then I argue that the accretion disk that builds up in the center of a halo is likely to fragment, resulting in the formation of a cluster of stars with a wide range of masses, and I speculate about how this process may be influenced by stellar feedback, the presence of magnetic fields, the energy input from dark matter annihilation, and the occurrence of large- scale streaming velocities between baryons and dark matter. Finally, I discuss direct and indirect constraints on Pop. III star formation from high-redshift observations and from the search for extremely metal-poor stars in the Milky Way and its satellites.
Reconstructing probabilistic trees of cellular differentiation from single-cell RNA-seq data

Until recently, transcriptomics was limited to bulk RNA sequencing, obscuring the underlying expression patterns of individual cells in favor of a global average. Thanks to technological advances, we can now profile gene expression across thousands or millions of individual cells in parallel. This new type of data has led to the intriguing discovery that individual cell profiles can reflect the imprint of time or dynamic processes. However, synthesizing this information to reconstruct dynamic biological phenomena from data that are noisy, heterogenous, and sparse---and from processes that may unfold asynchronously---poses a complex computational and statistical challenge. Here, we develop a full generative model for probabilistically reconstructing trees of cellular differentiation from single-cell RNA-seq data. Specifically, we extend the framework of the classical Dirichlet diffusion tree to simultaneously infer branch topology and latent cell states along continuous trajectories over the full tree. In tandem, we construct a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler that interleaves Metropolis-Hastings and message passing to leverage model structure for efficient inference. Finally, we demonstrate that these techniques can recover latent trajectories from simulated single-cell transcriptomes. While this work is motivated by cellular differentiation, we derive a tractable model that provides flexible densities for any data (coupled with an appropriate noise model) that arise from continuous evolution along a latent nonparametric tree.
Immigrant Child Poverty in Scandinavia: A Panel Data Study

Immigrant and native child poverty in Denmark, Norway and Sweden 1993 to 2001 is investigated using large sets of panel data. While native children face yearly poverty risks of less than 10 percent in all three countries and for all years investigated the increasing proportion of immigrant children with an origin in middle and low income countries have poverty risks that varies from 38 and up to as much as 58 percent. At the end of the observation period one third of the poor children in Norway have an immigrant origin, and that corresponding proportion is as high as about a half in Denmark as well as in Sweden. The strong overrepresentation of immigrant children from low and middle income countries when measured in yearly data is also found when applying a longer accounting period. We find that child poverty rates are generally high shortly after arrival to the new country, and typically decreases with years since immigration. Multivariate analysis shows that parents years since immigration and education affect risks of the number of periods in persistent poverty. While a native child is very unlikely to spend nine years in poverty, the corresponding risk for a child to a newly arrived immigrant from Turkey was found to be far from negligible. Much of the pattern is similar across the three countries but there are also some differences.
Knowledge sharing portal building blocks: academic's perspective

Knowledge sharing among knowledgeable staff in an organization gives a great impact towards productivity, especially in academic environment; where most of the knowledge resides in one's brain. Some researchers have discussed the important of knowledge sharing and suggested more researches and development should focus on academic environment. However, without a proper framework, the activities of knowledge sharing may become invisible. On top of that, in order to achieve greater impacts, knowledge transfer modes must be identified. The purpose of the study is to construct a knowledge sharing portal building blocks. This study describes the building blocks of a knowledge sharing portal for a particular academic organization. Data collection for feasibility was collected through focus group interview. Through triangulation technique, the building blocks described were derived from: enriched database, access mechanism and control, single user interface. Significantly, the proposed framework model can be adopted by other organizations as a guideline to develop their knowledge sharing portal.
DC-DC Converter with Coupled-Inductor For Multiple-Outputs

In this paper, the design methodologies are used to obtain the multiple outputs of DC-DC converter with a coupled inductor. The proposed system consists of single input of low voltage level, which can be boost into two different voltage levels. In this topology a coupled inductor with only one power switch is utilized for voltage clamping and soft switching operation. The two output voltages in this topology are obtained by limited components. The output voltages obtained are middle voltage and high voltage terminals are taken as power for a dc load applications. This topology is developed for high efficiency power conversion and two different voltages for dc loads. The proportional- integral derivative (PID) controller is designed in DC-DC converter to reduce the rise time and steady state error, and is modelled using SIMULINK and simulation results are obtained. It is referred as single input multiple output DC-DC converter.
~-----~-Ecological observations on the deep-sea anemone

Actinoscyphia aurelia, a hitherto poorly known deep-sea anemone, has been captured and photographed in large numbers off the north-west African coast, in depths between 1 000 and 2 000 m. After making allowances for the inaccuracies inherent in the use of towed samplers to obtain quantitative results, the indicated densities are sorne of the highest ever recorded for megabenthic animais at such depths. This could be due to the high sedimentation rate of organic material resulting from upwelling and consequent high primary productivity in this area. In addition, the different size structures of the sampled populations could be explained by slumps, and possibly turbidity currents, which may periodically expose fresh sediment surfaces for repopulation. The ability of A. aurelia to exploit these conditions is discussed in relation to its morphology and reproduction strategy.
Time in quantum mechanics: A fresh look at the continuity equation

The local conservation of a physical quantity whose distribution changes with time is mathematically described by the continuity equation. The corresponding time parameter, however, is defined with respect to an idealized classical clock. We consider what happens when this classical time is replaced by a nonrelativistic quantum-mechanical description of the clock. From the clock-dependent Schr\"odinger equation (as an analog of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation) we derive a continuity equation, where, instead of a time derivative, an operator occurs that depends on the flux (probability current) density of the clock. This clock-dependent continuity equation can be used to analyze the dynamics of a quantum system and to study degrees of freedom that may be used as internal clocks for an approximate description of the dynamics of the remaining degrees of freedom. As an illustration, we study a simple model for coupled electron-nuclear dynamics and interpret the nuclei as quantum clock for the electronic motion. We find that whenever the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is valid, the continuity equation shows that the nuclei are the only relevant clock for the electrons.
Jet lag: symptoms, causation and minimization

In this literature review we provide an overview of what jet lag is, how it is caused, what contributes to a less or more severe experience of jet lag and what we can do about it. Jet lag is a misalignment of the human circadian rhythm which is regulated by our Suprachiasmatic Nucleus in the brain and caused by crossing time zones too fast for our biological clock to keep up. Main symptoms are intense sleepiness or insomnia at inappropriate times. Other symptoms can be cognitive impairments like loss of motivation and concentration, loss of appetite, altered digestive functions, diarrhea, depressive symptoms and decreased physical performance can also occur. This is defined as jet lag. There is no aid to totally avoid jet lag, but there are ways to minimize the symptoms. Jet lag can be minimized by phase advancing or delaying the circadian rhythm before a flight with help of exposure or avoidance of bright light, melatonin and pre-adjusting the sleep schedule. The same resources can be used after arrival to reduce the symptoms.
Building an Open Source Automatic Speech Recognition System for Catalan

Catalan is recognized as the largest stateless language in Europe hence it is a language well studied in the ﬁeld of speech, and there exists various solutions for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) with large vocabulary. However, unlike many of the ofﬁcial languages of Europe, it neither has an open acoustic corpus sufﬁciently large for training ASR models, nor openly accessible acoustic models for local task execution and personal use. In order to provide the necessary tools and expertise for the resource limited languages, in this work we discuss the development of a large speech corpus of broadcast media and building of an Catalan ASR system using CMU Sphinx. The resulting models have a WER of 35,2% on a 4 hour test set of similar recordings and a 31.95% on an external 4 hour multi-speaker test set. This rate is further decreased to 11.68% with a task speciﬁc language model. 240 hours of broadcast speech data and the resulting models are distributed openly for use.
PRODUCTION PERFORMANCES AND EGG CHARACTERISTICS OF EMU (DROMAIUS NOVAEHOLLANDIAE) BIRDS

The present study was conducted to assess the production performances of emu birds and to analyze the characteristics of emu eggs. The emu breeders (mean ± SE) were started to lay eggs from 764.1±44.39 days. The mean ± SE production of 13.0±2.86, 21.8±3.39, 24.2±2.49, 29.1±13.13, 30.2±11.77 and 24.9±10.12 eggs per hen for 1st, 2nd , 3rd , 4th, 5th and 6th laying seasons, respectively with the spread of laying period (mean ± SE) 75.2±10.81, 98.7±8.98, 88.6±10.47, 119.1±12.71, 109.7±14.85 and 97.6±11.02 days were recorded, respectively. The mean ±SE egg weight (g) was 488.98±1.69, 562.23±4.08, 590.85±4.44, 593.12±3.50, 614.43±4.99 and 633.46±3.86 for 1st, 2nd , 3rd , 4th, 5th and 6th laying seasons with maximum weight (g) of 523, 660, 685, 686, 659 and 671, respectively. Egg laying was started in September, reaching peak in December, ending in March. Most (59.86%) of the eggs were laid at 3 days interval, mostly (40.73 %) between 6 to 7 PM. In the present study, fatty acid composition and internal qualities of emu eggs were carried out.
Anaerobic fermentation of biologically pretreated sawdust for energy applications.

During the study fermentation of biologically pretreated saw dust was carried out in pilot scale 50 l bioreactors. Deciduous tree sawdust had been pretreated with mycelium of Pleurotus ostreatus for more than three months before fermentation. Biogas production was stable with average methane composition about 50 %. The experiment was carried out for 71 days resulting with no major problems in reactor operation. It can be concluded that biologically pretreated sawdust can be used as the substrate for anaerobic fermentation.