Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Avaliação do desempenho de métodos de detecção da Resposta Auditiva de Estado Estável

In this paper, we present the performance analysis of four statistical detection tests for the Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR): F test, phase coherence (PC), magnitude-squared coherence (MSC) and T 2 circular (T2). The detector’s accuracy levels were analyzed by the receiver operating characteristic method. The ASSR was modeled by a sinusoidal response and a noise component generated by the Burg method. The MSC and T2 tests presented slightly better performances than the others, however the difference was not enough to consider the impact of the choice of the statistical detection method in the levels of accuracy as significant. Keywords— EEG, auditory evoked potentials, detection theory, receiver operating characteristic.
Design and Implementation of an 11-Level Inverter with FACTS Capability for Distributed Energy Systems with Fuzzy Controller

In this paper, a new single-phase wind energy inverter (WEI) with flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) capability is presented. The proposed inverter is placed between the wind turbine and the grid, same as a regular WEI, and is able to regulate active and reactive power transferred to the grid. This inverter is equipped with distribution static synchronous compensators option in order to control the power factor (PF) of the local feeder lines. Using the proposed inverter for small-to medium-size wind applications will eliminate the use of capacitor banks as well as FACTS devices to control the PF of the distribution lines. The goal of this paper is to introduce new ways to increase the penetration of renewable energy systems into the distribution systems. This will encourage the utilities and customers to act not only as a consumer, but also as a supplier of energy. Moreover, using the new types of converters with FACTS capabilities will significantly reduce the total cost of the renewable energy application. In this paper, modular multilevel converter is used as the desired topology to meet all the requirements of a single-phase system such as compatibility with IEEE standards, total harmonic distortion (THD), efficiency, and total cost of the system. The proposed control strategy regulates the active and reactive power using power angle and modulation index, respectively. The function of the proposed inverter is to transfer active power to the grid as well as keeping the PF of the local power lines constant at a target PF regardless of the incoming active power from the wind turbine. The simulations for an11-level inverter have been done in MATLAB/Simulink. To validate the simulation results, a scaled prototype model of the proposed inverter has been built andtested.
From Longevity of Firms to Transgenerational Entrepreneurship of Families

Whereas existing research on the longevity of family firms has focused on the survival of firms, this article investigates transgenerational entrepreneurship of families. By building on the transgenerational entrepreneurship research framework, the authors argue that by shifting from firm to family level of analysis, one gains a deeper understanding of family firms’ ability to create value across generations. The authors find evidence for their argument in that such a level shift reveals extended entrepreneurial activity, which is missed when focusing exclusively on the firm level. The study introduces and empirically explores the construct of family entrepreneurial orientation, which may serve as an antecedent to transgenerational value creation by families.
Precipitation concentration changes in Spain 1946-2005

Abstract. An analysis was made of the Precipitation Concentration Index using the new MOPREDAS database of monthly precipitation in Spain (Monthly Precipitation Data base of Spain). The database was compiled after exhaustive quality control of the complete digitalized Spanish Meterological Agency (AEMet) archives and contains a total set of 2670 complete and homogeneous monthly precipitation series from 1946 to 2005. Thus, MOPREDAS currently holds the densest information available for the 1946–2005 period for Spain and ensures a high resolution of results. The Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) is a powerful indicator of the temporal distribution of precipitation, traditionally applied at annual scales; as the value increases, the more concentrated the precipitation. Furthermore PCI is a part of the well-known Fournier index, with a long tradition on natural system analyses, as for example soil erosion. In this paper, the mean values of annual, seasonal and wet and dry periods of PCI in the conterminous Spain and for two normal periods (1946–1975 and 1976–2005) were studied. Precipitation in Spain follows a general NW-SE spatial pattern during the wet (months) period due to the Atlantic storm track, while during the dry (months) period, it follows a predominantly N-S spatial pattern. As a result, the annual values of PCI combine the two patterns and show a SW-NE PCI gradient. The analyses of the two sub-periods show significant changes in the precipitation occurred in conterminous Spain from 1946 to 2005, and precipitation concentration increased across most of the IP. At an annual scale, PCI increases mostly due to an increase in precipitation concentration during the wet season. At a seasonal scale significant changes were detected between 1945–1975 and 1976–2005, particularly in autumn (increase of PCI values), while changes in winter, spring and summer were mostly localized and not generalized (both increase and decrease). Changes in PCI seem to be complex and appear to be related to global atmospheric features and synoptic and local factors affecting precipitation trends. We discuss the possible explanation linked to the atmospheric pattern and monthly trends and their implications.
The impact of union formation dynamics on first births in West Germany and Italy: are there signs of convergence?

In this paper we investigate the changing impact of union formation on the transition to parenthood in West Germany and Italy using FFS data. We first draw attention to overall cohort patterns in union formation and first births and then describe the mutual relationships between union formation, first marriage, and first births. On the basis of event-history models, we then evaluate the impact of union formation behaviour on the transition to motherhood. In particular, we test whether the impact of union status has been changing for younger and older cohorts, thereby investigating whether the heterogeneous spread of non-marital childbearing is gaining relevance as we would expect from the perspective of the Second Demographic Transition. The findings from these analyses allow us to conclude that demographic behaviour is not converging from a cohort perspective. (AUTHORS)
ULTRA-LIGHT POROUS MATERIALS TAILORED FROM SOLIDIFICATION AND SOLID STATE PROCESSES

A method, conceptually new, for manufacturing hierarchically structured porous materials is presented. The porous structure was tailored during solidification stage and/or solid state transformations. These new materials are called AEROEUTECTICS® and AEROEUTECTOIDS®. Those names refer to a new family of light materials obtained by the substitution with air of selected solid phases (one or more) from a eutectic or eutectoid. This was done with specific treatment of chemical dissolution taking care of preserving the chemical composition and structural integrity of the remaining phases. Some potential uses of these materials are catalysts, adsorbent, super capacitors and solar collectors.
Ultralight Kernel Virtualization with Runnable Userspace Meta Programs

The common approach for virtualization is to treat the operating system as the basic unit. This gives the benefit of transparency, but is a heavyweight approach. We have implemented a radically different approach: virtualize based on application requirements and include only necessary components, e.g. networking domains. The virtual machine monitor is provided by a standard unmodified operating system. As opposed to implementing a new operating system, we have modified NetBSD and show that an existing Unix-style OS can be virtualized and componentized non-intrusively with relative ease; our changes are a part of the upstream source tree. We support file systems, networking, and a selection of drivers. Furthermore, we are able to use standard NetBSD binary kernel modules under virtualization. The bootstrap of a new virtual kernel takes milliseconds in the typical case. Resource consumption depends on the code base being virtualized and for NetBSD an untuned base virtual image uses 300kB of memory and e.g. a fully virtualized TCP/IP stack instance total is 500kB. This means scalability to thousands of units on commodity server hardware. Performance as compared to a regular kernel depends on the workload and ranges from superior to similar to worse.
Poverty impacts of changes in the price of agricultural commodities: recent evidence for Argentina

Argentina, like other land abundant country, benefited greatly from the increase in the prices of agricultural commodities. However, and in despite of the benefits at the macro level, with a large share of the population with low and medium-low incomes, the increase in agricultural commodity prices has the potential to hurt an important part of the population through a raise in the prices of the consumption basket of households, especially those that constitute the food-basket. The ex-ante evidence shows that this is expected to be the case. A less obvious channel, through changes in factor incomes would be more beneficial to the middle income households. Overall, losses range between 5.5 and 10% of initial household expenditure, with poorer households being the most negatively affected.
Improved Insulin Resistance, Adiponectin and Liver Enzymes without Change in Plasma Vaspin Level after 12 Weeks of Exercise Training among Obese Male Adolescents

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) the association among anthropometric measurements, cardiopulmonary fitness, liver enzymes and inflammatory markers including vaspin levels among male adolescents, and (2) the effects of a 12 week aerobic exercise training on insulin resistance, liver enzymes and inflammatory markers including vaspin levels among obese male adolescents were also studied. Methods: We compared anthropometric and metabolic parameters between thirty obese (BMI ≧ 25) and fifteen lean (BMI < 23) male high school students (17.0 ± 0.1 y). Obese male subjects were randomly assigned to either exercise intervention group (OIG, n = 18) or control group (OCG, n = 12). OIG participated in aerobic exercise (5 days/wk) for 12 weeks, while the OCG participated only in regular physical education class. Results: Partial correlation coefficient analysis showed no association between vaspin levels and metabolic parameters including insulin resistance. However, vaspin levels have significantly correlated with intima-media thickness (IMT). Parameters which were significantly associated with insulin resistance were gamma- glutamyltransferase (GGT) and VO2max, while adiponectin levels showed significant association with VO2max and fasting insulin levels. Twelve weeks of exercise training significantly improved insulin resistance with concurrent improvement in adiponectin and GGT without affecting the vaspin levels. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that 12 week of aerobic exercise training significantly improved insulin resistance and metabolic parameters. However, it did not affecting the plasma vaspin levels.
Microcellular Injection Molded Wood Fiber-PP Composites: Part II - Effect of Wood Fiber Length and Content on Cell Morphology and Physico-mechanical Properties

Microcellular wood fiber reinforced PP composites, a new development using bio-fiber strengthened plastic, are prepared in an injection molding process. The microcellular composites with five different types of wood fibers (hard wood fiber, finer hard wood fiber, soft wood fiber, finer soft wood fiber, and long wood fiber) are examined. The influence of wood fiber content (30-60% by weight) on the microcellular properties is also investigated. Microcell morphology (cell size, shape, and distribution) is observed using optical light and scanning electron micrographs (SEMs). The wood fiber length, geometry, and content strongly affected the microcellular structures of wood-PP composites. Composites with finer wood fibers possess better microcellular structures, and at a constant chemical foaming content, the higher percentage of wood fiber results in composites with smaller microcells. Due to the finer microcellular structures, finer wood fibers also result in improved physico-mechanical properties.
Microwave Technology: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

At present, water quality control is still dominated by laboratory analysis of grab samples. Sensors are only available for a very limited number of parameters and frequently do not entirely meet the needs of the users. Even a brief overview of the state-of-the-art in the real time water monitoring reveals that it is not possible to achieve adequate detection of water parameters by using only one type of sensor. Accordingly, the solution is to merge various technologies into a single system that would employ the best available methods for the detection of specific water contaminants, so as to provide overall superior sensitivity, selectivity and long-term stability, while enabling real-time wireless data collection for enhanced cost-effectiveness. Namely, multi-sensor platforms that utilise the best available methods combined into a single monitoring process are seen as the only way to achieve the holistic monitoring capabilities. It is suggested that a special role in this development is reserved for microwave technology based sensors a missing piece in the puzzle to potentially solve the issue of real-time water quality control. This paper reviews the capabilities of microwave sensors for real-time water quality monitoring as compared to other alternative methods, namely standard UV-VIS optical methods; fibre optic sensors; amperometric sensors, biosensors, specifically-sensitive microelectrodes and lab-on-chip sensing systems.
INVESTIGATION OF EFFECTS OF BUOYANCY ON SUPERCRITICAL CARBON DIOXIDE HEAT TRANSFER IN ROUND TUBES

A series of integral experiments were performed to investigate the unusual heat transfer characteristics to supercritical carbon dioxide flowing in round tubes under constant heat flux boundary condition. Wall temperatures were measured over a range of experimental parameters that varied fluid inlet temperature from 20 – 550 C, operating pressure from 7.5 to 10.2 MPa, mass flux from 150 to 350 Kg/m2s and a maximum heat flux of 62.5 KW/m2. Measurements were made for horizontal, upward, and downward flows to study the effect of buoyancy and flow acceleration caused by drastic density variation. Existing criterion to predict the influence of buoyancy suggested that the experimental data can be classified into three regimes namely normal, deteriorated, and enhanced heat transfer. In the case of upward flow, severe localized deterioration in heat transfer was observed due to reduction in the turbulent shear stress and is characterized by sharp increase in wall temperature. In the case of downward flow, turbulent shear stress is enhanced by the buoyancy forces leading to enhanced heat transfer. In the case of horizontal flow, flow stratification occurred leading to a circumferential variation in wall temperature. Thermocouples mounted 1800 apart on the tube revealed that the wall temperatures on the top side are significantly higher than the bottom side of the tube. When the bulk temperature is greater than the pseudocritical temperature, normal heat transfer was observed irrespective of flow orientation indicating that the buoyancy effects are negligible. INTRODUCTION As the traditional sources of energy used for power generation (natural gas, coal, oil etc) begin to deplete their costs will continue to rise. Hence, there is a need for alternative sources (nuclear, wind, solar etc) of energy and improvements in the thermal efficiency of the power generation. As a member of GenerationIV International Forum (GIF), the Department of Energy (DOE) has undertaken leading role in this area by funding research related to supercritical fluids both for reactor coolants (supercritical water) and for advanced power generation (supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle) [1]. It has been shown recently that the supercritical water-cooled (SCW) nuclear power plants can achieve higher efficiencies compared to the current generation nuclear power plants. Additionally, they also decrease the capital and operational costs of the plant [2]. However, one of the biggest challenges in SCWR development is reactor core design as no reliable data is currently available to model heat transfer from reactor fuel bundles to the
EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF THE SIMILARITY THEORY ON SCALED STRIP ELECTRODE CONFIGURATIONS FOR THE CALCULATION OF THE GROUNDING IMPEDANCE

Aim of the present work is the rigorous application of the dimensional analysis for the calculation of the impulse impedance of grounding stripes. First, the dimensionless parameters are defined according to the Buckingham Πi-Theorem and the necessary scaling factors for the physical quantities of the problem arise. Stripes embedded in a metal tank filled with saline water are subjected to a lightning impulse produced by an impulse current generator. The waveforms of the injected current and the electrode voltage are recorded for different geometrical scaling factors and conductivities and the impulse impedance is calculated from the oscillogramms. The experimental ratios of the impedance values for the various scaling scenarios are compared to the theoretically expected ratios resulting from the present dimensional analysis. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the accuracy of the proposed method and about factors that influence the experimental results and should be incorporated in the dimensional analysis.
Solubilization and tolerance of molybdenum trioxide ( MoO 3 ) by wood decaying fungi

Four strains of wood decaying fungi, Polyporus retirugis (PT 1), Trametes spp. (PT 2), Lentinus spp. (PT 3) and Ganoderma spp. (PT 4) were derived from Pathumwan Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. They were screened for the ability to tolerate and solubilize molybdenum trioxide (MoO3). These fungi were plated on malt extract agar (MEA) which were supplemented with 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7% (w/v) molybdenum trioxide. Polyporus retirugis (PT 1) and Lentinus spp. (PT 3) showed the highest efficiency for solubilizing molybdenum trioxide by producing clear zone diameters more than 40 mm. In this research, the metal tolerance ability of wood decaying fungi under various concentrations were investigated. The measurement of mycelial biomass dry weight indicated of metal tolerance. The results reveal that all strains of tested fungi were tolerant to high molybdenum concentration. For mycelial biomass production, the increase in molybdenum trioxide concentration in the culture medium caused a decrease in the mycelial biomass; therefore, this research demonstrated that these wood decaying fungi were promising agents to improve the efficacy of bioavailability of molybdate ion release from fertilizers containing molybdenum compounds.
EMM GENE POLYMORPHISM AMONG STREPTOCOCCUS PYOGENES ISOLATED FROM THROAT CULTURE

DNA sequencing is the most conclusive method for emm (M protein gene) typing of Streptococcus pyogenes. This method is not a feasible approach in developing countries where streptococcal infection is widespread among adults and children. Alternatively the PCR-RFLP has the potential for rapid screening of different types of S. pyogenes. To document the emm type distribution of S. pyogenes in a group of patients suffering from pharyngitis, the restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) profile of 50 isolates were analyzed. By using Hae III+ HincII (double digestion) and Dde I restriction enzymes and based on RFLP, the profile patterns of the isolates were compared. The analysis of data identified 15 distinct RFLP patterns for Hae III+ Hinc II and 13 patterns for Dde I. They differ from each other by at least one band. Although the number of isolates was not sufficient to make any epidemiological conclusion, but the finding demonstrated that the S. pyogenes population among pateints was heterogeneous. Regarding the PCR method, we managed to improve the results by modification of CDC protocol in three different ways. This study was conducted in normal circumstances when pharyngitis was at the peak seasonal incident. However emm amplicon restriction digest analysis is a valuable tool for rapid analysis of S. pyogenes infection in more important situation like outbreaks and in selected type of study like consideration of nosocomial infection.
The Key To Success In Innovation Part Ii: The Art Of Choosing Good Spokespersons

“Solve the technical problems first”, we often hear, “then we’ll deal with the market”. The real history of innovations does not generally follow this simple schema; it is made of adaptations, series of trial and error and countless negotiations between numerous social actors. A genuine combat from which conquerors who know how to choose good representatives emerge.
Tumor control and normal tissue toxicity: The two faces of radiotherapy

This thesis discusses the two contrasting sides of radiotherapy: tumor control and normal tissue toxicity. On one hand, radiation treatment aims to target the tumor with the highest possible radiation dose, inducing as much lethal DNA damage as possible. On the other hand however, escalation of the radiation dose will also result in an increase of normal tissue damage and hence of the normal tissue complication rate. Unfortunately, ionizing radiation cannot distinguish cancer cells from normal, healthy cells and damages all cells in the irradiated area. Fractionation of the total radiation dose to allow time for normal cells to repair together with high precision image-guided technologies to minimize the irradiated normal tissue volume, already augmented the utility of radiotherapy significantly. However, Improvements in radiotherapy remain necessary as several tumors are still poorly controlled by radiation alone and on the other hand, increased tumor control and subsequent survival rates make also the quality of life in cancer survivors more en more important. Exploring the molecular events after radiation treatment, in cancer cells and in normal cells, might unravel mechanistic insides and might lead to the identification of new therapeutic targets or biomarkers. In the studies described in this thesis, the molecular events involved in the repair of radiation induced DNA damage are investigated. By interfering with DNA double strand break repair processes, we aim to sensitize tumors and cancer cells to ionizing radiation and we measured the activity of these processes to predict tumor sensitivity and normal tissue toxicity.