Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis, design and implementation of serial-parallel-switched-capacitor coupled-inductor boost DC-AC inverter

ABSTRACT This work suggested a novel configuration of serial-parallel-switched-capacitor coupled-inductor (SPSCCI) inverter as well as its analysis, design and implementation to achieve high-gain boost DC-AC conversion and closed-loop regulation. The power part consists of two cascaded sub-circuits: a SPSCCI booster (a coupled inductor with turn ratio n, four pumping capacitors, five switches) and a half-bridge DC-link inverter (two bridge capacitors, two switches), so as to attain a wide DC-AC gain as: +0.5×[4(n + 1)+(1+ nD)/(1-D)]∼_0.5×[(4(n + 1)+(1+ nD)/(1-D)] (D: ratio cycle). When n = 4,D = 0.5, AC output can be +13~-13 times voltage of DC supply. Increasing n or D makes a higher gain, but it results in a larger weight/volume or magnetic bias/saturation of inductor. Here, the extendable switched-capacitor count can provide an extra gain to relieve these stresses. The control part consists of a phase generator and a sinusoidal pulse-width-modulation (SPWM) compensator, mainly fabricated on a full-custom chip: D35-105B-E0008, TSMC 0.35 μm 2P4M, 1500 × 1500 μm2, 5 V, 2.68 mW, 200 kHz max. Finally, the simulation results are illustrated to examine the validity of these analysis and design, and the experimental results are verified on the prototype circuit to prove the practicality .
Technical debt as an indicator of software security risk: a machine learning approach for software development enterprises

ABSTRACT Vulnerability prediction facilitates the development of secure software, as it enables the identification and mitigation of security risks early enough in the software development lifecycle. Although several factors have been studied for their ability to indicate software security risk, very limited attention has been given to technical debt (TD), despite its potential relevance to software security. To this end, in the present study, we investigate the ability of common TD indicators to indicate security risks in software products, both at project-level and at class-level of granularity. Our findings suggest that TD indicators may potentially act as security indicators as well.
Immunophenotypic Characteristics of Equine Monocytes and Alevolar Macrophages

IMMUNOPHENOTYPIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EQUINE MONOCYTES AND ALVEOLAR MACROPHAGES Solomon Olawole Odemuyiwa Advisor: University of Guelph, 2012 Dorothee Bienzle Hematopoietic cells of the myelomonocytic lineage play a central role in orchestrating both innate and adaptive immunity. They are important in the control of infectious agents and in the pathogenesis of diseases characterized by dysregulated immune response. Like allergic asthma in human patients, recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) of horses is a disease exemplified by chronic airway inflammation in the absence of infectious agents. However, unlike allergic asthma, RAO is marked by preponderance of neutrophils rather than eosinophils in the airways. Attempts to understand the immunological basis of RAO by studying lymphocytes produced equivocal results. This thesis examined the possible role of alveolar macrophages (AM) recovered from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) in RAO. Since macrophages are predominantly derived from circulating monocytes, the thesis investigated first the phenotypic characteristics of circulating monocytes, second those of macrophages in vitro derived from monocytes, and finally attributes of AM derived in vivo. Flow cytometric analysis following antibody staining of monocytes from 61 horses showed that the clustering pattern of human leukocytes may not always be extrapolated to horses when using this technique since clusters of granulocytes often spill over into the
Correlation between performance and feeding behavior of feedlot lambs fed without roughage diet

The objective was to evaluate the correlation between performance and feeding behavior of feedlot castrated Santa Ines lambs fed without roughage diet, weighing 20 ± 1,8 kg and four months of age (± 0,34). A completely randomized design was adopted. Correlations were obtained by Pearson’s linear correlation analysis and the t test, and processed on SAS software (version 9.2). The variables number of rumination chews per cud, number of cuds ruminated per day, speed of each chew, and number of rumination cuds per day were positively correlated with the variation in body weight (p < 0.05). For number of cuds ruminated per day, a positive correlation was found with the variations in body weight. Initial and final body weights were positively correlated with the feed and rumination efficiencies of the lambs feeding behavior and with the time per period spent feeding and performing other activities. Feeding time had a positive correlation with variation in body weight per day and the relative variation in body weight. Rumination was positively correlated with performance variables. The correlations show that there is influence between eating behavior and performance.
Identification of QTL for seed coat colour and oil content in Brassica napus by association mapping using SSR markers

Qu, C. , Hasan, M. , Lu, K. , Liu, L. , Zhang, K. , Fu, F. , Wang, M. , Liu, S. , Bu, H. , Wang, R. , Xu, X. , Chen, L. and Li, J. 2015. Identification of QTL for seed coat colour and oil content in Brassica napus by association mapping using SSR markers. Can. J. Plant Sci. 95: 387-395. Association mapping identifies quantitative trait loci (QTL) based on the strength of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between markers and functional polymorphisms across a set of diverse germplasms. In this study, we used association mapping to detect QTL and genome-wide simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers linked to seed coat colour and oil content in a population of 217 oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) accessions. We corrected for the population structure of B. napus using 389 genome-wide SSR markers. In total, 25 and 11 SSR markers linked to seed coat colour and oil content were detected, respectively, and these two sets of markers were in different linkage groups. Nine of these markers for seed coat colour spanned the major QTL region for seed coat colour, and been mapped to chromosome A9. Six of these markers showed high levels of association with both seed coat colour and oil content, and markers H081N08.8 and KS20291 were mapped to the major QTL region for seed coat colour on chromosome A9. Another marker, CB10364, was in high LD with all determined seed coat colour and oil content traits, and was mapped to the co-localized QTL region for them on chromosome A8. These data indicate that seed coat colour was found to be an important contributor to seed oil content. Further, we show that association mapping using a heterogeneous set of genotypes is a suitable approach for complementing and enhancing previously obtained QTL information for marker-assisted selection.
LTSA-LE: A local tangent space alignment label enhancement algorithm

: According to smoothness assumption, local topological structure can be shared between feature and label manifolds. This study proposes a new algorithm based on Local Tangent Space Alignment (LTSA) to implement the label enhancement process. In general, we ﬁrst establish a learning model for feature extraction in label space and use a feature extraction method of LTSA to guide the reconstruction of label manifolds. Then, we establish an unconstrained optimization model based on the optimal theory presented in this paper. The model is suitable for solving problems with a large number of sample points. Finally, the experiment results show that the algorithm can effectively improve the training speed and multilabel dataset prediction accuracy.
Multistage elastic full-waveform inversion for tilted transverse isotropic media

1) Jeonbuk National University Department of Resources and Energy Engineering, 567, Baekje-daero, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si, Jeollabuk-do 54896, Republic of Korea 2) Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) Mineral Resources Research Division 124, Gwahak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34132, Republic of Korea 3) King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Physical Science and Engineering Division 4700, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 4) Seoul National University Department of Energy Systems Engineering, 1, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
Plus de valeur pour plus de satisfaction ? Etude du rôle modérateur du cumul d’expériences du consommateur

Alors que la littérature souligne l’importance de la valeur perçue dans l’analyse du comportement du consommateur, force est de constater qu’elle ne produit pas toujours les effets escomptés sur la satisfaction. En vue d’expliquer ce constat, cet article réplique et approfondit l’analyse du rôle modérateur du cumul d’expériences du consommateur sur les liens entre la valeur perçue et la satisfaction. A cette fin, deux études (n1=1140 et n2=437) mobilisant des mesures analytiques de la valeur (générique et contingente) sont menées dans un contexte empreint à de fréquentes interactions individu*objet : le secteur audiovisuel. Le résultat principal de cette recherche souligne qu’à mesure que les expériences antérieures de consommation d’une émission TV s’accumulent, la capacité de la valeur à expliquer la satisfaction décroît alors même que les niveaux de valeur et de satisfaction vis-à-vis du programme augmentent.
Effects of terrain‐following vertical coordinates on simulation of stratus clouds in numerical weather prediction models

Many numerical weather prediction models employ terrain‐following vertical coordinates. As a consequence, over orography, flat tops of stratus clouds are intersected by the vertical coordinate surfaces. We conduct idealised two‐dimensional simulations of a stratus cloud with the COSMO model to study the effect of such sloping vertical coordinate surfaces. The evolution of the stratus cloud above a flat surface within a horizontally homogeneous atmosphere serves as a reference. During night‐time, the cloud thickens, driven by radiative cooling at the cloud top. Adding a sinusoidal perturbation to the vertical coordinate surfaces reduces the growth of the stratus cloud. With strong perturbations, the cloud starts to dissipate. The physical processes in the two simulations are identical, hence this behaviour is purely driven by numerical diffusion. The cloud is similarly thinned when sinusoidal orographic features are introduced. The reduction depends on the amplitude and wavelength of the perturbations and hills. Increasing the horizontal resolution partly mitigates the numerical diffusion. However, this is a very costly measure for an operational weather model. We suggest conducting further research on a new vertical coordinate with additional local smoothing of the orographic signal.
Prepared for a Pandemic? How Schools' Preparedness Related to Their Remote Instruction During COVID-19

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States in spring 2020 forced nearly all U.S. schools to transition rapidly to remote learning. Using responses to the American Educator Panels, RAND researchers investigate how schools' pre-pandemic planning translated into remote learning practices and principals' confidence in student achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers in Ghana’s health care institutions: An observational study

Objective To assess hand hygiene compliance in selected primary hospitals in Ghana. Design A cross-sectional health facility-based observational study was conducted in primary health care facilities in five regions in Ghana. A total of 546 healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, midwives and laboratory personnel from 106 health facilities participated in the study. Main outcome measures The main outcome measures included availability of hand hygiene materials and alcohol job aids; compliance with moments of hand hygiene; and compliance with steps in hygienic hand washing. These were assessed using descriptive statistics. Results The mean availability of hand hygiene material and alcohol job aids was 75% and 71% respectively. This was described as moderately high, but less desirable. The mean hand hygiene compliance with moments of hand hygiene was 51%, which was also described asmoderately high, but less desirable. It was observed that, generally, hand hygiene was performed after procedures than before. However, the mean compliance with steps in hygienic hand washing was 86%, which was described as high and desirable. Conclusion Healthcare workers are generally competent in performance of hygienic hand washing. However, this does not seem to influence compliance with moments of hand hygiene. Efforts must therefore be made to translate the competence of healthcare workers in hygienic hand washing into willingness to comply with moments of hand hygiene, especially contact with patients.
Conditions for the functioning of outsourcing in enterprises

The objective of the study is to present the underlying conditions of the functioning of outsourcing at various levels of company operations. In addition, it shows a detailed analysis of the purposes of outsourcing, the scope of outsourced services and outsourcing selection criteria. What is more, it includes an assessment of the level of company satisfaction with outsourcing performance and the risks involved. The research materials comprise data regard-ing 140 manufacturers and service providers located in Eastern Poland which have outsourced some of their activities. The survey performed allowed the researchers to evaluate the scope of use of outsourcing services in company operations. The descriptive, comparative and graphic methods were all applied to analyse the re-sults of the study. The statistical analysis and the calculation of the correlation coefficient were employed to assess the level of dependence of company size on the scope of use of out-sourcing services. The conducted analyses show that the main objective of outsourcing use appears to be the focus on core competencies and the reduction of operating costs (75.7% and 60.7%, respectively). The most frequently indicated areas outsourced by the companies are the organization of supply, distribution, transport services and renovation-repair services. More than a half of the analysed enterprises pointed at the above listed areas. The factors of major importance when selecting outsourcing services providers are experience, market recognition, price, quality, and the application of the principles of sustainable development. The last element was crucial, above all, in the case of companies employing over 250 people. This is because in their case cooperation with companies holding relevant certificates and permits in the field of sustainable development translates directly into the development of a good company image and an increase in company value.
Seasonal Variability in Dormancy and Flowering Competence in Chrysanthemum: Chilling impacts on shoot extension growth and flowering capacity

Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat.), an herbaceous perennial short-day plant, shows seasonality in its regulation of shoot extension growth and flowering capacity. To enhance our understanding of the physiological mechanisms of the seasonality in chrysanthemum, we investigated the changes in growth and flowering capacity, and the variation among cultivars. We also evaluated seasonal changes and the response to chilling in shoot extension and flowering capacity in chrysanthemum under controlled environmental conditions (20°C/15°C (light/dark) with a 12-h light period). Both shoot extension and flowering capacity under the subsequent growing conditions were regulated by the temperature of prior growing conditions. After the temperature increased over the summer, chrysanthemums showed a reduced ability for extension growth, and became more difficult to induce flowering. Chilling stimulated the extension growth of shoots when the meristems were entering a dormant state. Chilling had the opposite effect on two regulatory pathways involved in flowering capacity. A pathway related to the meristem dormant state was suppressed by exposure to chilling and induced flowering, and chilling activated an inhibitory regulator in parallel. Discipline: Horticulture Additional key words: Chrysanthemum morifolium, chilling, flowering Present address: 2 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Science, The University of Tokyo (Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan) 3 College of Bioresource Sciences, Nihon University (Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8510, Japan) *Corresponding author: e-mail tamotsu@affrc.go. jp Received 30 May 2016; accepted 24 November 2016. Introduction Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat.) is an herbaceous perennial short-day (SD) plant. The effects of environmental factors on its growth and flowering are well-documented (Cathey 1969, Cockshull 1985). In late autumn, the plants form rosetted suckers from underground parts. The development of rosettes in late autumn is an adaptive response by chrysanthemum that might evolve in its environment of origin to enable survival during winter (e.g. reviewed in Vegis 1964, Thomas and Vince-Prue 1997). These suckers show little growth during winter, but begin shoot elongation in early spring and continue vegetative growth in the long summer photoperiods. Their flowering is induced when the photoperiod becomes shorter than the critical day-length
A Study on the Effects of Business Service Quality on Satisfaction, Commitment, Performance, and Loyalty at a Private University

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of business service quality on satisfaction, commitment, performance, and loyalty in higher education. A survey was given to undergraduates involved in business through employment and start-up companies at a private university in Korea. With 252 respondents, this study used exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis to verify the reliability and validity of measured variables. Multiple regression was employed as a statistical method for the hypotheses of the study. The research questions were: 1) How do education SERVQUAL factors (tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy) affect customer satisfaction? 2) How do education SERVQUAL factors affect customer commitment? 3) How does customer satisfaction or commitment affect education performance? 4) How does customer satisfaction, commitment or performance affect their loyalty in higher education? The findings show that most dimensions of business service quality have effects on satisfaction and commitment, and satisfaction and commitment have a positive effect on performance. Additionally, satisfaction, commitment and performance all have an effect on loyalty. This study confirmed the need for the improvement of business service quality in a private university. Additionally, it highlighted the importance of user satisfaction, commitment and performance in order to increase the loyalty level of undergraduate students.
MRU-NET: A U-Shaped Network for Retinal Vessel Segmentation

Fundus blood vessel image segmentation plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and is the basis of computer-aided diagnosis. Feature information from the retinal blood vessel image is relatively complicated, and the existing algorithms are sometimes difficult to perform effective segmentation with. Aiming at the problems of low accuracy and low sensitivity of the existing segmentation methods, an improved U-shaped neural network (MRU-NET) segmentation method for retinal vessels was proposed. Firstly, the image enhancement algorithm and random segmentation method are used to solve the problems of low contrast and insufficient image data of the original image. Moreover, smaller image blocks after random segmentation are helpful to reduce the complexity of the U-shaped neural network model; secondly, the residual learning is introduced into the encoder and decoder to improve the efficiency of feature use and to reduce information loss, and a feature fusion module is introduced between the encoder and decoder to extract image features with different granularities; and finally, a feature balancing module is added to the skip connections to resolve the semantic gap between low-dimensional features in the encoder and high-dimensional features in decoder. Experimental results show that our method has better accuracy and sensitivity on the DRIVE and STARE datasets (accuracy (ACC) = 0.9611, sensitivity (SE) = 0.8613; STARE: ACC = 0.9662, SE = 0.7887) than some of the state-of-the-art methods.
A proactive route planning approach to navigation errors

ABSTRACT Online navigation systems assume a person can follow a given route from origin to destination. Nonetheless, spatial cognition studies show that wayfinding is a complex, highly adaptive process and that route planning is incremental rather than prescriptive. Indeed, people may deviate from their originally chosen route for a number of reasons including navigation errors, especially when the environment is unfamiliar. Even in familiar places, certainty in wayfinding is highly unlikely to be completely achieved. Consequently, when people make a wrong turn or miss an exit, even the best reroute to the destination may add several minutes to the originally planned travel time. This work formally defines the novel problem of finding a path such that, when navigation errors occur, recovering is not as costly. We call this approach the most recoverable path. This subtle change in the route planning problem – i.e., considering error recovery costs – invalidates using dynamic programming, such as in shortest path algorithm solutions. We therefore introduce a novel, readily applicable, fast heuristic to this NP-hard problem. The benefits of the most recoverable path are manifold: long detours are avoided, actual travel time is reduced, and it is comparable to its shortest counterpart in terms of length.
An Evolutionary Approach to Improve the Halftoning Process

The techniques of halftoning are widely used in marketing because they reduce the cost of impression and maintain the quality of graphics. Halftoning converts a digital image into a binary image conformed by dots. The output of the halftoning contains less visual information; a possible benefit of this task is the reduction of ink when graphics are printed. The human eye is not able to detect the absence of information, but the printed image stills have good quality. The most used method for halftoning is called Floyd-Steinberger, and it defines a specific matrix for the halftoning conversion. However, most of the proposed techniques in halftoning use predefined kernels that do not permit adaptation to different images. This article introduces the use of the harmony search algorithm (HSA) for halftoning. The HSA is a popular evolutionary algorithm inspired by the musical improvisation. The different operators of the HSA permit an efficient exploration of the search space. The HSA is applied to find the best configuration of the kernel in halftoning; meanwhile, as an objective function, the use of the structural similarity index (SSIM) is proposed. A set of rules are also introduced to reduce the regular patterns that could be created by non-appropriate kernels. The SSIM is used due to the fact that it is a perception model used as a metric that permits comparing images to interpret the differences between them numerically. The aim of combining the HSA with the SSIM for halftoning is to generate an adaptive method that permits estimating the best kernel for each image based on its intrinsic attributes. The graphical quality of the proposed algorithm has been compared with classical halftoning methodologies. Experimental results and comparisons provide evidence regarding the quality of the images obtained by the proposed optimization-based approach. In this context, classical algorithms have a lower graphical quality in comparison with our proposal. The results have been validated by a statistical analysis based on independent experiments over the set of benchmark images by using the mean and standard deviation.