Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Sliding Mode Methods for Active Power Filter Using Finite-Time Disturbance Observer

Active power filter (APF) is a typical nonlinear system with unknown external disturbances, its mathematical model is difficult to establish accurately. In order to compensate the external disturbance of the APF, a finite-time disturbance observer (FTDO) is designed to estimate matched and mismatched disturbances in this paper. The advantages of observer and sliding mode controller are combined. First, a nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control (NFTSMC) based on the FTDO is proposed. Then a dynamic terminal sliding mode control (DTSMC) based on the FTDO is proposed. Finally, a double hidden layer recurrent neural network (DHLRNN) is introduced to achieve the optimal sliding mode switching gain. Simulation studies show the satisfactory compensation performance of the proposed FTDO using the NFTSMC and DTSMC methods.
Changes in Thyroid Hormone Signaling Mediate Cardiac Dysfunction in the Tg197 Mouse Model of Arthritis: Potential Therapeutic Implications

Background Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients show a higher risk of heart failure. The present study investigated possible causes of cardiac dysfunction related to thyroid hormone (TH) signaling in a RA mouse model. Methods A TNF-driven mouse model of RA[TghuTNF (Tg197)] was used. Cardiac function was evaluated by echocardiography. SERCA2a and phospholamban protein levels in left ventricle (LV) tissue, thyroid hormone levels in serum, TH receptors in LV and TH-related kinase signaling pathways were measured. T3 hormone was administered in female Tg197 mice. Results We show LV and atrial dilatation with systolic dysfunction in Tg197 animals, accompanied by downregulated SERCA2a. We suggest an interaction of pro-inflammatory and thyroid hormone signaling indicated by increased p38 MAPK and downregulation of TRβ1 receptor in Tg197 hearts. Interestingly, female Tg197 mice showed a worse cardiac phenotype related to reduced T3 levels and Akt activation. T3 supplementation increased Akt activation, restored SERCA2a expression and improved cardiac function in female Tg197 mice. Conclusions TNF overexpression of Tg197 mice results in cardiac dysfunction via p38 MAPK activation and downregulation of TRβ1. Gender-specific reduction in T3 levels could cause the worse cardiac phenotype observed in female mice, while T3 administration improves cardiac function and calcium handling via modified Akt activation.
Diet Quality Assessment and the Relationship between Diet Quality and Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S. and globally. Dietary risk factors contribute to over half of all CVD deaths and CVD-related disability. The aim of this narrative review is to describe methods used to assess diet quality and the current state of evidence on the relationship between diet quality and risk of CVD. The findings of the review will be discussed in the context of current population intake patterns and dietary recommendations. Several methods are used to calculate diet quality: (1) a priori indices based on dietary recommendations; (2) a priori indices based on foods or dietary patterns associated with risk of chronic disease; (3) exploratory data-driven methods. Substantial evidence from prospective cohort studies shows that higher diet quality, regardless of the a priori index used, is associated with a 14–29% lower risk of CVD and 0.5–2.2 years greater CVD-free survival time. Limited evidence is available from randomized controlled trials, although evidence shows healthy dietary patterns improve risk factors for CVD and lower CVD risk. Current dietary guidance for general health and CVD prevention and management focuses on following a healthy dietary pattern throughout the lifespan. High diet quality is a unifying component of all dietary recommendations and should be the focus of national food policies and health promotion.
Laboratory simulation and numerical modelling of the kinematics of oceanic internal waves

Internal waves are known to occur in most ocean areas, especially the deep ocean where stable stratification is often found. While engineering operations have hitherto largely been confined to well-mixed shallow seas (such as the North Sea). ne\\' petroleum discoveries have prompted a move into areas (e.g. west of Shetland) where internal waves are more likely to be a problem. The implications of internal waves for safety in offshore operations have been raised by Osborne, Burch and Scarlett (1978) and by Bole, Ebbesmeyer and Romea (1994). The presence of internal waves in sea areas of current interest to the UK offshore industry has been confirmed by Sherwin (1991). While many aspects of internal wave behaviour have been extensively studied (e.g., Thorpe, 1975), very few measurements of detailed wave kinematics have been performed. Using an advanced flow measurement technique, this study provides measurements of internal wave kinematics in the laboratory and comparisons with non-linear wave theory. The extensive literature on internal waves is reviewed from the viewpoint of offshore engineering. Then, extending the Stokes expansion presented by Thorpe (1968), a nonlinear model for internal waves in a continuously stratified fluid, suitable for numerical solution, is derived. The long wave theory of Benjamin (1966) is also discussed. The experimental facilities are described, and the velocity measurement technique (Particle' Image Velocimetry) is discussed in the context of stratified flow measurement. Errors in the measurements are discussed, and an upper bound of about 9% is found to apply to the bulk of the flow, with larger errors (up to 17%) in the interface. The results of the experiments are presented alongside comparisons with the numerical predictions. The im plications of the results for offshore engineering are discussed with special reference to loading effects. It is concluded that second order Stokes theory is able to predict the velocities in large amplitude short internal waves within around 16% on an'rage, although in t he extremes the measured velocities can be up to 40% above predictions. The kinematics of large amplitude long waves are underpredicted by linear theory to a factor of up to :2 for the horizontal components. and 4 for the vertical components. These disparities warrant the liSP of more advanced nwthods of prediction in engineering applications.
Detecting behavioural changes when refactoring a web-based legacy system

Legacy code suffers from poor readability and testability. This together with ever changing business requirements leads management and development teams to prioritize quick fixes over risky restructuring of working code. It is clear that the technical debt accumulated through inadequate maintenance will create a sinking ship. The dilemma of having to change code to increase test coverage, to guard against the introduction of bugs withstands.Characterization testing is a form of automated testing where the goal is to detect behaviour changes rather than to ensure program correctness. This master thesis aims to develop a tool which allows for characterization testing without first changing the code under test. Using only URL's to create test cases for the web application and ensuring that the server response is the same before and after a refactorization.
Optimizing Bladder Resin Transfer Molding Process to Manufacture Complex, Thin-Ply Thermoplastic Tubular Composite Structures: An Experimental Case Study

The bladder molding process is primarily used in sporting applications but mostly with prepregs. Bladder-Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (B-RTM) presents the tremendous potential to automate and mass produce the complex hollow-composite profiles. Thin-ply, non-crimp fabrics (NCFs) provide excellent mechanical, fracture toughness, and vibration damping properties on top of the weight saving it offers to a final product. However, these fiber architectures are difficult to inject due to the resistance they provide for the polymer flow using the liquid injection process. Therefore, it is mandatory to optimize the process parameters to reduce the time for injection and simultaneously achieve better consolidation. This work presents a first, detailed, experimental case study to successfully inject a low-permeability, thin-ply, complex, thermoplastic tubular structure, and the effect of process parameters, boundary conditions, the associated manufacturing challenges, and proposed solutions are deliberated in this paper.
Generation-recombination transient effects in partially depleted SOI transistors: systematic experiments and simulations

A synthesis of the most frequent transient phenomena due to floating-body effects in partially depleted SOI MOSFET's is presented. The dominant physical mechanisms are examined through a variety of experiments. Comprehensive models which predict the transient effects are included in SOISPICE. Simulated transients involving both generation and recombination are fully validated by the experiments and are shown to he useful for reliable carrier lifetime extraction as well as SOI circuit simulation.
When and why direct transmission models can be used for environmentally persistent pathogens

Variants of the susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model of Kermack & McKendrick (1927) enjoy wide application in epidemiology, offering simple yet powerful inferential and predictive tools in the study of diverse infectious diseases across human, animal and plant populations. Direct transmission models (DTM) are a subset of these that treat the processes of disease transmission as comprising a series of discrete instantaneous events. Infections transmitted indirectly by persistent environmental pathogens, however, are examples where a DTM description might fail and are perhaps better described by models that comprise explicit environmental transmission routes, so-called environmental transmission models (ETM). In this paper we discuss the stochastic susceptible-exposed-infected-removed (SEIR) DTM and susceptible-exposed-infected-removed-pathogen (SEIR-P) ETM and we show that the former is the timescale separation limit of the latter, with ETM host-disease dynamics increasingly resembling those of a DTM when the pathogen’s characteristic timescale is shortened, relative to that of the host population. Using graphical posterior predictive checks (GPPC), we investigate the validity of the SEIR model when fitted to simulated SEIR-P host infection and removal times. Such analyses demonstrate how, in many cases, the SEIR model is robust to departure from direct transmission. Finally, we present a case study of white spot disease (WSD) in penaeid shrimp with rates of environmental transmission and pathogen decay (SEIR-P model parameters) estimated using published results of experiments. Using SEIR and SEIR-P simulations of a hypothetical WSD outbreak management scenario, we demonstrate how relative shortening of the pathogen timescale comes about in practice. With atttempts to remove diseased shrimp from the population every 24h, we see SEIR and SEIR-P model outputs closely conincide. However, when removals are 6-hourly, the two models’ mean outputs diverge, with distinct predictions of outbreak size and duration.
Classifying the Unknown: Identification of Insects by Deep Zero-shot Bayesian Learning

Insects represent a large majority of biodiversity on Earth, yet so few species are described. Describing new species typicallyrequires specific taxonomic expertise to identify morphological characters that distinguish it from other known species andDNA-based methods have aided in providing additional evidence of separate species. Machine learning (ML) provides apowerful method in identifying new species given its analytical processing is more sensitive to subtle physical differencesin images humans may not process. Existing ML algorithms are limited by image repositories that only contain describedspecies, leaving out the possibility of identifying new species. We develop a Bayesian deep learning method for zero-shotclassification of species. The proposed approach forms a Bayesian hierarchy of species around corresponding genera anduses deep embeddings of images and DNA barcodes to identify insects to the lowest taxonomic level possible. To demonstratethis proof of concept, we use a database of 32,848 insect images from 1,040 described species split into training and test datawherein the test data includes 243 species not present in the training data. Our results demonstrate that using DNA sequencesand images together, known insects can be classified with 96.66% accuracy while unknown (to the database) insects have anaccuracy of 81.39% in identifying the correct genus. The proposed deep zero-shot Bayesian model demonstrates a powerfulnew approach that can be used for the gargantuan task of identifying new insect species.
SILC dynamics in MOS structures subject to periodic stress

This work investigates stress-induced leakage current (SILC) in thin-oxide MOS capacitors subject to (quasiperiodic) ac voltage stress, under the condition of fixed charge fluence through the oxide. It shows that both trap creation and spontaneous trap annealing play a significant role when the duration of, and the time between, high-voltage pulses are comparable with characteristic times of trap dynamics. A phenomenological model is introduced that is able to accurately represent the main physical phenomena due to pulsed voltage stress under conditions of interest for unconventional programming schemes for fast programming nonvolatile memories (NVMs) with acceptable oxide degradation.
Design and Analysis of the Channel Waveguide Transformer

The authors describe an easily fabricated H-plane transformer for use in rectangular waveguide carrying the dominant mode. An approximate theoretical analysis of the structure is presented, and computed results are compared with measurements on transformers at X-band. Design curves are given for transitions from full to one-haff, one-third, and one-quarter height waveguide. The new transformers have been found particularly useful for millimeter-wave mixers and multipliers employing split-block construction. The structure can also be used as a transition from rectangular to channel waveguide.
Measuring Readiness to Change Substance Use, Alcohol Use, and Cannabis Use: An Experimental Manipulation of Cognitive Effort

Abstract Background: The Transtheoretical Model supports that readiness to change should predict actual substance-related behavior change. This relationship is surprisingly modest. Across several behavioral domains, individuals tend to have unrealistic expectations regarding the amount of effort and time required to successfully change one’s behaviors, dubbed the False Hope Syndrome. Objectives: Based on False Hope Syndrome, we expect the standard method of measuring self-reported readiness to change is overestimated. To test this hypothesis, we experimentally manipulated level of cognitive effort prior to completing readiness to change measures. College students from a large southwestern university who reported using substances in the past 30 days (n = 345) were recruited from a psychology department participant pool and randomized to one of three conditions: 1) standard, low effort condition, 2) medium effort condition (selected likes/dislikes of substance use and negative consequences of changing one’s use), and 3) high effort condition (also provided written responses to how they would handle difficult situations related to changing their substance use). We conducted one-way ANOVAs with Tukey post-hoc comparisons to examine differences on three measures of readiness to change: the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA) scale as well as readiness and motivation rulers. Results: Contrary to our hypothesis, all significant statistical tests supported higher cognitive effort conditions reporting higher readiness to change. Although effect sizes were modest, higher cognitive effort appeared to increase self-reported readiness to change substance use. Conclusions: Additional work is needed to test how self-reported readiness to change relates to actual behavior change when assessed under the different effort conditions.
The Receptor AT1 Appears to Be Important for the Maintenance of Bone Mass and AT2 Receptor Function in Periodontal Bone Loss Appears to Be Regulated by AT1 Receptor

A large number of experimental studies has demonstrated that angiotensin II (Ang II) is involved in key events of the inflammatory process. This study aimed to evaluate the role of Ang II type 1 (AT1) and Ang II type 2 (AT2) receptors on periodontitis. Methods: Experimental periodontitis was induced by placing a 5.0 nylon thread ligature around the second upper left molar of AT1 mice, no-ligature or ligature (AT1-NL and AT1-L), AT2 (AT2-NL or AT2-L) and wild type (WT-NL or L). Alveolar bone loss was scanned using Micro-CT. Cytokines, peptides and enzymes were analyzed from gingival tissues by Elisa and RT-PCR. Results: The blockade of AT1 receptor resulted in bone loss, even in healthy animals. Ang II receptor blockades did not prevent linear bone loss. Ang II and Ang 1-7 levels were significantly increased in the AT2-L (p < 0.01) group compared to AT2-NL and AT1-L. The genic expression of the Mas receptor was significantly increased in WT-L and AT2-L compared to (WT-NL and AT2-NL, respectively) and in AT1-L. Conclusions: Our data suggest that the receptor AT1 appears to be important for the maintenance of bone mass. AT2 receptor molecular function in periodontitis appears to be regulated by AT1.
A miniature hydro-energy generator based on pressure fluctuation in Kármán vortex street

A new miniature hydro-energy generator for harnessing energy from Kármán vortex street behind a bluff body in a water flow is developed. The flow energy is converted into electrical energy by an assembly of a cantilevered piezoelectric beam and a flexible diaphragm. An analytical model for the energy harvester is developed. Prototypes of the energy generator are fabricated and tested. Experimental results show that an open-circuit output voltage of 120 mVpp and an instantaneous output power of 0.7 nW are generated when the pressure oscillates with an amplitude of nearly 0.3 kPa and a frequency of about 52 Hz.
Matrices analysis based on Jacket for space time block codes

Recently, the orthogonal matrices with correlated values named Jacket were introduced, it can generalize all Walsh Hadamard and weighted Hadamard cases and leads same patterns as space time block codes (STBC). Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the matrices of STBC according to Jacket model, and derive some new cases of quasi-orthogonal matrices to enrich their family. In these cases we use unitary transform according to Jacket model, therefore, they have same diversity gain level. However, some new cases can lead simple correlations canceling based on adjacent transmitted symbols with trade off from code rate before modulations.
Performance of thin-film chip resistors

Increased use of thin-film surface mount chip resisters in military and high-performance industrial equipment has led to an increased awareness of potential failure modes in harsh environments. In this work, we have studied the behavior of chip resistors fabricated from tantalum nitride and nichrome metal films under biased humidity and have measured widely different results attributable to the metal film, and protective system. The effects of electrostatic discharge (ESD) and high-temperature stability on these small resistive devices was also examined and related to the resistor design. >
Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Efficacy and Effectiveness against Cancer

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection, with 15 HPV types related to cervical, anal, oropharyngeal, penile, vulvar, and vaginal cancers. However, cervical cancer remains one of the most common cancers in women, especially in developing countries. Three HPV vaccines have been licensed: bivalent (Cervarix, GSK, Rixensart, Belgium), quadrivalent (Merck, Sharp & Dome (Merck & Co, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA)), and nonavalent (Merck, Sharp & Dome (Merck & Co, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA)). The current HPV vaccine recommendations apply to 9 years old and above through the age of 26 years and adults aged 27–45 years who might be at risk of new HPV infection and benefit from vaccination. The primary target population for HPV vaccination recommended by the WHO is girls aged 9–14 years, prior to their becoming sexually active, to undergo a two-dose schedule and girls ≥ 15 years of age, to undergo a three-dose schedule. Safety data for HPV vaccines have indicated that they are safe. The most common adverse side-effect was local symptoms. HPV vaccines are highly immunogenic. The efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines has been remarkably high among young women who were HPV seronegative before vaccination. Vaccine efficacy was lower among women regardless of HPV DNA when vaccinated and among adult women. Comparisons of the efficacy of bivalent, quadrivalent, and nonavalent vaccines against HPV 16/18 showed that they are similar. However, the nonavalent vaccine can provide additional protection against HPV 31/33/45/52/58. In a real-world setting, the notable decrease of HPV 6/11/16/18 among vaccinated women compared with unvaccinated women shows the vaccine to be highly effective. Moreover, the direct effect of the nonavalent vaccine with the cross-protection of bivalent and quadrivalent vaccines results in the reduction of HPV 6/11/16/18/31/33/45/52/58. HPV vaccination has been shown to provide herd protection as well. Two-dose HPV vaccine schedules showed no difference in seroconversion from three-dose schedules. However, the use of a single-dose HPV vaccination schedule remains controversial. For males, the quadrivalent HPV vaccine possibly reduces the incidence of external genital lesions and persistent infection with HPV 6/11/16/18. Evidence regarding the efficacy and risk of HPV vaccination and HIV infection remains limited. HPV vaccination has been shown to be highly effective against oral HPV type 16/18 infection, with a significant percentage of participants developing IgG antibodies in the oral fluid post vaccination. However, the vaccines’ effectiveness in reducing the incidence of and mortality rates from HPV-related head and neck cancers should be observed in the long term. In anal infections and anal intraepithelial neoplasia, the vaccines demonstrate high efficacy. While HPV vaccines are very effective, screening for related cancers, as per guidelines, is still recommended.