Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VFD Application in a Manufacturing Plant

ABSTRACT In order to save on operating costs when production was reduced, a manufacturing plant cut the operation of seven of its 28 single zone constant air volume (CAV) units. In accordance with existing operation strategies, plant operators scheduled all the remaining units to operate together under higher loads, with half of the units alternately shutting down under lower load conditions. While the manufacturing plant managed to cut costs, this method created indoor thermal comfort issues. This article thus proposes a more efficient operating strategy that involves the installation of a variable frequency drive (VFD) for each supply fan and optimization of the operational control of the whole system. First, new control strategies are introduced. Then, theoretical models for the two scenarios are established to compare the fan power and cooling consumption under differing load ratios. Finally, the operating data are presented and compared. The resulting calculations reveal a 73% savings in annual fan p.
Identification and Characterization of Components of the Intraflagellar transport (IFT) Machinery: a Dissertation

Intraflagellar transport (IFT), the bi-directional movement of particles along the length of flagella, is required for flagellar assembly. The IFT particles are moved by kinesin II from the base to the tip of the flagellum, where flagellar assembly occurs. The IFT particles are then moved in the retrograde direction by cytoplasmic dynein 1b/2 to the base of the flagellum. The IFT particles of Chlamydomonas are composed of ~16 proteins, organized into complexes A and B. Alhough IFT is believed to transport cargoes into flagella, few cargoes have been identified and little is known about how the cargos are transported. To study the mechanism of IFT and how IFT is involved in flagellar assembly, this thesis focuses on two questions. 1) In addition to a heavy chain, DHC1b, and a light chain, LC8, what other proteins are responsible for the retrograde movement of IFT particles? 2) What is the specific function of an individual IFTparticle protein? To address these two questions, I screened for Chlamydomonas mutants either defective in retrograde IFT by immunofluorescence microscopy, or defective in IFT-particle proteins and D1bLIC, a dynein light intermediate chain possibly involved in retrograde IFT, by Southern blotting. I identified several mutants defective in retrograde IFT and one of them is defective in the D1bLIC gene. I also identified several mutants defective in several IFT-particle protein genes. I then focused on the mutant defective in D1bLIC and the one defective in IFT46, which was briefly reported as an IFT complex B protein. My results show that as a subunit of the retrograde IFT motor, D1bLIC is required for the stability of DHC1b and is involved in
A qualitative study of risks and protective factors against pregnancy among sexually-active adolescents in Soweto, South Africa

Risky sexual behaviors contribute to increased risk of adolescent pregnancy. This qualitative study sought to understand risks and protective factors against pregnancy amongst sexually-active adolescents in Soweto, South Africa. We used purposive sampling to recruit women at age 24 years from Soweto, who self-reported having sexual debut by age 15 years. Twenty women were recruited: (i) women who did not become pregnant before 18 years (n = 10) and (ii) women who became pregnant before 18 years (n = 10). In-depth interviews were conducted to understand their family backgrounds, conversations about sex, sexual behaviors, and initiatives taken (or not) during adolescence to prevent pregnancy. Both groups of women reported predisposing risks to early pregnancy including influence from peers to engage in early sex, unstable family relationships and limited conversations about sex. We found that the family is a key institution in supporting adolescents’ decisions regarding their behaviors and choices, as are peers and exposures to information. Community Youth Centers, high schools and Youth Friendly Health Services should ensure that adolescents have access to relevant information, including sex education and contraceptives.
Reliability calculation of connectivity considering travel cost

With the development of cities, the increasing traffic demand has put forward higher requirements for the supply capacity and the optimization level of the urban road network. Studies on the opening design of medium and large communities can be considered to improve the level of traffic supply and optimize the road network structure. In this paper, travel time is used as the criterion to measure the connectivity reliability of road sections. The efficiency coefficient method is used to combine the connectivity reliability index of road network with the ideal travel cost ratio index to establish the comprehensive optimization objective. In this paper, a bi-level programming model based on connectivity reliability is established, which uses the theory of user equilibrium assignment, to distribute traffic flow in the road network. The comprehensive optimization index is used as the upper objective function. The optimization of road network design scheme is realized through the analysis and calculation of an example. The calculation results show that the model is suitable for calculating the connectivity of the actual road network. The research results can provide a reference for the optimization and design of traffic network.
Occupational Ergonomics : Engineering and Administrative Controls

Epidemiology of Upper Extremity Disorders. Integrated Analysis of Upper Extremity Disorders. Biomechanical Aspects of CTDs. Occupational Risk Factors for Shoulder Disorders. Hand Tools. Gloves. Industrial Mats. Ergonomic Principles Applied to the Prevention of Injuries to the Lower Extremity. Ergonomics of the Foot. Epidemiology of Back Pain in Industry. Static Biomechanical Modeling in Manual Lifting. Dynamic Low Back Models. Selection of 2-D and 3-D Biomechanical Spine Models. Quantitative Assessment of Trunk Performance. Perspective on Industrial low Back Pain. Revised NIOSH Lifting Equation. A Population-Based Load Threshold Limit (LTL) for Manual Lifting Tasks Performed by Males and Females. Occupational Low Back Disorder Risk Assessment Using the Lumbar Motion Monitor. Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders. The Relative Importance of Biomechanical and Psychosocial Factors in Low Back Injuries. Low Back Pain (LBP) Glossary. Fundamentals of Surveillance for Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders. Injury Surveillance Database Systems. OSHA Recordkeeping. Body Discomfort Assessment Tools. Medical Management of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders. Ergonomic Programs in Post Injury Management. Physical Ability Testing for Employment Decision Purposes. Preplacement Strength Screening. Assessment of Worker Functional Capacities. Ergonomics and Rehabilitation. Update on the Use of Back Belts in Industry. The Influence of Psychosocial Factors on Sickness Absence. Back Pain in the Workplace. Upper Extremity Support.
Therapeutic Potential of Ursolic Acid in Cancer and Diabetic Neuropathy Diseases

Ursolic acid (UA) is a pentacyclic triterpenoid frequently found in medicinal herbs and plants, having numerous pharmacological effects. UA and its analogs treat multiple diseases, including cancer, diabetic neuropathy, and inflammatory diseases. UA inhibits cancer proliferation, metastasis, angiogenesis, and induced cell death, scavenging free radicals and triggering numerous anti- and pro-apoptotic proteins. The biochemistry of UA has been examined broadly based on the literature, with alterations frequently having been prepared on positions C-3 (hydroxyl), C12–C13 (double bonds), and C-28 (carboxylic acid), leading to several UA derivatives with increased potency, bioavailability and water solubility. UA could be used as a protective agent to counter neural dysfunction via anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. It is a potential therapeutic drug implicated in the treatment of cancer and diabetic complications diseases provide novel machinery to the anti-inflammatory properties of UA. The pharmacological efficiency of UA is exhibited by the therapeutic theory of one-drug → several targets → one/multiple diseases. Hence, UA shows promising therapeutic potential for cancer and diabetic neuropathy diseases. This review aims to discuss mechanistic insights into promising beneficial effects of UA. We further explained the pharmacological aspects, clinical trials, and potential limitations of UA for the management of cancer and diabetic neuropathy diseases.
Evaluation methods of automatic driving behavior based on the actual road test

This paper puts forward the method and process of road test for vehicles with the autonomous driving function from the perspective of the third-party testing organization. In view of the operational design domain (ODD) of the autopilot function and the road environment element library, the corresponding test roads are selected. At the same time, taking the synchronous data acquisition equipment as the test system, a true-value system equipped with traffic environment detection and dynamic data recording of the vehicle is installed on the tested vehicle to carry out the real vehicle road test. A safety driving model based on the driver’s response and vehicle dynamics is proposed in different scenarios, which is used as the evaluation model of autonomous driving behaviors to verify the safety of the automatic driving function of the vehicles. The test method is provided for the actual road test of the automatic driving function.
Front-end circuits for a photonic analog-to-digital converter

As the resolution of electrical ADCs gets limited at higher sampling rates due to sampling clock jitter, low-jitter mode-lock laser based photonic ADCs are starting to gain more attention. As well as low-jitter and high-linearity operation at very high speeds, photonic ADCs provide the opportunity to de-multiplex electrical signals to enable the parallel sampling of signals which increases the total sampling speed dramatically. However, even in photonic systems, a careful optimization between the degree of de-multiplexing, the optical non-linearities and receiver front-end noise has to be performed to enable resolution and sampling rate gains to materialize. Electrical components still constitute the bottleneck for a photonic ADC system. Photo-detector front-end, which is responsible for the current-voltage transformation of the samples, is one of the most critical components for the overall linearity, noise and jitter performance of photonic ADC systems. This work focuses on photo-detector front-ends and investigates the performance of several structures as well as evaluating the performance of photonic ADC systems depending on the amount of photo-detector current. Integrator and trans-impedance amplifier flavors of the front-end circuits are designed, implemented, simulated and laid out for 6 ENOB and 10 ENOB linearity and noise performance at 1GS/s. The circuits are implemented on 45 nm SOI process and integrated with on-chip photonic components which allow on-chip and off-chip ADC implementations. Thesis Supervisor: Vladimir Stojanovid Title: Associate Professor
Hypermethylation of TMEM240 Involved in Expression Deficiency Predicts Poor Hormone Therapy Response and Disease Progression in Breast Cancer

Background:Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer experience cancer progression throughout the disease course. Alterations in TMEM240 in breast cancer were identified and investigated to monitor treatment response and disease progression.Methods:Circulating methylated TMEM240 in the plasma of breast cancer patients was used to monitor treatment response and relapse events. Illumina methylation arrays were used to identify novel hypermethylated CpG sites and genes related to poor hormone therapy response. Quantitative methylation-specific real-time polymerase chain reaction (QMSP), quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR, and immunohistochemical analyses were performed to measure DNA methylation, mRNA and protein expression levels in 335 breast samples from Taiwanese and Korean patients. Kaplan–Meier curves, Cox proportional hazards regression and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to analyze 10-year survival and disease progression. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset was used to investigate TMEM240 alterations in Western countries. Transient transfection and knockdown of TMEM240 were performed to determine its biological functions and its relationship to hormone drug treatment response in breast cancer cells.Results: Aberrant methylated TMEM240 was identified in breast cancer patients with poor hormone therapy response using genome-wide methylation analysis in the Taiwan and TCGA breast cancer cohorts. A cell model showed that TMEM240, which is localized to the cell membrane and cytoplasm, represses breast cancer cell proliferation and cell migration. TMEM240 protein expression was observed in normal breast tissues, but not detected in 88.2% (67/76) of breast tumors and in 90.0% (9/10) of metastatic tumors from breast cancer patients. Almost all triple-negative breast cancer patients (95.7%, 22/23) had deficient TMEM240 protein expression. QMSP revealed that in 54.5% (55/101) of Taiwanese breast cancer patients, the methylation level of TMEM240 was at least 2-fold higher in tumor tissues than in the matched normal breast tissues. Patients with hypermethylation of TMEM240 had poor 10-year overall survival (p = 0.003) and poor treatment response, especially hormone therapy response (p < 0.001). Prediction of disease progression based on circulating methylated TMEM240 was found to have 87.5% sensitivity, 93.1% specificity, and 90.2% accuracy, better than the currently used biomarkers CEA and CA-153.Conclusions: Circulating methylated TMEM240 is a potential biomarker for treatment response and disease progression monitoring in breast cancer.
Diversity Patterns of Protists are Highly Affected by Methods Disentangling Inter-specific Variants: A Case Study in Oligotrich (s.l.) Ciliates

An enormous amount of environmental sequences produced by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) is popular for inferring diversity and distribution patterns of protists, which are widely distributed and playing important roles in energy flux and nutrient cycling. However, study testing whether methods disentangling inter-specific variants affect the diversity and distribution patterns of protists using field samples is insufficient. Using oligotrich (s.l.) ciliates, one group of abundant and dominate planktonic protists, in field samples as an example, the present study indicates that DADA2 performs better than UCLUST and UPARSE for inferring diversity patterns of oligotrich (s.l.) ciliates in Pearl River Estuary and surrounding regions. UPARSE, as an OTU-construction method might underestimate species richness and produce less reliable beta diversity pattern than DADA2. UCLUST with 97% and 99% clustering thresholds overestimate species richness, and the beta diversity pattern inferred by the former one is unreasonable. Salinity is shown to be one of the key factors responsible for variations in community distribution of ciliates, but infrequent marine-freshwater transitions occurred during evolutionary terms of this group.
Motion Modeling and Trajectory Tracking Control for a Soft Robotic Table

In this article, the development of a control framework for a soft robotic table is presented. The framework aims to enable the soft table to effectively manipulate an object to track a reference trajectory. The table system has been modeled using empirical methods via experiments and finite-element analysis simulations. A closed-loop trajectory tracking system, including a trajectory controller, a vision feedback, and a reference trajectory, has been designed. An algorithm to allocate actuation has been developed to implement the tracking system into the existing soft table system. Finally, simulations and experiments using different tracking controllers of an object tracking a circular trajectory have been conducted to validate the proposed trajectory tracking system. The experimental result shows that the tracking error remains within 3.4 mm for the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$</tex-math></inline-formula>-axis and 4 mm for the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Y$</tex-math></inline-formula>-axis. The error in orientation remains within 12.8<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula>. All the errors are bounded in the acceptable margin, which proves the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory tracking control method.
A Human-Following Motion Planning and Control Scheme for Collaborative Robots Based on Human Motion Prediction

Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) for collaborative robots has become an active research topic recently. Collaborative robots assist human workers in their tasks and improve their efficiency. However, the worker should also feel safe and comfortable while interacting with the robot. In this paper, we propose a human-following motion planning and control scheme for a collaborative robot which supplies the necessary parts and tools to a worker in an assembly process in a factory. In our proposed scheme, a 3-D sensing system is employed to measure the skeletal data of the worker. At each sampling time of the sensing system, an optimal delivery position is estimated using the real-time worker data. At the same time, the future positions of the worker are predicted as probabilistic distributions. A Model Predictive Control (MPC)-based trajectory planner is used to calculate a robot trajectory that supplies the required parts and tools to the worker and follows the predicted future positions of the worker. We have installed our proposed scheme in a collaborative robot system with a 2-DOF planar manipulator. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme enables the robot to provide anytime assistance to a worker who is moving around in the workspace while ensuring the safety and comfort of the worker.
Dimme chi sei e ti diro cosa penso: Processi di stereotipizzazione in contesti di giustificazione = Tell me who you are and I'll tell you what I think: stereotyping and accountability

Questo studio intende indagare se e come i processi di stereotipizzazone possano essere moderati da contesti di accountability. Nel presente studio ai partecipanti era chiesto di formarsi un’impressione a proposito di un target (ragazzo omosessuale). Inoltre, ai partecipanti delle condizioni sperimentali era detto di dover comunicare la loro impressione a degli studenti di psicologia (audience conosciuta: AC) oppure ad alcune persone (audience sconosciuta: AnC) mentre ai partecipanti della condizione di controllo non si menzionava alcuna audience (AA). I risultati mostrano che il livello di stereotipizzazione del target e minimo in AnC, intermedio quando i partecipanti conoscono lo stereotipo dell’audience (AC), massimo quando i partecipanti non devono giustificarsi (AA). Tale differenza di stereotipizzazione e associata ad una diversa elaborazione on-line delle informazioni. Secondo l’interpretazione dei dati da noi fornita, i partecipanti nella condizione di AnC cercano di integrare le informazioni disponibili in modo da non risiedere sulle conoscenze stereotipiche. Al contrario i partecipanti in AC sembrano adottare lo stereotipo dell’audience per elaborare le informazioni e infine i partecipanti in AA elaborerebbero le informazioni in modo categoriale. I risultati vengono discussi alla luce della teoria del cambiamento dello stereotipo. [This study aimed at investigating whether stereotyping could be moderated by situations of accountability. In the present study all participants were solicited to form an impression about a target (a gay man) but experimental participants were also asked to communicate it to an audience: psychology students (known audience: KA) vs. other persons (unknown audience: UkA) whereas the audience was not mentioned in the control condition (nA). Results showed that the level of stereotyping was minimal in the UkA condition, intermediate in the KA condition and extremely high in the no audience condition (nA). Such a difference in the level of stereotyping corresponded to a different path of on-line information processing about the target. Participants in the UkA condition integrated all the available information in order to avoid stereotypical responses, participants in the KA condition endorsed the audience’s stereotype in order to deal with the information and finally participants in the nA condition engaged in a category-based information processing. Results are discussed in line with current models of stereotype change]
Methods to improve the signal quality of corrupted multi-parameter physiological signals

A modern Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has automated analysis systems that depend on continuous uninterrupted real-time monitoring of physiological signals such as Electrocardiogram (ECG), Arterial Blood Pressure (ABP), and the Photo Plethysmogram (PPG). Unfortunately, these signals are often corrupted by noise, artifacts, and missing data, which can result in a high incidence of false alarms. We present a novel approach to improve the Signal Quality of a multi-parameter physiological signal by identifying the corrupted regions in the signal, and reconstructing them using the information available in correlated signals. The method is specifically designed to preserve the clinically most significant aspects of the signals. We use template matching to jointly segment the multi-parameter signal, morphological dissimilarity to estimate the quality of the signal segment, similarity search to find the closest match from a database of templates, and time-warping to reconstruct the corrupted segment using the matching template. Experiments carried out on the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, a multi-parameter ECG database with many clinically significant arrhythmias, demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Our method improved the classification accuracy of the beat type by more than 700% on the signal corrupted with white Gaussian noise, and increased the similarity to the original signal, as measured by the normalized residual distance, by more than 250%. When the method was applied to the multi-parameter physiological signal data from Cinc Challenge 2010 database at Physionet.org, our method improved the classification accuracy of beat type by more than 33 times on a signal corrupted with white Gaussian noise, and increased the similarity to the original signal by more than 280%. Thesis Supervisor: John J. Guttag Title: Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The Olympic Book of Sports Medicine

Part 1 Introduction The definition and scope of sports medicine The development, objectives and activities of the IOC Medical Commission The development, objectives and activities of the FIMS Part 2 The impact of regular training on human biological systems Part 3 Assessment of physical and functional capacity Part 4 Environmental conditions Part 5 The process and implementation of physical training Part 6 Anthropometry Part 7 Training children and adolescents Part 8 Female athletes Part 9 Sport and physical activities in older people Part 10 Prevention and management of sports injuries Part 11 Exercise in the prevention and management of internal disease Part 12 Medical care of sports teams Part 13 Doping and doping control