Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Synergetic Operation and Experimental Evaluation of an Ultra-Compact GaN-Based Three-Phase 10 kW EV Charger

—Fast charging of electric vehicles (EVs) requires isolated AC/DC converters with a wide output voltage range of 200V to 1000V. Combining a three-level Vienna Rectifier (VR) with four isolated Dual-Active-Bridge DC/DC Converter (DABC) modules and latest-generation 600V GaN technology enables very high switching frequencies of 560kHz for the VR and up to 330kHz for the DABCs. Hence, in this paper an ultra-compact realization of a 10kW EV charger module with a power density of 9kW/dm 3 (about 150W/in 3 ), not including the coldplate, is presented. In this context, a simplified DABC modulation method and straightforward yet accurate (confirmed by experiments) loss models for the DABCs and the VR are introduced, which facilitate a thorough investigation of the optimum synergetic operation of the two stages: For the considered converter, changing the VR operating mode from conventional 3/3-PWM (where the two stages operate rather independently and hence all three VR bridge-legs operate with PWM) to 1/3-PWM (where the DABCs shape the voltage of the shared intermediate DC-link such that always only one of the VR’s three bridge-legs must operate with PWM) results in an advantageous efficiency improvement of up to about 2% over a large part of the output voltage and power range, and in a peak efficiency of more than 97%. Further, the synergetic operation of the two-stage system (VR and DABCs) is experimentally verified for the first time, confirming the modeling results and the efficiency advantage of 1/3-PWM (i.e., 95.4% vs. 95.1% at the rated load of 10kW and with 500V output voltage). Conducted EMI pre-compliance measurements indicate that the change of the operating strategy from 3/3-PWM to 1/3-PWM only requires minor changes of the EMI filter design.
Research on Wind Turbine Fault Detection Based on the Fusion of ASL-CatBoost and TtRSA

The internal structure of wind turbines is intricate and precise, although the challenging working conditions often give rise to various operational faults. This study aims to address the limitations of traditional machine learning algorithms in wind turbine fault detection and the imbalance of positive and negative samples in the fault detection dataset. To achieve the real-time detection of wind turbine group faults and to capture wind turbine fault state information, an enhanced ASL-CatBoost algorithm is proposed. Additionally, a crawling animal search algorithm that incorporates the Tent chaotic mapping and t-distribution mutation strategy is introduced to assess the sensitivity of the ASL-CatBoost algorithm toward hyperparameters and the difficulty of manual hyperparameter setting. The effectiveness of the proposed hyperparameter optimization strategy, termed the TtRSA algorithm, is demonstrated through a comparison of traditional intelligent optimization algorithms using 11 benchmark test functions. When applied to the hyperparameter optimization of the ASL-CatBoost algorithm, the TtRSA-ASL-CatBoost algorithm exhibits notable enhancements in accuracy, recall, and other performance measures compared with the ASL-CatBoost algorithm and other ensemble learning algorithms. The experimental results affirm that the proposed algorithm model improvement strategy effectively enhances the wind turbine fault detection classification recognition rate.
New insight into the virulence and inflammatory response of Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from diabetic foot ulcers

Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) have less virulence, but still cause severe infections. Furthermore, hypovirulent S. aureus strains appear to be localized in the deep tissues of diabetic foot osteomyelitis, indicating that the unique environment within DFUs affects the pathogenicity of S. aureus. In this study, the cell-free culture medium (CFCM) of S. aureus strains isolated from DFUs exhibited higher cytotoxicity to human erythrocytes than those isolated from non-diabetic patients with sepsis or wounds. Among these S. aureus strains isolated from DFUs, β-toxin negative strains have less virulence than β-toxin positive strains, but induced a higher expression of inflammatory cytokines. Our study and previous studies have shown that the synergistic effect of phenol-soluble modulin α and β-toxin contributes to the higher hemolytic activity of β-toxin positive strains. However, lysis of human erythrocytes by the CFCM of β-toxin negative strains was greatly inhibited by an autolysin inhibitor, sodium polyanethole sulfonate (SPS). A high level of glucose greatly reduced the hemolytic activity of S. aureus, but promoted the expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in human neutrophils. However, 5 mM glucose or glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) increased the hemolytic activity of SA118 (a β-toxin negative strain) isolated from DFUs. Additionally, patients with DFUs with growth of S. aureus had lower level of serum IL-6 than those with other bacteria, and the CFCM of S. aureus strains significantly reduced lipopolysaccharide-induced IL-6 expression in human neutrophils. Therefore, the virulence and inflammatory response of S. aureus strains isolated from DFUs are determined by the levels of glucose and its metabolites, which may explain why it is the predominant bacteria isolated from DFUs.
Review of recent progress on solid‐state millimeter‐wave and terahertz signal sources

The research and development on solid‐state source generators have been making progress on chip, aiming to generate low noise, high output power, and high DC‐to‐RF energy efficiency in the millimeter‐wave (mmW) and terahertz (THz) domains. In particular, their full integration in silicon technologies, such as advanced complementary‐metal‐oxide‐semiconductor processes, has motivated the design of low cost, high performance, and miniature integrated circuits (ICs). This manuscript focuses on providing a general overview of recent progress on solid‐state signal source operating beyond 60 GHz till the THz region, from the perspective of operating principle, design metrics, state‐of‐the‐art performance, testing results, and their applications in emerging mmW/THz systems. Finally, with the use of fully integrated source generators, several design arts are highlighted to showcase the recent advances of ICs toward millimeter‐wave and THz radiation, imaging, coupled oscillator network (CON), and communication. Potential future research directions enabled by mmW/THz signal sources will be envisioned.
Exploring Gender Diversity in Transgender and Non-Binary Adults Accessing a Specialized Service in Italy

In Italy, studies investigating gender identity and expression in gender non-conforming adults are lacking, as well as data regarding the non-binary population. The present study aimed at dimensionally exploring how transgender and non-binary Italian adults identify and express their gender. The Gender Diversity Questionnaire (GDQ) was administered to a sample of 112 adult subjects aged 18–60 years accessing a gender-specialized service in Rome. The majority of the participants were aged 18–24 years (53.6%), whereas fewer subjects were aged 25–35 years (32%) and 35 years and older (14.3%). Most participants (83.9%) identified themselves as trans binary, while the remaining (16.1%) identified as non-binary. Trans binary participants reported a stable gender identity, whereas non-binary participants reported a more fluid gender identity over time and across contexts. Younger subjects recognized the use of chosen names, pronouns, and clothes as important for their gender expression, whereas older subjects attributed more importance to physical appearance and emotions. Differences regarding gender-affirmative interventions emerged between non-binary and transbinary participants. Findings evidence that gender non-conforming adults accessing gender-specialized services have unique needs and features, thus it is essential to shed light on this population by providing greater visibility and recognition.
Development of a cylindrical diffusing optical fiber probe for pancreatic cancer therapy

Although the patients with cancer on pancreas or pancreaticobiliary duct have been increased, it is very difficult to detect and to treat the pancreatic cancer because of its low accessibility and obtuseness. The pancreatic cancer has been diagnosed using ultrasonography, blood test, CT, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) and etc. Normally, light can be delivered to the target by optical fibers through the ERCP or EUS. Diffusing optical fibers have been developed with various methods. However, many of them have mechanical and biological problems in the use of small-bend-radius apparatus or in tissue area. This study developed a therapeutic cylindrical diffusing optical fiber probe (CDOFP) for ERCP and EUS which has moderate flexibility and solidity to treat the cancer on pancreaticobiliary duct or pancreas. The CDOFP consists of a biocompatible Teflon tube and multimode glass fiber which has diffusing area processed with laser and high refractive index resin. The CDOFP was characterized to investigate the clinical feasibility and other applications of light therapy using diffusing optical fiber. The results presented that the CDOFP may be used in clinic by combining with endoscopic method, such as ERCP or EUS, to treat cancer on pancreas and pancreaticobiliary duct.
KDE-Based Simultaneous Background Model Learning and Entropy-Based Fusion of Cascaded Features for Video Object Segmentation With Shadow Removal

Object detection with shadow removal is one of the challenging issues in computer vision. Dynamic shadow resembles a moving object’s properties, so separating this shadow from the object is a challenging task. This dynamic shadow if not eliminated, distorts the shape of the object. In this paper, a novel scheme for moving object detection and shadow removal is proposed based on the background modeling in fused feature space, and these models learn to take care of the scene dynamics. Initially, in KDE space, temporal modeling of the spatial KDE (TMS-KDE) is carried out and cascaded features of Gabor and HOG are obtained. Besides, the original video frame is transformed into YCbCr color space and LBP features are extracted. The LBP and cascaded features are fused probabilistically to generate fused feature frames which are used in background modeling. The weights for the feature fusion are determined by the proposed entropy based measure. Background modeling and model learning is a pixel based approach and the pixel is classified as either background or foreground during the learning process. We have tested our proposed method on a wide range of datasets which includes ATON-CVRR, LASIESTA, CD-net, Kaggle, PETS 2006, SGM-RGBD, SBMI 2015, SBMnet 2016 and VIRAT. The proposed scheme is found to take care of different shadow conditions while detecting the moving object. The performance of the proposed scheme is found to be superior to that of many existing schemes.
Comparison of Contrast Sensitivity for Different Amount of Deviation of Alternate Esotropia

Purpose: Aim of the present study is to compare contrast sensitivity in different amounts of deviation of alternate exotropia Methods: A pilot, cross sectional, observational study was performed at tertiary eye care centers. Subjects with Ocular deviation between 10 to 40 prism diopters, Corrected distance Visual Acuity should be greater than 6/18 and Age should be between 10 to 40 years of age were included in the study. Contrast sensitivity was assessed with Pelli Robson Chart. Results: 30 subjects were included in the study. Out of that, 16 subjects were in the age group of 11-20 years, 12 subjects were in the age group of 21-30 years and 2 subjects were in the age group of 31-40 years. 60% subjects were Female and 40% subjects were Male. The mean contrast sensitivity was considered in each amount of deviation. It shows that maximum contrast is deteriorated in the ocular deviation of 31-40 prism diopters. Conclusions: As the amount of ocular deviation increases, contrast sensitivity will be more deteriorated.
Phonetic variation in Italian L2: An acoustic analysis of sibilant fricatives in the speech of L1 Spanish learners

The present study investigates the acoustic features of Italian sibilant fricatives (/s/, /z/ and /ʃ/) in the speech of L1 Spanish learners. Segmental duration, degree of voicing and place of articulation of learners’ productions are analysed alongside those of a control group of L1 Italian speakers to investigate the fine-grained phonetic differences between native and non-native pronunciation. Results from a quantitative analysis suggest that factors such as the degree of typological markedness of the phoneme and the influence of the L1 in perception and production affect L2 pronunciation to a different extent for each of the target sounds.
A novel lorenz-sine coupling chaotic system and its application on color image encryption

The chaos-based image encryption has been extensively studied for image security owing to its high efficiency. However, both the complexity of the chaotic system and the chaos-based image encryption method must be enhanced. A Lorenz-Sine coupling chaotic system with complex behavior and a novel image encryption scheme is presented in this work. By adding a nonlinear controller containing sinusoidal function to the Lorenz system, we obtain smooth chaotic attractors with a unique appearance. Analysis of the dynamical properties shows that it has a multi-symmetry stranger attractor and a large chaotic range. Based on the proposed chaotic system, a pseudorandom sequence generator is designed to generate keys with high randomness. Furthermore, an image encryption scheme using spiral-rotation and random permutation is presented. Cipher-feedback is employed to increase the avalanche effect. The encryption efficiency and the security analysis are simulated. The result shows that the correlation coefficient between the adjacent pixels of the proposed scheme achieves 10−4. The NPCR of the proposed scheme is larger than 0.9661 and the UACI falls within the theoretical value of UACI with a significance level of 0.05. Thus, the proposed scheme is more capable against differential attacks. Furthermore, it is more robust against noise attacks and cropping attacks.
On the stability of homogeneous equilibria in the Vlasov–Poisson system on R3

The goal of this article is twofold. First, we investigate the linearized Vlasov–Poisson system around a family of spatially homogeneous equilibria in R3 (the unconfined setting). Our analysis follows classical strategies from physics (Binney and Tremaine 2008 Galactic Dynamics (Princeton University Press); Landau 1946 Acad. Sci. USSR. J. Phys. 10 25–34; Penrose 1960 Phys. Fluids 3 258–65) and their subsequent mathematical extensions (Bedrossian et al 2022 SIAM J. Math. Anal. 54 4379–406; Degond 1986 Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 294 435–53; Glassey and Schaeffer 1994 Transp. Theory Stat. Phys. 23 411–53; Grenier et al 2021 Math. Res. Lett. 28 1679–702; Han-Kwan et al 2021 Commun. Math. Phys. 387 1405–40; Mouhot and Villani 2011 Acta Math. 207 29–201). The main novelties are a unified treatment of a broad class of analytic equilibria and the study of a class of generalized Poisson equilibria. For the former, this provides a detailed description of the associated Green’s functions, including in particular precise dissipation rates (which appear to be new), whereas for the latter we exhibit explicit formulas. Second, we review the main result and ideas in our recent work (Ionescu et al 2022 (arXiv:2205.04540)) on the full global nonlinear asymptotic stability of the Poisson equilibrium in R3 .
Diagnostic Accuracy of Flow Cytometric DNA Index in Saudi Children with B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

B cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL) is one of the most common types of cancer diagnosed in children in Saudi Arabia. Cytogenetic investigations, including karyotyping and FISH, are used to determine the incidence and prognostic significance of chromosomal abnormalities in B-ALL. However, in ALL, accurate identification of the morphology of chromosomes is sometimes not achieved. Flow cytometric DI may have the advantage of being technically fast, using either fresh or frozen samples to correctly stratify the patient into the appropriate risk group for treatment. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and validity of using fixed samples instead of fresh samples to determine aneuploidy in cancer cells using a DNA index. The results of the DNA index obtained by flow cytometry were compared with those of conventional cytogenetic analysis to validate the accuracy. Fixed samples (n = 72) from children diagnosed with B-ALL at King Fahad Medical City in Riyadh between 2017 and 2019 were investigated. The results showed strong and statistically significant positive correlation between DNAI-FCM and conventional cytogenetic analysis (p = 0.000 < 0.01). The DNA index value by flow cytometry was proportional to the cytogenetic study in 94.36% (67) of the cases, while discrepancy was observed in 5.6% (four) cases. Our findings highlight the ability of the DNA index method to provide complementary information for the accurate diagnosis of aneuploidy in patients with B-ALL.
Focus, Topic, and Word Order: A Compositional View

This paper looks at the cartographic approach to word order restrictions relating to focus and topic. The observed word order patterns are more flexible than is expected under the assumption of a totally ordered hierarchy of functional projections, suggesting that this standard assumption of the cartographic approach results in an all-too-Procrustean bed for syntactic typology. The observed patterns are as expected under a compositional view that tries to derive the observed word order patterns from the semantics of the focus operators involved. The evidence suggests that a cartography of natural languages has to take into account a broader range of syntactic configurations. A closer look at the compositional meaning of sentences can help understand existing constraints on word order variation.
The difference in the composition of gut microbiota is greater among bats of different phylogenies than among those with different dietary habits

Bats have a very long evolutionary history and are highly differentiated in their physiological functions. Results of recent studies suggest effects of some host factors (e.g., phylogeny and dietary habit) on their gut microbiota. In this study, we examined the gut microbial compositions of 18 different species of bats. Results showed that Firmicutes, Gammaproteobacteria, and Actinobacteria were dominant in all fecal samples of bats. However, the difference in the diversity of gut microbiota among bats of different phylogenies was notable (p = 0.06). Various species of Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria were found to contribute to the majority of variations in gut microbiota of all bats examined, and Aeromonas species were much more abundant in bats that feed on both insects and fish than in those of insectivores. The abundance of various species of Clostridium, Euryarchaeota, and ancient bacterial phyla was found to vary among bats of different phylogenies, and various species of Vibrio varied significantly among bats with different dietary habits. No significant difference in the number of genes involved in various metabolic pathways was detected among bats of different phylogenies, but the abundance of genes involved in 5 metabolic pathways, including transcription; replication, recombination, and repair; amino acid transport and metabolism; and signal transduction mechanisms, was different among bats with different dietary habits. The abundance of genes in 3 metabolic pathways, including those involved in stilbenoid, diarylheptanoid, and gingerol biosynthesis, was found to be different between insectivorous bats and bats that feed on both insects and fish. Results of this study suggest a weak association between dietary habit and gut microbiota in most bats but a notable difference in gut microbiota among bats of different phylogenies.
Review of potential spermatogenic and aphrodisiac effects of the Ferula genus

Objective Men’s sexual health plays an important role in male fertility and childbearing, as it is associated with factors such as sexual desire, healthy spermatogenesis, and erectile function. In various cultures, medicinal plants have been utilized to address male sexual issues, including infertility and erectile dysfunction. Despite recent advancements in medical science for treating male impotence, some men opt for herbal supplements as an alternative, given that numerous herbs have the potential to enhance male sexual performance. The Apiaceae family is one of the oldest plant families used for medicinal purposes. Ferula, a genus within this family, comprises approximately 170 different species worldwide. Members of this genus possess numerous therapeutic properties due to the presence of various compounds. This article aims to explore the potential impacts of Ferula plants on the male reproductive system. Methods This review article was prepared by searching for terms including Ferula and “aphrodisiac,” Ferula and “spermatogenesis,” and Ferula and “male reproductive system. ” Relevant information was gathered through electronic databases, including ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Results The findings indicated that relatively comprehensive studies have been conducted in this area, revealing that certain Ferula species have been employed in folk medicine to boost fertility and libido. Recent research has corroborated these effects. Conclusion It is hoped that new aphrodisiac compounds with fewer side effects can be isolated from Ferula plants in the future.
An update on heat stress in laying hens

SUMMARY Heat stress is one of the environmental stressors challenging global poultry industry and lowers performance and welfare of chickens leading to significant economic loss. It triggers the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical system, which releases a corticotrophin-releasing factor from the hypothalamus. This then leads to an increase in corticosterone levels. The harmful effects of heat stress on laying hens include decreased laying performance, feed intake, egg quality, metabolic rate, and immune state in laying hens. Additionally, heat stress induces negative regulation of metabolic hormones, endocrine systems, acid-base balance, antioxidant balance, and poor physiological functioning of internal digestive and reproductive organs. Therefore, it is important to mitigate heat stress to maintain maximum production efficiency. This review article explores the impact of heat stress on production, behaviour, physiology, gut health, oxidative stress, and immune responses in laying hens. It emphasises the environmental factors that contribute to heat stress and the behavioural and physiological host responses.
Document Image Binarization Process

Technology has made significant strides in recent years, which accounts for how pervasive it is in our daily lives. In order to address the fundamental issue with historical document preservation, namely their degeneration, this work suggests using new technology. The method is built on pieces of artificial intelligence that can read the writing from a page and recognize the useful information, converting it into a digital version. Contrary to photographing or scanning, binarizing a document is a considerably more effective method, both in terms of quality—the legibility of the writing—and quantity—the amount of memory needed to retain the resulting image. According to common assessment measures, the suggested fully convolutional network manages to deliver results that are comparable to those of other solutions of a similar nature.