Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of creeping discharges activity at solid/liquid interfaces subjected to ac voltage

This paper presents the experimental characterisation of discharges propagating over insulators immersed in mineral oil, under ac using a point-plane electrode arrangement. The influence of voltage magnitude and the nature of insulator on the cumulative number of discharge events and their locations during one voltage cycle are also investigated. It is shown that the nature and the thickness of insulator have a significant influence on the properties of discharges and especially their morphology and stopping length Lf . For a given thickness, Lf increases quasi-linearly with voltage; it decreases when the thickness is increased and/or the dielectric constant of insulator decreases, thus indicating the important role of capacitive effect in the propagation mechanism. The total number of discharges recorded during 500 cycles of applied voltage increases significantly with the voltage magnitude. The threshold voltage Ui of discharges depends on the kind of material; and the average number of discharges ( nmoy ) increases with the dielectric constant e r , of insulator. For instance, nmoy is the highest for Bakelite (e r =4.8) and the lowest for Polycarbonate (e r =2.9). nmoy of negative discharges seems to be slightly higher than that for positive ones irrespective of the solid sample and the amplitude of voltage.
DETERMINING URBAN STORM WATER BMP EFFECTIVENESS

The goal of this U.S. EPA-funded cooperative research program with the ASCE is to develop a more useful set of data on the effectiveness of storm water best management practices (BMPs) used to reduce pollutant discharges from urban development. BMP monitoring data gathered at a particular site should not only be useful for that site, but also need to be useful for comparing the effectiveness of similar and different types of BMPs at other locations. Most BMP effectiveness studies in the past have provided data that is difficult, if not impossible, to use in comparing BMP design effectiveness and in the selection among individual BMP types to meet desired goals. This paper describes some of the comparability problems encountered between different BMP effectiveness studies. Also discussed are considerations that affect data transferability, such as methods used for determining efficiency and statistical significance. It outlines the efforts used to establish and analyze the currently available data and prop.
Resistência mecânica do solo e força de tração em hastes sulcadoras de semeadoras-adubadoras em sistema de integração lavoura-pecuária

A integracao lavoura-pecuaria, realizada mediante a implantacao de pastagens no inverno e a semeadura de milho ou soja no verao, constitui-se numa alternativa para a diversificacao de atividades e ampliacao dos lucros. Animais em pastejo, principalmente em areas agricolas manejadas sob semeadura direta, podem resultar na compactacao adicional do solo, diagnosticada geralmente pelo aumento de resistencia do solo a penetracao (RP). Com o objetivo de avaliar a correlacao entre RP e forca de tracao (FT) medida em hastes sulcadoras de semeadoras-adubadoras, nos anos de 2004 e 2005, foi conduzido um experimento em Sao Miguel das Missoes - RS, em Latossolo Vermelho (0.540 kg kg-1 de argila). Os tratamentos consistiram em quatro intensidades de pastejo, que resultaram em alturas de pastagem de 10; 20; 30 e 40 cm, e de testemunha sem pastejo, organizados em DBC, com tres repeticoes. Avaliou-se a RP, no final do periodo de pastejo, e na semeadura da soja, obteve-se a FT exigida nas hastes sulcadoras de semeadoras-adubadoras. A RP e a FT aumentaram com o incremento na intensidade de pastejo. A correlacao entre essas variaveis foi significativa, comprovando que e possivel avaliar o estado de compactacao do solo por meio da medicao da FT requerida pelas hastes sulcadoras de semeadoras-adubadoras.
A MATLAB-Based Application Development Using a 3D PMD Camera for a Mobile Robot

Three-dimensional sensing is a vital field in mobile robotic applications. This work proposes an application of a Time-ofFlight 3D Photonic Mixer Device (PMD) camera for the navigation of an Omni-directional mobile robot. The 3D PMD camera enables real time distance detection as well as the capturing of grayscale images. In our framework, the application of the 3D PMD camera is aimed at solving the problem of environmental perception in mobile robotics. In this paper, we present the development of a MATLAB-based kit for the control of an Omni-directional mobile robot supported by a data acquisition board. The communication interface of the camera, used to close the system’s control loop, has been also developed. We further present results of different experiments including online obstacle detection and avoidance. In addition, an adaptive pose determination for the robot is proposed.
Biodeterioration of Stone in Tropical Environments: An Overview

Part 1 General aspects of biodegeneration in tropical regions: characteristics of tropical regions ecological aspects of biodeterioration identification of biodeteriogens and their activity phenomenology of biological alterations. Part 2 Biodeteriogens - characteristics and biodeterioration mechanisms: bacteria and bacterial biodeterioration fungi and fungal biodeterioration algae and algal biodeterioration lichens and lichenic biodeterioration biodeterioration by mosses and liverworts biodeterioration by higher plants. Part 3 Preventive and remedial methods: preventive methods remedial methods. Part 4 Selection of chemical treatments: some considerations in biocide selection biocide application - procedures and precautions chemical treatments used to control biodeteriogens. Part 5 Current research status and areas for further investigation: current research status areas for further investigation.
Microwave‐induced constant‐voltage steps at one volt from a series array of Josephson junctions

It is demonstrated that a series array of 1474 Josephson junctions can produce quantized voltages up to 1.2 V when driven by microwaves at 90 GHz in the absence of a dc bias. This result brings closer the possibility of a practical Josephson voltage standard at the 1‐V level.
Study on the Statistical Performance of Relay Cooperation Over Non-Isotropic Mobile-to-Mobile Nakagami-m Fading Channels

This work focuses on the investigation of the second-order statistical descriptions for full mobile wireless networks over non-isotropic Nakagami-m fading environment. The system consists of a source, a relay, and K destination users, all of which are mobile. For the full mobile system model, we first extend the Akki and Habers mobile-to-mobile (M2M) model to non-isotropic scattering fading channels by adopting the von Mises PDF for both the angle of arrival (AnOA) and the angle of departure (AnOD). With appropriate mathematical proof, we obtain the approximate solution to the correlation function of M2M Nakagami-m fading channel envelop, and the variance of the first derivative. Secondly, using the obtained correlation, we study the average outage rate (AOR) and the average outage duration (AOD) of the multi-user single relay cooperation system in detail, and obtain the closed-form analytical expressions to AOR and AOD.
Winter Production of Asian Leafy Greens in High Tunnels Using Biodegradable Mulches

Use of season extension tools such as high tunnels and diverse vegetable crops have been crucial in improving competitiveness of vegetable growers in Mississippi who operate on small- to medium-sized farms. Chinese cabbage, also known as pak choy or bok choy, has become increasingly popular due to numerous cultivar choices, fast maturity, high productivity, tolerance for frost, and its potential use for winter production in high tunnels in a subtropical climate. Five Chinese cabbage cultivars including ‘Asian Delight’, ‘Black Summer’, ‘Red Pac’, ‘Rosie’, and ‘Tokyo Bekana’ were evaluated for plant growth, yield, and mineral nutrient concentrations when grown with three types of biodegradable plastic mulches (BDMs) and one polyethylene (PE, or plastic) mulch in a high tunnel in two experiments from 30 October 2019 to 18 March 2020. The five tested cultivars varied in plant height, widths, leaf SPAD, fresh and dry plant weights, marketable yield, and macro- and micro-nutrient concentrations. ‘Tokyo Bekana’ produced the highest marketable yield and fresh and dry plant weights in both experiments. The three BDMs resulted in similar marketable yield and mineral nutrients in tested cultivars and similar temperatures of leaf, mulch, and substrate compared to the PE mulch. The high tunnel provides a viable way for the winter production of selected Chinese cabbage cultivars in a subtropical climate with possible different yields between production cycles due to varying microenvironment in those months.
Research on Energy Management Control Strategy by dSPACE Based Half-Practicality Simulation

In order to manage the power of electric drive system effectively and improve the fuel economy and working efficiency of electric drive tracked vehicle, this paper proposed a novel energy management control strategy based on the theory of threshold logic and fuzzy logic. The mathematical models of the key components of electric drive system were built in SIMULINK. To examine and analysis the efficiency of control strategy, a driver-controller based HILS (hardware-in-the-loop simulation) platform was built and the energy management control strategy was verified. The simulation results reveal that the strategy have excellent performance in energy distribution, fuel saving and working efficiency, and the proposed control strategy is simple and easy to realize in a real controller, which provides an effective method for the design and application of energy management control strategy of electric drive tracked vehicle.
Real-time implementation of image alignment and fusion

Many modern imaging and surveillance systems contain more than one sensor. For example, most modern airborne imaging pods contain at least visible and infrared sensors. Often these systems have a single display that is only capable of showing data from either camera, and thereby fail to exploit the benefit of having simultaneous multi-spectral data available to the user. It can be advantageous to capture all spectral features within each image and to display a fused result rather than single band imagery. This paper discusses the key processes necessary for an image fusion system and then describes how they were implemented in a real-time, rugged hardware system. The problems of temporal and spatial misalignment of the sensors and the process of electronic image warping must be solved before the image data is fused. The techniques used to align the two inputs to the fusion system are described and a summary is given of our research into automatic alignment techniques. The benefits of different image fusion schemes are discussed and those that were implemented are described. The paper concludes with a summary of the real-time implementation of image alignment and image fusion by Octec and Waterfall Solutions and the problems that have been encountered and overcome.
Dimensions of Urban Environmental Quality

For purposes of planning and for impact studies, definition of environmental quality and instruments for its measurement are badly needed. Efforts in this area have largely been subjective, have depended upon expert judgment, and have been concerned with specific, isolated aspects of environmental quality rather than being directed to description of the domain in terms of its major dimensions. This study used the responses of 2,541 residents of the San Francisco Bay Area to items developed largely from open-ended questions asked of persons in that and another metropolitan area, and subjected them to the objective method of factor analysis to provide an empirical description of environmental quality in reference to residential use. The study produced 20 clean and meaningful factors which provide, from the viewpoint of residents, a more finely differentiated definition of environmental quality than has previously been available. The data collection instrument, with minor modifications, can serve as an instrument to measure residential environmental quality and will be useful to planners and in evaluative studies of a variety of environmental interventions. The methodology can be used to further refine the definition and measurement of environmental quality for residential purposes and should prove equally useful in regard to environmental quality in relation to other land uses.
Dual band dual sense circularly polarised monopole antenna for GPS and WLAN applications

A novel circular dual band, dual sense circularly polarised (CP) monopole antenna for GPS and WLAN applications is presented. A CP bandwidth larger than 40% can be attained simply by creating rectangular slots on the circular patch of the microstrip line. By adding rectangular slots, the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth and the −10 dB impedance bandwidth can be greatly improved. Novel and simple design of the radiating patch, large 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth and compact size of the antenna are the novel aspects of this work.
A dual‐band circularly polarized stacked elliptic microstrip antenna

A novel design of a probe-fed stacked microstrip antenna for obtaining dual-band circular polarization (CP) radiation is presented. By properly selecting two elliptic patches of different axial ratios in the proposed design, and introducing a small air-gap layer between the two patches, dual-band CP radiation can be obtained by exciting the top elliptic patch using a single probe feed. Details of the proposed antenna design and experimental results for the obtained dual-band CP performances are presented and discussed. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 24: 354–357, 2000.
Improved Word Sense Determination in Malayalam using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Semantic Features

Recent years have witnessed phenomenal developments worldwide in the field of NLP. But developments in Indian regional languages are very few compared to them. This work is a step towards the construction of a target word sense disambiguation system in Malayalam, which is the regional language of the state of Kerala, India. Word Sense Disambiguation/Determination refers to the task of correctly identifying the sense of an ambiguous word from its context. This is considered an AI-Complete problem in the field of Natural Language Processing. For this purpose, an exclusive corpus of 1,147 contexts of target ambiguous words has been created, which to the best of our knowledge is the first attempt in Malayalam. This work describes how the performance of an unsupervised LDA-based approach towards WSD could be improved using semantic features like synonyms and co-occurrence information.
A new approach to accelerate SEU sensitivity evaluation in circuits with embedded memories

Current circuit complexity requires faster fault injection techniques to allow the evaluation of a high number of faults in a reasonable time. In particular, FPGA emulation has proven to be a performance effective method to analyze the behavior of digital circuits in the presence of soft errors due to SEU effects. In general, fault emulation-based solutions that use circuit instrumentation to inject faults in the literature does not consider the fault emulation in circuits with embedded memories. The few existing proposals that study this kind of circuits are oriented to inject faults in microprocessors, are slow solutions with respect to the injection in flip-flops and with a poor capacity to analyze the circuit behavior, due to the limited accessibility in memories (a word memory per clock cycle). Embedded memories are more and more usual and large in modern designs, and therefore, the emulation of the embedded memories is a problem of rising importance. The proposed models presented in this work allow the fault emulation in embedded memories, injection faults and observing their effects in a fast way.
Nonlinear two element active antenna array stability analysis

Closed form analytical equations for the stability condition for the two modes available within a two element active antenna linear array as the element separation is increased are presented for the first time. A mathematical explanation to the mode swap characteristics first reported by Stephan and Young (1988) is given with a prediction of within which mode the array will operate as a function of element separation. This knowledge is imperative since the array far-field radiation pattern is different depending on the operating mode, and so a prediction method is desirable (i.e. boresight null or peak). The identical element case is considered, although the analysis can be extended to incorporate similar though non-identical elements.
The Influence of Ecological Remediation Process on Bacterial Community Composition in Beishi River Sediment Determined by PCR-DGGE Analysis

Pollution of urban river is a major risk to human health and water quality throughout the world. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of ecological remediation process on sediment bacterial community structure. Three sediment samples in urban river located in Changzhou city, the bacterial community structure was studied in the process of ecological remediation period using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). The results of the microbial community analysis were related to water environmental parameters through the analysis to investigate the relationship between potential impact of water quality and microbial community structure. As the ecological remediated river, T, DO and COD were the important environmental variables influencing the sediment microbial community composition. Microbial community changes determined by DGGE patterns showed that microbial community structures in the same period did not change further, while those in different period changed continuously. In July 2010, Pseudomonas sp, Escherichia sp, Exiguobacterium sp and Bacillus sp as each point jointly owned. In October 2010, Acinetobacter sp, Clostridiales, Dechloromonas sp and uncultured bacterium were belonged to these three sample sites.
LASER-ULTRASONICS FOR MATERIALS CHARACTERIZATION

Abstract Several material properties and microstructural features can be determined or monitored by measuring ultrasonic velocity and/or ultrasonic attenuation. Conventional techniques which use piezoelectric transducers for generation and reception have several limitations, for example in coupling to materials at elevated temperature, Or to samples of complex shapes, or because of their restricted bandwidth. These limitations are eliminated by laser-ultrasonics, a technique which uses lasers for generation and detection of ultrasound. Following a review of the various principles used for generation, we present various methods for detection and the corresponding probes which have been developed in our laboratories. Various applications to ultrasonic velocity and attenuation determination made possible by using these probes are then discussed.
Exposure Based Waiving in Environmental Risk Assessment: A Tiered Approach

ABSTRACT The REACH legislation describes the “Exposure Based Waiving” (EBW) methodology, that allows reduction of animal tests and that facilitates the Chemical Safety Assessments. We introduced a tiered EBW decision strategy for the aquatic environment. Tier 0 in this strategy justifies waiving if it can be demonstrated that exposure of organisms to a chemical will be practically zero (i.e., if no environmental emissions during the full life-cycle of a chemical are to be expected. Tier 1 uses tabular data, derived from physical–chemical properties of a chemical and emission data, to identify whether the environmental exposure levels are less than the conservative toxicological reference value “Threshold of Toxicological Concern” (TTC). To this end, systematic exposure calculations have been carried out with a hypothetical chemical dataset, covering the full chemical spectrum for neutral organic substances. In tier 2, PEC and PNEC are to be assessed probabilistically in order to address the probability of effects. Following this strategy, risk can be shown to be sufficiently low, using minimal exposure and hazard data. Our tiered EBW concept is illustrated by a case study for the substance dibutylphthalate with the endpoint of fresh water aquatic risks.
The Role of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Virulence Factors in Cytoskeletal Dysregulation and Lung Barrier Dysfunction

Pseudomonas (P.) aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that causes serious infections and hospital-acquired pneumonia in immunocompromised patients. P. aeruginosa accounts for up to 20% of all cases of hospital-acquired pneumonia, with an attributable mortality rate of ~30–40%. The poor clinical outcome of P. aeruginosa-induced pneumonia is ascribed to its ability to disrupt lung barrier integrity, leading to the development of lung edema and bacteremia. Airway epithelial and endothelial cells are important architecture blocks that protect the lung from invading pathogens. P. aeruginosa produces a number of virulence factors that can modulate barrier function, directly or indirectly, through exploiting cytoskeleton networks and intercellular junctional complexes in eukaryotic cells. This review summarizes the current knowledge on P. aeruginosa virulence factors, their effects on the regulation of the cytoskeletal network and associated components, and molecular mechanisms regulating barrier function in airway epithelial and endothelial cells. A better understanding of these processes will help to lay the foundation for new therapeutic approaches against P. aeruginosa-induced pneumonia.
Planar Signal Extraction Techniques for a Self-Powered Microsystem

Over the years there has been a growing interest in the field of micro-systems and their applications across a wide range of areas, including sensor based micro-systems able to operate with full galvanic isolation. Two significant issues to consider when designing such remote sensor systems are the supply of power and the method of signal extraction. This paper talks about using planar techniques to address both issues. The concept of a Self-Powered Micro-System is developed. This Eliminates the need for a battery with a finite service life. Current experimental work is explained and potential applications for such novel remote sensor systems are put forward.
Sprinting Ability as an Important Indicator of Performance in Elite Long-Distance Runners.

PURPOSE Increases in maximal oxygen uptake (V̇O2max) and running economy (RE) improve performance in long-distance runners. Nevertheless, long-distance runners require sprinting ability to win, especially in the final phase of competitions. We determined the relationships between performance and sprinting ability, as well as other abilities in elite long-distance runners. METHODS The subjects were 12 elite long-distance runners. Mean official seasonal best times in 5,000-m (5,000 m-SB) and 10,000-m (10,000 m-SB) races within 1 year before or after the examination were 13:58.5 ± 0:18.7 and 28:37.9 ± 0:25.2 (mean ± standard deviation), respectively. We measured 100-m and 400-m sprint times as the index of sprinting ability. We also measured V̇O2max and RE (V̇O2 at 300 m min-1 of running velocity). We used a single correlation analysis to assess relationships between 5,000 m-SB or 10,000 m-SB and other elements. RESULTS There were significant correlations between 5,000 m-SB and 100-m sprint time (13.3 ± 0.7 s; r = 0.68, P = 0.014), 400-m sprint time (56.6 ± 2.7 s: r = 0.69, P = 0.013) and RE (55.5 ± 3.9 ml kg-1 min-1: r = 0.59, P = 0.045). There were significant correlations between 10,000 m-SB and 100-m sprint time (r = 0.72, P = 0.009) and 400-m sprint time (r = 0.85, P < 0.001). However, there was no significant correlation between 5,000 m-SB or 10,000 m-SB and V̇O2max (72.0 ± 3.8 ml kg-1 min-1). CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that sprinting ability is an important indicator of performance in elite long-distance runners.