Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of Data Collection and Analysis Method for a Pleasant and Safe User Experience of Personal Mobility Device

In recent years, the idea of personal mobility devices (PMD) has gained prominence globally for different contexts, for diverse types and extent of uses. The advantages of owning a PMD allows users to cover the short distance in between stops where they have access to long distance transportation, establishing a full end to end transport system for many. The rise in usage of PMDs also came along the rise in accidents. One of the reasons that could result in this phenomenon is the lack of calibration of PMD towards how users use it. Currently, most user experience (UX) methodologies are based on subjective questionnaires rather than by objective quantitative data. While there exists a few that studies wheelchair and electronic bicycles, UX concerning this specific device is a field not many studies have delved into. Therefore, in this project, we seek to propose a data-driven model to explore electronic scooter user’s riding profile based on psychophysiological data such as galvanic skin response (GSR) and kinematics data such as the speed and acceleration. Upon retrieving the stress status of the user when he or she is riding, the dataset undergoes a data analysis pipeline that cleans, process and analyse data with Random Forest machine learning algorithms. With the ability to create customised profiles, the model can be adopted to serve the needs of PMD sharing service stakeholders or PMD design companies to ensure good user experience for their customers in the future.
Arousal and Consciousness in Focal Seizures

Impaired consciousness during seizures severely affects quality of life for people with epilepsy but the mechanisms are just beginning to be understood. Consciousness is thought to involve large-scale brain networks, so it is puzzling that focal seizures often impair consciousness. Recent work investigating focal temporal lobe or limbic seizures in human patients and experimental animal models suggests that impaired consciousness is caused by active inhibition of subcortical arousal mechanisms. Focal limbic seizures exhibit decreased neuronal firing in brainstem, basal forebrain, and thalamic arousal networks, and cortical arousal can be restored when subcortical arousal circuits are stimulated during seizures. These findings open the possibility of restoring arousal and consciousness therapeutically during and following seizures by thalamic neurostimulation. When seizures cannot be stopped by existing treatments, targeted subcortical stimulation may improve arousal and consciousness, leading to improved safety and better psychosocial function for people with epilepsy.
Estudo comparativo entre algoritmos de árvores de classificação e máquinas de vetores suporte baseados em ensembles de classificadores

Este artigo apresenta uma análise comparativa de desempenho de um algoritmo de árvores de classificação (J48) e um algoritmo de máquinas de vetores suporte (SMO) quando combinados na forma de ensembles bagging e boosting. As duas questões principais são: a) Para um certo algoritmo, que configuração entre Bagging e Boosting resulta em maior acurácia? b) Há evidência de que um algoritmo seja consistentemente superior ao outro sob as configurações ensemble? Os resultados sugerem que o J48 tende a obter maiores acurácias sob a configuração Boosting, enquanto o SMO parece menos sensível à configuração ensemble utilizada. Não obstante, ambos os algoritmos obtiveram números de vitórias similares entre os datasets
Infrastructure as Software in Micro Clouds at the Edge

Edge computing offers cloud services closer to data sources and end-users, making the foundation for novel applications. The infrastructure deployment is taking off, bringing new challenges: how to use geo-distribution properly, or harness the advantages of having resources at a specific location? New real-time applications require multi-tier infrastructure, preferably doing data preprocessing locally, but using the cloud for heavy workloads. We present a model, able to organize geo-distributed nodes into micro clouds dynamically, allowing resource reorganization to best serve population needs. Such elasticity is achieved by relying on cloud organization principles, adapted for a different environment. The desired state is specified descriptively, and the system handles the rest. As such, infrastructure is abstracted to the software level, thus enabling “infrastructure as software” at the edge. We argue about blending the proposed model into existing tools, allowing cloud providers to offer future micro clouds as a service.
Design and Implementation of Triple Band Half Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide (HMSIW) Antenna with Compact Size

This study investigated structure strategies and exploratory scenarios for a half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) antenna. The proposed antenna consists of three Hilbert cells, which are simulated by using CST programming. The antenna was manufactured with the realities of minor imperfections and high incorporation. The proposed structure offers a suitable substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) with about a decrease in size by half. In addition, Hilbert cells were added to realize the triple-band characteristics with good impedance matching, radiation patterns, and radiation performance. The antenna was fabricated on h = 1 mm thick dielectric substrate with dielectric constant (𝜀𝑟 = 4.3). The Hilbert cells were drilled on the top plane of the antenna substrate and fed using a microstrip transmission line. The proposed antenna is small, with a slot side length of approximately half of the guided wavelength. The three developed Hilbert cell HMSIW antenna resonates at 3.25, 5.94 and 6.5 GHz with a bandwidth of 2.97, 2.25 and 2.29% within a return loss of ‑38.77, ‑35.82 -23.35 dB, respectively. The results showed enhancements in antenna gain of 3.56, 4.97 and 6.43 dBi, with a radiation efficiency of -1.253, -0.493 and -0.586 dB, respectively.
Capacity Analysis of NOMA-Enabled Underwater VLC Networks

Visible light communication (VLC) has recently emerged as an enabling technology for high capacity underwater wireless sensor networks. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been also proven capable of handling a massive number of sensor nodes while increasing the sum capacity. In this paper, we consider a VLC-based underwater sensor network where a clusterhead communicates with several underwater sensor nodes based on NOMA. We derive a closed-form expression for the NOMA system capacity over underwater turbulence channels modeled by lognormal distribution. NOMA sum capacity in the absence of underwater optical turbulence is also considered as a benchmark. Our results reveal that the overall capacity of NOMA-enabled Underwater VLC networks is significantly affected by the propagation distance in underwater environments. As a result, effective wireless transmission at high and moderate spectral efficiency levels can be practically achieved in underwater environments only in the context of local area networks. Moreover, we compare the achievable capacity of NOMA system with its counterpart, i.e., orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). Our results reveal that NOMA system is not only characterized by achieving higher sum capacity than the sum capacity of its counterpart, OFDMA system. It is also shown that the distances between sensor nodes and the clusterhead for achieving the highest sum capacity in these two multiple access systems are different.
DETERMINAÇÃO DO SETPOINT DA TEMPERATURA DE UM FORNO DE AQUECIMNTO DE GÁS FLUIDIZADOR DE UM LEITO BORBULHANTE

RESUMO – O objetivo deste trabalho foi determinar uma equaçã o empírica que preveja o valor da temperatura (setpoint) de saída de um fo rno, utilizado para aquecer o ar em um processo de pirólise com reator de leito fluidiz a o. Os dados experimentais foram obtidos a partir do emprego da técnica de planejame nto de experimentos, considerando ensaios com variações da temperatura do forno e da vazão de gás que passa por ele. Como resultados, foram determinados que o aumento d a emperatura aumenta a perda de calor para o meio e o aumento de vazão de ar dim inu esta perda. O emprego da técnica estatística possibilitou a determinação de equações empíricas deste perfil, o que culminou na determinação da equação preditora do se tpoint da temperatura do forno.
Photocatalytic Degradation of Methylene Blue over TiO2 Pretreated with Varying Concentrations of NaOH

In this paper, different NaOH concentrations (2, 5, 10, and 15 M) were used to treat {001}TiO2. The effect of NaOH on the crystal structure, morphology, optical properties, light raw electronic-hole recombination, and degradation performance of {001}TiO2 on methylene blue were studied. The results demonstrate that rutile TiO2 appeared when the NaOH concentration was as high as 10 M, showing much better photolytic performance than others. As the concentration of sodium hydroxide increases, the morphology changes accordingly. The specific surface area increases and the optical electronic-hole recombination rate decreases. Radical scavenging tests showed that hydroxyl radical and hole are very important in photocatalysis.
Efficient Grid Map Data Structures for Autonomous Driving in Large-Scale Environments

In this paper, we investigate data structures for grid mapping in autonomous driving. While the traversed environment can be virtually infinitely large, one is mainly interested in the immediate surroundings of the vehicle. Thus, a world-fixed, square grid map centered roughly at the vehicle is used. For an efficient data handling, this grid map is subdivided into multiple submaps, which can be added and removed in order to move the currently considered window with the vehicle. We evaluate different choices for the underlying data structures (array, hashmap, quadtree) as well as different submap sizes on both a theoretical and practical level: We provide a complexity analysis and a discussion on possible overheads. Furthermore, we present empirical results regarding memory consumption and runtime of common operations (mapping, scan matching, map retrieval) on real-world datasets of different scenarios (sub-urb, rural area, highway). Finally, we give recommendations depending on the actual requirements of the used algorithm.
Isolation of Silica-Lignin Composites from Rice Husk and Their Adsorption to Cr(VI)

Rice husk is the most abundant agricultural waste in Indonesia. It can be used as a precursor for multifunctional materials such as silica-lignin composite for adsorbents. Silica-lignin can reduce heavy metal content in an industrial waste, such as the content of Cr(VI). This study aims to isolate and characterize silica-lignin composite, and determines the isotherm type of silica-lignin for hexavalent chromium adsorption. The isolation from rice husk used an alkali extraction method. Confirmation of typical functional groups in the silica-lignin composite was characterized by FTIR, while the morphology was characterized by SEM, respectively. The results reveal that the silica-lignin isolation was successfully performed. FTIR spectra indicate a typical wavenumber of the silica-lignin. The SEM image of the composite showed homogeneous morphology. The silica-lignin adsorption process on hexavalent chromium followed a Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm type indicated by multilayer adsorption with a surface area of 948.8421 mg. g-1.
Investigation on Characteristics of Liquid and Hydrochar Products from Hydrothermal Carbonization of Oily Scum at Different Temperatures

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a promising technology for upgrading organic substances with high moisture content. The characteristics of liquid and hydrochar products derived from oily scum at the different HTC temperatures were investigated in this study. The increase of HTC temperature resulted in a significant color shift of liquid from light yellow to strong yellow. The liquid uptake of hydrochar increased significantly with the increase of HTC temperature. SEM showed that there exhibited an irregular pit structure in hydrochars. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that high carbonization temperature of oily scum could improve the combustion characteristics of hydrochars. The comprehensive combustion properties were positively correlated with HTC temperature. The overall results of hydrochar combustion study showed that the activation energy of hydrochars decreased gradually with an increase in HTC temperature. This study provides a sustainable and promising treatment to reuse oily scum and suggests the possible fuel utilization of subsequent hydrochar product.
Assessment of reclaimed soils by unsupervised clustering of proximal sensor data

The application of soil proximal sensors on reclaimed sites presents a novel method for assessing the quality of reclaimed landscapes. This method improves assessment reliability, information management, and environmental assurance. One proximal sensing system that could be used to provide high spatial resolution measurements of soil parameters is an on-the-go optical sensor that collects data at two wavelengths: 660 and 940 nm. Proximal soil sensing data were collected at 27 sites, where organic matter, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and soil water content were collected from 221 soil samples from 0 to 15 cm. The proximal soil sensor data were then automatically clustered using a combination of self-organizing maps and random uniform forests. Overall, the proximal sensor data combined with this data analysis approach created maps with either three or four soil zones. On average, soil zones had statistically significant differences in organic matter, CEC, and water content. This system could be used to map out zones with significant soil variation as part of reclamation monitoring and then used to guide laboratory analytical sampling. Future work should focus on development of on-the-go reflectance spectroscopy systems to provide quantitative soil data with high spatial resolution.
The minimum wage in the national economy: reasons and changes in Poland

Motivation: The minimum wage protect employees from excessively low wages. It helps ensure fair participation in economic development for the general public. The minimum wage in the economy is an essential element in a country’s economic policy. Decisions concerning the implementation and changes in the minimum wage are part of the socio-economic policy of the state. Research on minimum wage relate to its overall impact on the level and structure of wages, employment, productivity at work, the size of the gray economy, the level of poverty and public finances. Factors affecting changes in the minimum wage are formal and non-formal. The question therefore arises which factors are decisive in the Polish economy. Aim: The aim of this paper is to present the essence and causes of changes in the minimum wage in Poland in 2003–2020 with particular regard to formal and non-formal aspects. Results: On the basis of research carried out in Poland, a link between minimum wage and inflation was observed. There is also a fundamental relationship between the minimum wage and average wages in the economy. It has been shown that the minimum wage is not without significance for the impact on public finance sector in Poland.
Identification of tissue-specific proteins and peptides forming innovative meat products corrective properties to confirm authenticity of meat raw materials

Proteomic methods and approaches to the detection of tissue-specific and tissue-generating proteins and peptides – which form corrective properties – in studied meat samples and specially developed meat products were successfully tried out in 2016–2017. The methods allow one to confirm protein and peptide authenticity and also detect bio-markers of proteolytic changes in meat after slaughter. The following proteomic techniques were used in the present research: two-dimensional O’Farrell electrophoresis with isoelectrofocusing in ampholin and immobilin pH gradients, the detection of proteins on two-dimensional electrophoregrams by staining with Coomassie R-250 and silver nitrate, and mass spectrometric identification of proteins by means of MALDI-TOF and MS/MS methods. Contractile actomyosin complex proteins, such as myosin light chains and tropomyosins, were the most informative among proteins of species specificity. It is also necessary to mention that earlier experiments allowed us to choose enzymes which play a part in carbohydrate metabolism (glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase and β-enolase) as markers. In addition to the listed proteins, myoglobins, actins, and several other proteins in horse meat have showed high species specificity and have been detected well. A system of species specificity (authenticity) of meat raw materials was suggested. The system allows the presence of pork, beef, horse, and camel meat to be detected in both raw and heat-treated products if the content is 5% and more. The data has been obtained by means of bioinformatics, а highly useful tool for formulating an algorithm to identify the protein markers for the Atlas “Proteomic profiles of farm animals meat proteins”. “Proteomic profiles of farm animals muscle proteins”.
Luminal Chemosensory Cells in the Small Intestine

In addition to the small intestine’s well-known function of nutrient absorption, the small intestine also plays a major role in nutrient sensing. Similar to taste sensors seen on the tongue, GPCR-coupled nutrient sensors are expressed throughout the intestinal epithelium and respond to nutrients found in the lumen. These taste receptors respond to specific ligands, such as digested carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The activation of nutrient sensors in the intestine allows for the induction of signaling pathways needed for the digestive system to process an influx of nutrients. Such processes include those related to glucose homeostasis and satiety. Defects in intestinal nutrient sensing have been linked to a variety of metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. Here, we review recent updates in the mechanisms related to intestinal nutrient sensors, particularly in enteroendocrine cells, and their pathological roles in disease. Additionally, we highlight the emerging nutrient sensing role of tuft cells and recent work using enteroids as a sensory organ model.
Expression of proto-oncogene c-Myc in patients with urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma

Abstract Background: c-Myc is a proto-oncogene located on human chromosome 8. It encodes a transcriptional factor which regulates the expression of approximately 10% to 15% of human genes, playing a crucial role in cell growth, differentiation, cellular metabolism, apoptosis, and cell transformation. The aim of this study is to correlate the expression of c-Myc in patients suffering from urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma with tumor grade, stage, and lymph node metastases. Materials and methods: Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples were obtained from 54 consecutive patients who underwent transurethral resection of bladder tumor or radical cystectomy (RC) as treatment for urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma. Immunohistochemistry was performed using c-Myc monoclonal antibody and c-Myc expression was then analyzed for correlation with tumor stage, grade, and lymph node metastases. Results: From a total of 54 patients, 42 (77.8%) had c-Myc positive staining and 12 (22.2%) were c-Myc negative. In the c-Myc positive group, 28 patients (66.7%) had low grade tumors and 33 (78.6%) presented with non-muscle-invasive disease (p < 0.05). In the c-Myc negative group, 10 patients (83.3%) had high-grade disease and 8 (66.7%) presented with muscle-invasive disease (p < 0.05). Lymph node metastases were evaluated in 17 patients who underwent RC. Of these, 5 had lymph node metastases, 4 of whom had c-Myc negative staining (p < 0.05). Conclusions: In our study, c-Myc negative staining was associated with higher grade and higher stage disease. On the contrary, most c-Myc positive tumors were low grade and non-muscle-invasive disease. In patients who underwent RC, c-Myc negative staining was associated with lymph node metastases.
Annuloplasty as a method to prevent recurrent herniation of lumbar intervertebral discs

Among patients with herniation of the intervertebral disc (HIVD), surgical treatment is recommended for patients with failure of conservative treatment or severe muscle weakness [1,2]. During surgical treatment, the herniated disc is removed to relieve the compressed cauda equina or nerve roots. Although surgical treatment is performed successfully, the risk of recurrence is reported to be up to 15% [3–5]. Objective: Recurrent disc herniation occurs frequently after discectomy and is associated with annulus fibrosus defects. This study evaluated the effectiveness of annuloplasty in preventing recurrent intervertebral disc herniation following microscopic discectomy. Methods: We analyzed 102 patients (56 males, 46 females) who underwent discectomy between December 2019 and February 2021. Twenty-two patients received annuloplasty using sutures and 80 did not. Surgical and clinical outcomes and the herniation recurrence rate were compared between the groups. Results: The mean age was significantly lower in the suture group than in the non-suture group (54.55±10.12 years vs. 60.60±12.20 years; P=0.021). There were no significant between-group differences in sex, body mass index, or length of follow-up. The surgical outcomes, such as operation time (66.82±13.01 minutes vs. 63.14±20.54 minutes; P=0.305) and estimated blood loss (54.55±14.71 mL vs. 59.77±19.59 mL; P=0.175), did not differ significantly between the groups. No significant between-group difference was found in the proportion of patients with lower extremity weakness preoperatively (63.6% vs. 48.8%; P=0.155), and at 1 (36.4% vs. 25.0%; P=0.275) and 6 months (13.6% vs. 11.3%; P=0.707) postoperatively. There were no cases of recurrent herniation in the suture group, whereas the recurrence rate was 5.0% in the non-suture group. Conclusion: Despite the non-statistically significant results, annuloplasty may serve as a simple method to prevent recurrent intervertebral disc herniation.