Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fast communication Spreadspectrum aud io watermarking using frequency hopping andattack characterization

In this paper, we present a novel audio watermarking scheme that uses attack characterization to obtain high robustness against standard watermark attacks. The watermark embedding and detection are based on the frequency hopping method in the spectral domain. Perceptual transparency of the algorithm, achieved using frequency masking property of the human aud itory system, was con5rmedthroughout listening tests. Detection robustness of the proposedscheme with andwithout attack characterization mod ule was comparedto stand ardd irect sequence approach. Tests showedthat the proposedmethod obtains higher robustness to standardwatermarking attacks andthat the attack characterization module signi5cantly improves the performance of both algorithms. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A machine learning approach to find the determinants of Peruvian coca illegal crops

The current study analyzed the determinants of the Peruvian coca illegal plantations in the period 2003-2019. Hence, the DEVIDA database variables were gathered at first. Then, a machine learning-based technique is employed to select the most relevant variables for the study. That technique, Lasso, selected as accurate variables eradication of coca plantations and pasta base. Both OLS and VAR are employed to analyze the relevance of the selected variables. OLS finds that eradication was negatively related to the dependent variable. Nonetheless, pb confiscation had a positive relationship with illegal coca crops. Furthermore, VAR encounters that only pb confiscation affected the dependent variable. Supplementary tests are carried to ensure the accuracy of the results. In consequence, it is concluded that eradication policies by themselves were not enough to discourage the coca plantations. Farmers should get instruction about alternative crops and financial help. Furthermore, it has been claimed that pb confiscation generates scarcity of the drug, which elevates its price. Thus, coca farmers are more motivated to plant coca because of the higher prices. Therefore, as long as the international demand, which is disposed to pay high prices, the coca illegal crops and its illicit products will exist.
Cross-Sectional Imaging Instead of Colonoscopy in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Lights and Shadows

International guidelines recommend a treat-to-target strategy with a close monitoring of disease activity and therapeutic response in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Colonoscopy (CS) represents the current first-line procedure for evaluating disease activity in IBD. However, as it is expensive, invasive and poorly accepted by patients, CS is not appropriate for frequent and repetitive reassessments of disease activity. Recently, cross-sectional imaging techniques have been increasingly shown as reliable tools for assessing IBD activity. While computed tomography (CT) is hampered by radiation risks, routine implementation of magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) for close monitoring is limited by its costs, low availability and long examination time. Novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based techniques, such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), can overcome some of these weaknesses and have been shown as valuable options for IBD monitoring. Bowel ultrasound (BUS) is a noninvasive, highly available, cheap, and well accepted procedure that has been demonstrated to be as accurate as CS and MRE for assessing and monitoring disease activity in IBD. Furthermore, as BUS can be quickly performed at the point-of-care, it allows for real-time clinical decision making. This review summarizes the current evidence on the use of cross-sectional imaging techniques as cost-effective, noninvasive and reliable alternatives to CS for monitoring patients with IBD.
Effect of Different Pretreatments and Drying Techniques on some Chemical and Bioactive Components of Pumpkin Fruit Pulp

The present work was conducted to evaluate the effect of unblanched (U),steam blanched(SB), osmotic dehydration(OS) and microwave (MW) as pretreatments and convective air drying as well as freeze-drying (F) as drying methods to prepare pumpkin pulp powder. The proximate chemical composition, total, reducing and non-reducing sugars, dietary fiber, some bioactive compounds and antioxidant activities of pumpkin pulp powder were determined. The results showed that the moisture content of the dried pumpkin pulp could be arranged in a descending order as follow: microwave MW, SB, U, F and finally OS. The previous mentioned dehydration processes removed 86.44, 86.83, 88.75, 89.22 and 91.47% of the initial water content leading to final moisture content of 12.33, 11.97, 10.23, 9.8 and 7.75 %, respectively. Pumpkin pulp is considered as a rich source of some bioactive compounds. Carotenoids as β-carotene, polyphenols , flavonoids and ascorbic acid content were 24.73 mg /100g, 120.22 mg GAE / 100g, 24.73 mg RE / 100g and 181.21 mg / 100g on D.W, respectively. All treatments caused increment in β-carotene and polyphenol content except osmotic dehydration that caused pronounced decrement. Flavonoid content increased to reach 33.07 mg (rutin equivalent )RE/100g by steam blanching, while, all the other treatments caused decrement. Ascorbic acid was dramatically decreased by all treatments. Except the OS dehydration sample , the free radical scavenging activity by DPPH(1,1-Diphenyl-2picrylhydrazyl) method varied between 49.7 in case of freeze drying to 69.34% in case of MW sample. On the other hand, IC50 values varied from 14.42 to 53.59 mg/ml.
Migration of Copper and Zinc of Regreen Indocalamus Leaves in Different Food Simulants

The work aims to analyze and study the migration of copper and zinc of regreen indocalamus leaves in different food stimulants, so as to provide a theoretical basis for the quality and safety control of indocalamus leaves used for food packaging. Six portions of 25 g of indocalamus leaves were taken and placed in six food simulants respectively, and then heated at 100 °C for 24 hours. The concentrations of copper and zinc in regreen indocalamus leaves were measured by microwave digestion-Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (AAS) to evaluate the migration in food simulants before and after treatment. Finally, the migration amount was calculated and the migration situation was analyzed. Neither copper nor zinc in regreen indocalamus leaves migrated in alkaline buffer solution (pH 10.14), but both of them migrated in varying degrees in other 5 food simulants. Copper migrated with maximum amount in soybean oil by 4.7 mg/L, and zinc migrated with maximum amount in 4% acetic acid solution by 17.5 mg/L. Neither copper nor zinc in regreen indocalamus leaves migrate in alkaline buffer solution, but both of them migrate in varying degrees in other 5 food 第 42 卷 第 21 期 刘立萍等:返青箬叶中铜和锌在不同食品模拟物中迁移情况 ·73· simulants. There is a food safety risk in the food wrapped with regreen indocalamus leaves. Based on the study results and the fact that there is no standard for the source and migration limits of green compounds in natural food packaging materials in China, it should be prohibited to use regreen indocalamus leaves as food packaging materials.
Assessment of Pavement Deflection-Caused Fuel Consumption via FWD Data

The recently developed deflection-induced pavement-vehicle interaction analysis links the structural performance of the pavement to the fuel consumption of moving vehicles and the subsequent greenhouse gas emissions during the pavement use-phase. Accurate estimations of these impacts are tightly dependent on the proper evaluation of pavement structural parameters, including the properties of the surface course and underlying layers. A recent study demonstrated that inertia and damping effects of underlying layers must be taken into account for pavements subjected to dynamic loads, and that accurate parameters of pavement model could be backcalculated using the falling weight deflectometer measurements. In this paper, the pavement-vehicle interaction analysis is modified accordingly. Then, a case study is performed using multiple time histories of falling weight deflectometer deflections collected over a year’s time for a rigid and a flexible pavement. Analysis of deflection basins showcases how falling weight deflectometer measurements can be used for estimating the deflection-induced vehicle fuel consumption for both rigid and flexible pavements. The simplicity and accuracy of the demonstrated analyses show a lot of promise for wider application of this methodology, especially regarding sustainable development of pavement network.
SUPERCOMPUTING THE ELECTRON TRANSPORT USING CUDA TECHNOLOGY

Summary. Statistical algorithms are presented for modeling the interaction processes between electrons and matter. A software implementation has been developed for hybrid supercomputers making use of NVIDIA© CUDA© technology. Standard Monte Carlo schemes are modified for effectively exploiting the parallel computing capabilities of graphical processors. Modeling inter-action processes of electrons with objects of a complex non-uniformly scaled structure requires developing fine-grained models of the interaction without using well-known approximations. The model of individual collisions (MIC) is worked out to describe the interaction of electrons with atoms. MIC does not include the approximations assumed in multiple collision theory or the continuous slow down approach. The distributions of electron characteristics are obtained from tabulated electron cross-section data. Modeling hundreds of thousands of electron collisions with small energy transfers within the scope of MIC requires a huge amount of calculations. Therefore, modern computers based on hybrid architecture are required for computing electron transport using MIC. A corresponding parallelization technique is developed for using these hybrid computers. The discussed examples demonstrate the applicability of the algorithms to investigating the interaction of electrons with X-ray tube targets producing Bremsstrahlung and to researching the process of electron emission from surfaces of objects being under radiation.
Knowledge to Predict Pathogens: Legionella pneumophila Lifecycle Systematic Review Part II Growth within and Egress from a Host Cell

Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is a pathogenic bacterium of increasing concern, due to its ability to cause a severe pneumonia, Legionnaires’ Disease (LD), and the challenges in controlling the bacteria within premise plumbing systems. L. pneumophila can thrive within the biofilm of premise plumbing systems, utilizing protozoan hosts for protection from environmental stressors and to increase its growth rate, which increases the bacteria’s infectivity to human host cells. Typical disinfectant techniques have proven to be inadequate in controlling L. pneumophila in the premise plumbing system, exposing users to LD risks. As the bacteria have limited infectivity to human macrophages without replicating within a host protozoan cell, the replication within, and egress from, a protozoan host cell is an integral part of the bacteria’s lifecycle. While there is a great deal of information regarding how L. pneumophila interacts with protozoa, the ability to use this data in a model to attempt to predict a concentration of L. pneumophila in a water system is not known. This systematic review summarizes the information in the literature regarding L. pneumophila’s growth within and egress from the host cell, summarizes the genes which affect these processes, and calculates how oxidative stress can downregulate those genes.
Selective Harmonic Control for AC-DC-AC Regulated Converter AC-DC-AC Converter

Multilevel inverter technology has emerged recently as a very important alternative in the area of high-power medium-voltage energy control. This paper presents selective harmonic elimination method for cascade multilevel converters to eliminate the specified harmonics in the output voltage. The principle of the converter is analyzed. Then the switching angles are computed to eliminate the low order harmonics in theory, and the gating signals for the converter are given. The Selective Harmonic Elimination, SHE modulation method is presented where additional notches are introduced in the multi-level output voltage. These notches eliminate harmonics at the low order/frequency and shifts it a higher order/frequency and hence the filter size is reduced without increasing the switching losses and cost of the system. Static power converters are used for many applications, such as general power supplies. This paper analyzes the performance of single phase AC-DC-AC converter, where the converter consists of two parts, an AC to DC controlled rectifier cascaded with a DC to AC multilevel inverter, so as to increase the number of voltage levels of the inverter to reduce the filter size of the output voltage of the DC-AC converter. The experimental results show that the method can effectively eliminate the specific harmonics as expected. Index Terms— Selective Harmonic Elimination; Staircase Modulation; Cascaded H-Bridge inverter, multilevel inverter, AC-DC-AC converter, and regulated power supply
Emprendimiento femenino: características, motivos de éxito, limitantes, involucrados y consecuencias

El Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Perú 2017 - 2018 explicó que Perú ocupa el primer lugar en América Latina y el Caribe y el quinto en el Índice de Emprendimiento. La presencia de mujeres emprendedoras por oportunidad es de 0,92 por cada hombre, por lo que se incorporaron a la economía del país y están generando empleo directa e indirectamente. El objetivo del estudio fue analizar el emprendimiento femenino e identificar las características, motivos de éxito, limitaciones, implicaciones y consecuencias. El estudio se desarrolló bajo el paradigma interpretativo, enfoque cualitativo, método analítico, sintético e inductivo. La categoría de estudio se dividió en cinco subcategorías, y se codificó cada indicador, luego se trianguló la información de la entrevista con el apoyo del software Atlas.ti 8. La principal característica de las mujeres emprendedoras es la perseverancia y siempre están atentas a las oportunidades del mercado. Una limitación es el acceso al financiamiento para el capital inicial, así como los trámites, son burocráticos. A pesar del carácter exigente del negocio, las mujeres no descuidan sus tareas como madres. La familia apoya el crecimiento y desarrollo de la actividad económica, lo que se traduce en rentabilidad económica y riqueza personal, lo que permite la emprendedora independencia económica y estatus social.
Research on Ultrasonic Shot Peening through Numerical Simulation

Ultrasonic shot peening can be used to strengthen mechanical parts. Its equipment structure is compact, which is convenient for incorporated into production line. It is fitting to facilitate operation and high reproducibility without dust pollution and noise. The finite element simulation method of ultrasonic shot peening further contributes to the development of ultrasonic shot peening technology. In the present work, finite element simulation method was adopted to establish a three-dimensional numerical model for analyzing the strengthening mechanism of ultrasonic shot peening. By choosing reasonable material model and different combination of parameters (such as treated material, diameter of shots, peening velocity), the curves of residual stress vs. depth of alloy materials were obtained, including the relationships between the peak value and depth of residual compression stress and peening velocity.
Applying CBR to machine tool product configuration design oriented to customer requirements

Product customization is a trend in the current market-oriented manufacturing environment. However, deduction from customer requirements to design results and evaluation of design alternatives are still heavily reliant on the designer’s experience and knowledge. To solve the problem of fuzziness and uncertainty of customer requirements in product configuration, an analysis method based on the grey rough model is presented. The customer requirements can be converted into technical characteristics effectively. In addition, an optimization decision model for product planning is established to help the enterprises select the key technical characteristics under the constraints of cost and time to serve the customer to maximal satisfaction. A new case retrieval approach that combines the self-organizing map and fuzzy similarity priority ratio method is proposed in case-based design. The self-organizing map can reduce the retrieval range and increase the retrieval efficiency, and the fuzzy similarity priority ratio method can evaluate the similarity of cases comprehensively. To ensure that the final case has the best overall performance, an evaluation method of similar cases based on grey correlation analysis is proposed to evaluate similar cases to select the most suitable case. Furthermore, a computer-aided system is developed using MATLAB GUI to assist the product configuration design. The actual example and result on an ETC series machine tool product show that the proposed method is effective, rapid and accurate in the process of product configuration. The proposed methodology provides a detailed instruction for the product configuration design oriented to customer requirements.
Représentations intermédiaires interactives pour la manipulation de code LaTeX: Interactive Intermediate Representations for LaTeX Code Manipulation

Editing documents written in a description language such as LaTeX is difficult. Few editors improve the experience, and WYSIWYG interfaces for LaTeX are often limited. Yet, LaTeX is still used extensively, especially in the scientific community. We interviewed 11 LaTeX users and performed a thematic analysis of the issues they face. We define the concept of interactive intermediate representations (IIR) and propose to use it to answer some of these problems. IIR constitute a new kind of user interface for document description languages that enable to visualise and manipulate certain pieces of code through suitable representations. We present i- LaTeX , a prototype of a LaTeX editor equipped with IIR, and discuss its design, its implementation, its preliminary evaluation and its limits. We conclude on the benefits of IIR for document description language editing.
Retinal Image Enhancement Using Cycle-Constraint Adversarial Network

Retinal images are the most intuitive medical images for the diagnosis of fundus diseases. Low-quality retinal images cause difficulties in computer-aided diagnosis systems and the clinical diagnosis of ophthalmologists. The high quality of retinal images is an important basis of precision medicine in ophthalmology. In this study, we propose a retinal image enhancement method based on deep learning to enhance multiple low-quality retinal images. A generative adversarial network is employed to build a symmetrical network, and a convolutional block attention module is introduced to improve the feature extraction capability. The retinal images in our dataset are sorted into two sets according to their quality: low and high quality. Generators and discriminators alternately learn the features of low/high-quality retinal images without the need for paired images. We analyze the proposed method both qualitatively and quantitatively on public datasets and a private dataset. The study results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to other advanced algorithms, especially in enhancing color-distorted retinal images. It also performs well in the task of retinal vessel segmentation. The proposed network effectively enhances low-quality retinal images, aiding ophthalmologists and enabling computer-aided diagnosis in pathological analysis. Our method enhances multiple types of low-quality retinal images using a deep learning network.
Toward Co-Design of Autonomous Aerospace Cyber-Physical Systems.

Toward Co-Design of Autonomous Aerospace Cyber-Physical Systems by Justin M. Bradley Chair: Ella M. Atkins Modern vehicles are equipped with a complex suite of computing (cyber) and electromechanical (physical) systems. Holistic design, modeling, and optimization of such Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) requires new techniques capable of integrated analysis across the full CPS. This dissertations introduces two methods for balancing cyber and physical resources in a step toward holistic co-design of CPS. First, an ordinary differential equation model abstraction of controller sampling rate is developed and added to the equations of motion of a physical system to form a holistic discrete-time-varying linear system representing the CPS controller. Using feedback control, this cyber effector, sampling rate, is then co-regulated alongside physical effectors in response to physical system tracking error. This technique is applied to a spring-massdamper, inverted pendulum, and finally to attitude control of a small satellite (CubeSat). Additionally, two new controllers for discrete-time-varying systems are introduced; a gain-scheduled discrete-time linear regulator (DLQR) in which DLQR gains are scheduled over time-varying sampling rates, and a forward-propagation Riccati-based (FPRB) controller. The FPRB CPS controller shows promise in balancing cyber and physical resources.
Réalité augmentée et interface tangible au service des novices en programmation: Augmented Reality and Tangible Interaction to Help Programming Novices

Introductory programming courses are a challenge for any teacher and a barrier for students. Among other factors, novice programmers often have misconceptions, leading them to build incorrect mental models. A concept inventory coupling tangible interfaces and augmented reality (TARCI) has been developed according to a design-oriented methodology, in close collaboration with the future users of the system (students, teachers). With TARCI, teachers should quickly become aware of misconceptions in their students and thus be able to correct them. Preliminary tests were carried out during development, in particular to improve TARCI first with eight experts and then with nine students. These tests show promising results. Les cours d’introduction à la programmation constituent un défi pour tout enseignant et un obstacle pour les étudiants. Entre autres facteurs, les programmeurs novices ont souvent des représentations erronées, ce qui les conduit à construire des modèles mentaux incorrects. Un concept inventory couplant interface tangible et réalité augmentée (CITRA) a été développé selon une méthodologie orientée-conception, en étroite collaboration avec les futurs utilisateurs du système (étudiants, enseignants). Avec CITRA, les enseignants devraient prendre conscience rapidement des représentations erronées présentes chez leurs étudiants et ainsi, pouvoir les corriger. Des tests préliminaires ont été menés durant le développement, notamment pour améliorer CITRA d’abord avec huit experts et ensuite, avec neuf étudiants. Ces tests montrent des résultats prometteurs.