Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of optimized Markov Decision Process using Dynamic Programming and Temporal Differencing – A reinforcement learning approach

Reinforcement learning is one of the promising approaches for operations research problems. The incoming inspection process in any manufacturing plant aims to control quality, reduce manufacturing costs, eliminate scrap, and process failure downtimes due to non-conforming raw materials. Prediction of the raw material acceptance rate can regulate the raw material supplier selection and improve the manufacturing process by filtering out non-conformities. This paper presents a Markov model developed to estimate the probability of the raw material being accepted or rejected in an incoming inspection environment. The proposed forecasting model is further optimized for efficiency using the two reinforcement learning algorithms (dynamic programming and temporal differencing). The results of the two optimized models are compared, and the findings are discussed.
A design technique for variable digital filters

In some applications the frequency characteristics of a filter may be required to change during the course of signal processing. This requirement can be satisfied by filters with coefficients that are directly computable from the specified spectral parameters. Such filters are referred to as variable filters. A design technique for variable filters is proposed. The filter coefficients are expressed as analytical functions of the frequency specifications by using a curve-fitting technique. Several examples are presented to illustrate the method. >
Common-Centroid Analog Circuit Layout

—This paper presents an overview of common-centroid (CC) layout styles, used in analog designs to overcome the impact of systematic variations. CC layouts must be carefully engineered to minimize the impact of mismatch. Algorithms for CC layout must be aware of routing parasitics, layout-dependent effects (for active devices), and the performance impact of layout choices. The optimal CC layout further depends on factors such as the choice of the unit device and the relative impact of uncorrelated and systematic variations. The paper also examines scenarios where non-CC layouts may be preferable to CC layouts.
The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Feeling of Happiness, and Quality of Life among Older Adults Residing in the Assisted Living Facilities in Alexandria, Egypt

Background: High emotional intelligence has important practical implications because it is linked to happy and satisfied life, which leads to a higher quality of life and a more subjective well-being. Objective: to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence, feeling of happiness, and quality of life among older adults residing in the assisted living facilities in Alexandria, Egypt. Design: A descriptive correlational research design. Setting: The study was carried out in two assisted living facilities in Alexandria, Egypt namely; Dar El Hana (governmental elderly home) and Dar Mohammed Ragab (none governmental elderly home). Subjects: 150 older adults (out of 168) of both sexes residing in the previously mentioned settings. Tools: five tools were used for data collection: 1) Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 2) Sociodemographic and Clinical Data Structured Interview Schedule of Older Adults Residing in the Assisted Living Facilities, 3) Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS), 4) Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), 5) The LIEPAD Questionnaire Scale. Results: The key results of this study showed that while the study subjects reported reasonably high emotional intelligence in its total domains with a mean percent score of (72.8±13.1), they typically feel moderately happy (53.3±15.7). In addition, more than one-half (54.0%) of the participants had mild impairment in their quality of life and the rest (46.0%) had moderate impairment. Conclusion: The emotional intelligence is positively associated with subjective happiness and cognitive wellbeing, although there is a clear negative correlation between the emotional intelligence of the study subjects and their quality of life. Recommendations: Designing and implementing of educational intervention programs for elderly people residing in assisted living facilities by gerontological nurses, focusing on improvement of emotional skills and the most appropriate coping techniques for their feelings to enhance their quality of life and subjective wellbeing.
Periodontal ligament and intraosseous anesthetic injection techniques

anesthetic agents has been an important advancement in dental therapeutics. Their anesthetic effectiveness, however, sometimes is inadequate, particularly after the administration of a mandibular nerve block. The nerves supplying mandibular teeth and periodontal tissue are encased in the bone. The thick cortical plate of the mandible impairs diffusion of anesthetic solutions into the mandible, often limiting the effectiveness of infiltration anesthesia. Alternative anesthetic techniques that can overcome this barrier are available. The periodontal ligament (PDL) anesthetic technique involves using high injection pressure to force the local anesthetic solution through the PDL into the cancellous medullary bone surrounding a tooth. The intraosseous (IO) anesthetic technique requires mechanical perforation of the thick cortical plate between the roots of the teeth to permit deposition of the local anesthetic into the medullary bone surrounding the tooth. These techniques permit diffusion of anesthetic around the tooth socket to anesthetize all of the nerves supplying the dental pulp. The anesthesia often is limited to the specific tooth undergoing treatment.
The Need for Training and Development in Provincial Government Departments: A Case of a Government Communication & Information System

Many training and development programmes in the public sector are not informed by the training needs of the employees. This paper explores how training needs analysis is conducted in South Africa drawing on a case study of the Department of Government Communication and Information Systems (GCIS). Data for this study were collected through a mixed method approach. The quantitative part used a questionnaire survey with purposively selected participants (N=108) from the GCIS and 13 in-depth interviews. The findings revealed that despite the existence of Personal Development Plans (PDPs) in the GCIS, there is an absence of diversity and particularity in the training programmes provided in the GCIS. Furthermore, the findings revealed that the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, which requires GCIS employees, particularly the communicators, to use various constantly evolving items of technological equipment means that individual training needs must be considered. These findings have profound implications for human resource development practitioners in the public sector as they provide important insights into the reason for the infectiveness of training and development.
Retrospective evaluation of patients undergoing amputation surgery due to diabetic foot ulcers

DOI: 10.4328/ACAM.20578 Received: 2021-03-09 Accepted: 2021-08-26 Published Online: 2021-09-20 Printed: 2021-10-01 Ann Clin Anal Med 2021;12(10):1083-1087 Corresponding Author: Gamze Küçükosman, Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, Faculty of Medicine, Bülent Ecevit University, Zonguldak, Turkey. E-mail: gamzebeu@gmail.com P: +90 532 566 25 71 F: +90 372 261 27 68 Corresponding Author ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5224-0258 Abstract Aim: This study aims to determine the characteristics of patients undergoing major lower extremity amputation (LEA) surgery due to diabetic foot ulcers. Material and Methods: The study was conducted by scanning files between January 2016 and December 2018. Patients were divided into two groups as survivors and non-survivors over the course of a 30-day follow-up period. Results: The files of 43 patients (25 men, 18 women; mean age: 67±11 years) were examined. Thirty-seven of those patients underwent below-the-knee amputation and 5 of the surgeries were urgent. It was observed that 56% of the patients were in the ASA 3 and 40% were in the ASA 4 risk group. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of age, gender, amputation level, surgical procedure, number of comorbidities, ASA risk group, postoperative laboratory values, or follow-up location (p>0.05). However, preoperative albumin levels were found to be lower in patients who died (p=0.02). General anesthesia was applied for 3 of the patients who died (p=0.08). It was determined that 23 patients were hospitalized postoperatively in intensive care for close hemodynamic follow-up and none of them needed a ventilator. During the postoperative 30-day follow-up period, the mortality rate was 9.3% and mean time to death was determined as 15.4±20 days. Three of 4 patients died due to cardiac reasons while 1 patient died because of respiratory failure. Discussion: Since there were no significant differences in our study except low albumin levels among non-survivors, we think that supporting diabetic patients with nutritional programs in the preoperative period with a multidisciplinary approach will affect the treatment process positively.
A unified approach to robust meter placement against loss of measurements and branch outages

This paper presents a systematic procedure by which measurement systems can be optimally upgraded. The proposed procedure yields a measurement configuration that can withstand any single branch outage or loss of single measurement, without losing network observability. It is a numerical method based on the measurement Jacobian and sparse triangular factorization, making its implementation easy in existing state estimators. It can be used offline in planning and meter placement studies or it can be implemented as part of the online observability analysis function. Details of the procedure are presented using numerical examples.
Challenges Facing HRM Practitioners in Achieving Organisational Effectiveness in South African State- Owned Enterprises

The South African state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have drawn criticism in the country concerning their performance. Retrenchments and government bailouts have been resorted to for South African SOEs in a bid to avoid liquidation. As a result, Human Resource Management is regarded as a source of organisational competence which aims at improving employee morale, reducing cost of operations and quality service improvement. An investigation was undertaken at a selected South African SOE to examine the challenges facing human resource professionals in obtaining organisational competitiveness. A qualitative research design was applied, and interviews were used on human resource practitioners who occupy departmental supervisory positions. The study revealed that Human Resources departments experienced challenges such as lack of technology, high labour turnover, and not attracting skilled technical personnel thus impending company competitiveness.
Automated Negative Lightning Return Strokes Classification System

Over the years, many studies have been conducted to measure and classify the lightning-generated electric field waveform for a better understanding of the lightning physics phenomenon. Through measurement and classification, the features of the negative lightning return strokes can be accessed and analysed. In most studies, the classification of negative lightning return strokes was performed using a conventional approach based on manual visual inspection. Nevertheless, this traditional method could compromise the accuracy of data analysis due to human error, which also required a longer processing time. Hence, this study developed an automated negative lightning return strokes classification system using MATLAB software. In this study, a total of 115 return strokes was recorded and classified automatically by using the developed system. The data comparison with the Tenaga Nasional Berhad Research (TNBR) lightning report showed a good agreement between the lightning signal detected from this study with those signals recorded from the report. Apart from that, the developed automated system was successfully classified the negative lightning return strokes which this parameter was also illustrated on Graphic User Interface (GUI). Thus, the proposed automatic system could offer a practical and reliable approach by reducing human error and the processing time while classifying the negative lightning return strokes.
Vision-Based Edge Detection System for Fruit Recognition

There are variety of fruits around the world, different types of fruits contain different types of nutrients and vitamins which could benefits our health. In order to understand which fruit can provide specific type of nutrients, we need to identify the types of fruits. However, fruits grow in a different shape, colour and texture based on the country they were planted and the environment of the land. Implementing a machine vision-based recognition on the fruits can help people recognize them easily. In this paper, an edge detection method is applied using computer vision approach to recognize different types of fruits. The fruits are classified based on the features extracted from their images. In the experiment, a total of 450 images of three types of fruit are used, which are apples, lemons and mangoes. Pre-processing steps are applied on the captured image to improve the quality of fruit details and the edge features are extracted using Canny Edge Detection method. Classification of the fruits is accomplished using two different types of learning model, the deep leaning model, Convolution Neural Network (CNN) and machine learning model, Support Vector Machines (SVM). The performance of both classifiers is compared and the model with the best performance, SVM is chosen as the model for the system. The system can achieve 86% classification accuracy with the SVM model, which is good enough for fruit recognition.
Interaction between Multiple Current Sheets and a Shock Wave: 2D Hybrid Kinetic Simulations

Particle acceleration behind a shock wave due to interactions between magnetic islands in the heliosphere has attracted attention in recent years. The downstream acceleration may yield a continuous increase of particle flux downstream of the shock wave. Although it is not obvious how the downstream magnetic islands are produced, it has been suggested that current sheets are involved in the generation of magnetic islands due to their interaction with a shock wave. We perform 2D hybrid kinetic simulations to investigate the interaction between multiple current sheets and a shock wave. In the simulation, current sheets are compressed by the shock wave and a tearing instability develops at the compressed current sheets downstream of the shock. As the result of this instability, the electromagnetic fields become turbulent and magnetic islands form well downstream of the shock wave. We find a “post-cursor” region in which the downstream flow speed normal to the shock wave in the downstream rest frame is decelerated to ∼ 1V A immediately behind the shock wave, where V A is the upstream Alfvén speed. The flow speed then gradually decelerates to 0 accompanied by the development of the tearing instability. We also observe an efficient production of energetic particles above 100 E 0 during the development of the instability some distance downstream of the shock wave, where E0=mpVA2 and m p is the proton mass. This feature corresponds to Voyager observations showing that the anomalous cosmic-ray intensity increase begins some distance downstream of the heliospheric termination shock.
Louisiana's Experience with Open-Graded Friction Course Mixtures

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) began developing open-graded friction course (OGFC) mixtures in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, in the late 1980s, a moratorium was imposed on their use because of some early failure issues. However, OGFC mixture performance and service life have improved significantly since a new generation of OGFC mixture was promoted in the United States in the late 1990s. Inspired by the success of other state agencies, the Louisiana DOTD modified the earlier mix design and constructed four new OGFC sections during the past decade to evaluate pavement performance and safety benefits. This paper includes a comprehensive evaluation of Louisiana OGFC mixtures based on their laboratory and field performance. Laboratory work entailed material and mixture design in addition to numerous laboratory tests, namely permeability, draindown, tensile strength ratio, and loaded wheel test. Field evaluation involved visual inspection, pavement condition survey, skid resistance, and traffic safety. With few exceptions in the laboratory, the selected OGFC mixtures showed the potential to meet current Louisiana DOTD specifications, as well as various performance standards established by previous studies. The field analysis indicated that the OGFC test sections showed improved rutting, cracking, and skid performance when compared with typical Superpave® roadway sections. This performance evaluation will likely support the ongoing use of OGFC mixtures in the state of Louisiana. Additionally, the evaluation provides an opportunity to continually improve the current OGFC specification and mix design procedures adopted by the Louisiana DOTD.
Position Tracking Performance with Fine Tune Ziegler-Nichols PID Controller for Electro-Hydraulic Actuator in Aerospace Vehicle Model

Electro-Hydraulic Actuator (EHA) system is a third order non-linear system which is highly suffer from system uncertainties such as Coulomb friction, viscous friction and pump leakage coefficient which makes this system more complicated for the designing of the controller. The Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller has proposed in this paper to control EHA system and main problem in its application is to tune the parameter to its optimum value. Two different methods are used to tune the PID controller which are trial and error and Ziegler-Nichols method. MATLAB Simulink is used to simulate the system. In order to determine the performance of EHA system for the position tracking. 3 different of external disturbance such as 0N, 5000N and 10000N has been injected into the system. Simulation results show that the Ziegler-Nichols fine tuning method provides the better tracking performance when compared to the trial and error method for every specific disturbance setting. The Ziegler Nichols method provides better disturbance rejection as the performances indexes such as percentage overshoot, settling time and steady state error are not affected by the varying of disturbance.
Flavonoids: Polyphenolic compound for the improvement of poultry and its products

Flavonoids (also named as bioflavonoids) are naturally occurring secondary plant metabolites found in all plant species and known to exhibit a number of benefits. Due to their possible role in health promoting and preventing from chronic diseases, they could be known as “functional ingredients” and “health promoting biomolecules”. Flavonoids have shown various biological effects including antibacterial, antiviral, gut modulatory, antioxidant, hepatoprotective, hypocholesteremic and immunomodulator activities. Many evidences confirms that phytochemicals like flavonoids could improve genomic stability and cellular integrity by reducing oxidative stress at cellular level. Because of these biological effects flavonoids can eventually decreases risk of infectious diseases and could increase animal's performance. Dietary supplementation with flavonoids could be used as a plan to improve and enhance meat and egg quality in commercial poultry, in addition to other positive effects on poultry health like it can improve meat's shelflife, sensorial and technological attributes, thus positively affecting consumers' preference for purchasing. In poultry diets, several studies confirmed the effective role of flavonoids on growth performance, carcass yield, meat and egg quality, oxidative status and other productive performance parameters. Today, poultry production is moving toward incorporating a range of naturally bioactive-based products as additives in ration in order to satisfy consumer awareness and demands.
Opimon: A Transparent, Low-Overhead Monitoring System for OpenFlow Networks

SUMMARY OpenFlow is a widely adopted implementation of the Software-Deﬁned Networking (SDN) architecture. Since conventional network monitoring systems are unable to cope with OpenFlow networks, researchers have developed various monitoring systems tailored for OpenFlow networks. However, these existing systems either rely on a speciﬁc controller framework or an API, both of which are not part of the OpenFlow speciﬁcation, and thus limit their applicability. This article proposes a transparent and low-overhead monitoring system for OpenFlow networks, referred to as Opimon. Opimon monitors the network topology, switch statistics, and ﬂow tables in an OpenFlow network and visualizes the result through a web interface in real-time. Opimon monitors a network by inter- posing a proxy between the controller and switches and intercepting every OpenFlow message exchanged. This design allows Opimon to be compat- ible with any OpenFlow switch or controller. We tested the functionalities of Opimon on a virtual network built using Mininet and a large-scale inter- national OpenFlow testbed (PRAGMA-ENT). Furthermore, we measured the performance overhead incurred by Opimon and demonstrated that the overhead in terms of latency and throughput was less than 3% and 5%, respectively.
Analysis of human object lifting operation force using power assist device

We carry various objects at the work site. At that time, you may have a heavy object, which requires muscular strength. However, setting such restrictions reduces the number of people who can participate in the work. Therefore, I think that it can be improved by using a power assist device. However, the power assist device has a problem in operability. When we use an assist device to lift an object, we feel sensation different than usual. At that time, we can feel discomfort and unstable. Analyze what kind of operation is performed when a person feels uncomfortable. For that purpose, we set a weight and some lifting conditions and conducted an experiment.
The effect of amplitude modulation index on harmonic distortion in unipolar SHEPWM inverter

The appearance of low order odd harmonic in the AC power line can be mitigated by projecting a proper switching angle during the conversion of the inverter. The switching angles can be obtained by solving the numerical nonlinear equation using numerous solving techniques and algorithms. Several studies shows the value of harmonic significantly increase whenever the amplitude modulation decrease for the SPWM switching scheme of the inverter. However, this topic has not yet covered in the single-phase SHEPWM inverter. This paper is to study the effect of the amplitude modulation index towards the harmonic distortion in the SHEPWM switching technique. To solve the numerical equations, MATLAB code is used to produce the specific switching angles to drive the inverter by solving the numerical equations. The validation of results thru hardware implementation using EZDSPTMS320F28335 to produce the digital signal for controlling the inverter. The targeted low order harmonic to be eliminated are the 3rd, 5th and 7th and three four amplitude modulation indices will be compared and observed in term of total harmonic distortion. The THD results for amplitude modulations 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9 are 17.50%, 15.10%, 13.30% and 10.63%.