Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defining the Exposome Using Popular Education and Concept Mapping With Communities in Atlanta, Georgia

Introduction The exposome concept provides a framework to better incorporate the environment into the study of health and disease and has been defined by academics to encompass all lifetime exposures including toxicants, diet, and lifestyle choices. However, initial applications of the exposome concept have been less apt at measuring social determinants of health, focusing primarily on conventional environmental exposures and lifestyle choices that do not reflect the complex lived experience of many communities. To bring community voice into the exposome concept, the HERCULES Exposome Research Center and its Stakeholder Advisory Board co-developed the Exposome Roadshow. We present and discuss the resulting community-exposome definition to inform and improve exposome research. Materials and Methods Four communities from distinct areas across metro-Atlanta participated in separate 2-day Exposome Roadshow workshops with concept mapping. Aligned with a popular education approach in which community knowledge is used to work collectively for change, concept mapping provided a systematic method to collect and visualize community members' knowledge and create a shared understanding to take action. Community members brainstormed, sorted, and rated their responses to the prompt: “What in your environment is affecting your and your community's health? ” Responses were analyzed and visually depicted by concept maps consisting of separate but interrelated clusters of ideas. Community members discussed and validated the maps, selecting a final map illustrating their community's exposome. Results A total of 118 community members completed concept mapping. On average communities identified 7 clusters to define their exposome. The resulting concept maps offer a community definition of the exposome. Five major themes arose across all four communities: conventional environmental concerns, built environment, social relationships, crime and safety, and individual health and behaviors. Discussion The resulting community-exposome definition demonstrates the importance of expanding the scope of exposures beyond traditional environmental influences to include the lived experience of individuals and communities. While newer exposome definitions align more closely with this community definition, traditional exposome methods do not routinely include these factors. To truly capture the totality of lifetime exposures and improve human health, researchers should incorporate community perspectives into exposome research.
Statistical analysis of tooling cost in high speed end milling for hardened steel

One of the main challenges for any manufacturer is how to decrease the manufacturing cost without affecting the final quality of the product. One of the major cost factors in machining processes as a main part of manufacturing industry is the tooling cost associated with the High speed machining process. However, high speed hard milling (HSHM) is new advanced machining processes in industry that merges three advanced machining processes: high speed milling, hard milling and dry milling. The aim of this research is to analyses statistically the effect of three main independent factors: cutting speed, feed rate and cutting speed on the tooling cost associated with machining process. To achieve the objective of the research, the experimental work with statistical tools was integrated. The face centered cubic design (FCC) has been used to conduct the experiments to minimize the flank wear rate up to total length of 0.3mm based on the ISO standard to maintain the finishing requirements.
Comparison of benchmarking algorithms in Prosthesis

--- Due to the remarkable performance of deep reinforcement algorithms in numerous benchmark tests and current environmental setups, Deep Reinforcement Learning has gained a lot of attention in recent years. In such methods, the combination of Deep Learning, which is already well established and strong, and Reinforcement Learning, which is unique, provides amazing results. To enable valuable technical and practical insights into these methods and their results, provides a comprehensive look at these methods and their results, which is concise, accurate, and comparable. Passive prostheses don't fully restore lost functions like robot prostheses do for amputees with transfemoral amputations. There are, however, several issues that must be resolved before an automatic control system could be developed for prosthetic devices. It is a natural tool to use that is based on reinforcement learning (RL). The controlled prosthesis should be able to adapt to different task environments as quickly and easily as possible when it is controlling the prosthesis with the user in the loop. When an environment changes during a runtime, most real-time agents have to re-learn all the rules. In this paper we will be benchmarking the following algorithms: Proximity Policy Optimization (PPO), Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and ME-TRPO.
A Framework for Improving Capabilities of Tanzanian Contracting Parties Practices through Adopting Three Philosophies: Lean, BPR and the Capability Maturity Model

In Tanzania, construction industry is very slow in adapting technologies as well as the management philosophy. As such, it is plagued with problems associated with poor process management. It is normal for projects in the country to register huge time overrun, budget overrun that are associated with dissatisfactory quality and safety standards. More search of information suggests that the poor performance of these projects is due to incapability of the parties involved. This situation has prompted a number of researches with the aim of improving performance of individual party as well as the whole industry. This paper presents yet another effort towards improving performances of individual contracting party within the industry. Literature review about three emerged management techniques, namely: Lean, Business process reengineering (BPR) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) are reviewed and mapped into the Tanzanian construction industry context with the aim of synthesizing their potentials and fitment to typical local contracting parties’ problems. Concepts of lean and BPR have been embedded together to form L-BPR framework. In order for a developed L-BPR framework to be adequately adopted by the parties to improve performance, the CMM concepts were introduced making it a full framework with four elements, namely: (i) map process to understand it (ii) analyse processes to identify weaknesses (iii) establish the redesigned process and (iv) exercise CMM to enable unique party to change from a low to a high level of performance. As for this, local contracting parties should adapt a developed framework to improve own performance. The study is further, denoting that, its’ overall outputs have implications of use by majority contracting parties within the country, and, from developing countries.
Vitamin D and Ocular Diseases: A Systematic Review

The contributory roles of vitamin D in ocular and visual health have long been discussed, with numerous studies pointing to the adverse effects of vitamin D deficiency. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of recent findings on the association between vitamin D and different ocular diseases, including myopia, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy (DR), dry eye syndrome (DES), thyroid eye disease (TED), uveitis, retinoblastoma (RB), cataract, and others, from epidemiological, clinical and basic studies, and briefly discuss vitamin D metabolism in the eye. We searched two research databases for articles examining the association between vitamin D deficiency and different ocular diseases. One hundred and sixty-two studies were found. There is evidence on the association between vitamin D and myopia, AMD, DR, and DES. Overall, 17 out of 27 studies reported an association between vitamin D and AMD, while 48 out of 54 studies reported that vitamin D was associated with DR, and 25 out of 27 studies reported an association between vitamin D and DES. However, the available evidence for the association with other ocular diseases, such as glaucoma, TED, and RB, remains limited.
New inroads into the brain circuits and network dynamics behind sudden unexpected death in epilepsy

This scientific commentary refers to ‘Hyperexcitable superior colliculus and fatal brainstem spreading depolarization in a model of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy’ by Cain et al. (https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcac006) and ‘Ictal neural oscillatory alterations precede sudden unexpected death in epilepsy’ by Gu et al. (https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcac073)
Breast Injury in USA Female Water Polo Athletes

Objective: Water polo is a very physical and aggressive sport and injury data for male water polo athletes is well established. However, the data is scarce for women. Given that a recent study identified that almost half (47.9%) of female collegiate athletes experienced a breast injury during participation in basketball, soccer, volleyball, and softball, it warrants the investigation of the prevalence of female breast injuries during participation in water polo. The purpose of this study was to report the prevalence and reporting of breast injury during participation on the USA Women’s Water Polo Team. Design: Descriptive research design utilizing an anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire consisting of 12 questions about various aspects of any sports related breast injury history. This was emailed to the 18 members of the USA Women’s Water Polo Team. Setting/participants: 18 members of USA Women’s Water Polo Team were emailed a questionnaire, 16 responded. Results: Response rate was 88.9%. Exactly half (8/16) of the athletes reported that they sustained a breast injury, and 62.5% (5/8) of those that had an injury indicated having at least 6 or more injuries to their breast. None of the women informed a medical professional about their breast injury. Conclusions: The prevalence of breast injuries in elite female water polo players in this study (50%) and lack of informing medical professionals about their injuries is consistent with previously published breast injury rates in a study of collegiate athletes. These findings should be used to heighten the awareness of the prevalence of breast injury in female athletes. Continued research into possible sequela of these injuries is warranted.
State determination of the faulty phase conductor of HV and UHV transmission line during single-phase reclosing cycle

The results of theoretical and experimental studies of electromagnetic transients on overhead transmission lines when clearing single-phase short-circuits by means of single-phase-reclosing automatics, are presented in this article. Special attention is paid to an examination of transients taking place in the faulted phase. Effects of various factors upon these processes are considered. A number of indications by which one can determine that the fault was self-cleared during dead time, are found. The results of the experimental check of the proposed method for determination of a state of the tripped phase, are presented.
Electrical characteristics of barium-strontium titanate thin-film capacitor

The electrical characteristics of barium-strontium titanate (Ba/sub 1-x/Sr/sub x/TiO/sub 3/) thin-film capacitor are investigated and the effects of oxygen annealing conditions (annealing time and annealing temperature) on dielectric constant are studied. Experimental results show that the dielectric constant of the thin film decreases with increasing annealing time, but increases with increasing annealing temperature. These facts can be explained by the microstructure analysis and the polarization theory.
EdgeEye: A Data-Driven Approach for Optimal Deployment of Edge Video Analytics

Deep neural network (DNN)-based video processing methods are applied in mobile video analytics because of high accuracy. Edge computing is an efficient paradigm that improves the performance of mobile video analytics. However, due to the limited computing and storage resources at edge devices, deploying DNN-based video analytics at edge devices may have difficulty to meet user’s requirements in terms of accuracy, delay, power consumption, and device costs. Choosing optimal system configuration, including resources on edge devices and parameters in video stream and DNN models, can better satisfy user’s performance requirements; however, there lacks practical approaches to find such optimal configurations. In this article, we take an initial step to investigate the optimal system configuration problem, and propose a data-driven approach, EdgeEye, which first models the above problem as a combinatorial optimization problem, and then designs an algorithm to find the solutions for the optimal configuration. These models and algorithms are applied in a real-world face detection and recognition application based on two edge computing models, including edge only and edge server. Comprehensive evaluation results demonstrate that EdgeEye can find both feasible and optimal system configurations including optimal edge computing model to satisfy varying user requirements under different network conditions.
Fault analysis and excitation requirements for switched reluctance generators

Switched reluctance machines are a prime candidate for aerospace starter/generators and various automotive applications. The choice of SRM for a starter/generator application is driven largely by the perceived reliability and fault tolerance of the machine and its electronics. An analysis of the SR generator's faults and excitation requirements is essential to utilize the full fault tolerance capability of the machine in this application. Thus, research has been undertaken to identify, analyze and simulate the various fault modes of the SR generator. This research included an investigation of the generator's excitation requirements with and without faults. The investigation makes it possible to determine the size of the excitation source required during the initial build up of the generator's output voltage and under fault conditions. The SR machine, controller, EMI filter, excitation source and load were all modeled and integrated into a Matlab-Simulink model in order to analyze the SR generator system.
The DIALOG chip in the front-end electronics of the LHCb muon detector

We present a custom integrated circuit, named DIALOG (DIagnostic, time Adjustment and LOGics), which is a fundamental building block in the front-end architecture of the LHCb Muon detector. DIALOG is realized in IBM 0.25 mum technology, using radiation-hardening layout techniques. DIALOG integrates important tools for detector time alignment procedures and time alignment monitoring on the front-end system. In particular, it integrates 16 programmable delays, which can be regulated in steps of 1 ns. Other features, necessary for the Muon trigger operation and for a safe front-end monitoring are integrated into DIALOG. It generates the information, that will be used by the trigger, as a combination of its 16 inputs from the Amplifier-Shaper-Discriminator (ASD) chips, it generates the thresholds of the ASD, it monitors the rate of all its input channels. We describe the circuit architecture, its internal blocks and its main modes of operation. Measurements performed on final prototypes are also reported
The Impact of the Six Thinking Hats as a Teaching Technique on EFL College Students’ Performance in Composition Writing

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats are real or metaphorical six different coloured hats, in which each colour represents a different type of thinking. The White Hat represents objective thinking ,i.e. it also concerns with information and facts. The Red Hat examines the given topic through emotions and feelings. The Black Hat denotes constructive criticism, and explores the negative aspects of the given topic. The Yellow Hat delineates the advantages of an issue and promotes problem solving skills. The Green Hat aims at exploring creative ways for overcoming the disadvantages or problems encountered or for taking an idea about new direction. Finally, the Blue Hat focuses on the
How do Professionals in Municipal Health and Welfare Relate to Bereaved Persons During the Acute Phase of a Drug-Related Death? A Qualitative Study

This study aims to broaden our knowledge of how professionals in municipal health and welfare relate to bereaved persons during the acute phase of a drug-related death. A reflexive thematic analysis was applied to six focus group interviews with 27 first responding personnel in Norway. The article describes the complexity and simultaneousness of the professional response. Three main themes were identified: (a) establishing contact, (b) diverse, supportive assistance, and (c) a complex helping context. The analysis showed that experiences from previous encounters and the deceased’s illicit drug use affected many of the professionals’ assessments, and implied an evaluation of the bereaved as not in need of emergency services or psychosocial follow-up. Professionals should be trained to understand drug-related death as a sudden and unnatural death, and to initiate immediate psychosocial crisis intervention. There is a need for further research on the perspective of professionals in the health and welfare services on the drivers and barriers to support (bereaved persons) during the acute phase.
Lithium‐ion battery anode with high capacity retention derived from zinc vanadate and holey graphene

Several phases of zinc vanadates having different morphologies have been investigated recently for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs), where they suffer from poor electronic conductivity and low mechanical stability resulting in short cycle life, low specific capacity and unsatisfactory rate performance. The issues are resolved here, by directly growing Zn3V2O8 sheets on two dimensional (2D) holey graphene oxide (hGO) nanosheets making an open framework of Zn3V2O8 that allows suitable spacing for Li+‐ions for (de) intercalation and the holey graphene provides the necessary mechanical strength, permeability and electronic conductivity across the Zn3V2O8 sheets. Consequently, the sheet on sheet morphology has resulted in an impressive rate capability of 851.2 mAh g−1 at 5000 mA g−1 with 67% retention after a 10‐fold increase in the current rate, high specific capacity (1465.9 mAh g−1 at 200 mA g−1) and long‐term stability (88% retention after 200 cycles). This is due to the crystalline structure of Zn3V2O8/hGO, with a large surface area that can provide more reaction sites and facilitate the fast Li+‐ion transport as verified by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy analysis. The ex situ X‐ray photoelectron spectrometer reveals the involvement of multiple reaction mechanisms (conversion, (de) insertion and (de) alloying) showing Zn2+/Zn0 and V4+/V3+/V2+ redox couples during the electrochemical process.
Glass Frit Jetting for Advanced Wafer-Level Hermetic Packaging

Glass frit bonding is a widely used technology to cap and seal micro-electromechanical systems on the wafer level using a low melting point glass. Screen printing is the main method to apply glass frit paste on wafers. Screen printing of glass frit paste is usually performed on less sensitive, less critical wafers, normally the capping wafer, because screen printing is a rough process involving the mechanical contact of the screen printing mesh and the wafer. However, for some applications in which contactless patterning of glass frit materials on the device wafers are preferred (e.g., 3D topographies, micro-lens and optics integration) jet dispensing could be a promising approach. Consequently, in this study, wafer-level jetting of glass frit materials on silicon wafers was proposed and investigated. The jetting parameters such as jetting distance, power and temperature were optimized for a glass frit paste. Additionally, the effect of jetted pitch size on the bond-line thickness was assessed. The wafers with jetted glass frit pastes were conclusively bonded in low vacuum and characterized. As a single-step (non-contact) additive approach, the jet printing of glass frit was revealed to be a straightforward, cost-effective and flexible approach with several implications for hermetic packaging.
Annealed Demon Algorithms Solving the Environmental / Economic Dispatch Problem

This paper presents an efficient and reliable Annealed Demon (AD) algorithm for the Environmental/Economic Dispatch (EEB) problem. The EED problem is a multi-objective non-linear optimization problem with constraints. This problem is one of the fundamentals issues in power system operation. The system of generation associates thermal generators and emissions which involves sulphur oxides (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The aim is to minimize total fuel cost of the system and control emission. The proposed AD algorithm is applied for EED of a simple power system.
Natural Interaction with a Virtual World

A large portion of computer graphics and human/computer interaction is concerned with the creation, manipulation and use of two and three dimensional objects existing in a virtual world. By creating more natural physical interfaces and virtual worlds which behave in physically plausible ways, it is possible to empower non-expert users to create, work and play in virtual environments. This thesis is concerned with the design, creation, and optimization of user-input devices which break down the barriers between the real and the virtual as well as the development of software algorithms which allow for the creation of physically realistic virtual worlds.
Regularized high dimension low tubal-rank tensor regression

: Tensor regression models are of emerging interest in diverse ﬁelds of social and behavioral sciences, including neuroimaging analysis, neural networks, image processing and so on. Recent theoretical advance- ments of tensor decomposition have facilitated signiﬁcant development of various tensor regression models. The focus of most of the available lit- erature has been on the Canonical Polyadic (CP) decomposition and its variants for the regression coeﬃcient tensor. A CP decomposed coeﬃcient tensor enables estimation with relatively small sample size, but it may not always capture the underlying complex structure in the data. In this work, we leverage the recently developed concept of tubal rank and develop a tensor regression model, wherein the coeﬃcient tensor is decomposed into two components: a low tubal rank tensor and a structured sparse one. We ﬁrst address the issue of identiﬁability of the two components comprising the coeﬃcient tensor and subsequently develop a fast and scalable Alternating Minimization algorithm to solve the convex regularized program. Further, we provide ﬁnite sample error bounds under high dimensional scaling for the model parameters. The performance of the model is assessed on synthetic data and is also used in an application involving data from an intelligent tutoring platform.