Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Electrostatically Actuated MEMS Arch Band-Pass Filter

This work presents an investigation of the dynamics of micromachined arches resonators and their potential to be uti- lized as band-pass filters. The arches are actuated by a DC electrostatic load superimposed to an AC harmonic load. The dynamic response of the arch is studied analytically using a Galerkin-based reduced-order model when excited near its fundamental and third natural frequencies. Several simulation results are presented demonstrating interesting jumps and snap-through behavior of the arches and their attractive features for uses as band-pass filters, such as their sharp roll-off from pass bands to stop bands and their flat response.
Input Shaping Control of Double-Pendulum Bridge Crane Oscillations

Large amplitude oscillation of crane payloads is detrimental to safe and efficient operation. Under certain conditions, the problem is compounded when the payload creates a double-pendulum effect. Most crane control research to date has focused on single-pendulum dynamics. Several researchers have shown that single-mode oscillations can be greatly reduced by properly shaping the inputs to the crane motors. This paper builds on those previous developments to create a method for suppressing double-pendulum payload oscillations. The input shaping controller is designed to have robustness to changes in the two operating frequencies. Experiments performed on a portable bridge crane are used to verify the effectiveness of this method and the robustness of the input shaper.
Recycling of Demolished Masonry Rubble as Coarse Aggregate in Concrete: Review

The recycling of demolished masonry rubble as coarse aggregate in new concrete represents an interesting possibility at a time when the cost of dumping such material is on the increase. With the number of readily accessible disposal sites around major cities in the world decreasing in recent years and disposal volume and maximum sizes of waste being restricted, the cost of dumping construction and demolition debris has increased substantially over recent years. This cost increase has been further fueled in the United Kingdom and other countries by the introduction of a landfill tax by governments and local authorities for the dumping of such waste. Due to the growing concerns over the environmental impact of aggregate extraction and the continued rise in aggregate demand, it is clear that the building and construction industry is ready to accept recycled and secondary aggregates. This paper provides a review of previous work covering the use of demolished waste, especially crushed brick, as the coarse aggregate in new concrete.
A novel single switch per phase converter topology for four-quadrant PM brushless DC motor drive

Considerable attention is given to finding compact and low cost converter topologies for permanent magnet brushless motor drives to meet the emerging high volume low performance applications such as in HVAC, air handlers, fans, pumps, small process drives, hand tools, appliance drives and many others in the range of fractional to one hp rating. This paper is concerned with such an attempt to formulate a novel converter topology for a four-quadrant PM brushless DC motor drive. The proposed topology has a single switch per phase limiting the motor drive to half-wave operation. But it also endows unique features with high reliability such as shoot-through free topology by having a switch always in series with a phase winding, operational possibilities even with one or two phase windings failure, reducing the converter losses to half that of the full-wave inverter, reduction of gate drivers and amplifiers, and reduction in logic power supplies requirement. Many of these features result in low cost and compact packaging of the converter for the PM brushless DC motor drive. The machine design modification requirement due to the half-wave operation of the proposed converter is derived in this paper to help in the realization of the proposed motor drive in industrial applications. The formulation and description of the circuit topology and its operation with the motor, their dynamic modeling, simulation and analysis and its comparison to the full-wave inverter fed PMBDC are the key contributions of this paper.
A Comparative Assessment of Two SHM Damage Detection Methods in a Laboratory Tower

In the present paper, we introduce an application of two damage detection methods to a laboratory structure. One of the methods is based on autoregressive modeling of the signals involved, whereas the second one is based on subspace identification. Both have been tested in a tower that simulates a wind turbine. The results obtained are correct for the damages simulated by loosening some bolts of the different joints. The results show that the second method is computationally more efficient whereas the results are more stable in the first one.
Rotordynamic Evaluation of a Roughened-Land Hybrid Bearing

Hybrid bearings represent an attractive alternative to ball bearings for use in highspeed cryogenic turbopumps. However, the internally-developed cross-coupled forces can generate instabilities responsible for a speed limitation of the machine. To reduce these forces and raise the onset speed of instability, the use of deliberately-roughened stators, already successfully tested for liquid damper seals, is investigated. Rotordynamic results are presented for a five-pocket orifice-compensated hole-pattern-land hybrid bearing tested with water at high speed and high pressure, Experimental data show a good prediction of leakage flow rate and direct damping but a significant improvement in stability compared to a conventional smooth-land hybrid bearing, resulting in an elevation of the onset speed of instability. Comparisons between measurements and predictions from a code developed by San Andres (1994) shows good predictions for flowrate and direct damping but an over prediction for the direct and cross-coupled stiffness coefficients by about 30 and 50 percent, respectively. The use of the Moody friction-factor model is thought to be mainly responsible for the poorer predictions of stiffness coefficients.
EFFECT OF ROBOT-ASSISTED THERAPY ON UPPER EXTREMITY FUNCTION IN CHRONIC STROKE PATIENTS

Purpose of the study: This preliminary study was aimed to compare the effect of advanced robotic-assisted therapy device on upper extremity function in early and late chronic stroke patients. Methods: 45 chronic male stroke patients were divided into three equal groups (A, B and C). Each group received the same designed physical therapy program for upper extremity in addition to robotic therapy for both groups A (from six to two years after stroke) and B (more than two years after stroke)12 sessions of robotic treatment for four weeks in a row (3 days/week). The Amadeo robotic system (Tyromotion GmbH Graz, Austria) was used to provide the treatment. Each patient was assessed before and after four weeks of intervention protocol by Fugl-Meyer Scale (FM) test to evaluate sensorimotor function of upper limb and by Amadeo robotic system to evaluate grip strength. Results: There was statistically significant post-treatment improvement in Fugl-Meyer score and grip strength in all groups. The percentage of improvement was higher in group A compared to other groups. Conclusion: Adding robotic assisted therapy to designed physical therapy program for upper extremity rehabilitation in chronic stroke patients improves grip strength and upper limb motor recovery especially as early as possible in chronic stage
Age and Gender as Predictors of Injury Severity in Head-on Highway Vehicular Collisions

Whether age or gender or both influenced severity of injuries suffered in head-on automobile collisions on rural highways was assessed. The initial hypothesis was that, because of physiological changes, and possibly other changes related to aging (including loss of bone density), older drivers and passengers would suffer more severe injuries when involved in head-on collisions. Results of logistic regression analysis indicate that four separate factors, incorporating 14 individual and interactive variables, were strongly related to injury severity. Individual variables included age of driver or passenger (either linear or quadratic), position in the vehicle, and form of protection used, along with a set of interactive variables (such as age and position). The importance of age-related effects in injury severity is verified by hierarchical and principal components logistic regression models, amplifying findings of exploratory stepwise logistic analysis. Variations in findings resulted when the population was divided by gender. Although age remained a very important factor in predicting injury severity for both men and women, use of lap and shoulder restraints appeared to be more beneficial for men than for women, while deployed air bags seemed more beneficial for women than for men.
NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR ATMS: ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES IN TRAFFIC DETECTION

There is a need for advanced traffic management systems (ATMS) on a local and network level to effectively utilize today`s transportation system. An automated operating system, with round the clock incident detection, would help to initiate the required action on time in case of an accident and would minimize the effect of the incident. One of the key elements of ATMS is the vehicle detection unit. The most commonly used inductive loop detectors have a relatively short life span and frequently malfunction. Any maintenance of loop detectors requires road closures. Also, safety of the crew is an issue. An overview of currently available technologies for traffic control and monitoring is presented, with special emphasis on systems that can be installed and maintained without significantly interfering with the traffic. The paper presents the available technologies, provides comparative information about them, and discusses the technical and conceptual problems typically arising during the deployment. The paper describes video detection systems that currently seem to be the most attractive alternative to the traditional intrusive methods. The new perspectives for traffic monitoring and management not available so far are drawn. The typical architecture of these systems is described, and a few popular video systems aremore » presented in some detail. The most critical deployment issues, such as the choice of the equipment, are described, the location of the sensors is discussed, and data transmission problems are considered. « less
Process and design for ESD robustness in deep submicron CMOS technology

The impact of drain process variation and physical layout design on the nMOSFET ESD performance of a 0.35 micron CMOS technology was investigated. It was found that the second breakdown current (It2) increases with arsenic nLDD and boron halo implant doses and decreases with increasing GBLDD phosphorus implant energy. Increasing the number of source/drain contacts and increasing the drain contact-to-gate spacing (drain CGS) while decreasing source CGS was shown to increase the value of It2. Testing of multiple finger structures showed only half of the fingers conducting during ESD pulses. This study suggests that this could be due to shared drain contacts in the multiple finger configuration.
Pavement Roughness Modeling Using Back‐Propagation Neural Networks

Abstract: Quantifying the relationship between material and construction (M&C) variables and pavement performance is an on‐going important research area. It is, however, realized that deriving such relationships is too complex and too poorly understood to develop using traditional statistical methods. Therefore, this study is focused on the analysis of a data set from the long‐term pavement performance (LTPP) database to quantify the contribution of M&C variables of asphalt concrete on pavement performance (i.e., international roughness indicator) using a back‐propagation neural network (BPNN) algorithm. It was found that by using sensitivity analysis neural network trained with optimal number of epochs could be used effectively for better understanding of the factors controlling overall performance indicators, establishing quantitative functions to weigh the role of such factors, and for use in performance‐related specifications.
Local Organizer

Many biomedical ontologies have now been developed, stimulated by the increasing importance of biomedical ontologies in the scientific community. Most ontology development efforts have required not only the participation of ontology engineers but also of domain experts. This should help the veracity of the domain knowledge, but not necessarily the engineering of the ontology. In fact, the quality of ontologies varies widely due to absent integration of one or more of such expert competencies (d’Aquin and Gangemi (2011)). Measuring the quality of the resulting ontologies is necessary in order to monitor to which extent and how good methodologies, practices and guidelines are being applied. In the last years, a series of techniques and tools have been developed (see, for instance, Gangemi et al. (2006); Obrst et al. (2007); Vandredic (2010)) The Ontology Summit Communique 2013 (Neuhaus et al. (2013)) identified that such tools and techniques are not widely used in the development of ontologies, what can lead to ontologies of poor quality and, consequently, is an obstacle to the success of ontologies. Some ontology construction methods have developed their own method for evaluating their ontologies, but such methods have not been used to evaluate ontologies developed by others. Indeed, there is a lack of practical experiences and scientific literature about the application of general evaluation methods to ontologies created applying different methodologies and guidelines. In the last years, the ISO 25000 Software Product Quality Requirements and Evaluation standard (SQuaRE) ISO25000 (2005) has been adapted to ontology evaluation with the aim of providing a generic framework for objective, reproducible ontology evaluation. This framework, called OQuaRE, proposes the use of metrics to evaluate the quality characteristics of ontologies. OQuaRE has been successfully applied to the evaluation of different types of ontologies (Duque-Ramos et al. (2013); Bennett et al. (2013)) and has been able to draw conclusions similar to the ones from specific evaluation methods, like the GoodOD guideline (Boeker et al. (2013); DuqueRamos et al. (2014)). However, the evaluation by external experts also revealed areas of improvement (Duque-Ramos et al. (2013)), including the need for evaluating against clear requirements, which is also a recommendation of the Ontology Summit Communique 2013. The evolution from construction guidelines and methodologies to evaluation metrics requires a deep understanding of the possibilities and limitations of metrics-based evaluation, as well as community efforts, discussion and agreement. This is one of the big challenges in the ontology engineering field for the next years. Contact: jfernand@um.es; http://webs.um.es/jfernand Funding: This talk is possible thanks to the International Association for Ontologies and its Applications. This research has been carried out thanks to the support of Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the FEDER programme through grant TIN201021388-C02-02, and thanks to the Fundacion Seneca through grant 15295/PI/10.
Gamification and games, their potential for application in marketing strategies

What is gamification? Gamification is the application of structure and mechanics of games (points, rewards, levels, challenges, trophies) to the real world, in order to boost the engagement of users, change their behaviour and solve problems of various kinds. „Engagement” from the point of view of business is a close connection between the brand and the consumer. When we take into consideration mobile technologies and Internet networks, the strength of engagement can be measured by means of the following indicators: • frequency of appearance, • frequency of interaction, • the duration of interaction, • readiness for propagation, • assessment1. Only achieving a high level of engagement of the user can guarantee an adequate growth of income for the company. Just informing and encouraging to make a purchase of an ever greater number of services or goods has lost its significance. In the marketing context, the term “loyalty” is used to define engagement. The term means that the users will choose the benefit we provide, instead of reaching for our rival’s offer. Applying gamification may help a company gain the upper hand on the market in times when the client has at his or her disposal several similar, in terms of characteristics, price and availability, goods or services. When we start thinking about clients as players, we change the approach to the brand itself and start assuming a long, symbiotic cooperation based on pleasure and fun. Every subject area has a potential
Investigation of the Influence of Deep Rolling on the Thermal Fatigue Cracking for AISI H13 Steel

Hot-working tools are frequently exposed to high cyclic temperature and mechanical loads, usually resulting in thermal fatigue cracking, which is observed as a network of fine cracks on the surface. The crack network degrades the performance of the tool and even invalidates it. Deep rolling is a surface strengthening treatment generally applied to improve the fatigue performance of metal components. But few attentions are paid on its influence on thermal fatigue cracking of the components, considering the relaxation of residual stresses and work hardening, which are deemed to mainly account for the improvement of fatigue performance. In this paper experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of deep rolling on thermal fatigue behavior of hot-work tool steel AISI H13. The experiment results show that deep rolling can improve the thermal fatigue behavior of AISI H13. To explore the mechanism of the effect, the changes of the residual stresses, the microhardness of the samples are also presented.
Performance Analysis of Beamforming in Fixed-gain AF Relay Networks with Asymmetric Correlated Fading Channels

Abstract In this paper, the performance of beamforming (BF) for a dual-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) relay network, where the source and destination are each equipped with multiple antennas, is investigated. It is assumed that the source-relay and relay-destination channels experience mixed fading distributions, namely, correlated Nakagami-m/Rician and correlated Rician/Nakagami-m, respectively. By considering fixed-gain relaying, analytical expressions for outage probability (OP) and average symbol error rate (ASER) are derived in closed-form. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of our performance analysis, also illustrate the impact of channel correlation, fading severity, Rician factor and antenna configuration on the performance of the system. It is shown that the correlated Nakagami-m/Rician fading channel can achieve better performance than the correlated Rician/Nakagami-m fading channel with the increase of fading severity parameter, and the correlated Rician/Nakagami-m fading channel may outperform the correlated Nakagami-m/Rician fading channel by enlarging the Rician factor.
Reconfigurable patch-antenna design for wideband wireless communication systems

An effective design of a reconfigurable patch antenna, with a wide operational bandwidth for wireless communication and radar systems, is presented in this paper. The reconfigurable patch possesses an E-shaped structure and its operation frequency can be changed by integrated switches. The operational frequency of the antenna can cover an octave frequency range by utilising only two switch states. In state 1, the antenna operates from 9.2 GHz to 15.0 GHz and, in state 2, from 7.5 GHz to 10.7 GHz. Relative bandwidths of 48% and 35% are obtained in the two states, respectively
Studying the Conditions for Magnetic Reconnection in Solar Flares with and Without Precursor Flares

Forecasting of solar flares remains a challenge due to the limited understanding of the triggering mechanisms associated with magnetic reconnection, the primary physical phenomenon connected to these events. Studies have indicated that changes to the photospheric magnetic fields associated with magnetic reconnection – particularly in relation to the field helicity – occur during solar flare events. This study utilized data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and SpaceWeather HMI Active Region Patches (SHARPs) to analyze full vector-field component data of the photospheric magnetic field during solar flare events within a near decade long HMI dataset. Analysis of the data was used to identify and compare the trends of differing flare classes for varying time intervals leading up to an event, as well as the trends of flares that occur with and without a precursor flare, in order to discern signatures of the physical mechanisms involved. The data suggests that active regions (AR) that produce flares with precursors are continuing to evolve and appreciably more complex than those that produce a flare without a precursor. Additionally, precursor flares were found to enhance the shear across an AR, helping set up the conditions necessary for a larger solar flare to occur. Ultimately none of the SHARP parameters showed a distinct signature of magnetic reconnection.
Lessons from the Collapse of Typical RC Frames in Xuankou School during the Great Wenchuan Earthquake

The seismic damage of typical reinforced concrete (RC) frames in Xuankou School during the Great Wenchuan Earthquake in China is introduced. A simulation method for the seismic damage sustained was developed to enable analysis of the damage mechanisms. The simulation makes use of different nonlinear finite element (FE) models, including macro-scale fibre-beam-element models and a micro-macro-scale hybrid model. The results of the nonlinear FE simulations show that the design of RC frames do not properly allow for the influence of slabs and footing rotations, which results in incorrect predictions of the internal forces and hence, the seismic damage. The collapse resistances of different buildings are compared using incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). The IDA results show that the collapse resistance of the classroom buildings is much lower than that of the office buildings because the larger axial load ratio in classroom buildings limits their lateral deformation capacity. An optimum design is proposed which would improve the collapse resistances of classroom buildings at very low cost.
Smart cam application to robot control

Smart cam or electronic cam is a combination of a computer program for motion definition and a high‐performance servo mechanism. By using this, one can obtain a high‐speed, reliable and application‐oriented motion, just as obtained from a mechanical cam system. Hard cams are dedicated and difficult to change, but smart cams are flexible in stroke, in timing, etc. With the progress of computer and servo technology, smart cams are becoming widely used. In this report the methods used to create smart cams are discussed and some examples are shown. The experimental results of these examples show excellent performance which is as good as hard cams.
Breathing-ventilation model, and simulation of high-frequency ventilation

An extended model is proposed for lung respiration. This model is made to cope with gas diffusion by convection in the airway network, gas exchange at the alveolus, gas transport by blood flow, and gas flow in the airway network induced by diaphragm motion. The submodel for each phenomenon is combined into a total respiratory system, and it is formulated in the context of discretization based on the adjoint variational principle