Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental Investigation on the Effect Air–Fuel Ratio on Cycle-to-Cycle Variations of SI Combustion and Performance Parameters

: In this paper we analyze the cycle-to-cycle fluctuations of peak pressure p max and peak pressure angle α pmax in a four-cylinder spark ignition engine. We examine the experimental time series of p max and α pmax for four different equivalence ratio. Using standard statistical techniques such as return maps and Standard Deviation we show that depending equivalence ratio, there are significant differences in the fluctuations of p max and α pmax . To evaluate the cycle-to-cycle fluctuations of SI combustion parameters, Standard Deviation ( σ ) of every parameter were calculated for every engine operating condition. Finally, we explain how the information on both p max and α pmax can be used to develop optimal strategies for controlling the combustion process and improving engine performance. The results showed that φ =0.9 is enough to do accurate calculation of the average pressure cycle at various operation conditions of the engine.
The Nexus between Types of Innovation and Marketing Performance of Small Medium-sized Enterprises in an Emerging Economy

Nowadays the practice in which businesses find themselves becomes unknown, innovation types have been seen as a critical element in an organizational growth of companies. This paper intends to cross examine the interrelation between innovation types and small medium-sized enterprises (SME) marketing performance (MP) in a growing economy of Ghana. The research used quantitative methods, in which four research hypotheses were formulated and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling. In all, 437 respondents of SME composed data through a questionnaires survey sight in the cities of Kumasi and Accra respectively in Ghana. The study outcomes identified the usefulness of a strong and meaningful impact between the types of innovation namely Product, Process, Marketing and Organization and SME MP of a developing economy. The paper explores to add to the limited knowledge of SME in the perspective of innovation types literature relationship to the MP in a developing economy. Studies conducted, consistently endeavor to determine the connection between the types of innovation and the firm performance and neglecting the MP viewpoint. Hence, this research offers a specialized focus on the types of innovation and its relationship via SME MP in a developing economy. Furtherance, executing critical issues to business managers/owners when devising approaches to organizational firm performance.
Link-based Ensemble Approach for Web Information Retrieval Using Honey Bee and K-Means Algorithm

--In the rapid development of internet technologies, search engines play a vital role in information retrieval. The traditional search engines provide users with a set of non-classified web pages to their request based on its ranking mechanism. In order to satisfy the need of the user, a new algorithm has been proposed associating the link based k-means clustering approach with honey bee algorithm. This paper proposes a clustering method that integrates the simplicity of the k-means algorithm with the capability of the Bees Algorithm to avoid local optima. The Proposed model is divided into two parts first , comparison of co-occurrence terms and clustering of documents second, implementing the bees concept . In this information retrieval, the relevancy of documents is obtained based on the number of occurrences of each co-concurrent term (in links and out links) in a particular web page. The clustering of these relevant documents can be done based on the threshold values assigning to cluster and then the web pages are grouped into that cluster. When the web pages are clustered, a boost up factor is given to a web page based on the relevancy of content. As the honey bee algorithm is included, the mechanism is processed in a distributed way, automatically the relevance rate of search results will be increased and the computational time of the user will be reduced.
Argument Schemes and Provenance to Support Collaborative Intelligence Analysis

—Intelligence analysis is the process of interpreting scattered information to form hypotheses and testing those against evidence. Collaboration enhances this process reducing effort and bias of an individual, while permitting more criticism and different perspectives to be considered. Existing analytical tools support an analyst in collecting information and evaluating hypotheses. However, for effective collaboration, analysts must work together in forming hypotheses from information. We propose an evidential reasoning service that aims at improving collaborative sense-making. It exploits argumentation schemes for structuring annotation and analysis of information, and records provenance to track data and reviews. This service aims to support the analysis by introducing automated reasoning about competing evidence for identifying plausible hypotheses. It provides a uniform reasoning structure that permits integration and facilitates sharing of analyses from different contributors.
University of Birmingham Incident atrial fibrillation in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer

Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) represents the most common form of thyroid neoplasms and is becoming increasingly prevalent. Evidence suggests a possible relationship between DTC diagnosis and subsequent atrial fibrillation (AF). If confirmed, this may present an alarming health risk (AF) in an otherwise condition with a relatively good prognosis (DTC). The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to provide for the first time a pooled estimate of AF incidence in DTC patients in comparison to healthy controls. A detailed search in electronic databases, clinical trial registries and grey literature was performed to identify studies reporting the incidence of AF in DTC patients. Newcastle–Ottawa quality assessment scale was used to assess study quality. We used a random effects (RE) generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) in pooling of individual studies and also calculated a prediction interval for the estimate of a new study. Six observational studies met the eligibility criteria, which included totally 187,754 patients with DTC and 199,770 healthy controls. The median follow-up period was 4.3 to 18.8 years; the incidence rate of AF was 4.86 (95% CI, 3.29 to 7.17, I 2 = 96%) cases per 1000 person-years, while the incidence rate ratio was 1.54 (95% CI, 1.44 to 1.65, I 2 = 0%, 95% PI, 1.33 to 1.78). This is the first meta-analysis to confirm that patients with DTC are at a high risk for developing AF, which may be attributed to a state of iatrogenic hyperthyroidism due to long-term thyrotropin suppression therapy.
CIA_A_256588 821..826

Kamil Serkan Agacayak 1 Rıdvan Guler 1 Pınar Sezgin Karatas 1Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Dicle University School of Dentistry, Diyarbakır, Turkey; 2Department of Radiology, Diyarbakir Pediatrics Hospital, Diyarbakır, Turkey Background: The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship of carotid artery calcifications detected in panoramic radiographs of patients aged 60 or older with isolated systemic diseases. Patients and Methods: From October 2018 to December 2019, 867 panoramic radiographs of patients, who applied to Dicle University Faculty of Dentistry for various dental reasons, were collected for examination. Of these 867 panoramic radiographs, 444 panoramic radiographs were included in this study. Medical data were collected from the archival records of the dental school. Results: The study population consisted of 240 female (54.1%) and 204 male (45.9%) patients. Their mean age was 66 ± 7.3 (range: 60–92) years. Only 39 (8.8%) of the 444 patients had atherosclerotic plaques. Of the 39 patients with carotid artery calcification, 13 (33.3%) were male and 26 (66.7%) were female. As a result of statistical analysis, carotid artery calcification compared to other systemic diseases was found to be significantly more common in patients with hypertension (p = 0.009). Conclusion: Carotid artery calcifications detected coincidentally in standard panoramic radiographs of dental patients may be important markers for preventing serious risks such as coronary artery disease, stroke, and death. The relationship between carotid artery calcifications found on dental panoramic radiographs and hypertension was significant. Therefore, it seems that detection of carotid artery calcifications on panoramic images of hypertension patients must be considered by dentists.
A Study of Dynamic Range of Common-Gate with Common-Source Active Balun in CMOS Technology

An active balun (balanced-unbalanced) circuit is a type of transformer that converts signals that are single-ended or unbalanced with respect to ground into signals that are differential or balanced with respect to ground. Fig. 1 illustrates an active balun topology comprising of 2 amplifiers namely common-gate amplifier (M1) and the common-source amplifier (M2). The input signal is applied into the drain node or terminal of transistor M1 and at the same time into the gate node of transistor M2, while the outputs are probed at the drain terminals of M1 and M2. Load resistors R1 and R2 dictate the output voltages as well as the voltage gains of the two output signals with respect to the input signal.
Electromagnetic radiation from vertical dipole antennas near air–lossy soil interface—a finite-difference time-domain simulation: Research Articles

Radiation from vertical dipole antennas, which are located over or under the surface of lossy earth, is analysed by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method in cylindrical coordinates. A novel generalized perfectly matched layer (PML) has been developed and used for the truncation of the lossy soil. In order to decrease the memory requirements and for having an accurate modelling, an efficient ‘non-uniform’ mesh generation scheme is used. The excitation is considered in the form of sine carrier modulated by Gaussian pulse (SCMGP) and in each time step, computation is limited to that part of the mesh where the radiated pulse is passing (computational window). This could considerably reduce the required CPU time. In this manner, large-scale problems can be solved and the values of radiated field at far distances (up to 500λ0 in this work) can be obtained directly by the FDTD method. The frequency-domain results are calculated from the obtained time-domain results by taking the Fourier transform. The spatial distributions of the amplitude and phase of radiated field are shown in illustrations for different types of soil and different positions of antenna. The influence of the lossy soil on dipole's admittance is also shown. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
4.0. Novel topical combo-therapeutic formulation integrating honey, neomycin and bacitracin for diabetic wound

https://doi.org/10.30574/gscbps.2021. 17.2. 0341 Abstract This study evaluated the healing effects of honey as a topical therapy for diabetic ulcers singly and in combination with bacitracin and neomycin (Cicatrin ® ), formulated as ointments in experimental rats. Antimicrobial evaluation of the test agents against Vancomycin and Oxacillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VORSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa was done by the cup plate agar-diffusion technique using the Checkerboard method. Subsequently, the optimized combination was formulated into an ointment and administered as single therapy and in combination to hyperglycemic rats made diabetic by subcutaneous injection of alloxan (130 mg/kg) and inflicted with wounds. Administration was done daily on wounds for 21 days while infected wounds had the pus from them evaluated for presence of VORSA and Pseudomonas . triple combo-therapeutics formulation had improved anti-bacterial activity, in comparison with the individual formulations, with the ratio (1:9) of Cicatrin ® : Honey respectively giving the best activity against VORSA. Also, the triple combo-therapeutics exhibited positive wound contraction and size reduction. Furthermore, clinical signs of infection were absent at the end of the follow-up period in the rats administered the combo-therapeutic agents while other groups of rats administered the bland ointment, and the individual agents were infected with either Pseudomonas aeruginosa or VORSA. In addition, the triple combo-therapeutics formulation exhibited good physicochemical stability throughout the treatment duration and beyond (28 days), with insignificant (p > 0.05) changes in pH and spreadability. The triple combination therapeutics formulation showed superior effect to the singly administered agents (honey and Cicatrin ® ) in the management of diabetic
i-TiRE: Incremental Timed-Release Encryption or How to use Timed-Release Encryption on Blockchains?

Timed-release encryption can encrypt a message to a future time such that it can only be decrypted after that time. Potential applications include sealed bid auctions, scheduled confidential transactions, and digital time capsules. To enable such applications as decentralized smart contracts, we explore how to use timed-release encryption on blockchains. Practical constructions in the literature rely on a trusted server (or servers in a threshold setting), which periodically publishes an epoch-specific decryption key based on a long-term secret. Their main idea is to model time periods or epochs as identities in an identity-based encryption scheme. However, these schemes suffer from a fatal flaw: an epoch's key does not let us decrypt ciphertexts locked to prior epochs. Paterson and Quaglia [SCN'10] address this concern by having encryption specify a range of epochs when decryption is allowed. However, we are left with an efficiency concern: in each epoch, the server(s) must publish (via a smart contract transaction) a decryption key of size logarithmic in the lifetime (total number of epochs). For instance, on Ethereum, for a modest lifetime spanning 2 years of 1-minute long epochs, a server must spend over \6 in gas fees, every minute; this cost multiplies with the number of servers in a threshold setting. We propose a novel timed-release encryption scheme, where a decryption key, while logarithmic in size, allows incremental updates, wherein a short update key (single group element) is sufficient to compute the successive decryption key; our decryption key lets the client decrypt ciphertexts locked to any prior epoch. This leads to significant reduction is gas fees, for instance, only \0.30 in the above setting. Moreover, ciphertexts are also compact (logarithmic in the total lifetime), and encryption and decryption are on the order of few milliseconds. Furthermore, we decentralize the trust among a number of servers, so as to tolerate up to a threshold number of (malicious) corruptions. Our construction is based on bilinear pairing, and adapts ideas from Canetti et al.'s binary tree encryption [Eurocypt 2003] and Naor et al.'s distributed pseudorandom functions [Eurocrypt 1999].
COPD_A_238214 755..764

Pere Almagro 1 Ramon Boixeda 2 Jesús Diez-Manglano 3 María Gómez-Antúnez Francisco López-García Jesús Recio 6 1Multimorbidity Patient Unit, Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital Universitari Mútua de Terrassa, Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain; 2Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital de Mataró-CSDM, Barcelona, Mataró, Spain; 3Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital Royo Villanova, Zaragoza, Spain; 4Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain; 5Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital General Universitario de Elche, Alicante, Elche, Spain; 6Service of Internal Medicine, Hospital Quironsalud València, Valencia, Spain Abstract: In patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular comorbidities are highly prevalent and associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. This coincidence is increasingly seen in the context of a “cardiopulmonary continuum” rather than being simply attributed to shared risk factors, in particular, cigarette smoking. Both disease entities are centrally linked to systemic inflammation as well as aging, arterial stiffness, and several common biomarkers that led to the development of pulmonary hypertension, left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, atherosclerosis, and reduced physical activity and exercise capacity. For these reasons, COPD should be considered an independent factor of high cardiovascular risk, and efforts should be directed to early identification of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in COPD patients. Assessment of the overall cardiovascular risk is especially important in patients with severe exacerbation episodes, and the same therapeutic target levels for glycosylated hemoglobin, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), or blood pressure than those recommended by clinical practice guidelines for patients at high cardiovascular risk, should be achieved. In this review, we will discuss the most recent evidence of the role of COPD as a critical cardiovascular risk factor and try to find new insights and potential prevention strategies for this disease.
Linked raster data

: Linked Data (LD) is a paradigm that allows linking various heterogeneous data sources in a well-defined way (Bizer, Heath, Berners-Lee, 2009). These links establish a Web of Data (WoD), instead of a web of html documents. In the WoD more and more geographic data sets are made available such as GeoNames, dbPedia
Extension of the gambler's ruin problem played over networks

In this thesis we consider the problem of extending and adapting the classical Gambler's Ruin (GR) problem so that it can be played over net-works in a manner consistent with both the classical two-player and the fully connected N-player GR problem. We introduce an extended GR problem, in which players in a network compete against the opponents to whom they are connected, and in which players exit the network either when they achieve a specified target or when they become bankrupt. In both cases, the game continues with the remaining players. While a bankrupted player simply leaves the network, successful players (achievers) may produce one or more offspring who connect to the network and continue playing the game with a share of the achiever's resources. We simulate the extended GR problem in the case of contracting, fixed and evolving networks. A key motivation is to understand the interplay between the game and the network, i.e., how the topology of the network influences the progression of the GR problem game, and, conversely, how the game influences the evolution of the network topology. Therefore we consider several attachment rules, including random and preferential attachment. We also introduce a bespoke preferential attachment rule called kudos. Unlike the established preferential attachment rules, we find that kudos induces a phase transition in the network, as the size of target is varied.
Optical Coherence Tomography Angiographic Evaluation of Macular Vessel Density in Diabetic Macular Edema After Intravitreal Dexamethasone Implants: A Prospective Interventional Trial.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to assess macular vascular density evolution, macular thickness, and functional outcomes after intravitreal dexamethasone implants for diabetic macular edema. PATIENTS AND METHODS Vascular density was evaluated with optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography in 21 eyes. Macular thickness was evaluated with structural OCT. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were evaluated before and after treatment, and these functional outcomes were analyzed for association with anatomic outcomes. Macular vessel density in the superficial capillary plexus was evaluated with OCT angiography and quantified in areas with no fluid, allowing a more accurate measurement and eliminating the segmentation bias in areas with intra-retinal fluid. Such a methodology was possible by positioning the scans only in areas with no fluid before and after the implant. The absence of fluid in these areas was confirmed by three experienced evaluators using both the B-scan and the en face. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were evaluated before and after treatment, and these functional outcomes were analyzed for association with anatomic outcomes. RESULTS At 30, 60, and 90 days after implantation, there was improvement in macular perfusion in areas without fluid after intravitreal dexamethasone implantation, accompanied by reduced macular thickness and improved visual acuity (P < .001). However, there was no improvement in contrast sensitivity after treatment. CONCLUSIONS Improved macular perfusion after treatment with intravitreal dexamethasone implantation may be associated with modulation of leukostasis, when the release of cytokines leads to capillary endothelial damage and obstruction of the micro-vasculature, leading to impaired capillary perfusion and ischemic damage. Despite the anatomical and functional findings demonstrated, further studies are needed to prove the relationship between the inflammatory mechanisms of diabetic macular edema and its relationship with macular perfusion and functional aspects. [Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina 2023;54(3):174-182. ].
Fidelity-driven Optimization Reconstruction and Details Preserving Guided Fusion for Multi-Modality Medical Image

By integrating effective features of multi-modality medical images to provide richer information, multi-modality medical image fusion has been substantially used in computer-aided diagnosis applications. However, many existing fusion schemes do not consider how to eliminate the effects of the noise in source medical images and cannot provide enough details and textures for disease diagnosis. To address the problems above, we propose a new fidelity-driven optimization (FDO) reconstruction and details preserving guided-based fusion method for multi-modality medical images. To overcome the influence of noise in multi-modality medical images, a rank coefficient optimization method of low-rank approximation based on weighted mean curvature is proposed to reconstruct multi-modality medical image. Moreover, we propose an iterative detail preserving guided fusion (DPGF) method to integrate more textures and detail information of source multi-modality medical images, while ensuring high signal-to noise ratios. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms some of the state-of-the-art fusion methods. Specifically, the extensive experiments prove that our method has high robustness for noisy medical images, which also indicates the application prospects in diagnosis applications.
Robust consensus of uncertain multi agent systems with one‐sided Lipschitz nonlinearity

This article develops protocols for the consensus of an uncertain nonlinear multi‐agent system that satisfies the one‐sided Lipschitz and quadratic‐inner bounded conditions. Fully distributed consensus protocols with observer‐based and observer‐less schemes are investigated. For the observer‐based system, a full order Luenberger observer is designed. To overcome the difficulties of designing the controller and observer‐based controller gains, sufficient conditions are provided with a complete linear matrix inequality characterization. Finally, two simulation examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.