Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pilotage de la recherche à l'université: premiers résultats d'une étude de cas enchâssés

The new autonomy of universities should lead to deep changes in the system of control and the information systems of universities. As with any introduction of management tools, the question of appropriation arises: what tools are implemented for the control, which designs them and implements them, for what purposes and which actors? We led a study of embedded cases in a university spent in the RCE since January 1st, 2010. Initial results show the cohabitation of two control systems with very different characteristics. In the research units, the control system aims at supporting the activity of the researchers. In the university, the control system seems "to turn on itself", requesting, for its reporting, a lot of information from research units, without giving them real support.
KR16 Moving Towards a Normative System Engineering Process: Why standards sometimes fail to gain traction

The use of standards is one of the four architecting methodologies commonly used in Systems Engineering, but where do standards come from? Why are standards developed? Why do some standards fail to gain traction? Are standards always developed for the right reasons and along the right lines? This paper discusses the timing and emergence of new standards in the marketplace. The paper selects an emerging industry – Automated Meter Reading (AMR) and discusses the four “who's” (who benefits, who pays, who provides, and who loses) with respect to standard development. Finally, the paper offers some concluding remarks which contain recommendations for would‐be standards sponsors and developers.
A Preliminary Study on Non-Intrusive User Authentication Method Using Smartphone Sensors

This paper proposes a non-intrusive authentication method based on two sensitive apparatus of smartphones, namely, the orientation sensor and the touchscreen. We have found that these two sensors are capable of capturing behavioral biometrics of a user while the user is engaged in relatively stationary activities. The experimental results with respect to two types of flick operating have an equal error rate of about 3.5% and 5%, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first publicly reported study that simultaneously adopts the orientation sensor and the touchscreen to build an authentication model for smartphone users. Finally, we show that the proposed approach can be used together with existing intrusive mechanisms, such as password and/or fingerprints, to build a more robust authentication framework for smartphone users.
Design of Intelligent System for LED Lighting Based on PWM

For the disadvantage of traditional lighting system such as low energy utilization and poor dimming performance, a new intelligent system for LED lighting based on PWM is proposed. The basic principle of the system is discussed and the solutions of the hardware and software are designed. Using the PWM dimming technology, the data from the infrared detector and photo resistor is processed in the MCU to generate PWM signals, which control the switch and regalute the brightness of the LED according to the ambient light. Because the opening and closing of LED takes a form of gradual change, human eye is not fell the dramatic changes of brightness which can contribute to protecting human vision. The results show that this embedded system has a simple structure, small volume, and good real time ability. This system will meet the demand of energy saving, which will be widely applied in many fields such as mine, corridor and underground parking.
CRISPR-Cas Biology and Its Application to Infectious Diseases

Infectious diseases remain a global threat contributing to excess morbidity and death annually, with the persistent potential for destabilizing pandemics. Improved understanding of the pathogenesis of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, along with rapid diagnosis and treatment of human infections, is essential for improving infectious disease outcomes worldwide. ABSTRACT Infectious diseases remain a global threat contributing to excess morbidity and death annually, with the persistent potential for destabilizing pandemics. Improved understanding of the pathogenesis of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, along with rapid diagnosis and treatment of human infections, is essential for improving infectious disease outcomes worldwide. Genomic loci in bacteria and archaea, termed clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, function as an adaptive immune system for prokaryotes, protecting them against foreign invaders. CRISPR-Cas9 technology is now routinely applied for efficient gene editing, contributing to advances in biomedical science. In the past decade, improved understanding of other diverse CRISPR-Cas systems has expanded CRISPR applications, including in the field of infectious diseases. In this review, we summarize the biology of CRISPR-Cas systems and discuss existing and emerging applications to evaluate mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions, to develop accurate and portable diagnostic tests, and to advance the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.
Growing Spatial Overlap Between Dam-Related Flooding, Cropland and Domestic Water Points: A Water–Energy–Food Nexus Management Challenge in Malawi and Ghana

In sub-Saharan Africa, land cover change, expansion of hydropower infrastructure, and increased flooding complicate country-level efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target concerning access to safe water. The Water, Energy and Food (WEF) nexus approach recognises that addressing these complex challenges requires cross-sectoral analyses at multiple scales. Building on such an approach, our study examined the interrelationships between land cover change, dam-related flooding and access to safe water via a national-level spatial analysis with local case studies in Malawi and Ghana. Our assessment of the water–food interactions found that areas of overlap between water points and cropland increased from 2000 to 2020 for both countries at national scale, but overlap extent varied greatly depending on the land cover product used. Local-scale exploration of water point installation patterns in Zomba, Malawi confirmed this pattern, highlighting increasing non-governmental funding of borehole installation programmes. Our assessment of water–energy interactions found that flooding mediated by hydropower dams increased for the White Volta Basin in Ghana, thereby increasing inundation of groundwater points. Local-scale focus group discussions revealed flooding resulted in contaminated water sources and high risk of injury or drowning whilst fetching water. Overall, our study highlights how socio-economic drivers are bringing water points, flooding and cropland into closer proximity, requiring flood mitigation measures at water points and agro-chemical management to minimise potential water quality impacts. Given differences between land cover products, we recommend more robust integration of existing land cover products to better monitor these phenomena.
Integrative Analysis and Identification of an Excellent lncRNA Signature to Predict Prognosis in Patients with COAD

Backgroud: Tumour recurrence and metastasis lead to poor prognosis incolon cancer(COAD). Therefore We aimed to identify a lncRNA signature through an integrative analysis of copy number variation, mutation and transcriptome data to predict prognosis and explore its internal mechanism.Methods: The lncRNA expression profile were collected fromThe Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). TCGA data was randomly divided 3:1 intotraining andtesting cohort. In the training, weperformed integrated analyses of three candidate lncRNA sets that correlated with prognosis, copy number variations and mutations to establish a signature through Cox regression analysis. The robustness was determined in the testing and GEO.Results: An 11-lncRNA signature that was significantly associated with prognosiswas constructed in the training (P<0.0001, HR=2.014) , And this signature was validated in the testing(P=0.0019, HR=3.374) and GSE17536(P=0.0076, HR=1.864). The signature is significantly related to MSI status and clinical prognostic factors. The prognostic-relatedrisk scores were significantly excellent than the other five models have been reported. Furthermore, GSEA suggested that the signature was involved in COAD development and metastasis-related pathways.Conclusions: We identifiedansignature has strong robustness and can stably predict the prognosis of COAD in different platformsand may be implicated in COAD pathogenesis and metastasis and applied clinically as a prognostic marker.
A Study of Personal Values, Sociocultural Adaptation And Subjective Well-Being From the Perspective of Refugees in the Time of Covid19 Pandemic

A Study of Personal Values, Sociocultural Adaptation And Subjective Well-Being From the Perspective of Refugees in the Time of Covid19 Pandemic. Abstract The goals of the present study were to test the relationship between personal values (i.e., self-transcendence and self-enhancement) and subjective well-being and the mediation of this relationship by sociocultural adaption among a sample of Afghan refugees ( N = 381) during COVID19. The data was analysed using SPSS 25. Results show that self-transcendence was a significant predictor of subjective well-being, even by controlling for sociocultural adaptation. Sociocultural adaptation did not significantly mediate the positive relationship between refugees’ self -transcendence and subjective well-being. This research provides a novel understanding from the psychological perspectives of refugees’ well -being in time of crisis. We anticipate many new insights with the recent flourishing of research on personal value-subjective well-being relations, and with the additional inclusion of sociocultural adaptation.
Modeling and analysis of Internet differentiated-services traffic

It is widely accepted that the next major requirement and milestone in the Internet is the ability to provide qualities of service to various applications. The Internet community and the standards bodies have been working on myriad schemes to achieve this objective. One of the prominent and promising approaches is being defined and developed at the Differentiated Services Working Group in IETF. We model the traffic associated with Assured Forwarding Per-Hop Behavior in differentiated services enabled IP networks in this paper. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of such traffic on network resources with the objective of developing efficient traffic engineering methodologies. We also formulate the optimization problem relating to traffic engineering in DS networks with an MPLS core.
National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer

This is the story of two great sports. One is "America's game," while the other is "the world's game. " Baseball and soccer are both beloved cultural institutions. What draws fans to one game is often a mystery to fans of the other. Despite superficial differences, however, the business and culture of these sports share more in common than meets the eye. This is the first in-depth, cross-cultural comparison of these two great pastimes and the megabusinesses that they have become. In National Pastime , Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist illustrate how the different traditions of each sport have generated different possibilities for their commercial organization and exploitation. They pay special attention to the rich and complex evolution of baseball from its beginnings in America, and they trace modern soccer from its foundation in England through its subsequent expansion across the world. They illustrate how Victorian administrators laid the foundation for Major League Baseball (MLB) and soccer leagues such as the English Premier League, Italy's Serie A, and the European Champions League. The authors show how the organizers of baseball and soccer have learned from each other in the past and how they can continue to do so. Both sports are rich in tradition. In some cases, however, these traditions --often arbitrary rules established by long-defunct administrators --have obstructed the healthy development of the sport. By studying the experiences of other sports, it might be possible to develop new and better ways to operate. For example, soccer might benefit from greater cooperation among teams as in baseball. On the other hand, MLB could learn from soccer's relegation rules and more open system of ownership, thus avoiding some of the excesses (competitive imbalance, uneven team resources) associated with monopoly. National Pastime does not advocate the jettisoning of all tradition to adopt wholesale the approach of another sport, of course. In an era of globalization, where business interests are increasingly looking to transplant organizational ideas in order to maximize profits, the authors argue that fan-friendly reforms may be necessary in order to avoid something worse. Ultimately, they propose no simple solutions, instead suggesting specific reforms to the organization of baseball and soccer, drawing on each other's experiences. Lively and accessibly written, this book is essential reading for business analysts, journalists, policymakers, and managers of both sports. Most of all, however, it will appeal to baseball and soccer aficionados, whether they root for the New York Yankees, Manchester United, or Real Madrid.
Microdamage accumulation in bovine trabecular bone

When bone is loaded beyond its failure point, it develops damage in the form of microcracks. Normally, microcracks are repaired by the remodeling process, limiting the number of in vivo microcracks. However, if the rate of microdamage accumulation increases or the rate of remodeling slows, microdamage can accumulate, reducing bone stiffness and strength and may lead to stress fractures or fragility fractures. A new technique for visualizing microdamage in vitro has been developed that uses chelating fluorochromes to label microcracks. Sequential staining is used to distinguish between microdamage that occurred before testing and damage created during testing. Microdamage parameters quantified include the total number of microcracks, total length of microcracks, damaged area, the number of trabeculae containing microcracks, the pattern of microcracking, the extent of microdamage across the thickness of the trabeculae, and the size of the damage-containing region in the specimen. The chelating fluorochrome marker technique was used to label and quantify microdamage in specimens of bovine trabecular bone damaged in uniaxial compression and compressive fatigue, and relationships between microdamage parameters and changes in mechanical properties (maximum compressive strain, modulus reduction) were quantified. The progressions of damage accumulation during a single compression cycle and during fatigue to failure were determined. Comparisons were made between specimens tested in different loading modes, including uniaxial compression, compressive fatigue, and compressive creep (Pierce, 1999). Microdamage accumulation increases with increasing specimen strain and with increasing stiffness loss. A model was developed to predict modulus reductions based on observed microdamage using cellular solid principles. The predictions were compared to experimentally measured changes in mechanical properties during uniaxial compressive loading and compressive fatigue. There was good agreement between model predictions and experimental results for specimens tested in uniaxial compression. The model predictions were less accurate when applied to specimens tested in compressive fatigue. Thesis Supervisor: Lorna J. Gibson, Ph.D. Thesis Committee: Brian D. Snyder, M.D., Ph.D. Subra Suresh, Ph.D.
Landmark Discoveries in Calcium Metabolism Review of Literature

Calcium metabolism plays an integral role in maintaining homeostasis. Over 99% of the calcium present normally in the adult human body resides in the skeleton, where it provides mechanical stability and serves as a reservoir sometimes needed to maintain extracellular fluid (ECF) calcium concentration. Ionized calcium in the ECF must be maintained within a narrow range because of the critical role calcium plays in a wide array of cellular functions, especially in the neuromuscular activity, secretion, and signal transduction. Intracellular cytosolic free calcium levels are ~100nmol/L and are 10,000-fold lower than ionized calcium concentrations in the blood and ECF (1.1-1.3mmol/L). Cytosolic calcium does not play the structural role played by extracellular calcium; instead, it serves a signaling function. The steep chemical gradient of calcium from outside to inside the cell promotes rapid calcium influx through various membrane calcium channels that can be activated by hormones, metabolites, or neurotransmitters, swiftly changing cellular function. In blood, total calcium concentrations normally 2.2-2.6mM (8.5-10.5mg/dL), of which ~50% is ionized [1].
The advantages and potential of electret‐based vibration‐driven micro energy harvesters

In this paper, we clarify the use and potential of the electret, in the context of vibration‐driven micro‐energy harvesting that seeks to obtain energy from a vibrating environment to power small electronic devices. An electret is an insulator containing a permanent electric charge or dipole. We make broad comparisons against other methods such as electromagnetic methods and methods using piezoelectric materials, in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the electrets. In particular, we introduce a new general model that covers both the electrets and piezoelectric materials to enable comparisons on a common basis. This is followed by a review of a recent method, developed by our group to make full use of the implanted charge inside an electret. Furthermore, we investigate other ways to realize the full potential of the electret as a key material for electromechanical energy conversion in applications where only small forces are involved. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A reduced-order model for electrically actuated microbeam-based MEMS

We present an analytical approach and a reduced-order model (macromodel) to investigate the behavior of electrically actuated microbeam-based MEMS. The macromodel provides an effective and accurate design tool for this class of MEMS devices. The macromodel is obtained by discretizing the distributed-parameter system using a Galerkin procedure into a finite-degree-of-freedom system consisting of ordinary-differential equations in time. The macromodel accounts for moderately large deflections, dynamic loads, and the coupling between the mechanical and electrical forces. It accounts for linear and nonlinear elastic restoring forces and the nonlinear electric forces generated by the capacitors. A new technique is developed to represent the electric force in the equations of motion. The new approach allows the use of few linear-undamped mode shapes of a microbeam in its straight position as basis functions in a Galerkin procedure. The macromodel is validated by comparing its results with experimental results and finite-element solutions available in the literature. Our approach shows attractive features compared to finite-element softwares used in the literature. It is robust over the whole device operation range up to the instability limit of the device (i.e., pull-in). Moreover, it has low computational cost and allows for an easier understanding of the influence of the various design parameters. As a result, it can be of significant benefit to the development of MEMS design software.
Performance of Isolated and Continuous Digit Recognition System using Kaldi Toolkit

A digit recognition system is built for recognizing the sequence of digits through 0-9. The system is experimented with speech corpus created in the room environment. The acoustic information to feature representation is achieved using PLP and MFCC features. The system initially utilized the conventional GMM-HMM framework, state of the art hybrid classifier with varied number of states to complete the speech recognition task, i.e., the system is first trained and tested using Monophone models, and system’s recognition accuracy is then evaluated using Triphone Models: Triphone1 models, which was later followed by Triphones2 models and Triphones3 Models. The Ngram Language model is used for both Monophone and Triphone training. The system performance is evaluated with the use of MFCC and PLP parameterisation techniques on Kaldi toolkit. The system performance is evaluated using metrics word error rate (WER) and Word Recognition Accuracy (WRA). The proposed system can be utilized for building speech applications
Design and simulation of a power management unit in a solar based electric propulsion system

The aim of this paper is to compare different architectures for a power system that supplies electrical thrusters for future space exploration missions. The main goal of these architectures is the maximization of the power extracted from the solar arrays in all operational situations and this is possible only by using peak power tracking algorithms. This limits the choice of architectures only to those including some form of peak power tracking algorithms. (5 pages)
High resolution and energetically efficient lensless imaging system based upon time varied pinholes array

In this paper, we describe a novel super resolution method with variable pinholes arrays. The imaging system is based on super resolved time multiplexing method using variable and moving pinholes arrays. The improved resolution and signal to noise ratio are achieved with improved light intensity in the same exposure time, compared to imaging done with a single pinhole system. This new configuration preserves the advantages of pinhole optics while solving the resolution limitation problem and the low energetic efficiency of such system. The changeable and moving pinholes array can be realized using a DLP matrix. The system can also be used as an addition to several of existing optical systems which use visible, invisible light or even x-ray radiation.
A structure and scoring method for judging alternatives

A method is described for organizing, evaluating, and classifying contestants in a competition. The technique facilitates the task of decision making by introducing orderliness of approach, quantification technique, and mathematical processing to the subjective problem of judging alternatives. The system is essentially two-phased: 1) an organizational structure that is simply adjusted to encompass the particular subject under consideration; and 2) a rank ordering evaluation and accumulation scheme leading to a numerical assessment for each competitor, which is insensitive to overriding superiority in specific capabilities and demands balanced excellence. The usual vagaries of assigning weights to particular categories are avoided and the lack of defined specifications normally arising in cost-reimbursable competition is handled efficiently. Several useful steps based upon significant experience are stipulated for insuring good proposal response to an advertised request; considerable insight is supplied by specific examples. The method has proved to be an extremely effective tool, and has been applied on varied topics in different circumstances to the satisfaction of its many users.