Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Um sistema de reconhecimento facial aplicado a um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem composto por agentes pedagógicos

Currently, most of Learning Virtual Environments (VLEs) has no efficient mechanisms that can identify students access to both the system and during the development of their activities. In general, this type of system adopts the use of security mechanisms for authentication and login password. The use of this simple type of authentication increases vulnerability to fraud as to the identity of that which carries the course. Based on this context, this work presents a face recognition system based on techniques of Principal Component Analysis and Autofaces, and investigates their accuracy in identifying the student during the entire course in an VLE. The results show an accuracy exceeding 90% in the identification of student achievement throughout the course in VLE consists of pedagogical agents. Index Terms - Learning Virtual Environments, Face,EigenFaces, PCA, Pedagogical Agents.
Decentralized Anaerobic Blackwater Management: A Sustainable Development Technology Concept for Urban Water Management

Sustainable management of water and wastewater infrastructure is essential to ensure future water quantity and quality goals are achieved. In self-sustaining decentralized wastewater management, toilet wastewater (blackwater) which contains a majority of organic material, pathogens and nutrients is separated from remaining wastewater. High organic loading in concentrated blackwater makes anaerobic digestion a feasible option for treatment. Decentralized management of blackwater using advanced reactor technologies is often considered for application in new developments and re-development projects due to localized benefits provided to the end user. Decentralized anaerobic treatment of blackwater stands out in its ability to extract and conserve green water and energy resources from blackwater and promote reuse of these resources at a local level. A demonstration scale, 95 L, upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor was constructed on the Foothills Campus of Colorado State University (CSU) to treat blackwater produced in an academic research building. This demonstration scale project is a follow up to a planning study which outlined options for sustainable wastewater treatment for the CSU Foothills Campus. Results from this study intend to demonstrate the treatability of research campus blackwater in a UASB reactor and sustainable benefits ensuing from anaerobic digestion of blackwater. Treatment efficiency of the UASB was monitored in respect to reductions in chemical oxygen demand (COD), pathogens, and suspended solids. Sustainable aspects of this study include potential to offset energy input into the UASB through use of biogas produced as fuel, nutrient recovery and reuse, and disinfected effluent reuse. Data provided in this study will provide further insight into the effectiveness and safety of decentralized management of blackwater and reuse of resources contained within blackwater. It is anticipated that data will also be useful as guidance for the basis of regulations on applying advanced decentralized wastewater management systems in sustainable development projects. Such data is vital to encourage incorporation of sustainable treatment technologies as aging and failing infrastructure is rapidly becoming in need of replacement and new developments are constructed. This research is in line with recent study efforts put forth by the USEPA attempting to develop technologies and methods for new and existing developments to achieve both water and energy independence from typical centralized grid systems.
Electrorheological fluid-actuated microfluidic pump

The authors report the design and implementation of an electrorheological (ER) fluid-actuated microfluidic pump, with programmable digital control. Our microfluidic pump has a multilayered structure fabricated on polydimethylsiloxane by soft-lithographic technique. The ER microfluidic pump exhibits good performance at high pumping frequencies and uniform liquid flow characteristics. It can be easily integrated with other microfluidic components. The programmable control also gives the device flexibility in its operations.
Technical Bases for the Development of a Test Standard for Impacts of Powered Two-Wheelers onRoadside Barriers

The problem of injuries to motorcyclists caused by impacts on roadside barriers has numerously been pointed out in the literature. Nevertheless, there is a lack of agreement concerning injury criteria for these particular cases. One of the objectives of the European research project APROSYS SP4 "Motorcycle Accidents" is to propose a European crash test standard for the assessment of impact performance of roadside barriers with respect to injury risks. This paper describes the methodology of work that has been followed for the proposal of the standard. In-depth databases have been analysed in order to evaluate the nature of motorcyclists' impacts to barriers and to gain knowledge in addition to the anecdotal cases reported in the literature. About 1000 accidents of powered two-wheelers from four different databases were analysed. In contrast to previous views, impacts in upright riding position seem to occur equally often as impacts in sliding position. A detailed analysis of the current testing procedures (e.g. the Spanish standard, the procedure developed by INRETS, France) has been performed. Full-scale crash tests in sliding position, performed by CIDAUT, and upright position, performed by DEKRA, were included in this analysis. The selection of the injury criteria, especially in head, neck and thorax, has to take into consideration the peculiarities of this kind of accidents. It was concluded that the biofidelity of available dummies (Hybrid III) needs to be further assessed for this particular application, e.g. by comparative simulations using HUMOS2 model. The knowledge gained at the light of the results obtained from the described methodology will be used in the future development of a standard.
Framework for Travel Time Learning and Behavioral Adaptation in Route and Departure Time Choice

Understanding the dynamics of individual travel choice behavior is both a considerable research challenge and of considerable practical importance. Of particular interest are the day-to-day dynamics of commuters’ route and departure time choice decisions, since these processes influence peak-period conditions. Two key mechanisms underlying these behavioral dynamics are the process by which commuters update their perceptions of network travel times (which will be referred to as learning) and the process by which they adjust their behavior as a result of this learning. A new theoretical framework for modeling the day-to-day dynamics of drivers’ route and departure time choice decisions in a commuting context is presented as well as estimation results based on data collected in a series of web-based experiments involving travelers’ repeated decisions in hypothetical transport networks over a period of 15 simulated days. The estimation results indicate that triggering, updating, and adaptation are indeed distinct processes and that the proposed framework constitutes a fruitful direction for future research.
Analysing COVID-19 News Impact on Social Media Aggregation

The pandemic corona virus so called COVID-19 outbreak, which was recognized in late 2019, requires special consciousness because of its future epidemics and possible worldwide menace. Besides its clinical approaches and treatments. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) assures a new prototype for healthcare. There are various AI tools that are built upon Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are included to examine the data and decision-making processes. People spend many hours every-day on social media websites to share their views, ideas, opinions, and expressions with others, so in this paper, I have analysed the sentiments on reddit news regarding coronavirus disease(COVID-19) jeopardy, because most of the peoples from various countries are affected by coronavirus that is very condemnatory issue at present days, so analyze the sentiments of various people’s opinion for this disease, we are fetching the reddit streaming articles connected to coronavirus using reddit API and scrutinized these articles using machine learning methods and tools as positive, negative and neutral. In this paper, I have run experiments through Python programming on various articles related to pandemic corona virus using reddit API and NLTK library is used for pre-processing of articles and then scrutinizing the articles dataset by using Textblob and it pointers to stimulating outcomes as positive, negative, neutral sentiments over different conceptions. The outcomes show that on reddit related to COVID-19 articles about 50% percentage articles are neutral, 22% articles are positive and about 28 % was negative.
Faulted behaviour of permanent magnet electric vehicle traction drives

The paper considers the implications of typical faults on the design and operation of permanent magnet (PM) traction drives. As the excitation of these machines is fixed, it is not sufficient to simply disconnect the machine by gating off the inverter power semiconductors following the detection of a fault, and other remedial actions need to be employed. A range of single point winding and power semiconductor failures are analysed in detail and for each the most appropriate mitigating action described. The discussion is illustrated with test results taken from two identically rated salient and nonsalient PM traction motors.
Design and implementation of a distributed back-up system. (Conception et implémentation d'un système de sauvegarde distribué)

As computer users, we create increasing amounts of data, such as digital documents, pictures, and videos. Because these data have high value in our daily life the need for back-ups arises. The creation of local back-ups, e.g. on external hard drives, is a common approach, but is insufficient in the event of natural disasters or theft. In this thesis, we provide a proof of concept for a distributed back-up system that induces only low overhead, and respects user needs to easily recover a state of a file system in a snapshot-based manner. We store distributed back-ups on residential gateways and use a central tracker as coordinator. We introduce index files in order to map the full state of a file system to a single data structure. We divide the system into swarms of flexible size so that accessing data and monitoring is easy. Files are handled differently depending of their size in order to increase the system performance and reduce resource requirements. All files and their metadata are encrypted before being uploaded, so that data confidentiality is ensured. We use state-of-the-art technologies in order to design a tracker that is scalable, fault-tolerant, and is replaceable in case it entirely leaves the system. The load of the tracker only depends on the number of participants, not on the amount of data stored in the network. The system allows configuring a time span within which a user needs to recover his data in case of local data loss. We analyze this approach by using real world connectivity traces of residential gateways and show that it results in low resource demands. Together with simulations on these traces, we underline the feasibility of our service.
Effects of Computer Keyboard Setup Parameters and User's Anthropometric Characteristics on Wrist Deviation and Typing Efficiency

Two questions that computer keyboard operators face when using keyboards that can be separated into halves (split keyboards) are at what angle should the keyboard halves be opened and at what distance should the keyboard halves be placed apart. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the opening angle and separation distance between halves of a split keyboard on wrist radial/ulnar deviation and typing efficiency. Eleven experienced typists participated in this study and typed on a split keyboard configured in the following four arrangements. 1. The keyboard halves were setup the same way as a conventional keyboard. 2. The keyboard halves were contiguous but angled, based on the user's anthropometry, to maintain a theoretical neutral posture of the user's wrists in the radial/ulnar plane. 3. The keyboard halves were separated at a fixed distance of 20 cm, and the halves were angled to maintain a theoretical neutral posture of the user's wrists in the radial/ulnar plane. 4. The keyboard halves were separated at a distance equal to the user's shoulder width, and the halves were parallel to each other, resulting in a theoretical neutral posture of the user's wrists in the radial/ulnar plane. The findings from testing these four keyboard configurations are the following: 1. The mean ulnar deviations from the alternative configurations of the split keyboard (configurations 2, 3, and 4 above) ranged from 7.0 to 8.4 for the left wrist and 2.7 to 5 deg. for the right wrist. There were no significant differences in ulnar deviations among the three alternative configurations. 2. The three alternative configurations resulted in ulnar deviation of both wrists that were significantly less than ulnar deviation from typing on the conventional setup (configuration 1 above). The mean ulnar deviations from the conventional setup were 18.9 deg. for the left wrist and 14.2 deg. for the right wrist. 3. There were no significant differences in typing speed and accuracy between the alternative and conventional configurations.
Designing neuroclassifier fusion system by immune genetic algorithm

A multiple neural network classifier fusion system design method using immune genetic algorithm (IGA) is proposed. The IGA is modeled after the mechanics of human immunity. By using vaccination and immune selection in the evolution procedures, the IGA outperforms the traditional genetic algorithms in restraining the degenerate phenomenon and increasing the converging speed. The fusion system consists of N neural network classifiers that work independently and in parallel to classify a given input pattern. The classifiers' outputs are aggregated by a fusion scheme to decide the collective classification results. The goal of the system design is to obtain a fusion system with both good generalization and efficiency in space and time. Two kinds of measures, the accuracy of classification and the size of the neural networks, are used by IGA to evaluate the fusion system. The vaccines are abstracted by a self-adaptive scheme during the evolutionary process. A numerical experiment on the 'alternate labels' problem is implemented and the comparisons of IGA with traditional genetic algorithm are presented.
Modeling the Risk from Giardia and Viruses in Drinking Water

This article discusses the assessment of risk from microorganisms in drinking water, the problems associated with such an analysis, the approach for specific organisms, the monitoring required to demonstrate that risk levels are met, and how risk assessment might be approached for determining whether a given level of risk from Giardia and viruses is avoided. Guidelines are suggested for determining the level of treatment necessary to ensure that consumers receive a finished drinking water with risks of less than one infection per 10,000 people per year from Giardia and enteric viruses. There is a critical need for the practical application of quantitative assessments of risk from pathogens in drinking water. There are a number of questions that need to be addressed. Does a system really need to filter? What is an adequate watershed control program? How much disinfection, depending on the level of contamination in the source water, should a system that filters apply? When is the minimum 3and 4-log removal-inactivation requirement for Giardia and viruses, required under the Surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR), not enough? When is disinfection warranted in a groundwater system? What level of disinfection should be provided? How much less disinfectant can safely be used in order to minimize risk from disinfectants and disinfection byproducts? Once practical modeling of risk from pathogens in drinking water is available to the industry, it should be possible to answer these questions more readily. This article discusses the need for risk assessment for microorganisms, the problems associated with such an analysis, the approach for specific organisms, the monitoring required to demonstrate that risk levels for specific organisms are met, and how risk assessment might be practically Introduction by Kenneth L. Mercer, Editor-in-Chief
Assessment of U.S. Domestic Airline Fuel Efficiency since 2010

Aircraft are responsible for about 2.5% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally. Total aircraft CO2 emissions are expected to triple by 2050 if present trends continue. Surprisingly little public information is available about the fuel efficiency, and therefore carbon intensity, of U.S. airlines. This research seeks to address this gap by assessing the fuel efficiency of major airlines serving the U.S. domestic market from 2010 to 2012 by using airline-reported fuel and operations data. A frontier model was used to develop an efficiency metric that accounts for the fuel that airlines burn to provide both mobility (passenger miles traveled) and access (frequency of service and number of airports served). Recognizing that many main-line carriers receive service from their regional partners, the fuel efficiency assessment incorporates the fuel and operations of regional carriers into the fuel and operations of their respective main-line carriers. Airlines that operate circuitous routes are also distinguished. Alaska, Spirit, and Southwest were among the most fuel-efficient airlines, in contrast to less-efficient carriers such as Allegiant and American, which consumed an estimated 26% more fuel than Alaska on equivalent operations in 2012. Airlines that were the most efficient overall did not necessarily transport a given passenger more efficiently between each city–city pair, because of differences in technology utilization and operations. From 2010 to 2012, the average rate of improvement was estimated to be 1.1% per year, short of existing climate protection goals, highlighting the importance of continued efforts in both technology and policy to reduce emissions from aviation.
The joined wing - An overview

The joined wing is a new type of aircraft configuration which employs tandem wings arranged to form diamond shapes in plan view and front view. Wind-tunnel tests and finite-element structural analyses have shown that the joined wing provides the following advantages over a comparable wing-plus-tail system; lighter weight and higher stiffness, higher span-efficiency factor, higher trimmed maximum lift coefficient, lower wave drag, plus built-in direct lift and direct sideforce control capability. A summary is given of research performed on the joined wing. Calculated joined wing weights are correlated with geometric parameters to provide simple weight estimation methods. The results of low-speed and transonic wind-tunnel tests are summarized, and guidelines for design of joined-wing aircraft are given. Some example joined-wing designs are presented and related configurations having connected wings are reviewed.
Remote Tracking of UAV Swarms via 3D Mobility Models and LoRaWAN Communications

Over the last few years, the many uses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have captured the interest of both the scientific and the industrial communities. A typical scenario consists in the use of UAVs for surveillance or target-search missions over a wide geographical area. In this case, it is fundamental for the command center to accurately estimate and track the trajectories of the UAVs by exploiting their periodic state reports. In this work, we design an ad hoc tracking system that exploits the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) standard for communication and an extended version of the Constant Turn Rate and Acceleration (CTRA) motion model to predict drone movements in a 3D environment. We analyze the trade-off in setting the main parameters of the communication system and Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) scheme, showing how our tracking system can handle large swarms of drones at distances up to 4 km. Simulation results on a publicly available dataset show that our system can reliably estimate the position and trajectory of a swarm of UAVs, significantly outperforming baseline tracking approaches.
Approximation Methods for Control of Structural Acoustics Models with Piezoceramic Actuators

The active control of acoustic pressure in a 2-D cavity with a flexible boundary (a beam) is considered. Specifically, this control is implemented via piezoceramic patches on the beam which produce pure bending moments. The incorporation of the feedback control in this manner leads to a system with an unbounded input term. Approximation methods in the context of an LQR state space formulation are discussed and numerical results demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in computing feedback controls for noise reduction are presented.
On the Effect of Contact Friction and Contact Compliance on the Grasp Performance of Underactuated Hands

Although adding compliant, frictional material on robotic fingers to improve the performance is generally accepted, at least for underactuated hands this effect is hardly quantified. In this study, the phalanges of an underactuated hand in an experimental setup were firstly covered with material of different friction coefficients but equal contact compliance, while the force to pull a grasped object completely out of the hand was measured. Then, the phalanges were covered with material of different compliance while the same measurements were done. In the latter experiment, the effect of contact friction was eliminated by using a specially designed testbed that emulates a frictionless object. The experiments showed an increase of the maximal pull force by 250% when the friction coefficient of the contact material increased from 0.25 to 1.51. The compliance of the contact material had a marginal effect on this maximum force. Finally, the pull force was calculated by a static grasp model, incorporating contact friction and linear contact compliance. Trends similar to the experiments were observed in these simulations.Copyright © 2009 by ASME
Kapazitive Energiewandler zum Aufbau kinetischer VibrationsgeneratorenCapacitive Converters for Design of Kinetic Vibration Harvesters

Zusammenfassung Die Technologie sowie der Stand der Technik kapazitiver Energiewandler zum Aufbau kinetischer Vibrationsgeneratoren werden präsentiert. Dabei wird auf das physikalische Wirkprinzip sowie auf aktuelle Prototypen aus der einschlägigen Literatur eingegangen. Um eine Optimierung kapazitiver Energiewandler mit Hinblick auf eine spezifische Einsatzumgebung vornehmen zu können, wurde ein auf mathematischen Gleichungen basierendes Signalfluss-Modell erstellt. Ziel der Optimierung ist die Maximierung der Effektivität des kapazitiven Energiewandlers. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden zwei Kondensator-Topologien untersucht.