Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applying Spectral Fractal Dimension to Predict the SPAD Value of Rice Leaves Under Disease Stress

BackgroundThe chlorophyll content is a vital indicator for reflecting the photosynthesis ability of plants and it plays a significant role in monitoring the general health of plants. Since the chlorophyll content and the soil-plant analysis development (SPAD) value are positively correlated, it is feasible to estimate the SPAD value by calculating the vegetation indices (VIs) through hyperspectral images, thereby estimating the chlorophyll content. However, current indices simply adopted few wavelengths of the hyperspectral information, which may decrease the estimation accuracy. Besides, few researches explored the applicability of VIs over plant leaves under disease stress.MethodsIn this study, the SPAD value was estimated by calculating the fractal dimension of hyperspectral curves, ranging from 420 to 950 nm. The correlation between the SPAD value and wavelengths under disease stress was analyzed. In addition, a SPAD prediction model was built upon the combination of selected indices and 4 machine learning methods, including decision tree (DT), partial least square regression (PLSR), support vector regression (SVR), and back propagation neural network (BPNN). The performance of these models was compared through the correlation of determination, root mean square error, and relative error.ResultsThe results suggested that the SPAD value of rice leaves under different disease levels were sensitive to different wavelengths, meaning that the fixed wavelength selection in current indices may achieve poor estimation results. Compared with current VIs, a stronger positive correlation was detected between the SPAD value and our proposal, reaching an average correlation coefficient of 0.8263. For the prediction model, the one built with our proposal and SVR achieved the best performance, reaching R2, RMSE, and RE at 0.8752, 3.7715, and 7.8614%, respectively.ConclusionsThis work provides an in-depth insight for accurately and robustly estimating the SPAD value of rice leaves under disease stress, and our proposal is of great significance for monitoring the chlorophyll content in large-scale fields non-destructively.
GAD: A Global-Aware Diversity-Based Template Matching Method

A novel similarity measurement metric, global-aware diversity (GAD), between a template and an image is proposed in this article, which can be efficiently utilized in a template matching method. Unlike the existing nearest neighbor field (NNF)-based methods, which use either the local or global diversity alone, GAD utilizes the global context to guide the local diversity. We verify that the global context is important for template matching task and can largely remove the background and outliers. The state-of-the-art NNF-based methods in general are not efficient enough as resolution grows. Thus, we also elaborately design a very efficient algorithm of GAD to reduce the complexity from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}(\vert \,\mathcal {I}\,\vert \cdot \vert \,\mathcal {T}\,\vert)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}(\vert \,\mathcal {I}\,\vert)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. First, the GAD algorithm has been evaluated on two challenging benchmark datasets best-buddies similarity (BBS) and TinyTLP. Experiments show that the GAD algorithm achieves the state-of-the-art performance. As GAD does not impose any prior on unseen data, it is more insensitive to large rotation or deformation than the deformation-based algorithms. Besides, the GAD algorithm can run at 150 ms on average with high accuracy on the dataset of resolution 1280 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times780$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.
Small Cell Lung Cancer Staging: Prospective Comparison of Conventional Staging Tests, FDG PET/CT, Whole-Body MRI, and Coregistered FDG PET/MRI.

Background: Whole-body MRI and FDG PET/MRI have shown encouraging results for staging of thoracic malignancy, but are poorly studied for staging of small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Objective: To compare the performance of conventional staging tests, FDG PET/CT, whole-body MRI, and FDG PET/MRI for staging of SCLC. Methods: This prospective study included 98 patients (64 men, 34 women; median age, 74 years) with SCLC who underwent conventional staging tests (brain MRI; neck, chest, and abdominopelvic CT; bone scintigraphy), FDG PET/CT, and FDG PET/MRI, within 2 weeks before treatment; coregistered FDG PET/MRI was generated. Two nuclear medicine physicians independently reviewed conventional tests and FDG PET/CT examinations in separate sessions; two chest radiologists independently reviewed whole-body MRI and FDG PET/MRI examinations in separate sessions. Readers assessed T, N, and M categories; TNM stage; and Veterans Administration Lung Cancer Study Group (VALSG) stage. Reader pairs subsequently reached consensus. Stages determined clinically during tumor board sessions served as reference. Results: Accuracy for T category was higher (p<.05) for whole-body MRI (94.9%) and FDG PET/MRI (94.9%) than for FDG PET/CT (85.7%). Accuracy for N category was higher (p<.05) for whole-body MRI (84.7%), FDG PET/MRI (83.7%), and FDG PET/CT (81.6%) than for conventional staging tests (75.5%). Accuracy for M category was higher (p<.05) for whole-body MRI (94.9%), FDG PET/MRI (94.9%), and FDG PET/CT (94.9%) than for conventional staging tests (84.7%). Accuracy for TNM stage was higher (p<.05) for whole-body MRI (88.8%) and FDG PET/MRI (86.7%) than for FDG PET/CT (77.6%) and conventional staging tests (72.4%). Accuracy for VALSG stage was higher (p<.05) for whole-body MRI (95.9%), FDG PET/MRI (95.9%), and FDG PET/CT (98.0%) than for conventional staging tests (82.7%). Interobserver agreement, expressed as kappa, ranged from 0.81 to 0.94 across imaging tests and staging endpoints. Conclusion: FDG PET/CT, whole-body MRI, and coregistered FDG PET/MRI outperformed conventional tests for various staging endpoints in patients with SCLC. Whole-body MRI and FDG PET/MRI outperformed FDG PET/CT for T category and thus TNM stage, indicating utility of MRI for assessing extent of local invasion in SCLC. Clinical Impact: Incorporation of either MRI approach may improve initial staging evaluation in SCLC.
Secure data exchange between intelligent devices and computing centers

The advent of reliable spontaneous networking technologies (commonly known as wireless ad-hoc networks) has ostensibly raised stakes for the conception of computing intensive environments using intelligent devices as their interface with the external world. These smart devices are used as data gateways for the computing units. These devices are employed in highly volatile environments where the secure exchange of data between these devices and their computing centers is of paramount importance. Moreover, their mission critical applications require dependable measures against the attacks like denial of service (DoS), eavesdropping, masquerading, etc. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to assure reliable data exchange between an intelligent environment composed of smart devices and distributed computing units collectively called 'computational grid'. The notion of infosphere is used to define a digital space made up of a persistent and a volatile asset in an often indefinite geographical space. We study different infospheres and present general evolutions and issues in the security of such technology-rich and intelligent environments. It is beyond any doubt that these environments will likely face a proliferation of users, applications, networked devices, and their interactions on a scale never experienced before. It would be better to build in the ability to uniformly deal with these systems. As a solution, we propose a concept of virtualization of security services. We try to solve the difficult problems of implementation and maintenance of trust on the one hand, and those of security management in heterogeneous infrastructure on the other hand.
On modelling assistive technology systems - Part 2: Applications of the comprehensive assistive technology model

The Comprehensive Assistive Technology model was devised to describe the full social and engineering context of assistive technology devices, systems, applications, and provision. It is based on a detailed decomposition of the four attributes: Person, Context, Activities, and Assistive Technology. The paper commences will a brief discussion of the different representations of the model, including tree-diagrams, labelled attributes and tables and the use of engineering block diagrams to supplement some elements of the description. The main contribution of the paper is the presentation of four case studies of different applications of the model. These are the identification of accessibility barriers, the analysis and synthesis of assistive technology systems and the provision of a framework for identifying end-user requirements, providing assistive technology and assessing the associated outcomes. This case study involves the presentation of the novel concept of a personal assistive technology profile.
SYNTHESIS AND NMR ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF TRIBLOCK POLY(ESTER-SILOXANE-ESTER) COPOLYMER BASED ON L-LACTIDE

The synthesis, structure and composition of triblock poly(ester-siloxane-ester) copolymers, PLLA-PDMS-PLLA, based on α,ω–diaminopropyl-poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) and L-lactide were studied in this work. The samples of the controlled block length were synthesized by ring-opening polymerization of L-lactide in the presence of stannous octoate, Sn(Oct)2, as a catalyst, and aminopropyl-terminated siloxane prepolymer, as a macroinitiator, in a concentrated toluene solution. Influence of temperature and concentration of the catalyst on the structure, composition and size of the copolymers were investigated by 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy and dilute solution viscometry.
A study of the performance on human resource management strategy in tourism industry with data envelopment analysis

The emergence of the Internet has changed the previous rules in tourism industry that travel agencies are facing the change of the competitive environment and the integration world caused by Internet technology to cope with the competition in the new era. Tourism industry is a human-centered service industry that Human Resource Management Strategy performance is considered primary. Reviewing the academic discussions on tourism industry, questionnaire survey was mostly applied to studying the operation performance or product quality satisfaction; few of them would discuss Human Resource Management Strategy with the actual operating data. Based on such motives, this study applies Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to proceeding efficiency analyses of Human Resource Management Strategy. Ten travel agencies in Taiwan were studied within 2009-2011, in which Human resource cost, Operating cost, and Total fixed asset were regarded as the input items and Total business turnover was the output item to analyze Total efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PTE), and scale efficiency (SE). According to the results and slacks-based measure, the evaluated sectors are provided suggestions. The empirical results showed that the average total efficiency in the three years was 0.84, when Lion Travel presented the best performance, while Skylark Travel the worst. Regarding the pure technical efficiency, Lion Travel appeared the best performance, while Skylark Travel the worst. In regard to scale efficiency, Lion Travel showed the best performance, while Ming Tai the worst. Apparently, Lion Travel presented the best performance, while Skylark Travel the worst. With Malmquist Productivity Analysis, both Lion Travel and Phoenix Tours were approaching the permanent optimal scale, while the rest appeared <1, showing the future operation was going far away from the permanent optimal scale.
Analysis of Conventional Sram 6t at Low Power and High Perfomamce 32nm Technologies

Here we analysis and compare the conventional SRAM 6t at two different nano-scale technologies. First is low power 32nm PTM technology and second is high performance 32nm PTM technology. At low power 32nm PTM technologies power dissipation is significantly reduces at reducing power supply but both read and write delay increases drastically. In other side, at high performance 32nm PTM technologies power dissipation reduces at reducing the power supply, and read delay increase moderate but write delay reduces gives the high performance and low power SRAM, all the simulation is done in Tanner Tool.
FASAL concept in meeting the requirements of assessment and forecasting crop production affected by extreme weather events

The research in remote sensing application in India started first in agriculture way back in 1969. With the improvement in satellite sensors, data processing algorithms, models and computational power over time, this research culminated into development of operational projects of CAPE and FASAL, tackling an important issue of operationally providing pre-harvest crop production forecast to stakeholders. This review paper details the sequential developments in the use of remote sensing data for crop production forecasting. The scientific developments in the use of single and multi-temporal optical and microwave satellite images for crop identification and yield estimation in India have been reviewed. The case studies on use of remote sensing data for crop assessment under extreme weather events are also presented. These include the assessment of crop damage due to extreme weather events of floods, drought, and hailstorm. Examples on use of remote sensing for crop damage assessment due to pest and diseases and forecasting their incidence using satellite derived weather parameters are reviewed.
Study on voltage oscillation phenomenon in high power P-i-N diode

The voltage oscillation mechanism with an anomalous spike voltage during reverse recovery of a P-i-N diode has been studied for the first time. The anomalous spike voltage starts to appear when the reverse bias V/sub RB/ just becomes larger than the threshold reverse power supply voltage V/sub RB/(th). As the initial forward current density I/sub F/ decreases below 20 A/cm/sup 2/, V/sub RB/(th) becomes lower than the punch-through voltage V/sub PT/, since the excess carrier disappears before the depletion layer reaches the N/sup +/ cathode region during the reverse recovery process. Furthermore, measurements were also done to corroborate numerical results. Based upon these results, a newly developed diode was successfully designed and fabricated in order to reduce voltage oscillations.
Broadband Electromagnetic Gap-Coupled Assembly of Patches Forming Trapezoidal Microstrip Antenna for S-Band Application

In this paper our aim is to design an Electromagnetic Gap Coupled Trapezoidal Shaped Microstrip Patch Antenna [GCTSMPA] which is suitable for Microwave S-band applications. This antenna offers much improved impedance bandwidth 20%. The proposed antenna has achieved a suitable gain of 3.90 dBi and 0.99 dBi at resonating frequencies 3.59GHz and 4.10 GHz respectively. Other antenna parameters such as antenna input impedance, the Voltage Standing wave ratio (VSWR), Return Loss, Gain and Bandwidth are simulated for the proposed antenna. Antenna geometry and other simulated results are also presented in a tabular form. The antenna designed on glass epoxy FR-4 dielectric substrate, that has a dielectric constant 4.4, a Loss tangent 0.025 and thickness of the dielectric substrate h=1.6mm.
Silica buried channel waveguides fabricated at low temperature using PECVD

Buried channel waveguides made of silica films deposited on silicon substrates have been fabricated at low temperature (<100°C) without thermal annealing, using the Helicon plasma deposition technique. The guides have losses as low as 1 dB/cm. A 1 × 8 splitter comprising concatenated Y-junctions has been fabricated and characterised.
P‐51: A Novel Analog Buffer Circuit using Low Temperature Poly‐Si TFT

A novel source follower circuit employing low temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) thin film transistors (TFT) is proposed as an analog buffer for integrated data driver circuit. Instead of capacitive bootstrapping for self‐compensation of the characteristic of TFTs, a new compensation method is applied so that the error programming of gate voltage of driving TFT can be effectively eliminated. The feasibility of proposed circuit is exhibited through the simulation results.
Zika Virus Enters Soma of Neuron through NGF/TrkA-Like Endosomal Signaling Pathway

Infection with the Zika virus results in severe neurological disease in adults or congenital Zika syndrome in newborns. We employed the domain search strategy to study the Zika virus glycoprotein E in this work. The results revealed that immature E contains a NGF domain (“MNKCYIQIMDLGHMCDATMSYECPMLDEGVEPDDVDCWCNTTSTWVVYGTCHH”) and is capable of interacting with TrkA. The E/TrkA complex increased E's interaction with receptors such as Axl and facilitated Zika virus endocytosis via clathrin. Rab5 retrograded transmission of Zika virus-containing E/TrkA endosomal signals to neuronal soma. Rab7 helped dissociation of E/TrkA in late acidic endosomes, and then E became mature after the NGF domain was cut. After membrane fusion with the endosome, the Zika virus was released into the neuron cell body. It showed only the immature E protein of Zika had NGF activity. The retrograde trafficking of endosomal signals (E/TrkA) similar to NGF/TrkA enabled Zika virus to infect neuronal cells. E's interference with the TrkA signal impaired neuronal cell growth and results in neuronal cell apoptosis.
Remote Integration and Coordination of Verification

We present jETI, a redesign of the Elec- tronic Tools Integration platform (ETI), that addresses the major issues and concerns accumulated over seven years of experience with tool providers, tool users and students. Most important was here the reduction of the effort for integrating and updating tools. jETI combines Eclipse and Web Services functionality with our Appli- cation Building Center (ABC), a framework supporting coordination based application development. This provides (1) lightweight remote component (tool) integration, (2) distributed component (tool) libraries, (3) a graphical coordination environment, and (4) a distributed execution environment. We illustrate these features by discussing their impact on the typical jETI user groups: the Tool Providers, the Standard Tool Users, and the Advanced Tool Users.
The rental system in Ghana’s low-income housing communities, challenges and adaptation strategies

Shelter is one of the fundamental needs of human survival aside food and clothing. However, provision of adequate housing to accommodate people in urban areas has been a challenge in developing countries, including Ghana. This has caused many Ghanaians, especially the low-income group, to resort to the rental sector for their housing needs. It is widely discussed in the literature that each city user is to be accorded the needed right to utilise what exists in the city, including decent accommodation. This article examines the strategies put in place by low-income house tenants to cope with the challenges of renting houses in the Wenchi Municipality, in order to rightly utilise urban housing. The study used a quantitative approach and a questionnaire survey to collect data from 245 tenant household heads. Purposive and systematic sampling techniques were used to select the respondents for the study. The data was analysed using SPSS. The study revealed that rental problems faced by tenants and adaptation measures developed to cope in cities and bigger towns are not different from what exists in the smaller towns. The study recommended that rent control should be strengthened to perform its duties in the rental sector well enough to protect the interest of the urban low-income renters.
Evolution of Neoproterozoic Shillong Basin, Meghalaya, NE India: implications of supercontinent break-up and amalgamation

Abstract Fragmentation and amalgamation of supercontinents play an important role in shaping our planet. The break-up of such a widely studied supercontinent, Rodinia, has been well documented from several parts of India, especially the northwestern and eastern sector. Interestingly, being located very close to the Proterozoic tectonic margin, northeastern India is expected to have had a significant role in Neoproterozoic geodynamics, but this aspect has still not been thoroughly studied. We therefore investigate a poorly studied NE–SW-trending Shillong Basin of Meghalaya from NE India, which preserves the stratigraphic record and structural evolution spanning the Neoproterozoic Era. The low-grade metasedimentary rocks of Shillong Basin unconformably overlie the high-grade Archean–Proterozoic basement and comprise a c. 4000-m-thick platform sedimentary rock succession. In this study, we divide this succession into three formations: lower Tarso, middle Ingsaw and upper Umlapher. A NW–SE-aligned compression event later caused the thrusting of these sedimentary rocks over the basement with a tectonic contact in the western margin, resulting in NE–SW-trending fold belts. The rift-controlled Shillong Basin shows a comparable Neoproterozoic evolution with the equivalent basins of peninsular India and eastern Gondwana. The recorded Neoproterozoic rift tectonics are likely associated with Rodinia’s break-up and continent dispersion, which finally ended with the oblique collision of India with Australia and the intrusion of Cambrian granitoids during the Pan-African Orogeny, contributing to the assembly of Gondwana. This contribution is the first to present a complete litho-structural evolution of the Shillong Basin in relation to regional and global geodynamic settings.
Literature Review about the Cooperation and Integration influencing Innovation

This paper aims to show by literature review how Cooperation and Integration act efficiently in order to promote Innovation. In this sense, the study investigates practices and tools used on improvement systems. Questions are raised about Cooperation and Integration related to strategic planning, organizational structure, standardization, benchmarking and technology resources. The methodology of the article is applied and qualitative one, exploratory bibliography techniques are used, including those related to the Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model, a framework for evaluating and improving enterprise supply-chain performance and management. The SCOR principles and variables are used to assess Cooperation and Integration in an organizational system. The research points the Innovation as a consequence of combining Cooperation and Integration within the organizational environment, generating thus competitive advantage and allowing the processes of reflection, awareness and maturity of managers, students, academics and other stakeholders.
Master-Slave Control Technology Research for Abdominal Minimally Invasive Surgery Robot

According to characteristics of abdominal minimally invasive robotic surgical tasks, based on performant industrial computer platform, an extended multifunctional hardware communicates with PCI-bus is designed, a master-slave control system is studied. In order to solve the problem of low responsivity caused by traditional inverse kinematics transformation method, a algorithm based on equivalent differential transformation suitable for real-time master-slave surgical robot control is put forward, and the accumulated error of the algorithm is eliminated by feedback mechanism. A fast trajectory planning method efficient in real-time master-slave surgical robot control is put forward to replace traditional trajectory prediction and off-line calculation. Finally, in order to avoid the impact on the accuracy of the system coursed by hand-trembling of operators, a digital filter is designed to help filtering the master manipulator signal.Copyright © 2010 by ASME