Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Compact Cylinder Luneburg Lens Antenna with Wide Scanning Range

The Luneburg lens antenna is a promising candidate for multibeam antennas. However, the Luneburg lens often suffer from the bulky size which limits their applications in practical wireless communication systems. Meanwhile Luneburg lens with compact size usually can only provide a relatively narrow scanning range. To deal with these problems, a new approach to achieve a compact size and wide scanning range simultaneously is proposed. This paper presents a compact cylinder Luneburg lens antenna with diameter of 29 mm, achieving a wide scanning range of ±90°. The lens is formed by 10 layers of dielectric cylindrical rings with air gaps, and the rectangular waveguide is chosen as the feed antenna. Simulated results show that the Luneburg lens antenna can operate over the whole Ka-band with the gain of 14.5-17 dBi. Besides, by arranging several feed antennas, a wide scanning range of ±90° can be attained.
Cost-effective test-bed for secure visible-light communication

Abstract. This study presents a real-time hardware implementation of a novel physical layer security algorithm developed for visible-light communications (VLCs) based on precoded spatial modulation (SM). The demonstration was carried out on a low-cost 70 cm × 40 cm × 40 cm miniature room model with four light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as a test-bed for conducting experiments in the field of VLC. The test-bed is a 10:1 shrunk replica of a conventional room and can be built with simple office supplies totaling <$10, excluding drive and collection optoelectronic components. While being cost-friendly, the test-bed also allows for (i) integrating optical components and (ii) carving desired window and door patterns with different cardboard color tones. Hence, the effects of reflections from different colored walls and the effect of external light sources can be observed on the performance of the secure VLC system. We successfully demonstrate the operation of the zero-forcing precoder and the SM on the built set up to provide robust and secure communication among the transmitting LEDs and the receivers, representing the legitimate user and the eavesdropper, for the first time in the literature. The secrecy capacity improvement is also noted, validating the proposed approach in realistic environments.
A 1-Bit Phase-Reconfigurable Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna with Wide Beamwidth

In this paper, a 1-bit phase-reconfigurable wide-angle magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna at Ku-band is proposed. By employing the PIN diodes, different feeding paths are selected to achieve the 1-bit reconfigurable phase (0°/180°). By introducing four additional via holes into the wide-angle ME dipole antenna, the half-power beam-width (HPBW) of the E-plane is further expanded. Simulated results show that such antenna has beamwidth of 174° in E-plane and 132° in H-plane at 14.4 GHz. The proposed antenna has the characteristics of reconfigurable phase, low profile, and widebeam, which can be applied in wide-angle scanning phased array.
The Integrated Nutrition Education on eHealth Intervention and Its Effectiveness on Improvement of Anthropometric Status and Behavioural Outcomes of Obese Adults: A Systematic Review

Background: The problem of overnutrition has become an epidemic issue at the global level. As one of the effective ways to prevent and overcome obesity, nutrition education is growing by utilizing eHealth media as a message delivery channel. Objectives: To identify studies that integrate nutrition education with eHealth-based technology in the prevention and control of obesity, behavioral theory and BCT (Behaviour Change Technique), their effectiveness in improving the anthropometric status and behavioral outcomes in obese adults. Discussion: Article searches were conducted using PubMed, Science Direct, ProQuest, and using manual search Google Scholar in reputable journals in the last ten years, and 17 English articles were obtained. Two forms of communication channels and activities were used to deliver nutrition education messages, namely interpersonal channels and internet-based mass media with or without assistance. Mobile applications were the most widely used as a messaging tool. The most frequently used theory was Social Cognitive Theory, and the majority of BCT were self-monitoring, goal setting, and feedback. The eHealth method (online) gave the same results on anthropometric status, physical activity, and treatment adherence compared to face-to-face (offline) by providing the same BCT-based obesity management intervention. Conclusions: Integrating nutrition education into eHealth media channels that emphasizes modification of eating behavior and physical activity has a significant effect on improving anthropometric status but was inconsistent on eating behavior and physical activity outcomes in adults with short-term intervention (≤3.5 months/ 14 weeks). This effect will give benefit the outcomes if followed by personal or group mentoring accompanied by well-design BCT.
What role for social sciences in innovation?: Re-assessing how scientific disciplines contribute to different industries

Knowledge transfer between industry and science is fundamental to innovation. There are important differences across scientific disciplines and sectors of activity in that, for instance, the financial and pharmaceutical sectors have different demands for science inputs. This paper reviews the data sources and associated methodologies available to measure different types of science-industry interaction. It applies these insights to re-assess the contributions of social sciences to industry and the disciplinary needs of the ICT sector. The paper finds that commonly used methodologies fail to shed light on a number of important industry-science interaction channels, and introduce biases in assessing connections. Using new evidence from labour force and university graduate surveys can help to some extent. The paper shows how these additional data allow to better capture the contributions of social scientists and the complexity of disciplinary demands of the digital economy. However, new data sources and methods should be further explored.
Treatment Strategy Research on a Squirrel-Cage Induction Motor with Broken Rotor Bar Faults

Squirrel-cage induction motors are increasingly displaying a broken rotor bar fault, which represents both a technical problem and an economic problem. After confirming that the broken rotor bars do not affect the normal start-up and basic working performance of the squirrel-cage induction motor, this paper focuses on the loss and efficiency changes of the motor brought about by the broken rotor bar fault. Using finite element simulation and experimentation, various losses like stator copper loss, iron loss, rotor copper loss, mechanical loss and additional losses, total loss and efficiency are obtained. By combining price and cost factors, the cost-effective measures that can be taken after the occurrence of different degrees of broken bars are evaluated here to provide guidance for correctly handling this problem.
THE OPTIMIZATION AT STUDYING OF ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY IN THE DIELECTRIC NANOCOMPOSITES WITH DISORDERED NANOTUBES

We study the electrical conductivity of a three-dimensional (3D) nanocomposite with incorporated random carbon nanotubes (CNT). A large length of the remote nanotubes generates a lot of intersections that induce a rather small percolating threshold of the global conductivity in this medium. We simulate such a system by random cylinders placed in a percolating parallelepiped with the use of Monte Carlo method. The conductivity of such a structure is associated with the critical phenomena, where the main transition parameter is defined by the value of the percolation threshold. We calculate the minimal percolating threshold and determine the functional form of the conductivity by the global optimization technique. Such an approach allows studying the details of the electrical conductivity in nanocomposites even at significant level of the percolating fluctuations.
THE EFFECT OF FEEDING PROBLEMS ON THE GROWTH OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH CEREBRAL PALSY

This cross sectional study determine the growth, feeding problems and nutrient intakes of cerebral palsy children and adolescents. A total of 153 subjects (68 females, 85 males) aged between 2 to 15 years old (mean 8.93+3.5) from community rehabilitation centers and spestic centers around Kuala Lumpur, Muar and Penang were recruited using convenience sampling method. 61% of subjects had feeding problems especially in the severe level group (72.9%) as compared to the mild (50.6%) [(χ 2 =7.890), p<0.05], whereby choking and swallowing were significantly associated with their severity levels [(χ 2 choking =7.183), p<0.05; (χ 2 swallowing =9.994), p<0.05]. Subjects with feeding problems have lower body weight, height, BMI, fold and MUAC (p<0.05 for all parameters). 60% of cerebral palsy subjects had poor nutritional status, feeding problems and the presence of feeding problems significantly affects their growth. Keywords : cerebral palsy; feeding problem; specific growth charts; gross motor classification system; wasting.
Visible-Light Active Flexible and Durable Photocatalytic Antibacterial Ethylene-co-vinyl Acetate—Ag/AgCl/α-Fe2O3 Composite Coating

When particles are mixed in polymer, particle surfaces become passivated by polymer matrix, leading to significantly reduced photocatalytic and, thus, also reduced antibacterial activity, as the catalytic particles become isolated from the outer environment and microorganisms reaching the surface. Herein, we demonstrate a facile and rapid approach for coating preparation at room temperature, yielding good adhesion of particles in combination with the particles’ interface location. Flexible ethylene-co-vinyl acetate Ag/AgCl/α-Fe2O3 composite coatings were prepared by the spin-coating method. The synthesized photocatalytically active coating surface exhibited a distinct and rapid inhibition of bacterial growth, with at least a 7-log reduction of gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus viability after 30 min of visible-light illumination. We also analyzed the shedding of the Ag-ions and reactive oxygen species production from the composite coating and showed that reactive oxygen species played the main role in the photocatalytic bacterial inactivation, destroying the bacteria cell as proven by the Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy.
P4DM: Measure the Link Delay with P4

Network management strategies depend on a timely and accurate knowledge of the network performance measures. Among these, one of the most relevant is the delay of the links, which unfortunately is not easy to measure with accuracy, especially when considering multi-hop paths. This is a classical networking problem, for which several solutions have been proposed. Nonetheless, we argue in this manuscript that there is still some room for improving accuracy and effectiveness in the measurement. This paper proposes a new solution based on the exploitation of the P4 data plane programming language. The basic idea is to handle lightweight probe packets that are forged ad-hoc at the edge of a link and processed at the other edge. Hosts generate the probe packets that are then exploited by the P4 programs in the switches to implement the measure. This approach provides an accurate and reliable measure of the link transit time, also effective in multi-hop links. In this latter case, we show that the measurement is not influenced much by the packet loss when the network is overloaded, thus providing more reliable results with respect to more conventional tools such as the classical ping utility. The manuscript explains the proposed P4 solution; then, it provides a comparison with several other approaches found in the literature, showing that outperform most of them, and finally show the behavior of the proposed methodology when facing a multi hop network path on a congested network to prove its robustness.
Water shortage risk in Taiwan’s Silicon Valley

ABSTRACT Hsinchu is Taiwan’s Silicon Valley and is an important part of the world’s technology industry, but there is a risk of water shortages in the area. Some of Hsinchu’s water supply is currently taken from neighboring areas. This study determines the risk to Hsinchu’s water supply and proposes solutions to water shortages. Five scenarios are used to determine the risk to the water supply. The simulation of the water resources system for this study uses historical daily flow data from 1969 to 2017 in the river basin. To reduce the risk of future water shortages in Hsinchu, the existing external support (up to 120,000 m3/day) must be maintained, and the Hsinchu area should be prioritized over the needs of the local agricultural industry in terms of water supply. This strategy would increase the water transfer volume of the Touqian River Basin by 36.83 million cubic meters per year. The results show that the water rights transfer program will address water shortages in Hsinchu. If the government’s agriculture, economic and water departments are assertive, this plan is feasible and will not be difficult to implement.
Self-Synchronized Class E Resonant Rectifier by Compensating Propagation Delay for Multi-MHz Switching Applications

In this article, a self-synchronized, high-frequency class E resonant rectifier is proposed to compensate for the synchronization signal mismatch due to the propagation delay. The synchronous rectification helps the power conversion system increase its efficiency by using active devices such as <sc>mosfets</sc> instead of diodes. Even with the <sc>mosfets</sc>, it is still challenging to generate an accurate synchronous signal from the input source in the multi-MHz wireless power transfer (WPT) systems due to the propagation delay from the integrated circuit (IC) components and the gate driver. In general, the propagation delay is more than 10 ns, a significant period in the multi-MHz operation. To mitigate the propagation delay, we present the self-synchronized rectifier, sensing the signal in the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C_{s}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{s}$</tex-math></inline-formula> network. The proposed design creates a proper gate signal to the active device in the rectifier by measuring the voltage of the node between <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C_{s}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{s}$</tex-math></inline-formula> resonant filter. In the experiments, we tested the driving method in the class E rectifier at an output power of 228 W and a switching frequency of 13.56 MHz. While the total propagation delay was 8 ns, including the gate-driver and comparator, the leading phase of the sensing voltage successfully offsets the driver’s propagation delay.
Tunable wideband frequency and switching polarisation reconfiguration antenna for wireless applications

In this article, a circular microstrip tunable wideband frequency and polarisation reconfigurable antenna are investigated. The wideband tunability is achieved by placing the four varactor diodes between circular microstrip patch and circular ring. The impedance bandwidth of 2.09-2.96 GHz (34.52%) is realised by tuning the capacitance value from 4.15 pF (0 V) to 0.94 pF (6 V). Both frequency tunability and polarisation reconfigurability are controlled in the antenna using the proposed cascaded branch line coupler feed network. The four single pole double throw and two dual in-line package switches are used in the feed network to control the tunable impedance bandwidth of the antenna over a wideband from 1.25 to 2.95 GHz. The vertical linear polarisation and horizontal linear polarisation (H-LP) are achieved by any one of the feed port excited in the antenna. Similarly, the right-hand circular polarisation and left-hand circular polarisation are realised by exciting both the feed ports in the antenna with±90° phase difference. The impedance bandwidth of proposed feed network is well matching with the tunable bandwidth of the patch antenna. Simulated and experimental verification results show good agreement.
Audit Committee Characteristics and Timeliness of Financial Reporting: Social Enterprises Evidence

There was vast research on the effectiveness of audit committees as part of the mechanisms in safeguarding shareholders’ interest and also ensuring effective financial reporting by companies. However, studies on the efficacy of audit committees as governance tools in a niche area relating to social enterprises namely cooperative societies in Malaysia is still scarce. Hence, this study intends to investigate the association between audit committee attributes namely audit committee expertise and experience, audit committee meeting frequency and audit committee size to the timeliness reporting compliance among Malaysian cooperative societies. Using qualitative research methods, 158 usable questionnaires from 59 cooperative societies were successfully gathered and analysed using SmartPLS 3 Version 3.2. 8. The results obtained provided support to the notion that there is a significant positive relationship between the frequency of meetings on the timeliness reporting compliance and a significant positive relationship between audit committee size on the timeliness reporting compliance. However, the notion expecting a significant positive relationship between the expertise of the audit committee on the timeliness reporting compliance proved to be insignificant. Conclusively, the study provides theoretical and practical support to both literature and practitioners on the importance of having optimum audit committee size and high frequency of meeting in ensuring the timeliness compliance of financial reporting of cooperative societies.
Online Orchestration of Collaborative Caching for Multi-Bitrate Videos in Edge Computing

In the traditional video streaming service provisioning paradigm, users typically request video contents through nearby Content Delivery Network (CDN) server(s). However, because of the uncertain wide area networks delays, the (remote) users usually suffer from long video streaming delay, which affects the quality of experience. Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) offers caching infrastructures in closer proximity to end users than conventional Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). Yet, for video caching, MEC's potential has not been fully unleashed as it overlooks the opportunities of collaborative caching and multi-bitrate video transcoding. In this paper, we model and formulate an Integer Linear Program (ILP) to capture the long-term cost minimization problem for caching videos at MEC, allowing joint exploitation of MEC with CDN and real-time video transcoding to satisfy arbitrary user demands. While this problem is intractable and couples the caching decisions for adjacent time slots, we design a polynomial-time online orchestration framework which first relaxes and carefully decomposes the problem into a series of subproblems solvable in each individual time slot and then converts the fractional solutions into integers without violating constraints. We have formally proved a parameterized-constant competitive ratio as the performance guarantee for our approach, and also conducted extensive evaluations to confirm its superior practical performance. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms, with 13.6% improvement on average in terms of total cost.
Thermal Induced Interface Mechanical Response Analysis of SMT Lead-Free Solder Joint and Its Adaptive Optimization

Surface mount technology (SMT) plays an important role in integrated circuits, but due to thermal stress alternation caused by temperature cycling, it tends to have thermo-mechanical reliability problems. At the same time, considering the environmental and health problems of lead (Pb)-based solders, the electronics industry has turned to lead-free solders, such as ternary alloy Sn-3Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305). As lead-free solders exhibit visco-plastic mechanical properties significantly affected by temperature, their thermo-mechanical reliability has received considerable attention. In this study, the interface delamination of an SMT solder joint using a SAC305 alloy under temperature cycling has been analyzed by the nonlinear finite element method. The results indicate that the highest contact pressure at the four corners of the termination/solder horizontal interface means that delamination is most likely to occur, followed by the y-direction side region of the solder/land interface and the top arc region of the termination/solder vertical interface. It should be noted that in order to keep the shape of the solder joint in the finite element model consistent with the actual situation after the reflow process, a minimum energy-based morphology evolution method has been incorporated into the established finite element model. Eventually, an Improved Efficient Global Optimization (IEGO) method was used to optimize the geometry of the SMT solder joint in order to reduce the contact pressure at critical points and critical regions. The optimization result shows that the contact pressure at the critical points and at the critical regions decreases significantly, which also means that the probability of thermal-induced delamination decreases.
Prevalence and Molecular Characterisation of Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase-Producing Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli, from Cattle Farm to Aquatic Environments

Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing bacteria are a major problem for public health worldwide because of limited treatment options. Currently, only limited information is available on ESBL-producing Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) in cattle farms and the surrounding aquatic environment. This study sought to track and characterise ESBL-producing STEC disseminating from a cattle farm into the water environment. Animal husbandry soil (HS), animal manure (AM), animal drinking water (ADW), and nearby river water (NRW) samples were collected from the cattle farm. Presumptive ESBL-producing STEC were isolated and identified using chromogenic media and mass spectrophotometry methods (MALDI-TOF-MS), respectively. The isolates were subjected to molecular analysis, and all confirmed ESBL-producing STEC isolates were serotyped for their O serogroups and assessed for antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and for the presence of selected virulence factors (VFs). A phylogenetic tree based on the multilocus sequences was constructed to determine the relatedness among isolates of ESBL-producing STEC. The highest prevalence of ESBL-producing STEC of 83.33% was observed in HS, followed by ADW with 75%, NRW with 68.75%, and the lowest was observed in AM with 64.58%. Out of 40 randomly selected isolates, 88% (n = 35) belonged to the serogroup O45 and 13% (n = 5) to the serogroup O145. The multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis revealed four different sequence types (STs), namely ST10, ST23, ST165, and ST117, and the predominant ST was found to be ST10. All 40 isolates carried sul1 (100%), while blaOXA, blaCTX-M, sul2, blaTEM, and qnrS genes were found in 98%, 93%, 90%, 83%, and 23% of the 40 isolates, respectively. For VFs, only stx2 was detected in ESBL-producing STEC isolates. The results of the present study indicated that a cattle environment is a potential reservoir of ESBL-producing STEC, which may disseminate into the aquatic environment through agricultural runoff, thus polluting water sources. Therefore, continual surveillance of ESBL-producing STEC non-O157 would be beneficial for controlling and preventing STEC-related illnesses originating from livestock environments.