Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multimodal nonlinear damping technique using spatial filtering

A nonlinear damping strategy using spatial filtering aiming at attenuating multimodal vibrations in a flexible structure is proposed and applied to a clamped–clamped steel beam. Based on the mode shapes, four piezoelectric patches are symmetrically or antisymmetrically attached on the surfaces of the beam close to the clamped ends. To suppress odd modes, two antisymmetrically attached patches are intermittently connected to a switching device consisting of a digital switch and an inductor. The electronic switch is kept open unless the sum of the two piezovoltages reaches an extremum value. When the switch is closed, the antisymmetrically bonded patches and the inductor constitute an oscillator. The switching time corresponds to half a period of this oscillator until the sum of two piezovoltages has been reversed. In a similar way, symmetrical patches based on the difference signal are used for controlling even modes. Experimental setup for controlling the first two vibration modes of a clamped–clamped beam is established to validate the analytical results based on finite element method. Corresponding results showed that the proposed damping strategy using spatial filtering exhibits better performance and allows an effective bimodal control method without significantly increasing the complexity and can be easily extended to multimode control.
A Robust Tensor-Based Submodule Clustering for Imaging Data Using l12 Regularization and Simultaneous Noise Recovery via Sparse and Low Rank Decomposition Approach

The massive generation of data, which includes images and videos, has made data management, analysis, information extraction difficult in recent years. To gather relevant information, this large amount of data needs to be grouped. Real-life data may be noise corrupted during data collection or transmission, and the majority of them are unlabeled, allowing for the use of robust unsupervised clustering techniques. Traditional clustering techniques, which vectorize the images, are unable to keep the geometrical structure of the images. Hence, a robust tensor-based submodule clustering method based on l12 regularization with improved clustering capability is formulated. The l12 induced tensor nuclear norm (TNN), integrated into the proposed method, offers better low rankness while retaining the self-expressiveness property of submodules. Unlike existing methods, the proposed method employs a simultaneous noise removal technique by twisting the lateral image slices of the input data tensor into frontal slices and eliminates the noise content in each image, using the principles of the sparse and low rank decomposition technique. Experiments are carried out over three datasets with varying amounts of sparse, Gaussian and salt and pepper noise. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over the existing state-of-the-art methods.
Effect of Protein Diet on Growth Performance and Body Composition of Labeo rohita Reared in Glass Tank

Fish is used as a great source of food and the quality of its meat can be indicated by fat and protein contents as well as low quantity of water in fish meat. Therefore, the present study was performed for improvement in weight, feed-conversion ratio, protein-efficiency ratio, and growth. The experiment was performed at commercial level in field (pond) and the influence of fish meal protein on growth of Labeo rohita was investigated in 60 days culture trials. 90 fingerlings (Size: 4.97 to 6.04; Weight: 4.15 to 4.20) were maintained in well aerated 280 L three glass tanks in triplicate. These glass tanks were named as T1, T2 and T3. T1 was consisted of 30% crude protein with control diet containing proteins, fats vitamins and fibres, T2 consisted of 35% protein with control diet, while T3 consisted of only control diet (rice polish). The fish were fed 4% percent of their body weight twice a day at twelve hours interval for 60 days. There was a significant increase (p<0.05) in body weight, feed-conversion ratio, protein-efficiency ratio, and gross fish production of fish having 35% fish meal protein with control diet (T2) when compared with 30% fish meal protein with control diet T1 and control diet T3. These findings suggest that 35% fishmeal protein appear to be sufficient for obtaining optimum growth in fish.
On - line monitoring of dairy products with the use of NIR technology

The feasibility of the use of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and multivariate calibration methods for the measurement of multiple constituents of complex mixtures has been shown for a variety of agricultural and food related products. This report presents the use of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for on-line and at-line monitoring of dairy related products, such as milk, powder milk, butter, cheese, etc. The measurement includes parameters such as fat, protein, solids, salt, moisture, etc.
Stability and control of the nonlinear system for tractor with N trailer in the presence of slip

In many engineering systems, it is not enough to merge the system paths to zero at infinite time, but the speed of moving these paths to zero is very important. Estimating this speed can be done using exponential functions. This concept is used in exponential stability definition. The purpose of this paper is to design a controller for problem inputs and implement a system of a car with N to a trailer connected to it. This approach is based on the analysis of the Lyapunov stability method. In the given problem, the purpose of conducting and converging the system considering the slip phenomenon as a primitive uncertainty in the system is toward the desired point. Since the trailer tractor system has limitation constraints in the modeling structure, it is difficult to guarantee the stability of a non-holonomic system. Because no controller designed by the control feedback method can continuously and stable ensure the convergence of the system. If this possibility almost dynamic errors, even adaptive controls do not versatile with the operation of the Lyapunov function, especially in the presence of uncertainties, which is a very important factor in system instability, which requires the development of controllers designed to deal with these disturbances. In the simulated results, this paper not only examines the convergence properties, but also shows the ability to control the system by designing a controller in the presence of a slip phenomenon to strengthen the system in the stability debate.
Re-democratization in Chile: Is the “New” Democracy Better than the “Old”?

ABSTRACT Much of the literature on democratic transitions has focused on the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, but few studies have examined how democracies that re-emerged compare to those that existed in the past. Examining the Chilean case, this study explores the degree to which the “new” democracy has recovered its former strength, posing a similar question for other Latin American countries. It considers the conceptualization of quality of democracy that underpins this controversy and explores the methodological challenges of intertemporal comparison, which may be relevant for other cases that have experienced periods of authoritarian rule and process of re-democratization. We find that, overall, democracy in the contemporary period is more robust. Yet, to an important extent, indices’ different understandings of the concept of the quality of democracy are relevant in terms of the degree to which they emphasize procedural aspects versus democratic outcomes.
Importance of Infiltration Rates for Fate and Transport of Benzene in High-Tiered Risk-Based Assessment Considering Korean Site-Specific Factors at Contaminated Sites

Widely used conservative approaches for risk-based assessments of the subsurface transport processes have been calculated using simple analytical equations or general default values. Higher-tier risk assessment of contaminated sites requires the numerical models or additional site-specific values for input parameters. Previous studies have focused on the development of sophisticated models fit into risk-based frameworks. Our study mainly aims to explore the applicability of site-specific parameters and to modify the risk-based fate and transport model according to the types of the site-specific parameters. To apply the modified fate and transport equation and the site-specific default infiltration range, this study assessed the source depletion, leachate concentrations, and exposure concentration of benzene, which is a representative organic contaminant. The numerical models consist of two continuous processes, the fate and transport of contaminants from (1) the soil to the groundwater table in the vadose zone and subsequently (2) from the groundwater table to exposure wells in the saturated zone. Spatially varied Korean domestic recharge data were successfully incorporated into site-specific infiltration parameters in the models. The numerical simulation results were expressed as transient time series of concentrations over time. Results presented the narrow range of predicted concentrations at the groundwater table when site-specific infiltration was applied, and the dilution–attenuation factors for the unsaturated zone (DAFunsat) were derived based on the prediction. When a contaminant travels to the longest path length of 10 m with a source depth of 1 m in the vadoze zone, the simulated DAFunsat ranged from 3 to 4. The highest DAFunsat simulation results are close to 1 when contaminants travel to a source depth of 5 m and the shortest path length of 1 m. In the saturated aquifer below the contaminated sites, the variation in exposure concentration with time at monitoring wells is detected differently depending on the depth of the saturated zone.
Analysis of Condolence Response to the Death of Dr. John Pombe 
Joseph Magufuli on Facebook

This study investigated on condolence comments posted on Facebook pages in response to the death of the fifth president of the United Republic of Tanzania, Dr. John Pombe Joseph Magufuli. A total of 200 comments were extracted from famous Facebook accounts. The findings revealed seven strategies of giving condolences from the most frequently used to the less frequently used: asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, commenting on the deceased, expressing shock and grief, expressing sympathy, realizing death as a natural part of life, expressing skepticisms and reciting some verses from Holy books like the Bible and Quran. The choice of these strategies was related to respondents’ belief in either Christian or Islamic religion, the status of the deceased before death and nature and contribution offered by the deceased to other people’s life before his death. It is recommended that we should significantly contribute to other people’s life in one way or another so that we can be remembered here on earth at the end of our life like the way Magufuli was and is still remembered because of his good deeds and the significant contributions he offered to other people’s life before his death.
Effects of Physical Exercise on Prosocial Behavior of Junior High School Students

Objective: This study aims to investigate whether physical activity can promote students’ prosocial behavior by analyzing the relationship between sports participation and the prosocial behavior of junior high school students. Methods: Based on the 2014–2015 China education panel survey (CEPS), the relationship between regular athletic sports and prosocial behavior was evaluated among eighth-grade students by ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation and propensity score matching (PSM) and the relationship between OLS and PSM was evaluated by Rosenbaum’s bounds test for a robustness test; the observations were analyzed for heterogeneity to identify those who benefit more from sports. Results: The OLS results showed that sporting behavior increased prosocial behavior scores by 4%, and the PSM results showed that regular physical exercise increased students’ prosocial behavior tendencies by over 0.2 standard deviations from the mean prosocial behavior score (standardized). According to the Rosenbaum’s bounds test, the estimates were robust and reliable, and the results of the heterogeneity analysis showed that with males and students whose fathers had more than 9 years of education, the students showed more significant improvements in prosocial behavior. Conclusion: Physical activity has a significant positive effect on students’ prosocial behavior, and gender and the father’s education are significantly related to prosocial behavior.
Multiple switching-mode series-resonant half-bridge converter for a wide load range

In this article, a multiple switching-mode series-resonant half-bridge (SRHB) dc–dc converter is presented. The proposed multiple switching scheme changes switching modes to improve power efficiency for a wide output range, especially in the low output power range. This multiple switching scheme is composed of three different switching modes depending on the output power. The prototype was implemented using a single-chip microcontroller. With the multiple switching mode, high efficiency is achieved over an entire output power region. Experimental results on a 1.2 kW prototype are presented to confirm the performance of the proposed multiple switching scheme for an SRHB converter.
CSEVP: A Collaborative, Secure, and Efficient Content Validation Protection Framework for Information Centric Networking

As a new architecture of Internet infrastructure, Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is mainly designed to effectively handle the rapidly increasing user demand for content delivery through in-network caching. While facilitating the dissemination of content to users and making better use of the network resources, ICN is also vulnerable in that attackers can inject poisoned content into the network and isolate users from valid content sources. The introduction of signature verification in each router can effectively prevent this attack, but it also introduces great computation overhead. Existing schemes in ICN reduce verification overhead from a single routing perspective but do not consider integrating resources within ICN for collaborative content authentication and cyber self-defense. In this paper, we propose a collaborative, secure, and efficient content validation protection framework, named CSEVP, to implement a multi-router collaborative defense mechanism for ICN. On the one hand, we conduct content verification by probabilistically choosing one router involved in the transmission path to offload the computation overhead of content verification from a single router to multiple ones. On the other hand, we adopt bloom filters for routers to record and share verification results to further facilitate a more efficient content validity verification. The security and efficiency analysis shows that our proposed CSEVP can achieve efficient content validity verification among multiple routers with acceptable low communication and storage overhead.
Prototype Model for Build-Operate-Transfer Risk Assessment

The build-operate-transfer ~BOT! approach for project delivery, where the private sector has to finance, design, build, operate, and maintain the facility and then transfer it to the government after a specified concession period, is now gaining widespread popularity in developing countries. Compared with conventional project delivery methods, BOT sponsors expose themselves to a high risk, so that special attention must be paid to analyzing and managing risks. The identification, analysis, and allocation of various types of risks are an important aspect for the validation of privately promoted infrastructure projects. The BOT risk model presented in this paper is a prototype evaluation model that provides a logical, reliable, and consistent procedure for assessing the BOT project risk. The proposed model introduced the BOT risk index ~F! , which relied on the actual performance of eight main BOT risk areas. Two different modeling approaches were used in constructing this index: a new developed and an adapted Dias and Ioannou model. Not only can this index be used for BOT projects' risk evaluation, but also for ranking them to select the lowest risk project as well.
A New Concept of a Large-Workspace Small-Size Bending Bellow Actuator

Ask a mechanical designer, especially those dealing with robotics, what are the two main limitations when designing a new autonomous small mechanism. The answer will most likely be the need for better small-size actuation devices and better and smaller energy sources. Indeed, these two factors impose most of the constraints to designers, reflected in the size of the device, the forces it can apply, its achievable workspace, and the time duration it can work when not connected to a permanent energy source. Usually these parameters are in conflict with each other, that is, a small motor has somewhat low output torque and power, while a motor that can generate a large amount of torque is usually large in size and consumes a lot of power. Consequently, every mechanism designer is eager to design a small actuator that generates a large amount of torque while it simultaneously consumes a reasonable amount of energy. This report explains our efforts in developing an inflatable actuator having a small size yet can apply relatively large torque where at the same time can cover a large workspace. The inflatable actuator is shaped as a bellow which is composed of two materials with different shear modulus—one has high elasticity and the other low. By applying pressure inside the bellow, each of the materials tends to deform according to Hooke’s law, resulting in the bending effect due to the elongation differences between the two materials which are constrained to deform simultaneously. We describe the mechanical concept of the bellow actuator; we also provide an analytical model for the bellow deformation. Experimental results for verification of the model are also presented. © 2008 ASME
Association Between Different Versions of the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease Score and Contrast-Associated Acute Kidney Injury in Patients Undergoing Elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention.

BACKGROUND Pre-procedure liver dysfunction was associated with acute kidney injury after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The aim of this study is to assess and compare the predictive value of different liver function scoring systems for contrast-associated acute kidney injury (CA-AKI) in patients undergoing elective PCI.Methods and Results:A total of 5,569 patients were retrospectively enrolled. The model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) including albumin (MELD-Albumin) score (AUC=0.661) had the strongest predictive value in comparison to the MELD score (AUC=0.627), the MELD excluding the international normalized ratio (MELD-XI) score (AUC=0.560), and the MELD including sodium (MELD-Na) score (AUC=0.652). In the fully adjusted logistic regression model, the MELD-Albumin score and the MELD-Na score were independently associated with CA-AKI regardless of whether they were treated as continuous or categorical variables; however, this was not the case for the MELD score and the MELD-XI score. Furthermore, the addition of the MELD-Albumin score significantly improved the reclassification beyond the fully adjusted logistic regression model. The study further explored the association between different versions of the MELD score and CA-AKI using restricted cubic splines and found a linear relationship between the MELD-Albumin score and the risk of CA-AKI. CONCLUSIONS The MELD-Albumin score had the highest predictive value for CA-AKI in patients undergoing elective PCI. The addition of the MELD-Albumin score to the existing risk prediction model significantly improved the reclassification for CA-AKI.
The Neglected Contribution of Streptomycin to the Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Problem

The airborne pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis is responsible for a present major public health problem worsened by the emergence of drug resistance. M. tuberculosis has acquired and developed streptomycin (STR) resistance mechanisms that have been maintained and transmitted in the population over the last decades. Indeed, STR resistant mutations are frequently identified across the main M. tuberculosis lineages that cause tuberculosis outbreaks worldwide. The spread of STR resistance is likely related to the low impact of the most frequent underlying mutations on the fitness of the bacteria. The withdrawal of STR from the first-line treatment of tuberculosis potentially lowered the importance of studying STR resistance. However, the prevalence of STR resistance remains very high, could be underestimated by current genotypic methods, and was found in outbreaks of multi-drug (MDR) and extensively drug (XDR) strains in different geographic regions. Therefore, the contribution of STR resistance to the problem of tuberculosis drug resistance should not be neglected. Here, we review the impact of STR resistance and detail well-known and novel candidate STR resistance mechanisms, genes, and mutations. In addition, we aim to provide insights into the possible role of STR resistance in the development of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
Current drive methods to extend the range of travel of electrostatic microactuators beyond the voltage pull-in point

When a voltage source drives an electrostatic parallel plate actuator, the well-known pull-in instability limits the range of displacement to 1/3 of the gap. Different strategies have been reported to overcome this limitation. More recently, experimental results have been presented using a capacitor in series with the actuator. Nevertheless, this strategy requires higher voltage than the pull-in voltage value to achieve full range of travel. In order to reduce the operating voltage, a switched-capacitor configuration has been also proposed. In this paper, two different approaches are introduced to control charge in the actuator by means of current driving. Theoretical equations derived for each method show that full range of travel can be achieved without voltage penalty. Both approaches are based on the use of current pulses injecting the required amount of charge to fix the position of the movable plate. Experimental measurements, showing that displacement beyond the pull-in point can be achieved, are in good agreement with the theoretical and the predicted simulated behavior.
A Cognitive-Grammatical Study of “我家住NL” and “我家住在NL”

This paper is based on usage-based theory in cognitive grammar. Usage-based theory is proposed by Tomasello. Usage-event-based models of language focus on the specific communicative activities by which people learn and use language. We found that the NL in the phrase “ 我家住 NL” is generally smaller in scope and refers to a more ambiguous place, while NL can also refer to time. In contrast, the NL in “ 我家住在 NL” can refer to both larger and smaller locations, and the NL in this construction can also refer to a detailed location, which means that “ 我家住在 NL” is more commonly used when expressing a detailed address.