Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SAU-RFC hand: a novel self-adaptive underactuated robot hand with rigid-flexible coupling fingers

Abstract In this paper, a novel self-adaptive underactuated robot hand with rigid-flexible coupling fingers (SAU-RFC hand) is proposed. The seven degrees of freedom (DOFs) SAU-RFC hand is driven by four servomotors, consists of three fingers, including two side-turning (ST) fingers and one non-side-turning finger. Specially, the ST fingers can perform synchronous reverse rotation laterally with each other. Each finger with three joints and two DOFs introduces a flexible structure, and the inner part of the proximal phalanx that makes most of the contact with the object is replaced by a flexible belt. The fingers can generate flexion/extension under the pull of the flexible belt, and the middle and distal phalanxes are mechanically coupled through a four-bar linkage. In particular, the flexible belt in the inner direction of the finger will deform, while it will not deform in the outer direction since the outer is a rigid structure. The flexible belt not only plays the role of transmitting power but also has the effect of uniformizing the contact force. Due to the rigid-flexible finger structure, the developed robot hand has a higher self-adaptive grasping ability for objects with different shapes, sizes, and hardness. In addition, the kinematic and kinetic analyses of SAU-RFC hand are performed. A contact force distribution model is established for the flexible belt, which demonstrates its effect of promoting uniform force distribution theoretically. In the end, experiments are conducted on different objects to verify the performance of SAU-RFC hand.
Barriers facing Bangladeshi Adolescents in Learning about Sexual and Reproductive Health

This paper looks into the barriers faced by Bangladeshi adolescents in learning about sexual and reproductive health. A mixed method approach was used to generate data gathered from the two study sites named Dhormasor Mohisa Trimukhi Uchho Bidalay and the Jaforgonj High School located in the Rangpur district, the northern part of Bangladesh. Thematic analysis was employed to develop themes, priori and other memos. Our findings demonstrate several key issues, all of which negatively impact adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health (SRHR) education. First, there is the lack of teacher training and experience in SRHR class lectures, as well as parental ignorance. Second, there are social stigmas, social taboos and cultural rigidity. Third, there are significant institutional barriers like the lack of textbook information, combined classes and age discrepancies between teachers and students. Fourth, male teachers often give SRHR lectures to female students, and female teachers give SRHR lectures to males. Fifth, misuse of appropriate technology and sometimes its lack of access can also prevent adolescents obtaining correct information about SRHR. This study contributes to the field of gender and public health.
Global variations in regional degradation rates since the Last Glacial Maximum mapped through time and space

Abstract Topographic diffusivity is an often-used metric of regolith mobility. It accounts for the collective effects of climate, substrate, fauna, flora, and other factors on hillslope degradation and is used to model natural lowering in landscapes. The present study assesses where temporal variations in diffusivity derived from known past climate fluctuations have occurred. We also determine where significant differences might result when modeling landscape degradation if a long-term constant diffusivity is applied instead of diffusivity that varies through time. A space-for-time substitution approach was implemented. Through use of a transfer function that correlates current diffusivities with air temperatures, we mapped the relative diffusivities globally at a 500 yr temporal resolution for 21 ka. The analyses spanned all land areas from the tropics to the poles with a spatial resolution of 3.70° latitude by 3.75° longitude using paleo-temperature data from the TraCE-21ka global paleoclimate model. The results show Arctic and subarctic regions with the highest relative maximum diffusivities and largest variance from current values. The results suggest strong surficial dynamics in the Arctic and subarctic regions driven by local and spatially transient deglaciation and long-term stability in the tropics that correlates with relatively stable climate there through the past 21 ka.
Differential Vaginal Microbiota Profiling in Lactic-Acid-Producing Bacteria between Infertile Women with and without Chronic Endometritis

Purpose: Chronic endometritis (CE) is an infectious and inflammatory disorder associated with infertility of unknown etiology, repeated implantation failure, and recurrent pregnancy loss. In the current clinical practice, intrauterine interventions such as endometrial biopsy/histopathologic examinations and/or hysteroscopy are required for the diagnosis of CE. In this study, we analyzed the microbiota in vaginal secretions (VS) as a potential prediction tool for CE in infertile women. Methods: Using next-generation sequencing analysis, we compared the VS and endometrial fluid (EF) microbiota in infertile women with (n = 20) or without CE (n = 103). Results: The detection rate of Streptococcus and Enterococcus as well as the bacterial abundance of Atopobium and Bifidobacterium in the VS microbiota was significantly lower in the CE group than in the non-CE group. Meanwhile, the detection rate and bacterial abundance of Lactobacillus in the EF and VS microbiota were at similar levels between the two groups. Conclusion: These findings suggest that VS microbiota in infertile women with CE is characterized by the reduction in Bifidobacterium and lactic-acid-producing bacteria other than Lactobacillus. Our results hold promise for the prediction of CE, not by somewhat interventional intrauterine procedures, but by less invasive VS sampling. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: UMIN000029449 (registration date 6 October 2017).
Development of Intensity-Duration Frequency Curves for Koforidua City in Ghana

The estimation of rainfall intensity for a particular frequency is normally required for design of hydraulic and water resources engineering control structures. The main objective of this paper was to develop IDF curves for Koforidua based on recent rainfall information. Annual Maximum Rainfall depths of various durations over twenty-nine yearsfor Koforidua were obtained from the Ghana Meteorological Services in Accra. Linear regression analysis was used to make the data consistent which allowed for filling in the gaps where data were missing. The data set obtained was then subjected to frequency analysisto determine the distribution which best characterize the data set. The annual maximum series were found to be drawn from the Gumbel distribution whose parameters were computed by fitting the statistics to the data. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test proves the appropriateness of the fitting. The trend followed the normal Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency-curves. By using easy fit software, Gumbel Extreme type one was found to be the best distribution for the analysis. The results shown that for shorter durations (12 min and 24 min), the IDF Curves gave higher intensities for the same return period whiles for longer durations (42min, 1 hr, 2hr, 3hr, 6hr, 12hr and 24 hr), the IDF Curves gave low intensities for the same return period.The Intensity- Duration-Frequency-Curves obtained for the study area has a general characteristic form of Intensity-Duration-Frequency-Curves. This study could be of significance academic value and useful to improve the hydraulic and water resources engineering.
Assessment of sociodemographic indicators of Tobacco expenditure: an application of the censored regression model

ABSTRACT Background The high level of tobacco use in Turkey and across the world, causes a high number of health problems. This study explores the indicators of tobacco expenditure of households, the smallest unit of a society. In this context, the sociodemographic factors affecting household tobacco use were examined, and recommendations are made to reduce tobacco product impact in terms of users and those who are exposed to smoke. Methods This study uses the dataset acquired from the Household Budget Survey. The factors affecting household expenditure on tobacco products were evaluated using the Tobit model. Results Gender, age, educational status, marital status, income level, and social variables were found to be effective indicators of tobacco product expenditure. Conclusion The study aims to bring the following issues to the attention of decision-makers and policymakers: Priority should be given to tobacco control programs, particularly for young, single, male, and lowly educated individuals; raise tobacco taxes in a way that does not adversely affect the financial situation of low-income smokers who use such products; and encourage the implementation of evidence-based smoking cessation methods.
Remaining useful life prediction based on the mixed effects model with mixture prior distribution

ABSTRACT Modern engineering systems are gradually becoming more reliable and premature failure has become quite rare. As a result, degradation signal data used for prognosis are often imbalanced as most units are reliable and only few tend to fail at early stages of their life cycle. Such imbalanced data may hinder accurate Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction especially in terms of detecting premature failures as early as possible. This aspect is detrimental for developing cost-effective condition-based maintenance strategies. In this article, we propose a degradation signal–based RUL prediction method to address the imbalance issue in the data. The proposed method introduces a mixture prior distribution to capture the characteristics of different groups within the same population and provides an efficient and effective online prediction method for the in-service unit under monitoring. The advantageous features of the proposed method are demonstrated through a numerical study as well as a case study with real-world data in the application to the RUL prediction of automotive lead–acid batteries.
Iterative surface construction for blind deflectometry

Freeform optics provide excellent performance for a wide variety of applications. However, obtaining an accurate freeform surface measurement is highly challenging due to its large aspheric/freeform departure. It has been proven that SCOTS (Software Configurable Optical Test System), an advanced deflectometry system developed at the University of Arizona, can measure the departure of a freeform surface from the desired shape with nanometer accuracy. Here, a new data processing technique was used to measure a freeform surface without any prior knowledge of the shape of the surface. Knowing only the geometry of one point on the test surface, this method can take a blind measurement of a freeform surface and arrive at the true surface through iterative construction.
Evaluation of the biodynamic response of the hand–arm system and hand-tool designs: a brief review

Hand-operated tools transmit a high magnitude of vibration exposure to the hand–arm system that causes occupational diseases. The health effects caused in various countries for the past years due to usage of hand tools are necessary to identify the occupational disorders. Researchers have conducted various studies on biological effects, hand-transmitted vibration exposure and biodynamic responses throughout the years. This article goes over each of these studies in detail, as well as identifying areas where more research is needed. The majority of studies deal with the following topics: general guidelines for hand-transmitted vibrations; assessment techniques of vibration exposure; hand-tool evaluation methods; influence of hand-tool design to overcome the biomechanical effects; and finite element modelling for quantifying vibration exposure. In response to this, understanding the biodynamic behaviour of the hand–arm system is useful for better ergonomic intervention in hand tools to reduce fatigue and increase comfort.
Phytochemical Analysis and Antioxidant Activity of Avocado Pear Peel (Persea americana) Extract

This study evaluated the phytochemicals and antioxidant activity in Persea americana peel it also assessed the efficiency of Persea americana peel (Avocado Pear fruit peel) waste in different in vitro activities in order to explore the possibility of utilizing waste as a value-added product in various applications. Quantitative phytochemical analysis was performed. Quantitative phytochemical screening confirmed the presence of alkaloids (56.5063 ug/ml), flavonoids (245.6875 ug/ml), phenols (15.65 ug/ml), tannins (27.03 ug/ml) phytate (9.68 ug/ml), oxalate (13.65%), saponin (22.73 ug/ml). For antioxidant activity, the peels of fruit sample of Persea americana were prepared in ethanol solution. The vitamin content of the peel extract was assayed using calorimetric and titration methods while the antioxidant enzyme assay was determined by spectrophotometric method. The antioxidant enzyme assay was also determined for catalase, Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase. The Vitamins A, C and E were found to be present, with Vitamin A being the highest in concentration. Copper, Zinc, Iron and manganese were also present in the peel extract. The result from this study indicates that the peel extract of Persea americana possess antioxidant properties and could serve as free radical scavenger or inhibitor.
Novel Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls by Substituting Wheat Flour with Resistant Starch, Lupine and Flaxseed Flour

Celiac disease (CD) is an immunological mediated disorder that occurs to genetically susceptible individuals who suffer from gluten consumption. Therefore, the most effective treatment of CD is a life-long gluten-free diet. This study aimed to produce a nutritious gluten-free cinnamon roll, where resistant starch and lupine flour were used instead of wheat flour, in addition to 10% flaxseed flour and a fixed amount of hydrocolloid (1% xanthan gum). Eight different gluten-free cinnamon roll treatments (T1–T8) were produced with different ratios of resistant starch and lupine flour according to the following percentages (85:5, 80:10, 75:15, 70:20, 65:25, 60:30, 55:35 and 50:40, respectively). The proximate analysis, physical properties, color measurements and sensory evaluation of all cinnamon roll treatments and flours were determined. It was found that lupine and flaxseed flours in all different treatments had significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher levels of ash, protein, lipid and crude fiber compared to wheat flour treatment (control treatment). However, carbohydrate levels were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher in control treatment compared with treatments 3–8. Gluten-free cinnamon rolls had significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids (oleic acid, linoleic acid and linolenic acid) than control. Further, there were significant differences in lightness (L*), redness (a*) and yellowness (b*) color values between the gluten-free and control treatments. The control cinnamon roll significantly (p ≤ 0.05) had the highest level of lightness and the lowest level of redness. The sensory evaluation obtained by consumer evaluation indicated that control cinnamon rolls significantly (p ≤ 0.05) received the highest score in overall impression, overall flavor, hardness and aftertaste. However, treatment 5 significantly (p ≤ 0.05) received the highest score in all the sensory scores in comparison with other gluten-free treatments. It is possible to develop a quality gluten-free cinnamon roll with respect to nutritional value manifested in higher levels of protein, fibers, unsaturated acids and prebiotics with acceptable sensory attributes.
Hop-Count Aware Wireless Body Area Network for Efficient Data Transmission

This work focuses on the clustering in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Recently, it was found that less attention was given to Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) clustering in WBAN. Past works on LoS clustering WBAN consider the problem of enhancing the network throughput and end-to-end delay of the network. However, the problem of necessary hop count for packet transmission has not been considered. The non-consideration of necessary nodes hop count degrades the performance of cluster-based WBAN as throughput of the network is reduced in addition to high end-to-end delay. This work develops a hop count aware WBAN for enhancing the performance of body nodes called improved Dual Sink Approach using Clustering in Body Area Network (iDSCB). The simulation results depicted that the hop distance criterion of iDCSB improved the performance of WBAN in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput by 3.16% and 6.59%, respectively.
Role and Regulation of Pif1 Family Helicases at the Replication Fork

Pif1 helicases are a multifunctional family of DNA helicases that are important for many aspects of genomic stability in the nucleus and mitochondria. Pif1 helicases are conserved from bacteria to humans. Pif1 helicases play multiple roles at the replication fork, including promoting replication through many barriers such as G-quadruplex DNA, the rDNA replication fork barrier, tRNA genes, and R-loops. Pif1 helicases also regulate telomerase and promote replication termination, Okazaki fragment maturation, and break-induced replication. This review highlights many of the roles and regulations of Pif1 at the replication fork that promote cellular health and viability.
Low-Frequency Low-Reflection Bidirectional Sound Insulation Tunnel with Ultrathin Lossy Metasurfaces

We report both numerical and experimental constructions of a tunnel structure with low-frequency low-reflection bidirectional sound insulation (BSI). The designed tunnel was constructed from a pair of lossy acoustic metasurfaces (AMs), which consists of six ultrathin coiled unit cells, attached on both sides. Based on the generalized Snell′s law and phase modulations for both AMs, the tunnel with the low-frequency BSI was constructed based on sound reflections and acoustic blind areas created by the AMs. The obtained transmittances were almost the same for sound incidences from both sides and were lower than −10 dB in the range 337–356 Hz. The simulated and measured results agreed well with each other. Additionally, we show that the low-reflection characteristic of the tunnel can be obtained simultaneously by thermoviscous energy loss in coiled channels of the unit cells. Finally, an interesting application of the designed tunnel in an open-window structure with low-frequency low-reflection BSI is further simulated in detail. The proposed tunnel based on the ultrathin lossy AMs has the advantages of ultrathin thickness (about λ/35), low-frequency low-reflection BSI, and high-performance ventilation, which may have potential applications in architectural acoustics and noise control.
A Game-Theoretic Approach for Cost-Effective Multicast Routing in the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have enabled communications in resource-limited computing environments. Sensor nodes from the multiple IoT devices collectively work for many applications, such as disaster management, border security management, smart farming, smart cities, etc. In such applications, the data from a single source node is often destined for multiple nodes. Multicast communication is preferred over unicast or broadcast communication for such applications, as multicast uses fewer resources. Efficient construction of the multicast tree leads to cost-effective multicast transmission. This article introduces a path selection game (PSGame), a game-theoretic approach that formulates the construction problem of the least-cost multicast tree as a potential game. Our proposed path selection algorithm (PSA) quickly converges to the pure Nash equilibrium (PNE), bringing the least cost multicast tree. Our findings show that the overhead incurred in terms of energy consumption and delay is minimal in the proposed algorithm compared to other mechanisms. The theoretical analysis proves that the proposed algorithm quickly converges to PNE in $O(n.r_{\max })$ steps. It also proves that the cost ratio between the proposed solution and the centralized optimum will be bounded by $\log (n)$ . The numerical analysis substantiates the theoretical analysis.
CAE “FOCUS” for modelling and simulating electron optics systems: development and application

Electron optics is a theoretical base of scientific instrument engineering. Mathematical simulation of occurring processes is a base for contemporary design of complicated devices of the electron optics. Problems of the numerical mathematical simulation are effectively solved by CAE system means. CAE “FOCUS” developed by the authors includes fast and accurate methods: boundary element method (BEM) for the electric field calculation, Runge-Kutta- Fieghlberg method for the charged particle trajectory computation controlling an accuracy of calculations, original methods for search of terms for the angular and time-of-flight focusing. CAE “FOCUS” is organized as a collection of modules each of which solves an independent (sub) task. A range of physical and analytical devices, in particular a microfocus X-ray tube of high power, has been developed using this soft.
Assessing Quality of Control in Tactile Cyber–Physical Systems

We evolve a methodology and define a metric to evaluate Tactile Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS). Towards this goal, we use the step response analysis, a well-known control-theoretic method. The adoption includes replacing the human operator (or master) with a controller with known characteristics and analyzing its response to slave side step disturbances. The resulting step response curves demonstrate that the Quality of Control (QoC) metric is sensitive to control loop instabilities and serves as a good indicator of potential factors that contribute to operator-side cybersickness. Through experiments, we demonstrate how QoC accounts for network overheads such as the link latency and jitter and non-networking overheads such as the testbed settings and robot performances in a TCPS. We show that there is a one-to-one correlation between QoC and end-to-end latency, jitter, and packet drops of a TCPS implementation. We show through experiments how QoC can be used to estimate positional errors in tactile-visual control applications. Since higher positional errors can result in poor task performance, estimating them is useful in developing a better-performing TCPS. We also evaluate a TCPS using Fitts’ test and compare its results with QoC. We show that QoC is useful in distinguishing TCPS with differences in their specifications that are not detectable using Fitts’ test.