Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modifications of Wound Dressings with Bioactive Agents to Achieve Improved Pro-Healing Properties

The great variety of wounds and the lack of an effective universal treatment method has resulted in high demand for modern treatment strategies. Traditional approaches are often ineffective on a variety of chronic wounds, such as venous ulcers or the diabetic foot ulcer. There is strong evidence that naturally derived bioactive compounds have pro-healing properties, raising a great interest in their potential use for wound healing. Plant-derived compounds, such as curcumin and essential oils, are widely used to modify materials applied as wound dressings. Moreover, dressing materials are more often enriched with vitamins (e.g., L-ascorbic acid, tocopherol) and drugs (e.g., antibiotics, inhibitors of proteases) to improve the skin healing rate. Biomaterials loaded with the above-mentioned molecules show better biocompatibility and are basically characterized by better biological properties, ensuring faster tissue repair process. The main emphasis of the presented review is put on the novel findings concerning modern pro-healing wound dressings that have contributed to the development of regenerative medicine. The article briefly describes the synthesis and modifications of biomaterials with bioactive compounds (including curcumin, essential oils, vitamins) to improve their pro-healing properties. The paper also summarizes biological effects of the novel wound dressings on the enhancement of skin regeneration. The current review was prepared based on the scientific contributions in the PubMed database (supported with Google Scholar searching) over the past 5 years using relevant keywords. Scientific reports on the modification of biomaterials using curcumin, vitamins, and essential oils were mainly considered.
ADDRESSING FISCAL CONSTRAINT AND CONGESTION ISSUES IN STATE TRANSPORTATION PLANNING, JULY 14-16, 2002, WOOD'S HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS

This report documents the three segments of the 2002 Statewide Multimodal Transportation Planning Peer Exchange. In the first section, Identification of Key Issues Facing Statewide Transportation Planning, the key issues facing state transportation planning raised during the informal discussion are summarized. Written lists of key issues submitted by the Maryland and Florida Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are included. The next section, Fiscal Constraint and Financial Planning Issues, presents state DOT answers to fiscal constraint and financial planning questions, a summary of the written responses and a description of additional items raised during the discussion. The final section, Addressing Congestion in State Transportation Plans, contains state answers to the questions related to congestion, as well as a summary of the written responses, synopses of the five presentations, recapitulation of the discussion, and identified conclusion and research items. Appendices contain a list of participants and supporting documents.
Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

The world of smart shoes, appliances, and phones is already here, but the practice of user experience (UX) design for ubiquitous computing is still relatively new. Design companies like IDEO and frogdesign are regularly asked to design products that unify software interaction, device design and service design -- which are all the key components of ubiquitous computing UX -- and practicing designers need a way to tackle practical challenges of design. Theory is not enough for them -- luckily the industry is now mature enough to have tried and tested best practices and case studies from the field. Smart Things presents a problem-solving approach to addressing designers' needs and concentrates on process, rather than technological detail, to keep from being quickly outdated. It pays close attention to the capabilities and limitations of the medium in question and discusses the tradeoffs and challenges of design in a commercial environment. Divided into two sections, frameworks and techniques, the book discusses broad design methods and case studies that reflect key aspects of these approaches. The book then presents a set of techniques highly valuable to a practicing designer. It is intentionally not a comprehensive tutorial of user-centered design'as that is covered in many other books'but it is a handful of techniques useful when designing ubiquitous computing user experiences.In short, Smart Things gives its readers both the "why" of this kind of design and the "how," in well-defined chunks. * Tackles design of products in the post-Web world where computers no longer have to be monolithic, expensive general-purpose devices* Features broad frameworks and processes, practical advice to help approach specifics, and techniques for the unique design challenges* Presents case studies that describe, in detail, how others have solved problems, managed trade-offs, and met successes
Rapid Manufacturing: An Industrial Revolution for the Digital Age

Rapid Manufacturing is a new area of manufacturing developed from a family of technologies known as Rapid Prototyping. These processes have already had the effect of both improving products and reducing their development time; this in turn resulted in the development of the technology of Rapid Tooling, which implemented Rapid Prototyping techniques to improve its own processes. Rapid Manufacturing has developed as the next stage, in which the need for tooling is eliminated. It has been shown that it is economically feasible to use existing commercial Rapid Prototyping systems to manufacture series parts in quantities of up to 20,000 and customised parts in quantities of hundreds of thousands. This form of manufacturing can be incredibly cost-effective and the process is far more flexible than conventional manufacturing.
Rail vehicles in crosswinds : analysis of steady and unsteady aerodynamic effects through static and moving model tests

This thesis presents the results of an experimental investigation of scale-model trains in crosswinds, undertaken to assess steady and unsteady aerodynamic effects of the vehicle movement simulation. A 1:25 scale-model train was tested in the University of Birmingham's TRAIN rig facility. A crosswind generator was designed and constructed to enable static and moving model experiments in the presence of crosswinds in this facility. An on­ board pressure measuring system comprising a series of miniaturised pressure transducers and a bespoke stand­ alone data logger were developed. Static and moving model experiments were carried out investigating a scale­ model of the Class 390 Pendolino train, on a nominal flat ground infrastructure scenario whilst subjected to a crosswind at 30° yaw angle. The test facility, measuring equipment and experimental methodology that were developed led to a more realistic underbody flow simulation and to a reduced margin of experimental uncertainty with respect to previous moving model tests. Furthermore, they enabled detailed surface pressure data to be measured, which are suitable for CFD benchmarking. The results support the reliability of wind tunnel tests on static vehicles for investigating steady aerodynamic coefficients but suggest that their use in the analysis of train unsteady aerodynamics is not entirely satisfactory.
Climate Change and Water Management in the Developing World

It should be stressed at the outset that climate change is not the major concern of most people living in the developing world. Events potentially happening two or three decades in the future do not have much resonance in countries mired in trying to climb out of extreme poverty now. Hence, the issues of time and economic costs and benefits are critical in any discussion of water development in the developing world and how this influences the availability of the resource in terms of quantity and variability.
Digital Compensation for Analog Front-Ends: A New Approach to Wireless Transceiver Design

The desire to build lower cost analog front-ends has triggered interest in a new domain of research. Consequently the joint design of the analog front-end and of the digital baseband algorithms has become an important field of research. It enables the wireless systems and chip designers to more effectively trade the communication performance with the production cost. Digital Compensation for Analog Front-Ends provides a systematic approach to designing a digital communication system. It covers in detail the digital compensation of many non-idealities, for a wide class of emerging broadband standards and with a system approach in the design of the receiver algorithms. In particular, system strategies for joint estimation of synchronization and front-end non-ideality parameters are emphasized. The book is organized to allow the reader to gradually absorb the important information and vast quantity of material on this subject. The first chapter is a comprehensive introduction to the emerging wireless standards which is followed by a detailed description of the front-end non-idealities in chapter two. Chapter three then uses this information to explore what happens when the topics introduced in the first two chapters are merged. The book concludes with two chapters providing an in-depth coverage of the estimation and compensation algorithms. This book is a valuable reference for wireless system architects and chip designers as well as engineers or managers in system design and development. It will also be of interest to researchers in industry and academia, graduate students and wireless network operators. Presents a global, systematic approach to the joint design of the analog front-end compensation, channel estimation, synchronization and of the digital baseband algorithms Describes in depth the main front-end non-idealities such as phase noise, IQ imbalance, non-linearity, clipping, quantization, carrier frequency offset, sampling clock offset and their impact on the modulation Explains how the non-idealities introduced by the analog front-end elements can be compensated digitally Methodologies are applied to the emerging Wireless Local Area Network and outdoor Cellular communication systems, hence covering OFDM(A), SC-FDE and MIMO Written by authors with in-depth expertise developed in the wireless research group of IMEC and projects covering the main broadband wireless standards
Management Aspects Regarding the Market of Organic Products in Romania

The organic products that have been produced in harmony with nature and maintain the health of the population are increasingly required on the market in Romania. The production is directed especially to food, but non-food products are made in Romania or imported, too. Although the diversity and percentage of these products increased and the number of operators in this field is also increased, the achievements are relatively insignificant representing less than 1 % of total production; this fact may be explained by a variety of reasons, like technological, economic, bureaucratic, etc. Therefore, it is necessary primarily to grow the organic production in both agriculture and industry. Farmers must be supported by the government in achieving their final products. In a sustainable development, the intervention of state to support those who produce organic food and non-food should be felt more strongly.
A Comparison of Robust Kalman Filters for Improving Wheel-Inertial Odometry in Planetary Rovers

This paper compares the performance of adaptive and robust Kalman filter algorithms in improving wheel-inertial odometry on low featured rough terrain. Approaches include classical adaptive and robust methods as well as variational methods, which are evaluated experimentally on a wheeled rover in terrain similar to what would be encountered in planetary exploration. Variational filters show improved solution accuracy compared to the classical adaptive filters and are able to handle erroneous wheel odometry measurements and keep good localization for longer distances without significant drift. We also show how varying the parameters affects localization performance.
Harnessing machine learning to boost heuristic strategies for phylogenetic-tree search

Inferring a phylogenetic tree, which describes the evolutionary relationships among a set of organisms, genes, or genomes, is a fundamental step in numerous evolutionary studies. With the aim of making tree inference feasible for problems involving more than a handful of sequences, current algorithms for phylogenetic tree reconstruction utilize various heuristic approaches. Such approaches rely on performing costly likelihood optimizations, and thus evaluate only a subset of all potential trees. Consequently, all existing methods suffer from the known tradeoff between accuracy and running time. Here, we train a machine-learning algorithm over an extensive cohort of empirical data to predict the neighboring trees that increase the likelihood, without actually computing their likelihood. This provides means to safely discard a large set of the search space, thus avoiding numerous expensive likelihood computations. Our analyses suggest that machine-learning approaches can make heuristic tree searches substantially faster without losing accuracy and thus could be incorporated for narrowing down the examined neighboring trees of each intermediate tree in any tree search methodology.
Vehicle Crash Testing on a GFRP-Reinforced PL-3 Concrete Bridge Barrier

Corrosion of steel reinforcement due to environmental effects is a major cause of deterioration problems in bridge barriers. Glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) not only addresses this durability problem but also provides exceptionally high tensile strength and Young's modulus. A recent design work conducted at Ryerson University on PL-3 bridge barrier proposed the use of 16 mm and 12 mm diameter GFRP bars as vertical reinforcement in the barrier front and back faces, respectively, with 12 mm diameter GFRP bars as horizontal reinforcement in the barrier wall, all at 300 mm spacing. The connection between the deck slab and the barrier wall utilized the GFRP headed end bars for proper anchorage. This paper summarizes the procedure and the results of a recent vehicle crash test conducted on the developed barrier. The crash test was performed in accordance with MASH Test Level 5 (TL-5), which involves the 36000V tractor trailer impacting the barrier at a nominal speed and angle of 80 km/h and 15 degrees, respectively. Crash test results showed that the barrier contained and redirected the vehicle. The vehicle did not penetrate, underride or override the parapet. No detached elements, fragments, or other debris from the barrier were present to penetrate or show potential for penetrating the occupant compartment, or to present undue hazard to others in the area. No occupant compartment deformation occurred. The test vehicle remained upright during and after the collision event. For the covering abstract of this conference see record contro number 201111RT334E.
Competitors in Alliance: Industry Associations, Global Rivalries and Business-Government Relations

Preface Introduction Association Foundations: Past, Present, Future Legacies of the Past and Present Japan The United States Germany The Leaders High Tech Industries and Their Trade Associations Introduction The Aerospace Industries and Their Association The Biotechnology Industry and Its Trade Organizations The Semiconductor Industry and Its Association The Computer Systems Industry and Its Associations Characteristics of American High-Tech Trade Associations Designing American Associations for Global Competition The Approach to a New Design American Competitiveness and the Intermediate Sector Forming and Focusing the Primary Association Alliances and Consortia Operating the Primary Associations Designing the Association Bibliography Index
Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19

Worldwide, an increase in cases and severity of domestic violence (DV) has been reported as a result of social distancing measures implemented to decrease the spreading of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). As one’s language can provide insight in one’s mental health, this pre-registered study analyzed word use in a DV online support group, aiming to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DV victims in an ex post facto research design. Words reflecting social support and leisure activities were investigated as protective factors against linguistic indicators of depression in 5,856 posts from the r/domesticviolence subreddit and two neutral comparison subreddits (r/changemyview & r/femalefashionadvice). In the DV support group, the average number of daily posts increased significantly by 22% from pre- to mid-pandemic. Confirmatory analysis was conducted following a registered pre-analysis plan. DV victims used significantly more linguistic indicators of depression than individuals in the comparison groups. This did not change with the onset of COVID-19. The use of negative emotion words was negatively related to the use of social support words (Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient [rho] = −0.110) and words referring to leisure activities (rho = −0.137). Pre-occupation with COVID-19 was associated with the use of negative emotion words (rho = 0.148). We conclude that language of DV victims is characterized by indicators of depression and this characteristic is stable over time. Concerns with COVID-19 could contribute to negative emotions, whereas social support and leisure activities could function to some degree as protective factors. A potential weakness of this study is its cross-sectional design and the lack of experimental control. Future studies could make use of natural language processing and other advanced methods of linguistic analysis to learn about the mental health of DV victims.
English for mechanical engineering : in higher education studies

Contents Unit 1: What is engineering? Unit 2: Engineering achievements Unit 3: Forces on materials Unit 4: Computers in engineering Unit 5: MEMS and nanotechnology Unit 6: Friction Unit 7: The future of cars: Battery power Unit 8: Engineering and sustainability Unit 9: Health and safety Unit 10: Accident analysis in construction Unit 11: Wind turbines Unit 12: Water engineering
Muet Blogging: An Integral Platform for Students Projects

Since the evolution of web 2.0 technologies, the use of weblogs has grown vastly. Weblog is a platform for discussion and awareness about various subjects. It has also promoted use of blogs in other IT sectors like educational blogs, fashion blogs, IT technology blogs, food recipe blogs, microblogs and other personalized blogs. The ratings of users on each post in a blog are significant. Researchers have suggested that using blogs in education are also vital as it instills awareness in the students and develops an interaction amongst them. Blogs are a subset of group-work as it diffuses awareness about different fields and technologies across the interested demographic. As students feel difficulty to go through all the previous projects and also find it difficult to select a particular domain for their final year projects. This research is the solution of above defined problem. In this research work, first a weblog for maintaining the final year B.E projects of MUET students is developed. This work embodies the feature of the post’s ranking at specific time with the help of a ranking algorithm that is applied on posts by MUET students. This algorithm is termed as WCA (Word CountAlgorithm) and uses the comments of users as its source. Developed ranking algorithm provide users particular information in several particular dimensions. The developed searching filters assists the weblog to announce a particular post as highest comments containing posts, 1 week older posts, 1 hour older posts, and all the older posts.Automated testing and user testing also proves the usefulness of the developed MUET blog
The design of an all-digital VCO-based ADC in a 65nm CMOS technology

This thesis explores the study and design of an all-digital VCO-based ADC in a 65 nm CMOS technology. As the CMOS process enters the deep submicron region, the voltage-domain-based ADCs begins to suffer in improving their performance due to the use of complex analog components. A promising solution to improve the performance of an ADC is to employ as many as possible digital components in a time-domain-based ADC, where it uses the time resolution of an analog signal rather than the voltage resolution. In comparison, as the CMOS process scales down, the time resolution of an analog signal has found superior than the voltage resolution of an analog signal. In recent years, such time-domain-based ADCs have been taken an immense interest due to its inherent features and their design reasons.In this thesis work, the VCO-based ADC design, falls under the category of time-based ADCs which consists of a VCO and an appropriate digital processing circuitry. The employed VCO is used to convert a voltage-based signal into a time signal and thereby it also acts as a time-based quantizer. Then the resulting quantized-time signal is converted into a digital signal by an appropriate digital technique. After different architecture exploration, a conventional VCO-based ADC architecture is implemented in a high-level model to understand the characteristic behaviour of this time-based ADC and then a comprehensive functional schematic-level is designed in reference with the implemented behavioural model using cadence design environment. The performance has been verified using the mixed-levels, of transistor and behavioural-levels due to the greater simulation time of the implemented design.ADC’s dynamic performance has been evaluated using various experiments and simulations. Overall, the simulation experiments showed that the design was found to reach an ENOB of 4.9-bit at 572 MHz speed of sample per second, when a 120 MHz analog signal is applied. The achieved peak performance of the design was a SNR of 40 dB, SFDR of 34 dB and an SNDR of 31 dB over a 120 MHz BW at a 1 V supply voltage. Without any complex building blocks, this VCO-based all-digital ADC design provided a key feature of inherent noise shaping property and also found to be well compatible at the deep submicron region.