Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of PI and SMC Controlled Zeta Converter

This paper presents the design and analysis of DC-DC Zeta converter operating in the continuous conduction mode to regulate the output voltage of the converter for automotive battery recharge applications. The state space analysis of the converter is derived to obtain the transfer function of the converter. The presented DC-DC converter exhibits the non-linearity due to the presence of energy storage elements and degrades the performance of the converter. Therefore, this paper proposes a non-linear cascaded Proportional -Integral Sliding Mode Controller (PI-SMC) to improve the performance of the converter. PI-SMC Controller contains PI Controller in the outer loop for voltage regulation and an inner fast acting SMC Controller for current shaping. The PI controller is tuned by Root locus and Routh Hurwitz criterion and the steady state performance parameters are obtained for the PI-SMC Controlled Zeta converter. MATLAB/SIMULINK results are presented for Set point tracking of the controller. The results shows that the steady state performance indices such as Integral Absolute Error (IAE) and Integral Time Absolute Error (ITE) are significantly enhanced for the converter using the proposed cascaded control scheme compared to the conventional PI controller.
Hypofibrinogenemia is Associated With a High Degree of Risk in Infectious and Hematological Diseases: A Post-Hoc Analysis of Post-Marketing Surveillance of Patients With Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation Treated With Thrombomodulin Alfa

Introduction In patients with infectious diseases, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is often diagnosed without the fibrinogen value and the relationship between hypofibrinogenemia and the outcomes of infectious DIC has remained unclear.Materials and Methods We analyzed 3204 patients who received with thrombomodulin alfa (TM-α) for with DIC and suspected DIC. Hypofibrinogenemia was defined by a fibrinogen level of <1.5 g/L.Results Hypofibrinogenemia was observed in 10.3% of patients with infectious diseases. The frequencies of both bleeding and organ failure symptoms, and the scores for organ failure or the DIC diagnostic criteria were significantly high in infectious disease patients with hypofibrinogenemia, suggesting that in patients with infectious diseases, hypofibrinogenemia is associated with more progressive and severe DIC. Although the 28-day survival rate and the DIC resolution rate were both significantly lower in infectious disease patients with DIC with hypofibrinogenemia than in those without hypofibrinogenemia, this difference was not observed in DIC patients with hematological diseases.Conclusion In infectious disease patients with DIC, hypofibrinogenemia may reflect from the increased consumption of fibrinogen due to an accelerated coagulating reaction, while that in hematological disease patients DIC may be caused by fibrinogenolysis due to hyperfibrinolysis, and frequently results in bleeding and multiple-organ failure.
Ethereum Blockchain based Secure E-voting System

The security and accountability issues are a challenge to the traditional structure from still widespread elections. General e-voting system use a centralized system, where one organization manages overall system. These organisations have full control over the database and system, allowing manipulation of the database. There should be no e-voting system to secure data and potential attacks should be able to withstand. Blockchain technology should solve certain voting problems. In this paper we are implementing an ethereum blockchain based electronic voting system. Ethereum blockchain networks are used to transfer money and store data. Networks are organized by one or more machines. Every node is a machine that running an ethereum client. The eligible one can run the node. By adopting blockchain in e-voting system database distribution, one of the cheating sources of database manipulation and data loss can be reduced. This can be a better solution for the currently existing issues over rigging the electronic voting machines to win elections by the political parties in our government
P4.4 - Touch Sensitivity of Objects Based on Surface Acoustic Waves

With the mode conversion effect of surface acoustic waves, a touch sensitivity of solid plates can be achieved without affecting the front side but by attaching transducers to the backside of the plate. By thinning the region of the surface acoustic wave transmission to a thickness smaller than the wavelength, a large touch sensitivity of about 70% has been achieved at different materials such as ceramics, metals and plastics. This is accompanied by mode splitting and dispersion, which may provide an access for internal referencing with respect to aging and temperature influences. Prospectic applications of this touch sensing concept are tiles with switching functions in bathrooms or touch control panels at medical equipments, in kitchens or in cars.
High resolution ECG and MCG mapping: simulation study of single and dual accessory pathways and influence of lead displacement and limited lead selection on localisation results

In this simulation study, we used an anatomical computer model of the human ventricles to simulate body surface potentials and magnetic field for 10 single preexcitation sites and 8 pairs of preexcitation sites positioned on the epicardial surface along the atrio-ventricular ring. We demonstrated that electrocardiographic and magnetocardiographic inverse solutions using a pair of equivalent dipoles could be employed in localising dual accessory pathways. Average localisation errors were in the range of 5 to 21 mm and 3 mm to 20 mm, respectively, when body surface potentials and magnetic field were used. Additionally, we have investigated the influence of random lead displacements and limited lead selection on localisation results.
Developing English language tests for Luxembourg secondary schools:The Test Design and Evaluation (TDE) project, 2011-2014

This report describes the activities, achievements and outcomes of an English language secondary school exam reform project in Luxembourg. In 2010, as part of reforms and development of English language teaching in Luxembourg secondary schools, a number of stakeholders identified the existing system of testing and assessment to be an obstacle in making the desirable progress. At the same time, those involved recognised that there was a relative lack of formal expertise in language testing and assessment amongst the teaching body.Out of this concern arose the Test Design and Evaluation (TDE) initiative in 2011. A group of teachers proposed to improve the existing exams, whilst at the same time building up language testing expertise within the country as a step towards establishing a more professional basis for the design of tests. This report describes the training and test development activities that have taken place during the first three years of the project, and formulates a number of recommendations to ensure the sustainability of the high-quality assessment work that has been accomplished.
Service Start Time Optimization in Elementary Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints

Besides their real-life applications, elementary shortest path problems with resource constraints are faced as the pricing sub-problem when more complex problems are solved through column generation and branch-and-price. We consider an elementary shortest path problem with resource constraints, where there is a capacitated single vehicle at the depot for serving a set of customers by respecting their associated time windows. The vehicle can start serving the customers at any desired time and can be used for a fixed amount of time. The total transportation cost is defined as a function of the total distance traveled and the total amount of time that the vehicle spends by performing the assigned trip. Every time the vehicle visits a customer, it delivers the required load and collects a revenue in return for the delivery. The objective is to determine the trip to be performed and the service start time from the depot so as to minimize the total loss, which is calculated as the total transportation cost minus the collected revenues. In this study, we develop two exact dynamic programming algorithms which can deal with an infinite number of Pareto-optimal states arising from the fact that the vehicle can depart from the depot at any point in time and charges depending on the amount of time it spends for serving customers. Apart from reporting computational results for our elementary shortest path problem, we also embed it into a column generation framework for the corresponding capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows. Recent results for the developed branch-and-price algorithm are also reported.
Muscle strength evaluation of limb dominance in prepubescent swimmers boys and girls

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the lower limb muscle strength in terms of gender and limb dominancy in prepubescent swimmers. Material and Methods: Seventy-four prepubescent swimmers (mean age: 11.01±1.58 years; 42 boys; 32 girls) who were training for at least 8 hours a week and without current lower limb pain participated in the study. Isometric muscle strength of lower limb was measured by hand-held dynamometry. Independent samples-t test was used to determine the difference between genders, while paired samples-t test was used for dominant-nondominant side comparison. The significance level was accepted as p<0.05. Results: Knee flexion (p<0.001), extension (p<0.001) and ankle dorsiflexion (p=0.003) muscle strength were stronger on the dominant side than on the non-dominant side. Knee flexion/extension strength ratio was similar (p=0.957); while ankle plantar flexion/dorsiflexion strength ratio was significantly different (p=0.011). Boys swimmers had stronger isometric muscle strength in the dominant side together with knee flexion (p=0.018) and knee flexion extension strength ratio (p=0.007) than girls swimmers. Conclusion: Boys swimmers had higher dominant side knee flexion muscle strength compared to female peers. Gender and lower limb dominancy might be important for lower limb muscle strength to show varieties in prepubescent swimmers before planning a training program.
Skull osteology of Aetosauroides scagliai Casamiquela, 1960 (Archosauria: Aetosauria) from the Late Triassic of Brazil: New insights into the paleobiology of aetosaurs

Aetosauroides scagliai, from the Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina and Santa Maria Supersequence of Brazil (Carnian-Norian), is one of the oldest members of Aetosauria, a diverse clade of armored crocodile-line archosaurs. Aetosauroides scagliai differs from other aetosaurs in having the maxilla excluded from the margin of the external nares, the length/width ratio of the postzygapophyses ≤ 0.75, and other features that place it as one of the earliest-diverging members of the clade. In this paper we provide a detailed description of the skull of A. scagliai based on a new Brazilian specimen, revealing that it lacks a pneumatic cavity on the medial surface of the maxilla and further differs from all other known aetosaurs by the presence of ≥ 12 dentary teeth. However, contra previous studies, the elongated posterior process of the jugal does articulate ventrally with the quadratojugal in A. scagliai, forming the posteroventral corner of the skull as in all other aetosaurs. Aetosauroides scagliai exhibits some characters typical of predatory archosaurs (like the recurved ziphodont teeth and mandibular articulation at the level of the tooth row), but was probably an omnivore, as it also shares several probable adaptations for herbivory with aetosaurs generally (i.e., edentulous anterior premaxilla and dentary) and stagonolepidoids specifically (e.g., shovel-shaped snout). This suggests that there was greater trophic diversity in this clade than usually recognized, at least early in their evolutionary history. Voltaire Dutra Paes Neto. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geociências. Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Prédio 43127, 91540-000, Porto Alegre, Brazil. voltairearts@gmail.com Julia Brenda Desojo. División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n°, La Plata, B1900FWA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET). julideso@fcnym.unlp. edu.ar Ana Carolina Biacchi Brust. Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas em Direito e Internet. Av. Roraima, 1000, 74B (3427), 97105-900, Santa Maria, Brazil. anacarolinabrust@gmail.com Ana Maria Ribeiro. Museu de Ciências Naturais do Rio Grande do Sul – SEMA/RS. Dr. Salvador França, 1427 Jardim Botânico, Porto Alegre RS, 90690-000 amaria_ribeiro@yahoo.com. br PAES NETO ET AL.: AETOSAUROIDES SKULL 2 Cesar Leandro Schultz. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geociências. Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Prédio 43127, 91540-000, Porto Alegre, Brazil. cesar.schultz@ufrgs.br Marina Bento Soares. Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Parque da Quinta da Boa vista s/n 20940-040, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. marina.soares@mn.ufrj. br
MATHEMATICAL MODELING FOR PLATFORM-BASED PRODUCT CONFIGURATION CONSIDERING TOTAL LIFE-CYCLE SUSTAINABILITY

MATHEMATICAL MODELING FOR PLATFORM-BASED PRODUCT CONFIGURATION CONSIDERING TOTAL LIFE-CYCLE SUSTAINABILITY Many companies are using platform-based product designs to fulfill the requirements of customers while maintaining low cost. However, research that integrates sustainability into platform-based product design is still limited. Considering sustainability during platformbased design process is a challenge because the total life-cycle from pre-manufacturing, manufacturing and use to post-use stages as well as economic, environmental and societal performance in these stages must be considered. In this research, an approach for quantifying sustainability is introduced and a mathematical model is developed for identifying a more sustainable platform. Data from life-cycle assessment is used to quantify environmental factors; criteria from the Product Sustainability Index (ProdSI) are used to quantify societal factors. The Analytic Hierarchical Process method is used to assess relative importance of societal factors and the weighted sum method is used in the objective function for overall multi-objective optimization. A bicycle platform configuration is used as a case study to demonstrate the application of the model. The relationship between commonality of the platform and sustainability performance is analyzed.
Impact of Presence and Concentration of Ionic Species on Regeneration Efficacy of Zeolites for Ammonium Removal

One of the biggest challenges to implementing ion exchange processes in full scale at wastewater treatment works is regeneration of the media. In this paper, regeneration efficiency as a function of brine type, brine reuse, molarity and pH was investigated for the zeolite MesoLite treating synthetic solutions of ammonium. When pretreating the zeolite with KCl rather than NaCl, a 30% improvement in regeneration efficiency was found in the first cycle, which dropped to a 10% improvement in the fifth cycle. For both systems, the observed uptake capacity during the load cycle remained constant, indicating that both were effective and that the brine could be reused five times without deterioration in the performance of the zeolite. The use of KCl was more effective at lower molarities than NaCl such that equivalent regeneration efficiencies were observed at 1.0M and 0.1M for NaCl and KCl respectively. Alteration of the pH between 9 and 12 had no impact on the regeneration efficiency. However, operation at pH 12 was possible without brine. Taken together, these findings indicate that the choice of regenerant can have significant implications on regeneration efficiency and that potassium chloride might be a potentially viable alternative choice.
Robust Time Difference Estimation for Unknown Microphone Positions with Reverberation

In this thesis a system is developed for robust time difference estimation for multiple microphones in reverberant environments, without any knowledge of the 3D positions of the microphones or the room. RANSAC is used to find line segments in sets of frames containing a number of the largest GCC-PHAT peaks. Focus is on real experiments with one moving sound source continuously playing music. The estimated time differences can be used to find the microphone positions, track the sound source, and estimate flat surfaces in the room. The system has been evaluated on real data with manually annotated ground truth in order to estimate the precision of the system in terms of true positives and false positives. The algorithms have also been incorporated into a system that takes a number of sound files as input and produces the microphone positions, sound path motion and reverberant structures. The complete system has been evaluated on real data with promising results.
Correction

Correction for “Isoindolone derivative QSN-10c induces leukemic cell apoptosis and suppresses angiogenesis via PI3K/AKT signaling pathway inhibition. ” by Lv WW, Qin SN, Chen CQ, Zhang JJ, Ren TS, Xu YN, et al, which appeared in issue 5, 2014, of Acta Pharmacol Sin (35: 625–35; 10.1038/aps.2013.194).
Thermodynamics and Energy Systems Analysis: From Energy to Exergy

The present book is the result of more than half a century of teaching and research in thermodynamics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne), known as the EPFL, in Switzerland. Its objective is to facilitate the teaching of thermodynamics to engineering students and to allow engineers from industry to update their knowledge in this domain. It deals primarily with the study of problems of energy conversion of chemical, mechanical and thermal energies in an approach known as phenomenological thermodynamics.
Enhancing creativity and play through accessible projector-based interactive PC-control touch technology

Abstract: Standard computer peripherals are often challenging to use for mobility impaired, and in particular controlling computer mouse movements efficiently and without risking strain injuries. Projected touch screen technology show promise in this respect. This paper presents a Projected Interactive PC-control pilot (PIP) solution for computer interaction. The paper focus on testing and improving the usability of the PIP solution through iterative user tests with mobility impaired children. It describes prototype improvements aimed at fulfilling the requirements of users with reduced motor skills, and discusses challenges and key findings from the extensive usability tests. Our results demonstrates that interactive touch based solutions may enable heavily impaired children to independently partake in creative activities and play, and points to the value of creating a touch based computer interaction solution tailored to the needs of
Underinvestment in employer training: A mandate to spend?

U.S. employers and their workers underinvest in employer training. Underinvestment occurs because training generates externalities, because the tax system is biased against training investments, because turnover is high, and because most workers lack access to loans and are unable to finance general training. School-based occupational training ameliorates the underinvestment problem somewhat, but it is not a complete answer to the problem. During the election campaign, President Clinton proposed to stimulate training by requiring employers to spend some minimum percentage of their wage bill on training or else to pay a special tax. France has had such a mandate since 1972, so the design of a U.S. training mandate is likely to benefit from a careful examination of the French program. The French have demonstrated that a training mandate is administratively and politically feasible, but their mandate is not optimally designed for U.S. implementation. The article concludes with some recommendations about structuring a U.S. mandate to spend on training.
Performance comparison of carbon nanotube, nickel silicide nanowire and copper VLSI interconnects: Perspectives and challenges ahead

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate the performance comparison of carbon nanotubes (CNT) and nickel silicide (NiSi) nanowires interconnects as prospective alternatives to copper wire interconnects.Design/methodology/approach – The increasing resistivity of the copper wire with scaling and rising demands on current density drives the need for identifying new wiring solutions. This paper explores the various alternatives to copper. The metallic bundle CNTs and NiSi nanowires are promising candidates that can potentially address the challenges faced by copper. This paper analyzes various electrical models of carbon nanotube and recently introduced novel interconnect solution using NiSi nanowires.Findings – The theoretical studies proves CNTs and NiSi nanowires to be better alternatives against copper on the ground of performance parameters, such as effective current density, delay and power consumption. NiSi nanowire provides highest propagation speed for short wire length, and cop.
An Efficient Email Spam Detection using Support Vector Machine

This research paper proposes the electronics mail is small known as E-mail is used for communication between the people to person. E mail is providing as an necessary contribution for messaging by internet. Spam e mails are the unwanted messages that arise in high volume and are used by spammers for revealing users personal credentials. These e mails are regularly some sort of company/control announcement or viruses that the user receive without any notification. So as to defeat it, there need aid exactly existing frameworks that still don't keep them from striking. Therefore, there is a require should manufacture and proficient framework that adequately detects and more keeps the spam messages In those server utilizing the Naïve bayes classifier. Naïve bayes classifier is a mainstream statistical classifier utilized fundamentally for content arrangement
Public transport priority: an energy saving ITS measure

the objective of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) on the energy consumption of public transport. Particularly, the work investigates the benefits in terms of energy consumption given by a public transport priority policy. The model presented in this paper is based on the assumption that the total energy consumption of a vehicle, in this case a tram line vehicle, can be intended as the sum of three contributions: consumption for traction, consumption for winning motion resistances, consumption for auxiliary systems. On average, waiting time at traffic lights is lower when fixed plan control is applied, but also the probability of no waiting at stop line is considerably higher when priority policies are activated.