Accurate Estimation without Calibration of the Complex Relative Permittivity of Multilayer Dielectric Material based on the Finite Integration Technique

In this paper, a simple and effective solution is proposed to accurately estimate the complex relative permittivity of individual layers and multilayers of dielectric material samples from the S-parameters measured by two waveguide cells having equal or different lengths filled with the same vacuum/empty material without having to calibrate before performing experiments. The measurement system is set up by modeling using the Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software. In the modeling, a single layer/multilayer material sample is placed in the X-band rectangular waveguide and it has two ports used for the electromagnetic wave supply and measurement of S-parameters. From the S-parameters measured, the complex relative permittivity of individual layers and the multilayers of the material samples are estimated by the proposed method. The known single-layer and multilayer materials such as Garlock, Bakelite, and Teflon have different dielectric constants and thicknesses. The results show that the complex relative permittivity of the samples matches the measured and calculated values of S-parameters in the frequency range of 8.2GHz to 12.4GHz

Organisational Baseline Study: Overview report for Ma CSV, Vietnam (VN01)

According to the data provided by Yen Bai Statistics Department (YSD), the total area of Yen Bai about 668,628 ha, of which 87.5% (585,089 ha) are agricultural land. Most of the province’s agricultural lands are sloping. The province shares the common features of the North-western Vietnam: terrain is complicated and are strongly fragmented by mountain and stream systems; climate is tropical and with different climatic sub- regions. Over 70% of the population (over 70%) are agricultural. Yen Binh district locates in the south of Yen Bai province, with the total area of 77,262 ha, and is diverse and rich in natural resources. Having diverse agricultural production activities (including crop, livestock, aquaculture and forestry) and sharing the common features with the province, Ma village has been facing important challenges caused by natural resource degradation, environmental pollution and climate variability. On the other hand, there are also great potentials for this village to develop sustainable and climate smart livelihoods and agriculture. Ma village, Vinh Kien commune, Yen Binh district, Yen Bai province has therefore been selected to be a site for building Climate Smart Villages (CSV) under the CGIAR Program “Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). An organization baseline survey, was therefore conducted as part of the baseline effort for this village, which consists of three components – household survey, village study and organizational survey. The objectives of this organization baseline study (OBS) include: - Provide indicators to allow us to monitor changes in behaviours and practices of relevant local organizations over time; - Understand the current status of provision of information/services at the local level that informs farmers’ decision making about their livelihood strategies in response to climate change. To gather necessary information, we conducted survey of organizations of which activities covered a wide range in all the aspects: natural resources management, environment and climate change, agricultural production, agricultural product processing and input supplying. The list of these organization is presented in Table 1

Proposal of MIMO Ultra-Wide Band Antenna with Low Mutual Coupling

In this paper, a new ultra-wide band (UWB) MIMO antenna is proposed. A MIMO antenna set consists of two single ultra-wide band antennas. This simple and compact MIMO antenna, which is designed to work from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz, has a broad bandwidth with the VSWR ≤ 2. In addition, MIMO antenna characteristics such as radiation pattern, maximal gain are thoroughly investigated

Active disturbance rejection control-based anti-coupling method for conical magnetic bearings

Conical-shape magnetic bearings are currently a potential candidate for various magnetic force-supported applications due to their unique geometric nature reducing the number of required active magnets. However, the bearing structure places control-engineering related problems in view of underactuated and coupling phenomena. The paper proposes an Adaptive Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) for solving the above-mentioned problem in the conical magnetic bearing. At first, virtual current controls are identified to decouple the electrical sub-system, then the active disturbance rejection control is employed to eliminate coupling effects owing to rotational motions. Comprehensive simulations are provided to illustrate the control ability

Hemorrhagic Meningioma With Symptom of Convulsion: A Rare Presentation of Parietal Meningioma

Meningioma is the most common, extra-axial, non-glial intracranial tumor with an incidence of 2.3-5.5/100 000, accounting for 20%-30% of all primary brain tumor diagnoses in adults. Meningiomas associated with intratumoral hemorrhage are very rare occurring in 0.5%-2.4%. of individuals. Herein, we report a rare case of hemorrhagic meningioma with the symptom of convulsion. The case was a 68-year-old woman admitted to the hospital with severe headache and convulsions. Computed tomography revealed an increase in heterogeneous lesion measuring 4 × 3 × 2.5 cm at the right parietal lobe. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed a grossly stable homogeneously enhancing extra-axial mass measuring 43 × 33 × 28 mm, small calcified peripheral, intratumoral hemorrhage. Histopathology showed a multi-celled meningioma with bleeding areas (WHO grade I)

Village Baseline Study – Site Analysis Report for My Loi, Ky Anh district, Ha Tinh province – Viet Nam

Data collection for the Village Baseline Study (VBS) of My Loi village in the CCAFS benchmark site of central Viet Nam took place on 17- 19 October 2014. Focus group discussions were conducted separately for 45 men and 45 women villagers.. The VBS had three main topics: map of (1) community resources, (2) organizational landscapes, and (3) information networks. A seminar was held in December 2014 to seek participants’ feedback. My Loi village has experienced multiple extreme weather events (temperature and water stresses, storms and typhoons) throughout the years. The main constraints for agricultural development and livelihoods are limited water resources and poor conditions of irrigation systems, which are challenges to improving the agricultural production situation. Moreover, sand and rock mining have caused water pollution, erosion on riverbanks and loss of farmland area. Another constraint is marketing, as villagers are not aware of any organization involved in finding outlets for agricultural products. The potentials for developing innovative climate-smart solutions in the village are several: farmers have experiences and are interested in trying new varieties and adjusting farming calendars to improve the situation. Livestock expansion and agroforests/reforestation hold opportunities for improving household incomes. Furthermore, at least half of the organisations identified in the region are working to address food security issues

Le portail g-INFO pour surveiller la grippe Influenza A

Le portail g-INFO pour surveiller la grippe Influenza

EmbryosFormer: Deformable Transformer and Collaborative Encoding-Decoding for Embryos Stage Development Classification

The timing of cell divisions in early embryos during the In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) process is a key predictor of embryo viability. However, observing cell divisions in Time-Lapse Monitoring (TLM) is a time-consuming process and highly depends on experts. In this paper, we propose EmbryosFormer, a computational model to automatically detect and classify cell divisions from original time-lapse images. Our proposed network is designed as an encoder-decoder deformable transformer with collaborative heads. The transformer contracting path predicts per-image labels and is optimized by a classification head. The transformer expanding path models the temporal coherency between embryo images to ensure monotonic non-decreasing constraint and is optimized by a segmentation head. Both contracting and expanding paths are synergetically learned by a collaboration head. We have benchmarked our proposed EmbryosFormer on two datasets: a public dataset with mouse embryos with 8-cell stage and an in-house dataset with human embryos with 4-cell stage. Source code: https://github.com/UARK-AICV/Embryos.Comment: Accepted at WACV 202

Village Baseline Study – Site Analysis Report Ma village-Yen Binh district, Vietnam

Ma village, Vinh Kien commune, Yen Binh district, Yen Bai province has been selected to be one of Climate Smart Villages (CSVs) under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in Southeast Asia. The village baseline survey (VBS) of Ma village, was therefore conducted as part of the baseline effort. This VBS aimed to provide baseline information at the village level about some basic indicators of natural resource utilization, organizational landscapes, and information networks for weather and agricultural information, which can be compared across sites and monitored over time. The study was conducted using the method developed and provided by CCAFS. The study’s findings show that Ma Village is rich and diverse in natural resources. There are three main resources of vital importance for the local people livelihoods, namely farmland, forest and water resources. However, improper exploitation and management have caused negative impacts on these resources. As mentioned by farmers, in the past, farmland of the village used to be very fertile, but has now become severely degraded due to overexploitation and improper management. Regarding forest resources: before 1980s, natural forests existed in large areas and consisted of valuable timber and wild animals. Today, much of the forest area has been converted to production forests or to food crop production land. Water resources, including lakes, rivers and streams have been severely polluted with pollutants from processing cassava, wood and also from animal husbandry and crop production. Degradation of water, farmland and forest resources are causing increasing challenges to agricultural production and also to other human activities. Results of farmer group discussions also demonstrate that there are 34 organizations operating in the village. Most of them are governmental. Very few are private or non-governmental organizations. The number of organizations involving in food security accounts for nearly 50%, the figure for those involving food crisis is 41.6% and in natural resources management is 25%. Those organizations working in food security and food crisis focus mainly on providing support (financial, seed and agricultural inputs) to local farmers to implement some production activities. Insufficient attention and input spent for sustainable development by these 34 organizations, especially those working in the area of natural resources management, could be one of the main reasons for the degradation and erosion of natural resources. There was no activity supporting Ma Village to develop production systems which can respond well to climate change. The study findings however show that local people are very flexible and creative, especially in exploitation of information. Among media channels, television is the most popular. Nevertheless, organizations, in particular, extension networks, Farmers’ Union, local authorities, etc., also have an important role in information dissemination. Exploitation of information from the internet and mobile phones has also been given attention, but mostly by young people only