Trichoepithelioma: A comprehensive review

Trichoepithelioma is an uncommon benign adnexal neoplasm. It can present as a solitary non-familial or multiple familial form. Trichoepithelioma usually develops in early childhood or puberty. Females are more affected. It is attributed to two genetic mutations on chromosomes 9p21 and 16q12-q13. Multiple familial trichoepithelioma is an autosomal-dominant disorder, characterized by numerous nodules and papules, predominantly on the face and occasionally on the scalp, neck, or upper trunk, positive family history, and histopathological findings. The lesions gradually increase in both size and number over time; however, they remain mostly asymptomatic. Although it is rare, trichoepithelioma lesions can undergo malignant transformation to trichoblastic carcinoma or basal cell carcinoma. Patients mainly seek treatment because the lesions are usually disfiguring and can lead to psycho-social issues. Non-pharmacologic approaches (e.g., excisional surgery, laser resurfacing), as the current mainstay of management, suffer from several drawbacks. New treatment techniques such as pharmacotherapy with potentially effective agents deserve more attention and investigation.</p

Chattering-Free Robust Adaptive Sliding Mode Speed Control for Switched Reluctance Motor

This study describes an adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) for the control of switched reluctance motor (SRM). The main objective is to minimize torque ripples with controller effort smoothness while the system is under perturbation by structured uncertainties, unknown parameters, and external disturbances. The control algorithm employs an adaptive approach to remove the need for prior knowledge within the bound of perturbations. This is suitable for tackling the chattering problem in the sliding motion of ASMC. In order to achieve control effort smoothness and more effective elimination of chattering, the algorithm then incorporates proper modifications in order to build a chattering-free robust adaptive sliding mode control (RASMC) using Lyapunov stability theory. A final advantage of the algorithm is that system stability and error convergence are guaranteed. The effectiveness of the proposed controller in improving robustness and minimizing ripples is demonstrated by numerical simulation. Experimental validation is used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme. The results indicate that RASMC provides a superior performance with respect to speed tracking and disturbance rejection over the conventional sliding mode control (CASMC) in the face of uncertainties in model and dynamic loads

Investigating Performance-based Budgeting and Performance Control in Iran's Executive Apparatus Using Balanced Scorecard Technique

In this research, operational budgeting was investigated in the form of four groups of contextual factors, structural factors, human factors and other factors on operational and research budgeting with analytical model, balanced evaluation method. The statistical population of this study is all executive bodies subject to Article (5) of the Civil Service Management Law. Data were obtained using 182 questionnaires and analyzed using structural equation method and Smart PLS software. In this model, the balanced evaluation method was adapted to the three-part cycle of performance management and a three-part model of performance management, based on balanced measurement, is obtained. The results showed that the identified structures in operational budgeting have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive agencies. The structures of “structural factors”, “human factors” and “other factors affecting the implementation of operational budgeting (including personality, acceptance and ability)” have a positive and significant effect on performance, but the structure of “underlying factors” has a significant effect. It does not affect the performance of executive agencies.IntroductionIn traditional budgeting, the goals and emphasis are based solely on financial instruments and accounting of receipts and payments of the public sector (Mio et al., 2022). Also, in the traditional method of budgeting, the ability to plan long-term is limited and the possibility of achieving operations and budget monitoring is very weak.The problem that exists is that organizations pay less attention to budgeting in a new way and as a result, it is not used seriously in strategic decisions. Therefore, the effect of the operational budgeting method on the performance of organizations is not clear (Park & Jang, 2022). On the other hand, despite the sensitivity of the budget and the importance of its economic allocation, this issue has not been seriously considered yet. Therefore, it is necessary to study, discuss and review operational budgeting in organizations.Research QuestionsDespite the different emphasis and requirements of the country's development programs on the implementation of operational budgeting, the following questions are raised:What is the operational budgeting mechanism? What factors, including contextual, structural, human and other factors, are effective on the implementation of operational budgeting? What kind of budgeting model do Iran's executive bodies use? What are the important and influential factors related to operational budgeting? What are the obstacles and problems of operational budgeting in Iran's executive bodies? How to solve the current operational budgeting obstacles and problems?Research hypothesesBased on the theoretical foundations of operational budgeting as well as balanced evaluation and research history, the following hypotheses are presented:The main hypothesis: Operational budgeting variables are effective on the performance of Iran's executive bodies (using the balanced evaluation technique). Sub-hypotheses1) Structural factors in the establishment of operational budgeting are effective on the performance of Iran's executive bodies (using the balanced evaluation technique).2) Background factors in the establishment of operational budgeting are effective on the performance of Iran's executive bodies (using the balanced evaluation technique).3) Human factors in the establishment of operational budgeting are effective on the performance of Iran's executive bodies (using the balanced evaluation technique).4) Other effective factors in the establishment of operational budgeting (including personality factors, acceptance and ability) are effective on the performance of Iran's executive bodies (using the balanced evaluation technique).Literature ReviewThe theoretical foundations of operational budgeting are based on agency theory (Arief, (2020)) and organizational performance improvement (Derfuss, (2016)). In operational budgeting, instead of being based on cost materials, budget information is based on activities, and the results of performance measurement are provided with performance reports. The design and implementation of operational budgeting in any organization is based on three important factors: “planning”, “costing” and “organizational performance evaluation”. Activity-based costing (ABC) is the heart of operational budgeting and the main pillar in budget calculations (Azer and Khadivar, 2013), because activity-based costing is much more suitable for planning and control than traditional methods and provides more accurate information in this field. makes (Namazi, 1998 and 1999).MethodologyThis research is among the few researches that uses the scientific method of construction and experimental proof and is carried out based on pre-determined hypotheses and research plans. (Namazi, 2003). The method of data collection is a questionnaire. The information obtained from the measurement of the variables for the purpose of research tests was used from structural equations and the information was analyzed using Smart PLS version 2 and SPSS version 25 software.ResultsThe value of the T statistic and its statistical significance for the first main hypothesis and all balanced evaluation factors at the 95% confidence level shows as follows:The main hypothesis test: The structures identified in operational budgeting have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.The first sub-hypothesis: The structures identified in the operational budgeting structural factors have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.The second sub-hypothesis: The strength of the model and the background factors of operational budgeting do not have a significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.The third sub-hypothesis: The structures identified in human factors of operational budgeting have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.The fourth sub-hypothesis: The structures identified in other effective factors in operational budgeting have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive.DiscussionThe purpose of this study was to expand the theoretical foundations and provide empirical evidence in the field of operational budgeting in Iran. This development was done by presenting a conceptual model, explaining the organization's strategy and presenting 5 balanced evaluation criteria and testing related hypotheses. The findings of the study confirmed the theoretical foundations of operational budgeting and balanced evaluation. The results of the main hypothesis test of the research showed that the structures identified in operational budgeting have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.ConclusionThe findings of the first, third and fourth sub-hypothesis showed that the structures identified in the structural factors, human factors and other operating budgeting factors of operational budgeting, have a positive and significant effect on the performance of executive bodies.The results of the second sub-hypothesis test showed that the variable of operational budgeting background factors does not have a statistically significant effect on the performance of executive bodies. The reason for this can be related to the governmental nature of executive bodies, non-compliance with the requirement to establish operational budgeting and cultural factors such as the resistance of employees and managers to new changes in the body

CITB: A Benchmark for Continual Instruction Tuning

Continual learning (CL) is a paradigm that aims to replicate the human ability to learn and accumulate knowledge continually without forgetting previous knowledge and transferring it to new tasks. Recent instruction tuning (IT) involves fine-tuning models to make them more adaptable to solving NLP tasks in general. However, it is still uncertain how instruction tuning works in the context of CL tasks. This challenging yet practical problem is formulated as Continual Instruction Tuning (CIT). In this work, we establish a CIT benchmark consisting of learning and evaluation protocols. We curate two long dialogue task streams of different types, InstrDialog and InstrDialog++, to study various CL methods systematically. Our experiments show that existing CL methods do not effectively leverage the rich natural language instructions, and fine-tuning an instruction-tuned model sequentially can yield similar or better results. We further explore different aspects that might affect the learning of CIT. We hope this benchmark will facilitate more research in this direction.Comment: EMNLP 2023 Finding

Stabilization of DC–DC buck converter with unknown constant power load via passivity-based control plus proportion-integration

Abstract It is known that constant power load (CPL) may cause a negative impedance, which seriously affects the stability of power system. In this paper, a new control algorithm for DC–DC buck converter feeding unknown CPL is proposed. First, under the assumption of known extracted power load, the standard passivity–based control (PBC) is presented to reshape the system energy and compensate for the negative impedance and a proportion‐integration (PI) action around passive output is added to improve disturbance rejection performance, which forms the PBC plus PI (PBC+PI). Then, a parameter estimation algorithm is developed, based on immersion and invariance (I&I) technique, in order to online estimate the extracted power load. In the next step, the online estimation scheme is adopted to construct an adaptive strategy. Finally, the stability analysis of the cascaded system containing a closed‐loop control system and observer error dynamics is conducted. Simulation and experimental results are demonstrated to validate the performance of the proposed controller

Turn-Level Active Learning for Dialogue State Tracking

Dialogue state tracking (DST) plays an important role in task-oriented dialogue systems. However, collecting a large amount of turn-by-turn annotated dialogue data is costly and inefficient. In this paper, we propose a novel turn-level active learning framework for DST to actively select turns in dialogues to annotate. Given the limited labelling budget, experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of selective annotation of dialogue turns. Additionally, our approach can effectively achieve comparable DST performance to traditional training approaches with significantly less annotated data, which provides a more efficient way to annotate new dialogue data.Comment: EMNLP 2023 Main Conferenc