Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nucleation and Growth of Single Layer Graphene on Supported Cu Catalysts by Cold Wall Chemical Vapor Deposition

Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is the most widely used method to grow large-scale single layer graphene. However, a systematic experimental study of the relationship between growth parameters and graphene film morphology, especially in the industrially preferred cold wall CVD, has not been undertaken previously. This research endeavored to address this and provide comprehensive insight into the growth physics of graphene on supported solid and liquid Cu films using cold wall CVD. A multi-chamber UHV system was customized and transformed into a cold wall CVD system to perform experiments. The versatile growth process was completely custom-automated by controlling the process parameters with LabVIEW. Graphene growth was explored on solid electrodeposited, recrystallized and thin sputter deposited Cu films as well as on liquid Cu supported on W/Mo refractory substrates under ambient pressure using Ar, H2 and CH4 mixtures. The results indicate that graphene grown on Cu films using cold wall CVD follows a classical two-dimensional nucleation and growth mechanism. The nucleation density decreases and average size of graphene crystallites increases with increasing dilution of the CH4/H2 mixture by Ar, decrease in total flow rate and decrease in CH4:H2 ratio at a fixed substrate temperature and chamber pressure. Thus, the resulting morphological changes correspond with those that would be expected if the precursor deposition rate was varied at a fixed substrate temperature for physical deposition using thermal evaporation. The evolution of graphene crystallite boundary morphology with decreasing effective C deposition rate indicates the effect of edge diffusion of C atoms along the crystallite boundaries, in addition to H2 etching, on graphene crystallite shape. The roles of temperature gradient, chamber pressure and rapid thermal heating in C precursor-rich environment on graphene growth morphology on thin sputtered Cu films were explained. The growth mechanisms of graphene on substrates annealed under reducing and non-reducing environment were explained from the scaling functions of graphene island size distribution in the pre-coalescence regime. It is anticipated that applying the pre-coalescence size distribution method presented in this work to other 2D material systems may be useful for elucidating atomistic mechanisms of film growth that are otherwise difficult to obtain. Materials Science & Engineering Doctoral Defense Nucleation and Growth of Single Layer Graphene on Supported Cu Catalysts by Cold Wall Chemical Vapor Deposition Shantanu Das Advisor: Dr. Jeff Drucker June 15, 2018; 2 PM; ECA 219 School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy
Reduced circulating CD4+CD25+ cell populations in haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome

Immunopathological mechanisms are speculated to underlie haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) caused by Hantaviruses. CD4+CD25+ T regulatory cells (Tregs), a subset of CD4+ T cells, expressed high levels of CD25 and the forkhead box transcription factor P3 (FoxP3), plays an important role in the down‐regulation of various immune responses. Therefore, we hypothesized that in patients with HFRS the immunopathology could be, at least in part, the result of an inefficient control of pathogenic effector T cells by Tregs. The number of Tregs was determined by flow cytometry according to their characteristic CD4+CD25high membrane phenotype. The functional characterization of Tregs was analysed by suppression of proliferation and secretion of cytokines by co‐cultured effector CD4+CD25‐ T cells. FoxP3 mRNA level was assessed by quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction. We observed that CD4+CD25high cells of patients with HFRS showed a conventional phenotype. Furthermore, acute‐stage patients with HFRS exhibited significantly reduced numbers of peripheral Tregs compared with healthy donors, and marked improvement was observed in convalescent‐phase patients. The frequency of Tregs was correlated positively with platelet count, and was correlated negatively with blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine and serum aspartate aminotransferase. On the other hand, Tregs from both healthy individuals and patients with HFRS exhibited equal FoxP3 expression of mRNA, and their ability to suppress the proliferation and cytokine secretion of CD4+ effector T cells was unimpaired in HFRS patients.
War Trauma Experience and Behavioral Screening of Bosnian Refugee Children Resettled in Massachusetts

&NA; The authors assessed war violence exposure and behavioral symptoms in Bosnian refugee children in Massachusetts and the utility of behavioral screening of refugees during the Refugee Health Assessment (RHA), required of newly arrived refugees. The study was a survey of 31 Bosnian refugee children in 1996 at the International Clinic of Boston Medical Center, the state's largest contracted provider of the RHA. Subjects were also offered referrals to appropriate mental health services. Sixty‐eight percent experienced long‐term separation from a parent. Eighty‐one percent were directly exposed to armed combat. Seventy‐one percent experienced the death of a close friend or relative. Fifty‐two percent experienced economic deprivation. Families reported behavioral symptoms for 77% of children. Only one family expressed interest in psychosocial services of any kind. Large numbers of Bosnian refugees are likely to have experienced traumatic war violence and are at risk of behavioral symptoms. The RHA affords opportunities to screen for behavioral problems but not to intervene. Primary care providers and other clinicians should be aware of likely recurrences of symptoms in high‐risk children such as these.
Treatment with retinoic acid and lens epithelial cell-conditioned medium in vitro directed the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells towards corneal endothelial cell-like cells

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have extensive self-renewal capacity and the potential to differentiate into all tissue-specific cell lineages, including corneal endothelial cells (CECs). They are a promising prospect for the future of regenerative medicine. The method of derivation of CECs from ESCs and iPSCs, however, remains to be elucidated. In this study, mouse ESCs and iPSCs were induced to differentiate into CECs using CEC embryonic development events as a guide. All-trans retinoic acid (RA) treatment during the embryoid body (EB) differentiation step was used to promote neural crest (NC) cell differentiation as first step and was followed by a second induction in CEC- or lens epithelial cell (LEC)-conditioned medium (CM) to ultimately generate CEC-like cells. During the corresponding differentiation stages, NC developmental markers and CEC differentiation markers were detected at the protein level using immunocytochemistry (ICC) and at the mRNA level by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). During the first stage, the data indicated that 4 days of treatment with 1 μM RA starting on day 4 of EB formation favored NC cell differentiation and that plating on gelatin-coated plates led to cell migration out of the EBs. The second-stage differentiation results showed that the CM, particularly the LEC-CM, enhanced the yield of polygonal cells with CEC-specific marker expression shown by ICC and RT-qPCR. This study demonstrates that mouse ESCs and iPSCs were induced and expressed CEC differentiation markers when subjected to a two-step inducement process, suggesting that they are a promising resource for corneal endothelium failure replacement therapy in the future.
Ieee Transactions on Software Engineering 1 Preventing Temporal Violations in Scientific Workflows: Where and How

— Due to the dynamic nature of the underlying high performance infrastructures for scientific workflows such as grid and cloud computing, failures of timely completion of important scientific activities, namely temporal violations, often take place. Unlike conventional exception handling on functional failures, non-functional QoS failures such as temporal violations cannot be passively recovered. They need to be proactively prevented through dynamically monitoring and adjusting the temporal consistency states of scientific workflows at run time. However, current research on workflow temporal verification mainly focuses on run-time monitoring while the adjusting strategy for temporal consistency states, namely temporal adjustment, has so far not been thoroughly investigated. For this issue, two fundamental problems of temporal adjustment, namely where and how, are systematically analysed and addressed in this paper. Specifically, a novel minimum probability time redundancy based necessary and sufficient adjustment point selection strategy is proposed to address the problem of where and an innovative genetic algorithm based effective and efficient local rescheduling strategy is proposed to tackle the problem of how. The results of large scale simulation experiments with generic workflows and specific real world applications demonstrate that our temporal adjustment strategy can remarkably prevent the violations of both local and global temporal constraints in scientific workflows.
Assessing Effects of Schooling With Cross-Sectional Data: Between-Grades Differences Addressed as a Selection-Bias Problem

Abstract This article details how cross-sectional data may be used to assess the effect of schooling. The methodology proposed requires that the data derive from two (or more) adjacent grades. Differences in learning outcomes between grades are assumed to be accounted for by differences in age, the education received, and unmeasured variables affecting both assignment to grades and learning outcomes. The approach presented includes an estimation of the impact of these unmeasured variables. It was applied to the TIMSS-95 data, which relate to student achievement and attitudes to both mathematics and science in 15 different countries. This research illustrated that the proposed approach yielded results that were very close to estimates based on an instrumental variables method.
Quantifying how much sensory information in a neural code is relevant for behavior

Determining how much of the sensory information carried by a neural code contributes to behavioral performance is key to understand sensory function and neural information flow. However, there are as yet no analytical tools to compute this information that lies at the intersection between sensory coding and behavioral readout. Here we develop a novel measure, termed the information-theoretic intersection information $I_{II}(S;R;C)$, that quantifies how much of the sensory information carried by a neural response R is used for behavior during perceptual discrimination tasks. Building on the Partial Information Decomposition framework, we define $I_{II}(S;R;C)$ as the part of the mutual information between the stimulus S and the response R that also informs the consequent behavioral choice C. We compute $I_{II}(S;R;C)$ in the analysis of two experimental cortical datasets, to show how this measure can be used to compare quantitatively the contributions of spike timing and spike rates to task performance, and to identify brain areas or neural populations that specifically transform sensory information into choice.
Tension-free inguinal hernia repair comparing 'darn' with 'mesh': Aprospective randomized controlled clinical trial

Background : Tension-free inguinal hernioplasty is sine-qua-non for a good hernia repair and is aptly fulfilled by both Lichtenstein's mesh and a correctly done Abrahamson's darn. Aims: This study compares the increasingly popular, yet costly, Lichtenstein's mesh repair with the classical Abrahamson's darn repair for inguinal hernia. Materials and Methods : A randomized, bias-free study was conducted on 240 patients with blinding adopted during the computation of results. All 240 patients, underwent 240 repairs after being randomized into 2 groups. 120 repairs were done with prolene mesh secured with 2-0 prolene sutures, while the other 120 patients underwent a 3-layered darn repair using 1-0 prolene sutures over a 2-0 prolene posterior bed. Duration of surgery and ergonomics were noted for each case. Results : The operative time was comparable (mean of 38 min for the darn group and 36 min for the mesh group), ( P > 0.5; insignificant), using Fisher's exact 't' test being > 0.5 and hence insignificant. Postoperative complications were minimal in both series. Both groups recorded no recurrences till date. However, darning scored better than mesh when cost of the mesh and darn sutures were compared, other factors being similar. Conclusion : Mesh repair is definitely the more popular version of the two but in countries where cost factors still play a part and prevent many from seeking early treatment, a well constructed darn is an equally effective and less costly treatment option for inguinal hernias.
Thermal transport in amorphous materials: a review

Thermal transport plays a crucial role in performance and reliability of semiconductor electronic devices, where heat is mainly carried by phonons. Phonon transport in crystalline semiconductor materials, such as Si, Ge, GaAs, GaN, etc, has been extensively studied over the past two decades. In fact, study of phonon physics in crystalline semiconductor materials in both bulk and nanostructure forms has been the cornerstone of the emerging field of ‘nanoscale heat transfer’. On the contrary, thermal properties of amorphous materials have been relatively less explored. Recently, however, a growing number of studies have re-examined the thermal properties of amorphous semiconductors, such as amorphous Si. These studies, which included both computational and experimental work, have revealed that phonon transport in amorphous materials is perhaps more complicated than previously thought. For instance, depending on the type of amorphous materials, thermal transport occurs via three types of vibrations: propagons, diffusons, and locons, corresponding to the propagating, diffusion, and localized modes, respectively. The relative contribution of each of these modes dictates the thermal conductivity of the material, including its magnitude and its dependence on sample size and temperature. In this article, we will review the fundamental principles and recent development regarding thermal transport in amorphous semiconductors.
Cardiorespiratory strain during walking in snow with boots of different weights.

In order to assess the physiological strain of different boot weights, seven male and three female subjects walked on a treadmill and a snow-field while wearing three types of boots: winter jogging boots (WJB), rubber boots (RB), and rubber safety boots (RSB), weighing (means +/- s.d.) 0.9 +/- 0.1, 1.9 +/- 0.4 and 2.5 +/- 0.2 kg, respectively During each walk the subjects wore the same clothing ensembles and moved at the same, individually determined speed. The mean (+/- s.e.) depths of the footprint impression in the snow while walking in the WJB, RB, and RSB were 26.1 +/- 1.5, 25.6 +/- 1.4 and 26.1 +/- 1.5 cm (NS), respectively. During walking on the treadmill, the means for oxygen consumption were 0.79 +/- 0.05, 0.81 +/- 0.06 and 0.83 +/- 0.04 l min-1 (NS) and in snow 2.24 +/- 0.18, 2.34 +/- 0.17 and 2.34 +/- 0.19 l min-1 (p less than 0.01) with the WJB, RB and RSB, respectively. The mean oxygen consumption levels observed during the walks averaged 23% and 65% of the subject's maximum oxygen consumption on the treadmill and in the snow-field, respectively. During the walking tests the corresponding mean heart rates were 106 +/- 4, 93 +/- 5, and 95 +/- 5 beats min-1 (p less than 0.05) on the treadmill, and 151 +/- 11, 150 +/- 11 and 151 +/- 12 beats min-1 (NS) in snow. No significant differences in ratings of perceived exertion were observed between the walking tests in snow with the three types of boots. In accordance with earlier studies, walking in snow was found to be strenuous work. In conclusion, the use of the RSB is recommended during logging work in snow, since they are known to provide greater protection than lighter boots and the increase in physiological strain experienced with RSB in this study was not appreciably greater than that with boots of lighter weight.
What Goes around Comes around-A Comparative Study of the Influence of Chemical Modifications on the Antimicrobial Properties of Small Cyclic Peptides

Tryptophan and arginine-rich cyclic hexapeptides of the type cyclo-RRRWFW combine high antibacterial activity with rapid cell killing kinetics, but show low toxicity in human cell lines. The peptides fulfil the structural requirements for membrane interaction such as high amphipathicity and cationic charge, but membrane permeabilisation, which is the most common mode of action of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), could not be observed. Our current studies focus on elucidating a putative membrane translocation mechanism whereupon the peptides might interfere with intracellular processes. These investigations require particular analytical tools: fluorescent analogues and peptides bearing appropriate reactive groups were synthesized and characterized in order to be used in confocal laser scanning microscopy and HPLC analysis. We found that minimal changes in both the cationic and hydrophobic domain of the peptides in most cases led to significant reduction of antimicrobial activity and/or changes in the mode of action. However, we were able to identify two modified peptides which exhibited properties similar to those of the cyclic parent hexapeptide and are suitable for subsequent studies on membrane translocation and uptake into bacterial cells.
Effectiveness of a fading emulator in evaluating the performance of MIMO systems by comparison with a propagation test

This paper presents a MIMO spatial fading emulator, used to represent a street microcell environment. The fading emulator can reproduce a multipath radio propagation environment with either a uniform or non-uniform angular power spectrum (APS) in the horizontal plane. In this paper, we used the emulator to measure the 2-by-2 MIMO characteristics of four handset arrays with two monopoles in a multipath environment with one spatial cluster of incoming waves. From our investigation, good agreement was obtained between the results from the emulator and data measured in a radio propagation test in a street microcell. This demonstrates that the emulator is effective in evaluating the MIMO performance in a multipath propagation environment.
Exhaled nitric oxide and bronchial responsiveness in healthy subjects exposed to organic dust

Inhalation of organic dust from swine houses causes an intense inflammatory reaction in the respiratory tract, and increased bronchial responsiveness to methacholine in healthy subjects. The aims of the present study were to investigate whether exhaled nitric oxide (NO) is a marker of the inflammation caused by exposure to organic dust (swine dust), whether there is a relationship between an increase in exhaled NO and bronchial responsiveness, and also whether wearing a half-mask influences the airway reaction (assessed by exhaled NO) and the increased bronchial responsiveness. Thirty-three healthy nonatopic, nonsmoking subjects were exposed during 3 h of light work in a swine confinement building. Eleven of the subjects were wearing a half-mask and 22 were unprotected. Lung function, bronchial responsiveness and exhaled NO were measured before and after exposure. The provocative concentration causing a 20% fall in forced expiratory volume in one second fell by 2.7 (2.1–4.1) (median (25th–75th percentiles)) doubling concentration steps in subjects without a half-mask and by 1.5 (0.9–2.9) doubling concentration steps in subject wearing a mask. Exhaled NO increased from 7.5 (5.7–13.7) parts per billion (ppb) before to 13.4 (10.5–17.5) ppb after exposure in the unprotected group and was unaltered (8.3 (6.1–14.1) to 8.6 (6.6–14.6) ppb) in the group wearing a half-mask. There was no correlation between NO increase and provocative dose causing a 20% fall in the forced expiratory volume in one second decrease. In conclusion, bronchial responsiveness and exhaled nitric oxide increased after exposure to a swine confinement facility. Half-mask abolished the increase in exhaled nitric oxide levels, but influenced the increase in bronchial responsiveness to a minor extent. These results indicate that these two outcome measures reflect different aspects of airway inflammation induced by exposure to a farming environment.
Grasping the Finer Point: A Supervised Similarity Network for Metaphor Detection

The ubiquity of metaphor in our everyday communication makes it an important problem for natural language understanding. Yet, the majority of metaphor processing systems to date rely on hand-engineered features and there is still no consensus in the field as to which features are optimal for this task. In this paper, we present the first deep learning architecture designed to capture metaphorical composition. Our results demonstrate that it outperforms the existing approaches in the metaphor identification task.
Micro-shear bond strength of different adhesives to human dental enamel.

UNLABELLED The aim of this study was to evaluate the micro-shear bond strength of 5 adhesive systems to enamel, one single-bottle acid-etch adhesive (O), two self-etching primers (P) and two all-in-one self-etching adhesives (S). METHOD Sixty premolar enamel surfaces (buccal or lingual) were ground flat with 400- and 600-grit SiC papers and randomly divided into 5 groups (n = 12), according to the adhesive system: SB2--Single Bond 2 (O); CSE--Clearfil SE Bond (P); ADS--AdheSE (P); PLP--Adper Prompt L-Pop (S); XE3--Xeno III (S). Tygon tubing (inner diameter of 0.8 mm) restricted the bonding area to obtain the resin composite (Z250) cylinders. After storage in distilled water at 37 degrees C for 24h and thermocycling, micro-shear testing was performed (crosshead speed of 0.5 mm/min). Data were submitted to one-way ANOVA and Tukey test (a = 5%). Samples were also subjected to stereomicroscopic and SEM evaluations after micro-shear testing. Mean bond strength values (MPa +/- SD) and the results of Tukey test were: SB2: 36.36 (+/- 3.34)a; ADS: 33.03 (17.83)a; XE3: 32.76 (+/- 5.61)a; CSE: 30.61 (+/- 6.68)a; PLP: 22.17 (+/- 6.05)b. Groups with the same letter were not statistically different. It can be concluded that no significant difference was there between SB2, ADS, XE3 and CSE, in spite of different etching patterns of these adhesives. Only PLP presented statistically lower bond strengths compared with others.