Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WOOD ADHESIVES MADE WITH PYROLYSIS OILS

Phenol-formaldehyde resins represent an important type of adhesives employed in the production of wood-based panels of superior water resistance (exterior use products). Phenol is a petrochemical product and the increased oil prices together with the need of reducing the demand on fossil fuels and promoting environmentally friendly products have encouraged developments in the use of alternative raw materials derived from renewable resources. Efforts in this field have accelerated in the latest two decades. The research group of A.C. M. Wood Chemicals plc in this respect has studied the potential use of biomass derived pyrolysis oils (bio-oils), a portion of which comprises of phenolic compounds, for replacing part of the phenol needed in the formulation of a phenol-formaldehyde resin. Phenol-formaldehyde resins were produced by substituting up to 50% of the phenol needed in the formulation with bio-oils and by modifying the synthesis procedure. The resins were successfully used in the production of oriented strand board and plywood. This difference in the field of application required an adaptation of the resin production sequence. The use of bio-oils provided in both cases phenolic adhesives with reactivity and performance equal to the non-modified resins. Further increase in the substitution level is envisaged, with the aim to further reduce the resin cost. The lower toxicity of bio-oils as compared to pure phenol would facilitate resin manufacture. The conformity with the EU directive for sustainable development makes them attractive for further investigation.
Air-bubble entrapment due to a drop

In 2001, an ultra-high-speed video camera of 1,000,000 frames per second was developed in Hydraulics Laboratory of Kinki University. The image sensor of the camera was the ISIS-V2, the In-situ Storage Image Sensor-Version 2. The camera has been applied to visualization of high-speed phenomena in various fields of science and engineering. We observed entrapment phenomena of bubbles resulting from thermal spraying of metals. Thermal spraying is used to improve solid surfaces by spraying melted metal or ceramic particles to the surfaces. One of the problems relating to the thermal spraying is entrapment of air bubbles under the metal or ceramic layers covering the solid surfaces. The bubbles decrease bonding strength of the layers made by the thermal spraying. The entrapment processes were successfully visualized by application of the ultra-high-speed video camera.
Surface Layer Thermodynamics of Steel Penetrators at High and Very High Sliding Velocities

Abstract : One of the most difficult problems in the mechanics of kinetic energy projectiles penetrating geological or cementitious target materials is a proper understanding of the frictional properties between the projectile surface and the target. The model developed in this study is limited to a simple definition of the state of the projectile surface as a set of uniformly distributed micro-asperities with the same active height, h = 20 microns, which are subject to fast adiabatic shearing. Although the heat conduction equation has not been solved numerically in this study, a useful approximation of the evolution of temperature in the bulk material was applied. This approximation permitted finding the closed form solution for the homologous bulk temperature, at different sliding conditions. Because evolution of the bulk temperature could be estimated, it also permitted finding the evolution of the coefficient of friction as a function of the sliding velocity. For every definition of the coefficient of friction a substantial decrease of the resistance to sliding at increasing velocities has been found. An open question remains as to the role of the hydrostatic pressure. For example, the experimental data suggest that at constant velocity the coefficient of friction will diminish as a function of pressure as predicted by Eq. (51). Thus, an advantage of the model presented here is that hydrostatic pressure can be taken into consideration in a correct way. Albeit implementation of the friction model in the form of Eq. (51) into numerical codes is rather too early, preliminary trials should be recommended.
Randomized Stopping Times and American Option Pricing with Transaction Costs

In a general discrete‐time market model with proportional transaction costs, we derive new expectation representations of the range of arbitrage‐free prices of an arbitrary American option. The upper bound of this range is called the upper hedging price, and is the smallest initial wealth needed to construct a self‐financing portfolio whose value dominates the option payoff at all times. A surprising feature of our upper hedging price representation is that it requires the use of randomized stopping times (Baxter and Chacon 1977), just as ordinary stopping times are needed in the absence of transaction costs. We also represent the upper hedging price as the optimum value of a variety of optimization problems. Additionally, we show a two‐player game where at Nash equilibrium the value to both players is the upper hedging price, and one of the players must in general choose a mixture of stopping times. We derive similar representations for the lower hedging price as well. Our results make use of strong duality in linear programming.
Larval development of Myzostoma cirriferum (Myzostomida)

The larval development of Myzostoma cirriferum is described by means of SEM, TEM, and cLSM. It is similar to that of other myzostomids and includes three stages: the protrochophore, the trochophore, and the metatrochophore. The protrochophore is a ball‐shaped larva present in culture from 18–48 h after egg laying. It has no internal organs and its body is made of three cell types: covering cells and ciliated cells that are external and surrounded by a cuticle, and resting cells that fill the blastocoel. The trochophore is a pear‐shaped larva that develops 20–72 h after egg laying; the body includes the same three cell types as the previous stage. The metatrochophore is a pear‐shaped larva that develops between 40 h and 14 days and is characterized by the presence of two bundles of four chaetae. When fully developed, the metatrochophore has a digestive system (made of a pharynx, an esophagus, and a blind digestive pouch), two pairs of protonephridia, and a nervous system composed of a supraesophageal ganglion, circumesophageal connectives, and dorsal and ventral nerves. Metamorphosis generally occurs 7 days after egg laying. At that time, the metatrochophore loses its chaetae and becomes pleated ventrally. This ultrastructural analysis suggests that chaetae and the five ventral longitudinal nerve cords of M. cirriferum metatrochophores are homologous structures to those observed in some polychaete trochophores. Coupled with recent phylogenetic analyses, where the Myzostomida are placed outside the Annelida, homologies between myzostomid and polychaete larvae support the view that a trochophore appeared early during the spiralian evolution. J. Morphol. 258:269–283, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Virtual Checkpoints: Architecture and Performance

Checkpoint and rollback recovery is a technique that allows a system to tolerate a failure by periodically saving the entire state and, if an error is detected, rolling back to the prior checkpoint. A technique that embeds the support for checkpoint and rollback recovery directly into the virtual memory translation hardware is presented. The scheme is general enough to be implemented on various scopes of data such as a portion of an address space, a single address space, or multiple address spaces. The technique can provide a high-performance scheme for implementing checkpoint and rollback recovery. The performance. of the scheme is analyzed using a trace-driven simulation. The overhead is a function of the interval between checkpoints and becomes very small for intervals greater than 10/sup 6/ references. However, the scheme is shown to be feasible for intervals as small as 1000 references under certain conditions. >
Influence of defects and domain walls on dielectric and mechanical resonances in LiNbO3

Monodomain and periodically poled LiNbO3 crystals (congruent composition) show dielectric and piezoelectric resonances between 100 K and 900 K. Dielectric measurements show resonances in some samples between 10–100 kHz. These resonances vanish under thermal anneal in monodomain crystals while they remain stable in periodically poled samples with high domain wall densities. The low activation energy of 0.18 eV suggests their electronic (bi-polaronic) origin. Resonant piezoelectric spectroscopy, RPS, shows two features in virgin samples: a relaxation peak at 420 K and a rapid hardening when the sample was slowly heated to ~500 K. The dynamic relaxation and the hardening are related to excitations and reorientations of Li defects. The relaxations and hardening are irreversibly suppressed by high temperature anneal. We do not observe domain wall related RPS resonances in annealed samples, which excludes the existence of highly charged walls. We suggest that domain walls stabilize polaronic states with (bi-)polarons located inside or near to the ferroelectric domain walls.
MR imaging and proton spectroscopy of the brain in posttraumatic cortical blindness

Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and localized proton MR spectroscopy of the occipital lobes were performed in a patient with cortical blindness following brain trauma. Computed tomography (CT) scans and MR images of the visual cortex were normal in the acute stage. Six weeks after the trauma, MR images showed cortical lesions in both occipital lobes, while the spectra showed elevated lactate and decreased N‐acetyl aspartate levels relative to those of healthy volunteers. One year later, visual acuity had improved and follow‐up studies revealed an increase in the ratios of N‐acetyl aspartate to choline and creatine. These results demonstrate that parenchymal lesions may develop in brain regions that appear normal at CT and MR imaging during the acute stage after trauma. Metabolic changes can be observed in these areas by means of localized proton MR spectroscopy.
Does the medium affect the message? The influence of text representation format on critical thinking

The proliferation of digital information resources in recent years challenges consumers with the need to employ critical thinking skills in reading news. This paper suggests an updated perspective to the expression that "the medium is the message" by comparing the ability of high-school and college students to exercise critical thinking skills in reading news in print and digital formats. The most important finding is the better performance of the younger participants (high school students) in reading digital news formats, and the better performance of the college students when reading news in a print format. The findings of this exploratory study are discussed through the lenses of three perspectives: a usability perspective, a cognitive perspective and an information economics perspective in order to stimulate further research that may provide designers, researchers and educators with useful guidelines for designing effective messages in the information age.
Structural and magnetic properties of uniform magnetite nanoparticles prepared by high temperature decomposition of organic precursors

Magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) of three different sizes below the limit for single domain magnetic behaviour have been obtained by thermal decomposition of an iron precursor in an organic medium in the presence of a surfactant. Good agreement between mean particle size obtained by TEM, crystal size calculated from x-ray diffraction and magnetic diameter calculated from magnetization curves measured at room temperature shows that the samples consist of uniform, crystalline and isolated magnetite nanoparticles with sizes between 5 and 11 nm. High saturation magnetization and high initial susceptibility values have been found, the latter decreasing as the particle size decreases. The main contribution to the anisotropy is magnetocrystalline and shape anisotropy, since surface anisotropy is suppressed by the oleic acid molecules which are covalently bonded to the nanoparticle surface.
Ultrastructural analysis of aminoglycoside‐induced hair cell death in the zebrafish lateral line reveals an early mitochondrial response

Loss of the mechanosensory hair cells in the auditory and vestibular organs leads to hearing and balance deficits. To investigate initial, in vivo events in aminoglycoside‐induced hair cell damage, we examined hair cells from the lateral line of the zebrafish, Danio rerio. The mechanosensory lateral line is located externally on the animal and therefore allows direct manipulation and observation of hair cells. Labeling with vital dyes revealed a rapid response of hair cells to the aminoglycoside neomycin. Similarly, ultrastructural analysis revealed structural alteration among hair cells within 15 minutes of neomycin exposure. Animals exposed to a low, 25‐μM concentration of neomycin exhibited hair cells with swollen mitochondria, but little other damage. Animals treated with higher concentrations of neomycin (50–200 μM) had more severe and heterogeneous cellular changes, as well as fewer hair cells. Both necrotic‐like and apoptotic‐like cellular damage were observed. Quantitation of the types of alterations observed indicated that mitochondrial defects appear earlier and more predominantly than other structural alterations. In vivo monitoring demonstrated that mitochondrial potential decreased following neomycin treatment. These results indicate that perturbation of the mitochondrion is an early, central event in aminoglycoside‐induced damage. J. Comp. Neurol. 502:522–543, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Constructing Consensus Genetic Maps in Comparative Analysis

The construction of consensus genetic maps is a very challenging problem in computational biology. Many computational approaches have been proposed on the basis of only the marker order relations provided by a given set of individual genetic maps. In this article, we propose a comparative approach to constructing consensus genetic maps for a genome, which further takes into account the order relations from a closely related genome when resolving ordering conflicts among individual genetic maps. It aims to retain as many order relations as possible from individual genetic maps while achieving the minimum rearrangement distance to the reference genome. We implement the proposed approach as an integer linear program and test it on both simulated and real biological datasets. The experimental results show that it is capable of constructing more accurate consensus genetic maps than the most recent approach called MergeMap.
THE DIFFERENT EVOLUTION OF GAS AND DUST IN DISKS AROUND SUN-LIKE AND COOL STARS

Planet formation is profoundly impacted by the properties of protoplanetary disks and their central star. However, how disk properties vary with stellar parameters remains poorly known. Here, we present the first comprehensive, comparative Spitzer/IRS study of the dust and gas properties of disks around young Sun-like stars (K1–M5) and cool stars/brown dwarfs (M5–M9). The comparison of these two large samples of over 60 sources reveal major differences in the evolution of both the dust and gas components. We report the first detection of organic molecules in disks around brown dwarfs. The detection rate statistics and the line flux ratios of HCN and C2H2 show a striking difference between the two samples, demonstrating a significant underabundance of HCN relative to C2H2 in the disk surface of cool stars. We propose this to originate from the large difference in the UV irradiation around the two types of sources. The statistical comparison of the 10 μm silicate emission features also reveals a difference between the two samples. Cool stars and brown dwarfs show weaker features arising from more processed silicate grains in the disk atmosphere. These findings complement previous indications of flatter disk structures and longer disk lifetimes around cool stars. Our results highlight important differences in the chemical and physical evolution of protoplanetary disks as a function of stellar mass, temperature, and radiation field which should be taken into account in planet formation models. We note that the different chemistry of preplanetary materials in the disk may also influence the bulk composition and volatile content of the forming planets. In particular, if exogenous HCN has played a key role in the synthesis of prebiotic molecules on Earth as proposed, then prebiotic chemistry may unfold differently on planets around cool stars.
Shape-similarity search of 3D models by using enhanced shape functions

We propose a pair of shape features for shape-similarity search of 3D (three-dimensional) polygonal-mesh models. The shape features are an extension of the D2 shape functions proposed by Osada et al. (2001). Our proposed shape features are tolerant of topological variations and geometrical degeneracies. Our shape feature is also invariant to similarity transformation. Experiments showed that, with only a modest increase in computational cost, our shape feature achieved a significant performance improvement over Osada's D2.
Prevalence of stuttering in African American preschoolers.

PURPOSE In this study, the authors sought to determine the prevalence of stuttering in African American (AA) 2- to 5-year-olds as compared with same-age European Americans (EAs). METHOD A total of 3,164 children participated: 2,223 AAs and 941 EAs. Data were collected using a 3-pronged approach that included investigators' individual interactions with each child, teacher identification, and parent identification of stuttering. RESULTS No statistically significant difference for stuttering was found between AA and EA children. Using the investigator and teacher method of identification, the prevalence of stuttering was 2.52% for the entire sample. For both racial groups, boys exhibited a higher prevalence of stuttering than girls. Of the 3 predictors (age, race, sex) of stuttering, only sex was a significant predictor. CONCLUSIONS AA 2- to 5-year-olds are not overrepresented in the stuttering population for this age group. When data are combined for both racial groups, the prevalence of stuttering is 2.52%. More boys than girls stuttered in this sample of preschoolers.
Working memory deficits in multiple sclerosis: a controlled study with auditory P600 correlates

Background: Recently, the P600 component of event related potentials, a waveform that is conceived to be generated and/or modulated by basal ganglia and cingulate area has been considered an index of the completion of any synchronised operation after target detection, having much in common with working memory operation. Moreover, dysfunction of these brain structures as well as working memory deficits have been implicated in the pathophysiology of multiple sclerosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the patterns of P600 elicited during a working memory test in multiple sclerosis patients compared with healthy controls. Methods: Twenty two definite, chronic progressive multiple sclerosis patients, with recent exacerbation of their illness, and 20 normal subjects matched for age, sex, and educational level, were studied with a computerised version of the digit span test of Wechsler batteries. Auditory P600 were measured during the anticipatory period of this test. Results: The patient group, as compared with healthy controls, showed significantly reduced latencies of P600 at left frontal areas and reduced P600 amplitudes at left temporoparietal region. Moreover, memory performance of patients was significantly more impaired when compared with healthy controls. Conclusions: These findings may indicate that multiple sclerosis is associated with abnormal features of the completion of synchronised operation after target detection, as they are reflected by P600 amplitudes and latencies. Dysfunction of this mechanism may contribute to the identification of basic cognitive processes that could account for the cognitive deficits in multiple sclerosis.
Effects of Nerve Growth Factor on the Neurotization of Denervated Muscles

Studies on surgical repair techniques of the peripheral nerve are still trying to improve the outcome. There are many studies on the effects of various neurotrophic factors on the transected peripheral nerve. Muscular neurotization, which is the direct implantation of the nerve to the target denervated skeletal muscle, is one of the techniques used when the primary repair of the peripheral nerves is not possible. The effects of nerve growth factor (NGF), which is one of the primary neurotrophic factors, on the reinnervation of denervated muscles by neurotization is investigated in this experimental study. The denervated soleus muscle was neurotized via peroneal nerve implantation (group 1), and NGF was administered to the neurotized muscle (group 2). All animals were evaluated at weeks 8, 10, and 12 using electromyography. Muscle contractility, muscle weight, and histological morphometric tests were performed at week 12. The experimental groups were compared with each other and normal control values. Electromyographically, group 2 (direct nerve implantation + NGF) demonstrated better reinnervation in all evaluations. The study of muscle weight showed that the muscle mass was 75% of the normal soleus muscle in group 1 and was 85% of the normal side in group 2 at the end of week 12. In group 1, the twitch force was 56% of the normal soleus muscle and was 71% in group 2. Tetanic force was 53% of the normal soleus muscle in group 1 and 68% in group 2. Histological morphometric studies revealed that there was a decrease in the density of the motor end plates in group 1, but there was no statistically significant difference between the normal soleus muscles and the NGF applied to group 2. The positive effects of NGF on the neurotization of denervated muscles seen in this study suggest that it may be useful for treating some difficult reconstructions caused by denervation.
Submental intubation: A journey over the last 25 years

Airway management in patients with faciomaxillary injuries is challenging due to disruption of components of upper airway. The anesthesiologist has to share the airway with the surgeons. Oral and nasal routes for intubation are often not feasible. Most patients have associated nasal fractures, which precludes use of nasal route of intubation. Intermittent intraoperative dental occlusion is needed to check alignment of the fracture fragments, which contraindicates the use of orotracheal intubation. Tracheostomy in such situations is conventional and time-tested; however, it has life-threatening complications, it needs special postoperative care, lengthens hospital stay, and adds to expenses. Retromolar intubation may be an option, But the retromolar space may not be adequate in all adult patients. Submental intubation provides intraoperative airway control, avoids use of oral and nasal route, with minimal complications. Submental intubation allows intraoperative dental occlusion and is an acceptable option, especially when long-term postoperative ventilation is not planned. This technique has minimal complications and has better patients’ and surgeons’ acceptability. There have been several modifications of this technique with an expectation of an improved outcome. The limitations are longer time for preparation, inability to maintain long-term postoperative ventilation and unfamiliarity of the technique itself. The technique is an acceptable alternative to tracheostomy for the good per-operative airway access.