Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Fructose and Glycerol as Plasticizers in Cassava Bioplastic Production

This research paper is an investigation into the effects of fructose and glycerol as plasticizers in cassava bioplastic production. The experiments were carried out at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton Department of Chemistry. The objectives of the research were to produce cassava-based bioplastics in the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton Chemistry Department Laboratory, to investigate the use of fructose and glycerol as plasticizers in the production of the cassava-based bioplastics and to conduct physical and chemical quality tests on the bioplastics to determine which plasticizer is best for industrial use. A Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) was used in the experiments. The parameters measured were film thickness, density, moisture content, solubility in water, water absorption, swelling index, and biodegradability test. Overall, fructose as a plasticizer is recommended over glycerol and over fructose and glycerol.
Experimental and numerical studies on the Portevin-LeChâtelier effect in Cu-Al and Al-Mg in strain and stress controlled tensile tests

The scope of this work was to investigate the spatio-temporal instabilities due to strain softening during the localized plastic deformation of metals, denoted as Portevin-LeChatelier (PLC) Effekt, for the examples of polycrystalline Cu-15at. %Al and Al-3wt. %Mg. Applying a laser scanning extensometry technique during tensile tests at different deformation modes, i.e. straining at a constant stress-rate or strain-rate, respectively, and at various temperatures, provides an unambiguous classification of the types of instabilities as well as an independent determination of velocity, width, and strain concentration of the often propagating strain localization. These observations support the results of numerical simulations based on a recent model of Hahner. Starting with an introduction, the second chapter presents a phenomenological and theoretical description of the PLC effect and briefly summarizes the most important previous results. In the third chapter the experimental methods, especially the laser scanning extensometry technique and the stress-rate controlled tensile test is explained. The fourth chapter includes the presentation and discussion of all experimental results, separately for the two materials and for the two deformation modes, stress-rate and strain-rate control, respectively. The chapter ends with the main results of the numerical simulation. Taking into account the previous and recent results of this work, a final conclusion is drawn in the fifth chapter, and the main findings are briefly summarized in the last chapter.
Neural Speech Translation at AppTek

This work describes AppTek’s speech translation pipeline that includes strong state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR) and neural machine translation (NMT) components. We show how these components can be tightly coupled by encoding ASR confusion networks, as well as ASR-like noise adaptation, vocabulary normalization, and implicit punctuation prediction during translation. In another experimental setup, we propose a direct speech translation approach that can be scaled to translation tasks with large amounts of text-only parallel training data but a limited number of hours of recorded and human-translated speech.
Design and Characterization of a High-resolution Cardiovascular Imager

Fluoroscopic imaging devices for interventional radiology and cardiovascular applications have traditionally used image-intensifiers optically coupled to either chargecoupled devices (CCDs) or video pick-up tubes. While such devices provide image quality sufficient for most clinical applications, there are several limitations, such as loss of resolution in the fringes of the image-intensifier, veiling glare and associated contrast loss, distortion, size, and degradation with time. This work is aimed at overcoming these limitations posed by image-intensifiers, while improving on the image quality. System design parameters related to the development of a high-resolution CCD-based imager are presented. The proposed system uses four 8 x 8-cm three-side buttable CCDs tiled in a seamless fashion to achieve a field of view (FOV) of 16 x 16-cm. Larger FOVs can be achieved by tiling more CCDs in a similar manner. The system employs a thallium-doped cesium iodide (CsI:Tl) scintillator coupled to the CCDs by straight (non-tapering) fiberoptics and can be operated in 78, 156 or 234-microns pixel pitch modes. Design parameters such as quantum efficiency and scintillation yield of CsI:Tl, optical coupling efficiency and estimation of the thickness of fiberoptics to provide reasonable protection to the CCD, linearity, sensitivity, dynamic range, noise characteristics of the CCD, techniques for tiling the CCDs in a seamless fashion, and extending the field of view are addressed. The signal and noise propagation in the imager iii was modeled as a cascade of linear-systems and used to predict objective image quality parameters such as the spatial frequency-dependent modulation transfer function (MTF), noise power spectrum (NPS) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). The theoretical predictions were compared with experimental measurements of the MTF, NPS and DQE of a single 8 x 8-cm module coupled to a 450-microns thick CsI:Tl at x-ray beam quality appropriate for cardiovascular fluoroscopy. The measured limiting spatial resolution (10% MTF) was 3.9 cy/mm and 3.6 cy/mm along the two orthogonal axes. The measured DQE(0) was ~0.62 and showed no dependence with incident exposure rate over the range of measurement. The experimental DQE measurements demonstrated good agreement with the theoretical estimate obtained using the parallel-cascaded linear-systems model. The temporal imaging properties were characterized in terms of image lag and showed a first frame image lag of 0.9%. The imager demonstrated the ability to provide images of high and uniform spatial resolution, while preserving and potentially improving on DQE performance at dose levels lower than that currently used in clinical practice. These results provide strong support for potential adaptation of this type of imager for cardiovascular and pediatric angiography.
Effect of annealing temperature on structural, electrical, and UV sensingcharacteristics of n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction photodiodes

The aim of this study is to investigate the influences of annealing temperature on initial device characteristics and their correlations with ultraviolet (UV) radiation sensitivity of n-type zinc oxide/p-silicon (n-ZnO/p-Si) heterojunction photodiodes. Evolutions on the crystalline structure, surface morphology, ideality factor, barrier potential, interface state density, and donor concentration were systematically analyzed during the initial device characterizations before testing the UV sensitivities of the photonic devices. The results demonstrate that the sensitivity of each n-ZnO/p-Si photodiode annealed at various temperatures was linearly correlated with different UV illumination intensities. The devices annealed at 750 oC and 550 oC exhibit more sensitive performance than devices annealed at 150 oC and 350 oC owing to lower dark currents and good oxide quality. However, the presence of an interfacial suboxide or silicate oxide layer significantly decreased the responsivity of the photodiodes annealed at 750 oC. The maximum responsivity value was 126 mA/W for the photodiode annealed at 550 oC. It can be concluded that the photodiode annealed at 550 oC exhibits promising performance for UV sensing applications.
Using Equity Market Reactions to Infer Exposure to Trade Liberalization

We outline a method for using asset prices to identify firm exposure to changes in policy. We highlight the benefits of this approach for studying trade agreements and apply it to two US trade liberalizations, with China and Canada. We find that abnormal equity returns during key events associated with these liberalizations are correlated with standard measures of import competition, vary across firms even within industries, predict subsequent firm outcomes, and provide a more complete view of distributional implications. In both cases, predicted relative increases in operating profit among the largest firms dwarf the relative losses of smaller firms.
Dynamic compressive behaviour and microstructural evolution of extrusion-shear Mg–6Zn–1Cu–1Y–0.6Zr alloy

ABSTRACT In this work, the alloy Mg–6Zn–1Cu–1Y–0.6Zr was prepared using an extrusion-shear method, which combines traditional extrusion with the equal channel angular pressing. Dynamic compressive behaviour and microstructural evolution were studied along the extrusion direction with strain rates in the range of 695–1995 s−1 using a Split-Hopkinson pressure bar. The dynamic compression properties have a distinct positive strain rate strengthening effect. A texture transition from ⟨10–10⟩ into ⟨0001⟩ is found in the Mg–6Zn–1Cu–1Y–0.6Zr alloy. Analysis of the microstructural evolution shows that {10–12} extension twinning and (0002) basal-type slip are major deformation mechanisms. The absorption energy density dramatically increases as the strain rate increases, results indicate that dynamic recrystallisation and high yield strength are mainly responsible for the high energy absorption capacity.
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the DNA Radiation Damage and Conformation Behavior on a Zirconium Dioxide Surface

This work is aimed on a complex study of the DNA immobilization and conformation processes on the zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) surface. The DNA+ZrO2 nanoparticles and nanosized films were investigated with the molecular dynamics (MD) modeling, experimental spectral and integral methods, including nuclear physics. Using the MD hybrid classical and quantum chemistry potentials, for the DNA solvated with water the DNA+ZrO2 surface interactions were simulated We have generated series MD models, thereby simulating a different scenario of the DNA with possible charge modifications. The DNA charge modification were introduced in the DNA central region via its two phosphorus atoms, Pa and Pb, and for several set of MD models for the relaxed DNA structures we have estimated the positional changes of the distance D[DNA(Pa,Pb) - ZrO2(O)] between the phosphorus atoms (Pa,Pb) and selected oxygen atoms of the ZrO2 surface. The work is aimed to the development of functional heterojunctions such as a biological molecule - wide-gap dielectric. These heterojunctions are intended for useing in the field of molecular electronics, in particular, for the creation of biochips, memory arrays and computer architectures of the future.
Low Energy Ar Ion Milling of FIB TEM Specimens from 14 nm and Future FinFET Technologies

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) specimens are typically prepared using the focused ion beam (FIB) due to its site specificity, and fast and accurate thinning capabilities. However, TEM and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) analysis may be limited due to the resulting FIB-induced artifacts. This work identifies FIB artifacts and presents the use of argon ion milling for the removal of FIB-induced damage for reproducible TEM specimen preparation of current and future fin field effect transistor (FinFET) technologies. Subsequently, high-quality and electron-transparent TEM specimens of less than 20 nm are obtained.
Investigations on the Osmoregulation System of Freshwater Fish ( Oreochromis niloticus ) Exposed to Mercury in Differing Salinities

The aquatic environments are the sinks for most discharges produced by anthropogenic and natural activities. It is well known that heavy metals are accumulated from water by fish and are toxic at high levels. There are environmental quality standard levels set to estimate the maximum concentrations in the aquatic environment. This is <0.5 μg/L for mercury in the estuaries and coastal waters (McLusky, 1989). Mercury is perhaps the most toxic metal for aquatic organisms, organic mercury being 10 times more toxic than inorganic mercury (Boening, 2000). These toxicities become unpredictable in estuarine organisms where salinity changes, as the bioaccumulation of mercury changes in different salinities (Dutton and Fisher, 2014). Together with heavy metal stress, freshwaters are also loaded with salt from anthropogenic activities such as industry, domestic, agriculture and road salting (approximately 15 million tons in USA and 200 thousand tons in Turkey). Most of those salts eventually find their ways in nearby water bodies like lakes and rivers, making salinity increase one of the most important problems in the freshwater ecosystems (Lin et al., 2005, Choi, An & An, 2008). Rainbow and Luoma (2011) indicated that metal toxicity is not generally related to the metal burdens in tissues, but always related to metals that are metabolically available. Bioavailability of metals is also affected by salinity presence and consequently metal Investigations on the Osmoregulation System of Freshwater Fish (Oreochromis niloticus) Exposed to Mercury in Differing Salinities
In silico discoveries for biomedical sciences

Text-mining is a challenging field of research initially meant for reading large text collections with a computer. Text-mining is useful in summarizing text, searching for the informative documents, and most important to do knowledge discovery. Knowledge discovery is the main subject of this thesis. The hypothesis that knowledge discovery is possible started with the work done by Swanson. He made, as a first finding, links between Raynaud’s disease and fish oil using intermediate medical terms to relate them to each other. This principle was formalized in the AB- C concept. A and C are not directly related to each other but via an intermediate concept B that needs to be discovered. Tex data can be extended by adding other non textual data such as microarray experiments. Then we are in the field of data-mining. The final goal is to do all kinds of discoveries with computer (in silico) using data sources in order to assist biology research to save time and discover more.
Quantitative evaluation of interfacial adhesion between steel reinforcements and self-compacting concretes, in steel/concrete composites, by indentation tests

ABSTRACT To ensure reinforced concrete bars applications in more severe loading conditions, the contact between the steel bar and concrete must be strongly adhesive. This adhesion constitutes an important property for the use of reinforced concrete. That is why many techniques were developed with the aim of determining this property. Adhesion can be easily found out by standard pull-out test machine. However, in this work, the adhesion was measured for the first time using Interfacial Indentation test. In this work, given the lack of results obtained using the interfacial indentation test in the literature so that we can compare our results with, the alone alternative found is to compare them with those of the pull out test. Using reinforcing bars, adhesion was measured using Self Compacting Concrete (SCC) and Normal Vibrated Concrete (NVC) specimens. The impact of water-to-binder ratio variations and concrete type on steel bar/concrete adhesion has been the incentive of the present study. As a main conclusion, interfacial indentation test can be more properly represent the actual steel/concrete interface adhesion compared to the pull-out test which is a more global test. Graphical Abstract
Alternative interpretation of the adequate traffic levels of modified bitumens on Superpave®: a case study with crumb rubber and polyphosphoric acid (PPA)

This study proposes an alternative interpretation for the choice of modified bitumens on Superpave®, according to which heavier traffic levels described in the standardised bitumen classifications must comply with one additional requirement for the material to be graded as H, V or E. In order to show the application of this proposed interpretation, modified bitumens were subjected to MSCR tests at five temperatures (52°C, 58°C, 64°C, 70°C and 76°C) and four creep-recovery times (1/9, 2/9, 4/9 and 8/9 s). Crumb rubber and polyphosphoric acid (PPA) were used as modifiers to prepare three formulations: bitumen + PPA, bitumen + rubber and bitumen + rubber + PPA. The proposed criterion identified decreases in the traffic levels from E to V for the bitumen + rubber + PPA at 58°C and the bitumen + PPA at 64°C. This suggests that such bitumens may not be appropriate for heavier traffic levels, and a deeper investigation of their permanent deformation performance at the asphalt scale should be carried out.
WELDING TECHNOLOGIES FOR BUILT-UP COLD-FORMED STEEL BEAMS: EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS

Structural efficient elements are very attractive due to their economical savings but also for their ease of construction. Cold formed elements are among the solutions for rational use of material as trusses and, lately, corrugated web beams. The connection between the built-up beam parts can be easily obtained by screws but the developments in the welding process also led to other solutions as spot weld. The WELLFORMED research project, ongoing at the CEMSIG Research Center of the Politehnica University of Timisoara, proposes to study a new technological solution for built-up beams made of corrugated steel sheets for the web and thin-walled cold-formed steel profiles for the flanges, connected by spot welding or cold-metal transfer (CMT) welding. Within the research project, the experimental work includes tensile-shear tests on the lap joint welded specimens, were different combinations of steel sheets with various thicknesses were tested and, tests on five full-scale beams in bending. The paper presents the experimental results of the tests performed on lap joint specimens and on the full-scale beams. A numerical model that replicates both the beam instabilities and the forcedisplacement response of the beam is presented.
Extracting Boer-Mulders functions from p+D Drell-Yan processes

We extract the Boer-Mulders functions of valence and sea quarks in the proton from unpolarized p+D Drell-Yan data measured by the FNAL E866 Collaboration. Using these Boer-Mulders functions, we calculate the cos2{phi} asymmetries in unpolarized pp Drell-Yan processes, both for the FNAL E866/NuSea and the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider experiments. We also estimate the cos2{phi} asymmetries in the unpolarized pp Drell-Yan processes at GSI.
Topological Map Extraction From Overhead Images

We propose a new approach, named PolyMapper, to circumvent the conventional pixel-wise segmentation of (aerial) images and predict objects in a vector representation directly. PolyMapper directly extracts the topological map of a city from overhead images as collections of building footprints and road networks. In order to unify the shape representation for different types of objects, we also propose a novel sequentialization method that reformulates a graph structure as closed polygons. Experiments are conducted on both existing and self-collected large-scale datasets of several cities. Our empirical results demonstrate that our end-to-end learnable model is capable of drawing polygons of building footprints and road networks that very closely approximate the structure of existing online map services, in a fully automated manner. Quantitative and qualitative comparison to the state-of-the-arts also show that our approach achieves good levels of performance. To the best of our knowledge, the automatic extraction of large-scale topological maps is a novel contribution in the remote sensing community that we believe will help develop models with more informed geometrical constraints.
Investigation of Ultrasonic Wave Scattering Effects using Computational Methods

PAGE Advances in computational power and expanded access to computing clusters has made mathematical modeling of complex wave effects possible. We have used multi-core and cluster computing to implement analytical and numerical models of ultrasonic wave scattering in fluid and solid media (acoustic and elastic waves). We begin by implementing complicated analytical equations that describe the force upon spheres immersed in inviscid and viscous fluids due to an incident plane wave. Two real-world applications of acoustic force upon spheres are investigated using the mathematical formulations: emboli removal from cardiopulmonary bypass circuits using traveling waves and the micromanipulation of algal cells with standing waves to aid in biomass processing for algae biofuels. We then move on to consider wave scattering situations where analytical models do not exist: scattering of acoustic waves from multiple scatterers in fluids and Lamb wave scattering in solids. We use a numerical method called finite integration technique (FIT) to simulate wave behavior in three dimensions. The 3D simulations provide insight into experimental results for situations where 20 simulations would not be sufficient. The diverse set of scattering situations explored in this work show the broad applicability of the underlying principles and the computational tools that we have developed. Overall, our work shows that the movement towards better availability of large computational resources is opening up new ways to investigate complicated physics phenomena.
SCALING RELATIONS OF THE PROPERTIES FOR CO RESOLVED STRUCTURES IN NEARBY SPIRAL GALAXIES

Complementing the observations on the eastern part of galaxy NGC 6946 presented in a previous work, we report high spatial resolution observations of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the nearby spiral galaxies M101 and NGC 628 obtained with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). We observed CO ( 1 → 0 ) ? > over regions with active star formation extending from 2 to 15 kpc galactocentric radius. Higher resolution observations of CO ( 2 → 1 ) ? > toward the brightest regions observed in CO ( 1 → 0 ) ? > have allowed us to resolve some of the largest GMCs. We have recovered short-spacing u–v components by using single dish observations from the Nobeyama 45 m and IRAM 30 m telescopes. Using the automated CPROPS algorithm we identified 112 CO complexes in the CO ( 1 → 0 ) ? > maps and 144 GMCs in the CO ( 2 → 1 ) ? > maps. Using a Bayesian fitting approach, we generate scaling relations for the sizes, line widths, and virial masses of the structures identified in this work. We do not find evidence for a tight power-law relation between size and line width, although the limited dynamic range in cloud size remains a clear issue in our analysis. Additionally, we use a Bayesian approach to analyze the scaling relation between the star formation and molecular gas surface density, known as the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation. When we perform our analysis using the boundaries of the structures identified by CPROPS, we find that the distribution of slopes are broadly distributed, mainly due to the limited dynamic range of our measured &Sgr; H 2 ? > . In the case of the CO ( 1 → 0 ) ? > complexes, the slope distributions are most consistent with super-linear relations, although sub-linear relations cannot be excluded for NGC 628 and NGC 6946. The GMCs from higher resolution CO ( 2 → 1 ) ? > maps follow a similar behavior, but with larger scatter. As a complementary study, we use the Bayesian approach to analyze the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation for a uniform grid covering the areas surveyed, and with &Sgr; H 2 ? > non-detections included in the analysis. The distributions of slopes is consistent with sub-linear relations for NGC 6946 and NGC 628, but is less constrained for M101. This picture is preserved after a 24 μm background component is subtracted from the &Sgr; SFR ? > measurements. On-arm regions tend to have higher star formation rates than inter-arm regions. Similar to what we find in our study of the eastern part of NGC 6946, in M101 we find regions where the star formation efficiency (SFE) shows marked peaks at specific galoctocentric radii. On the other hand, the distribution of SFE in NGC 628 is more contiguous. We hypothesize that differences in the distribution of SFE may be indicative of different processes driving the spiral structure.