Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optical properties and high-frequency electron transport in plasmonic cavities

Boosted by the emerging connection between the fields of plasmonics and molecular electronics, this thesis explores theoretically the relation between the optical properties and the transport properties of plasmonic systems. It is deeply analyzed how the optical response of plasmonic dimers is altered due to the presence of junctions linking both parts of the system. First, the junction is considered to be a pure conductor, since this simple system allows the understanding of the basic behaviour of the problem. Then, a more realistic model is taken into account, where the junction is a molecular linker, and different transition energies, corresponding to potentially adequate molecules, are considered. Finally, the efficiency of the previously studied systems as sensors is explored. Along this thesis, the optical properties and the electromagnetic fields are obtained by solving Maxwell? s equations exactly by means of a numerical method known as Boundary Element Method (BEM). This thesis contributes to a better understanding in the fields of transport processes and molecular conductance in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum, a regime not accessible through standard electrical measurements, what makes this work interesting for different research areas.
Whole Atmosphere Coupling on Intraseasonal and Interseasonal Time Scales: A Potential Source of Increased Predictive Capability

Recent advances in developing accurate, physics‐based models of the coupled ionosphere‐thermosphere (CIT) system have now made these models an integral part of next‐generation space weather prediction capabilities. These advances have produced a better understanding of how the CIT is affected by variability in the neutral lower atmosphere. However, the impacts on the CIT of lower atmospheric variability over time scales with characteristic periods longer than ~10 days have received little attention, despite clear evidence of this variability in atmospheric circulation patterns throughout the stratosphere, mesosphere, and lower thermosphere. This review synthesizes the state of knowledge on long‐term variability (>10 days) originating in the lower atmosphere and its impacts on the CIT, highlighting the following critical points and challenges: (a) planetary wave oscillations are likely to couple the lower and upper atmospheres, especially those corresponding to normal modes of the atmosphere, but it remains unclear whether they impact the ionosphere directly via wind‐dynamo coupling, or indirectly via modulation of solar and lunar tides; (b) while fast moving planetary wave oscillations are ubiquitous in the CIT especially during solstices, there is only sporadic evidence that the slowest moving modes are also present in the upper atmosphere; (c) there is abundant evidence of long‐term variations of tidal amplitudes in the CIT, but how and why such variations occur still remain; (d) interseasonal variations associated with major tropospheric and stratospheric variability have been observed, but the physical pathways are still poorly understood.
Feasibility study of the use of the Vitamove in measuring mobility of patients after surgery

Introduction: Early mobilisation is part of standard postoperative care after abdominal surgery. Nevertheless no consensus exists on the content of early mobilisation. Impartial information on the mobility of patients can contribute to better treatments. The use of ambulant accelerometrics as applied in the VitaMove system enables a detailed assessment of patient mobility in terms of body postures and movements. Until now, the VitaMove has not been applied in clinical, inpatient settings. Objective : Primary objective is to determine if the VitaMove is feasible for measuring mobility of patients after abdominal surgery, admitted to the hospital. The secondary objective is to examine the face validity i.e. whether the VitaMove measures the clinically relevant aspects of mobility after surgery. Methods: Five patients, admitted to the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam for elective whipple operation, were included in the study. Inclusion criteria were: age between 18 and 85 years and no limitations for early postoperative mobilisation. The mobility was measured during the first, third, seventh and ninth day after surgery. Criteria for feasibility were: wearing time, burden for patients, influencing nursing staff during daily care and missed activities. The VitaMove is considered feasible when all four endpoints are met. The VM was examined on face validity in three ways: the VM-reports were checked on obvious errors and the observation of recovery of mobility. Further the activity detection was examined in detail, with focus on sub-categories of mobility and optimization of settings. Results: The average wearing time of the VitaMove is 85%, 18% of the patients reported complaints on wearing the VitaMove , 0% of the nursing staff reported to be influenced by the VitaMove during daily care and in 13% of the days, more than 2 activities were missed. Face validity: with all patients the posture ‘prone’ was measured although after abdominal surgery patients never take this posture. This is an obvious error. On the other hand recovery of mobility was observed correctly and two subcategories could be distinguished: sitting upright and backwards. Conclusion: The use of the VitaMove does not meet two out of four endpoints. Therefore the VM is not feasible for measuring mobilisation with patients staying in hospital after abdominal surgery. With adjustments of study protocol concerning wearing time and placement by nursing staff, the VM will probably be assessed as feasible. The face validity is ambiguous: the VM measures recovery of mobility correctly, but on the other hand non-performed activities were detected.
Does the Implementation of Rapid Deceleration Training Improve Change of Direction Performance in Rugby Players

2 List of Tables . 6 Attestation of Authorship . 7 Acknowledgements . 8 Ethics Approval . 9 Chapter One. 10 Introduction . 10 Background . 10 Significance of Thesis . 11 Research Question . 12 Study Aims . 12 Study Hypothesis . 12 Thesis Organisation . 12 Chapter Two . 13 Literature Review . 13 Literature Search . 13 Introduction . 13 Purpose of the Review . 14 Injury . 14 Deterministic Models of Agility, Change of Direction and Deceleration . 17 Dynamical Systems Theory: Agility, Change of Direction and Deceleration . 19 Change of Direction and Deceleration Technique . 20 Strength . 24 Reactive Strength & Dynamic Balance . 27 Sprint Speed . 29 Ground Reaction Force . 30 Repeat Deceleration Fatigue . 30 Testing Change of Direction and Agility . 33 505 Change of Direction Test . 34 T-Test. 35 Characteristics of Superior Decelerators . 35 COD and Deceleration Research in Rugby Codes . 37 Recommendations for Future Research . 38 Conclusion . 39 Chapter Three . 41
On the scaling and topology of confined bluff-body flows

An experimental study of bluff bodies in confinement is presented. Two Reynolds matched rigs (pipe diameters: $D=40~\text{mm}$ and $D=194~\text{mm}$ ) are used to derive a picture of the flow topology of the primary-shedding mode (Kármán vortex, mode-I). Confined bluff bodies create an additional spectral mode (mode-II). This is caused by the close coupling of the shedder blockage and the wall and is unique to the confined bluff-body problem. Under certain conditions, modes-I and II can interact, resulting in a lock-on, wherein the modes cease to exist at independent frequencies. The topological effects of mode interaction are demonstrated using flow visualisation. Furthermore, the scaling of mode-II is explored. The two experimental facilities span Reynolds numbers (based on the shedder diameter, $d$ ) $10^{4}<Re_{d}<10^{5}$ and bulk Mach numbers $0.02<M_{b}<0.4$ . Bluff bodies with a constant blockage ratio ( $d/D$ ), forebody shape and various splitter-plate lengths ( $l$ ) and thicknesses ( $t$ ) are used. Results indicate that the flow topology changes substantially between short ( $l<d$ ) and long ( $l>d$ ) tailed geometries. Surface flow visualisation indicates that the primary vortex becomes anchored on the tail when $l\gtrsim 3h$ ( $2h=d-t$ ). This criterion prohibits the development of such a topology for short-tailed geometries. When mode interaction occurs, which it does exclusively in long-tailed cases, the tail-anchored vortex pattern is disrupted. The onset of mode-II occurs at approximately the same Reynolds number in both rigs, although the associated dimensionless frequency is principally a function of Mach number. Accordingly, mode interaction is avoided in the larger-scale rig, due to the increased separation of the modal frequencies.
The Impact of Software User Experience on Customer Satisfaction

This study aims to investigate the impact of user experience variables (utility, usability, aesthetics, identification and value) on customer satisfaction of smartphones in Jordan. A convenience sample (393) questionnaires were measured. Simple and hierarchal regression was used for statistical analysis, covering (78.6%) response rate. Adoption of the UX style was high and customer’s satisfaction was also significant. All of the UX variables affect customer’s satisfaction. Value was the most influencing variable. There was a statistical significance in adopting UX pattern for smartphone users due to gender, experience and age; the level of education did not show any statistical impact. This research includes implication for the impact of user experience variables on customer satisfaction of smartphones in Jordan. This study seeks to identify the software user experience dimensions in user and customer satisfaction in the development of the Jordanian software smart phone users and customers.
Modeling and Analysis of Optical Blur for Everyday Photography

Modeling and Analysis of Optical Blur for Everyday Photography Huixuan Tang Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Computer Science University of Toronto 2018 Optical blur obscures image detail due to the camera’s optics. The blur appearance depends on the scene’s depth, wavelength, as well as the camera. The inference of such information — optical calibration, image deblurring, and depth estimation – is of great interest to computer vision. Existing approaches make impractical assumptions about the camera and the scene, and are therefore restricted to lab settings. In this thesis, we propose novel optical blur models towards solving the above inference problems in everyday settings. First, we propose a practical model for lenses with monochromatic optical aberrations, assuming the aberrations can be fully described by Seidel aberrations. Although the model produces realistic 2D blur kernels of complicated appearance, it has very few parameters and thus can be estimated using very limited data. We show specifically that just three blur kernels contain enough information to estimate the lens parameters up to an aperture-dependent scale factor. Second, we study image deblurring for RGB-Infrared imaging. This problem is especially challenging since RGB-Infrared cameras su↵er from inevitable chromatic aberration, channel crosstalk, and pixel multiplexing due to the color-filter-array. The coupling of the distortions are critical to deblurring quality but is non-trivial to invert e ciently. We propose a practical image formation model that captures all three distortions while enables fast restoration. Third, we develop an approach to two-frame Depth from Defocus (DFD) in everyday settings. The main challenge here is that the inter-frame motion needs to be estimated in addition to depth from just two images. We propose conditions to control the camera focus to guarantee near-optimal DFD estimation and a method to estimate depth and the motion jointly in local 9x9 patches. This allows us to capture sparse depth map even in non-rigid scenes. ii Fourth, we propose a method to fuse local DFD results into dense depth and flow maps. The noise, sparsity and ambiguities inherent in DFD makes this problem particularly di cult. We introduce a splined-based prior to enable fusion over great image distances and irregular shaped regions, and to allow explicit reasoning about figure-ground relationships. Our final results exhibits high quality results with crisp boundaries.
Toward modular in situ visualization in Earth system models: the regional modeling system RegESM 1.1

Abstract. The data volume produced by regional and global multicomponent Earth system models is rapidly increasing because of the improved spatial and temporal resolution of the model components and the sophistication of the numerical models regarding represented physical processes and their complex non-linear interactions. In particular, very small time steps need to be defined in non-hydrostatic high-resolution modeling applications to represent the evolution of the fast-moving processes such as turbulence, extratropical cyclones, convective lines, jet streams, internal waves, vertical turbulent mixing and surface gravity waves. Consequently, the employed small time steps cause extra computation and disk input–output overhead in the modeling system even if today's most powerful high-performance computing and data storage systems are considered. Analysis of the high volume of data from multiple Earth system model components at different temporal and spatial resolutions also poses a challenging problem to efficiently perform integrated data analysis of the massive amounts of data when relying on the traditional postprocessing methods today. This study mainly aims to explore the feasibility and added value of integrating existing in situ visualization and data analysis methods within the model coupling framework. The objective is to increase interoperability between Earth system multicomponent code and data-processing systems by providing an easy-to-use, efficient, generic and standardized modeling environment. The new data analysis approach enables simultaneous analysis of the vast amount of data produced by multicomponent regional Earth system models during the runtime. The presented methodology also aims to create an integrated modeling environment for analyzing fast-moving processes and their evolution both in time and space to support a better understanding of the underplaying physical mechanisms. The state-of-the-art approach can also be employed to solve common problems in the model development cycle, e.g., designing a new subgrid-scale parameterization that requires inspecting the integrated model behavior at a higher temporal and spatial scale simultaneously and supporting visual debugging of the multicomponent modeling systems, which usually are not facilitated by existing model coupling libraries and modeling systems.
FORENSIC PALYNOLOGY : VARIATION IN THE POLLEN CONTENT OF SOIL SURFACE SAMPLES

Surface soil samples from several localized areas within a few meters of parent plants. were analyzed for pollen and compared using an ordination analy- Many crime scenes (e.g., the break and entry point of a building sis. The aim was to objectively establish the forensic value of using or a rape scene under a tree) are typically restricted to only a few soil samples to link people or objects to crime scenes. This was done by determining the degree to which pollen assemblages of square meters, i.e., they are "localized areas. " These areas will have surface soil samples from within the same localized area differ, and a particular combination of plant species comprising the local and the degree to which the pollen assemblage of a surface soil sample surrounding vegetation that produces a particular pollen combina- from within a localized area differs from distant localized areas of tion or "assemblage" in their soil. Corresponding assemblages of similar vegetation type. Samples from within the same localized pollen types found in soil samples, especially those containing rare area (the control site) showed a high degree of similarity, suggesting that pollen assemblages of surface soil samples from within a local- (insect-pollinated) types, may therefore very strongly suggest that ized area are homogeneous. Results also showed that localized areas the samples are from the same source (8). A suspect may thus be of similar vegetation type, even within the same geographic region, associated with a crime scene by pollen evidence. However, Bryant have significantly different pollen assemblages. et al. (4) stated that although pollen assemblages from different areas are "unique in their own way," the use of complex mathematical cal-
Antecedents of control over nursing practice

Control over nursing practice (CONP) is a participatory process through which nurses have input and engage in decision making about the context of practice and unit operations related to nursing practice. CONP has been associated with a number of positive outcomes related to nurse satisfaction, nurse status, effectiveness of patient care, and quality of patient outcomes. However, no comprehensive model has been created nor comprehensive analysis been conducted related to approaches for increasing CONP. This study tested a hypothesized model of antecedents to CONP developed from a review of the literature in nursing, psychology, and organizational management using a complexity theory perspective. The study used a nonexperimental, comparative design. The sample for data analysis consisted of 28 nurse managers and 583 staff nurses from 32 units in 10 hospitals. Existing instruments were used in a paper and pencil format to collect demographic and perceptual data on CONP and the hypothesized antecedent variables. Data were aggregated to provide an analysis of organizational and unit level contextual and variable effects related to CONP. Contextual regression indicated a greater influence of unit-level variables than organizational-level variables on nurses’ perceptions of CONP. Regression analyses and revised model testing demonstrated that nurse manager supportiveness, implementation of a formal structure for CONP, and information flow consisting of open and accurate communication were positively related to CONP. Hierarchy of authority was negatively related to CONP. The relationship between CONP and job codification and autonomy
Positive Solutions for a Semipositone Singular Riemann–Liouville Fractional Differential Problem

Abstract We study the existence of multiple positive solutions for a nonlinear singular Riemann–Liouville fractional differential equation with sign-changing nonlinearity, subject to Riemann–Stieltjes boundary conditions which contain fractional derivatives. In the proof of our main theorem, we use various height functions of the nonlinearity of equation defined on special bounded sets, and two theorems from the fixed point index theory.
An Application of Deep-Learning to Understand Human Perception of Art

Eye movement patterns are known to differ when looking at stimuli given a different task, but less is known about how these patterns change as a function of expertise. When a particular visual pattern is viewed, a particular sequence of eye movements are executed and this sequence is defined as scanpath. In this work we made an attempt to answer the question, “Do art novices and experts look at paintings differently? ” If they do, we should be able to discriminate between the two groups using machine learning applied to their scanpaths. This can be done using algorithms for Multi-Fixation Pattern Analyses (MFPA). MFPA is a family of machine learning algorithms for making inferences about people from their gaze patterns. MFPA and related approaches have been widely used to study viewing behavior while performing visual tasks, but earlier approaches only used gaze position (x, y) information with duration and temporal order and not the actual visual features in the image. In this work, we extend MFPA algorithms to use visual features in trying to answer a question that has been overlooked by most early studies, i.e. if there is a difference found between experts and novices, how different are their viewing patterns and do these differences exist for both lowand high-level image features. To address this, we combined MFPA with a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Instead of converting a trial’s 2-D fixation positions into Fisher Vectors, we extracted image features surrounding the fixations using a deep CNN and turn them into Fisher Vectors for a trial. The Fisher Vector is an image representation obtained by pooling local image features. It is frequently used as a global image descriptor in visual classification. We call this approach MFPA-CNN. While CNNs have been previously used to recognize and classify objects from paintings, this work goes the extra step to study human perception of paintings. Ours is the first attempt to use MFPA and CNNs to study the viewing patterns of the subjects in the field of art.
Distribución y correlación espacial de especies arbóreas por gradiente altitudinal en la Selva Lacandona, Chiapas

Se analizó el patrón de distribución y correlación espacial de las especies arbóreas a lo largo de un gradiente altitudinal en el Área Natural Protegida (ANP) Metzabok, Selva Lacandona, Chiapas. En cada estrato altitudinal (EA) se instaló una unidad de muestreo de 20 × 50 m, que fue dividida en 10 subunidades de muestreo (SUM) de 10 × 10 m, donde se registraron los fustales. En las SUM se delimitó un cuadro de 5 × 5 m para el registro de latizales, y en su interior se establecieron dos cuadros de 2 × 2 m para el reconocimiento de brinzales. La distribución espacial de fustales, latizales y brinzales se analizó con el índice de Morisita-Horn; mientras que, la distribución y correlación espacial de los fustales por categorías de altura (inferior, intermedia y superior) y EA se evaluó mediante la función univariada K(t) y bivariada K12 (t) de Ripley. El patrón espacial promedio de la clase fustal para las tres categorías de altura a lo largo del gradiente altitudinal fue agregado (), similar que en latizales y brinzales . La función K12 (t) indica que los EA 2, 3 y 5 de la categoría inferior-intermedia mostraron, tanto repulsión como atracción espacial, mientras las denominadas inferior-superior e intermedia-superior tuvieron un comportamiento de independencia y repulsión espacial, respectivamente. Estos hallazgos aportan bases para la implementación de estrategias silvícolas enfocadas a la conservación de las especies arbóreas presentes en el ANP Metzabok.