Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient contact resistance extraction from individual device characteristics of graphene FETs

Practical contact resistance extraction methods have been applied to fabricated graphene field-effect transistors from different technologies. In contrast to other characterization techniques which require either the fabrication of additional test structures or elaborated models requiring internal quantities and a few number of fitting parameters, the methods used here enable a straightforward extraction of contact resistance values from the electrical characteristics of individual devices within the linear transistor operation using a drift-diffusion approach. Results are validated with other experimental characterization methods and with sophisticated models.
Edge Caching in Multi-UAV-Enabled Radio Access Networks: 3D Modeling and Spectral Efficiency Optimization

Unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) enabled radio access is an effective technology to improve the wireless coverage, in particular for remote and disaster-struck areas. It will become a key enabler in the forthcoming 5G heterogeneous cellular networks to provide improved and resilient coverage. In this article, we study edge caching for multiple UAV-enabled radio access networks (UAV-RANs) and investigate how the overall spectral efficiency (SE) can be improved by efficient edge caching. In this context, UAV base stations (UBSs) may not serve the immediate close-by users, but serve the users based on the requested contents, which brings the service contents closer to users. Based on analyses of the SE achieved by the content-centric UAV-RAN, a hybrid caching strategy is proposed to further improve the SE. In order to cache more files with limited cache resources while guaranteeing the quality-of-service, the contents are divided into two subsets, a popular set and a less popular set, based on their popularity profile that follows Zipf distribution. The popular files, according to the proposed hybrid caching strategy, are cached at all the UBSs, while each less popular file is cached at one UBS only. The overall SE is maximized by finding an optimal popularity threshold between the two subsets. By relaxing the formulated problem, analytical expression for the optimized threshold is derived. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical examples where existing benchmark schemes are compared and outperformed.
Variation in age and size among breeding populations at different altitudes in the Japanese newts, Cynops pyrrhogaster

The age distribution of Cynops pyrrhogaster was studied by skeletochronology on 12 breeding populations inhabiting altitudes ranging from 120 m to 1140 m on Shikoku Island, Japan. In populations inhabiting altitudes 500 m or less, the mean SVL were smaller than in those that lived at higher altitudes. In populations inhabiting altitudes less than 500 m, minimum age at maturation was three years. In populations inhabiting altitudes of 500 m or more, the minimum age at maturation was four to seven years. The number of testes lobes was influenced by age and body size and was variable among populations.
Effects of pH variability on the intertidal isopod, Paradella dianae

Ecological and evolutionary effects of anthropogenic climate change are influenced by the response of individual organisms and populations to environmental variability. Environmental conditions are predicted to become more variable with global climate change and oceans will become more acidic as increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2 are dissolved in seawater. Species such as the isopod Paradella dianae living in the intertidal are naturally subjected to large environmental variation and may therefore have high acclimation potential to increased acidity and more pronounced pH fluctuations. Here, we use P. dianae to experimentally test whether organisms that are naturally exposed to variable environmental conditions can withstand elevated pH fluctuations. We observed physiological and behavioral differences between animals under stable, low pH conditions and fluctuating, low pH levels. Fluctuating pH conditions influenced survival, oxygen consumption, harassment response, and swimming speed of isopods differently relative to stable pH conditions, suggesting that variable environments can produce different effects than constant environments.
Rapid diagnosis of resistance to imidazolinone herbicides in barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli) and control of resistant biotypes with alternative herbicides

The resistance of barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli) to imidazolinone herbicides is a worldwide problem in paddy fields. A rapid diagnosis is required for the selection of adequate prevention and control practices. The objectives of this study were to develop expedite bioassays to identify the resistance to imidazolinone herbicides in barnyardgrass and to evaluate the efficacy of alternative herbicides for the post-emergence control of resistant biotypes. Three experiments were conducted to develop methods for diagnosis of resistance to imazethapyr and imazapyr + imazapic in barnyardgrass at the seed, seedling and tiller stages, and to carry out a pot experiment to determine the efficacy of six herbicides applied at post-emergence in 13 biotypes of barnyardgrass resistant to imidazolinones. The seed soaking bioassay was not able to differentiate the resistant and susceptible biotypes. The resistance of barnyardgrass to imidazolinones was effectively discriminated in the seedlings and tiller bioassays seven days after incubation at the concentrations of 0.001 and 0.0001 mM, respectively, for both imazethapyr and imazapyr + imazapic. The biotypes identified as resistant to imidazolinones showed different patterns of susceptibility to penoxsulam, bispyribac-sodium and pyrazosulfuron-ethyl, and were all controlled with profoxydim and cyhalofop-butyl. The seedling and tiller bioassays are effective in the diagnosis of barnyardgrass resistance to imidazolinone herbicides, providing an on-season opportunity to identify the need to use alternative herbicides to be applied at post-emergence for the control of the resistant biotypes.
BAX: A Bundle Adjustment Accelerator With Decoupled Access/Execute Architecture for Visual Odometry

As the demand for embedded-vision grows, solving large optimization problems in real-time with energy and cost budget is a challenge. We present BAX, a hardware accelerator of bundle adjustment (BA), which solves the least-squares problem of state estimation in visual odometry (VO). BAX consists of a frontend and a backend for control and computation, respectively. The frontend generates instructions on-the-fly executed at the backend to perform the BA algorithm. The backend adopts decoupled access/execute (DAE) architecture, which separates the memory access unit (MAU) from the pipeline. The MAU can prefetch vectors and matrices ahead of computations. To further reduce the latency of data reorganization, three transpose-free dataflows are proposed for matrix multiplication operations on the vector processing unit (VPU). Besides, a unified architecture for both forward and backward substitution is designed for matrix decomposition in the linear solver. All the data are stored in 442kB on-chip memory, and the local map is maintained efficiently by the hierarchical graph memory. Compared with the baseline architecture, the processing time is reduced by 53.9% through the above techniques. BAX is implemented in 32-bit floating-point precision with data normalization on FPGA. It completes a full BA in about 63.44ms at 200MHz, consuming 1.12W power. BAX is $1.73\times $ and $22.38\times $ faster than the desktop and embedded CPUs, respectively, and achieves 90% performance of the GPU at much less power consumption.
Spiral slot-fed High Gain Wide Bandwidth Circularly Polarized Layered Cylindrical DRA

A circularly polarized (CP) high gain wide bandwidth cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) that is fed by spiral slot aperture is proposed over a frequency range of ~9 to 14 GHz. The CDRA consists of two layers with different dielectric permittivities. The inner Alumina layer has a dielectric constant of ϵr =10 and has been coated by a Polyimide layer with ϵ r=3.5. The proposed antenna offers wide impedance and CP bandwidths of ~45% and 18%, respectively, in conjunction with a high gain of ~12.5dBi.
Preparation and characterization of edible films from fish water-soluble proteins

SUMMARY: As a means of effective utilization of fish water-soluble proteins (FWSP), which are mostly discarded into the waste water of seafood processing plants, the development and characterization of edible films from FWSP of blue marlin meat were investigated. The film-forming solutions were prepared from 3% FWSP solutions at pH 10 with 1.5% glycerol as a plasticizer, followed by heating at 70°C for 15 min. Edible films were successfully prepared by drying the film-forming solutions at 25°C for 20 h. It was revealed that FWSP had to be denatured somehow to unfold the protein structure, and the interaction of FWSP molecules, particularly through disulfide linkages, was attributed to the formation of films. Transparent edible films thus formed had better flexibility and lower water vapor permeability compared with most of the other protein films.
Reply: Is oil red‐O staining and digital image analysis the gold standard for quantifying steatosis in the liver?

We read with great interest the article by Petta et al. The compound 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25[OH]D3) was reported as an independent predictor of cardiovascular disease (by a decreased expression of profibrotic markers, and an increased expression of antifibrotic markers) despite the fact that its real pathological pathway is still not clear. Incubation of the multipotent mesenchymal cell with 25(OH)D3 also resulted in antiproliferative and antiapoptotic processes. Therefore, the lower levels of 25(OH)D3 in liver with greater fibrosis is understandable. Lower cholesterol and lower 25(OH)D3 levels, along with greater steatosis, were found to be risk factors affecting sustained virological response (SVR) as seen in recent studies. The stage of fibrosis was found to be a risk factor for SVR not only in hepatitis C virus (HCV) alone, but also in patients coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus and HCV, in contrast to the results of the current article. Moreover, age, sex, and body mass index were also described as predictors for SVR in patients infected with HCV, in contrast to the current study. These challenging results could be related in the methodologic differences between the present study and recent studies, or mistakes could have happened during the sampling and/or analyzing periods. For example, SVR was reached in the half the male patients, whereas it was reached in just one-third of the females, results which are also different from the recent data. The patients in the study may also be infected with an unknown subgroup of HCV, which could explain these patients’ characteristics.
First cytogenetic characterization of the giant Amazonian catfish Brachyplatystoma filamentosum (Siluriformes, Pimelodidae)

In contrast to the enormous variability of Neotropical fish species, genetic information about many groups is not yet available. Chromosomal studies have greatly contributed to the characterization of several species, providing important data on these animals. We performed the first cytogenetic characterization of the Amazonian fish species Brachyplatystoma filamentosum (Pimelodidae), popularly known as “piraíba”. The results revealed a diploid number of 2n = 56 composed of 24 metacentric, 12 submetacentric, and 10 acrocentric chromosomes in both females and males. After silver nitrate treatment (AgNORs) it was possible to visualize the nucleolus organizer region located in the terminal portion of the short arms of subtelocentric chromosome pair 22, presenting size polymorphism. Hybridization with 18S and 5S rDNA probes confirmed the number and location of 18S marks rDNA in pair 22 and differences in the size of signals among homologs. The 5S rDNA genes were localized near the centromere on the short arms of chromosome pair 19. Constitutive heterochromatin (C-bands) were localized predominantly in the terminal regions of the chromosomes, and also occurred in some interstitial and centromeric positions. The chromosomal genetic data obtained in this study contribute to the biological characterization of B. filamentosum, which has economic and ecological importance as the largest freshwater catfish occurring in many rivers of the Amazon and Tocantins-Araguaia basins in Brazil. These results may also be used in to infer relationships among Pimelodidae species.
Rhizosphere oxidation in rice and other species: a mathematical model based on the oxygen flux component.

A mathematical model is presented from which one can predict the likely dimensions of oxidised rhizospheres due to oxygen diffusing from roots into anaerobic media such as wet soil. The analysis applies Fick's law of diffusion to the diffusion of oxygen from a cylindrical object (the root) into a sink (the soil) which is absorbing oxygen at a constant rate M. Solution of the final equation gives the dimensions of the oxygenated rhizosphere, i.e. the distance from the root at which the oxygen concentration becomes zero. The results obtained supoprt the view that oxygen diffusing from roots will produce a rhizosphere ‘sheath’ charged with oxygen. Furthermore, some of the predicted limits for this oxygen sheath correspond with those of ferric iron sheaths around roots in waterlogged soils. Calculations also show that oxygenated rhizospheres around the roots of plants very tolerant of reducing conditions. e.g. Menyanthes trifoliata, Oryza sativa and Eriophorum angustifolium, should be from two to three times as broad as for Molinia coerulea which is a species intolerant of strong reducing conditions. Consequently if oxidation reactions are not instantaneous but occur only gradually as quantities of reduced products enter the oxygenated zone, then the plants with the larger rhizospheres will be significantly better protected from absorbing large amounts of reduced products than will those plants with smaller oxygenated zones. This may in part explain the reason for intervarietal defferences in physiological disease resistance in rice. Finally the observation is made that small lateral roots can be expected to oxygenate a zone nearly as large as, or probably larger, than the primary root from which they have arisen.
Flight Arrival Delay Prediction And Analysis Using Ensemble Learning

With the development of the civil aviation transportation industry in recent years, the volume of civil aviation transportation has increased rapidly. Increased carrier costs and reduced airport operating efficiency caused by flight delays have become issues that need to be addressed. How to improve the accuracy of predicting flight arrival delay time is of great significance for improving airport transportation efficiency, rationally scheduling flights and improving passenger comfort. In this paper, the Cat-boost model is utilized on the U.S Domestic airline on-time performance data from U.S. Transportation Administration, combined with the characteristics of the model to determine the influencing factors, and to predict the arrival delays of flights within the United States. The accuracy;precision and some other criterion of the model are given to evaluate the performance on the data. A better effect is obtained: the accuracy reach 80.44% in this case. Finally, the specific delay time is predicted, we found that the support vector machine has the best prediction result for the flight delay time, the average prediction error is 9.733 min, which has a certain reference value for flight operation and airport scheduling.
Reduction in elemental waste loading from commercial carp feeds by manipulating the dietary phosphorus levels

: The effect of dietary phosphorus (P) manipulation on environmental loading of P and nitrogen (N) from carp was investigated. Two commercial diets (A and B) were re-prepared as four experimental diets A, B, AP, and BP, the latter two being topped up to the required available P level for carp. The total P ranged between 1.52 and 1.99% and water-extractable (or available) P was 0.50, 0.36, 0.62, and 0.63% for A, B, AP, and BP, respectively. A 20% fishmeal diet was chosen as the control and it contained 1.41% total P and 0.67% water-extractable P. Duplicate groups of carp (size, 8.6 g) were fed the test diets for 12 weeks. The best growth performance was that of fish fed the control diet, followed by the test diets supplemented with P. The highest rates of P absorption and retention of P and N were obtained for the control group followed by the AP, A, BP, and B experimental groups. In the case of waste discharge, the reduction in P loading was marginal, but N loading was markedly lower for P supplemented test diets. The control diet was the least-loading diet. Thus commercial carp feed formulations could be improved by incorporating sufficient available P in order to reduce discharges of P and N into the water.
Artificial Intelligence in Education: A Review

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on education. Premised on a narrative and framework for assessing AI identified from a preliminary analysis, the scope of the study was limited to the application and effects of AI in administration, instruction, and learning. A qualitative research approach, leveraging the use of literature review as a research design and approach was used and effectively facilitated the realization of the study purpose. Artificial intelligence is a field of study and the resulting innovations and developments that have culminated in computers, machines, and other artifacts having human-like intelligence characterized by cognitive abilities, learning, adaptability, and decision-making capabilities. The study ascertained that AI has extensively been adopted and used in education, particularly by education institutions, in different forms. AI initially took the form of computer and computer related technologies, transitioning to web-based and online intelligent education systems, and ultimately with the use of embedded computer systems, together with other technologies, the use of humanoid robots and web-based chatbots to perform instructors’ duties and functions independently or with instructors. Using these platforms, instructors have been able to perform different administrative functions, such as reviewing and grading students’ assignments more effectively and efficiently, and achieve higher quality in their teaching activities. On the other hand, because the systems leverage machine learning and adaptability, curriculum and content has been customized and personalized in line with students’ needs, which has fostered uptake and retention, thereby improving learners experience and overall quality of learning.
Differential responses to warming and increased precipitation among three contrasting grasshopper species

We conducted a field manipulation experiment to investigate developmental and demographic responses to warming and increased precipitation in three Inner Mongolian grasshopper species that differ in phenology (an early‐season species Dasyhippus barbipes, a mid‐season species Oedaleus asiaticus, and a late‐season species Chorthippus fallax). Infrared heaters were used for warming the ground surface by 1–2 °C above the ambient condition and periodic irrigations were applied to simulate a 50% increase in annual precipitation. We found that warming advanced the timing for egg hatching and grasshopper eclosion in each of the three species. However, grasshopper diapause and increased precipitation appeared to offset the effect of warming on egg development. Hatching and development were more strongly affected by warming in the mid‐season O. asiaticus and the late‐season C. fallax relative to the early‐season D. barbipes. Warming by ∼1.5 °C advanced the occurrence of the mid‐season O. asiaticus by an average of 4.96 days; while warming and increased precipitation interactively affected the occurrence of the late‐season C. fallax, which advanced by 5.53 days. Our data and those of others suggest that most grasshopper species in the Inner Mongolian grassland are likely to extend their distribution northward with climate change. However, because of the differential response to warming we demonstrate for these species, the different grasshopper species are predicted to aggregate toward the middle period of the growing season, potentially increasing interspecific competition and grazing pressure on grasslands.
Prevalence of Aedes camptorhynchus (Thomson) (Diptera: Culicidae) and Other Mosquitoes in the Eastern Coast of Victoria

Adult mosquito populations were monitored using dry‐ice baited EVS light traps at weekly intervals for four seasons (1991–95) in Avon, Bairnsdale, Rosedale and Hastings, and for three seasons (1991–94) in Tambo, in the eastern coast of Victoria. Among the 20 species of adult mosquitoes recorded, Aedes camptorhynchus (Thomson) was dominant (74–99%). Higher Ae camptorhynchus adult populations were recorded in the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons, than in 1991–92 and 1994–95 seasons. Rosedale shire recorded higher Ae camptorhynchus adult populations than the Avon, Bairnsdale, Hastings and Tambo shires. In all shires, two peaks of Ae camptorhynchus activity reaching high (100–1,000 adults/trap) to very high (> 1,000 adults/trap) levels were recorded, with the first peak in the middle of December (summer) and the second peak in the middle of April (autumn). the Ae camptorhynchus activity in the coastal region increased with an increase in the minimum temperature.