Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electromagnetic processes and launch efficiency of railgun systems

Detailed analysis of electromagnetic processes in railgun armatures shows that an electromagnetic drag mechanism caused by the generation of eddy currents is an ubiquitous effect in any railgun system. The results of an energy balance analysis allowed us to construct the equivalent electric circuits of railgun armatures. The acceleration in any railgun is equivalent, from an energetic point of view, to charging of a leaking capacitor. Simple numerical evaluations of the value of the electromagnetic drag force show that its role in the acceleration process is unavoidable for typical railgun launcher experimental conditions, although a quantitative evaluation of the drag force is difficult to make. Even discounting any known performance loss mechanism of a non-electromagnetic nature, our study gives a consistent qualitative explanation for all irreconcilable phenomena known from experiments; the saturation of attainable velocities, the degradation of plasma armatures, and the problem of high velocity sliding contact for metal armatures. Possible ways of optimizing railgun acceleration and achieving a higher velocity are discussed.
Use of Ethanol Injections to Create a Complete Atrioventricular Block in a Rat Model

Complete atrioventricular block (AVB) is an abnormal heart rhythm resulting from a defect in the cardiac conduction system. Patients with complete AVB are at risk of symptoms ranging from syncope or hypotension to cardiovascular collapse or sudden cardiac death. A reliable animal model of complete AVB is essential for understanding the mechanisms underlying the fatal hemodynamic effects and alterations in electrical conductivity associated with this arrhythmia. We evaluated the use of ethanol injections in a systematic surgical approach to create a complete AVB model in rats. We used eight Sprague Dawley rats (8 weeks old, 220 ± 30 g): four received a 70% ethanol injection in the AV node, and four received a similar injection of 0.9% sodium chloride. Our surgical approach involved performing a partial sternotomy, using the epicardial fat as a landmark for ethanol injections. Animals were followed for 7 and 14 days. Complete AVB was successfully induced in all four rats that received ethanol injections. Rats in the control group experienced a transient AVB with a return to sinus rhythm. Our study found that using 70% ethanol injections in a systematic surgical approach is a reliable, safe, and reproducible way of creating a complete AVB model in rats.
Optical properties of the neutral silicon split-vacancy center in diamond

The zero-phonon line (ZPL) at 1.68 eV has been attributed to the negatively charged silicon split-vacancy center in diamond, (Si-V) − , and has been extensively characterized in the literature. Computational studies have predicted the existence of the neutral charge state of the center, (Si-V) 0 , and it has been experimentally observed using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). However, the optical spectrum associated with (Si-V) 0 has not yet been conclusively identified. In this paper the 1.31 eV band visible in luminescence and absorption is attributed to (Si-V) 0 using an approach which combines optical absorption and EPR measurements. The intensities of both 1.68 eV and 1.31 eV bands are found to increase in deliberately Si-doped chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown diamond, and also after electron irradiation and annealing, suggesting the involvement of both Si and a vacancy in the centers. The 1.31 eV ZPL is unambiguously associated to Si by its shift to a lower energy when the dominant Si isotope is changed from 28 Si to 29 Si. Charge transfer between (Si-V) − and (Si-V) 0 induced via ultraviolet photoexcitation or heating in the dark allows calibration factors relating the integrated absorption coefficient of their respective ZPLs to the defect concentration to be determined. Preferential orientation of (Si-V) 0 centers in CVD diamond grown on { 110 } -oriented diamond substrates is observed by EPR. The (Si-V) 0 centers are shown to grow predominantly into CVD diamond as complete units, rather than by the migration of mobile vacancies to substitutional Si ( Si S ) atoms. Corrections for the preferential alignment of trigonal centers for quantitative analysis of optical spectra are proposed and the effect is used to reveal that the 1.31 eV ZPL arises from a transition between the 3 A 2 g ground state and 3 A 1 u excited state of (Si-V) 0 . A simple rate equation model explains the production of (Si-V) 0 upon irradiation and annealing of Si-doped CVD diamond. In as-grown Si-doped diamond the (Si-V) defects only account for a fraction of the total silicon present; the majority being incorporated as Si S . The data show that both Si S and (Si-V) are effective traps for mobile vacancies.
Experimental Analysis of the Influence of Heat Treatments on the Flexibility of NiTi Alloy for Endodontic Instruments Manufacturing

The flexibility of NiTi based endodontic files is improved by heat treatment, leading to lower risk of failure, ledges, and canal transportation during the preparation of curved root canals. The aim of this study is to investigate and clearly highlight the influence of every parameter of heat treatment on the flexibility of NiTi wires and thus of endodontic instruments. A full factorial Design of Experiment (DoE) and a designed bending–torsion bench following the ISO 3630-1 standard were used for this investigation. Temperature, holding time, and cooling method were selected as contributing factors, while maximum bending moment, hysteresis size, and stiffness during martensitic transformation were selected as outputs. Regression analysis was performed to estimate the relationship between contributing and output variables to assess how the experimentation fits with the model. The experimental results showed that wires heated at 425 °C for 30 min are more flexible. Moreover, heat treatment temperature is the most critical factor influencing the flexibility and hysteresis size of the NiTi wire followed by the holding time, while the cooling method has a negligible effect. The regression analysis showed that the model is effective at predicting the relationship between contributing factors, bending moment response, and hysteresis size.
Co-Plasticization of Starch with Glycerol and Isosorbide: Effect on Retrogradation in Thermo-Plastic Cassava Starch Films

Thermoplastic starch (TPS) has emerged as an essential alternative to produce environmentally friendly packaging; however, retrogradation is a disadvantage that affects its shelf life. This study analyzed the co-plasticizing effect of isosorbide on the mechanical, thermal, physicochemical, and microstructural properties and the retrogradation of films obtained by blown film extrusion from thermoplasticized starch with mixtures of glycerol and isosorbide in different ratios (3:0, 2:1, 1:2, and 0:3, respectively). The results showed that the higher concentration of isosorbide significantly increased the tensile strength; however, it reduced the elongation. Retrogradation modeled using the Avrami equation showed that the presence of isosorbide reduced the retrogradation rate (k) and modified the recrystallization mechanism (n). The relative crystallinity in the plasticized TPS films was reduced to 89%, and the adsorption significantly decreased. Isosorbide was very important in reducing the retrogradation of TPS. The best performance was obtained with the 2:1 ratio of glycerol/isosorbide due to the synergistic effect between the plasticizers. The results would allow tuning the properties of TPS films by combining glycerol/isosorbide in different ratios, which enables the design of materials tailored to potential application requirements.
2-complexes with large homological systoles

We prove an upper bound on the size of homological systoles in $2$-dimensional simplicial complexes with $n$ vertices and $m$ faces. Applying the probabilistic method, we also prove the existence of complexes with essentially optimally large systoles, providing a nearly matching lower bound. The results contrast with the analogous story for the girth of a graph---in two dimensions, homological systoles can be polynomially large in $n$, over a wide range of $m$. Our main tool is an upper bound the number of triangulated surfaces with $v$ vertices and $f$ faces. Sharp asymptotics are known for the number of triangulations of the genus $g$ surface when $g$ is fixed, but this seems to be a new bound on the total number of combinatorial types of surfaces of all genus.
Contributions to Noncommutative Ideal Theory

The well-known results of Krull concerning the minimal prime divisors and the radical of an ideal in a commutative ring have been extended to the noncommutative case in a recent paper [5] by N. H. McCoy. In that paper systematic use was made of the concept of an m-system, a set M of elements of the ring such that if a ∈ M and b ∈ M then axb ∈ M for some element x of the ring.
Determination of Indolepropionic Acid and Related Indoles in Plasma, Plasma Ultrafiltrate, and Saliva

The microbial metabolite indolepropionic acid (IPA) and related indolic metabolites, including indolecarboxylic acid (ICA), indolelactic acid (ILA), indoleacetic acid (IAA), indolebutyric acid (IBA), indoxylsulfate (ISO4), and indole, were determined in human plasma, plasma ultrafiltrate (UF), and saliva. The compounds were separated on a 150 × 3 mm column of 3 μm Hypersil C18 eluted with a mobile phase of 80% pH 5 0.01 M sodium acetate containing 1.0 g/L of tert-butylammonium chloride/20% acetonitrile and then detected fluorometrically. Levels of IPA in human plasma UF and of ILA in saliva are reported for the first time. The determination of IPA in plasma UF enables the first report of free plasma IPA, the presumed physiologically active pool of this important microbial metabolite of tryptophan. Plasma and salivary ICA and IBA were not detected, consistent with the absence of any prior reported values. Observed levels or limits of detection for other indolic metabolites usefully supplement limited prior reports.
Lecithin as an Effective Modifier of the Transport Properties of Variously Crosslinked Hydrogels

Transport properties are one of the most crucial assets of hydrogel samples, influencing their main application potential, i.e., as drug carriers. Depending on the type of drug or the application itself, it is very important to be able to control these transport properties in an appropriate manner. This study seeks to modify these properties by adding amphiphiles, specifically lecithin. Through its self-assembly, lecithin modifies the inner structure of the hydrogel, which affects its properties, especially the transport ones. In the proposed paper, these properties are studied mainly using various probes (organic dyes) to effectively simulate drugs in simple release diffusion experiments controlled by UV-Vis spectrophotometry. Scanning electron microscopy was used to help characterize the diffusion systems. The effects of lecithin and its concentrations, as well as the effects of variously charged model drugs, were discussed. Lecithin decreases the values of the diffusion coefficient independently of the dye used and the type of crosslinking. The ability to influence transport properties is better observed in xerogel samples. The results, complementing previously published conclusions, showed that lecithin can alter a hydrogel’s structure and therefore its transport properties.
A Novel Approach for the Treatment of Aerobic Vaginitis: Azithromycin Liposomes-in-Chitosan Hydrogel

Biocompatible mucoadhesive formulations that enable a sustained drug delivery at the site of action, while exhibiting inherent antimicrobial activity, are of great importance for improved local therapy of vaginal infections. The aim of this research was to prepare and evaluate the potential of the several types of azithromycin (AZM)-liposomes (180–250 nm) incorporated into chitosan hydrogel (AZM-liposomal hydrogels) for the treatment of aerobic vaginitis. AZM-liposomal hydrogels were characterized for in vitro release, and rheological, texture, and mucoadhesive properties under conditions simulating the vaginal site of application. The role of chitosan as a hydrogel-forming polymer with intrinsic antimicrobial properties was explored against several bacterial strains typical for aerobic vaginitis as well as its potential effect on the anti-staphylococcal activity of AZM-liposomes. Chitosan hydrogel prolonged the release of the liposomal drug and exhibited inherent antimicrobial activity. Additionally, it boosted the antibacterial effect of all tested AZM-liposomes. All AZM-liposomal hydrogels were biocompatible with the HeLa cells and demonstrated mechanical properties suitable for vaginal application, thus confirming their potential for enhanced local therapy of aerobic vaginitis.
Eulerian mean, contour integral, and finite-amplitude wave activity diagnostics applied to a single-layer model of the winter stratosphere

Abstract A shallow water model is used to simulate a case of planetary wave breaking in the lower winter stratosphere. The simulation is diagnosed in terms of zonal mean mass and zonal momentum budgets, and also in terms of potential vorticity (PV) contour mass and circulation budgets. The time evolution of the PV contour diagnostics depends only on nonconservative processes such as diabatic heating, friction, and irreversible small-scale mixing;transient but essentially reversible events such as a temporary displacement of the vortex from the pole are effectively filtered out. The PV contour diagnostics show unambiguously and quantitatively aspects of the evolution such as shrinking of the vortex and sharpening of the vortex edge. The cross-contour mass flux gives a radically different view of meridional transport from that given by the mass-weighted Eulerian mean poleward velocity, both in terms of its qualitative behavior and in terms of the physical mechanisms that cause it. The PV contour diagnostics.
Transcriptomic and Functional Analyses Reveal the Different Roles of Vitamins C, E, and K in Regulating Viral Infections in Maize

Maize lethal necrosis (MLN), one of the most important maize viral diseases, is caused by maize chlorotic mottle virus (MCMV) infection in combination with a potyvirid, such as sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV). However, the resistance mechanism of maize to MLN remains largely unknown. In this study, we obtained isoform expression profiles of maize after SCMV and MCMV single and synergistic infection (S + M) via comparative analysis of SMRT- and Illumina-based RNA sequencing. A total of 15,508, 7567, and 2378 differentially expressed isoforms (DEIs) were identified in S + M, MCMV, and SCMV libraries, which were primarily involved in photosynthesis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging, and some pathways related to disease resistance. The results of virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) assays revealed that silencing of a vitamin C biosynthesis-related gene, ZmGalDH or ZmAPX1, promoted viral infections, while silencing ZmTAT or ZmNQO1, the gene involved in vitamin E or K biosynthesis, inhibited MCMV and S + M infections, likely by regulating the expressions of pathogenesis-related (PR) genes. Moreover, the relationship between viral infections and expression of the above four genes in ten maize inbred lines was determined. We further demonstrated that the exogenous application of vitamin C could effectively suppress viral infections, while vitamins E and K promoted MCMV infection. These findings provide novel insights into the gene regulatory networks of maize in response to MLN, and the roles of vitamins C, E, and K in conditioning viral infections in maize.
Eugenic ideology and the world history curriculum: How eugenic beliefs structure narratives of development and modernity

ABSTRACT Using discourse analysis, this article traces the persistence of eugenic ideology through the narrative structures of world history in the California Department of Education’s history/social science K-12 framework. This article excavates the hidden depths at which scientific racism has become embedded into the curriculum and asks, “How do eugenic beliefs continue to shape world history in schools? ” Analysis revealed the persistence of eugenic beliefs in how civilization, modernity, reason, and intelligence are articulated and circulated across grades six, seven and ten. This study’s application of discourse analysis serves as a useful tool in continuing to improve curricular frameworks beyond static narratives that reproduce outdated ideologies of race and human development. The study directs social studies education toward helping students confront history’s scientific overlaps with eugenics, as well as recognizing how eugenic ideology persists today.
Being a Dog: A Review of the Domestication Process

The process of canine domestication represents certainly one of the most interesting questions that evolutionary biology aims to address. A “multiphase” view of this process is now accepted, with a first phase during which different groups of wolves were attracted by the anthropogenic niche and a second phase characterized by the gradual establishment of mutual relationships between wolves and humans. Here, we provide a review of dog (Canis familiaris) domestication, highlighting the ecological differences between dogs and wolves, analyzing the molecular mechanisms which seem to have influenced the affiliative behaviors first observed in Belyaev’s foxes, and describing the genetics of ancient European dogs. Then, we focus on three Mediterranean peninsulas (Balkan, Iberian and Italian), which together represent the main geographic area for studying canine domestication dynamics, as it has shaped the current genetic variability of dog populations, and where a well-defined European genetic structure was pinpointed through the analysis of uniparental genetic markers and their phylogeny.
ScatterFormer: Locally-Invariant Scattering Transformer for Patient-Independent Multispectral Detection of Epileptiform Discharges

Patient-independent detection of epileptic activities based on visual spectral representation of continuous EEG (cEEG) has been widely used for diagnosing epilepsy. However, precise detection remains a considerable challenge due to subtle variabilities across subjects, channels and time points. Thus, capturing fine-grained, discriminative features of EEG patterns, which is associated with high-frequency textural information, is yet to be resolved. In this work, we propose Scattering Transformer (ScatterFormer), an invariant scattering transform-based hierarchical Transformer that specifically pays attention to subtle features. In particular, the disentangled frequency-aware attention (FAA) enables the Transformer to capture clinically informative high-frequency components, offering a novel clinical explainability based on visual encoding of multichannel EEG signals. Evaluations on two distinct tasks of epileptiform detection demonstrate the effectiveness our method. Our proposed model achieves median AUCROC and accuracy of 98.14%, 96.39% in patients with Rolandic epilepsy. On a neonatal seizure detection benchmark, it outperforms the state-of-the-art by 9% in terms of average AUCROC.
Unsupervised Learning of Robust Spectral Shape Matching

We propose a novel learning-based approach for robust 3D shape matching. Our method builds upon deep functional maps and can be trained in a fully unsupervised manner. Previous deep functional map methods mainly focus on predicting optimised functional maps alone, and then rely on off-the-shelf post-processing to obtain accurate point-wise maps during inference. However, this two-stage procedure for obtaining point-wise maps often yields sub-optimal performance. In contrast, building upon recent insights about the relation between functional maps and point-wise maps, we propose a novel unsupervised loss to couple the functional maps and point-wise maps, and thereby directly obtain point-wise maps without any post-processing. Our approach obtains accurate correspondences not only for near-isometric shapes, but also for more challenging non-isometric shapes and partial shapes, as well as shapes with different discretisation or topological noise. Using a total of nine diverse datasets, we extensively evaluate the performance and demonstrate that our method substantially outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods, even compared to recent supervised methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/dongliangcao/Unsupervised-Learning-of-Robust-Spectral-Shape-Matching.
Helmholtz FEM solutions are locally quasi-optimal modulo low frequencies

For $h$-FEM discretisations of the Helmholtz equation with wavenumber $k$, we obtain $k$-explicit analogues of the classic local FEM error bounds of [Nitsche, Schatz 1974], [Wahlbin 1991], [Demlow, Guzm\'an, Schatz 2011], showing that these bounds hold with constants independent of $k$, provided one works in Sobolev norms weighted with $k$ in the natural way. We prove two main results: (i) a bound on the local $H^1$ error by the best approximation error plus the $L^2$ error, both on a slightly larger set, and (ii) the bound in (i) but now with the $L^2$ error replaced by the error in a negative Sobolev norm. The result (i) is valid for shape-regular triangulations, and is the $k$-explicit analogue of the main result of [Demlow, Guzm\'an, Schatz, 2011]. The result (ii) is valid when the mesh is locally quasi-uniform on the scale of the wavelength (i.e., on the scale of $k^{-1}$) and is the $k$-explicit analogue of the results of [Nitsche, Schatz 1974], [Wahlbin 1991]. Since our Sobolev spaces are weighted with $k$ in the natural way, the result (ii) indicates that the Helmholtz FEM solution is locally quasi-optimal modulo low frequencies (i.e., frequencies $\lesssim k$). Numerical experiments confirm this property, and also highlight interesting propagation phenomena in the Helmholtz FEM error.
Symmetries of the D$\Delta$mKP hierarchy and their continuum limits

In the recent paper [Stud. App. Math. 147 (2021) 752], squared eigenfunction symmetry constraint of the differential-difference modified Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (D$\Delta$mKP) hierarchy converts the D$\Delta$mKP system to the relativistic Toda spectral problem and its hierarchy. In this paper we introduce a new formulation of independent variables in the squared eigenfunction symmetry constraint, under which the D$\Delta$mKP system gives rise to the discrete spectral problem and a hierarchy of the differential-difference derivative nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation of the Chen-Lee-Liu type. In addition, by introducing nonisospectral flows, two sets of symmetries of the D$\Delta$mKP hierarchy and their algebraic structure are obtained. We then present a unified continuum limit scheme, by which we achieve the correspondence of the mKP and the D$\Delta$mKP hierarchies and their integrable structures.
Sensitive Tuning of Large Scale CNNs for E2E Secure Prediction using Homomorphic Encryption

Privacy-preserving machine learning solutions have recently gained signiﬁcant attention. One promising research trend is using Homomorphic Encryption (HE), a method for performing computation over encrypted data. One major challenge in this approach is training HE-friendly, encrypted or unencrypted, deep CNNs with decent accuracy. We propose a novel training method for HE-friendly models, and demonstrate it on fundamental and modern CNNs, such as ResNet and ConvNeXt. After training, we evaluate our models by running encrypted samples using HELay-ers SDK and proving that they yield the desired results. When running on a GPU over the Ima-geNet dataset, our ResNet-18/50/101 implementations take only 7, 31 and 57 minutes, respectively, which shows that this solution is practical. Furthermore, we present several insights on handling the activation functions and skip-connections under HE. Finally, we demonstrate in an unprecedented way how to perform secure zero-shot prediction using a CLIP model that we adapted to be HE-friendly.