Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fast co-simulation approach to vehicle/track interaction with finite element models of S&C

Simulations of vehicle/track interaction (VTI) in switches and crossings (S&C) require taking into account the complexity of their geometry. The VTI can be handled via a co-simulation process between a finite element (FE) model of the track and a multibody system (MBS) software. The objective of this paper is to reduce the computing effort in the co-simulation process. In the proposed approach, the VTI problem is solved inside the MBS software to reduce the computational effort in the track model as well as the flow of input/output between both modules. The FE code is used to supply the matrices of stiffness, damping and mass at the beginning of the simulation. An explicit time scheme is used with mass scaling. A good agreement is found between both approaches with a reduction of the computing time by a factor of 10. This new approach allows the optimisation of the design of S&C in further studies.
Deformation modes of an oil-water interface under a local electric field: From Taylor cones to surface dimples

Fluidic interfaces disintegrate under sufficiently strong electric fields, leading to electrohydrodynamic (EHD) tip streaming. Taylor cones, which emit charged droplets from the tip of a conical cusp, are among the most prominent and well-studied examples of EHD instabilities. In liquid-liquid systems, more complex interface deformation modes than simple Taylor cones can be observed, with the interface being pushed away from the electrode, and additional cone structures emerging from the rim of the dimple. In this article, we investigate the mechanisms behind these deformation modes experimentally and numerically, and demonstrate that the presence of droplets triggers the dimple at the interface. In order to characterize the underlying processes, we replace the pin electrode by a hollow metallic needle with a prescribed electrolyte volume flow. The submerged electrospray introduces droplets of an aqueous KCl solution with varying ion concentrations into silicone oils with varying viscosities. By measuring the corresponding electric current and by optical investigation of the interface deformation, we study the system response to variations of the ionic concentration, viscosity, applied voltage as well as flow rate. The voltage between needle and liquid-liquid interface has a strong influence on the deformation, whereas the electrolyte flow rate only has a small influence. In addition, we observe that both the deflection as well as the current reach limiting values with increasing ion concentration and viscosity, which we explain based on a scaling relationship for the size of the droplets. In addition to the experiments, we use a finite element solver and compute the charge transport due to the droplets in the oil phase as an advection-diffusion process. Further, we compute the electric potential distribution, flow field and interface deformation. After calibration of our model with particle tracking velocimetry data of the flow inside the oil phase, we reproduce the experimentally observed dimple at the liquid-liquid interface. By including a relationship between the electric field at the pin electrode and the emitted electrospray current, we are able to identify the space charge as the cause of the experimentally observed limiting behavior of the interface deflection and the electric current. In summary, this work highlights the importance of charged droplets for the complex dynamic modes observed when a liquid-liquid interface is exposed to a local electric field.
Graph Convolutional Memory using Topological Priors

Solving partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is critical when applying reinforcement learning to real-world problems, where agents have an incomplete view of the world. We present graph convolutional memory (GCM), the first hybrid memory model for solving POMDPs using reinforcement learning. GCM uses either human-defined or data-driven topological priors to form graph neighborhoods, combining them into a larger network topology using dynamic programming. We query the graph using graph convolution, coalescing relevant memories into a context-dependent belief. When used without human priors, GCM performs similarly to state-of-the-art methods. When used with human priors, GCM outperforms these methods on control, memorization, and navigation tasks while using significantly fewer parameters.
Combining Igusa's conjectures on exponential sums and monodromy with semi-continuity of the minimal exponent

We combine two of Igusa's conjectures with recent semi-continuity results by Musta\c{t}\u{a} and Popa to form a new, natural conjecture about bounds for exponential sums. These bounds have a deceivingly simple and general formulation in terms of degrees and dimensions only. We provide evidence consisting partly of adaptations of already known results about Igusa's conjecture on exponential sums, but also some new evidence like for all polynomials in up to $4$ variables. We show that, in turn, these bounds imply consequences for Igusa's (strong) monodromy conjecture. The bounds are related to estimates for major arcs appearing in the circle method for local-global principles.
FairCal: Fairness Calibration for Face Verification

Despite being widely used, face recognition models suffer from bias: the probability of a false positive (incorrect face match) strongly depends on sensitive attributes such as the ethnicity of the face. As a result, these models can disproportionately and negatively impact minority groups, particularly when used by law enforcement. The majority of bias reduction methods have several drawbacks: they use an end-to-end retraining approach, may not be feasible due to privacy issues, and often reduce accuracy. An alternative approach is post-processing methods that build fairer decision classifiers using the features of pre-trained models, thus avoiding the cost of retraining. However, they still have drawbacks: they reduce accuracy (AGENDA, PASS, FTC), or require retuning for different false positive rates (FSN). In this work, we introduce the Fairness Calibration (FairCal) method, a post-training approach that simultaneously: (i) increases model accuracy (improving the state-of-the-art), (ii) produces fairly-calibrated probabilities, (iii) significantly reduces the gap in the false positive rates, (iv) does not require knowledge of the sensitive attribute, and (v) does not require retraining, training an additional model, or retuning. We apply it to the task of Face Verification, and obtain state-of-the-art results with all the above advantages.
Electronic and vibrational states of inn and gainn nanocolumns

Se estudian las propiedades opticas y vibracionales de nanocolumnas semiconductoras de InN y de GaInN aleado con distintas concentraciones de galio. La propiedades opticas se estudiaron usando las tecnicas de fotoluminiscencia y de excitacion de la luminiscencia, mientras que las propiedades vibracionales se estudiaron usando la espectroscopia Raman. Los estudios realizados permitieron determinar que la acumulacion de carga en la superficie tiene una gran influencia en los propiedades opticas de las nanocolumnas. Igualmente, se obtuvo nueva evidencia experimental sobre la existencia de acumulacion de electrones cerca a las superficies no polares del nitruro de indio. Las nanocolumnas de GaInN mostraron tener concentraciones de Ga distintas, aunque con una inhomogeneidad composicional muy alta.
Appearance

Socially interactive agents (SIAs) are no longer mere visions for future user interfaces, as 20 years of research and technology development has enabled the use of virtual and physical agents in day-to-day interfaces and environments. This chapter of the ACM"The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents"reviews research on and technologies involving socially interactive agents, including virtually embodied agents and physically embodied robots, focusing particularly on the appearance of socially interactive agents. It covers the history of the development of these technologies; outlines the design space for the appearance of agents, including what appearance comprises, modalities in which agents are presented, and how agents are constructed; and the features that agents use to support social interaction, including facial and bodily features, those that express demographic characteristics, and issues surrounding realism, appeal, and the uncanny valley. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of open questions surrounding the appearance of socially interactive agents.
Clinical Benefits and Budget Impact of Lenzilumab plus Standard of Care Compared with Standard of Care Alone for the Treatment of Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in the United States from the Hospital Perspective

Aims: The study estimated the clinical benefits and budget impact of lenzilumab plus standard of care (SOC) compared with SOC alone in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the United States hospital perspective. Materials and Methods: An economic model was developed to estimate the clinical benefits and costs for an average newly hospitalized COVID-19 patient, with a 28-day time horizon for the index hospitalization. Clinical outcomes from the LIVE-AIR trial included failure to achieve survival without ventilation (SWOV), mortality, time to recovery, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) use. Base case costs included drug acquisition and administration for lenzilumab and hospital resource costs based on the level of care required. The inclusion of 1-year rehospitalization costs was examined in a scenario analysis. Results: In the base case and all scenarios, treatment with lenzilumab plus SOC improved all specified clinical outcomes over SOC alone. Adding lenzilumab to SOC was also estimated to result in cost savings of $3,190 per patient in a population aged <85 years with CRP <150 mg/L and receiving remdesivir (base case). Per-patient cost savings were also estimated in the following scenarios: 1) aged <85 years with CRP <150 mg/L, with or without remdesivir ($1,858); 2) Black and African American patients with CRP <150 mg/L ($13,154); and 3) Black and African American patients from the full population ($2,763). In the full mITT population, a budget impact of $4,952 was estimated. When adding rehospitalization costs to the index hospitalization, a total per-patient cost savings of $5,154 was estimated. Conclusions: The results highlight the clinical benefits for SWOV, ventilator use, time to recovery, mortality, time in ICU, and time on IMV, in addition to a favorable budget impact from the United States hospital perspective associated with adding lenzilumab to SOC for patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.
Conservation and coevolution determine evolvability of different classes of disordered residues in human intrinsically disordered proteins

Structure, function, and evolution are interdependent properties of proteins. Diversity of protein functions arising from structural variations is a potential driving force behind protein evolvability. Intrinsically disordered proteins or regions (IDPs or IDRs) lack well‐defined structure under normal physiological conditions, yet, they are highly functional. Increased occurrence of IDPs in eukaryotes compared to prokaryotes indicates strong correlation of protein evolution and disorderedness. IDPs generally have higher evolution rate compared to globular proteins. Structural pliability allows IDPs to accommodate multiple mutations without affecting their functional potential. Nevertheless, how evolutionary signals vary between different classes of disordered residues (DRs) in IDPs is poorly understood. This study addresses variation of evolutionary behavior in terms of residue conservation and intra‐protein coevolution among structural and functional classes of DRs in IDPs. Analyses are performed on 579 human IDPs, which are classified based on length of IDRs, interacting partners and functional classes. We find short IDRs are less conserved than long IDRs or full IDPs. Functional classes which require flexibility and specificity to perform their activity comparatively evolve slower than others. Disorder promoting amino acids evolve faster than order promoting amino acids. Pro, Gly, Ile, and Phe have unique coevolving nature which further emphasizes on their roles in IDPs. This study sheds light on evolutionary footprints in different classes of DRs from human IDPs and enhances our understanding of the structural and functional potential of IDPs.
Exposure–safety analysis of QTc interval and transaminase levels following bedaquiline administration in patients with drug‐resistant tuberculosis

Bedaquiline (BDQ) has shown great value in the treatment of multidrug‐resistant tuberculosis (MDR‐TB) in recent years. However, exposure–safety relationships must be explored to extend the use of BDQ. Two reported safety findings for BDQ are prolongation of the QTc interval and elevation of transaminase levels. In this study, we investigated the potential relationships between BDQ and/or its main metabolite (M2) pharmacokinetic (PK) metrics and QTcF interval or transaminase levels in patients with MDR‐TB using the approved dose regimen. Data from 429 patients with MDR‐TB from two phase IIb studies were analyzed via nonlinear mixed‐effects modeling. Individual model‐predicted concentrations and summary PK metrics were evaluated, respectively, in the QTcF interval and transaminase level exposure–response models. Investigation of further covariate effects was performed in both models. M2 concentrations were found to be responsible for the drug‐related QTcF increase in a model accounting for circadian rhythm patterns, time on study, effect of concomitant medication with QT liability, and patient demographics. Simulations with the final model suggested that doses higher than the approved dose (leading to increased M2 concentrations) are not expected to lead to a critical QTcF interval increase. No exposure–safety relationship could be described with transaminase levels despite previous reports of higher levels in patients treated with BDQ. The developed longitudinal models characterized the role of M2 concentrations in QTc interval prolongation and found no concentration dependency for transaminase level elevation, together suggesting that BDQ exposure at the high end of the observed range may not be associated with a higher risk of safety events.
Fingerprinting study of tuber ultimate compressive strength at different microwave drying times using mid-infrared imaging spectroscopy

Abstract Tuber ultimate compressive strength (UCS) is a very important sensory property of tuber products. The UCS depends significantly on tuber moisture content and cooking degree. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the UCS of tuber products during the industrial production. In the present study, Fourier transform mid-infrared spectra and UCS reference values of tuber samples at different drying times were collected. The fitting functions between tuber UCS and drying time were evaluated. Moreover, the fingerprint spectral matrices (1500–900 cm−1) were studied by pre-treatment methods and principal component analysis. Then, the spectral features were linked to the tuber UCS based on multivariate calibration models in terms of principal component regression and support vector machine regression (SVMR). It has been confirmed that tuber UCS values fitted by specific exponential function could be successfully used to develop robust SVMR model.
Annealing effect on the structural and Morphological properties of Organic Semiconductor Alq3:C60 blend Thin Films

In this work, has been a studied the effect of thermal treatment using different annealing temperatures (373, 423 and 473) K in vacuum on structural and morphological properties of organic semiconductor Alq 3 :C 60 thin films which are prepared by the spin coating on a glass, silicon and porous silicon. These films have been coated on substrates with speed of 2000 rpm. The structure properties of Tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (III) (Alq 3 ) and fullerene (C 60 ) (100:1) and (100:10) blend as-deposited and treated have been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) for glass only and morphological properties by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) for silicon and porous silicon substrates. The results of XRD pattern shows that the structure of (Alq 3 :C 60 ) as-deposited and annealed thin films are polycrystalline in nature for both mixed weight ratio. The result of AFM measurements show that grain size increase is due to the increases of surface energy at high temperature. Surface roughness increasing and decreased randomly with the temperature can be attributed to the random distributions of the grains and also due to the phase change.
Displaced clines in an avian hybrid zone (Thamnophilidae: Rhegmatorhina) within an Amazonian interfluve*

Secondary contact between species often results in the formation of a hybrid zone, with the eventual fates of the hybridizing species dependent on evolutionary and ecological forces. We examine this process in the Amazon Basin by conducting the first genomic and phenotypic characterization of the hybrid zone formed after secondary contact between two obligate army‐ant‐followers: the White‐breasted Antbird (Rhegmatorhina hoffmannsi) and the Harlequin Antbird (Rhegmatorhina berlepschi). We found a major geographic displacement (∼120 km) between the mitochondrial and nuclear clines, and we explore potential hypotheses for the displacement, including sampling error, genetic drift, and asymmetric cytonuclear incompatibilities. We cannot exclude roles for sampling error and genetic drift in contributing to the discordance; however, the data suggest expansion and unidirectional introgression of hoffmannsi into the distribution of berlepschi.
Paradigms of frustration in superionic solid electrolytes

Superionic solid electrolytes have widespread use in energy devices, but the fundamental motivations for fast ion conduction are often elusive. In this Perspective, we draw upon atomistic simulations of a wide range of superionic conductors to illustrate some ways frustration can lower diffusion cation barriers in solids. Based on our studies of halides, oxides, sulfides and hydroborates and a survey of published reports, we classify three types of frustration that create competition between different local atomic preferences, thereby flattening the diffusive energy landscape. These include chemical frustration, which derives from competing factors in the anion–cation interaction; structural frustration, which arises from lattice arrangements that induce site distortion or prevent cation ordering; and dynamical frustration, which is associated with temporary fluctuations in the energy landscape due to anion reorientation or cation reconfiguration. For each class of frustration, we provide detailed simulation analyses of various materials to show how ion mobility is facilitated, resulting in stabilizing factors that are both entropic and enthalpic in origin. We propose the use of these categories as a general construct for classifying frustration in superionic conductors and discuss implications for future development of suitable descriptors and improvement strategies. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Understanding fast-ion conduction in solid electrolytes’.
Nuclear warfare beyond counterforce

Abstract A counterforce attack intends to disable an opponent's nuclear arsenal to limit potential damage from that adversary. We postulate a future when hardening and deeply burying fixed sites, transition to mobile strategic systems, and improved defences make executing a counterforce strategy against an adversary's nuclear forces extremely difficult. Additionally, our postulated future has multiple nations possessing nuclear weapons. Consequently, each country needs to consider multiple actors when addressing the question of how to deter a potential adversary's nuclear attack. We examine six nuclear targeting alternatives and consider how to deter them. These strategies include nuclear demonstration, conventional military targets, and attacks consisting of communications/electronics, economic, infrastructure, and population centers that a nation might consider striking with nuclear weapons. Since these alternative strikes require only a few nuclear weapons, executing one of them would not significantly shift the balance of nuclear forces. The attacking country's remaining nuclear forces may inhibit the attacked country or its allies from responding. How can nations deter these limited nuclear attacks? Potentially, threatening economic counter-strikes seems to be the best alternative. How might escalation be controlled in the event of a limited attack? Other instruments of power, such as political or economic, might be employed to bolster deterrence against these types of nuclear strikes.
Introduction to the special issue: No longer second-order? Explaining the European Parliament elections of 2019

The dominant perspective of European Parliament (EP) elections is that these are second-order national elections where little is at stake. This Special Issue asks whether this perspective is still valid in view of increased politicisation of European integration and in view of the higher turnout levels at the last EP elections. This introduction provides a general framework for the Special Issue and reflects upon some of its main findings. We argue that EP elections can only be considered first-order if they are primarily about the policies, rather than the polity. Some of the contributions in this Special Issue suggest that this is indeed the case. We reflect upon this and argue that there are reasons to expect that EP elections will become first-order elections in the future.
Use of Supercritical Water for the Liquefaction of Polypropylene into Oil

About five billion tons of plastic waste have accumulated in landfills and the natural environment over the past 50 years. Polypropylene (PP) waste accounts for about 23% of the total plastic waste. Converting PP waste into useful products can reduce the accumulated waste and associated risks to the environment and human health. In this study, model PP was converted into oil using supercritical water at 380–500 °C and 23 MPa over a reaction time of 0.5–6 h. Up to 91 wt % of model PP was converted into oil at 425 °C with a 2–4 h reaction time or at 450 °C with a 0.5–1 h reaction time. Higher reaction temperatures (>450 °C) or longer reaction times (>4 h) led to more gas products. The oil products consisted of olefins, paraffins, cyclics, and aromatics. About 80–90 wt % of the oil components had the same boiling point range as naphtha (25–200 °C) and heating values of 48–49 MJ/kg. Reaction pathways for converting model PP into oil under the tested conditions were proposed. Preliminary analyses indicate that.