Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Numerical approximations for a phase field dendritic crystal growth model based on the invariant energy quadratization approach

We present two accurate and efficient numerical schemes for a phase field dendritic crystal growth model, which is derived from the variation of a free‐energy functional, consisting of a temperature dependent bulk potential and a conformational entropy with a gradient‐dependent anisotropic coefficient. We introduce a novel Invariant Energy Quadratization approach to transform the free‐energy functional into a quadratic form by introducing new variables to substitute the nonlinear transformations. Based on the reformulated equivalent governing system, we develop a first and a second order semi‐discretized scheme in time for the system, in which all nonlinear terms are treated semi‐explicitly. The resulting semi‐discretized equations consist of a linear elliptic equation system at each time step, where the coefficient matrix operator is positive definite and thus, the semi‐discrete system can be solved efficiently. We further prove that the proposed schemes are unconditionally energy stable. Convergence test together with 2D and 3D numerical simulations for dendritic crystal growth are presented after the semi‐discrete schemes are fully discretized in space using the finite difference method to demonstrate the stability and the accuracy of the proposed schemes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ePub WU Institutional Repository

This paper provides evidence on (1) refugees’ subjective well-being, (2) their access and barriers to health care utilization and (3) their perception of health care provision in Austria, one of the countries most heavily affected by the European ‘refugee crisis. ’ It is based on primary data from the Refugee Health and Integration Survey (ReHIS), a cross-sectional survey of roughly ﬁve hundred Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees. Results indicate that refugees’ self-rated health falls below the resident population’s, in particular for female and Afghan refugees. Whereas respondents state overall high satisfaction with the Austrian health system, two in ten male and four in ten female refugees report unmet health needs. Most frequently cited barriers include scheduling conﬂicts, long waiting lists, lack of knowledge about doctors, and language. Although treatment costs were not frequently considered as barriers, consultation of specialist medical services frequently associated with co-payment by patients, in particular dental care, are signiﬁcantly less often consulted by refugees than by Austrians. Refugees reported comparably high utilization of hospital services, with daycare treatment more common than inpatient stays. We recommend to improve refugees’ access to health care in Austria by a) improving the information ﬂow about available treatment, in particular specialists, b) fostering dental health care for refugees, and c) addressing language barriers by providing (web-based) interpretation services. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Acute aerobic exercise effects on brain wave pattern of player and non- player: A pilot study

Background: Brain wave pattern reveals mental state of an individual. Exercise may alter mental state, which could be observed by brain study Aim: The aim of this study was to examine brain wave pattern of the player and the non-player after acute aerobic exercise Methods: Two (one player and other non-player) young healthy males aged between 21-23 years were exposed to an Electroencephalogram (EEG) followed by acute aerobic exercise session using cycle ergometer. Again post exercise EEG was recorded on both the subjects. Results: Result indicated an increase in beta absolute power in various subareas after exercise in both the participants. Whereas, pre exercise EEG recording of both the participants reported no such differences. Acute aerobic exercise may lead to higher cortical activation which influences changes in beta absolute power in brain regions. Conclusions: Exercises of acute aerobic in nature may increase cortical arousal level which could be useful in health and diseases condition of players and non-players population.
CodeOntology: Querying Source Code in a Semantic Framework

Code reuse, code querying and computer aided programming are some of the main research challenges in software engineering. Therefore, we have introduced CodeOntology as an approach to leverage recent advances in the Semantic Web area and the impressive amount of open source code freely available online, to provide a semantic view of software systems by extracting structured information from source code and by performing named entity disambiguation on the comments provided within the code, in order to link the corresponding entities to pertinent DBpedia resources. In this paper, we focus on the expressiveness of this framework by showing how CodeOntology can be used for static code analysis, semantic component search and code reuse.
A novel role for sox7 in Xenopus early primordial germ cell development: mining the PGC transcriptome

ABSTRACT Xenopus primordial germ cells (PGCs) are determined by the presence of maternally derived germ plasm. Germ plasm components both protect PGCs from somatic differentiation and begin a unique gene expression program. Segregation of the germline from the endodermal lineage occurs during gastrulation, and PGCs subsequently initiate zygotic transcription. However, the gene network(s) that operate to both preserve and promote germline differentiation are poorly understood. Here, we utilized RNA-sequencing analysis to comprehensively interrogate PGC and neighboring endoderm cell mRNAs after lineage segregation. We identified 1865 transcripts enriched in PGCs compared with endoderm cells. We next compared the PGC-enriched transcripts with previously identified maternal, vegetally enriched transcripts and found that ∼38% of maternal transcripts were enriched in PGCs, including sox7. PGC-directed sox7 knockdown and overexpression studies revealed an early requirement for sox7 in germ plasm localization, zygotic transcription and PGC number. We identified pou5f3.3 as the most highly expressed and enriched POU5F1 homolog in PGCs. We compared the Xenopus PGC transcriptome with human PGC transcripts and showed that 80% of genes are conserved, underscoring the potential usefulness of Xenopus for understanding human germline specification. Summary: RNA-sequencing and genetic manipulation of Xenopus laevis PGCs reveal novel roles for sox7 and pou5f3.3 in PGC development and a high degree of conservation between the Xenopus and human PGC transcriptomes.
Improved Spinnability of Metallocene Polyethylenes by Using Processing Aids

Abstract Melt spinning is a polymer processing technique that is strongly influenced by the extensional flow behaviour of polymer melts. Therefore only a few polymeric materials are usable for this kind of processing with sufficient take-up speeds. When approaching critical conditions of deformation most polymers show either fibre break in the molten state either by a brittle cohesive rupture or a ductile failure. During the melt spinning of pure and modified metallocene poylethylenes additional flow instabilities occur within the spinning die. Namely, wall slip, ‘sharkskin’ and pressure oscillations (gross fracture) may be obtained dependending on the volume flow rate. Pressure oscillations lead to diameter oscillations of the melt extrudate, which create local increase of tensile stress in the spin line. This effect immediately causes fiber break in the spinline. Therefore, melt spinning of polyethylenes was only possible up to a critical molecular weight or its relating melt viscosity. The limitation of the molecular weight restricts the mechanical properties of the melt spun fibres. This paper reports on an attempt to find out appropriate processing aids for suppressing ‘sharkskin’ effects and pressure oscillations in an attempt to overcome the limitation of a critical molecular weight. At first, the critical conditions for the onset of flow instabilities for higher molecular weight polymers were analysed. Further experiments concerned with the use of processing aids for melt spinning of metallocene polyethylenes of higher molecular weights. A combination of boron nitride powder and a fluoroelastomer was found to be an effective processing aid for this process.
Touching without vision : terrain perception in sensory deprived environments

In this paper we demonstrate a combined hardware and software solution that enhances sensor suite and perception capabilities of a mobile robot intended for real Urban Search & Rescue missions. A common fail-case, when exploring unknown environment of a disaster site, is the outage or deterioration of exteroceptive sensory measurements that the robot heavily relies on—especially for localization and navigation purposes. Deprivation of visual and laser modalities caused by dense smoke motivated us to develop a novel solution comprised of force sensor arrays embedded into tracks of our platform. Furthermore, we also exploit a robotic arm for active perception in cases when the prediction based on force sensors is too uncertain. Beside the integration of hardware, we also propose a framework exploiting Gaussian processes followed by Gibb’s sampling to process raw sensor measurements and provide probabilistic interpretation of the underlying terrain profile. In the final, the profile is perceived by proprioceptive means only and successfully substitutes for the lack of exteroceptive measurements in the close vicinity of the robot, when traversing unknown and unseen obstacles. We evaluated our solution on real world terrains.
Constant and seasonal drivers of bird communities in a wind farm: implications for conservation

Background. One of the most difficult challenges for conservation biology is to reconcile growing human demands for resources with the rising need for protecting nature. Wind farms producing renewable energy have been recognised to be a threat for birds, but clear directives for environmental planning are still missing. Methods. Point counts were performed to study the relationship between eight environmental variables and bird populations in different parts of a year on the largest Polish wind farm between March 2011 and February 2013. Variables potentially related to species richness (Chao 1 estimator) and the abundance of the entire bird community as well as five selected farmland species were analysed with the use of generalized linear mixed models. Results. Some associations between the studied variables and bird populations were season/year specific, while others had a constant direction (positive or negative) across seasons and/or years. The latter were distance to the nearest turbine, field size, number of wind turbines, proximity of settlements and water bodies. Spatial autocorrelation and counting time were significantly correlated with bird population estimates but the directions of these relationships varied among seasons and years. Associations between abundance of individual species and environmental variables were species-specific. Conclusions. The results demonstrated a constant negative relationship between wind turbine proximity and bird numbers. Other environmental variables, such as field size, proximity of settlements and water bodies that also had constant associations with bird populations across seasons may be taken into account when minimizing adverse effects of wind farm development on birds or choosing optimal locations of new turbines.
Optical imaging for breast cancer prescreening

Breast cancer prescreening is carried out prior to the gold standard screening using X-ray mammography and/or ultrasound. Prescreening is typically carried out using clinical breast examination (CBE) or self-breast examinations (SBEs). Since CBE and SBE have high false-positive rates, there is a need for a low-cost, noninvasive, non-radiative, and portable imaging modality that can be used as a prescreening tool to complement CBE/SBE. This review focuses on the various hand-held optical imaging devices that have been developed and applied toward early-stage breast cancer detection or as a prescreening tool via phantom, in vivo, and breast cancer imaging studies. Apart from the various optical devices developed by different research groups, a wide-field fiber-free near-infrared optical scanner has been developed for transillumination-based breast imaging in our Optical Imaging Laboratory. Preliminary in vivo studies on normal breast tissues, with absorption-contrasted targets placed in the intramammary fold, detected targets as deep as 8.8 cm. Future work involves in vivo imaging studies on breast cancer subjects and comparison with the gold standard X-ray mammography approach.
Laplace's Theories of Cognitive Illusions, Heuristics, and Biases

In his book from the early 1800s, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités, the mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace anticipated many ideas developed in the 1970s in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, explaining human tendencies to deviate from norms of rationality in the presence of probability and uncertainty. A look at Laplace's theories and reasoning is striking, both in how modern they seem and in how much progress he made without the benefit of systematic experimentation. We argue that this work points to these theories being more fundamental and less contingent on recent experimental findings than we might have thought.
Variational Bayesian inference and complexity control for stochastic block models

It is now widely accepted that knowledge can be acquired from networks by clustering their vertices according to the connection profiles. Many methods have been proposed and in this paper we concentrate on the Stochastic Block Model (SBM). The clustering of vertices and the estimation of SBM model parameters have been subject to previous work, and numerous inference strategies such as variational expectation maximization (EM) and classification EM have been proposed. However, SBM still suffers from a lack of criteria to estimate the number of components in the mixture. To our knowledge, only one model-based criterion, Integrated Complete-data Likelihood (ICL), has been derived for SBM in the literature. It relies on an asymptotic approximation of the integrated complete-data likelihood and recent studies have shown that it tends to be too conservative in the case of small networks. To tackle this issue, we propose a new criterion that we call Integrated Likelihood Variational Bayes (ILvb), based on a non-asymptotic approximation of the marginal likelihood. We describe how the criterion can be computed through a variational Bayes EM algorithm.
Control of protein adsorption on functionalized electrospun fibers

Electrospun fibers that are protein resistant and functionalized with bioactive signals were produced by solution electrospinning amphiphilic block copolymers. Poly (ethylene glycol)‐block‐poly(D,L‐lactide) (PEG‐b‐PDLLA) was synthesized in two steps, with a PEG segment of 10 kDa, while the PDLLA block ranged from 20 to 60 kDa. Depending on the PEG and PDLLA segment ratio, as well as solvent selection, the hydrophilicity and protein adsorption could be altered on the electrospun mesh. Furthermore, an α‐acetal PEG‐b‐PDLLA was synthesized that allowed the conjugation of active molecules, resulting in surface functionalization of the electrospun fiber. Electrospun material with varying morphologies and diameter were electrospun from 10, 20, and 30 wt. % solutions. Sessile drop measurements showed a reduction in the contact angle from 120° for pure poly(D,L‐lactide) with increasing PEG/PDLLA ratio. All electrospun block PEG‐b‐PDLLA fibers had hydrophilic properties, with contact angles below 45°. The fibers were collected onto six‐arm star‐poly(ethylene glycol) (star‐PEG) coated silicon wafers and incubated with fluorescently labeled proteins. All PEG‐b‐PDLLA fibers showed no detectable adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA) independent of their composition while a dependence between hydrophobic block length was observed for streptavidin adsorption. Fibers of block copolymers with PDLLA blocks smaller than 39 kDa showed no adsorption of BSA or streptavidin, indicating good non‐fouling properties. Fibers were surface functionalized with Nε‐(+)‐biotinyl‐L‐lysine (biocytin) or RGD peptide by attaching the molecule to the PEG block during synthesis. Protein adsorption measurements, and the controlled interaction of biocytin with fluorescently labeled streptavidin, showed that the electrospun fibers were both resistant to protein adsorption and are functionalized. Fibroblast adhesion was contrasting between the unfunctionalized and RGD‐coupled electrospun fabrics, confirming that the surface of the fibers was functionalized. The PEG‐b‐PDLLA surface functionalized electrospun fibers are promising substrates for controlling cell–material interactions, particularly for tissue‐engineering applications. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2008;101: 609–621. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Influence of nickel on the electronic structure and magnetic properties in Gd7Pd3-xNix

Abstract With increasing amount of nickel in the Gd7Pd3-xNix series, the unit cell volume decreases due to difference between atomic radius of Pd and Ni but the type of crystal structure is preserved. The paper presents X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer, Transmission Electron Microscopy, AC and DC magnetic susceptibility and magnetocaloric examinations of the series. The Ni substitution into Pd position causes the decrease in the Curie temperature. Moreover, the dispersion observed in the AC-susceptibility at different frequencies vanishes at the Curie point. Just below the ordering temperature, a Hopkinson peak is observed. Complex processes depending on frequency and magnetic field occur in the transition region. The magnetization phenomena are very sensitive to the applied DC magnetic field and even very weak fields producing thermomagnetic hysteresis. A reorientation process around 150 K exists in all compounds and it is connected with increasing interactions at low temperatures. After nickel substitution, the relative cooling power (RCP) is greater in comparison to the parent compound.
Pressure welding of nickel-based 58Ni-Cr-Mo-B-Al-Cu alloy under low-temperature superplasticity conditions

Both the ultrafine-grained (UFG) structure with a grain size (d) less than 1 μm and nanocrystalline (NC) structure (d ≤ nm) can be processed in nickel-based alloy 58Ni-Cr-Mo-B-Al-Cu using methods severe plastic deformation, in particular, multistep isothermal forging within the temperature range of γ+δ — region on Bridgman anvils at strains е=5,5. Pressure welding performed under conditions of low temperature superplasticity (T=800°C, έ=10-4s-1) can provide solid state joining of the alloy under study being in different structure conditions as well as joining of samples with coarse-grained structure using a NC layer.
Decoherence effects on weak value measurements in double quantum dots

We study the effect of decoherence on a weak value measurement in a paradigm system consisting of a double quantum dot continuously measured by a quantum point contact. Fluctuations of the parameters controlling the dot state induce decoherence. We find that, for measurements longer than the decoherence time, weak values are always reduced within the range of the eigenvalues of the measured observable. For measurements at shorter time scales, the measured weak value strongly depends on the interplay between the decoherence dynamics of the system and the detector backaction. In particular, depending on the postselected state and the strength of the decoherence, a more frequent classical readout of the detector might lead to an enhancement of weak values.
Catching more offenders with EvoFIT Facial Composites: Lab Research and Police Field Trials

Often, the only evidence of an offender's identity comes from the memory of an eyewitness. For over 12 years, we have been developing software called EvoFIT to help eyewitnesses recover their memories of offenders' faces, to assist police investigations. EvoFIT requires eyewitnesses to repeatedly select from arrays of faces, with 'breeding', to 'evolve' a face. Recently, police forces have been formally evaluating EvoFIT in criminal cases. The current paper describes four such police audits. It is reported that EvoFIT composites directly led to an arrest in 25.4% of cases overall; the arrest rate was 38.5% for forces that used a newer, less detailed face-recall interview. These results are similar to those found in the laboratory using simulated procedures. Here, we also evaluate the impact of interviewing techniques and outline further work that has improved system performance.
Development of a formaldehyde biosensor with application to synthetic methylotrophy

Formaldehyde is a prevalent environmental toxin and a key intermediate in single carbon metabolism. The ability to monitor formaldehyde concentration is, therefore, of interest for both environmental monitoring and for metabolic engineering of native and synthetic methylotrophs, but current methods suffer from low sensitivity, complex workflows, or require expensive analytical equipment. Here we develop a formaldehyde biosensor based on the FrmR repressor protein and cognate promoter of Escherichia coli. Optimization of the native repressor binding site and regulatory architecture enabled detection at levels as low as 1 µM. We then used the sensor to benchmark the in vivo activity of several NAD‐dependent methanol dehydrogenase (Mdh) variants, the rate‐limiting enzyme that catalyzes the first step of methanol assimilation. In order to use this biosensor to distinguish individuals in a mixed population of Mdh variants, we developed a strategy to prevent cross‐talk by using glutathione as a formaldehyde sink to minimize intercellular formaldehyde diffusion. Finally, we applied this biosensor to balance expression of mdh and the formaldehyde assimilation enzymes hps and phi in an engineered E. coli strain to minimize formaldehyde build‐up while also reducing the burden of heterologous expression. This biosensor offers a quick and simple method for sensitively detecting formaldehyde, and has the potential to be used as the basis for directed evolution of Mdh and dynamic formaldehyde control strategies for establishing synthetic methylotrophy.