Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CFD Simulations of recovery boiler char beds with step and smooth surfaces

Step boundaries have often been used to approximate smooth boundaries in CFD simulations with orthogonal Cartesian coordinate grids. This paper investigates the use of steps to represent a smooth sloped surface that is typical of recovery furnace char beds. In this work the lower region of a recovery furnace was simulated with CFD models, and the slope of the char bed was represented by either a Cartesian coordinate step surface or a body-fitted-coordinate smooth surface. The effects of a step boundary on the calculations of gas velocity, shear stress, and heat transfer coefficient on the bed surface were then examined. Results showed that both methods predicted similar overall velocity fields, but the step-bed model underestimated shear stress and overestimated heat transfer area at the surface boundary.
A Symmetric Information-Theoretic Index For The Measurement of Inequality

The application of information theory to the measurement of income inequality has yielded an impressive array of measurement techniques known as Generalized Entropy (GE) measures. Special cases of this class of index include Theil’s T and L measures which are considered axiomatically superior to other types of metrics including the popular Gini coefficient. In this paper we show that the parallel between information theory and inequality measurement has not yet been fully explored and propose a new inequality measure based upon this concept. The proposed measure is already established as a tool for use in statistical classification and signal processing problems and is known in these fields as the J-Divergence or Symmetric Kullback-Leibler Divergence. As an inequality metric the measure is shown to be axiomatically complete and is in possession of an additional property allowing for an alternate type of decomposition analysis. The new type of decomposition makes the contribution of any individual or subgroup to the inequality metric directly observable such that the overall index may be reconciled with a weighted sum of each group contribution. We illustrate with an example using income micro-data from the United States where we evaluate the contributions of various racial groups to overall inequality. We also provide a standard decomposition of the inequalities between and within the racial groups to contrast the techniques. and within the racial groups to contrast the techniques.
The Efficient Method for Simultaneous Monitoring of the Culturable as Well as Nonculturable Airborne Microorganisms

Cultivation-based microbiological methods are a gold standard for monitoring of airborne micro-organisms to determine the occupational exposure levels or transmission paths of a particular infectious agent. Some highly contagious microorganisms are not easily culturable but it is becoming evident that cultivation and molecular methods are complementary and in these cases highly relevant. We report a simple and efficient method for sampling and analyzing airborne bacteria with an impactor-type high-flow-rate portable air sampler, currently used for monitoring culturable bacteria or fungi. A method is reported for extraction of nucleic acids from impacted cells without prior cultivation and using agarose as a sampling matrix. The DNA extraction efficiency was determined in spiked samples and, samples taken from a wastewater treatment plant and an alpine area. The abundance, diversity and quantity of total bacteria were analysed by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and by construction and analysis of clone libraries. The method does not interfere with downstream PCR analysis and can cover the gap between traditional culture and molecular techniques of bioaerosol monitoring.
Antibody-Mediated Killing of Carbapenem-Resistant ST258 Klebsiella pneumoniae by Human Neutrophils

ABSTRACT Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae is a problem worldwide. A carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae lineage classified as multilocus sequence type 258 (ST258) is prominent in the health care setting in many regions of the world, including the United States. ST258 strains can be resistant to virtually all clinically useful antibiotics; treatment of infections caused by these organisms is difficult, and mortality is high. As a step toward promoting development of new therapeutics for ST258 infections, we tested the ability of rabbit antibodies specific for ST258 capsule polysaccharide to enhance human serum bactericidal activity and promote phagocytosis and killing of these bacteria by human neutrophils. We first demonstrated that an isogenic wzy deletion strain is significantly more susceptible to killing by human heparinized blood, serum, and neutrophils than a wild-type ST258 strain. Consistent with the importance of capsule as an immune evasion molecule, rabbit immune serum and purified IgG specific for ST258 capsule polysaccharide type 2 (CPS2) enhanced killing by human blood and serum in vitro. Moreover, antibodies specific for CPS2 promoted phagocytosis and killing of ST258 by human neutrophils. Collectively, our findings suggest that ST258 CPS2 is a viable target for immunoprophylactics and/or therapeutics. IMPORTANCE Infections caused by carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae are difficult to treat, and mortality is high. New prophylactic approaches and/or therapeutic measures are needed to prevent or treat infections caused by these multidrug-resistant bacteria. A strain of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae, classified by multilocus sequence typing as ST258, is present in many regions of the world and is the most prominent carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae lineage in the United States. Here we show that rabbit antibodies specific for capsule polysaccharide of ST258 significantly enhance human serum bactericidal activity and promote phagocytosis and killing of this pathogen by human neutrophils. These studies have provided strong support for the idea that development of an immunotherapy (vaccine) for carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae infections is feasible and has merit. Infections caused by carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae are difficult to treat, and mortality is high. New prophylactic approaches and/or therapeutic measures are needed to prevent or treat infections caused by these multidrug-resistant bacteria. A strain of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae, classified by multilocus sequence typing as ST258, is present in many regions of the world and is the most prominent carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae lineage in the United States. Here we show that rabbit antibodies specific for capsule polysaccharide of ST258 significantly enhance human serum bactericidal activity and promote phagocytosis and killing of this pathogen by human neutrophils. These studies have provided strong support for the idea that development of an immunotherapy (vaccine) for carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae infections is feasible and has merit.
Innovating with users online? How network-characteristics affect collaboration for innovation

This paper addresses how network characteristics affect collaboration in open innovation applications. Combining insights from open innovation and networked innovation, this paper applies an analytical framework addressing the innovation process from ideation to potential innovation, with a focus on relationships between involved parties and types of collective action. The analysis is based on the use of an open innovation application in three organizations: a hospital, an IT-company and three municipalities. Findings suggest that open innovation applications for gathering ideas facilitate a cross-cutting of vertical/hierarchical and horizontal/domain boundaries yet do little to alleviate challenges with innovation-management and cross-domain communication. Innovation-work beyond ideation, proceeding from an idea to an implemented innovation, is an example of high level collaboration, requiring high levels of commitment, reciprocal trust, common purpose, mutual benefits and risks. The ideation-phase and the later phases of the innovation-process hence benefit from different constellations of networks.
Graph partition based multi-way spatial joins

We investigate the problem of efficiently computing a multi-way spatial join without spatial indexes. We propose a novel and effective filtering algorithm based on a two phase partitioning technique. To avoid missing hits due to an inherent difficulty in multi-way spatial joins, we propose to firstly partition a join graph into sub-graphs whenever necessary. In the second phase, we partition the spatial data sets; and then the sub-joins will be executed simultaneously in each partition to minimise the I/O costs. Finally, a multi-way relational join is applied to merge together the sub-join results. Our experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository

A detailed Pliocene oxygen isotope record from the Ontong Java Plateau, based on measurements of the surface-dwelling planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides sacculifer, was produced for the period from 5 to 2 Ma. The record documents major long-and short-term climate changes. The results show periods of enhanced ice volume at 4.6 to 4.3 Ma and after 2.85 Ma, a long-term warming trend from 4.1 to 3.7 Ma, and a distinct cooling trend that was initiated at 3.5 Ma and progressed through the initiation of large-scale Northern Hemisphere glaciation after 2.85 Ma (according to the time scale of Shackleton and others proposed in 1990). Periods of high average ice volumes also show the highest δ 18 θ amplitudes. The pattern of climate cyclicity changed markedly at about 2.85 Ma. Earlier times were marked by high-frequency variability at the precessional frequencies or even higher frequencies, pointing to low-latitude processes as a main controlling factor driving planktonic δ 18 θ variability in this period. The high-frequency variability is not coherent with insolation and points to strong nonlinearity in the way the climate system responded to orbital forcing before the onset of large scale Northern Hemisphere glaciation. After 3 Ma, stronger 41-k.y. cyclicity appears in the record. The shift in pattern is clearest around 2.85 Ma (according to the time scale proposed by Shackleton and others in 1990), 100-200 k.y. before the most dramatic spread of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. This indicates that high-latitude processes from this point on began to take over and influence most strongly the δ 18 θ record, which now reflects ice-volume fluctuations related to the climatic effects of obliquity forcing on the seasonality of high-latitude areas, most probably in the Northern Hemisphere. The general Pliocene trend is that high-latitude climate sensitivity and instability was increasing, and the causal factors producing the intensified glacial cyclicity during the Pliocene must be factors that enhance cooling and climate sensitivity in the subarctic areas.
Interference channel state based user-centric cell clustering for uplink multicell cooperation

Cooperative receiving has been recognized as an effective technique to mitigate inter-cell interference (ICI) for the uplink of multicell wireless systems. However, how to cluster the cooperative cells effectively is critical to the subsequent multicell signal processing and the corresponding performance improvement. A dynamic user-centric clustering scheme based on the interference channel strength is proposed in this work. Specifically, the cooperation opportunity of a base station (BS) is considered as limited resources because both the cooperative signal processing and the information exchange through backhaul would impose additional resource consumption to the BSs involved in the cooperation. In order to benefit from cooperation of the BSs, mobile users located within the coverage of the cooperative cells compete for the BS cooperation opportunities based on their interfering channel states, which create user-centric clusters that change dynamically with the channel states. A hierarchical pre-clustering scheme is proposed to further reduce the computational complexity of the clustering algorithm. Simulation results show that with modest computational complexity, the proposed user-centric clustering scheme is capable of achieving good tradeoff between cooperative gains and costs by avoiding excess cooperation burden on any particular BS.
Physiotherapists’ management of challenging situations in guiding people with rheumatoid arthritis to health-enhancing physical activity

ABSTRACT Objectives: To explore strategies used by physiotherapists (PTs) in guiding people with rheumatoid arthritis to health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) in a group setting during a 1-year intervention study. Methods: Exploratory design with qualitative video analysis performed in three steps. Eleven female PTs were video recorded while leading support group sessions aiming at facilitating HEPA (twice-weekly exercise sessions at public gyms and 150 weekly minutes of moderately intense aerobic physical activity). Results: Three categories of challenging situations emerged. They occurred when the HEPA intervention participants reported barriers to performing physical activity, when they neglected to use the planning tool for physical activity as intended in the program, and when they received negative results from physical capacity tests. PTs used different strategies to manage these challenges, with main focus either on information-giving, corresponding to a traditional health professional approach, or utilizing group resources by organizing participation. Conclusions: This study provides detailed descriptions of PTs’ clinical behavior in video-recorded sessions. The results imply that motivated PTs can, despite their biomedical and practitioner-focused training, learn to adapt their communication strategies to different situations, altering between traditional information-giving and utilizing group resources by organizing participation.
Dynamic Server Allocation Over Time-Varying Channels With Switchover Delay

We consider a dynamic server allocation problem over parallel queues with randomly varying connectivity and server switchover delay between the queues. At each time slot, the server decides either to stay with the current queue or switch to another queue based on the current connectivity and the queue length information. Switchover delay occurs in many telecommunications applications and is a new modeling component of this problem that has not been previously addressed. We show that the simultaneous presence of randomly varying connectivity and switchover delay changes the system stability region and the structure of optimal policies. In the first part of this paper, we consider a system of two parallel queues, and develop a novel approach to explicitly characterize the stability region of the system using state-action frequencies which are stationary solutions to a Markov decision process formulation. We then develop a frame-based dynamic control (FBDC) policy, based on the state-action frequencies, and show that it is throughput optimal asymptotically in the frame length. The FBDC policy is applicable to a broad class of network control systems and provides a new framework for developing throughput-optimal network control policies using state-action frequencies. Furthermore, we develop simple myopic policies that provably achieve more than 90% of the stability region. In the second part of this paper, we extend our results to systems with an arbitrary finite number of queues. In particular, we show that the stability region characterization in terms of state-action frequencies and the throughput optimality of the FBDC policy follows for the general case. Furthermore, we characterize an outer bound on the stability region and an upper bound on sum throughput and show that a simple myopic policy can achieve this sum-throughput upper bound in the corresponding saturated system. Finally, simulation results show that the myopic policies may achieve the full stability region and are more delay efficient than the FBDC policy in most cases.
Taking the Test Taker’s Perspective: Response Process and Test Motivation in Multidimensional Forced-Choice Versus Rating Scale Instruments

The multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) format has been proposed as an alternative to the rating scale (RS) response format. However, it is unclear how changing the response format may affect the response process and test motivation of participants. In Study 1, we investigated the MFC response process using the think-aloud technique. In Study 2, we compared test motivation between the RS format and different versions of the MFC format (presenting 2, 3, 4, and 5 items simultaneously). The response process to MFC item blocks was similar to the RS response process but involved an additional step of weighing the items within a block against each other. The RS and MFC response format groups did not differ in their test motivation. Thus, from the test taker’s perspective, the MFC format is somewhat more demanding to respond to, but this does not appear to decrease test motivation.
Expression of Aeromonas caviae polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase gene in Burkholderia sp. USM (JCM15050) enables the biosynthesis of SCL‐MCL PHA from palm oil products

Aims: Burkholderia sp. USM (JCM15050) isolated from oil‐polluted wastewater is capable of utilizing palm oil products and glycerol to synthesize poly(3‐hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB)]. To confer the ability to produce polymer containing 3‐hydroxyhexanoate (3HHx), plasmid (pBBREE32d13) harbouring the polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) synthase gene of Aeromonas caviae (phaCAc) was transformed into this strain.
Submarine back‐arc lava with arc signature: Fonualei Spreading Center, northeast Lau Basin, Tonga

[1] We present major, volatile, and trace elements for quenched glasses from the Fonualei Spreading Center, a nascent spreading system situated very close to the Tofua Volcanic Arc (20 km at the closest), in the northeast Lau Basin. The glasses are basalts and basaltic andesites and are inferred to have originated from a relatively hot and depleted mantle wedge. The Fonualei Spreading Center shows island arc basalt (IAB) affinities, indistinguishable from the Tofua Arc. Within the Fonualei Spreading Center no geochemical trends can be seen with depth to the slab and/or distance to the arc, despite a difference in depth to the slab of >50 km. Therefore we infer that all the subduction-related magmatism is captured by the back arc as the adjacent arc is shut off. There is a sharp contrast between the main spreading area of the Fonualei Spreading Center (FSC) and its northernmost termination, the Mangatolu Triple Junction (MTJ). The MTJ samples are characteristic back-arc basin basalts (BABB). We propose that the MTJ and FSC have different mantle sources, reflecting different mantle origins and/or different melting processes. We also document a decrease in mantle depletion from the south of the FSC to the MTJ, which is the opposite to what has been documented for the rest of the Lau Basin where depletion generally increases from south to north. We attribute this reverse trend to the influx of less depleted mantle through the tear between the Australian and the Pacific plates, at the northern boundary of the Lau Basin.
Every look matters: appraisals of faces follow distinct rules of information integration under arousing versus non-arousing conditions

ABSTRACT In this research, we investigated whether appraisals of faces follow distinct rules of information integration under arousing versus non-arousing conditions. Support for this prediction was found in four experiments in which participants observed angry (and fearful) faces that were presented with a direct versus an averted gaze (Experiments 1a, b), on a red versus a grey background (Experiment 2), and after performing a motor exercise versus no exercise (Experiment 3). Under arousing conditions, participants’ appraisals of faces reflected summation (i.e. extremely negative encounters were strengthened by moderately negative encounters) whereas, under non-arousing conditions, appraisals did not reflect summation (i.e. extremely negative encounters were weakened by moderately negative encounters) and could instead be accounted for by three alternative rules of information integration based on averaging, mere exposure, or the number of strong stimuli.
Global Bandits

Multiarmed bandits (MABs) model sequential decision-making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior works on MAB assume that the reward distributions of each arm are independent. But in a wide variety of decision problems—from drug dosage to dynamic pricing—the expected rewards of different arms are correlated, so that selecting one arm provides information about the expected rewards of other arms as well. We propose and analyze a class of models of such decision problems, which we call <italic>global bandits</italic> (GB). In the case in which rewards of all arms are deterministic functions of a single unknown parameter, we construct a greedy policy that achieves <italic>bounded regret</italic>, with a bound that depends on the single true parameter of the problem. Hence, this policy selects suboptimal arms only finitely many times with probability one. For this case, we also obtain a bound on regret that is <italic>independent of the true parameter</italic>; this bound is sublinear, with an exponent that depends on the informativeness of the arms. We also propose a variant of the greedy policy that achieves <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tilde {\mathcal {O}}(\sqrt {T})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> worst case and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}(1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> parameter-dependent regret. Finally, we perform experiments on dynamic pricing and show that the proposed algorithms achieve significant gains with respect to the well-known benchmarks.
Obstacle Detection using Heterogeneous Sensors for Intelligent Transportation Systems

The growing interest in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has motivated many of researchers to develop new technologies, such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Advanced Smart Cruise Control (ASCC). Despite those efforts, various technical challenges still remain to assure the safety of the driver and the pedestrian. In this paper, we introduce several obstacle detection techniques, which are one of the most important aspects to ensure the transportation safety, using camera and LiDAR based on our survey results. We also present our indoor test-bed and platforms, which will be used to evaluate and compare surveyed techniques.