Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heat Transfer Characteristics and Prediction Model of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide ( SC-CO 2 ) in a Vertical Tube

Due to its distinct capability to improve the efficiency of shale gas production, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) fracturing has attracted increased attention in recent years. Heat transfer occurs in the transportation and fracture processes. To better predict and understand the heat transfer of SC-CO2 near the critical region, numerical simulations focusing on a vertical flow pipe were performed. Various turbulence models and turbulent Prandtl numbers (Prt) were evaluated to capture the heat transfer deterioration (HTD). The simulations show that the turbulent Prandtl number model (TWL model) combined with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model accurately predicts the HTD in the critical region. It was found that Prt has a strong effect on the heat transfer prediction. The HTD occurred under larger heat flux density conditions, and an acceleration process was observed. Gravity also affects the HTD through the linkage of buoyancy, and HTD did not occur under zero-gravity conditions.
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Modulates Cortical Neuronal Activity in Alzheimer's Disease

Quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) showed that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by increased theta power, decreased alpha and beta power, and decreased coherence in the alpha and theta band in posterior regions. These abnormalities are thought to be associated with functional disconnections among cortical areas, death of cortical neurons, axonal pathology, and cholinergic deficits. Since transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over the temporo-parietal area is thought to have beneficial effects in patients with AD, in this study we aimed to investigate whether tDCS benefits are related to tDCS-induced changes in cortical activity, as represented by qEEG. A weak anodal current (1.5 mA, 15 min) was delivered bilaterally over the temporal-parietal lobe to seven subjects with probable AD (Mini-Mental State Examination, MMSE score >20). EEG (21 electrodes, 10–20 international system) was recorded for 5 min with eyes closed before (baseline, t0) and 30 min after anodal and cathodal tDCS ended (t1). At the same time points, patients performed a Word Recognition Task (WRT) to assess working memory functions. The spectral power and the inter- and intra-hemispheric EEG coherence in different frequency bands (e.g., low frequencies, including delta and theta; high frequencies, including alpha and beta) were calculated for each subject at t0 and t1. tDCS-induced changes in EEG neurophysiological markers were correlated with the performance of patients at the WRT. At baseline, qEEG features in AD patients confirmed that the decreased high frequency power was correlated with lower MMSE. After anodal tDCS, we observed an increase in the high-frequency power in the temporo-parietal area and an increase in the temporo-parieto-occipital coherence that correlated with the improvement at the WRT. In addition, cathodal tDCS produced a non-specific effect of decreased theta power all over the scalp that was not correlated with the clinical observation at the WRT. Our findings disclosed that tDCS induces significant modulations in the cortical EEG activity in AD patients. The abnormal pattern of EEG activity observed in AD during memory processing is partially reversed by applying anodal tDCS, suggesting that anodal tDCS benefits in AD patients during working memory tasks are supported by the modulation of cortical activity.
Computational modelling of the rheological behavior of branched polymer melts

An algorithm that predicts the linear viscoelasticity of a melt consisting of different branched polymers is presented. The derivation of this algorithm is based upon the tube model. Polymers, linear or branched, can relax by reptation or retraction. Knowing the molecular structure of the polymer melt, the relaxation function can be calculated. The algorithm is implemented in Fortran. Numerical results are compared with available experimental data.
Towards Evolutionary Deep Neural Networks

This paper is concerned with the problem of optimizing deep neural networks with diverse transfer functions using evolutionary methods. Standard evolutionary (SEDeeNN) and cooperative coevolutionary methods (CoDeeNN) were applied to three different architectures characterized by different constraints on neural diversity. It was found that (1) SEDeeNN (but not CoDeeNN) changes parameters uniformly across all layers, (2) both evolutionary approaches can exhibit good convergence and generalization properties, and (3) increased neural diversity improves both convergence and generalization. In addition to clarifying the feasibility of evolutionary deep neural networks, we suggests a guiding principle for synergizing evolutionary and error gradient based approaches through layerchange analysis.
Experimental and Analytical Study on the Mechanical Behavior of Stitched Sandwich Composite Panel with a Foam Core

To quantify the effect of structural through-thickness reinforcement in foam core sandwich composite panels, an experimental study was carried out which included three-point bending tests, core shear tests, flatwise tensile and compression tests, as well as edgewise compression tests. Standard test procedures based on ASTM guidelines are followed to test the behavior of the stitched panels with reinforcement at 90 degree orientation with respect to the sandwich faces. The test specimens were manufactured by using polyurethane foam Rohacell 71 IG and carbon fiber reinforced composite facesheets. The dry perform facesheets and foam core were then assembled in a dry lay-up already stitched. Kevlar 29 yarn was used to stitch both sets of panels. The results showed a significant effect of the stitching on the in-plane Young’s modulus which was attributed to local displacements of the in-plane fibers and changes in the fiber volume fraction. Stitching of sandwich panels significantly increases the maximum failure loads under flexure, core shear, flatwise tensile, flatwise compression, and edgewise compression loading. A finite element based unit-cell model was developed to estimate the elastic constants of structurally stitched foam core sandwich composite panels taking into consideration the yarn diameter, the stitching pattern and direction as well as the load direction. Depending on these parameters, local changes of the fiber volume fraction as well as regions with undisturbed and disturbed fiber orientations within the laminate plies are taken into account. A good match between the finite element modeling and the experimental data was obtained. The present work should be considered as a step towards developing a more sophisticated numerical model capable of describing mechanical behavior of sandwich structures.
An approach to constructing feature models based on requirements clustering

Feature models have been widely adopted in software reuse to organize the requirements of a set of similar applications in a software domain/product line. However, in most feature-oriented methods, the construction of feature models heavily depends on the domain analysts' personal understanding, and the work of constructing feature models from the original requirements of sample applications is often tedious and ineffective. This paper proposes a semiautomatic approach to constructing feature models based on requirements clustering, which automates the activities of feature identification, organization and variability modeling to a great extent. The underlying idea of this approach is to analyze the relationships between individual requirements and cluster tight-related requirements into features. With the automatic support of this approach, good quality feature models can be constructed in a more effective way. A case study is also provided to show the feasibility of this approach.
The interactive effects of food and predators on reproduction and overwinter survival of arctic ground squirrels

Summary 1. We examined the effects of food and predators on population limitation in the arctic ground squirrel (Spermophilus parryii plesius Richardson) in the boreal forest of the south-western Yukon. We focused on ground squirrel reproduction and overwinter survival. 2. Squirrel populations were monitored by live-trapping and radio-telemetry from 1993 to the spring of 1996 on four control and four experimental areas (one predator exclosure treatment, two food addition treatments, and one predator exclosure plus food addition treatment). 3. Predator exclusion increased body condition, percentage lactating, percentage weaning litters, litter size, and doubled population density relative to controls, but had no effect on juvenile growth rate, overwinter survival, or juvenile emergence date. 4. Food addition advanced juvenile emergence date and increased adult body condition, percentage lactating, percentage weaning litters, litter size, population density relative to controls (4–7 fold), but had no effect on juvenile growth rate or overwinter survival. 5. Predator exclusion combined with food addition increased adult body condition, percentage lactating, percentage weaning litters, and population density relative to controls (19-fold). 6. We conclude that arctic ground squirrels in the boreal forest are limited by an interaction between food and predation, acting primarily through changes in reproduction, and that their impact on density was multiplicative.
Continuous Use of Authoring for Adaptive Educational Hypermedia: A Long-term Case Study

Adaptive educational hypermedia allows lessons to be personalized according to the needs of the learner. However, to achieve this, content must be split into stand-alone fragments that can be processed by a course personalization engine. Authoring content for this process is still a difficult activity, and it is essential for the popularization of adaptive educational hypermedia that authoring is simplified, so that the various stakeholders in the educational process, students, teachers, administrators, etc. can easily work with such systems. Thus, real-world testing with these stakeholders is essential. In this paper we describe recent extensions and improvements we have implemented in the My Online Teacher MOT3.0 adaptation authoring tool set, based on an initial set of short-term evaluations, and then focus on describing a longterm usage and assessment of the system.
Tweets classification, hashtags suggestion and tweets linking in social semantic web

Nowadays social semantic Web has become one of the most important sources of data. The quality of data is crucial for data integration and annotation in social Linked Open Data (LOD). The main goal of tweets classification and linking is to integrate all tweets that are related semantically in one place on the Web. The data inequality problems exist because authors post tweets and hashtag them based on their own preference. The authors can post tweets in different languages (English-Arabic). Therefore, the hashtags cannot be the only trackback function of the tweet to link it with the related tweets. Thus, the goal of this paper is to develop an automated tweet classifier which is not limited by the language or the category of the tweet. The approach can create new suggested multilingual (English, Arabic) hashtags from tweet's content and comments "auto-tagging" in social linked open data (LOD), matching the tweets in the same topic and provides high accuracy and performance using blocking and indexing techniques. The proposed framework has substantial improvements in tweets classification and linking compared to state of the art framework of classifying and linking techniques with better classifying rate which reach 95% in precision and 97% in recall.
Mining and analysing scale-free proteinprotein interaction network

Protein-protein interaction network is essential to understand the fundamental processes that govern cell biology. In this paper, we integrate information extraction and data mining techniques to extract and mine the scale-free protein-protein interaction network from biomedical literature. The experiments on around 1,600 chromatin proteins indicate that our system is very promising for mining and analysing protein-protein interaction network.
High Performance Organic Semiconductors

Abstract : This report summarizes results supported by grant no. FA9550-09-1-0256. We report: 1. Development of new n-type dopants 2. Synthesis of semiconducting polymers based on acenes; 3. Tuning threshold voltage of organic transistors with self assembled monolayers; 4. A new method to achieve high mobility aligned single crystals over a large area; 5. The electronic skin concept.
Advanced Optical Diagnostic Techniques for Detection of Alkali Vapors in High-Temperature Gases

Two advanced optical techniques for the detection of alkali vapors in high-temperature gases are introduced in this Thesis. Alkali vapors are released in solid fuel combustion and increase the maintenance costs of the power plant boilers. Especially, biomass and waste are challenging fuels for contemporary technology. Alkali related problems are controlled with proper fuel mixture ratios and additives that are mixed to fuels or sprayed into the boiler. However, the controlling increases the cost of the produced energy and the additives increase SO2 concentration. In order to study the alkali formation mechanisms and to control alkali concentrations in power plant boilers, fast, accurate and highly sensitive detection techniques are needed. This Thesis presents the fundamental absorption properties of the K, KCl and KOH vapors, reviews previously applied techniques for the detection of alkalis, and introduces two novel detection methods. The first method is based on the Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (PAS), that utilizes two branches of physics, namely optics and acoustics. A high-temperature PAS cell is introduced and applied to detect KCl and NaCl. Moreover, the possibility to apply the PAS cell to high-temperature salt-induced metal oxidation is discussed. The second method, which was fully developed during this work, is called Collinear Photofragmentation and Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (CPFAAS). CPFAAS provides the limit of detection below parts per billion and the dynamic range of eight orders of magnitude in the detection of alkali chlorides. Moreover, the detection time of the CPFAAS measurement is in the order of micro second, which enables the diagnostics of the fast changing processes, such as combustion. The technique is calibration free and is integrable to ”see-through” applications. In this Thesis, CPFAAS is applied to determine potassium vapor concentrations from a laboratory cell, flue gases emanated from 10 mg fuel samples, and flue gases in intermediate and large scale combustion boilers. The presented applications, modeling and comparison with previously applied detection methods show that CPFAAS enables new detection and monitoring capabilities from corrosive high temperature gases.
GRAMMPS: a generalized mission planner for multiple mobile robots in unstructured environments

For a system of cooperative mobile robots to be effective in real-world applications it must be able to efficiently execute a wide class of complex tasks in potentially unknown and unstructured environments. Previous research in multi-robot systems has either been limited to relatively structured domains or to small classes of feasible missions. This paper describes a field-capable system called GRAMMPS which addresses this problem by coupling a general-purpose interpreted grammar for task definition with dynamic planning techniques. GRAMMPS supports a general class of local navigation systems and heterogeneous groups of robots, providing optimal execution of missions given current world knowledge. Simulations illustrating the capabilities of this system are provided. Results showing successful runs of this system on two autonomous off-road vehicles are also given.
Three Highly Conserved Proteins Catalyze the Conversion of UDP-N-acetyl-d-glucosamine to Precursors for the Biosynthesis of O Antigen in Pseudomonas aeruginosaO11 and Capsule in Staphylococcus aureus Type 5

N-Acetyl-l-fucosamine is a constituent of surface polysaccharide structures ofPseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. The three P. aeruginosa enzymes WbjB, WbjC, and WbjD, as well as the S. aureus homologs Cap5E, Cap5F, and Cap5G, involved in the biosynthesis ofN-acetyl-l-fucosamine have been overexpressed and purified to near homogeneity. Capillary electrophoresis (CE), mass spectroscopy (MS), and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy have been used to elucidate the biosynthesis pathway, which proceeds in five reaction steps. WbjB/Cap5E catalyzed 4,6-dehydration of UDP-N-acetyl-d-glucosamine and 3- and 5-epimerization to yield a mixture of three keto-deoxy-sugars. The third intermediate compound was subsequently reduced at C-4 to UDP-2-acetamido-2,6-dideoxy-l-talose by WbjC/Cap5F. Incubation of UDP-2-acetamido-2,6-dideoxy-l-talose (UDP-TalNAc) with WbjD/Cap5G resulted in a new peak separable by CE that demonstrated identical mass and fragmentation patterns by CE-MS/MS to UDP-TalNAc. These results are consistent with WbjD/Cap5G-mediated 2-epimerization of UDP-TalNAc to UDP-FucNAc. A nonpolar gene knockout of wbjB, the first of the genes associated with this pathway, was constructed in P. aeruginosa serotype O11 strain PA103. The corresponding mutant produced rough lipopolysaccharide devoid of B-band O antigen. This lipopolysaccharide deficiency could be complemented with P. aeruginosa wbjB or with the S. aureus homolog cap5E. Insertional inactivation of either the cap5G or cap5F genes abolished capsule polysaccharide production in the S. aureus strain Newman. Providing the appropriate gene in trans, thereby complementing these mutants, fully restored the capsular polysaccharide phenotype.
MeDICINE: Rapid prototyping of production-ready network services in multi-PoP environments

Virtualized network services consisting of multiple individual network functions are already today deployed across multiple sites, so called multi-PoP (points of presence) environments. This allows to improve service performance by optimizing its placement in the network. But prototyping and testing of these complex distributed software systems becomes extremely challenging. The reason is that not only the network service as such has to be tested but also its integration with management and orchestration systems. Existing solutions, like simulators, basic network emulators, or local cloud testbeds, do not support all aspects of these tasks. To this end, we introduce MeDICINE, a novel NFV prototyping platform that is able to execute production-ready network functions, provided as software containers, in an emulated multi-PoP environment. These network functions can be controlled by any third-party management and orchestration system that connects to our platform through standard interfaces. Based on this, a developer can use our platform to prototype and test complex network services in a realistic environment running on his laptop.
Arm–domain interactions can provide high binding cooperativity

Peptidyl arms extending from one protein domain to another protein domain mediate many important interactions in biology. A well‐studied example of this type of protein–protein interaction occurs between the yeast homeodomain proteins, MAT α2 and MAT a1, which form a high‐affinity heterodimer on DNA. The carboxyl‐terminal arm extending from MAT α2 to MAT a1 has been proposed to produce an allosteric conformational change in the a1 protein that generates a very large increase in the DNA binding affinity of a1. Although early studies lent some support to this model, a more recent crystal structure determination of the free a1 protein argues against any allosteric change. This note presents a thermodynamic argument that accounts for the proteins' binding behavior, so that allosteric conformational changes are not required to explain the large affinity increase. The analysis presented here should be useful in analyzing binding behavior in other systems involving arm interactions.
Review of Hydrogen Diffusion Models for the Analysis of Hydrogen Embrittlement of Materials

Hydrogen-assisted fracture (HAF) of metals is the problem of major concern in structural integrity. HAF is rate limited by hydrogen accumulation in fracture sites in metals. Diffusion is a relevant stage of transport that supplies hydrogen to fracture process zones. Addressing the purposes of HAF analysis, modelling of hydrogen diffusion with account for physical-mechanical fields and factors of material microstructure (hydrogen trapping) is revisited. Generalised system of equations of trapping-affected hydrogen diffusion is derived from the kinetics principles. For circumstances, which are relevant to plenty of engineering HAF cases, specialised models of “microstructure informed” stress-strain-assisted hydrogen diffusion in metals are retrieved and collated under the prism of their suitability for HAF analyses.
The Effects of Gamma and Proton Radiation Exposure on Hematopoietic Cell Counts in the Ferret Model

ABSTRACT Exposure to total-body radiation induces hematological changes, which can detriment one’s immune response to wounds and infection. Here, the decreases in blood cell counts after acute radiation doses of γ-ray or proton radiation exposure, at the doses and dose-rates expected during a solar particle event (SPE), are reported in the ferret model system. Following the exposure to γ-ray or proton radiation, the ferret peripheral total white blood cell (WBC) and lymphocyte counts decreased whereas neutrophil count increased within 3 hours. At 48 hours after irradiation, the WBC, neutrophil, and lymphocyte counts decreased in a dose-dependent manner but were not significantly affected by the radiation type (γ-rays verses protons) or dose rate (0.5 Gy/minute verses 0.5 Gy/hour). The loss of these blood cells could accompany and contribute to the physiological symptoms of the acute radiation syndrome (ARS).
X-Ray Mask Distortion: Process And Pattern Dependence

X-Ray lithography is widely believed to occupy an important future lithographic niche in the vicinity of 0.5 micron and below. "] It will be technically easier to achieve resolution and depth of focus with X-Ray than with optical steppers in this lithographic regime. It will be much less expensive to print large volume runners like Dynamic RAMs, microprocessors, or CODECs with X-Ray than with electron beam direct write. However, it is also recognized that distortion in the X-Ray mask membrane may be a major obstacle to the exploitation of this niche, because of the extraordinary registration requirements of submicron design rules.