Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CORROSION AND SCALING

The chemical nature of most geothermal fluids poses some severe technical constraints to the utilisation of geothermal energy, and especially of the high-enthalpy part. Geothermal fluids contain various quantities of soluble species (up to 300 g/kg of fluid) and dissolved gases, which under the thermodynamic changes occurring during their utilisation may result in scaling (or generally speaking fouling), corrosion of the metallic surfaces in contact with the fluids and even environmental problems (emission of harmful gases, liquid disposal etc.). Another intrinsic characteristic of geothermal energy is that the geothermal fluids vary greatly from site to site and for this reason measures taken to cope with these problems in one site may not be applicable to another site. The control and prevention of the corrosion and scaling problems has evolved over the past 50 years from the empirical approach and an ‘a posteriori’ treatment (chemical and/or mechanical removal of scales, replacement of heavily scaled or corroded sections) to systematic research towards understanding the complicated phenomena leading to these problems and taking measures to mitigate them. In this direction the knowledge acquired from other sectors (e.g. oil production, chemical industry, power generation) in dealing with similar problems contributed significantly to our understanding. The objective of this chapter is to offer a general description of the problems of scaling and corrosion in geothermal plants and to discuss the most common measures to mitigate these problems.
Electronic Agents and the Formation of Contracts

In this paper, an analysis is made of the increasingly active role of electronic agents, especially intelligent agents, in the negotiation and formation of contracts. Among the different doctrinal solutions that might be applicable is to consider conferring some degree of legal personality on agents or, at the other extreme, to treat them as mere communication tools. Another alternative discussed is whether intelligent agents should be considered as agents under the law of agency. Following an analysis of the two main theories of consent – the subjective and the objective theories – it is argued that the objective theory is applicable to the use of electronic agents in contracting. There is then a short examination of some enacted legislation that deal with contract formation through the involvement of electronic agents. Finally, some practical considerations for the widespread use of electronic agents in electronic commerce are highlighted, and some solutions proposed.
Psychosocial needs, mental health, and HIV transmission risk behavior among people living with HIV/AIDS in St Petersburg, Russia

Objectives: The number of new HIV infections in Russia has doubled annually since 1996. A total of 232 424 HIV infections have been officially recorded but the actual number probably exceeds one million. Very little is known about the social, psychological, behavioral, and health care service access of persons living with HIV in Russia. Design: A cross-sectional sample of 470 persons with HIV/AIDS recruited in 2002 using a representative sampling plan in major St. Petersburg HIV care and service agencies. Methods: Participants completed anonymous self-administered questionnaires that elicited detailed information about social and psychological characteristics, HIV serostatus disclosure and discrimination experiences, and risk practices since learning of their HIV positive status. Results: Most participants were young (mean age, 25.3 years), knew of their HIV positive status for about 2 years, and had histories of injecting drug use as well as sexual risk behavior. A large proportion reported encountering discrimination including being forced to sign documents acknowledging their HIV status (47.9%), refusal of general health care (29.6%), being fired from their jobs (9.9%), and being forced from their family homes (9.0%). Over one-third had probable clinical depression. Most remained sexually active since learning of their HIV positive serostatus, approximately half engaged in unprotected sex with HIV negative partners, and condoms were not used one-third of the time with discordant partners. A majority of injecting drug users in the sample still shared needles. Conclusions: HIV-infected persons in Russia experience a wide range of social, psychological, and care access problems. Improved services are urgently needed for persons living with HIV/AIDS in Russia.
Ultra-Low-Powered Aqueous Shear Stress Sensors Based on Bulk EG-CNTs Integrated in Microfluidic Systems

Novel aqueous shear stress sensors based on bulk carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were developed by utilizing microelectrical mechanical system (MEMS) compatible fabrication technology. The sensors were fabricated on glass substrates by batch assembling electronics-grade CNTs (EG-CNTs) as sensing elements between microelectrode pairs using dielectrophoretic technique. Then, the CNT sensors were permanently integrated in glass-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic channels by using standard glass-PDMS bonding process. Upon exposure to deionized (DI) water flow in the microchannel, the characteristics of the CNT sensors were investigated at room temperature under constant current (CC) mode. The specific electrical responses of the CNT sensors at different currents have been measured. It was found that the electrical resistance of the CNT sensors increased noticeably in response to the introduction of fluid shear stress when low activation current (Lt1 mA) was used, and unexpectedly decreased when the current exceeded 5 mA. We have shown that the sensor could be activated using input currents as low as 100 muA to measure the flow shear stress. The experimental results showed that the output resistance change could be plotted as a linear function of the shear stress to the one-third power. This result proved that the EG-CNT sensors can be operated as conventional thermal flow sensors but only require ultra-low activation power ( ~ 1 muW), which is ~ 1000 times lower than the conventional MEMS thermal flow sensors.
Cognitive Ability, Union Membership, and Voter Turnout

Labor unions are said to inuence elections and public policy by increasing their members’ electoral turnout. But existing research likely overestimates the turnout eect of union membership by ignoring sorting in the labor market. In the presence of a union wage premium, both membership and turnout are shaped by the same (unobserved) factors, such as cognitive ability. To disentangle the union eect from positive selection, we use unique data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It allows us to specify a latent factor potential outcome model with matching on both observable and unobservable individual characteristics. We nd that about one-third of the observed union turnout eect is due to selection, more than what previous studies suggest. JEL classication: A12, D72; J51
Interleukin-1 b-Induced Changes in Blood – Brain Barrier Permeability , Apparent Diffusion Coefficient , and Cerebral Blood Volume in the Rat Brain : A Magnetic Resonance Study

The cytokine interleukin-1b (IL-1b) is implicated in a broad spectrum of CNS pathologies, in which it is thought to exacerbate neuronal loss. Here, the effects of injecting recombinant rat IL-1b into the striatum of 3-week-old rats were followed noninvasively from 2 to 123 hr using magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy. Four hours after injection of IL-1b (1 ng in 1 ml), cerebral blood volume was significantly increased, the blood–brain barrier (BBB) became permeable to intravenously administered contrast agent between 4.5 and 5 hr, and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of brain water fell by 6 hr (5.42 6 0.35 3 10 4 mm/sec treated, 7.35 6 0.77 3 10 4 mm/sec control; p , 0.001). At 24 hr the BBB was again intact, but the ADC, although partially recovered, remained depressed at both 24 and 123 hr ( p , 0.03). Depleting the animals of neutrophils before IL-1b injection prevented the BBB permeability at all time points, but the ADC was still depressed at 6 hr (6.64 6 0.34 3 10 4 mm/sec treated, 7.49 6 0.38 3 10 4 mm/sec control; p , 0.005). No changes were seen in brain metabolites using proton spectroscopy at 6 hr after IL-1b. Intraparenchymal injection of IL-1b caused a neutrophildependent transient increase in BBB permeability. The presence of neutrophils within the brain parenchyma significantly contributed to the IL-1b-induced changes in cerebral blood volume and the ADC of brain water. However, IL-1b apparently had a direct effect on the resident cell populations, which persisted well after all recruited leukocytes had disappeared. Thus the action of IL-1b alone can give rise to magnetic resonance imaging-visible changes that are normally attributed to alterations to cellular homeostasis.
Multidimensional classifiers for neuroanatomical data

dimensional classification. It introduces a novel classifier, the class bridge decomposable multidimensional Gaussian classifier (CB-MGC) within the application of multiple state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to the Neuromorpho dataset. We formulate a supervised classification problem for predicting specie, gender, level one cell type, level two cell type, development stage and area of the neocortex based of a set of morphological features extracted from a neuron. Additionally, we show a performance comparative between the different classifiers and discuss its results.
Revisiting the role of sucrose in PLGA-PEG nanocarrier for potential intranasal delivery

Abstract The efficient design of nanocarriers is a major challenge and must be correlated with the route of administration. Intranasal route is studied for local, systemic or cerebral treatments. In order to develop nanocarriers with suitable properties for intranasal delivery, to achieve brain and to market the product, it is extremely important the simplification of the formulation in terms of raw materials. Surfactants and cryoprotectants are often added to improve structuration and/or storage of polymeric nanoparticles. PLGA-PEG nanocarriers were prepared by nanoprecipitation method evaluating the critical role of sucrose as surfactant-like and cryoprotectant, with the aim to obtain a simpler formulation compared to those proposed in other papers. Photon correlation spectroscopy and Turbiscan analysis show that sucrose is a useful excipient during the preparation process and it effectively cryoprotects nanoparticles. Among the investigated nanocarriers with different degree of PEG, PEGylated PLGA (5%) confers weak interaction between nanoparticles and mucin as demonstrated by thermal analysis and mucin particle method. Furthermore, in vitro biological studies on HT29, as epithelium cell line, does not show cytotoxicity effect for this nanocarrier at all texted concentrations. The selected nanosystem was also studied to load docetaxel, as model drug, and characterized by a technological point of view.
Bit erasure analysis of binary adders in Quantum-dot Cellular Automata

As a post-CMOS technology, the incipient Quantum-dot Cellular Automata technology has various advantages. A key aspect which makes it highly desirable is low power dissipation. One method that is used to analyse power dissipation in QCA circuits is bit erasure analysis. This method has been applied to analyse previously proposed QCA binary adders. However, a number of improved QCA adders have been proposed more recently that have only been evaluated in terms of area and speed. As the three key performance metrics for QCA circuits are speed, area and power, in this paper, a bit erasure analysis of these adders will be presented to determine their power dissipation. The adders to be analysed are the Carry Flow Adder (CFA), Brent-Kung Adder (B-K), Ladner-Fischer Adder (L-F) and a more recently developed area-delay efficient adder. This research will allow for a more comprehensive comparison between the different QCA adder proposals. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time power dissipation analysis has been carried out on these adders.
Protective effect of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate on corneal epithelia in dry eye conditions through suppression of apoptosis.

PURPOSE To investigate the effect of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate (HBA) on ocular surface epithelial disorders induced by tear fluid deficiency, the potency of HBA and serum, the efficacy of which has been well documented in clinical application, were compared. METHODS Rat corneal epithelial erosion was induced by exposure of rat eyes to continuous low-humidity airflow, which accelerated the tear evaporation. During desiccation, one eye of each rat was treated with HBA (20, 40, or 80 mM) or rat serum (5%, 20%, or 100%), and in the other eye a drop of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) was instilled as the control. Histopathologic examination and quantification of the epithelial defect area were performed. The apoptosis in the epithelia was determined by chromatin condensation using the Hoechst 33342 fluorescein probe. RESULTS In PBS-treated eyes, thinning in the cell layer was seen on the periphery of the initial wound after 6 hours, and it progressed to defects after 12 hours. In the 80-mM HBA and 20% serum applications, the pathologic change in the epithelia was moderate, and the structure was maintained in an almost normal state in the 100% serum application. Significant decreases in the defect areas were observed in the 5%, 20%, and 100% serum and 40- and 80-mM HBA treatment groups compared with the PBS-treated eyes (n=12). A significant suppression of chromatin condensation was observed with HBA and serum treatment. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest the potential clinical application of HBA for ocular surface epithelial disorders to maintain epithelial cell viability in patients with dry eye.
Nucleation-Dependent Polymerization Is an Essential Component of Amyloid-Mediated Neuronal Cell Death

Accumulating evidence suggests that amyloid protein aggregation is pathogenic in many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. However, the mechanisms by which protein aggregation mediates cellular dysfunction and overt cell death are unknown. Recent reports have focused on the potential role of amyloid oligomers or protofibrils as a neurotoxic form of amyloid-β (Aβ) and related amyloid aggregates. Here we describe studies indicating that overt neuronal cell death mediated by Aβ1-40 is critically dependent on ongoing Aβ1-40 polymerization and is not mediated by a single stable species of neurotoxic aggregate. The extent and rate of neuronal cell death can be controlled by conditions that alter the rate of Aβ polymerization. The results presented here indicate that protofibrils and oligomeric forms of Aβ most likely generate neuronal cell death through a nucleation-dependent process rather than acting as direct neurotoxic ligands. These findings bring into question the use of the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide formazan assay (MTT assay) as a reporter of Aβ-mediated neuronal cell death and suggest that diffusible Aβ protofibrils and oligomers more likely mediate subtle alterations of synaptic function and long-term potentiation rather than overt neuronal cell death. These results have been extended to Aβ1-42, the non-Aβ component of Alzheimer's disease amyloid plaques, and human amylin, suggesting that nucleation-dependent polymerization is a common mechanism of amyloid-mediated neuronal cell death. Our findings indicate that ongoing amyloid fibrillogenesis may be an essential mechanistic process underlying the pathogenesis associated with protein aggregation in amyloid disorders.
New bone scanning agent: 99m Tc-labeled 1-hydroxy-ethylidene-1, 1-disodium phosphonate.

Structure The radionuclide 99mTchas nearly ideal physical characteristics for imaging and is presently being used as a label for numerous radiopharmaceuticals. Consequently, most of the major organ systems have been studied with the aid of this radionuclide. One of the most recent to be considered is the skeletal system as reported by Subramanian and coworkers who labeled inorganic polyphosphates with oDmTc and observed satisfactory bone images (1,2). Our laboratory is presently investigating several organo-phosphorus compounds which also show promise as satisfactory bone imaging agents after tag ging with 99mTc One such compound which currently shows the most promise is a phosphonate derivative with the chemical name 1-hydroxy-ethylidene-1, 1-disodium phosphonate (HEDSPA) . Phosphonates are compounds containing a carbon-to-phosphate bond, and diphosphonates are compounds containing a carbon-to-disphosphate bond (3) . The structures of several inorganic and organic phosphorus corn pounds are shown in Table 1. Phosphonates have been used both in industry and in medicine : for example, as additives to deter gent tablets (4) , as scale and corrosion inhibitors (5), and as antioxidants (6). In 1966 several phos phonates were found to significantly inhibit bone resorption in vivo (7) , and three years later Fleisch and coworkers reported diphosphonates to inhibit the dissolution and crystal growth of hydroxyapatite (8) . More recently, diphosphonates have shown promise in the clinic for the treatment of myositis ossificans progressiva (9,10) , Paget's disease (11), and calcinosis universalis (12). This paper describes the synthesis and quality control of 1-hydroxy-ethy! idene-1 , 1-diphosphonic acid (HEDPHA), and the formulation and quality control of oomTc@HEDSPA.
Robust LPV control of diesel auxiliary power unit for series hybrid electric vehicles

This paper presents a robust gain-scheduling approach for the control of diesel auxiliary power unit (APU) for series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEVs), using the linear parameter-varying (LPV) techniques. An average physical model of the diesel APU is established, which combines the subsystem models including diesel engine, synchronous generator, and three-phase diode rectifier in an elegant way. The nonlinear system model is then formulated as a quasi-LPV form with parametric uncertainty and augmented with performance objectives in a robust control framework. As a solution to this type of control problem, a robust LPV control synthesis method is proposed and its numerical implementation issues are also considered. Simulation results verify the performance of the proposed robust LPV controller
Acute splenic infarction in a hiker with previously unrecognised sickle cell trait

Acute splenic infarction in otherwise asymptomatic individuals harbouring sickle cell trait (SCT) may occur when they are exposed to low oxygen tension at high altitudes.1 The first ever case report of splenic infarction in SCT was published way back in 1954 by Cooley et al . 2 Since then many similar cases have been reported worldwide and discussed at length.3 The case we are highlighting here is that of a young healthy 21-year-old man, born in Punjab, India who went mountain climbing (for the first time) at Nanda devi, Garhwal Himalayas (Uttarakhand), with an altitude of 5025 m above sea level. After rapidly ascending to around 3500 m he suddenly experienced acute left upper quadrant discomfort, shortness of breath and left-sided pleuritic chest pain …
Applying random walks in structured and self-organizing networks: Evaluation by transient analysis

ABSTRACT Dynamic overlay networks on the Internet and especially ad hoc networking scenarios often rely on self-organizing schemes for distributed communication and for construction and modification of the topology. When there are no central management facilities and search indices available, flooding is a standard method to collect knowledge about the network structure and the content on the nodes. In recent time, random walks have attracted attention as an alternative search method whose efficiency has been demonstrated by simulation studies. In this paper we use transient analysis as a simple and scalable approach to examine the properties of random walks. The convergence to steady state and the coverage of the network in the course of the random work are main characteristics of interest. In our evaluations we consider randomly build networks in comparison to structured networks of different type and size. In addition to basic random walks, an improvement by avoiding a direct return to the previous node is included.
Periodontal disease as a potential risk factor for the development of diabetes in women with a prior history of gestational diabetes mellitus.

OBJECTIVE To examine if periodontal disease is associated with later development of impaired glucose metabolism in women with a recent history of gestational diabetes (GDM). METHODS Women with (n = 19) and without (n = 20) a history of GDM were prospectively followed at 22 months postpartum. All subjects underwent: a) a 75-gram oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT); and b) an oral examination for measuring periodontal disease. Insulin sensitivity and pancreatic β-cell secretory capacity derived from fasting (HOMA-IR) and glucose-stimulated measures (SI(OGTT) and IGI/HOMA-IR) were determined. Periodontitis was defined as the presence of any site with a probing depth ≥ 4 mm or a clinical attachment loss ≥ 4 mm. RESULTS Compared to women without a history of GDM, prior GDM women had significantly higher fasting glucose and insulin concentrations, increased insulin resistance and decreased β-cell function. Although not statistically significant, prior GDM women had a higher prevalence of periodontal disease (42.1%) than women without a history of GDM (25.0%). Women with periodontal disease showed greater insulin resistance and lower β-cell function. Women with both prior GDM and periodontal disease had the most impaired glucose metabolism; the insulin secretion-sensitivity index was significantly lower in women with both prior GDM and periodontal disease (208.20 ± 2.60) than in women without prior GDM and periodontal disease (742.93 ± 1.78) (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Women with prior GDM show reduced insulin sensitivity and inadequate β-cell secretory function at 22 months postpartum. Periodontal disease may contribute to their impaired glucose metabolism and future risk of developing diabetes.
Reflection And Transmission of Electromagnetic Waves at a Rough Interface between Two Different Media

An iterative technique is developed to rigorously compute the electromagnetic wave reflection and transmission at a rough interface between two media. The method is based upon a wave-function expansion technique in which the electromagnetic field equations and the radiation condition are satisfied analytically, while the boundary conditions at the interface are satisfied numerically. The latter is accomplished by an iterative minimization of the integrated square error in the boundary conditions. In each step of the iteration, only Fourier transforms of the spectral and spatial variables occur. As starting value, the Sommerfeld-Weyl plane interface results can be employed.
Impact of system non-idealities on spatial correlation emulation in a multi-probe based MIMO OTA setup

MIMO OTA testing methodologies are being intensively investigated by CTIA and 3GPP, where a multi-probe anechoic chamber based solution is an important candidate for future standardized testing. In this paper, the probes located on an OTA ring are used to reproduce the channel spatial information. This paper investigates the extent to which we can emulate the channel spatial characteristics inside the test zone where the device under test is located. The focus is on performance deterioration introduced by system non-idealities on spatial correlation emulation in practical MIMO OTA test systems.