Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preparation and Characteristics of Graphene Oxide from the Biomass Carbon Material Using Fir Powder as Precursor

Graphene oxide (GO) was successfully prepared from the graphitization carbon based upon biomass material using fir powder as a precursor, which was named as FPGO. As a comparison to verify the successful synthesis of FPGO, GO from expanded graphite (named as EGO) was prepared. FPGO had the typical characteristics of GO, possessing the grossly close nanostructures and comparable element constitutions with EGO. The interlayer spacing of FPGO was 8.5 Å, close to 9.1 Å of EGO. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses indicated five different oxygen-containing functional groups existing between the FPGO nanosheets. The atomic force microscopic image directly observed that the FPGO nanosheets were single-layer thick, and lateral dimensions were in the range of about one to several micrometers in diameter. FPGO had a wrinkled morphology, and the layer structure was intuitively observed by field emissions scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope images. The thermogravimetric analysis curves reflected that FPGO had close contents of oxygenated groups with EGO, leaving the same residual carbon element of about 49 wt. % at 900°C.
Learning to Extract Semantic Structure from Documents Using Multimodal Fully Convolutional Neural Networks

We present an end-to-end, multimodal, fully convolutional network for extracting semantic structures from document images. We consider document semantic structure extraction as a pixel-wise segmentation task, and propose a unified model that classifies pixels based not only on their visual appearance, as in the traditional page segmentation task, but also on the content of underlying text. Moreover, we propose an efficient synthetic document generation process that we use to generate pretraining data for our network. Once the network is trained on a large set of synthetic documents, we fine-tune the network on unlabeled real documents using a semi-supervised approach. We systematically study the optimum network architecture and show that both our multimodal approach and the synthetic data pretraining significantly boost the performance.
Removal of Polyphenols from Wine Sludge Using Cloud Point Extraction

Abstract Cloud point extraction (CPE), a promising and simple technique for the separation of organic compounds using surfactants (Genapol X-080 [oligoethylene glycol mono-alkyl ether] and PEG 8000 [polyethylene glycol with molecular weight of 8000]), was used to recover polyphenols from wine sludge (wine production waste). The effect of various parameters such as surfactant concentration, temperature, and pH on the percentage of phenol recovery and phase volume ratio during phenol separation from wine sludge was investigated, and the derived optimum parameters were used as the basis for the selection of CPE conditions. When a two-step CPE with a total of 4% v/v of Genapol X-080 (pH = 3.5, temperature = 55 °C, and time = 30 min) or 10% v/v of PEG 8000 (pH = 2.5, temperature = 55 °C, and time = 30 min) was applied the phenol recovery values achieved were 75.8 or 98.5%, respectively. Phenols recovered from wine sludge using the above surfactants maintained high antiradical activity as determined by the 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl method.
An Improved Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption Scheme in Power Cloud Access Control

In power cloud environment, the existing Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) access control schemes, do not consider the generation of access structure and the existence of malicious users. To tackle these problems, a power cloud access control (PCAC) scheme is proposed, which improves the traditional CP-ABE access control model. Considering the heavy time consumption of CP-ABE, PCAC encrypts the symmetric key, instead of the raw data. PCAC combines the access tree and linear secret-sharing scheme (LSSS) to achieve the automatic generation and efficient operation of access structure. Additionally, an action audit phase, based on zero-knowledge verification was designed to defend against malicious users. The experiments proved that PCAC meets the requirement of fine-grained access control, in a power cloud. Compared with existing CP-ABE schemes, the PCAC scheme reduced about half of the time consumption, in the action audit phase and costs about one-third the time, in the data obtainment stage.
Determining universal processes related to best outcome in emergency abdominal surgery: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Introduction Emergency abdominal surgery outcomes represent an internationally important marker of healthcare quality and capacity. In this study, a novel approach to investigating global surgical outcomes is proposed, involving collaborative methodology using ‘snapshot’ clinical data collection over a 2-week period. The primary aim is to identify internationally relevant, modifiable surgical practices (in terms of modifiable process, equipment and clinical management) associated with best care for emergency abdominal surgery. Methods and analysis This is a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study. Any hospital in the world performing acute surgery can participate, and any patient undergoing emergency intraperitoneal surgery is eligible to enter the study. Centres will collect observational data on patients for a 14-day period during a 5-month window and required data points will be limited to ensure practicality for collaborators collecting data. The primary outcome measure is the 24 h perioperative mortality, with 30-day perioperative mortality as a secondary outcome measure. During registration, participants will undertake a survey of available resources and capacity based on the WHO Tool for Situational Analysis. Ethics and dissemination The study will not affect clinical care and has therefore been classified as an audit by the South East Scotland Research Ethics Service in Edinburgh, Scotland. Baseline outcome measurement in relation to emergency abdominal surgery has not yet been undertaken at an international level and will provide a useful indicator of surgical capacity and the modifiable factors that influence this. This novel methodological approach will facilitate delivery of a multicentre study at a global level, in addition to building international audit and research capacity. Trial registration number The study has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT02179112).
curlybot: designing a new class of computational toys

We introduce an educational toy, called curlybot, as the basis for a new class of toys aimed at children in their early stages of development — ages four and up. curlybot is an autonomous two-wheeled vehicle with embedded electronics that can record how it has been moved on any flat surface and then play back that motion accurately and repeatedly. Children can use curlybot to develop intuitions for advanced mathematical and computational concepts, like differential geometry, through play away from a traditional computer. In our preliminary studies, we found that children learn to use curlybot quickly. They readily establish an affective and body syntonic connection with curlybot, because of its ability to remember all of the intricacies of their original gesture; every pause, acceleration, and even the shaking in their hand is recorded. Programming by example in this context makes the educational ideas implicit in the design of curlybot accessible to young children.
Correlation of MR imaging and histologic findings in mouse melanoma

M2R melanoma tumors in male C57 black mice were used to correlate magnetic resonance (MR) images with the corresponding histologic slices and to determine if analysis of the achievable correlation can provide a basis for predicting gross histologic features with MR imaging alone. The MR imaging sections obtained at 4.7 T were each 680 μm thick, with an in‐plane resolution of 195 μm. The distribution of melanin within the histologic slices correlated well with the high‐signal‐intensity regions on the T1‐weighted images (T1W1s), while these regions had low signal intensity on the T2‐weighted images (T2WIs), providing evidence that melanin or melanin‐associated paramagnetic species are responsible for the observed proton relaxation rate enhancement. Viable melanoma cells typically showed intermediate signal intensity on T2WIs, T1WIs, and proton‐density images. Necrosis typically had high signal intensity on T2WIs, T1WIs, and proton‐density images. Quantitation of the MR imaging results, followed by statistical analysis, demonstrated statistically significant differences between melanin‐rich, viable‐melanoma, and necrotic regions on MR images.
Maximum Moduli of Sands Under Various Loadings

SYNOPSIS: Maximum moduli are the primary parameter in the determination of wave velocities in soils. They can be evaluated from either laboratory or field testing. In general, the excitation loadings used in laboratory and field testing are different. The resonant column apparatus was used to study the effect of loading type on the maximum moduli of sands. Sinusoidal, random ~nd impulse loading were used. Sand specimens were tested either longitudinally or torsionally with one of the three types of loadmg at low strain levels, and the low-amplitude moduli were measured. MaximlUil moduli of the specimens were obtained from the low-amplitude moduli. It was concluded that loading type has no effect on the maximlUil moduli of soils. Also, the maximum moduli at different confining pressures agreed well with published equations.
Optimization of the Use of His6-OPH-Based Enzymatic Biocatalysts for the Destruction of Chlorpyrifos in Soil

Applying enzymatic biocatalysts based on hexahistidine-containing organophosphorus hydrolase (His6-OPH) is suggested for the decomposition of chlorpyrifos, which is actively used in agriculture in many countries. The application conditions were optimized and the following techniques was suggested to ensure the highest efficiency of the enzyme: first, the soil is alkalinized with hydrated calcitic lime Ca(OH)2, then the enzyme is introduced into the soil at a concentration of 1000 U/kg soil. Non-equilibrium low temperature plasma (NELTP)-modified zeolite is used for immobilization of the relatively inexpensive polyelectrolyte complexes containing the enzyme His6-OPH and a polyanionic polymer: poly-l-glutamic acid (PLE50) or poly-l-aspartic acid (PLD50). The soil’s humidity is then increased up to 60–80%, the top layer (10–30 cm) of soil is thoroughly stirred, and then exposed for 48–72 h. The suggested approach ensures 100% destruction of the pesticide within 72 h in soils containing as much as 100 mg/kg of chlorpyrifos. It was concluded that using this type of His6-OPH-based enzyme chemical can be the best approach for soils with relatively low humus concentrations, such as sandy and loam-sandy chestnut soils, as well as types of soil with increased alkalinity (pH 8.0–8.4). Such soils are often encountered in desert, desert-steppe, foothills, and subtropical regions where chlorpyrifos is actively used.
Variations in damp heat-induced degradation behavior of sputtered ZnO window layer for CIGS solar cells

This paper presents our recent observations on variations in properties and damp heat (DH)-induced degradation behavior for single-layer 2%Al-doped ZnO (AZO) and bilayer ZnO (BZO), which comprises 0.1-μm intrinsic ZnO (i-ZnO) and AZO, deposited on glass substrates using the same sputtering system and essentially identical deposition conditions. BZO films with 0.12-μm AZO have been used on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) high-efficiency CuInGaSe2 (CIGS) solar cells for years. For the as-deposited BZO films, the most apparent variations appeared in notable peak shift in transmittance and reflectance spectra and ZnO (002) peak intensity and peak position in X-ray diffraction. Location of substrates placed on the substrate holder platform contributed partly to the variations. For the DH-degraded AZO and BZO, earlier films became highly resistive, porous, and 10~20 X thicker and showed flattened transmittance spectra caused by a loss of free-carrier absorption. However, recent DH-exposed AZO and BZO films also became highly resistive but exhibited only small changes in transmittance spectra, while the columnar grain structure and film thickness remained nearly unchanged without porous features, but with granular particles formed on the surfaces that increased in size with lengthening DH exposure time.
A Review of Data Privacy Issues in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has gained substantial research interest and with development, data security issues become more important. The term security has multiple facets such as confidentiality, availability and integrity. A perfect security solution must ensure all the security parameters effectively. With the growing adoption of cloud computing as a viable business proposition to reduce both infrastructure and operational costs, an essential requirement is to provide guidance on how to manage information security risks in the cloud. In this paper, most important security risk to cloud computing is discussed, privacy issue. Finally, a cloud computing framework and information asset classification model are proposed to assist cloud users when choosing cloud delivery services and deployment models based on cost, security and capability requirements. This paper focuses on the security of data, where the objectives of these various security and privacy related issues and the possible solutions in literature.
A Hybrid GPU-CPU Parallel CM Reordering Algorithm for Bandwidth Reduction of Large Sparse Matrices

We present a hybrid GPU-CPU implementation of a reordering strategy for permuting elements to make the half-bandwidth of a sparse matrix lower. This algorithm, based on work by Cuthill and McKee [4], is a critical component of the SPIKE-based preconditioner provided by the SaP::GPU library [3]. We discuss the three stages of the unordered implementation of the Cuthill-McKee (CM) algorithm and compare our implementation against both a self-implemented CPU CM algorithm and the MC60 algorithm provided by the HSL library [1], which also targets reducing the half-bandwidth. Numerical experiments, performed on around 130 matrices arising in various engineering and scientific applications, indicate that our implementation almost obtains similar or narrower reordered matrix, and for large matrices with dimension over 106 and number of nonzero entries over 107, our implementation is more efficient than both other implementations.
Towards an open service architecture for data mining on the grid

Across a wide variety of fields, huge datasets are being collected and accumulated at a dramatical pace. The datasets addressed by individual applications are very often heterogeneous and geographically distributed, and are used for collaboration by the communities of users, which are often large and also geographically distributed. There are major challenges involved in the efficient and reliable storage, fast processing, and extracting descriptive and predictive knowledge from this great mass of data. In this paper, we describe design principles and a service based software architecture of a novel infrastructure for distributed and high-performance data mining in Grid environments.
Masking of Unpleasant Gustatory Sensation by Cross-Linking of Dehydrated Paracetamol Alginate Pellets Produced by Extrusion-Spheronization

Alginate paracetamol pellets were prepared by extrusion-spheronization process. The process variables studied were wet mass mixing time, feed rate, die opening diameter, spheronization residence time, feed rate, disk speed, and drying. The formulation variables studied were granulation fluid composition and level and drug-to-excipient ratios. The dried pellets were cross-linked with calcium chloride solution. The cross-linked pellets were evaluated for dissolution test, friability test, sphericity, flow behavior, particle size distribution, aggregation, water uptake, drug entrapment, and yield. Gustatory sensation test exhibited successful taste-masking of paracetamol by present approach.
MATCH Communications in Mathematical and in Computer Chemistry

This paper describes the bibliometric characteristics of 1,319 articles published in the journal MATCH Communications in Mathematical and in Computer Chemistry, in the period 1995-2014. These articles have been analysed using data from the Web of Science Core Collection and demonstrate the contribution of the journal not only to mathematical and computer chemistry but also to science more generally.
Exponentially dissipative nonlinear dynamical systems: a nonlinear extension of strict positive realness

In this paper we extend the notion of dissipative dynamical systems to formalize the concept of the nonlinear analog of strict positive realness and strict bounded realness. In particular, using exponentially weighted system storage functions with appropriate exponentially weighted supply rates we introduce the concept of exponential dissipativity. The proposed results provide a generalization to the strict positive real lemma and the strict bounded real lemma to nonlinear systems as well as a nonlinear analog to the classical passivity and small gain stability theorems for state space nonlinear feedback systems.
Diet quality and its implications on the cardio-metabolic, physical and general health of older men: the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project (CHAMP)

Abstract The revised Dietary Guideline Index (DGI-2013) scores individuals’ diets according to their compliance with the Australian Dietary Guideline (ADG). This cross-sectional study assesses the diet quality of 794 community-dwelling men aged 74 years and older, living in Sydney, Australia participating in the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project; it also examines sociodemographic and lifestyle factors associated with DGI-2013 scores; it studies associations between DGI-2103 scores and the following measures: homoeostasis model assessment – insulin resistance, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, TAG, blood pressure, waist:hip ratio, BMI, number of co-morbidities and medications and frailty status while also accounting for the effect of ethnicity in these relationships. Median DGI-2013 score was 93·7 (54·4, 121·2); most individuals failed to meet recommendations for vegetables, dairy products and alternatives, added sugar, unsaturated fat and SFA, fluid and discretionary foods. Lower education, income, physical activity levels and smoking were associated with low scores. After adjustments for confounders, high DGI-2013 scores were associated with lower HDL-cholesterol, lower waist:hip ratios and lower probability of being frail. Proxies of good health (fewer co-morbidities and medications) were not associated with better compliance to the ADG. However, in participants with a Mediterranean background, low DGI-2013 scores were not generally associated with poorer health. Older men demonstrated poor diet quality as assessed by the DGI-2013, and the association between dietary guidelines and health measures and indices may be influenced by ethnic background.
Community structure and scale-free collections of Erdös-Rényi graphs

Community structure plays a significant role in the analysis of social networks and similar graphs, yet this structure is little understood and not well captured by most models. We formally define a community to be a subgraph that is internally highly connected and has no deeper substructure. We use tools of combinatorics to show that any such community must contain a dense Erdős-Rényi (ER) subgraph. Based on mathematical arguments, we hypothesize that any graph with a heavy-tailed degree distribution and community structure must contain a scale-free collection of dense ER subgraphs. These theoretical observations corroborate well with empirical evidence. From this, we propose the Block Two-Level Erdős-Rényi (BTER) model, and demonstrate that it accurately captures the observable properties of many real-world social networks.
Iterative multiuser detection performance evaluation on a satellite multibeam coverage

This paper deals with the use of non-linear multiuser detection techniques to mitigate co-channel interference on the reverse link of multibeam satellite systems. The considered system is inspired by the DVB-RCS standard, with the use of convolutional coding. The algorithms consist of iterative parallel interference cancellation scheme with semi-blind channel estimation. We propose a simple approach for statistical evaluation on a multibeam coverage, and present results obtained on a coverage designed on a digital Ka-band focal array feed reflector antenna.
Structural organization, expression, and functional characterization of the murine cytomegalovirus immediate-early gene 3

We have previously defined ie3 as a coding region located downstream of the ie1 gene which gives rise to a 2.75-kb immediate-early (IE) transcript. Here we describe the structural organization of the ie3 gene, the amino acid sequence of the gene product, and some of the functional properties of the protein. The 2.75-kb ie3 mRNA is generated by splicing and is composed of four exons. The first three exons, of 300, 111, and 191 nucleotides (nt), are shared with the ie1 mRNA and are spliced to exon 5, which is located downstream of the fourth exon used by the ie1 mRNA. Exon 5 starts 28 nt downstream of the 3' end of the ie1 mRNA and has a length of 1,701 nt. The IE3 protein contains 611 amino acids, the first 99 of which are shared with the ie1 product pp89. The IE3 protein expressed at IE times has a relative mobility of 88 kDa in gels, and a mobility shift to 90 kDa during the early phase is indicative of posttranslational modification. Sequence comparison reveals significant homology of the exon 5-encoded amino acid sequence with the respective sequence of UL 122, a component of the IE1-IE2 complex of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). This homology is also apparent at the functional level. The IE3 protein is a strong transcriptional activator of the murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) e1 promoter and shows an autoregulatory function by repression of the MCMV ie1/ie3 promoter. The high degree of conservation between the MCMV ie3 and HCMV IE2 genes and their products with regard to gene structure, amino acid sequence, and protein functions suggests that these genes play a comparable role in the transcriptional control of the two cytomegaloviruses.
Towards Next Generation Business Process Model Repositories - A Technical Perspective on Loading and Processing of Process Models

Business process management repositories manage large collections of process models ranging in the thousands. Additionally, they provide management functions like e.g. mining, querying, merging and variants management for process models. However, most current business process management repositories are built on top of relation database management systems (RDBMS) although this leads to performance issues. These issues result from the relational algebra, the mismatch between relational tables and object oriented programming (impedance mismatch) as well as new technological developments in the last 30 years as e.g. more and cheap disk and memory space, clusters and clouds. The goal of this paper is to present current paradigms to overcome the performance problems inherent in RDBMS. Therefore, we have to fuse research about data modeling along database technologies as well as algorithm design and parallelization for the technology paradigms occurring nowadays. Based on these research streams we have shown how the performance of business process management repositories could be improved in terms of loading performance of processes (from e.g. a disk) and the computation of management techniques resulting in even faster application of such a technique. Exemplarily, applications of the compiled paradigms are presented to show their applicability.