Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear electromechanics of nanomembranes and nanotubes

Department of Applied Physics Doctor of Philosophy Nonlinear Electromechanics of nanomembranes and nanotubes Daniel Midtvedt Nanomechanical resonators is a class of systems consisting of resonating structures on the sub-micrometer scale. They are known to display strong nonlinear dynamics. In addition, due to the size of the systems (∼ 104 − 106 atoms), a statistical description of the internal degrees of freedom is not a priori justified, and they are typically critically affected by fluctuations. This hampers the straighforward miniaturization of currently employed micromechanical systems, but it also introduces new and interesting physics. In particular, an improved description and understanding of the nonlinear effects in these systems will enable the exploitation of these effects. In this thesis, a theoretical framework for describing the elastic properties of lowdimensional resonators, such as suspended graphene and nanotube structures, is developed. The framework is based on continuum mechanics, which is the same underlying model that describes the properties of macroscopic rods and plates. However, the reduced dimensionality of the considered system introduces some interesting aspects of the theory. The nonlinearities are characterized in Paper I and Paper II and exploited in the subsequent papers: • To gain additional insight to the process of relaxation and thermalization in mesoscopic systems (Paper III); • To develop a method for experimentally determining the bending rigidity of atomically thin membranes (Paper IV) and • To study the interplay between mechanical motion and single electron tunneling in suspended carbon nanotubes (Paper V). Due to the theoretical nature of the thesis, special attention is given to the possibility of experimental observation of the physical effects presented.
Computer-Based Radiological Laboratory Diagnosis System

It is the responsibility of every government to provide efficient healthcare services to its citizens. This enormous responsibility cannot be attained if the diagnoses system for ailment is not fully developed. To facilitate an efficient diagnosis system, this paper seeks to present a prototype designed for radiological diagnosis using images. The system enable the radiological images of a patient to be compared with existing images from a robust image database for a match using the images sizes and extracted graphics features thus making search and diagnosis of ailment accuracy and efficient. The methodology used in this research is the Object Oriented approach. The system design involved the use of UML Use Case diagram and the Data Flow Diagram. Java Programming Language was used to develop the radiographic diagnosis system and Java Server pages (JSP) as the front end technology while Enterprise JavaBean business logic was used for the coding. The backend was developed using MYSQL relational database. The databases were constructed from the images available at the Federal Medical Centre, Gombe. The results from test implementation show that efficiency, speed and accuracy can be achieved in both diagnosis and recommended treatment to patients.
Application of semi-automated settlement detection for an integrated topographic map information system update in South Africa

Complete, accurate and up-to-date topographic data is of considerable importance as it is widely required by different government agencies, non-governmental organisations, the private sector as well as the general public for urban mapping, rural development and environmental management, to mention but a few applications. Efficient automatic / semi-automatic methods for detecting settlements as change area indicators are required in order to achieve a sustainable up-to-date topographic database. This leads to the aim of this study which seeks to investigate the automated / semi-automated settlement detection from remote sensing imagery to enhance the topographic database update in the KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. This study focuses on two methods for automated / semi-automated settlement detection using 2012 SPOT 5 imagery. The first method focused on geographic object based image analysis (GEOBIA) technique through the eCognition software application, while the second method, is based on the South African global human settlement layer (SA_GHSL). The GEOBIA provided 78% accuracy for settlement detection while SA_GHSL obtained 62.6% accuracy. The results from the automated / semi-automated methods provide the topographic update analyst to be drawn to more areas of new settlement development at an enhanced efficient rate. However a review on the enhancement of processing parameters applied on the automated / semi-automated methods is a research gap to be investigated to improve the accuracy of these methods.
Short-term reactions of sperm whales ( Physeter macrocephalus )t o whale-watching vessels in the Azores

There is ag reat lack of information on the e ects of boat operations on sperm whales ( Physeter macrocephalus), which is the target species of the recent whale-watching industry in the Archipelago of the Azores. During the 1998 Azorean whale-watching season, between 4J une and 23 September, observations were carried-out from land-based lookouts and at sea from whale-watching boats to quantify short-term reactions of sperm whales to the presence and manoeuvres of boats. Results from landbased observations did not indicate changes in the behaviour of sperm whales, either due to the presence of boats or when exposed to inappropriate boat manoeuvres (as designated by proposed Azorean legislation). From boat-based observations, change in the whale’s speed and the presence of aerial displays were significantly more frequent when facing inappropriate boat manoeuvres. The presence of swimmers also led to ah igher frequency of aerial displays by whales. In the presence of boats, mature females and immature individuals significantly increased their individual mean blow interval when accompanied by calves. Although some indications of disturbance were detected, we found no clear pattern of short-term reactions of sperm whales to whale-watching boats. It is strongly recommended that the activity is continuously monitored to assess its long-term e ects, which generally remain unclear.
JUROR COMPREHENSION AND PUBLIC POLICY Perceived Problems and Proposed Solutions

Laypersons, the media, and many legal scholars tend to attribute problems in the jury system to the dispositions of individual jurors and to recommend reforms in jury selection procedures and relaxation of the unanimity rule. Social scientists view problems as a consequence of the structure of the jurors' task and recommend reforms in trial procedures. Reforms recommended by both groups are reviewed and evaluated. After years of apathy, the legal system has proposed, and in some jurisdictions implemented, a variety of reforms, most of which are based on the social science perspective that the problem is not due to bad jurors but to unnecessary procedural obstacles to high-quality decision making. These reforms are described in the final section of the article.
Characterization of recommended banana cultivars using morphological and molecular descriptors

New banana varieties with superior agronomical characteristics have been developed through introduction and/or genetic breeding. In order to guarantee its marketing and intellectual property, these new varieties need to be characterized by efficient inheritable qualitative morphological and molecular descriptors. The aim of the research was to characterize recommended banana varieties using qualitative morphological and molecular descriptors. Twelve genotypes were analyzed using 61 morphological descriptors where 17 were related to the plant, 24 to the bunch and 20 regarding the flower. Eighty-one molecular markers; 47 RAPD primers and 34 SSR primers were used. The morphological and molecular descriptors were efficient in the characterization and identification of specific characteristics for most of the varieties evaluated. Plant and inflorescence descriptors presented the greatest variability of characteristics that can facilitate its use for cultivar protection and registration.
Introducing GLUSEEN: A New Open Access and Experimental Network in Urban Soil Ecology

In an effort to study urban soil ecological systems, we have recently piloted the Global Urban Soil Ecology and Education Network (GLUSEEN). When fully implemented, GLUSEEN will be a distributed network that builds upon a worldwide set of decomposition experiments using nylon-mesh teabags sited in various urban soil habitat types. As an open and distributed experimental network focused on urban and exurban areas, GLUSEEN will have both scientific and public participatory advantages. Additionally, a matrix of urban soil habitat types based on anthropogenic disturbances and management regimes is presented. The matrix provides an experimental framework to address the Network’s goal of comparing soil decomposition, biota, and characteristics across and within urban regions at multiple scales. Questions addressed include: (1) What is the relative importance of native vs. anthropogenic factors on soil characteristics? (2) How do assembly rules of soil communities differ in urban habitats, and how does this translate to ecological functions? (3) Do urban soil ecosystem attributes converge and soil communities homogenize at global and regional scales? (4) How can observations of ecological structure and function of urban soils by citizen scientists advance our understanding of soil ecology? As a proof of concept, we tested and demonstrated the practicality of nylon mesh teabags to measure decomposition between two soil habitat types exhibiting differences in soil abiotic and biotic factors over a 6-month period. Additionally, we illustrate the usefulness of the soil habitat matrix using published data that compared soil characteristics across five cities in four different habitat types.
REQUIREMENTS FOR REAL TIME CORRECTION OF DECAY AND SNAPBACK IN THE LHC SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNETS

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) superconducting magnets will have field errors with both static and dynamic components. These will affect the key beam parameters such as energy, tune, orbit and chromaticity. The allowed variations in these beam parameters during injection and the energy ramp are extremely small. The required compensation of certain multipole components of the field errors can probably not be performed with feed-forward correction alone. Real time control of beam parameters via appropriate correction magnets is therefore proposed. This paper outlines the requirements for such real time control The LHC aims at injecting, accelerating and then colliding beams with very well controlled beam parameters (e.g. momentum, orbit, tune and chromaticity, …) in an efficient, reliable and reproducible manner. This is a non-trivial task since the small aperture, the high stored beam energy and the sensitivity of the machine to beam loss impose very tight accelerator physics constraints. The superconducting magnets will generate field errors that have large static and dynamic components [1]. It was recognised in an early stage [2] that satisfactory operation of the machine would require real time control of beam parameters. Static effects in the superconducting magnets are caused by, for example, the deformation from the ideal dipole geometry. These static field errors can be controlled during production and are reproducible. The idea is to account for them via feedforward corrections into the ramping tables. Field errors that have dynamic effects are our main interest here. These field errors are mainly caused by eddy currents in the superconducting cables and by interaction between cable currents and DC magnetisation. Decay of these current is manifested as a decay of the multipole errors seen by the beam at constant current and a fast recovery ("snap-back") when the current is varied again. The contribution from the eddy currents can be difficult to control and it is difficult to account for the associated field errors using feedforward correction alone. Whether real time control of beam parameters via the power converters is feasible depends to a large extent on the time constants and the time delays introduced by the elements in the control loop. In this paper we will estimate these time constants based on the predicted evolution of the field errors during injection and the start of the energy ramp.
Reflection of teaching: A glimpse through the eyes of pre-service science teachers

This paper examines pre-service teachers‟ reflection on teaching after participating in an online course using teaching videos of micro-skills coupled with self-reflection and group blogs. A total of 137 online entries were collected from 26 participants. Larrivee‟s (2008) four levels of reflection (pre, surface, pedagogical and critical) were used to code the reflection by the participants. The findings showed that 67% of the reflection by pre-service teachers falls in the pedagogical category and 2% in the critical category. These findings show that pre-service teachers are capable of engaging in reflection beyond a surface level even with limited actual classroom experience, and micro-skills teaching videos coupled with self-reflection and online blogs can serve as stimulus for reflection about actual teaching practices. The resources that the pre-service teachers used to make sense of teaching are (1) their knowledge of learning theories; (2) their ideas of teachers‟ roles and responsibilities; and (3) existing ideas of what makes good teaching. The pre-service teachers reflected upon their learning and showed evidence of willingness to incorporate the learnt ideas of good teaching into their future classroom teaching. The use of videos and reflection allowed them to restructure their teaching knowledge through identification, comparison, modification and synthesising.
Integrated Use of Statistical-Based Approaches and Computational Intelligence Techniques for Tumors Classification Using Microarray

With the recent development of biotechnologies, cDNA microarray chips are increasingly applied in cancer research. Microarray experiments can lead to a more thorough grasp of the molecular variations among tumors because they can allow the monitoring of expression levels in cells for thousands of genes simultaneously. Accordingly, how to successfully discriminate the classes of tumors using gene expression data is an urgent research issue and plays an important role in carcinogenesis. To refine the large dimension of the genes data and effectively classify tumor classes, this study proposes several hybrid discrimination procedures that combine the statistical-based techniques and computational intelligence approaches to discriminate the tumor classes. A real microarray data set was used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approaches. In addition, the results of cross-validation experiments reveal that the proposed two-stage hybrid models are more efficient in discriminating the acute leukemia classes than the established single stage models.
THE HOSPITAL PREFERENCES AND EFFECT OF CORPORATE REPUTATION PERCEPTIONS ON ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURS OF TURKISH HEALTH SERVICE CONSUMERS SAĞLIK HİZMETİ TÜKETİCİLERİNİN HASTANE TERCİHLERİ VE KURUM ÜNÜ ALGILAMALARININ TUTUM VE DAVRANIŞLARI ÜZERİNDEKİ ETKİSİ

This study was made for determining impact of perceptions of patients and prospective healthcare consumers about corporate reputation hospitals have on patient trust, loyalty and identification. In addition, in the study it was investigated whether there is a statistically significant difference between socio-demographic characteristics of consumers and perceptions related to patient trust, loyalty to corporate and identification. It was used questionnaire form as tool of collecting data in the study. Population of the research consists of people who reside in city centre of Ankara. It was utilized method of simple random sampling. For this purpose, it was applied the form to 515 people. It was used descriptive statistics besides structural equation model in data analysis. It was showed perception hospital is well-known, successful and large affects corporate reputation have impact on trust people have in hospitals. Also, it was seen consumers suggest to their neighborhoods and defend against negative criticism about their hospitals. The research was conducted only in one province (Ankara) in Turkey using convenience sampling. Thus, the findings may not be generalized to all healthcare consumers in the world. It can be stated hospitals’ perceptions of corporate reputation have impact on people's attitudes and behaviors. The findings have proven that perceptions of corporate reputation have impact on people's attitudes and behaviors and play important role and affect sustainability in hospital preferences.
The frequency crossover for the Goos–Hänchen shift

For total reflection, the Goos–Hänchen (GH) shift is proportional to the wavelength of the laser beam. At critical angles, such a shift is instead proportional to the square root of the product of the beam waist and wavelength. By using the stationary phase method (SPM) and, when necessary, numerical calculations, we present a detailed analysis of the frequency crossover for the GH shift. The study, done in different incidence regions, sheds new light on the validity of the analytic formulas found in literature.
A 3.5-Dimensional Variational Method for Doppler Radar Data Assimilation and Its Application to Phased-Array Radar Observations

A 3.5-dimensional variational method is developed for Doppler radar data assimilation. In this method, incremental analyses are performed in three steps to update the model state upon the background state provided by the model prediction. First, radar radial-velocity observations from three consecutive volume scans are analyzed on the model grid. The analyzed radial-velocity fields are then used in step 2 to produce incremental analyses for the vector velocity fields at two time levels between the three volume scans. The analyzed vector velocity fields are used in step 3 to produce incremental analyses for the thermodynamic fields at the central time level accompanied by the adjustments in water vapor and hydrometeor mixing ratios based on radar reflectivity observations. The finite element B-spline representations and recursive filter are used to reduce the dimension of the analysis space and enhance the computational efficiency. The method is applied to a squall line case observed by the phased-array radar with rapid volume scans at the National Weather Radar Testbed and is shown to be effective in assimilating the phased-array radar observations and improve the prediction of the subsequent evolution of the squall line.
QUIESCENT PROMINENCES IN THE ERA OF ALMA: SIMULATED OBSERVATIONS USING THE 3D WHOLE-PROMINENCE FINE STRUCTURE MODEL

We use the detailed 3D whole-prominence fine structure model to produce the first simulated high-resolution ALMA observations of a modeled quiescent solar prominence. The maps of synthetic brightness temperature and optical thickness shown in the present paper are produced using a visualization method for synthesis of the submillimeter/millimeter radio continua. We have obtained the simulated observations of both the prominence at the limb and the filament on the disk at wavelengths covering a broad range that encompasses the full potential of ALMA. We demonstrate here extent to which the small-scale and large-scale prominence and filament structures will be visible in the ALMA observations spanning both the optically thin and thick regimes. We analyze the relationship between the brightness and kinetic temperature of the prominence plasma. We also illustrate the opportunities ALMA will provide for studying the thermal structure of the prominence plasma from the cores of the cool prominence fine structure to the prominence–corona transition region. In addition, we show that detailed 3D modeling of entire prominences with their numerous fine structures will be important for the correct interpretation of future ALMA observations of prominences.
Nonlinear Control of Electronic Throttle Based on Backstepping Approach

In order to overcome the disadvantage of the non-linear attribute of electronic throttle and the deficiency of traditional PID controller, a control strategy is proposed based on backstepping method， in which the throttle position tracking is taken as control object, and the structure of the electronic throttle is analysed, a mathematical model of the electronic throttle is established. A backstepping controller is also designed based on Lyapunov stability theory. Step, slope and sine waves are taken as target signals respectively to complete tracking control simulation by two control strategies: PID and backstepping, the simulation result indicates that backstepping control has good dynamic characteristics, step response time is less than 100 ms and its control effect is significantly better than that of PID. In addition, PID simulation can not reflect the torque in actual system reset spring, the simulation is different with actual waveform, and the Backstepping simulation based on the control model of nonlinear system is more in line with the actual, this type of control can effectively solve the contradiction between fast response and large overshoot in time-varying non-linear system.
Chapter 2 The Micaelamys namaquensis ( Rodentia : Muridae ) species complex from southern Africa : Patterns of mitochondrial DNA versus morphological diversity

Intraspecific variation has been determined in only a few southern African small mammals and research on the diverse rodent fauna of the subregion is especially limited. Here we report the genetic differentiation among populations of the Namaqua rock mouse, Micaelamys namaquensis Smith, 1834 a murine rodent from southern Africa, based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cytochrome b (cyt b) sequences. Phylogenetic analyses revealed 14 genetically distinct lineages of which several show strong geographic association with particular vegetation biomes or bioregions. The diversity and differentiation detected within M. namaquensis in the present study are much more complex than suggested by previous morphological assessments and strongly support earlier views that this taxon represents a species complex. Divergence times between lineages varied between 7.26 MYA and 2.70 MYA, suggesting a Late Miocene to Pliocene radiation. The identification of several regions of sympatry of distinct lineages offers future opportunities for the elucidation of the underlying speciation processes in the species complex. Micaelamys namaquensis lineages show contrasting patterns of phylogeographic structure but the majority of the diversification events date to the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene which coincide with major periods of aridification in southern Africa. Geographic mtDNA variation within Micaelamys namaquensis _________________________________________________________________________