Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reviews on Corrugated Diaphragms in Miniature Fiber-Optic Pressure Sensors

Corrugated diaphragms (CDs) have been widely used in many fields because of their higher pressure sensitivity and wider linear range compared to flat diaphragms (FDs) in the same circumstances. Especially in the application of miniature fiber-optic pressure sensors, the introduction of the corrugated structure gives the sensor high sensitivity, large dynamic range, good linearity, small hysteresis, good stability, and so on. Research on CD-based miniature fiber-optic pressure sensors has gradually attracted more attention in recent years. In this paper, the principles of operation of a miniature fiber-optic pressure sensor are briefly introduced, then the mechanical properties of FD and CD, as well as their influences on the performance of the sensor, are analyzed in detail. The application status of CDs in miniature fiber-optic pressure sensors is reviewed, and our conclusions and the prospects for the application of CDs in miniature fiber-optic pressure sensors are given finally.
PPARγ‐mediated antineoplastic effect of NSAID sulindac on human oral squamous carcinoma cells

There is strong evidence that nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug (NSAID) sulindac may exert a significant antineoplastic effect. The purpose of our study was to explore the effects of sulindac on human oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCCa) cells and to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms. The changes that sulindac treatment induced on growth, apoptosis and cell cycle distribution of human oral SCCa cell lines were assessed by cell growth and flow cytometry experiments. Utilizing quantitative RT‐PCR and immunocytochemistry, we determined the effect of sulindac treatment on mRNA and protein expression of different sulindac's targets. Also, PPARγ expression was selectively targeted by antisense oligonucleotide treatment. Both sulfide and sulfone metabolites of sulindac, which differ in the ability to cause COX‐2 inhibition, induced a significant dose‐ and time‐dependent cell growth reduction accompanied by increase in apoptosis without concomitant cell cycle arrest. Sulindac treatment also caused upregulation of the protein and mRNA expression levels of COX‐2 and PPARs. Treatment with antisense PPARγ oligonucleotides abolished sulindac's growth inhibitory effect. Our results are consistent with a significant growth inhibitory effect of NSAID sulindac on human oral SCCa cells, which is mediated, at least partially, through induction of apoptosis. We suggest that upregulation of PPARγ expression and activation may be, at least partially, responsible for sulindac's antiproliferative effect. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Recycling of 1,2-Dimethyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide Ionic Liquid by Stacked Cation and Anion Exchange Adsorption-Desorption

There are many advantages to using ionic liquids as solvents or catalysts in chemical processes. Their non-volatile characteristic and high cost, however, can pose economic, environmental, and long-term health concerns. As such, the recovery and recycling of ionic liquids have become essential to mitigate their environmental impact and to reduce costs. Numerous recovery and recycling methods have been reported, including distillation, extraction, membrane separation (a.k.a. filtration), adsorption, crystallization, gravity, and electrochemical separation. Whereas most of these methods recover both cations and anions of the ionic liquid as ion pairs, recycling methods such as single-phase ion exchange or mixed-ion exchange/non-ionic adsorption methods recover only one of the ionic liquid ions, typically the cation. These methods are frequently used for the recycling of ionic liquids having simple anions such as chloride or acetate, but are seldom employed for ionic liquids consisting of larger and more complex anions due to the added time and reagent costs necessary for the regeneration of the original ionic liquid. Herein, a combined cation and anion exchange adsorption-desorption method is presented that can effectively separate 1,2-dimethyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonimide) [DMPIm][NTf2] ionic liquid from neutral impurities. More importantly, the method is capable of recovery and recycling of the original ionic liquid. Concomitant desorption of both ionic liquid ions was achieved using 0.1 M NaCl: methanol (90:10 v/v) eluent followed by isolation using liquid–liquid extraction to afford high purity products and yields of approximately 60%.
Pitting Depth Prediction Caused by SRB using Empirical Equation

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is a serious problem in the oil and gas industry. The most common microorganism responsible for MIC is sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) which produces detrimental sulfide ions into the environment. Currently, there are some prediction models that develop to predict corrosion rate caused by SRB. However, among the models, the prediction is limited to predict the general corrosion rate, whereas, SRB caused localized corrosion. Thus, the objective of this work is to predict the pitting depth caused by SRB using available empirical equation. The study showed that the pitting depth increased with the increasing of sulfide concentration. In contrast, the pitting depth decreased with increasing sulfite concentration. The decreasing of pitting depth is related to the inhibitive FeS film formed, while the increasing of pitting depth is caused by the decreasing of the film thickness in the presence of sulfite.
Integrated Management of Cloud Computing Resources

Lunacloud is a cloud service provider with offices in Portugal, Spain, France and UK that focus on delivering reliable, elastic and low cost cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. The company currently relies on a proprietary IaaS platform the Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI) and wishes to expand and integrate other IaaS solutions seamlessly, namely open source solutions. This is the challenge addressed in this thesis. This proposal, which was fostered by Eurocloud Portugal Association, contributes to the promotion of interoperability and standardisation in Cloud Computing. The goal is to investigate, propose and develop an interoperable open source solution with standard interfaces for the integrated management of IaaS Cloud Computing resources based on new as well as existing abstraction libraries or frameworks. The solution should provide both Web and application programming interfaces. The research conducted consisted of two surveys covering existing open source IaaS platforms and PACI (features and API) and open source IaaS abstraction solutions. The first study was focussed on the characteristics of most popular open source IaaS platforms, namely OpenNebula, OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus, as well as PACI and included a thorough inventory of the provided Application Programming Interfaces (API), i.e., offered operations, followed by a comparison of these platforms in order to establish their similarities and dissimilarities. The second study on existing open source interoperability solutions included the analysis of existing abstraction libraries and frameworks and their comparison. The approach proposed and adopted, which was supported on the conclusions of the carried surveys, reuses an existing open source abstraction solution the Apache Deltacloud framework. Deltacloud relies on the development of software driver modules to interface with different IaaS platforms, officially provides and supports drivers to sixteen IaaS platform, including OpenNebula and OpenStack, and allows the development of new provider drivers. The latter functionality
The Effects of Different Task Types on EFL Learners' Acquisition of Two Grammatical Structures (Infinitives and Gerunds): The Case of Iranian High School Students

This study was an attempt to investigate the effects of three different task types, that is dictation task, individual reconstruction task, and collaborative reconstruction task on EFL learners' acquisition of two grammatical structures, gerunds and infinitives. These tasks were also accompanied by either explicit or implicit instructions to see whether explicit or implicit instruction was effective and useful in the final achievement of grammatical structures. 40 low-intermediate male High School learners of English in Lordegan, Iran, were selected as the participants of this study. A timed Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) was used for data collection. In order to compare the three groups under the study, both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed. To compare the means, one-way ANOVAs as well as t-test were used. The results of statistical analysis supported this hypothesis that significant differences existed in the performance of three groups of participants when they completed the treatments including dictation, individual reconstruction and collaborative reconstruction. The students who completed the collaborative reconstruction task outperformed the other two groups who completed the dictation task and individual reconstruction task. In addition, dictation group outperformed the individual reconstruction group. Moreover, the difference between explicit and implicit groups was significant. In addition, the explicit group outperformed the implicit group after receiving the special instructions. In other words, the explicit group performed better than the implicit group in acquisition of grammatical structures.
Glutathione is Required for Efficient Post-Golgi Trafficking of Incoming HPV16 Genome

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted pathogen in the United States, causing 99% of cervical cancers and 5% of all human cancers worldwide. HPV infection requires transport of the viral genome (vDNA) into the nucleus of basal keratinocytes. During this process, minor capsid protein L2 facilitates subcellular retrograde trafficking of the vDNA from endosomes to the Golgi, and accumulation at host chromosomes during mitosis for nuclear retention and localization during interphase. Here we investigated the relationship between cytosolic GSH and HPV16 infection. siRNA knockdown of GSH biosynthetic enzymes results in a partial decrease of HPV16 infection. Likewise, infection of HPV16 in GSH depleted keratinocytes is inefficient, an effect that was not seen with adenoviral vectors. Analysis of trafficking revealed no defects in cellular binding, entry, furin cleavage of L2, or retrograde trafficking of HPV16, but GSH depletion hindered post-Golgi trafficking and translocation, decreasing nuclear accumulation of vDNA. Although precise mechanisms have yet to be defined, this work suggests that GSH is required for a specific post-Golgi trafficking step in HPV16 infection.
Designed with Me: Empowering People Living with Dementia

This paper presents on- going research that adopts an open and truly collaborative approach to working with people living with dementia by recognising and utilising the inherent personal creative abilities that every individual possesses no matter their cognitive ability. The research project entitled " Designed with Me", via a series of carefully developed innovative co- design workshops, supports people living with dementia to express themselves fully in " live" design collaborations. Every individual's input in this research is highly valued and is held in the same esteem as any other collaborator. In this project, participants become collaborative designers helping to propose possibilities, evaluate and select solutions, give their knowledge and skills freely, and generally make things happen. " Designed with Me" highlights clearly that people living with dementia can continue to make a significant contribution to society long after a diagnosis of dementia.
Implementasi Sensor Gas dan Fuzzy Logic Untuk Mendeteksi Formalin Pada Tahu

Formalin merupakan zat yang berbahaya. Umumnya formalin sering dicampurkan ke dalam bahan makanan supaya makanan tersebut dapat bertahan lama. Salah satu makanan yang dijumpai mengandung formalin yaitu tahu. Dalam mengantisipasi makanan tahu tersebut perlu dirancang sistem yang dapat mendeteksi adanya zat formalin. Dalam penelitian ini telah dirancang alat pendeteksi formalin yang dilengkapi dengan sensor gas TGS2600 dan TGS2611, mikrokontroler Atmega8535 dan modul display . Alat ini memberikan informasi berupa indikator aman, waspada dan bahaya terhadap zat formalin tersebut. Indikator ini diperoleh dari proses fuzzy logic yang di-implementasikan ke dalam mikrokontroler. Pengujian dilakukan pada 5 sampel tahu yang dicampur formalin dengan kadar yang berbeda yaitu 0.1 ml sampai 1 ml. Hasil pengujian menunjukkan bahwa alat mampu mendeteksi adanya formalin dalam tahu, dan dari hasil alat manual “Test Kit Formalin” menunjukkan kesesuaian terhadap pengujian alat tersebut.
A new method of characterising gait using a portable, real-time, ultrasound ranging device

A portable gait analysis system is presented. The device uses direct ultrasound ranging to measure the distance between a base unit and a transponder worn by the subject at the approximate body center of mass. As the subject progresses away from the base unit distance samples are saved and displayed in real time on a computer screen. Immediately following a walking trial these saved distance samples are used to calculate the instantaneous horizontal velocity or the gait velocigram (GVG). The GVG can be considered to be a pictorial representation of that person's gait. Gait parameters such as average walking speed, cadence, stride time, stride length, the step lengths and times for each leg and the peak-to-peak fluctuation of the instantaneous velocity can all be readily calculated from the GVG. The power of this device is that it provides gait data in real-time, enabling a clinician to implement ideas or changes and then to immediately see effect of those ideas or changes on that person's gait. Our direct ultrasound ranging system (DURS) has application in the area of outcome measures for implant or corrective gait surgery as well as in the area of lower limb prosthetic alignment.
ZoneAlloy: Elastic Data and Space Management for Hybrid SMR Drives

The emergence of Hybrid Shingled Magnetic Recording (H-SMR) allows dynamic conversion of the recording format between Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) and SMR on a single disk drive. H-SMR is promising for its ability to manage the performance/capacity trade-off on the disk platters and to adaptively support different application scenarios in large-scale storage systems. However, there is little research on how to efficiently manage data and space in such H-SMR drives. In this paper, we present ZoneAlloy, an elastic data and space management scheme for H-SMR drives, to explore the benefit of using such drives. ZoneAlloy initially allocates CMR space for the application and then gradually converts the disk format from CMR to SMR to create more space for the application. ZoneAlloy controls the overhead of the format conversion on the application I/O with our quantized migration mechanism. When data is stored in an SMR area, ZoneAlloy reduces the SMR update overhead using H-Buffer and Zone-Swap. H-Buffer is a small host-controlled CMR space that absorbs the SMR updates and migrates those updates back to the SMR space in batches to bring down the SMR update cost. Zone-Swap dynamically swaps “hot” data from the SMR space to the CMR space to further alleviate the SMR update problem. Evaluation results based on MSRCambridge traces demonstrate that ZoneAlloy can reduce the average I/O latency and limit the performance degradation of the application I/O during format conversion.
Bayesian inference of multivariate rotated GARCH models with skew returns

Abstract Bayesian inference is proposed for volatility models, targeting financial returns, which exhibit high kurtosis and slight skewness. Rotated GARCH models are considered which can accommodate the multivariate standard normal, Student t, generalized error distributions and their skewed versions. Inference on the model parameters and prediction of future volatilities and cross-correlations are addressed by Markov chain Monte Carlo inference. Bivariate simulated data is used to assess the performance of the method, while two sets of real data are used for illustration: the first is a trivariate data set of financial stock indices and the second is a higher dimensional data set for which a portfolio allocation is performed.
Restored native prairie supports abundant and species‐rich native bee communities on conventional farms

Native pollinators are increasingly needed on conventional farms yet rarely fostered via management. One solution is habitat restoration in marginal areas, but colonization may be constrained if resident pollinator richness is low or if restored areas fail to provide sufficient floral or nesting resources. We quantified restoration outcomes for native bees, and associated resources, on three conventional farms with forb‐grass prairie plantings on marginal areas of varying sizes, in a heavily farmed region of central North America. We tested bee abundance and richness in restored prairie versus the dominant habitats of the region—crops, forest remnants, and edges of fields and roads. Restored prairie supported 2× more species (95 of 119 total species) and 3× more bees (72% of captured individuals) compared to the other cover types. All richness and abundance differences among habitat types were associated with higher floral resources in restored prairie. Thirty percent of the bee species were unique to prairie, consistent with long‐distance dispersal but begging the question of origin given the absence of prairie regionally. Our results suggest that road and field edges may be the source, as these areas had more floral and nesting resources than forest or crop fields combined and supported 55% of all species despite covering only approximately 5% of the sampled farms. Habitat scarcity is not the only constraint on native bees in agricultural landscapes, with increasing concern over disease and chemicals. However, we observed that restored areas on marginal lands of conventional farms can support abundant and species‐rich populations of native bees.
New earthworm species and records from the Southern Carpathians (Megadrili: Lumbricidae)

Recent collecting trips to different parts of the Southern Carpathians resulted in reporting 26 earthworm species, among them two species new to science: Dendrobaena cinerea sp. n. and Octodrilus banaticus sp. n. Moreover, Allolobophora pannonica (Cognetti, 1906) has been resurrected from synonymy of A. mehadiensis mehadiensis Rosa, 1895 and reinstated as a separate species. With all these, the number of earthworm species and subspecies present in Romania is now 80.
Integrated Dynamic Wavelength Division Multiplexed FBG Sensor Interrogator on a Silicon Photonic Chip

A wavelength division multiplexed fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor interrogator using an integrated unbalanced Mach–Zehnder interferometer followed by an arrayed waveguide grating on silicon-on-insulator platform is presented. The Bragg wavelength shift is determined through the phase-generated carrier demodulation technique, allowing accurate dynamic FBG interrogation. The performance of the proposed device was validated by comparing the measurements with a commercial FBG readout unit based on a spectrometer, serving as a reference. Experimental results demonstrate a dynamic strain resolution of 4.56 nϵ/√Hz and minimum detectable strain down to ∼0.49 μϵ at 1-kHz bandwidth.
SYNTHETIC PHONICS AS A TOOL FOR IMPROVING THE READING SKILLS OF

Inability to read is one of the major barriers to the attainment of the dream of many Nigerian children to earn a decent living or a university degree. Many reasons have been suggested for the poor literacy attainment. This study examines one of the reasons for poor reading skills in government primary schools in Nigeria, namely the teaching method, and suggests an alternative teaching method. The literature review reveals that the synthetic phonics method has been used with great success in teaching English literacy to second language (L2) pupils. The study used a synthetic phonics intervention in a case study design. The mixed method approach involved collecting quantitative data through standardized reading and spelling tests while focus group discussion of teachers provided qualitative data. The result suggests that the synthetic phonics method led to improved reading achievement of pupils and an increase in teachers’ interest in teaching English.
Effects of microbial fermented liquid (MFL) supplementation on gas production kinetics and digestibility using in vitro gas production technique.

The effects of microbial fermented liquid (MFL) supplementation on rumen fermentation and digestibility of dairy steer using in vitro gas production technique was studied. The two rumen fistulated dairy steers as a rumen fluid donor was used. The levels of source of microbes (yeast (Y) and microbial fermented liquid (MFL) were incorporated with the levels of supplementation (0, 10, 20 and 30 % of concentrate) was recorded. It was found that the intercept value (a) and IVDMD and IVOMD were interacted (p<0.01) between microbial source and supplement levels, while, supplement levels affected on a and the insoluble fraction (b), microbial source affected on b, potential extent of gas production (a+b) and cumulative gas production at 72 h and IVOMD. Moreover, supplementation of MFL with 20 % of concentrate were the highest (p<0.05) of b, c, a+b, cumulative gas production at 72 h, IVDMD and IVOMD. In conclusion, supplementation of MFL could improve nutritional digestibility and a possible productivity in ruminants.
Metrics of Interest in an ADA Development

Abstract : The emergence of Ada provides the opportunity and necessity for measurement, analysis, and experimentation in software development. Over the past several months, we have been studying a software project developed in Ada. One of the goals of the study is to identify metrics which are useful for evaluating and predicting the complexity, quality, and cost of Ada programs. This reprint defines a set of metrics for use with software development in Ada. The metrics are gathered into six categories: effort, changes, dimension, langauge use, data use, and execution. They are described further using formula generators, distributions, and formulas. Examples of each metric, as well as specific uses, are also included. Finally, our continuing research in this area is described. (Author)