Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shock-wave induced formation of nano-crystalline graphite from highly ordered pyrolytic graphite

We demonstrate that in-plane 2D propagation and focusing of a laser-induced shock wave results in enhanced nano-crystallization of highly ordered pyrolytic graphite. Throughout the 2D shock focusing technique, which enables to clearly distinguish between the laser-induced and the shock-induced transformation/transition, our findings establish the role of the shock wave during the transformation/transition process. This novel configuration could open the way to an alternative path for laser shock fabrication of graphitic compounds and would give access to real time investigation of shock waves mediated phase transitions. Many carbon allotropes, natural and man-made, are widely studied for their fundamental interest and their useful physical and chemical properties. A standard is set by diamond with its extremely strong sp3 covalent bonding and with the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material. Different forms of carbon allotropes including diamond-like carbons (DLC) and graphitic carbons [1,2] are used in applications such as protective coatings and batteries. Today, most commercially available nano-diamonds are prepared by detonation methods [3], chemical vapor deposition [4], laser irradiation of graphite [5–7], or carbon black [8], but often with low yield or requiring post-formation purification treatments. New routes of synthesis would stem from a better understanding of the transitions between different phases or local structures. The formation of diamondlike carbon and nano-diamond from highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) has been investigated by many groups. Depending on the crystalline grade and orientational order of the starting material, a wide range of transition onset pressures have been observed. Erskine and Nellis carried out shock experiments on HOPG up to 50 GPa with the shock normal to the basal plane and observed a martensitic transformation of HOPG to diamond-like carbon at 19.6 GPa [9]. Yamada and Tanabe reported the phase transition to diamond and diamond-like carbon at pressures of 15 GPa with a shock propagating along the basal plane [10]. More recently, Nian et al. synthesized nano-diamonds from graphite through direct low intensity laser irradiation using a transparent confinement layer to generate a local high dense plasma. The pressure was estimated to be 4.4 GPa [11]. Here we report formation of a nano-crystalline graphitic phase from HOPG through inplane 2D focusing of a laser-induced shock wave. The approach we present allows spatial separation of the sample regions into which the laser light and the focused shock wave are directed, permitting direct visualization of the shocked region and confirmation that the shock wave drives the material transformation. The laser light also generates nanocrystalline graphitic carbon, but in a distinct sample region. Our results provide a new experimental pathway for nano-crystalline graphite formation driven by laser-generated shock waves.
Temporally invariable bacterial community structure in the Arabian Sea oxygen minimum zone

Northeastern Arabian Sea (NEAS) is a recognized region of intense denitrification, with its 200-1200m water column being anoxic. Abundance of bacteria, viral particles as well as bacterial community (BC) were studied in addition to various chemical and other biological parameters from the Arabian Sea Time Series (ASTS) station. Water samples from surface, deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM), 250, 500 and 1000m were collected during Spring intermonsoon (SIM), Fall Intermonsoon (FIM), and Northeast monsoon (NEM) seasons and analyzed for various parameters. Bacterial abundance varied seasonally (P ≤ 0.05), with its highest abundance observed during FIM at all sampling depths. Conversely, seasonal variations in viral abundance were minimal, though a significant correlation between virus and bacterial abundance (r = 0.526, P < 0.05, n=14) was evidenced. Hierarchical clustering of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) profiles revealed clear patterns of vertical as well as temporal partitioning of BC during all three seasons. In that, BC varied seasonally both in the surface and DCM, whereas in the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ; 250-1000m) it was more or less identical during all three seasons in spite of significant seasonal variation in bacterial abundance, pH and DO level in the OMZ. Following the band-matching, several DGGE bands were excised and sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences brought forth Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria as the dominant bacterial groups at the ASTS location. Linkage tree (LINKTREE) and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) were performed to decipher the effect of environmental factors on the BC. From these analyses it is inferred that dissolved oxygen (DO) and total organic carbon (TOC) are responsible for vertical separation of BC between the surface and OMZ. Our results suggest seasonal variations in BC occurs in the surface layers with least or minimal temporal differences in the OMZ.
REAL-TIME BIOCHEMICAL RESPONSE UPON CHEMICAL STIMULA- TION OF LIVING MONOCYTES INVESTIGATED BY FOURIER TRANS- FORM INFRARED MICROSPECTROSCOPY (µ-FTIR)

This paper aims to present novel results on biomedical applications of FTIR microspectroscopy (µ-FTIR) in the field of real-time investigation of biochemical processes occurring within living cells under physiological conditions. During the past years, our group optimized fabrication strategies on IR-VIS transparent materials for the realization of new microfluidic devices. We further improved the experimental setup by fabricating a fully functional IR-VIS transparent microfluidic chip. This system allowed us to follow the response of circulating white-blood cells to the chemical stimuli induced by fMLP (Formyl-Methionyl-Leucyl-Phenylalanine) cytokine, simulating an inflammation process. Transcription phenomena, new protein synthesis and increased cell membrane fluidity were monitored within the first minutes of stimulation, demonstrating the applicability of µ-FTIR in studying living systems.
Web content mining with multi-source machine learning for intelligent web agents

The web is recognized as the largest data source in the world. The nature of such data is characterized by partial or no structure, and even worse there exist no standard data schema for the even low-volumed structured data. Web Mining aims to extract useful knowledge from the Web by using a variety of techniques that have to cope with the heterogeneity and lack of a unique and fixed way of representing information. An important aspect in Web Mining is played by the automation of extraction rules with proper algorithms. Machine Learning techniques have been successfully applied to Web Mining and Information Extraction tasks thanks to the generalization and adaptation capabilities that are a key requirement on general content, heterogeneous web pages. The World Wide Web is a graph, more precisely a directed labeled graph where the nodes are represented by the pages and the edges are represented by links between them. Recent works propose the exploitation of the web structure (Link Analysis) for content extraction, for example one can leverage the content category of neighbor pages to categorize the contents of difficult web pages where word-frequency-based techniques are not robust enough. In this thesis we propose an automated method suitable for a wide range of domains based on Machine Learning and Link Analysis. In particular we propose an inductive model able to recognize content pages where structured information is located after being trained with proper input data. In order to keep the recognition speed high enough for real-world applications an additional algorithm is proposed which lets the approach to boost both in speed and quality. The
Road inclinations in the design of LPV-based adaptive cruise control⋆

Abstract The paper presents the design of a new adaptive cruise control method which takes into consideration the knowledge of the inclinations of the road and the velocity regulations along the route of the vehicle. By choosing the velocities of the vehicle that are the most suitable for the given road conditions, the number of unnecessary accelerations and brakings and their durations can be reduced. First a control-oriented model which contains the longitudinal control forces and disturbances is formalized. In the model the predicted road inclinations and velocity regulations are considered together with the safety requirements. Then the control system is designed by using the Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) control theory. The operation of the longitudinal controlled system and the influence of different designed parameters are also analyzed.
Improving Security in Bring Your Own Device ( BYOD ) Environment by Controlling Access

With the rapid increase in smartphones and tablets, Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) has simplified computing by introducing the use of personally owned devices. These devices will help to ease access to business enterprise contents and networks. The effectiveness of BYOD offers several business benefits like employee job satisfaction, increased job efficiency and flexibility. However, allowing employees to bring their own devices could lead to a plethora of security issues; like data theft, unauthorized access, data leakage among others. This paper investigates current security approaches, and how organisations can leverage on these techniques regarding policies, risks, existing technologies, awareness and training to mitigate or halt potential security challenges. The research aimed to fill up the access control gap(s) in the existing Bring Your Own Device Environment by developing an adaptive security policy model.
Ab initio quantum mechanical modeling of infrared vibrational frequencies of the OH group in dioctahedral phyllosilicates. Part I: Methods, results and comparison to experimental data

Abstract The infrared (IR) spectra of small clusters of atoms ([MM'(OH)2] and [MM'(OH)2 (H2O)6], where M, M' = Al3+, Mg2+, Fe2+, Fe3+) mimicking the environment of the OH group in dioctahedral phyllosilicates have been modeled using ab initio quantum mechanical calculations. These modeling results are relevant to establishing the connections between IR spectra of phyllosilicates and their composition, and to investigate the utility of quantum mechanical models for calculating IR frequencies of minerals. This study focused on the OH stretch and in-plane bend fundamentals, because they give rise to a combination band near 4545 cm-1 (2.2 μm) that can be observed in imaging spectrometer or hyperspectral remote sensing data. A comparison among results obtained using both ab initio [Hartree-Fock (HF) and Density Functional Theory (DFT)], and semi-empirical [PM3(tm)] methods, showed that the DFT model approaches IR frequency experimental values most closely. IR spectra of phyllosilicates were modeled using the DFT method. The modeled frequencies were scaled using a mode-dependent linear transformation, and experimental frequencies were reproduced satisfactorily. The modeling results show that most of the variability observed in the OH in-plane bend fundamental of dioctahedral phyllosilicates can be explained by the effects of neighboring octahedral cations alone. Discrepancies between modeling and experimental results in the case of the OH stretch point to the existence of factors other than the nature of the neighboring octahedral cations, such as tetrahedral substitution, affecting this fundamental mode
Interactive comment on “ Automated continuous verification and validation for numerical simulation ” by P . E

Indeed, validity is a property of the algorithm which the model code implements rather than a property of the code itself. To the extent to which validation tests have established the validity of an algorithm, the repetition of those tests does not further establish validity. If a model which has been validated fails to perform as expected due to a change in the code, this is a verification error.
Architectural challenges and solutions for petascale postprocessing

With petascale applications comes petascale data; gleaning knowledge and insight from this large-scale data is widely accepted to be a limiting factor in many fields of scientific endeavor. Large-scale data presents two incredible challenges: scale and complexity. The scale challenge refers to the problem of being able to process tremendous numbers of bytes of data within some time constraint. The complexity challenge is more subtle; petascale data is inherently complex and reducing this data to comprehensible forms is difficult. For the scale challenge, it is often assumed that continued usage of techniques viable at the terascale will provide a recipe for success at the petascale. We argue the opposite: following this path will result in cost prohibitive solutions. Instead, we must pursue ‘smarter’ techniques, such as in situ and multi-resolution processing, which are well established by a decade's worth of research. The forms of postprocessing are very diverse, but they can be summarized in broad use cases: data exploration, presentation graphics, quantitative analysis, comparative analysis, and visual debugging. Together, these use cases are responsive to the complexity challenge. Moreover, these use cases are responsive to the demands of the user community. Making pretty pictures is just one component of the simulation community's postprocessing needs and all of these needs must be addressed for petascale data. A major focus of this paper is to construct a road map for realizing this broad set of use cases at the petascale, and, further, to do this in the most economical way possible. None of the smart processing techniques we consider are a panacea; none are capable of supporting every use case. However, a software architecture that underpins these processing techniques and that can dynamically select between them will provide an economical way to meet these challenging requirements, and in this paper we discuss such an architecture.
Temporal Variation of Mass Absorption Efficiency of Black Carbon at Urban and Suburban Locations

The mass absorption efficiency (MAE) of black carbon (BC) was measured for the ambient aerosols in urban and suburban areas and exhaust plumes from motor vehicles from September 2010 to September 2011 in Xiamen, China. Ambient aerosols, collected on quartz fiber filters, were analyzed for BC loadings using an OC/EC Carbon Aerosol Analyzer and measured for optical attenuations with a laser/LED transmissometer. The MAE of BC in Xiamen shows a large temporal and spatial variability, varying from 0.47 to 5.15 m 2 /g. In the same month (May 2011), the average MAE of BC in suburban area (0.50 m 2 /g) was one third that in urban area (1.50 m 2 /g), suggesting that the variance of MAE was related to the specific emission sources of BC. Here we report the large variation in MAE of BC measured during different sampling times and for different sources in Xiamen. The average MAE was 1.69 m 2 /g and the coefficient of variance was 52%. Factors contributing to the variability were also discussed, as well as the uncertainties caused by different carbon analysis methods, working wavelengths for optical attenuation measurements, and relative humidity when measuring the optical attenuation of the aerosol filters. The results suggest that if a constant value of MAE within the range of 0.47–5.15 m 2 /g is used to quantify the BC concentration, then this would bias the results with a maximum factor of 11. Site-specific values of MAE are recommended for long-term stationary monitoring of ambient BC in air quality monitoring stations.
AN EVOLUTIONARY PARADIGM OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS

This thesis aims at presenting Ervin Laszlo’s General Evolutionary Theory (GET), a particular systems theory model, as a credible framework in which to analyse and interpret the complex dynamic patterns of development of modern social technologies. GET has been a product of several disciplines of knowledge, including those of cybernetics, systems theory, and self-organisation. Also, GET is characterised by processes of complexity and non-equilibrium, and as such gives an analysis of society as moving from lesser to greater states of complexity and organisation. Information communication technologies (ICTs) provide a model for an application of GET as they manifest growth and development through similar stages of complex and adaptive self-organisation. Specifically, the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) will be used as a model and application for GET respectively. The thesis will conclude by stating that social technologies, as parts of an overall social evolution, display characteristic patterns that are applicable to GET. As such, an evolutionary model of complexity, such as GET, can have value as a tool for analysis of
Exploring the role of student diversity for the first-year experience

Heterogenitat in der Studieneingangsphase Steigende Studierendenzahlen haben zu wachsender Aufmerksamkeit fur die Heterogenitat der Studierendenschaft gefuhrt sowie zu diversen Forderangeboten, die den Ubergang an die Hochschule unterstutzen. Um die Bedeutung von Heterogenitat fur die Studieneingangsphase naher zu untersuchen, wird zunachst der aktuelle Forschungsstand skizziert. Anhand einer Interviewstudie wird zudem beleuchtet, wie sich Heterogenitat im Profil von Studierenden und in ihrer Wahrnehmung von Herausforderungen der Studieneingangsphase widerspiegelt. Der gewonnene Einblick in die Mehrdeutigkeit und das komplexe Zusammenspiel von Heterogenitatsaspekten liefert Anhaltspunkte fur die Gestaltung von Fordermasnahmen. 16.12. 2015 | Elke Bosse (Hamburg)
Student Expectations, Motivations, Target Language Use, and Perceived Learning Progress in a Summer Study Abroad Program in Germany

This study investigated students' motives for participating in a short-term study abroad program in Germany, their expectations about learning progress at the beginning of the program, and their perceived progress in various language skills at the end of the program. Findings indicated that students' expectations were higher than their perceived progress in all skills with the exception of cultural learning. Correlations were found between reported frequency of listening in the L2 and gains in L2 listening proficiency, and between the goals “to be in contact with Germans” and “cultural enrichment” with expected gains in speaking and listening skills.
Increasing vertical mixing to reduce Southern Ocean deep convection in NEMO3.4

Abstract. Most CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) models unrealistically form Antarctic Bottom Water by open ocean deep convection in the Weddell and Ross seas. To identify the mechanisms triggering Southern Ocean deep convection in models, we perform sensitivity experiments on the ocean model NEMO3.4 forced by prescribed atmospheric fluxes. We vary the vertical velocity scale of the Langmuir turbulence, the fraction of turbulent kinetic energy transferred below the mixed layer, and the background diffusivity and run short simulations from 1980. All experiments exhibit deep convection in the Riiser-Larsen Sea in 1987; the origin is a positive sea ice anomaly in 1985, causing a shallow anomaly in mixed layer depth, hence anomalously warm surface waters and subsequent polynya opening. Modifying the vertical mixing impacts both the climatological state and the associated surface anomalies. The experiments with enhanced mixing exhibit colder surface waters and reduced deep convection. The experiments with decreased mixing give warmer surface waters, open larger polynyas causing more saline surface waters and have deep convection across the Weddell Sea until the simulations end. Extended experiments reveal an increase in the Drake Passage transport of 4 Sv each year deep convection occurs, leading to an unrealistically large transport at the end of the simulation. North Atlantic deep convection is not significantly affected by the changes in mixing parameters. As new climate model overflow parameterisations are developed to form Antarctic Bottom Water more realistically, we argue that models would benefit from stopping Southern Ocean deep convection, for example by increasing their vertical mixing.
Identification of the Conserved Sequences at the Species Level of Odontoglossum Ringspot Virus and Other Members of Tobamovirus by Its Coat Protein Sequence Analysis

A synthetic 1056 base pair at 3′-terminal region of odontoglossum ringspot virus (ORSV) genome was determined by its amino acid sequence compositions. The deduced coat protein (CP) sequence of ORSV was compared with 32 available published data of tobamovirus CPs. The relationship of amino acid composition of tobamovirus CPs fell into three major clusters similar to the tobamovirus subgroups previously classified. The amino acid sequence within ORSV group showed highly conserved, almost 96-100% identical homology, but was distinct from the other tobamovirus subgroups. However, the topography of the phylogenetic tree showed that the orchid-infecting, crucifer-infecting (85-100% identity), some tomato-infecting (81-94% identity) and tobacco-infecting virus strains (95-98% identity) formed tight clusters which were mostly correlated with the host range preferences of the viruses. The application of the program clustalW to amino acid data alignment classified and identified the conserved sequence and genetic variability at the species level of each member of tobamovirus subgroups by its coat protein sequence analysis. According to the high degree of conservation in ORSV CP composition, it was successful in detecting virus infecting broad length of orchid host plants showing severe symptoms
Does Cross-Listing Lead to Functional Convergence? Empirical Evidence

The author examines the effect of legal bonding on ownership and control structures of foreign firms cross-listing in the United States. Contrary to the predictions of corporate governance convergence theories, there is little evidence of convergence-related migration to a dispersed ownership structure on cross-listing. She finds that rather than as a means to change their governance structure, foreign firms use American Depository Receipts as a vehicle to sell control blocks, often to a new foreign owner. Firms that cross-list and sell stakes to domestic owners are from large economies with high stock market liquidity. In contrast, firm-level characteristics are more important predictors of a control change to a foreign owner. Cross-listing firms that sell control blocks to foreigners tend to be smaller, have low levels of debt, and have a high foreign income growth rate. The post cross-listing performance of firms that undergo a control change is also different from firms that do not experience a control change.