Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Separation and Characterization of Reconstituted Skim Milk Powder Treated with Mineral Chelators

The proteins found in milk are largely important in the functionality of many dairy products and dairy processes. The casein micelle system in milk is a complex and highly studied system. The micelle is thought to be a sponge like structure containing four caseins, α s1 , α s2 , β, and κ casein, and bound together with colloidal calcium phosphate. When a chelating agent such as a citrate, phosphate, or polyphosphate are added to milk systems, the CCP is bound to the chelator and removed from the micelle. It has been shown through past research that the use of calcium chelating agents disrupts the calcium phosphate equilibrium and allows for the dissociation of the casein micelle and release of the individual caseins. Once the caseins are disrupted from micellar form and in solution, it may be possible to separate out different casein streams for functional usage in dairy products using common separation techniques. This thesis project seeks to evaluate the feasibility of separating milk treated with calcium chelators using various separation techniques to evaluate the individual casein fractions of this disrupted system. Four separation methods (ultracentrifugation, membrane filtration, heat coagulation, and coagulation based on pH) were employed to separate out the caseins based on selected properties, specifically density, molecular weight, and solubility. In ultracentrifugation, three speeds were tested, the heat coagulation study tested two temperatures, and pH based coagulation tested four different pHs to determine their impact on overall protein levels and individual casein yields. Skim v milk powder was reconstituted and chelator was added at 1, 50, or 100 mEq/L treatment level. These samples were then separated using aforementioned techniques, and the supernatant or permeate was analyzed for total protein content, individual casein composition, turbidity, and mean particle size. Analysis of centrifugal separation studies shows the interaction between chelator type, chelator level, and centrifugation speed had a significant impact on the amount of protein released from the casein micelle (p<0.001). Samples treated with 50 mEq of sodium hexametaphosphate and centrifuged at 60,000xg released significantly more protein into the supernatant than other samples. The type of chelator was not found to be statistically significant in impacting the proportion of α casein or β casein in the samples, but the interaction of chelator level and centrifugal force was found to have an impact. Larger proportions of α casein and lower proportions of β casein were seen in samples treated with …
Polymer-derived SiBCN ceramic and their potential application for high temperature membranes : Dedicated to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.h.c. hartmut fueß on the occasion of his 65th birthday

A novel preceramic polymer suitable to form a SiBCN ceramic was synthesized by hydroboration reaction of l,3,5-trivinyl-1,3,5-trimethyl-cyclotrisilazane with borane dimethylsulphide. The obtained polymer denoted as poly(borosilazane) was characterised by FT-IR and NMR spectroscopy and its thermal stability was studied by thermal gravimetric analysis in combination with in situ mass spectrometry (TG/MS). The polymer-to-ceramic transformation was achieved at 1050°C in inert argon atmosphere yielding black and X-ray amorphous SiBCN ceramics thermally stable up to 1800°C. Using the dip-coating technique, a SiBCN ceramic thin film was formed on a porous alumina substrate. N 2 sorption isotherm analysis revealed that the thin film contained a small amount of micropores of about 0.6 nm in diameter, as well as mesopores between 2.7 and 6 nm in size. The total pore volume was found to be about three orders of magnitude smaller than that of a hydrogen permselective amorphous silica membrane derived from polysilazane. These results indicated potential application of the SiBCN thin film as a molecular sieve membrane suitable for high-temperature separation of small gas molecules like hydrogen below 0.3 nm in size.
Techno-Economic Analysis of a Fuzzy Logic Control Based Hybrid Renewable Energy System to Power a University Campus in Japan

In order to reduce the load demand of buildings in Japan, this study proposes a grid-tied hybrid solar–wind–hydrogen system that is equipped with a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system, using a fuzzy logic control (FLC) algorithm. Compared with the existing MPPTs, the proposed MPPT provides rapid power control with small oscillations. The dynamic simulation of the proposed hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) was performed in MATLAB-Simulink, and the model results were validated using an experimental setup installed in the Chikushi campus, Kyushu University, Japan. The techno-economic analysis (TEA) of the proposed system was performed to estimate the optimal configuration of the proposed HRES, subject to satisfying the required annual load in the Chikushi campus. The results revealed a potential of 2% surplus power generation from the proposed HRES, using the FLC-based MPPT system, which can guarantee a lower levelized cost of electricity (LOCE) for the HRES and significant savings of 2.17 million yen per year. The TEA results show that reducing the cost of the solar system market will lead to a reduction in LCOE of the HRES in 2030.
Evaluation of some distributional downscaling methods as applied to daily precipitation with an eye towards extremes

Statistical downscaling (SD) methods used to refine future climate change projections produced by physical models have been applied to a variety of variables. We evaluate four empirical distributional type SD methods as applied to daily precipitation, which because of its binary nature (wet vs. dry days) and tendency for a long right tail presents a special challenge. Using data over the Continental U.S. we use a ‘Perfect Model’ approach in which data from a large‐scale dynamical model is used as a proxy for both observations and model output. This experimental design allows for an assessment of expected performance of SD methods in a future high‐emissions climate‐change scenario. We find performance is tied much more to configuration options rather than choice of SD method. In particular, proper handling of dry days (i.e., those with zero precipitation) is crucial to success. Although SD skill in reproducing day‐to‐day variability is modest (~15–25%), about half that found for temperature in our earlier work, skill is much greater with regards to reproducing the statistical distribution of precipitation (~50–60%). This disparity is the result of the stochastic nature of precipitation as pointed out by other authors. Distributional skill in the tails is lower overall (~30–35%), although in some regions and seasons it is small to non‐existent. Even when SD skill in the tails is reasonably good, in some instances, particularly in the southeastern United States during summer, absolute daily errors at some gridpoints can be large (~20 mm or more), highlighting the challenges in projecting future extremes.
Photodegradation of Some Organic Dyes over Two Metal–Organic Frameworks with Especially High Efficiency for Safranine T

Two new networks, namely, {[Cd(bpba)(H2bptc)1/2·H2O]}n (1), {[Co(bpba)(bdc)1/2]}n (2), where Hbpba = 3,5-bis(pyridin-4-ylmethoxy)benzoic acid, H4bptc = 3,3′,5,5′-biphenyltetracarboxylate, H2bdc = 1,4-benzenedicarboxylate, have been synthesized hydrothermally and characterized. Compound 1 is a three-dimensional net with a rare jea topology. The flexible pyridyl arms may afford a dimension extension in the crystal structure. While for compound 2 the flexible pyridyl arms are not involved in coordination, the Co(II) paddle-wheel secondary building units are bridged by the mixed ligands, bpba– and bdc2–, to furnish a two-dimensional layer. In addition, their heterogeneous catalytic oxidation activities toward methyl orange, methyl blue, neutral red, methylene blue, and safranine T (ST) in the presence of H2O2 are investigated in aqueous solution. The results suggested that the photocatalytic efficiency of ST is found to be 100% for MOF-2.
Determination of Predictors of Acute Kidney Injury in Patients with Coronary Bifurcation Lesions Revascularized with the Two-Stent Strategy

Introduction: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is an important complication that increases mortality, morbidity, hospitalization and costs after the invasive cardiac procedures. The incidence of AKI and the factors affecting the development of AKI after the revascularization of coronary bifurcation lesions with the two-stent strategy remain unclear. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 230 consecutive non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) patients who underwent revascularization with the two-stent strategy for the true coronary artery bifurcation lesions between January 2015 and September 2020, and did not meet the exclusion criteria. AKI was defined as meeting Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) group criteria with the development of creatinine changes within the first 48 hours after the procedure. ACEF (age, serum creatinine, left ventricular ejection fraction) score was calculated for all patients. Results: AKI developed in 28 (12.2%) patients after the procedure. As a result of the multivariable analysis, hypertension, ACEF score ≥ 1.14 and contrast agent volume ≥ 252 mL were determined as independent predictors for AKI. The coronary anatomical factors and technique related factors had no effect on AKI development. ACEF score ≥ 1.14 had sensitivity of 82.1%, specificity of 60.9% and negative predictive value of 96.1% for detecting AKI development. Moreover, the rate of AKI in the group with high ACEF score was significantly higher than the group with low ACEF score (22.5% vs. 3.9%, p< 0.001). Conclusion: The simple and extremely user-friendly ACEF score can accurately describe the risk of AKI development after the revascularization of coronary bifurcation lesions with the two-stent strategy.
Jointly human semantic parsing and attribute recognition with feature pyramid structure in EfficientNets

Pedestrian attributes recognition is an important issue in computer vision and has a special role in the ﬁeld of video surveillance. The previous methods presented to solve this issue are mainly based on multi-label end-to-end deep neural networks. These methods neglect to apply attributes for deﬁning local feature areas and they suffer from the problems of the bounding box presence. A new framework for jointly human semantic parsing and pedestrian attribute recognition to achieve effective attribute recognition is proposed. By extracting human parts via semantic parsing, both semantic and spatial information can be explored with eliminating of background. The framework also uses multi-scale features to employ rich details and contextual information through proposed attribute recognition-bidirectional feature pyramid network. For baseline network that has a signiﬁcant impact on the performance, EfﬁcientNet-B3 is selected as a baseline network from The EfﬁcientNet family which provides an appropriate trade-off between the three factors of CNNs scaling (depth/width/resolution). Finally, the proposed framework is tested on datasets PETA, RAP and PA-100k. Experimental results show that our method has superior performance in both mean accuracy and instance-based metrics compared to state-of-the-art results.
No Place in the City: The Segregation of Affordable Formal Private Rentals in Beijing

ABSTRACT Residential segregation by income has become an emerging concern in Chinese cities. Existing literature on residential segregation has mostly focused on the informal rental market, and little is known about the formal private rentals. Nevertheless, with the continued removal of informal settlements, formal private rentals are likely to play a more pivotal role in the provision of affordable housing in the upcoming years. Using data from online rental listings, this article examines changes in the spatial distribution of affordable formal private rentals in Beijing between 2015 and 2018. Our study finds that the availability of affordable formal private rentals decreased drastically in the central city area in the 3-year period, whereas the remaining affordable units in the central-city subdistricts became increasingly segregated from other higher priced rentals. When compared across rentals of different price ranges, the affordable rentals ended up being the most segregated in both 2015 and 2018, with a city-level index of dissimilarity of 0.71 and 0.75, respectively. The research findings necessitate policies that promote affordable rental provision in central locations.
A Comparative Analysis of the Temperature‐Mortality Risks Using Different Weather Datasets Across Heterogeneous Regions

New gridded climate datasets (GCDs) on spatially resolved modeled weather data have recently been released to explore the impacts of climate change. GCDs have been suggested as potential alternatives to weather station data in epidemiological assessments on health impacts of temperature and climate change. These can be particularly useful for assessment in regions that have remained understudied due to limited or low quality weather station data. However to date, no study has critically evaluated the application of GCDs of variable spatial resolution in temperature‐mortality assessments across regions of different orography, climate, and size. Here we explored the performance of population‐weighted daily mean temperature data from the global ERA5 reanalysis dataset in the 10 regions in the United Kingdom and the 26 cantons in Switzerland, combined with two local high‐resolution GCDs (HadUK‐grid UKPOC‐9 and MeteoSwiss‐grid‐product, respectively) and compared these to weather station data and unweighted homologous series. We applied quasi‐Poisson time series regression with distributed lag nonlinear models to obtain the GCD‐ and region‐specific temperature‐mortality associations and calculated the corresponding cold‐ and heat‐related excess mortality. Although the five exposure datasets yielded different average area‐level temperature estimates, these deviations did not result in substantial variations in the temperature‐mortality association or impacts. Moreover, local population‐weighted GCDs showed better overall performance, suggesting that they could be excellent alternatives to help advance knowledge on climate change impacts in remote regions with large climate and population distribution variability, which has remained largely unexplored in present literature due to the lack of reliable exposure data.
Experiments on pulsed laser deposition and characterization of epitaxially in-situ grown YBa2Cu3O7-x thin films

Experimental results concerning the pulsed laser deposition parameters of in-situ epitaxially grown high crystalline quality YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 - x thin films are reported. The structural and morphological properties of the deposited films analyzed by transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy are also presented. The YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 - x thin films, predominantly c-axis oriented had required the smallest oxygen pressure during the cool-down time reported to date.
[4-tBu-2,6-{P(O)(OiPr)2}2C6H2Sn(PPh3)Cr(CO)5]ClO4 – a salt containing a cationic triphenylphosphane-stabilized organostannylene transition metal complex

Abstract The isolation and molecular structure of bis(di-iso-propoxyphosphonyl)-4-tert-butyl]phenyl}tin triphenylphosphane perchlorate chromium pentacarbonyl, 2, is reported. It is the first example of an ionic compound containing an organostannylene transition metal complex cation stabilized by a phosphane donor. Slow reaction of compound 2 in acetonitrile gave trans-bis-triphenylphosphane chromium tetracarbonyl, trans-(Ph3P)2Cr(CO)4, in a new crystalline modification.
Scientific writing: an analysis of Pune‐based climate scientists’ perceptions and training needs

Scientific writing is integral to any scientific enterprise and constitutes an essential part of the toolkit of scientists to lead a successful career. But it remains a neglected area in science education, adversely impacting scientists’ career advancement and institutional productivity. When English is the de facto language of science, inabilities to express clearly in English can have serious implications for (non‐native English speaking) scientists. Further, scientists in a multilingual society like India may face more such lingual complexities barring clear and precise writing. Keeping in view the risks and uncertainty associated with weather and climate, different stakeholders are increasingly demanding clear communication from the scientific community. However, we have little understanding about what scientists think about their writing skills and capabilities. This article presents results of a survey examining the perceptions and attitudes of Indian weather and climate scientists about their skills, experiences and training needs in scientific writing. Results suggest that the majority of scientists have difficulties in preparing quality manuscripts suitable for publication, and that they are willing to undergo skill enhancement training to overcome their shortcomings. Some interesting insights emerge from the analysis that would be useful in helping scientists improve their scientific writing.
Switched Reluctance Motors and Drive Systems for Electric Vehicle Powertrains: State of the Art Analysis and Future Trends

This paper presents a detailed literature review on switched reluctance motor (SRM) and drive systems in electric vehicle (EV) powertrains. SRMs have received increasing attention for EV applications owing to their reliable structure, fault tolerance ability and magnet free design. The main drawbacks of the SRM are torque ripple, low power density, low power factor and small extended speed range. Recent research shows that multi-stack conventional switched reluctance motors (MSCSRM) and multi-stack switched reluctance motors with a segmental rotor (MSSRM-SR) are promising alternative solutions to reduce torque ripples, increase torque density and increase power factor. Different winding configurations such as single-layer concentrated winding (SLC), single layer mutually coupled winding (SLMC), double layer concentrated winding (DLC), double layer mutually coupled winding (DLMC) and fully-pitched winding (FP) are introduced in the literature in recent years to increase average torque and to decrease torque ripples. This research analyzes winding methods and structure of the SRMs, including conventional and segmental rotors. They have been compared and assessed in detail evaluation of torque ripple reduction, torque/power density increase, noise/vibration characteristics and mechanical structure. In addition, various drive systems are fully addressed for the SRMs, including conventional drives, soft-switching drives, drives with standard inverters and drives with an integrated battery charger. In this paper, the SRM control methods are also reviewed and classified. These control methods include strategies of torque ripple reduction, fault-diagnosis, fault-tolerance techniques and sensorless control. The key contributions of this paper provide a useful basis for detailed analysis of modeling and electromechanical design, drive systems, and control techniques of the SRMs for EV applications.
Oil Price Volatility is Effective in Predicting Food Price Volatility. Or is it?

Volatility spillovers between food commodities and oil prices have been identified in the literature, yet, there has been no empirical evidence to suggest that oil price volatility improves real out-of-sample forecasts of food price volatility. In this study we provide new evidence showing that oil price volatility does not improve forecasts of agricultural price volatility. This finding is based on extensive and rigorous testing of five internationally traded agricultural commodities (soybeans, corn, sugar, rough rice and wheat) and two oil benchmarks (Brent and WTI). We employ monthly and daily oil and food price volatility data and two forecasting frameworks, namely, the HAR and MIDAS-HAR, for the period 2nd January 1990 until 31st March 2017. Results indicate that oil volatility-enhanced HAR or MI-DAS-HAR models cannot systematically outperform the standard HAR model. Thus, contrary to what has been suggested by the existing literature based on in-sample analysis, we are unable to find any systematic evidence that oil price volatility improves out-of-sample forecasts of food price volatility. The results remain robust to the choice of different out-of-sample forecasting periods and three different volatility measures
Bromotyrosines from the sponges acanthodendrilla sp. and pseudoceratina cf.

The preliminary investigation of the CH2Cl2and CH3OH-extracts from the sponge Acanthodendrilla sp. , showed potent acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting activity (79.5% at 0.1 mg/mL), and the CHCl3and n-BuOH-extracts from the sponge Pseudoceratina cf. purpurea showed potent acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting activity (92.0% and 94.0% inhibition, respectively at 0.1 mg/mL). Further investigation led to the isolation of five bromotyrosine-derived alkaloids; aerothionin (1), homoaerothionin (2), 11,19-dideoxyfistularin 3 (3), 11-oxoaerothionin (4), and 11-deoxyfistularin 3 (5), from the sponge Acanthodendrilla sp. , and 15 alkaloids of the same class; purealidin Q (6), aplysamine 2 (7), aeroplysinin 1 (8), purpureamine J (9), aerophobin 1 (10), fistularin 3 (11), hemifistularin 3 (12), purealidin R (13), aplyzanzine A (14), iso-anomoian (15), purealidin B (16), purealidin J (17), aerophobin 2 (18), araplysillin I (19), and araplysillin II (20) from the sponge P. purpurea. All the isolated compounds were assayed for their acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting and cytotoxic activities. Compounds 6, 7, 14, and 15 showed inhibitory activity against the acetylcholinesterase enzyme at IC50 values of 1.2, 1.3, 106.8, and 70.4 μM, respectively, with a non-competitive mode of inhibition. Structural similarities among the active compounds suggested that the N,Ndimethylaminopropyloxy moiety may exert an importance in the enzyme inhibition. On the other hand, compound 3 was cytotoxic against MCF-7 and human fibroblast cell lines at IC50 values of 0.53 and 1.46 μM respectively, while 10 showed cytotoxic activity against MCF-7, KB, HT-29, and human fibroblast cell lines at IC50 values of 0.79, 0.53, 0.91, and 4.2 μM, respectively.