Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A general criterion for geomechanics: extension to jointed rocks masses

A general smooth and convex yield function had been proposed , able to model the particular behavior of porous materials, particularly rock materials, that are characterized by a linear or parabolic Mohr’s envelope, and a particular shape in the deviatoric plane. These characteristics are defined by two functions: the equation of the criterion in the meridian plane and the extension ratio, which are integrated in a general equation ensuring convexity and smoothness of the yield function, whatever the characteristic functions. In this paper, further developments of the criterion are made to encompass to modelize the behavior of damaged, weathered or heavily fractured rocks. We identify the functions that allow to develop a smooth version of the generalized Hœk-Brown criterion. So it can be use do predict the behavior of rock masses, relying on identification on intact core sample, and taking into account observations made by geologist and field engineers through the Geological Strength Index of Hoek.
Childhood Sexual Abuse and Sexual Risk Behaviour among Men Who Have Sex with Men

Previous research indicates a relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and an increased risk of participating in destructive behaviours during adulthood, including risky sexual practices. This study examined the association between unwanted sexual activity during childhood and adult HIV sexual risk behaviour among a South African sample of men who have sex with men (MSM). Potential pathological outcome measures of CSA such as dissociation and substance abuse were treated as variables mediating the relationship between CSA and sexual risk behaviour. Results indicate that one-third of participants reported a history of CSA. Men who were abused were more likely to engage in unprotected anal intercourse compared to those who were not abused. Men who were abused also scored significantly higher on a measure of dissociation. Regression analyses revealed that specific characteristics of the abuse experience, as well as drug abuse, were associated with greater sexual risk behaviour. The current data suggest that CSA is widespread among men at high risk for HIV infection, and that it may have a debilitating influence on the quality of life and health risk behaviour of these men. Further research is needed into the mediators and, more importantly, into the contextual factors or moderators of the childhood abuse experience that are associated with negative outcomes during adulthood.
Molecular Mechanism of Pancreatic Stellate Cells Activation in Chronic Pancreatitis and Pancreatic Cancer

Activated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) are the main effector cells in the process of fibrosis, a major pathological feature in pancreatic diseases that including chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. During tumorigenesis, quiescent PSCs change into an active myofibroblast-like phenotype which could create a favorable tumor microenvironment and facilitate cancer progression by increasing proliferation, invasiveness and inducing treatment resistance of pancreatic cancer cells. Many cellular signals are revealed contributing to the activation of PSCs, such as transforming growth factor-β, platelet derived growth factor, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), Smads, nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathways and so on. Therefore, investigating the role of these factors and signaling pathways in PSCs activation will promote the development of PSCs-specific therapeutic strategies that may provide novel options for pancreatic cancer therapy. In this review, we systematically summarize the current knowledge about PSCs activation-associated stimulating factors and signaling pathways and hope to provide new strategies for the treatment of pancreatic diseases.
A study of minimax LEQG control with constant-constrained Renyi divergence

This paper deals with a risk-sensitive control problem, which is known as a robust control. In general, model-based control problems have to consider some uncertainty, e.g., modeling error and unknown external signals. To this end, robust control synthesis has been studied in various ways [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Particularly, robust controller synthesis for linear time-invariant systems has been well developed along with the development of convex optimization. It provides us some systematical methods and therefore, robust controller synthesis for a kind of deterministic uncertainties is now useful in practice. In practice, however, sometimes it is required to deal with another type of uncertainty. For example, disturbances in a dynamical system are often modeled by the white Gaussian noises, however, we have no reason to do so in most cases. Therefore, it is desirable if we can ensure a control performance against certain kind of stochastic uncertainties. Pertersen et al. naturally extended a notion of deterministic uncertainty to stochastic one [6]. They show that if the stochastic uncertainty is described by a ball of probability measures whose “distance” is Kullback–Leibler divergence, then the robust controller synthesis is a risk–sensitive optimal control problem. Risk-sensitive controls have been known as a robust control in various senses [7, 8, 9], but Petersen et al. [6] characterize the robustness of risk sensitive control as a min-max optimal control problem. The key notion is the duality between free energy and Kullback–Leibler divergence [10, 11] and the Kullback–Leibler divergence constraint is a natural generalization of integral quadratic constraints and sum quadratic constraints [12, 13]. As described above, risk sensitivities are characterized by the duality between free energy and Kullback-Leibler divergence. There is another characterization of risk sensitivities found by Atar et al. [14]. Atar et al. exploited a Rényi divergence instead of Kullback–Leibler divergence, and derived a generalized duality between risk sensitivity functionals and Rényi divergence. Since the shape of the uncertainty ball changes if we use Rényi divergence, it is a good idea to generalize the result of [6] in case. In this paper we develop min-max Linear Exponential Quadratic Gaussian (LEQG) optimal control problems. Note that, since there are some technical problems, our results in the paper are not extended the results of [6] completely. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we state the problem of the paper and comment the difference between the previous and our problems. In Section 3, we show the extended duality relation between risk sensitivity functionals and Rényi divergence. Note that since the relation was proved only bounded functionals, we prove that the relation will hold if a suitable convex set exists when an unbounded functional is considered. In Section 4, the optimal min-max LEQG controller is derived. We conclude in Section 5.
4 million Q factor Si 3 N 4 micro-ring resonator at 780 nm wavelength for chip-scale atomic systems

A silicon nitride micro-ring resonator with a loaded Q factor of 1.4 × 106 at 780 nm wavelength is demonstrated on silicon substrates. This is due to the low propagation loss waveguides achieved by optimization of waveguide sidewall interactions and top cladding refractive index. Potential applications include laser frequency stabilization allowing for chipscale atomic systems targeting the 87Rb atomic transition at 780.24 nm. The temperature dependent wavelength shift of the micro-ring was determined to be 13.1 pm/K indicating that a minimum temperature stability of less than ±15 mK is required for such devices for wavelength locking applications. If a polyurethane acrylate top cladding of an optimized thickness is used then the micro-ring could effectively be athermal, resulting in reduced footprint, power consumption, and cost of potential devices. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal
A review of currently available in-stream water-quality models and their applicability for simulating dissolved oxygen in lowland rivers

In this paper, a review is undertaken of the major models currently in use for describing water quality in freshwater river systems. The number of existing models is large because the various studies of water quality in rivers around the world have often resulted in the construction of new ‘bespoke’ models designed for the particular situation of that study. However, it is worth considering models that are already available, since an existing model, suitable for the purposes of the study, will save a great deal of work and may already have been established within regulatory and legal frameworks. The models chosen here are SIMCAT, TOMCAT, QUAL2E, QUASAR, MIKE-11 and ISIS, and the potential for each model is examined in relation to the issue of simulating dissolved oxygen (DO) i lowland rivers. These models have been developed for particular purposes and this review shows that no one model can provide all of the functionality required. Furthermore, all of the models contain assumptions and limitations that need to be understood if meaningful interpretations of the model simulations are to be made. The work is concluded with the view that it is unfair to set one model against another in terms of broad applicability, but that a model of intermediate complexity, such as QUASAR, is generally well suited to simulate DO in river systems. 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Ion Distribution and Permeation Study of Biological Ion Channel Using PNP/ECP Model

The ion distrabution inside a biological ion channel is crut ial for the permeation properties of the system. The Poisson-Nernst-Planck(PNP) theory can b e used to compute macroscopic current in ion channels efficiently. However conventional PNP theor y is based on a continuum model for the charge flow, in which ions are considered as point particles. Due to the overscreening of mobile charge in the continue model and the point simplification of ions, th e conventional PNP theory predicts high ion concentration at highly changed protein and channel int rface, but moderate ion concentration at the axis of the channel region. This unrealistic ion distributi on results to the criticism of the PNP theory by many biologist for its imadequacy of explaining ion selec tivity and current saturation phenomena observed in many ion channels. The PNP model can be modified to include effects of finite ion size and water occupation by including a correction term, the Excess Chemical Potential (ECP), into the standard model [6] (Gillespie et al., 2002). The ECP correction term is caculated from the Density Functional Theory (DFT). A coupled 3-D PNP/ECP model is developed to simu late ion transport in biological ion channels [16] (Zhicheng et al., 2005). Ion distribution in s imple nanopore structure and real biological ion channels are presented in this paper. Permeation proper ties has been analysed and comparison to experiment results has been presented. Key-Words: Ion Channel, Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP), Excess Chemical P otential (ECP), Density Functional Theory (DFT), Gramicidin A (GA), Selectivity
Influence of N2 Gas Flow Ratio and Working Pressure on Amorphous Mo–Si–N Coating during Magnetron Sputtering

In this study, Mo–Si–N coatings were deposited on Si wafers and tungsten carbide substrates using a reactive direct current magnetron sputtering system with a MoSi powder target. The influence of sputtering parameters, such as the N2 gas flow ratio and working pressure, on the microstructure and mechanical properties (hardness (H), elastic modulus (E), and H/E ratio) of the Mo–Si–N coatings was systematically investigated using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), nanoindentation, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The gas flow rate was a significant parameter for determining the crystallinity and microstructure of the coatings. A Mo2N crystalline coating could be obtained by a high N2 gas flow ratio of more than 35% in the gas mixture, whereas an amorphous coating could be formed by a low N2 gas flow ratio of less than 25%. Furthermore, the working pressure played an important role in controlling the smooth surface and densified structure of the Mo–Si–N coating. For the amorphous Mo–Si–N coating deposited with the lowest working pressure (1 mTorr), the hardness, elastic modulus, and H/E ratio reached from 9.9 GPa, 158.8 GPa, and 0.062 up to 17.9 GPa, 216.1 GPa, and 0.083, respectively.
Cross-Platform Mobile App Development : A Qualitative Research and Systematic Mapping Study

Cross-platform frameworks for mobile application (app) development allow developers to deploy solutions on a range of platforms such as iOS and Android. Mobile apps developed using cross-platform frameworks can be run over different platforms, its development process reduces the time, effort, and resources cost. With the increased use of such frameworks, it is of utmost importance to understand the contributions and challenges in this emergent field, especially at industrial contexts. Although there have been numerous studies in this area of research, there is a lack of a coherent view at the industrial contexts. To address this issue, a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) is conducted to map state-of-theart empirical studies in this field. The SMS study introduced new perspectives for the intended case study at the industrial context. More specifically, the SMS study revealed a need to focus on code maintenance as well as testing methods. Accordingly, in this thesis, a qualitative research is conducted with four different software development companies in Palestine. This study aimed to understand how industrial teams approach mobile crossplatform development. Further, it worked to identify the challenges they face in the areas of code maintenance and software testing. The findings concluded in this research cover the important aspects in the industrial contexts, including the development process of how and why the cross-platform development approach is chosen. From the practitioners’ perspectives, the developers’ experience is the most influential factor in the development process. Further, it covers the used technologies in the industry and the dominant one from the practitioners’ perspectives, where they agreed that React-Native is the promising and dominant technology. Additionally, the main challenges that faced by the developers are introduced, it has been noticed that the libraries written by the providers are the major challenging area. Moreover, this research discussed the testing and found that the majority of the companies support the manual testing only. Finally, the maintenance for the crossplatform apps is also discussed, the developers clarified that the maintenance process becomes complex when the app has many injected native modules.
Oscillation criteria fornth-order forced functional differential equations

In this paper, by using the method of general means, some new oscillation criteria for force tional differential equations of the form x(n)(t)+ n−1 ∑ i=1 aix (i)(t)+ q(t)f (x(g(t)))= e(t), t0 0, are established, where ai are real constants, q(t), f (t), e(t), andg(t) are real continuous function xf (x) > 0 wheneverx = 0, and limt→∞ g(t) = ∞.  2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
SMALL-SCALE STUDIES OF WATER SPRAY DYNAMICS DURING EXPLOSION MITIGATION TESTS

Results are presented from small scale tests of the mitigation of methane-air explosions in a 5 m long 76 mm diameter explosion tube by water sprays covering a 500 mm long central section of the tube. By varying the length of an initial accelerating section, explosions with a range of flame velocities and associated rates of pressure rise could be generated. The dynamic response of the sprays to the explosion induced flows was monitored and the success or otherwise of the sprays in mitigating the explosions was noted. The preliminary findings suggest that a minimum explosion severity is required before sprays with initially relatively large mean droplet sizes (of the order 200-500 microns) are effective. The sprays become effective when the gas flow acceleration rates are sufficient to maintain a sufficient velocity differential between the spray and the gas phase so that droplet break-up occurs, in a manner similar to that observed for abrupt shock acceleration of sprays.
On-farm diagnosis of latent respiratory failure in calves

The goal of this study was to develop a method for the diagnosis of latent respiratory failure in calves with bovine respiratory disease (BRD) in farm conditions. The study involved 48 calves of the red-motley Holstein breed aged 14-28 days, with no previously experienced BRD, no dyspnea at rest, and a lack of anemia. Group I consisted of 24 calves with spontaneous or induced cough and WI clinical score of ≥5. Group II included 24 calves without spontaneous and induced cough and WI clinical score of ≤3. The determination of respiratory rate (RR), respiratory minute volume, and tidal volume in all calves was performed before and after functional exertion with a 15-min run and 30-s apnea. Blood samples were obtained from the jugular vein before 30-s apnea, then immediately after, and finally 1 min after apnea; blood gases and acid-base status were analyzed on an ABL-330, while total hemoglobin content was analyzed on a Micros-60. Tachypnea and dyspnea appeared after the 15-min run in group I calves, lasting 7.2 ± 0.4 and 3.7 ± 0.2 min. In group II calves, tachypnea lasted 3.8 ± 0.2 min, and no dyspnea occurred. Within 1 min, hypoxemia and hypercapnia caused by 30-s apnea in group II calves were compensated for due to an increase in pulmonary ventilation; in group I calves it was compensated for within more than 1 min, with presence of shallow breathing and dyspnea. The relation of RR immediately after 30-s apnea to RR before apnea showed excellent diagnostic value for detecting latent respiratory failure in the calves: area under the curve was 0.981, with cut-off point of ≥1.47, sensitivity of 95.8%, and specificity of 87.5%.
Running head: EUPHORIA IN MS AND MVA TBI PATIENTS 1 Euphoria in Multiple Sclerosis and Traumatic Brain Injured as a result of motor vehicle accidents patients

ion, planning, disinhibion, and set shifting. Verbal learning, memory and recognition were combined (RAVLT) to form one score, and visual learning, memory, and recognition were combined to form one score (BVMT-R). A composite of abstraction, disinhibion and set shifting was combined to form one score and named cognitive flexibility. A one-way ANOVA was therefore used to determine whether there were between-group differences in cognitive impairment. The analysis revealed significant between-group difference in the visuospatial measure (ROCF), F(2,20) = 3.61, p= . 046, η= . 27, verbal memory measure (RAVLT), F(2,20) = 15.45, p < . 001, η = . 61, and visual memory measure (BVMT-R), F(2,20) = 4.32, p= . 028,. η =. 30. Turkey’s HSD post hoc analysis indicated that the visuospatial measure (ROCF) tended toward significance between the HC and MVATBI participants, p= . 061. The verbal memory measure (RAVLT) revealed significant difference between the HC and MVA TBI participants, p < . 001, and between the MS and MVA TBI participants, p= . 003. The visual memory (BVMT-R) measure revealed significant difference between the HC and MVA TBI participants, p=. 043, and a difference between the MVA TBI and MS participants tended toward significance, p= . 060. A Kruskal-Wallis analysis was used to confirm these results. 2 MS participants performed significantly better than MVA TBI participants on the verbal memory measure (RAVLT), p <. 001. MS participants also performed better than MVA TBI A Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to evaluate between-group difference for measures of cognition. The test which was corrected for tied ranks, was significant for measures of verbal memory χ (2, N=30) = 12.72, p=. 002 and visual memory χ (2, N=30) = 4.861, p=. 010. Follow-up tests were conducted to evaluate pairwise differences among the three groups, The HC group were found to differ significantly from the MVA TBI group verbal memory. The MS group was found to differ significantly from the MVA TBI group on two measures of cognition, namely verbal memory and visual memory. The HC group was found to differ significantly from the MS group on only one measure of cognition, the visuospatial measure.
Faculty of Engineering and Technology Master of Computing (MCOM) Multi-Objective Optimization with K-medoids Clustering for Arabic Multi-Document Summarization

Multi-document summarization is one of the most important applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP). It aims to create a shorter version from a set of related documents with preserving the main content and overall meanings. This will eliminate redundancy and preserve the time required to read the whole documents. Text Summarization (TS) is either abstractive or extractive. In extractive summarization, the summary is generated by selecting the most important sentences based on statistical and linguistic features. In contrast, abstractive summary contains novel sentences which don’t appear in the source text. In this thesis, we propose an extractive Arabic multi-document summarization approach that employs a clustering-based method and an evolutionary multi-objective optimization method. The proposed approach uses the k-medoids clustering algorithm with a silhouette method to identify the main topics appearing in the original set of documents, while the optimization process tries to select the set of sentences to generate a summary that contains the most important sentences with maximum coverage and minimum redundancy. The proposed system has mainly three steps: scoring the sentences, identifying the topics that appear in the documents, then multi-objective optimization. In sentence scoring, both statistical features and semantic features are used to reflect the importance of each sentence in its local document. Moreover, the k-medoids clustering algorithm with a silhouette method is used to identify the main topics appearing in the original set of documents. Finally, the evolutionary algorithm is employed to generate a summary that contains the most important sentences with maximum coverage and diversity. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated using TAC 2011 and DUC 2002 datasets. The experimental results are compared using ROUGE evaluation measure, which shows the effectiveness of our system compared to other peer systems. With TAC 2011, our system outperforms other peer systems with all ROUGE metrics, and we achieve an F-measure of 38.9%, 17.7%, 35.4%, and 15.8% for Rouge-1, Rouge-2, Rouge-L, and Rouge-SU4 respectively. Moreover, our system with DUC 2002 dataset achieves an F-measure of 47.1%, 23.7%, 47.1%, 20.4% for Rouge-1, Rouge-2, Rouge-L, and Rouge-SU4 respectively.