Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adsorption of cadmium by magnesium-modified biochar at different pyrolysis temperatures

Metal pollution in soil is an increasing concern. Cadmium poses significant risks to ecosystems, and methodologies for its removal, including adsorption, have been researched. There are several environmentally friendly adsorbing materials (such as Biochar) for Cd removal. In this study, to improve the adsorptive capacity of Cd, coconut and peanut shells were used as raw materials to prepare Biochar at 300 °C and 600 °C. The effects of the pyrolysis temperature and material type on the physicochemical properties of the adsorbents were investigated by elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Magnesium-loaded BC was synthesized to determine its Cd2+ absorptivity. The adsorption characteristics and mechanisms of Cd2+ in an aqueous phase were studied through batch adsorption experiments. The results demonstrated that the pseudo-second-order kinetics model accurately described the adsorption kinetics of adsorbents of Cd2+. The adsorption behavior of the Cd2+ adsorbent conforms to the single layer adsorption described by the Langmuir model. Adsorption of Cd2+ involves a spontaneous endothermic process. The initial pH of the solution greatly influenced the adsorption of Cd2+ and showed a trend of rapid growth and then slow growth. Thus, magnesium-modified biomass carbon has good potential for applications in pollutant remediation.
A Beam-Tendon System with an Eccentrically Mounted Tendon: Parametric Studies

It has been recently suggested to incorporate a tendon into a rotorcraft blade to provide a means of controlling the blade’s dynamic properties. While the previous studies demonstrated the functionally of such a system, no systematic evaluation of the effect of the tendon crosssectional location and the effect of the cross-sectional parameters on the response of the system has been conducted. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to perform a series of numerical parametric studies to gain a better understating of free vibration of the beam-tendon system with an eccentrically placed tendon. The beam-tendon system is modelled using a set of partial differential equations and numerical free vibration analysis is carried out using a boundary problem solver. The sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the effect of the system’s parameters on the natural frequencies of the system and further parametric studies are carried out to assess the effect of the tendon’s eccentricity in detail. The results demonstrate that the location of the tendon significantly influences natural frequency shifts caused by the applied axial load and it is observed that some natural frequencies can even increase with the increasing axial loading for certain locations of the tendon. The paper concludes with a suggestion of practical applications of a beam-tendon system with an eccentrically placed tendon.
An Automatic Background Filtering Method for Detection of Road Users in Heavy Traffics Using Roadside 3-D LiDAR Sensors With Noises

Background filtering for roadside Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) data could benefit detection of road users with high frequency and accuracy. But existing methods are unsatisfactory under traffic congestions and neglect noises of LiDAR sensors. This paper attempts to develop background identification and filtering methods for heavy traffics and LiDAR noises. In particular, a 3-D space-time diagram of the LiDAR’s detection space over frames is divided into plenty of subspace-frames, where one subspace-frame refers to one subspace from the isometric division of detection space in one frame. For subspace-frames at the same position, an unsupervised clustering method with unknown number of clusters is applied for classifying subspace-frames into different groups and the background group is identified based on background characteristics. The proposed clustering method is a ${t}$ -distribution mixture model with constraints, where weights follow a Dirichlet distribution so that some weights have the possibility to be 0. A Bayesian estimation framework is developed to carry out the clustering. Then each background subspace-frame is divided into cubes with equal lengths. By aggregating points over frames in the same cube, the cube with aggregated points is regarded as background cube. For background filtering, points in background cubes are background points and excluded. Finally, examined by data from a Velodyne VLP-32 LiDAR sensor, the proposed approach has better filtering results no matter under free-flow conditions or congestions. Using background filtering results for road users’ detection is introduced as well.
Nonuniform compact Ultra-Wide Band Wilkinson power divider with different unequal split ratios

ABSTRACT A compact Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) Wilkinson power divider with different unequal split ratios of 2:1 and 3:1 using three optimized resistors is analyzed, designed and fabricated in this study. A 31.1% size reduction in each λ/4 uniform transmission line (UTL) of the divider is achieved by applying non-uniform transmission lines (NTLs) theory. The proposed divider is contributed to be suitable as a feeder to currently used wireless communication networks such as cognitive radios (CR), resulting in good impedance matching to its entire ports. In addition, the optimized resistors used provided good isolation between the output ports. The simulation is carried out in this study uses High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software. The simulation results are compared with the hardware measurements to validate the results. It was observed that there was approximately 5% of the difference between simulated and hardware measurements which is within the acceptable limit.
The impact of depression on outcomes following acute myocardial infarction.

ii Acknowledgements . iv Chapter 1: Introduction to Depression and AMI . 1 Depression and Medical Comorbidity . 1 Measurement of depression with comorbid medical illness . 2 Depression and health care consumption. 3 Depression Following Acute Myocardial Infarction . 3 Depression and Health Service Consumption Following AMI . 5 Depression and AMI – a conceptual framework . 6 Data Sources . 7 The impact of missing data . 8 Thesis Questions . 10 Chapter 2: Depression, mortality, and cardiac functional status following AMI. 12 ABSTRACT. 12 Introduction. 14 Methods. 15 Results. 21 Discussion. 24 Chapter 3: Depressive symptoms, health service use, and prognosis following AMI . 38 Abstract . 38
Variable-Weight Block Dual-Diagonal Structure for Low-Rate QC LDPC Codes With Low Error Floors

Irregular quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with the block dual-diagonal (BDD) parity structure are widely adopted in many communication standards because the BDD structure supports an efficient encoding and many degree-2 variable nodes inside are adequate for the construction of mid- to high-rate codes. However, we observe that low-rate irregular QC LDPC codes with the BDD parity structure inherently contain too many degree-2 variable nodes and suffer from error floors in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. In this paper, a generalized BDD structure including double-weight circulants as well as circulant permutation matrices is proposed for low-rate irregular QC LDPC codes with low error floors which is achieved with a little bit giving up error performance in the waterfall region. When constructing the parity part of a code with the generalized BDD structure, the portion of double-weight circulants is variable so that the resulting LDPC code can achieve a desired degree distribution including degrees 2 and 3 while supporting the efficient encoding. We show that low-rate QC LDPC codes constructed with the proposed BDD structure have better theoretical properties and lower error floor than those with the conventional BDD structure.
Design of a High-Performance Low-Cost Radiation-Hardened Phase-Locked Loop for Space Application

In the harsh space environment, the phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit is vulnerable to radiation effects, which will lead to performance degradation or even function interrupts. In this article, a rad-hard low-noise PLL is designed with low power and area overhead and verified in a 130-nm silicon-on-insulator process. Heavy ion test demonstrates that the proposed PLL is immune to the single-event effect up to 83.7 MeV·cm2/mg. Furthermore, its single-event sensitivity is characterized and compared with an unhardened PLL by the pulsed laser test. Finally, the gamma-ray radiation experiment confirms that it can provide >300 krad(Si) total ionizing dose assurance.
The epidemiology of paediatric diarrhoeal disease and Shigella infections in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Shigella is an enteric pathogen that is the most common bacterial cause of dysentery globally, most frequently infecting children in developing countries. Resistance to common antimicrobials is now widespread and is beginning to make the management of this often-severe infection very challenging. Vaccination offers a realistic option for preventing and controlling shigellosis, yet several critical questions need to be answered before a successfully licensed vaccine can be introduced. Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), in Vietnam, is a rapidly industrialising urban setting with a high burden of paediatric diarrhoeal disease and is representative of many similar regions globally. Through the structure of a community cohort, the incidence of diarrhoeal disease in children under the age of five in HCMC was found to be 70/100 child years, indicating that diarrhoea remains a significant cause of paediatric morbidity in this location. Furthermore, children living at low elevation in the centre of the city were found to be at increased risk of reported diarrhoeal disease during periods of higher temperature and flooding, highlighting a particular community at risk. This work also documents Shigella as a common cause of dysentery in both hospital and the community in HCMC, with community-based incidence estimated to be 1.5/100 child years in 2-5 year olds. Resistance against a variety of antimicrobials in Shigella was detected, and organisms harbouring mutations against fluoroquinolone activity were found to survive for longer periods in the presence of ciprofloxacin in vitro, suggesting a potential epidemiological advantage against sensitive strains. Finally, the half-life of maternal immunity against the O-antigen of S. sonnei was found to 43 days and by five months of age less than half of children in HCMC have any circulating maternal protection. Work from this thesis will help inform future vaccine rollout efforts and fills important gaps in the current literature surrounding this increasingly challenging infection.
Effective connectivity differences in motor network during passive movement of paretic and non-paretic ankles in subacute stroke patients

Background A better understanding of the neural changes associated with paresis in stroke patients could have important implications for therapeutic approaches. Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is commonly used for analyzing effective connectivity patterns of brain networks due to its significant property of modeling neural states behind fMRI signals. We applied this technique to analyze the differences between motor networks (MNW) activated by continuous passive movement (CPM) of paretic and non-paretic ankles in subacute stroke patients. This study aimed to identify CPM induced connectivity characteristics of the primary sensory area (S1) and the differences in extrinsic directed connections of the MNW and to explain the hemodynamic differences of brain regions of MNW. Methods For the network analysis, we used ten stroke patients’ task fMRI data collected under CPMs of both ankles. Regions for the MNW, the primary motor cortex (M1), the premotor cortex (PM), the supplementary motor area (SMA) and the S1 were defined in a data-driven way, by independent component analysis. For the network analysis of both CPMs, we compared twelve models organized into two model-families, depending on the S1 connections and input stimulus modeling. Using DCM, we evaluated the extrinsic connectivity strengths and hemodynamic parameters of both stimulations of all patients. Results After a statistical comparison of the extrinsic connections and their modulations of the “best model”, we concluded that three contralateral self-inhibitions (cM1, cS1 and cSMA), one contralateral inter-regional connection (cSMA→cM1), and one interhemispheric connection (cM1→iM1) were significantly different. Our research shows that hemodynamic parameters can be estimated with the Balloon model using DCM but the parameters do not change with stroke. Conclusions Our results confirm that the DCM-based connectivity analyses combined with Bayesian model selection may be a useful technique for quantifying the alteration or differences in the characteristics of the motor network in subacute stage stroke patients and in determining the degree of MNW changes.
The impact and implications of vehicle collisions on the endangered and endemic Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii)

Roads can affect wildlife in a variety of negative ways. Studies of road ecology have mostly concentrated in the northern hemisphere despite the potentially greater impact on biodiversity that roads may have in tropical habitats. Here, we examine a 4-year opportunistic dataset (January 2016 – December 2019) on mammalian roadkill observed along a road intersecting Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, Unguja, Zanzibar. In particular, we assess the impact of collisions on the population of an endangered and endemic primate, the Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii). Primates accounted for the majority of roadkill. Monthly rainfall variation was not associated with roadkill frequency for mammals and specifically for the Zanzibar red colobus. No single age-sex class of colobus was found dead more often than expected given their availability in the local population. The exact effect of roadkill on colobus populations in habitats fragmented by roads is unknown given the lack of accurate, long-term life history data for this species. However, the frequency of kills documented in this study suggests further mitigation measures may be important. Our data show that mortality from collisions with vehicles in some groups of colobus are comparable to rates of mortality experienced by other primate populations from natural predation. Unlike natural predators, however, vehicles are not ‘selective’ in their targeting of ‘prey’. The long-term implications of such a ‘predation regime’ on this species remain to be established.
Achieving O (log 3 n ) Communication-Efﬁcient Privacy-Preserving Range Query in Fog-Based IoT

—The advance of Internet of Things (IoT) techniques has promoted an increasing number of organizations to explore more mission-critical solutions. However, the response latency, bandwidth usage, and reliability are still challenging issues in traditional IoT. To tackle these challenges, fog-based IoT has become popular and range query is one of the most frequently used operations in fog-based IoT, where, given a range query, a fog node will return the aggregated data from IoT devices to the query user. Because the fog nodes are not fully trusted, there is a desire to design a privacy-preserving range query scheme in fog-based IoT. However, most of existing privacy-preserving range query schemes are not efﬁcient in terms of communication overhead, especially for a large-size range. Therefore, it is still a challenging issue to design a communication-efﬁcient range query in fog-based IoT. Aiming at this challenge, in this paper, we propose a new privacy-preserving range query scheme in fog-based IoT. Speciﬁcally, we ﬁrst devise an efﬁcient homomorphic encryption scheme for maintaining the data privacy and security in a range query. Then, we present a novel range decomposition technique to compile the range query, which can transform a given range query [ L, U ] , where 0 ≤ L ≤ U ≤ n − 1 , into a semi-triangular structure, and enable our proposed scheme to achieve O (log 3 n ) communication efﬁciency. Detailed security analysis shows that our proposed scheme is really privacy-preserving, and the extensive performance evaluation demonstrates that our proposed scheme is efﬁcient in terms of low communication overhead and computational cost.
Mapping from wheeled locomotion to vertical group of joint space for snake like robot rectilinear locomotion

This paper presents mapping from friction roller to robot joint space for complex snake like robot gait such as rectilinear locomotion. In this study, the parametric periodic wave is generated quantitatively from friction roller model to implement locomotion for hyper redundant robot multiple joint and linkages or joint space world. This procedure is called the mapping from operational or world to robot joint space. The body shape can be modelled as fraction of ideal diameter of the whole length of snake like robot body enveloping a desired diameter. The body shape, speed and contact points can be determined from the approximation of one whole diameter and desired diameter planned by the motion planner.
Detection of 1,4-Benzodiazepine by Using Different Analytical Methods

Benzodiazepines (BDZs) are the chemicals having the flexible restorative qualities. These are the kind of psychotropic medication, that is, they concern the brain and can revise attitude. Benzodiazepines upgrade the impact of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric corrosive (GABA) and are along these lines utilized restoratively as anxiolytics, sedatives, hypnotics, anticonvulsants in epilepsy and midway acting muscle relaxants. Benzodiazepines (BDZs) are for the most part regularly utilized as anxiolytic or potentially trancelike medications as a ligand of the GABA-benzodiazepine receptor. Besides, some of benzodiazepines are generally utilized as a hostile to depressive and narcotic medications, furthermore as against epileptic medications and now and again can be valuable as an assistant treatment in headstrong epilepsies or hostile to alcoholic treatment. The across the board utilization of this class of medications has sometimes raised worry about recreational benzodiazepine mishandle and has prompted to the wrong impression that benzodiazepines have a generally high manhandle risk among recreational medication clients. The mishandle or abuse of benzodiazepines is universally boundless which implies that any scientific research facility may experience a scope of these mixes. As a rule, benzodiazepines experienced in the unlawful market are redirected from legitimated sources.
The synergistic effect of the PEO–PVA–PESf composite polymer electrolyte for all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries

Blending with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and poly(oxyphenylene sulfone) (PESf) has been investigated to improve the properties of a polymer electrolyte based on a poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) matrix. The composite electrolyte shows a high ionic conductivity of 0.83 × 10−3 S cm−1 at 60 °C due to the significant inhibition of crystallization caused by the synergistic effects of PVA and PESf. The symmetrical cell Li/CPE/Li is continuously operated for at least 200 hours at a current density of 0.1 mA cm−2 without the enhancement in the polarization potential. In addition, the all-solid-state LiFePO4/CPE/Li cells exhibit small hysteresis potential (about 0.10 V), good cycle stability and excellent reversible capacity (126 mA h g−1 after 100 cycles).
Do Aligned Bodies Align Minds? The Partners’ Body Alignment as a Constraint on Spatial Perspective Use

ABSTRACT In a direction-giving task, we examine whether a high-level constraint—the task partners’ relative body alignment—influences spatial language use and task accuracy. In 32 pairs, task partners interacted in two conditions: for one route description, direction givers (DGs) and direction followers (DFs) sat side-by-side (aligned condition), and for another they sat opposite one another (counter-aligned condition). After each description, DFs drew the route on a map. When pairs were counter-aligned (vs. aligned), DGs increased their use of expressions from a survey perspective, using more frequently terms such as east-west. When counter-aligned, DFs also used more words per conversational turn, which was taken to reflect the increased difficulty of coordinating in that condition. Still, in terms of task performance, the accuracy of DFs’ drawings was unaffected by the partners’ body alignment or spatial language use; it was only predicted by the DGs’ spatial ability. We argue that, because direction giving emphasizes accuracy, task partners invest in strategies that contribute to mutual understanding (e.g., recaps of the route by the DF at the end, evidenced by shifts in language use over time). Thus, body alignment in direction giving impacts coordination difficulty and spatial language use, but it does not singularly influence task performance.
Professional Caregivers: Stress and Coping in the Face of Loss and Trauma

Abstract Professional caregivers who work with the trauma and suffering of others, such as doctors, nurses and psychologists, may face significant challenges along with the risk of adverse, long-term mental and physical health problems. Caregivers with responsibility for dependants outside their professional work reported more stress. This finding is of particular relevance in respect of caregivers in under-developed countries such as Zimbabwe, where many households have taken in additional children who have been orphaned, whose parents are ill, or whose parents have temporarily gone elsewhere in search of work. For the purposes of the study, a qualitative phenomenological research design was selected as appropriate to the focus on human experience. An interpretative approach was adopted to explore and explicate the lived experiences of the participants and the meaning they attached to them. The major sources of stress for professional caregivers emerged as being resource constraints, interpersonal issues, and personal issues. Factors found to promote coping include the caregiver’s meaning making perspective, making a difference, and constructing a sense of personal control.
High-order harmonic generation in solid 
C60

High-order harmonic generation (HHG) has unleashed the power of strong laser physics in solids. Here we investigate HHG from a large system, solid ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}$, with 240 valence electrons engaging harmonic generation at each crystal momentum. We employ the density functional theory and the time-dependent Liouville equation of the density matrix to compute HHG signals. We find that under a moderately strong laser pulse, HHG signals reach 15th order, consistent with the experimental results from ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}$ plasma. The helicity dependence in solid ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}$ is weak, due to the high symmetry. In contrast to the general belief, HHG is unsuitable for band structure mapping in ${\mathrm{C}}_{60}$. However, we find a window of opportunity using a long wavelength, where harmonics are generated through multiple-photon excitation. In particular, the fifth-order harmonic energies closely follow the transition energy dispersion between the valence and conduction bands. This finding is expected to motivate future experimental investigations.
An effective interference suppression algorithm for visible light communication system based on DBSCAN

In order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and mitigate the damage of noise to the communication quality, an effective interference suppression algorithm, which is based on the improved density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise algorithms, is proposed for visible light communication systems using the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor image sensor as the receiver. Experimental results show that the algorithm can learn the region where the payload data is located, filter out the noise data, and greatly decrease the interference. The effect of the algorithm is also studied through bit error ratio performance.