Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A nonuniform FDTD technique for efficient analysis of propagation characteristics of optical-fiber waveguides

In this paper, we present a highly efficient one-dimensional cylindrical nonuniform finite-difference time-domain (1-D CNUFDTD) method, which utilizes the unsplit anisotropic perfectly matched layer (APML) for mesh truncation along the radial direction to analyze axisymmetric optical-fiber waveguides. As a first step, we validate the proposed FDTD algorithm by analyzing a uniform dielectric waveguide of circular cross section and show that the results are in excellent agreement with the conventional mode theory solutions. Next, we apply the algorithm to analyze propagation characteristics of a number of commonly used optical-fiber waveguides, i.e., step-index multimode, graded-index multimode, and single-mode step-index configurations.
A modular assembling platform for manufacturing of microsystems by optical tweezers

Due to the increased complexity in terms of materials and geometries for microsystems new assembling techniques are required. Assembling techniques from the semiconductor industry are often very specific and cannot fulfill all specifications in more complex microsystems. Therefore, holographic optical tweezers are applied to manipulate structures in micrometer range with highest flexibility and precision. As is well known non-spherical assemblies can be trapped and controlled by laser light and assembled with an additional light modulator application, where the incident laser beam is rearranged into flexible light patterns in order to generate multiple spots. The complementary building blocks are generated by a two-photon-polymerization process. The possibilities of manufacturing arbitrary microstructures and the potential of optical tweezers lead to the idea of combining manufacturing techniques with manipulation processes to “microrobotic” processes. This work presents the manipulation of generated complex microstructures with optical tools as well as a storage solution for 2PP assemblies. A sample holder has been developed for the manual feeding of 2PP building blocks. Furthermore, a modular assembling platform has been constructed for an ‘all-in-one’ 2PP manufacturing process as a dedicated storage system. The long-term objective is the automation process of feeding and storage of several different 2PP micro-assemblies to realize an automated assembly process.
Experiment to mitigate size effect on deep beams

Size effect is a phenomenon in reinforced-concrete beams associated with a reduction of shear strength owing to an increase in member size. It is postulated here that the size effect is related to the effectiveness of strut-and-tie model (STM), the mobilisation of which largely depends on the strut geometry and the strut boundary conditions. Strut geometry is governed by the size of the loading and support plates as well as the beam depth, while strut boundary conditions are governed by the spacing and diameter of web reinforcement transverse to the inclined struts. The test programme provided experimental evidence to the hypotheses obtained from STM. Test specimens consisted of two groups of four geometrically similar specimens. The first group consisted of beams without any web reinforcement; the dimensions of the loading and support plates were kept constant. The second group corresponded to the first group, except that they had (a) orthogonal web reinforcement and (b) proportionally increased loading .
Rare Trafficking CFTR Mutations Involve Distinct Cellular Retention Machineries and Require Different Rescuing Strategies

Most of the ~2100 CFTR variants so far reported are very rare and still uncharacterized regarding their cystic fibrosis (CF) disease liability. Since some may respond to currently approved modulators, characterizing their defect and response to these drugs is essential. Here we aimed characterizing the defect associated with four rare missense (likely Class II) CFTR variants and assess their rescue by corrector drugs. We produced CFBE cell lines stably expressing CFTR with W57G, R560S, H1079P and Q1100P, assessed their effect upon CFTR expression and maturation and their rescue by VX-661/VX-445 correctors. Results were validated by forskolin-induced swelling assay (FIS) using intestinal organoids from individuals bearing these variants. Finally, knock-down (KD) of genes previously shown to rescue F508del-CFTR was assessed on these mutants. Results show that all the variants preclude the production of mature CFTR, confirming them as Class II mutations. None of the variants responded to VX-661 but the combination rescued H1079P- and Q1100P-CFTR. The KD of factors that correct F508del-CFTR retention only marginally rescued R560S- and H1079P-CFTR. Overall, data evidence that Class II mutations induce distinct molecular defects that are neither rescued by the same corrector compounds nor recognized by the same cellular machinery, thus requiring personalized drug discovery initiatives.
Crop coefficient estimated by degree-days for ‘Marandu’ palisadegrass and mixed forage

Considering profitability in pasture-based systems, investigating parameters affecting crop coefficients for irrigation management becomes important. In this experiment, we determined the crop coefficient of ‘Marandu’ palisadegrass based on accumulated degree-days and estimated plant water consumption under single (‘Marandu’ alisadegrass) and mixed (‘Marandu’ palisadegrass + black oats + Italian ryegrass) cropping regimes. The research was conducted at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil, between 2016 and 2017. Evapotranspiration was assessed using weighing lysimeters while crop evapotranspiration was calculated using mean weight variation. Reference evapotranspiration and degree-days were estimated. Data were obtained from an automated weather station. Equations and regression models relating crop coefficient with accumulated degree-days were generated for two seasons (spring/summer and autumn/winter) and evaluated for two year-cycles, from 2015 to 2018. The results showed better prediction accuracy for the single cropping system in spring/summer 2017–18. Highlights The model for determinating crop coefficient (Kc) by accumulated degree-days showed efficient for use in determination local. The use of the degree days for determination Kc is more vantage because only necessary to measure the air temperature (maximum and minimum). The equations for determining crop coefficient by accumulated degree days for the spring/summer season in Marandu palisade grass cultive show more precision that in mixture forage system.
A speculation about what linguistic structures might be

Linguistics is heavily invested in the idea that linguistic utterances have ‘structures’, but there seems to be relatively little insight into what these structures actually are. In this chapter, Andrews suggests that they can be regarded as ‘aspirational equivalence classes’ of computations whereby the utterances are produced or understood. ‘Aspirational’ refers to the fact that unlike the case of Proof Theory, where the idea of equivalence classes of proofs a.k. a. computations originated, in linguistics we do not know what the computations are, but can nevertheless motivate some ideas about how they are organized. A classic example from LFG is the proposal that constituent-structures are found by a different set of processes than those that find functional-structures; a suggested new example is a proposal that functional-structures for ‘words’ are computed prior to their integration into the functional-structure for the utterance. Andrews suggests that this might be an intermediate level ‘1.6’ in Marr’s system of levels.
Willingness to Pay for Public Benefit Functions of Daecheong Dam Operation: Moderating Effects of Climate Change Perceptions

This study estimates the economic value of the Daecheong Dam for the public function of responding to climate change. It examines the moderating effect of climate change perceptions on value estimates by applying choice experiments (CE). The study specifies three dam function attributes—drought management (DM), flood control (FC), and water quality monitoring (WM)—subdivided into three levels to improve the existing conditions. Survey data from 603 households living in Daejeon, Chungbuk, and Chungnam have been collected to perform the CE. Subsequently, two clusters—high-involvement and low-involvement groups—have been extracted, based on the climate change perception index. The main results of comparing the marginal willingness-to-pay between the two clusters are as follows. The attributes and price variable significantly affected the choice probability to benefit from improvements in the rational signs of the coefficients. This does not violate the independence of the irrelevant alternatives assumption. The improvement values of high-involvement and low-involvement groups are estimated as KRW 21,570 and KRW 14,572 a year per household, respectively. Both show the same value intensities in the order of WM, DM, and FC.
Linearization of the Hoek-Brown Failure Criterion for Non-Hydrostatic Stress Fields

In this paper, a novel approximate method is proposed for the linearization of the Hoek-Brown (H-B) plastic potential function to circumvent some computational difficulties encountered in the analysis of underground openings in dilatant rock masses subject to non-hydrostatic in situ stresses. This is achieved by computing the equivalent Mohr-Coulomb (M-C) dilation parameter. The proposed method is validated by conducting elastoplastic and elastic-brittle-plastic plane strain finite element analysis of circular and non-circular openings in dilatant and non-dilatant rock masses subject to hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic in situ stresses. Displacements computed by using the H-B strength and dilation parameters are compared with those obtained by using the equivalent M-C parameters. The agreement in results is found to be very good.
Damage Identification of Multistory Shear Structure from Sparse Modal Information

AbstractThis paper presents a procedure to identify the damage of multistory shear structure from sparse modal information. Practically, it is difficult and expensive to measure modal response at many locations. A method has been proposed to compute the full modal information of a particular mode simply by knowing the frequency value of that mode. Then the concept of the residual force vector along with genetic algorithm has been implemented to get the location and extent of damage. Frequencies at different number of modes with and without corresponding partial mode shape is used as input to the model and results are compared to find out minimum number of modal information and their locations required for the best result. Experimental data are simulated numerically by solving eigen value problem of the damaged structure with inclusion of random noise on the vibration characteristics. Reliability of the procedure has been shown by various examples of multistory structure with different damaged situations.
Annual thermal performance assessment of a regenerative evaporative cooling system under different climate conditions in Mexico

A numerical heat and mass transfer model with thermophysical properties dependent on the temperature, humidity ratio and atmospheric pressure was developed. The numerical model was verified and validated against literature, and it showed good agreements. The pseudo-transient model provides a low-cost computational tool to evaluate the potential and performance of a dew point evaporative cooling system for a wide range of extreme climate conditions (BWh, BSh, Cw and Aw from Köppen classification). A parametric analysis of different operational and design conditions in the evaporative cooler was conducted. Results show that there is an optimal channel length for given climatic conditions. The Dew-point evaporative cooling (DPEC) system showed that the best thermal performance corresponds to the climate very arid (Hermosillo – BWh) with 4018 comfort hours (83.1%) followed by the climate arid (Monterrey – BSh) with 3470 comfort hours (90.9%), the mild climate (Puebla – Cw) with 295 comfort hours (100%) and the warm climate (Cancun – Aw) with 3452 comfort hours (62.3%). Finally, an engineering correlation for constant atmospheric pressure and channel length was obtained ( R adj 2 of 93%).
Protein acetylation effects on enzyme activity and metabolic pathway fluxes

Acetylation of proteins seems a widespread process found in the three domains of life. Several studies have shown that besides histones, acetylation of lysine residues also occurs in non‐nuclear proteins. Hence, it has been suggested that this covalent modification is a mechanism that might regulate diverse metabolic pathways by modulating enzyme activity, stability, and/or subcellular localization or interaction with other proteins. However, protein acetylation levels seem to have low correlation with modification of enzyme activity and pathway fluxes. In addition, the results obtained with mutant enzymes that presumably mimic acetylation have frequently been over‐interpreted. Moreover, there is a generalized lack of rigorous enzyme kinetic analysis in parallel to acetylation level determinations. The purpose of this review is to analyze the current findings on the impact of acetylation on metabolic enzymes and its repercussion on metabolic pathways function/regulation.
Do Loneliness and Social Isolation Predict Mortality Because of Hazardous Drinking?

Introduction: Subjective feelings of loneliness and objective social isolation have been consistently connected with ill-health and mortality, though little work has empirically examined the mechanisms explaining the adverse effects. This study examines whether alcohol consumption explains the connection of loneliness and social isolation on mortality in different age and gender groups. Methods: The sample comprised a representative 1994 Finnish sample (n = 8,650) matched with 22-year follow-up mortality data. A multigroup path analysis with discrete survival time analyses was conducted. Results: There were unique differences in the associations between loneliness, social isolation, alcohol consumption, and mortality based on age and gender groups. Loneliness and particularly social isolation predicted mortality partly through subjective intoxication for women under 40 and men 40–65. Discussion: Loneliness and social isolation are associated with mortality, partly through subjective intoxication. Interventions targeted at reducing loneliness and social isolation may help address underlying causes of excess alcohol consumption and mortality.
Revisiting the pallet loading problem using a discrete event system approach to minimise logistic costs

This paper presents a new challenging modelling approach to support different heuristics to tackle the pallet loading problem (PLP). A discrete event system model to tackle the PLP is specified using the coloured Petri net formalism in order to integrate the model with the industrial context in which the PLP must be solved. New events can be formalised in the model to implement different heuristics to consider the upstream (production) and downstream (transport) influence of the palletising activity in the logistic flow. A state space analysis is performed to evaluate the different solutions to fit the maximum number of boxes on a rectangular pallet, supporting the inherent box diversity (heterogeneous palletising problems) of present production and distribution logistic systems. The heuristics implemented show that acceptable occupancy results can be obtained without requiring the exhaustive evaluation of the different feasible combination. The results demonstrate that it outperforms other approaches which have been suggested for this type of problem. Potentially useful extensions of the work are discussed.
EFFECT OF PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK DURING 6 WEEKS OF VELOCITY BASED SQUAT JUMP TRAINING

This study investigated the effect of instantaneous performance feedback (peak velocity) provided after each repetition of squat jump exercises in 13 professional rugby players. Players were randomly assigned to a feedback or non feedback group and completed three training sessions per week for six weeks. The relative magnitude (effect size) of the training effects for all performance tests were found to be small, except for 30m sprint which was moderate. The use of feedback was found to be possibly beneficial to increasing vertical jump, 10m and 20m sprint, likely to be beneficial to increasing horizontal jump and almost certainly beneficial to increasing 30m sprint. It is suggested that the provision of instantaneous feedback on movement velocity during resistance training sessions provides a greater potential for adaptation and larger training effects.
Three-dimensional optical transfer function of optical system: from sophisticated calculation to simple approximation

he paper presents the approximation of the three-dimensional optical transfer function of diffraction-limited non coherent optical systems with axial symmetry. This approximation is based on the analytical expression for identification of three-dimensional spatial cutoff frequencies that specifies the spatial bandwidth in three-dimensional space of spatial harmonics. It does not require numerical integrations. The proposed techniques makes calculation of the three dimensional optical transfer functions accurate, easy and fast. It can be applied for performance evaluation, analysis of spatial resolution, computer simulation of imaging systems etc.
Re-constructible CMM software system modeling and its implementation

This paper presents a novel way for the re-constructible CMM software system modeling by taking advantage of a tiered modeling strategy. It consists of four tiers: (1) the bottom layer is the CAD model manager which encapsulates geometric engine and 3D object displaying engine as a COM; (2) the middle is the kernel components which is designed to manage the objects of geometric entity, coordinate system, probe and the system environment parameters etc; (3) the third layer is function modules layer that is used to manage and handle the messages and events of the windows/dialog, menus and toolbars; (4) the top layer is GUI module that is designed to initialize the application with the resource of GUI with the manner of dynamic loading. A set of commercial CMM software, Direct DMIS, has applied the method in a R&D of China National Institute of Measuring and Test Technology (NIMTT). It proves that the developed system can effectively integrate the modules distributed in different layers developed with C++ or C# and the proposed method is feasible.
Casper stent in the treatment of pulsatile tinnitus in fibromuscular dysplasia: Therapeutic review and case report

Fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) is a known cause of pulsatile tinnitus that can, on rare occasion, evolve into an incapacitating condition. It is a noninflammatory and nonatherosclerotic arteriopathy of unknown cause that affects medium-sized vessels, such as the carotid and renal arteries, occurring mainly in women. We describe a 72-year-old woman suffering from pulsatile tinnitus refractory to medical treatment who was successfully treated with Casper stent in the carotid artery. The different treatment strategies published in the literature were reviewed.
Superconducting Negative Resistance Switches

A new type of superconducting switch using the negative differential resistance of the CVC (current-voltage characteristic) curve of a nontunneling Josephson junction is suggested. With the proper choice of the load resistor monostable or bistable switching circuits may be designed. The power consumption, the switching speed and other relevant characteristic features of the proposed superconducting switches are analyzed.
Epiphyllous bryophytes in Arboretum Stradch (Ukraine)

The aim of this work done in Arboretum Stradch was to investigate bryophytes growing on leaves of woody understory, which are poorly studied in Central Europe. It was identified two facultative epiphyllous bryophytes considered as generalists and common species of Ukraine bryoflora: Brachythecium salebrosum and Hypnum cupressiforme . The most abundant was H. cupressiforme . Total surface area of its mats was about 218 cm 2 , while the total surface area of B. salebrosum mats was about 10 cm 2 . Both identified species occurred mainly on young individuals of Abies alba , which grew near tree trunks abundantly covered by the same moss species. H. cupressiforme also occurred rarely on leaves of two deciduous angiosperm phorophytes Corylus avellana and Ulmus glabra . B. salebrosum occurred also on one individual of Rubus caesius and on one individual of Ulmus glabra . This study brings new information about the ecology of the two identified mosses – their ability to grow on silver fir spindles and also on leaves of some deciduous phorophytes.
Accounting for variability and uncertainties in NDT condition assessment of corroded RC-structures

ABSTRACT The quantitative forecasting of corrosion development remains difficult, limiting the development of validated preventive maintenance strategies. Difficulties come from the spatial variability of material properties, the temporal variability of the environment and the sensitivity of non destructive measurements to changing environmental conditions. The reinforced concrete Barra Bridge, Portugal, has been thoroughly investigated, and on site data have been used for modelling the development of corrosion and its variability. A model has been derived from additional laboratory experiments, which enables to account for the influence of environment and to support the decision process regarding the corrosion state and the forecasting of its evolution.
An artificial neural network-based real time maximum power tracking controller for connecting a PV system to the grid

This work deals with the application of a neural network-based controller for tracking the point of maximum power of a photovoltaic (PV) system interconnected to the utility grid. The neural network is used to identify, in real time, the voltage for maximum output power of the system. The controller, through the information supplied by the neural network, generates a control signal that will be applied to a DC/DC (boost) converter in such a way to take the voltage of the system to a value which guarantees the operation of the PV system at maximum power. The boost converter duty-cycle is generated by a PI controller based on the information supplied by the neural network. In order to connect the PV system to the electric distribution system a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) is used operating with optimized sinusoidal PWM strategy with harmonics elimination at the output voltage up to the 17/sup th/ harmonic. The inverter uses IGBT as power switches, and is microcontroller operated.