Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Studies of the Liquid/Vapor Interface of Binary Aqueous Solutions and Solid/Liquid Interface of Nanoparticle Colloids

Author(s): Makowski, Michael James | Advisor(s): Hemminger, John C | Abstract: The interface between two phases of matter is an interaction polestar, a chemically rich intermolecular hub often fraught with science unexplored. May it be the liquid/vapor interfaces of our oceans, rivers and aqueous cloud-based droplets suspended in the atmosphere, or the hydrated solid/liquid interfaces of industrial catalysts and electrodes found in batteries, fuel cells or groundwater remediation plants. No matter the choice, we are regularly exposed to interfaces and staunchly rely on an evolving knowledge-base of such systems to enhance the quality of life.The work to be presented in the following thesis will include the studies of both liquid/vapor and solid/liquid interfaces using experimental and computational techniques. In Chapter 1 is an experimental background highlighting the development of X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy toward its use of probing the liquid/vapor interface of liquid micro-jets and the adaptation of this technique to permit near ambient pressures in the sample analysis chamber. The experimental system utilized for the studies herein may be found in Appendix A.Also included in Chapter 1 is a general background on the computational methods required for simulating molecular trajectories of the systems in question. To follow, in Chapter 2, is a description of the program that I have written that evaluates the instantaneous interface of a liquid solution. Input and output les are considered for proper use of the program, and the source is provided in Appendix B.Chapter 3 is a highly comprehensive evaluation of the solvation of 1- and 2-propanol at the surface of aqueous solutions. Results presented are of liquid-jet ambient pressure X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy and classical Molecular Dynamics simulations. The direction of these studies were toward elucidating surface concentration, density and orientation effects upon changing the bulk alcohol concentration. The two systems were compared to learn of differences due to elementally identical, but geometrically dissimilar molecules. Discussed is the observation of surface concentration enhancements, orientational ordering and trends of the surface atom populations over varying bulk concentration.Chapter 4 is of the investigation of the solid/liquid interface of suspended titanium dioxide nanoparticles in a high ionic strength, aqueous, nitric acid electrolyte. The goal here was to investigate the affect that the surrounding ions have on the nanoparticle surface. It was the first study to successfully observe band bending at the solid/liquid interface of a colloidal TiO2 nanoparticle in bulk electrolyte solution.
Effect of water absorption on impact strength for epoxy-glass fibers composite

: Hand lay-up method was used to prepare sheets of epoxy (EP) reinforced with 12 layers of (0  -90  ) glass fiber mat with volume fraction equal to 30%. The sheets of Ep- glass fiber composite were cut to samples with standard dimensions for charpy impact test. The main objective of this research was to study the effect of water absorption on impact strength for epoxy-12 glass fiber composite. Diffusivity behavior and diffusion coefficient were investigated. The samples were dividing to three groups immersed in distilled water for different time, the first group 15 days ,the second group 27 days and the last 39 days at constant temperature(±20)C  the mass gain recorded every 3 days till saturation (M  ) after that the mass gain decreased . the results showed that the maximum diffusion coefficient (minimum absorption resistance ) was for sample (A),while the minimum diffusion coefficient (maximum absorption resistance) was for sample (C). The impact strength has been investigated for samples before and after the immersion in distilled water for different time. The results show that the impact strength decreased with increasing the time of immersion for samples.
Pulsed vacuum drying of Chinese ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) slices: Effects on drying characteristics, rehydration ratio, water holding capacity, and microstructure

ABSTRACT Effects of vacuum pressure duration (t-VPD of 5, 10, 15, and 20 min), ambient pressure duration (t-APD of 3, 5, 7, and 9 min), drying temperature (60, 65, 70, and 75°C), and slice thickness (3, 5, 7, and 9 mm) on drying kinetics, rehydration ratio (RR), water holding capacity (WHC), and microstructure of Chinese ginger were investigated using a pulsed vacuum dryer. Various parameters affecting drying rate significantly of ginger slices except t-APD, and the shortest drying time of 300 min was obtained when the t-VPD, drying temperature, and slice thickness were 10 min, 70°C, and 3 mm, respectively. Weibull model fitted the experimental results better (R2 > 0.99) than first-order model. RR was increased with increasing of t-VPD while it was decreased with increasing of temperature, and a decreased trend of WHC was observed with increasing temperature or t-VPD. Microstructure observation indicated that increased t-VPD resulted in larger tunnel structure, and high temperature caused the formation of rigid structure, which well explained the changes of RR and WHC of dried ginger. The findings in current work contribute to good understanding of the pulsed vacuum drying behavior and quality of ginger.
AUDIO SCENE CLASSIFICATION USING ENHANCED CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS FOR DCASE 2021 CHALLENGE

This technical report describes our system proposed for Task 1B – Audio-Visual Scene Classification of the DCASE 2021 Challenge. Our system focuses in the audio signal based classification. The system has an architecture based on the combination of Convolutional Neural Networks and OpenL3 embeddings. The CNN consist of three stacked 2D convolutional layers to process the log-Mel spectrogram parameters obtained from the input signals. Additionally OpenL3 embeddings of the input signals are also calculated and merged with the output of the CNN stack. The resulting vector is fed to a classification block consisting of three fully connected layers. Mixup augmentation technique is applied to the training data and binaural data is also used as input to provide additional information. In this report, we describe the proposed systems in detail and compare them to the baseline approach using the provided development datasets.
Combining electric vehicle battery charging and battery cell equalisation in one circuit

Haimeng Wu Department of Mathematics, Physics & Electrical Engineering Ellison Building, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, United Kingdom. Email: Haimeng.wu@northumbria.ac. uk Abstract Electric vehicles (EVs) require an onboard battery charger unit and a battery management system (BMS) unit that balances the voltage levels for each battery cell. So far, both units are two completely autarkic power electronics systems. The circuit presented here operates as a battery charger when the EV is connected to the grid and as a voltage balancer when the EV is driving. Thus, the proposed circuit utilises two functions in one and therefore eliminates the need of having two autarkic units reducing complexity and reduction in component count. The proposed circuit operates as a flyback converter and achieves power factor correction during battery charging. The constant‐current constant‐ voltage (CC–CV) charging method is employed to charge the batteries. However, to limit the number of sensors that will be employed as a result of varying cells during charging, the battery current is estimated using a single current transducer and embedding a converter model in the controller. The operation of the circuit is presented in detail and is supported by simulation results. A laboratory prototype is built to verify the effectiveness of the proposed topology. Experiment results show that the proposed method provides an integrated solution of on‐board charging and voltage equalisation.
Spatially modulated broad-area lasers for narrow lateral far-field divergence.

A novel laser design is presented that combines a longitudinal-lateral gain-loss modulation with an additional phase tailoring achieved by etching rectangular trenches. At 100 A pulsed operation, simulations predict a far-field profile with 0.3° full width at half maximum (Θ F W H M =0.3 ∘ ) where a 0.4°-wide main lobe contains 40% of the emitted optical output power (Θ 40% =0.4 ∘ ). While far-field measurements of these structured lasers emitting 10 ns long pulses with 35 W peak power confirm a substantial enhancement of radiation within the central 1∘ angular range, the measured far-field intensity outside of the obtained central peak remains high.
Extramarital Affairs and Family Disruption

Marriage is sacred bond and covenantal commitment. Unfaithfulness and perversity to it are unpardonable sins according to Islamic orthodoxy and jurisprudence. The extramarital relationship is proving devastating to this legitimate and committed relation. The researcher was inquisitive: why do married people fall a prey to extramarital affairs? Could it not be that spouses are deficient in some concomitant and compelling urges in the marital relationship, they seek to appease from external sources, transgressing the marital boundaries? Are such pernicious activities in vogue in our Islamic Society? Are these practices not a blatant renunciation to God’s commandments? Keeping in view all these staggering matters of concern, this study was conducted. The main objectives of this study were to explore the manifestations of extramarital affairs, the factors accounting for extramarital affairs and their influences on the family. For this purpose, a correlational study design was selected and followed; since, for the investigation of the influences of extramarital affairs on the family functionality, the determination of relationship between these two variables was considered a necessity. The sample of the study consisted of 120 well educated respondents of both sexes belonging to three different professions. The data were collected by administering five points Likert Scale questionnaire; titled: Extramarital Affairs and Family Disruption Questionnaire (EAFDQ). It was face validated by two experts. To check its internal consistency Cronbach Alpha reliability test was utilized and the value of the coefficient obtained was 0.831. To achieve the objectives of the study, three questions and three null hypotheses were formulated. The questions were analyzed comparing the means and standard deviations and using Pearson Correlation Analysis. The null hypotheses were examined through ANOVA and two stages Least Squares Regression Analysis. The major findings of the study showed that various types of extramarital affairs might occur among married couples. The study construed that EMA exerted diverse disruptive effects on the matrimonial relations and family set up, since there was a straight positive relationship between the independent variable of the types of EMA and the dependent variable of family disruption. The study also proved that sinful activities of EMA were being performed even in Islamic republic of Pakistan where such practices were considered a flagrant disobedience to God’s commandments and established bounds of permissible sexual behavior.
Comparison of Structural and Neural Language Models as Surprisal Estimators

A recent trend in computational psycholinguistics has been to use large pretrained neural lan­ guage models (NLMs) to generate surprisal estimates [2, 5, 8]. Although there is some evidence that NLM surprisal is predictive of human behavioral responses [2, 5], there has been very little work (see [4]) comparing its predictive power to that of surprisal from structural parser­based processing models. In this study, we conduct regression analyses on three different datasets and demonstrate that surprisal estimates from a sentence processing model informed by syntactic and morpholog­ ical structure contribute to substantially better fits than those from widely­used pretrained NLMs [3, 6, 4, 9] on self­paced reading and eye­tracking data, but not on fMRI data. To this end, we use a non­recurrent neural extension of a left­corner parser [12] that has a character­based model for estimating word generation probabilities at preterminal nodes. The proposed model defines a process of generating words w t from underlying lemmas x t and mor­ phological rules r t , which allows the processing model to capture the predictability of given word forms in a fine­grained manner. In
IMPROVING ABSTRACTIVE SUMMARIZATION BY UNDERSTANDING HIDDEN REPRESENTATIONS AND GUIDANCE ON SEMANTIC MEANING

Abstractive Summarization is a challenging task in Text Summarization field. Most work on summarization task focus on minimizing negative log-likelihood objective function. This leads to difficulty in generating highly abstractive summaries if the dataset does not have good reference summaries. In this paper, we propose a model that follows a three-step workflow of understanding and generating abstractive summarization, which includes understanding hidden representation of the data samples by using Conditional Variational Autoencoder model; giving guidance and rewards for the model going in right direction; and using top-𝑝 random sampling to generate highly abstractive summaries based on the learned features and hidden latent space. We show that having deeper understanding about the structure can obtain higher abstractedness while keeping the same semantic understanding of the document.
LINUX-BASED PXIe SYSTEM FOR THE REAL-TIME CONTROL OF NEW PAINTING BUMPER AT CERN

In the framework of the LHC Injectors Upgrade Project, the new connection from Linac4, injecting a 160 MeV Hbeam into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB) requires a set of four slow kicker magnets (KSW) per PSB ring to move the beam on a stripping foil, remove electrons and perform phase space painting. A new multiple-linear waveform generator based on a Marx topology powers each KSW, allowing adjustment of the current discharge shape with high flexibility for the different beam users. To control these complex power generators, National Instruments (NI) PXIe crates fitted with a set of modules (A/D, D/A, FPGA, PROFINET) are used. Initially, control soft-ware developed with LabVIEW has validated the test bench hardware. A full software re-engineering, accessing the hard-ware using Linux drivers, C APIs and the C++ framework FESA3 under Linux CentOS7 was achieved for operational deployment. This paper describes the hardware used, and the integration of NI PXIe systems into CERN controls environment, as well as the software architecture to access the hardware and provide PSB operators and kicker experts with the required control and supervision.
Cloning and expression of Neospora caninum rhoptry 2 and its potential as an immunobiological for neosporosis control 1

RESUMO. [Clonagem e expressão de rhoptry 2 Neospora caninum e seu potencial como um imunobiológico para o controle de neosporose. ] O protozoário Neospora caninum é conhecido mundialmente como uma das principais causas de aborto em bovinos. Durante a infecção, as proteínas rhoptry presentes no complexo apical do parasita desempenham papel importante na adesão e formação de vacúolos parasitóforos. O uso de ROP2 de N. caninum em vacinas experimentais tem mostrado resultados de proteção promissores. Em nosso estudo, realizamos a clonagem e expressão em Escherichia coli de uma porção antigênica de N. caninum ROP2. A proteína recombinante (rROP2) foi obtida na forma insolúvel, e a proteína purificada apresentou tamanho aproximado de 18kDa. Mesmo sendo uma pequena região truncada de NcROP2, foi possível conservar os epítopos antigênicos que foram reconhecidos pelo soro de bovinos naturalmente infectados com N. caninum. A vacinação com rROP2 adsorvida no adjuvante de hidróxido de alumínio induziu altos níveis de anticorpos IgG anti-rROP2, capazes de reconhecer a proteína nativa em lisados de taquizoítos. Em conclusão, nossas abordagens foram eficazes na obtenção da proteína rROP2, que induziu resposta imune específica em camundongos e também foi reconhecida por soros de bovinos naturalmente infectados com N. caninum. Estes resultados sugerem que rROP2 é um antígeno promissor para o desenvolvimento de vacinas de subunidades de neosporose, bem como um antígeno adequado para uso em imunodiagnóstico.
DCASE 2021 Task 1B: Technique Report

—This report shows a deep learning framework for audio-visual scene classiﬁcation (SC). Our extensive experiments, which are conducted on DCASE Task 1B development dataset, achieve the best classiﬁcation accuracy of 82.2%, 91.1%, and 93.9% with audio input only, visual input only, and both audio-visual input, respectively.
ASSISTO eCARE 4.0 - An IoT- and AI-based architecture for assisted active aging

INTRODUCTION: All over Europe, there is an increasing demand for social/welfare services and a shift towards a demand increasingly formed by a mix of well-being and safety. Artificial intelligence (AI), Internet-of-Things (IoT) and cloud computing techniologies can play a major role in such a type of services. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this work was to investigate, design, develop and validate a prototype platform, named Assisto eCare 4.0, providing “well-being” and “safety” services/functionalities to home elderly residents. METHODS: The platform builds upon biometric technologies and analytics functionalities exploiting AI techniques in order to limit human intervention during emergencies and automatically and immediately deciding actions to be performed by making the operators intervene also directly at the user home. RESULTS: The prototype has been validated with a group of 22 users over a period of more than 7 months. The results derived from the final evaluation questionnaire show that the majority of participants rated the service as excellent. CONCLUSIONS: The platform has been released according to the API-as-a-Service model, proposing itself with a pioneering model of social open innovation, which is to develop and test the IT system and then to make it available to all those who want to use it. Currently (July 2021) the system has been engineered and offered by a consortium of different industries and is operative in the Rome area.
Quality of Life in Chinese Cities

Abstract The Rosen-Roback spatial equilibrium theory states that cross-city variations in wages and housing prices reflect urban residents' willingness to pay for urban amenities or quality of life. This paper is the first to quantify and rank the quality of life in Chinese cities based on the Rosen-Roback model. Using the 2005 1% Population Intercensus Survey data, we estimate the wage and housing hedonic models. The coefficients of urban amenity variables in both hedonic models are considered the implicit prices of amenities and are used as the weights to compute the quality of life for each prefecture-level city in China. In general, provincial capital cities and cities with nice weather, good air quality, and accessible public transit have high quality of life. We also find that urban quality of life is positively associated with the subjective well-being of urban residents.
The Real Effects of Low-for-long Interest Rates on Mainland Firms Listed in Hong Kong

Using financial disclosure of listed firms in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2016, this paper investigates the investment response of Mainland firms to the low-for-long interest rate environment after the Global Financial Crisis and examines whether the changes in their investment decisions reflect the mitigation of financial constraints or the manifestation of agency problems. Our difference-in-difference tests show that Mainland firms listed in Hong Kong increased investments significantly more than local firms during this period when external financing costs were reduced. Empirical evidence also shows that Mainland firms’ total investments on average became more responsive to productive investment opportunities and their operating efficiency improved in the low-for-long interest rate environment when benchmarked to local firms. In addition, further tests show that Mainland firms with higher independent institutional ownership, which may be relatively less subject to agency problems, tend to exhibit higher level of investments. These empirical results support the view that the mitigation of financial constraints accounted relatively more for the surge in leverage and investment in Mainland firms listed in Hong Kong after the GFC. Nevertheless, the findings should be interpreted with caution, as they would explain the economic behaviour of Mainland firms listed in Hong Kong as a group rather than individual Mainland firms.
Renewable Risk and Its Impacts on Market Prices: The German Case

This paper develops a framework for renewable producers to withhold capacity from the day-ahead market in response to higher renewable output risk. The developed hypotheses are tested on a rich dataset from the German electricity market, with a novel measure of renewable forecast risk. The data does not support the presence of renewable withholding in Germany, based on the observed risk premium and day-ahead supply bids. This suggests that firms do not have access to this information or do not regard this as relevant.
Audit Committee Meetings and the Timeliness of Misstatement Disclosure

The Chairman of the SEC has recently called on audit committees to be active, knowledgeable, and independent to ensure high-quality corporate disclosure to the capital markets (SEC 2019). In this paper, we investigate whether more active audit committees improve financial reporting outcomes by examining the association between the frequency of audit committee meetings in a misstatement year and the timeliness of the restatement disclosure. We find that more audit committee meetings are associated with timelier misstatement disclosures, and in particular, when misstatements are less severe. We attribute this association to more communication among the audit committee, external auditors, and management, which leads to a faster resolution of financial reporting issues. Additionally, we find that the effect of audit committee meetings on the timeliness of misstatement disclosure is weaker for busier audit committees and for audit committees with accounting expertise. Finally, we find that more active audit committees are more likely to appoint a Big 4 auditor after the dismissal of the previous external auditor. Overall, our finding that more active audit committees improve financial information quality lends support to the SEC’s call for audit committees to be more active.