Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimization and manufacturing of gold gratings for pulse compression

There are several applications for diffraction gratings in laser physics and -engineering, e.g. as filters for bandwidth-narrowing and wavelength-tuning or for spectral beam combining and temporal pulse shaping in ultrafast lasers. Gold-coated diffraction gratings are still popular for laser pulse compression due to their rather simple and low-cost fabrication, especially compared to more sophisticated structured dielectric multilayers or dielectric transmission gratings [1]. To achieve high diffraction efficiencies (>90 %) with a practically feasible design, it is beneficial to consider the manufacturing process already in the design stage. In our contribution, we demonstrate a holistic design approach for holographically recorded gratings optimized for laser pulse compression in the NIR range as well as first experimental results from the manufacturing of these gratings yielding close to theoretical performance.
Experimental Investigations Of Thermal Pulsatile Boundary Layer Flow

Experimental Investigations Of Thermal Pulsatile Boundary Layer Flow by Drummond Biles University of New Hampshire, May, 2019 The need to reliably analyze, predict, and control the transport of mass, momentum, and energy in turbulent boundary layers is critically important across a broad spectrum of technological applications and scientific disciplines. While there has been extensive–and continuing– research investigating laboratory-scale canonical wall-bounded flows, beyond the scope of these well-studied flows there exists a broad range of application relevant flows that are far less studied. The theme of this dissertation research is to study a non-canonical flow, specifically to study coupled momentum and thermal transport in pulsatile boundary layer flows. The primary contributions of the present work are (1) the design, fabrication, and validation of a unique flow facility to study non-equilibrium boundary layer flow and (2) to use this facility to study momentum and thermal transport in pulsatile boundary layer flow over a heated wall. In pulsatile boundary layer flow, the freestream velocity has a time-steady mean component and an unsteady oscillatory component superimposed on the mean component. Pulsatile boundary layer flows are therefore periodic and unidirectional characterized by both their frequency and amplitude, and are fundamentally important in many aerodynamic, industrial, and natural flow systems. The experimental data will be analyzed through time-average and phase-average frameworks to understand the underlying flow physics of pulsatile boundary layer dynamics. Results demonstrate a varied response between the momentum and thermal field, indicating a break down in the socalled Reynolds analogy assumption. The importance of buoyant transport is also demonstrated, even at low Richardson number flows.
High Quality Direct Replications Matter: Response to Williams (2014)

We respond to Williams’(2014) comments on our three failures to replicate of Study 2 from Williams and Bargh (2008). We clarify our conclusions on this topic, making clear that although the results of our studies cast doubt on the specific effect reported in Williams and Bargh (i.e., that instant hot and cold packs influence choice of reward for self or friend), a more complete understanding of the embodiment hypothesis in question requires consideration of relevant conceptual replications. Accordingly, we consider the strength of the evidence in the conceptual replications that Williams identifies and find that small samples appear to be the norm. We conclude that in order for researchers to move forward, future studies must take seriously issues of power, researcher degrees of freedom, and file drawer problems. Doing so will ensure that future studies are more informative tests of this hypothesis.
A grounded theory of detoxification-seeking among heroin users in south east Ireland

The need for widespread increase of both community and residential detoxification services in Ireland has been clearly articulated at national and local level (Mannix, 2006; Corrigan & O’Gorman, 2007; Dept. Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, 2007; Doyle & Ivanovic, 2010). This study explores a central phenomenon of detoxification-seeking among heroin users in the South East of Ireland, through a grounded theory approach. The study conceptualises detoxification-seeking as a help-seeking behaviour, experienced by heroin users, but not all, in response to and as a consequence of the complex experience of being heroin dependent, and wanting to become abstinent. The core category, ‘forging a pathway towards abstinence from heroin’, provides an insight into challenges and tasks that research participants undertook when their aim was abstinence. Pathways towards abstinence involved collaboration with other heroin users, family and/or health and drug service professionals and were heavily influenced by internal factors such as perception of services and perception of need for help. The process of forging a pathway towards abstinence had three stages; recognising, help-seeking, and navigating. The three stages include actions related to information seeking, and treatment (including detoxification) seeking. Not all research participants experienced all of the stages. However, all of the research participants, at some point in their heroin-using careers experienced factors which blocked, or facilitated them, to seek detoxification. Such factors included the presence, or lack of; family support, a therapeutic alliance, personal knowledge (of heroin dependence and drug treatment) and access to treatment services. Such barriers and/or enabling factors, were found in the social and personal contexts of the individual, and were shown to inhibit or facilitate the individual to seek heroin detoxification. The study offers a clear theoretical framework for understanding the contextual factors that can lead heroin users to seek detoxification. The study has implications for development of low threshold services, development of community-based detoxification and facilitation of service user involvement.
Education through art.

Throughout his career Herbert Read worked tirelessly for peace in the world. At the time when he was working with UNESCO during its infancy he was already exploring the idea of art-for-peace. A prolific writer, editor, poet, academic, teacher, curator, activist, and defender of children, Read is one of educations towering figures. In 1943 at the height of his powers, Read shook the educational establishment with his book Education Through Art. This publication marked a turning point, and is still one of those historic bench marks that actually mean something in the culture of education. I will pursue in this paper, Read’s claim that education through art can make a considerable positive difference in the way we connect to the world. I will be suggesting that what children embody through their art, as Read thought, represents part of the filial bond of education. Read’s particular insight into this filial bond is a provocative, and aspiring account of the virtues of aesthetic education.
Propagation Dynamics of a Periodic Epidemic Model on Weighted Interconnected Networks

Many real-world networks are comprised of several networks interconnected with each other and they may have different topologies and epidemic dynamics. The dynamical behaviors of various epidemic models on coupled networks have attracted great attentions. For instance, many people adhere to the statutory working and rest days, which results in a periodic fluctuation of disease transmission in the population, and the strength of connections between two individuals cannot be ignored either. In this paper, we explore the disease transmission on weighted interconnected networks by establishing a model that includes contact strengths and periodic incidence rates. The weights on the links indicate the familiarity or intimacy of the interactive individuals. Here, we analyze the stability of the disease-free periodic solution and the unique positive periodic solution (i.e., disease-free equilibrium and endemic equilibrium) of the model, and an explicit expression for the basic reproduction number in some special cases of the periodic model is derived. We also perform numerical simulations to validate and supplement the theoretical results. It is found that the weight exponent promotes the epidemic transmission by enlarging the basic reproduction number, and the influence of internal infectious rate on epidemic prevalence is larger than that of cross infectious rate for different network structures. It is expected that this work can deepen the understanding of transmission dynamics on weighted interconnected networks.
The Effects of Language Token Prefixing for Multilingual Machine Translation

Machine translation traditionally refers to translating from a single source language into a single target language. In recent years, the field has moved towards large neural models either translating from or into many languages. The model must be correctly cued to translate into the correct target language.This is typically done by prefixing language tokens onto the source or target sequence. The location and content of the prefix can vary and many use different approaches without much justification towards one approach or another. As a guidance to future researchers and directions for future work, we present a series of experiments that show how the positioning and type of a target language prefix token effects translation performance. We show that source side prefixes improve performance. Further, we find that the best language information to denote via tokens depends on the supported language set.
Hyperspectral Restoration via $L_0$ Gradient Regularized Low-Rank Tensor Factorization

Due to the mechanism of the data acquisition process, hyperspectral imagery (HSI) are usually contaminated by various noises, e.g., Gaussian noise, impulse noise, strips, and dead lines. In this article, a spectral–spatial <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gradient regularized low-rank tensor factorization (LRTF<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) method is proposed for hyperspectral denoising, in which the restored HSI is approximated by low-rank block term decomposition (BTD). BTD factorizes a tensor into the sum of a series of component tensors, each of which is represented by the outer product of a matrix and a vector. From subspace learning point of view, the vector and matrix can be considered as a spectral atom and its corresponding coding coefficients. In the proposed method, the correlations in both spectral and spatial domains are taken into account via the small size of atom set and low-rankness of coding matrices. In addition, HSIs also have the local structure of piecewise smoothness in both spectral and spatial domains. Motivated by the supreme virtues of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gradient regularization in image structure exploitation, we develop a spectral–spatial <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gradient regularization and embed it into BTD to explore the spectral–spatial texture information. The proposed method can simultaneously remove various types of noises, and the experimental results on both synthetic data and real-world data show its superiority when compared with several state-of-the-art approaches.
The Influence of Organizational Culture on the Existence of Systems Employed to Improve Quality of Care in Medical Office Practices

THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON THE EXISTENCE OF SYSTEMS EMPLOYED TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF CARE IN MEDICAL OFFICE PRACTICES By Donna Pillittere Dugan, Ph.D., M.S. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010 Major Director: Stephen S. Mick, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Doctoral Program in Health Services Organization & Research Department of Health Administration A frequently cited reason for poor quality of care in the ambulatory care setting is the lack of optimally designed systems to address care for those with preventive or chronic care needs. Organizational theory suggests that culture plays an important role in the shaping of these types of programs. The purpose of this cross-sectional study is to understand through descriptive and regression analysis of secondary data, the relationship between the existence of cultural characteristics such as collegiality, quality emphasis and autonomy, and the systems employed to improve quality of care within primary care practices. The study uses an integrated theoretical framework consisting of organizational culture, social network and organizational learning theories to better understand the rationale for the relationships. The analysis is an outgrowth of a previous National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) project conducted in Minnesota where 300 staff across 42 office practices were asked to answer questions on a self-report survey to assess the presence and function of clinical practice systems. To evaluate organizational culture, validated questions from the work of Kralewski and colleagues were also asked. Descriptive analysis results showed a large range in consistency of practice system use, with clinical information systems as most used and care management systems as least used. Results of the multivariate analysis showed collegiality and quality emphasis as significantly related to the use of practice systems. More specifically, both collegiality and quality emphasis were seen to positively influence the use of clinical quality evaluation and improvement systems and an emphasis of quality was seen to positively influence the use of clinician reminders and clinical information systems. A statistically significant relationship between autonomy and practice systems use was not seen. As the study shows that culture does influence the use of certain systems for care improvement, it provides an increased understanding and avenue for intervention/change in the continued quest for improved quality of care. Policymakers and practice leadership may want to focus energy on understanding primarily whether the culture of practices places an emphasis on quality and collegiality. Ultimately it may foster the use of practice systems for quality of care improvement.
Determining Thermal Conductivity For Biological Materials In A Drying Process

It is key issue for the Agricultural Engineering to identify thermo physical properties of biological materials. There is a special interest in the thermal conductivity and diffusivity coefficient estimation, which can be performed by comparing data obtained from a specific experimental procedure and theoretical data obtained from some mathematical model – capable for simulating the referred procedure. The experimental data of temperature were previously obtained from one thermal measuring system consisting of concentric cylinders to hold the biological material (a soybean sample in this study), with a heat source placed at the central axis and keeping the cylindrical, as well the circular cross sectional outer surfaces insulated . In such a procedure, only radial heat transfer is effective, minimizing the heat flux in the axial direction. Simulated data of temperature are obtained by using the mathematical model based on the Fourier’s law with initial and boundary conditions according to the experimental procedure, which requires estimative of one the thermal conductivity value. The direct problem is solved by using an implicit forward time and centered space finite difference scheme, with Neumann boundary at the center and the outer surface. Results show a dependency of the thermal conductivity with radial component. The thermal property is estimated by computing the value having the best agreement.
Switchable parallel elastic actuators in monopod and quadruped applications

Legged robotics have proven to be a viable approach to extending human reach to various terrains that are unfit for conventional wheeled locomotion. While advances have been made to further capacity of these robots through a variety of design approaches, there are still difficulties in bridging compromise between energetic efficiency and joint dexterity. Switchable Parallel Actuators (Sw-PEAs) have been proposed and developed in legged robotics to address this trade-off by providing the benefits of both control authority of the joint, and passive compliance, in a manner that is desired by the overall objective of the application. This thesis begins by building upon the Sw-PEA concept, by first discussing a two-link monopedal robot, SPEAR-II, which is the second design iteration of the robot SPEAR (Switchable Parallel Elastic Actuator Robot). A mathematical model of the monopod is created with a focus on understanding the internal system interactions to use for simulation and controller design. Parameter identification experiments are then conducted to improve the accuracy of the model by estimating previously unknown variables. Using the refined monopod model, a simple controller is tuned and implemented on the robot during hopping experiments. Lastly, a quadruped design is proposed using SPEAR-II as a legged template. A quadruped model is derived to perform analysis on key design parameters. Finally, the thesis concludes with results for the quadruped simulation as a feasibility study for the proposed design using the Sw-PEA.
Pathology and genetics of head and neck tumours

1. Nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses 2. Nasopharynx 3. Hypopharynx, larynx and trachea 4. Oral cavity and oropharynx 5. Salivary glands 6. Odontogenetic tumours 7. Ear 8. Paraganglionic systems
On the controllers' design to stabilize ground resonance helicopter

Ground resonance (GR) in helicopters is a potentially catastrophic instability commonly caused by coalescence of the regressive cyclic blade lag mode with the fuselage motion in certain rotor speed ranges. It can limit the helicopter operational envelope and the design of this type of vehicle can become a difficult task. Although a broad class of actuators allows the use of active and semi-active techniques to design feedback-based control systems, a limited number of works in the literature introduce formulations to compute the controller gain to suppress this phenomenon. Also, commonly, a control approach defines a feedback, particularly to a specific rotor speed. In this context, this work introduces an alternative methodology to design an active control system to stabilize GR of a helicopter. The proposed approach can suppress this instability in all rotor speed ranges by using only one control gain. Two strategies are proposed based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The Lyapunov stability criteria are used and the unstable rotor speed is considered as an uncertain parameter to define an associated convex space. Using convex optimization, a robust control gain is computed until all the unstable rotor speed range is stabilized. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of this methodology. The results confirm the viability of the proposed approach to design active and semi-active controllers.
A genetic association study of colon cancer

The project of this bachelor degree concerns the statistical analysis of a genetic database provided by Professor Victor Moreno, epidemiologist of the Hospital de Bellvitge in Barcelona. The goal is to investigate associations between a particular area of the genome and colon cancer. To achieve the objective, some basic statistical genetic models such as the codominant test, the exact test, the allele test and the Cochran-Armitage test will used to analize the data. These tests reveal a few clusters of genetic markers that appear to be associated with colon cancer.
Electrophoretic deposition of hydroxyapatite coating on biodegradable Mg–4Zn–4Sn–0.6Ca–0.5Mn alloy

Aluminium-free Mg–4Zn–4Sn–0.6Ca–0.5Mn alloys, with similar mechanical properties to natural bone, were produced and used as substrates for electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of hydroxyapatite (HA) powder. HA powder was deposited at three levels of DC voltage (50, 100 and 150 V) at different times. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were used for phase characterization. Cavities appeared in coated specimens with a coating thickness of more than 70 µm and micro-cracks appeared in a coating thickness of more than 100 µm. The maximum adhesion strength of coatings was 2.8 ± 1.1 MPa for 150 V–5 s. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) test showed that coating resistance and charge transfer resistance increased in the coated samples of 100 V–5 s and 150 V–5 s, respectively.
Vibration control of a tunnel boring machine using adaptive magnetorheological damper

With a large number of tunnel boring machines (TBM) being used in various tunnel constructions, the vibration problem under complex geological conditions have become increasingly prominent. In order to solve the problem, this article investigates the application of an adaptive magnetorheological (MR) damper on the vibration reduction of a TBM. The MR damper could reduce the horizontal vibration of the TBM system and adjust its dragging force on the propulsive system under different geological conditions. The MR damper can also provide large enough damping force even under a small amplitude vibration, which is required by TBM. In this paper, an MR damper was designed, prototyped and its properties were tested by an MTS system, including its current-dependency, amplitude-dependency and frequency-dependency features. A scaled TBM system incorporated with the MR damper was built to evaluate the vibration reduction effectiveness of the MR damper on the TBM system. The experimental test results demonstrate that the displacement and the acceleration amplitudes of the TMB vibration could be reduced by 52.14% and 53.31%, respectively.
Analyzing the determinants of college and health care provider choice

This article investigates whether students taking introductory macroeconomics and microeconomics courses at a community college perform as well as students taking the introductory sequence at a four-year university when the rigor of instruction is held constant. Using data collected over a four-year period at both a community college and four-year university, this study estimates a production function (with correction for students dropping the course) using a Heckman two-step process to determine what variables affect student performance. Findings include that, if one controls for rigor and instruction in principles of economics classes, the differences in performance between community college and four-year students can be explained by differences in class size, frequency of instruction, and gender rather than type of educational institution.
OPTIMIZATION OF CUTTING PARAMETERS OF TURNING OPERATION WITH VORTEX TUBE COOLING SYSTEM USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK METHOD

Controlling the heat during cutting operations are an important factor in improving the quality of the product and performance of the machining. For controlling the heat, there are a lot of methods. One of this is Vortex Tube Cooling System. In this study, the Vortex tube cooling system was used to control heat during the turning operation. In the design of experiment, cutting speed, cooling temperature, feed rate, and cutting tool corner radius were selected as input parameters. Surface roughness and cutting force was selected as output parameters. The input and output parameters were modeled by using Artificial Neural Network, the results of experiment were optimized.