Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth Of Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii Under Nutrient-Limited Conditions In Steady-State Bioreactors

In recent years, massive mobilization of researchers is mounting regarding the development of more sustainable energy supplies, driven by factors such as oil price spikes and the need for increased energy security. Biofuel production is, at its purest, an attempt to wean the world's addiction to fossil fuels. Large-scale algae production has the potential to provide a significant fraction of the liquid fuel market, due to its high productivity per area. In order to realize the great potential of algae for biofuel, economical production systems must be developed that minimize inputs, such as nutrients and water. It should be made more robust, productive and predictable in order to ensure successful scale-up. Using traditional reactor engineering we propose to further the understanding of algae reactor systems by investigating the effects of various bioreactor operating conditions on growth rate, cell composition, and storage of neutral lipids. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a model green algae species, widely grown in the laboratory for research in cell and molecular biology due to its fast generation time and ability to grow photo-, mixo-, or heterotropically while maintaining a functional photosynthetic apparatus. The productivity of C. reinhardtii was tested in tubular flow-through photo-bioreactors under steady-state conditions. Reactors were continuously fed media containing different nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur concentrations. The cell mass density, chlorophyll a and pH were monitored during growth. Algae were harvested and the carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and lipid content of the cells were measured under conditions of replete and deficient nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. The nutrient consumption was calculated by analyzing influent and effluent nutrients concentrations. In experiments where nitrogen inputs were varied from sufficient to limiting, cellular composition changed significantly showing 3-fold higher C:N ratio in nitrogen-deplete cells, and higher carbon content is also supported by four-fold higher relative lipid content. For phosphorus limiting conditions, cells showed slightly higher C:N ratio but no significant increase in carbon content or relative lipid content was observed. Unfortunately for sulfur limitation, cellular composition was not determined so far and thus nothing certain could be said for carbon accumulation in sulfur-deplete cells. Also, no significant change was observed in relative lipid content under this condition. This work also confirms the decline in growth rate affecting final biomass yield (g/L-day) and decrease in cell quota of non-limiting nutrients under limiting nutrient supply. Also, of all the nutrients evaluated, nitrogen was observed to be the most critical nutrient affecting growth rate, cellular composition and neutral lipid storage.
Molecular Dynamics Calculation of the Effect of Solvent Polarizability on the Hydrophobic Interaction

The potential of mean force (PMF) between two methane molecules in water is calculated using molecular dynamics with Ewald boundary conditions for two water models, the WK model (a nonpolarizable model) and the PSRWK model (a polarizable model), for the purpose of understanding what role many-body polarization plays in the hydrophobic interaction. These models of neat water have the same static dielectric constants and similar structural and thermodynamic properties. The methane-water interaction is taken to be exactly the same in both fluids. Nevertheless, the simulated potential of mean force between two dissolved methane molecules is very different for these two models. In the polarizable model, solvent-separated pairing is dominant over contact-pairing, while in the nonpolarizable model the reverse is true. -
Soviet Research on the Transport of Intense Relativistic Electron Beams Through High-Pressure Air

Abstract : Soviet research on the propagation of intense relativistic electron beams (IREB) through air and gases has demonstrated the existence of several pressure ranges for possible efficient IREB propagation. The Soviets have recently paid specific attention to the low-pressure range from . 000001 to . 001 Torr. Theoretical analysis concentrated on the formation of a quasi-equilibrium beam and the derivation of an expression for its propagation through low- pressure gas, taking into account space-charge forces, self-focusing of the beam, and the effect of the beam's own magnetic field on its focusing properties. The analysis involved the determination of equilibrium-beam formation time, relaxation length, density distribution of plasma formed by the passage of the beam, and the effects of beam parameters upon this background plasma. Experimental investigation of the quasi-equilibrium beam demonstrated that it has a Bennett profile, determined the beam formation time, and showed that formation time decreases with increasing pressure and propagation length. For a 300 keV, 100 A beam, transverse beam temperature was found to be 0.5 keV near the beam focus, and 2 keV downstream of the focus. No dependence of beam front velocity upon propagation length had been observed.
Partial Confirmation of Single katG and katE Knockouts and Double katG/katE Knockouts Created from Isogenic Background of Escherichia coli K-12 Strains

Presumptive knockouts of katE and katG catalases were constructed from BW25113 E.coli K-12 strain background via Lambda Red recombination system to generate katE/katG double knockout for a better assessment of the roles of the individual catalases (Narita and Peng, JEMI, 16, 123-8, 2012). The kanamycin resistance cassettes were then removed through FLP-FRT recombination system for consistent antibiotic sensitivity across the laboratory strains. In this study, our goal was to confirm the genotype and phenotype of these knockout strains by PCR, and catalase activity assay with 30% or 2% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The katG single knockout and double knockout strains, as expected, were catalase positive and negative, respectively. The katE single knockout strain was only catalase positive when the test was done with 2% hydrogen peroxide suggesting a threshold concentration of hydrogen peroxide required for katG expression. The PCR results confirmed the continued existence of katE knockout during the process of creating double knockouts. It also identified that the kanR gene insert is present in the presumptive double knockout strain PN11W-4a.
Bifurcations , transition to turbulence and development of chaotic regimes for double-diffusive convection

For double-diffusive convection the sequence of bifurcations from stationary motion to stochastic motion was investigated. Attractor has the structure of a Mobius band in chaotic regimes. With the help of Poincare sections and Poincare maps modification of the attractor were illustrated. First, Poincare map can be represented as a one-valued function, then with the growth of supercriticality Poincare map remains one-dimensional but with many minima and self-intersections so it can’t be approximated with some function. Relative residual was calculated for all the calculations, so we can affirm that the properties of the solutions presented practically exactly correspond to the Navier-Stokes equations (third range of accuracy). Key-Words: turbulence, convection, double-diffusive, stochastic regimes, strange attractors, bifurcations
Towards Understanding Systems Through User Interactions

Modern computer systems are complex. Even in the best of conditions, it can be difficult to understand the behavior of the system and identify why certain actions are occurring. Existing systems attempt to provide insight by reviewing the effects of actions on the system and estimating their cause. As computer systems are strongly driven by actions of the user, we propose an approach to identify processes which have interacted with the user and provide data to which system behaviors were caused by the user. We implement three sensors within the graphical user interface capable of extracting the necessary information to identify these processes. We show our instrumentation is effective in characterizing applications with an on-screen presence, and provide data towards the determination of user intentions. We prove that our method for obtaining the information from the user interface can be done in an efficient manner with minimal overheads.
Tidal Tails of the Nearest Open Clusters

Abstract We show that an extended population of stars escaping an evolved cluster and moving along its galactic orbit forms at the final phases of its dynamical evolution. Here we present some results of the numerical simulations for nearest open clusters: Hyades, Pleiades, Praesepe, Alpha Persei, Coma, IC 2391, and IC 2602. We calculated the models of the stellar tails for nearest open clusters and estimated some parameters: sizes, densities, locations relative to the solar neighborhood. Stars of the nearest tails can be observed as moving clusters.
ThinDedup: An I/O Deduplication Scheme that Minimizes Efficiency Loss due to Metadata Writes

I/O deduplication is an important technique for saving I/O bandwidth and storage space for storage systems. However, it requires a new level of address mapping, and consequently needs to maintain corresponding metadata. To meet requirements on data persistency and consistency, the metadata writing is likely to make deduplication operations much fatter, in terms of amount of additional writes on the critical I/O path, than one might expect. In this paper we propose to compress the data and insert metadata into data blocks to reduce metadata writes. Assuming that performance-critical data are usually compressible, we can mostly remove separate writes of metadata out of the critical path of servicing users' requests, and make I/O deduplication much thinner. Accordingly we name the scheme ThinDedup. In addition to metadata insertion, ThinDedup also uses persistency of data fingerprints to evade enforcement of write order between data and metadata. We have implemented ThinDedup in the Linux kernel as a device mapper target to provide block-level deduplication. Experimental results show, compared to existing deduplication schemes, ThinDedup achieves (much) higher (up to 3X) I/O throughput and lower latency (reduced by up to 88%) without compromising data persistency.
Cai, Charlie X. and Hillier, David and Tian, Gaoliang and Wu, Qinghua (2015) Do audit committees reduce the agency costs of ownership

We investigate the agency costs of corporate ownership structure and the role of audit committees in mitigating their effect. Using China as a laboratory, where audit committees are voluntary, we study the demand for and value relevance of audit committees conditional on the various agency costs of corporate ownership. Audit committees complement existing internal governance systems by reducing the agency conflicts embedded in ownership structure. They are always value relevant, the magnitude of which depends upon the level and complexity of the ownership lattice. Audit committees substitute for inefficient external regulatory environments, particularly where weak legal institutions predominate. Our results are robust to firm size, investment level and financial leverage.
The Effects of Thermal Radiation, Chemical Reaction and Rotation on Unsteady MHD Viscoelastic Slip Flow

This paper investigates the unsteady flow of an electrically conducting incompressible non-Newtonian viscoelastic fluid through a porous medium filled in a vertical porous channel in the presence of transverse magnetic field. The fluid and the channel rotate as a solid body with constant angular velocity, 𝛀𝛀∗, about an axis perpendicular to the planes of the plates. The effects of thermal radiation and chemical reaction are taken into account embedded with slip boundary condition. The closed-form analytical solutions are obtained for momentum, energy and concentration equations. The influences of the various parameters entering into the problem in the velocity, temperature and concentration field are discussed with the help of graphs. Also, numerical values of physical quantities, such as skin friction coefficient, Nusselt number and Sherwood number are presented in tabular form.
Sex differences in response to adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) administration in sheep

This thesis summarises and discusses results of two separate studies on the effects of adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) on the secretion of steroid hormones in sheep of different sex and gonadal status. Furthermore, it includes a study on the effects of ACTH and progesterone on luteinising hormone (LH) secretion in castrated rams as well as a study on sex differences in oestrogen receptor (ER) content of adrenal glands of sheep. Testosterone concentrations of castrated males before and after ACTH administration were below the detection limit of the assay used. After ACTH administration cortisol, progesterone and 17α-hydroxy pregnenolone (17OHP5) were elevated for several hours and differed from pre-ACTH levels. Cortisol after ACTH administration was higher in females than in males in both the breeding and the non-breeding season. Gonadectomy eliminated the differences between the ewes and the rams. Rams showed a lower response in the breeding season than in the non-breeding season, which was not observed in the ewes. After ACTH administration the number of LH pulses in the first half of the experimental period was significantly lower than it was in the second half. No effect was seen on mean LH secretion. Progesterone treatment had no effect on either the number of LH pulses or LH secretion. Ewes had higher levels of cytosolic ERs in the adrenals than did the rams and gonadectomy increased ER levels. No differences were observed in messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) levels for ER sub-type α (ERα) and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I). Progesterone receptor (PR) mRNA levels were reduced in ovariectomised ewes and enhanced in castrated rams. All of the animals had positive nuclear staining for ERα in the adrenal cortex, and no differences were observed between the groups. The studies revealed progesterone and 17OHP5 secretion after ACTH administration, with the adrenal gland being the most likely source. Sex differences were observed in ACTH-induced cortisol secretion in intact sheep. Adrenocorticotropin decreased LH pulsatility in recently castrated rams. We demonstrated the existence of ER in the adrenal gland of sheep and found varying sensitivity to oestrogens as the ER levels differed among gender and gonadal status. Oestrogens may affect steroidogenesis directly at the adrenal cortex, which suggests that oestrogens are partly responsible for the sex differences in cortisol secretion in sheep.
Nonmonotone Spectral Gradient Method for l_1-regularized Least Squares

In the paper, we investigate a linear constraint optimization reformulation to a more general form of the l_1 regularization problem and give some good properties of it. We first show that the equivalence between the linear constraint optimization problem and the l_1 regularization problem. Second, the KKT point of the linear constraint problem always exists since the constraints are linear; we show that the half constraints must be active at any KKT point. In addition, we show that the KKT points of the linear constraint problem are the same as the stationary points of the l_1 regularization problem. Based on the linear constraint optimization problem, we propose a nonomotone spectral gradient method and establish its global convergence. Numerical experiments with compressive sense problems show that our approach is competitive with several known methods for standard l_2-l_1 problem.
Principles for User Experience Design – Adapting the TIPS Approach for the Synthesis of Experiences

The idea of User Experience (UX) is to achieve a positive emotional reaction of users on a product interaction and thereby to create a unique selling proposition. Unfortunately, people's needs, perception and resulting emotions are subjective and thereby very diverse. Furthermore, UX is highly dependent on the physical and social context. We developed the User Experience Interaction Model (UXIM) which consists of UX-relevant elements from the disciplines industrial design, human factors and psychology to handle this complexity. Based on UXIM, we propose concrete principles derived from examples of successful experiences to support UX design. These were taken from real product reviews found in magazines and internet (e.g. Amazon). Thereby, we bridge the gap between abstract UX theory and concrete principles with practical examples.
Upper mantle seismic structure beneath the Ethiopian hot spot: Rifting at the edge of the African low‐velocity anomaly

The Miocene‐Recent East African Rift in Ethiopia subaerially exposes the transitional stage of rifting within a young continental flood basalt province. As such, it is an ideal study locale for continental breakup processes and hot spot tectonism. We combine teleseismic traveltime data from 108 seismic stations deployed during two spatially and temporally overlapping broadband networks to present detailed tomographic images of upper mantle P and S wave seismic velocity structure beneath Ethiopia. Tomographic images reveal a ∼500 km wide low P and S wave velocity zone at 75 to ≥400 km depth in the upper mantle that extends from close to the eastern edge of the Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) westward beneath the uplifted and flood basalt‐capped NW Plateau. We interpret this broad low‐velocity region (LVR) as the upper mantle continuation of the African Superplume. Within the broad LVR, zones of particularly low velocity are observed with absolute delay times (δtP ∼ 4 s) that indicate the mantle beneath this region is amongst the slowest worldwide. We interpret these low velocities as evidence for partial melt beneath the MER and adjacent NW Plateau. Surprisingly, the lowest‐velocity region is not beneath Afar but beneath the central part of the study area at ∼9°N, 39°E. Whether this intense low‐velocity zone is the result of focused mantle upwelling and/or enhanced decompressional melting at this latitude is unclear. The MER is located toward the eastern edge of the broad low‐velocity structure, not above its center. This observation, along with strong correlations between low‐velocity zones and lithospheric structures, suggests that preexisting structural trends and Miocene‐to‐Recent rift tectonics play an important role in melt migration at the base of the lithosphere in this magmatic rift zone.
WiZi-Cloud : Application-transparent Dual ZigBee-WiFi for Mobile Internet

The high density of WiFi Access Points and large unlicensed RF bandwidth over which they operate makes them good candidates to alleviate cellular network’s limitations. However, maintaining connectivity through WiFi results in depleting the mobile phone’s battery in a very short time. We propose WiZi-Cloud, a system that utilizes a dual WiFi-ZigBee radio on mobile phones and Access Points, supported by WiZi-Cloud protocols, to achieve ubiquitous connectivity, high energy efficiency, real time intra-device/interAP handover, that is transparent to the applications. WiZi-Cloud runs mostly on commodity hardware such as Android phones and OpenWrt capable access points. Our extensive set of experiments demonstrate that for maintaining connectivity, WiZi-Cloud achieves more than a factor of 11 improvement in energy consumption in comparison with energy-optimized WiFi, and a factor of 7 in comparison with GSM. To demonstrate the feasibility of WiZi-Cloud system, we carry out an extensive set of experiments with real Android mobile applications on Android G1 phone, and evaluate the performance in terms of throughput, energy efficiency and coverage. With VoIP and audio streaming Android applications running over ZigBee and WiFi respectively, we show that WiZi-Cloud achieves satisfactory throughput performance, and leads to 2 times better energy efficiency in active mode, 3 times in standby mode. While the basic WiZiCloud system already has a better coverage than WiFi, we describe and experimentally demonstrate how further improvements can be achieved using time and spatial diversity mechanisms.
A Feature-Selection Based Approach for the Detection of Diabetes in Electronic Health Record Data

Type II diabetes is a serious health problem, with over 25 million Americans diagnosed. Thus, diabetes prediction is a major focus of interest, within both the medical community and the general public. In 2012, Kaggle.com, a competitive data-analysis website, released a set of electronic health record data and challenged its users to predict which patients had diabetes. Although the competition is over, we used this rich dataset to build models predicting diabetes from a patient’s electronic medical record. Traditional approaches to a modeling problem like this are often based on domain knowledge, which is used to guide the selection and creation of relevant features for predictive modeling. Instead of this domain-based approach, we considered a feature selection-based approach. Our approach began with the generation of a very large feature table, which we then subsetted using various feature reduction techniques (of both “wrapper” and “filter” types). We then induced a variety of models, and assembled these models into ensembles in attempts to maximize lift. Our final models were more than three times as effective as random selection, suggesting this feature generation and selection approach is competitive with a domain knowledge-based approach. Our feature selection-based approach also allowed for the discovery of unexpectedly relevant features, something a domain-based procedure does not allow for. Although feature selection can be more labor-intensive than a domain based approach, for this diabetes problem feature selection led to both powerful predictive models and interesting insights.
Single and Multicomponent Sorption of CO2, CH4 and N2 in a Microporous Metal-Organic Framework

Abstract Single and multicomponent fixed-bed adsorption of CO2, N2, and CH4 on crystals of MOF-508b has been studied in this work. Adsorption equilibrium was measured at temperatures ranging from 303 to 343 K and partial pressures up to 4.5 bar. MOF-508b is very selective for CO2 and the loadings of CH4 and N2 are practically temperature independent. The Langmuir isotherm model provides a good representation of the equilibrium data. A dynamic model based on the LDF approximation for the mass transfer has been used to describe with good accuracy the adsorption kinetics of single, binary and ternary breakthrough curves. It was found that the intra-crystalline diffusivity for CO2 is one order of magnitude faster than for CH4 and N2.