Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconfigurable chalcogenide phase change metamaterials: a material, device, and fabrication perspective

Chalcogenide phase change semiconductors have played a crucial role in the evolution of photonic technologies. From their decades-long utilization at the core of optical disks to their emergence as a highly promising reconfigurable component for a variety of nanophotonic modulation, switching and sensing platforms, the field of optics has continuously recognized their potential and sought to engineer their properties through a variety of material, device and fabrication level schemes. Most recently, the integration of phase change semiconductors within various photonic metamaterials, metadevices and metasystems has ignited research interest worldwide. This has facilitated the development of a wealth of highly promising application-driven nanophotonic device platforms that address growing societal demands requiring higher data storage capacity, faster and more efficient telecommunication, as well as adaptive sensing and imaging with reduced size, weight and power requirements. Here, we present a comprehensive review on the evolution of reconfigurable phase change chalcogenide metamaterials that focuses not just on a device level perspective but also examines the underlying material and fabrication considerations that are critical to obtaining optimal performance in these groundbreaking devices.
COVID-19 Related Information and Psychological Wellbeing: Mediating Role of Employment Uncertainty Among Pakistani People

In December 2019, the confirmed Coronavirus (COVID-19) patient was initially reported in Wuhan which later spread quickly in other cities of China resulting in severe acute respiratory disorder. This virus is not confined only to China but has affected billions of people living globally. Media has served as an important platform in educating the masses about precautionary measures to be taken by the general public to protect themselves from becoming patients of this fatal virus. Currently, the majority population of the world is getting information through different media platforms. This paper observes the impact of COVID-19 related media coverage role in developing mental problems among the Pakistani people as well as the mediating role of employment uncertainty due to COVID-19 related information. An online questionnaire was circulated to collect data. This study includes 405 respondents using random sampling techniques resided in Lahore. The results explained that most of the people got COVID-19 related information from different media platforms that have developed depression and fear among people. Moreover, this study suggests that government as well as media practitioners should take initiatives to prevent mental health problems, particularly employment certainty developed due to watching COVID-19 related information.
Seven-Year Follow-Up of an Online Critical Care Curriculum

Background: In July of 2013, the University of Maryland launched MarylandCCProject.com. This free-access educational website delivers asynchronous high-quality multidisciplinary critical care education targeted at critical care trainees. The lectures, presented in real time on-site, are recorded and available on the website or as a podcast on iTunes or Android. Thus, the curriculum can be easily accessed around the world. Objective: We sought to identify the impact this website has on current and former University of Maryland critical care trainees. Methods: A 32-question survey was generated using a standard survey generation tool. The survey was e-mailed in the fall of 2019 to the University of Maryland Multi-Departmental Critical Care current and graduated trainees from the prior 7 years. Survey data were collected through December 2019. The questions focused on user demographics, overall experience with the website, scope of website use, and clinical application of the content. Anonymous responses were electronically gathered. Results: A total of 186 current trainees and graduates were surveyed, with a 39% (n = 72) response rate. Of responders, 76% (55) use the website for ongoing medical education. The majority use the website at least monthly. Most users (63%, n = 35) access the lectures directly through the website. All 55 current users agree that the website has improved their medical knowledge and is a useful education resource. Platform use has increased and includes users from around the world. Conclusion: Based on our current data, the MarylandCCProject remains a valuable and highly used educational resource, impacting patient care both during and after critical care fellowship training.
Discrete topology and sizing optimization of frame structures with compliance constraints: A semidefinite programming-based approach

The discrete topology and sizing optimization of frame structures with compliance constraints is studied using a novel approach, which is capable of finding the theoretical lower bounds and high-quality discrete solutions in an efficient manner. The proposed approach works by reformulating the discrete problem as a relaxed semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. This reformulation is made possible by a linear relaxation of the original discrete space and the elimination of the nonconvex equilibrium equation using a semidefinite constraint. A continuous global optimum is first derived using existing solvers and then the discrete solution is discovered by the neighborhood search. Numerical examples are presented, including the sizing optimization of 2-Bay 6-Story frame and 3-Bay 10-Story frame, the topology and sizing optimization of 2-Bay 6-Story braced frame. A topology and sizing example with multiple load cases is also provided. The proposed approach and three other metaheuristic algorithms are used to solve these examples. Theoretical lower bounds for these examples can be efficiently discovered by the proposed approach. For the sizing problems, the discrete solutions by the proposed approach are all better than the other algorithms. For the topology and sizing problems, the proposed approach achieves discrete solutions better than genetic algorithm, but worse than the other metaheuristics. The computational superiority of the proposed approach is validated in all the examples.
Binding biological polyanions : understanding and controlling binding mode in order to achieve controlled nanoscale assembly

This thesis explores polyanion binding and sensing using varirty of different approaches and aims to understand and manipulate these interactions. Amine-functionalised pyrene derivatives Py-G1 and Py-DAPMA can act as effective heparin sensors in competitive media using a ratiometric fluorescence sensing approach. The assembly of Py-G1 into pre-formed self-assembled multivalent (SAMul) nanostructures provides it with a significant (order of magnitude) advantage in terms of the dynamic range of sensory response over the non-SAMul Py-DAPMA in buffer. In the presence of serum, both ligands can still detect heparin ratiometrically, however, the SAMul sensing mechanism of Py-G1 is switched off. Three series of SAMul dendrons based on L or D lysine and focal point hydrophobic groups, either pyrene or hydrocarbon chains, have been developed. Their ability to exhibit different chiral binding preferences towards chiral polyanions DNA and heparin have been studied. The way in which the ligands are displayed, which in turn depends on the nature of the hydrophobic component and the overall structural characteristics, are absolutely critical. Insertion of a simple linker allows expression of the chiral information at the nanoscale surface. The interaction between heparin and Mallard Blue (Mal-B) or a series of SAMul heparin binders are explored by NMR spectroscopy. The choice of buffer has significant impact on Mal-B/heparin binding, but precipitation of the Mal-B:heparin complex limits the opportunity for NMR analysis. NMR provides some insight to the binding events at the nanoscale and appears particularly useful for uncovering the role of ligands and dynamics in mediating binding with the best binder appearing to have best resolved ligand NMR resonances. The ability of C22-G1 and Py-G1 to ast as “nanoglue”, causing adhesion between polyanions and carbon nanotubes was studied. Both can self-assemble and bind to DNA and SWCNT respectively and C22-G1 is a better DNA and SWCNT binder. Although the attempt to quantitatively assay simultaneous DNA and SWCNT binding was unsuccessful, TEM imaging clearly allowed onto monitor the binding of DNA and CNT, and demonstrated that our synthetic nanoglue system causes them to co-assemble.
Modulation of Magnetospheric Substorm Frequency: Dipole Tilt and IMF By Effects

Substorm activity is heavily influenced by the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) Bz component and magnetospheric substorms occur most frequently when Bz is strongly negative. The substorm occurrence rate is also affected by the magnitude of the By component, but it is usually presumed that this contribution is independent of the sign of By. Using five independent substorm onset lists, we show that substorm activity does depend on the sign of By near the solstices. Specifically, we show that substorms occur more frequently when By and the dipole tilt angle Ψ have different signs as opposed to when they have the same sign. These results confirm that the magnetosphere exhibits an explicit dependence on the polarity of By for nonzero Ψ, as other recent studies have suggested, and imply variation in the dayside reconnection rate and/or the magnetotail response. On the other hand, we find no clear relationship between substorm intensity and By regardless of Ψ. Last, for the onset list based on identifying negative bays at auroral latitudes, we observe an overall trend of more frequent onsets for positive By, regardless of season. However, substorm frequency in the other four substorm lists does not exhibit an overall preference for positive By. We show that this phenomenon is very likely a consequence of the particular substorm identification method (i.e., identification of negative bays), which is affected by local ionospheric conditions that depend on By and Ψ.
Impact of Inter-Regional Transport in a Low-Emission Scenario on PM2.5 in Hubei Province, Central China

In 2020, when the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) broke out as a global pandemic, cities in Hubei Province first went into lockdown on 23 January and resumed work and production on 20 March. From February to March 2020, human activities in Hubei decreased significantly, with the average particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) concentration standing at 40 μg/m3, which is 21% lower than the expected based on a linear fitting trend in thePM2.5 concentration in Hubei. By using the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) method, this paper comparatively analyzes the spatial-temporal variations of Hubei’s PM2.5 concentration anomaly in February and March 2020 and the same periods of 2016–2019. The results show that the daytime peak of the PM2.5 daily variation in Hubei in a low-emission scenario during COVID-19 declined significantly, to which human activities contributed the most. However, during nighttime, the PM2.5 peak became more prominent, and the meteorological conditions had a more noticeable effect on the PM2.5 concentration. In addition, during COVID-19, there was a great drop in PM2.5 pollution accumulated from local sources within the urban circle of Wuhan City, while an increase was seen in central-western Hubei due to the inter-regional pollutant transport. Thus, the high PM2.5 concentration center in the urban circle of Wuhan disappeared, but the pollution transport channel cities in central-western Hubei remained as high-PM2.5-concentration centers.
How Does Mytilus galloprovincialis Respond When Exposed to the Gametophyte Phase of the Invasive Red Macroalga Asparagopsis armata Exudate?

Asparagopsis armata is classified as an invasive species in Europe. Through the exudation of secondary metabolites, this macroalga holds a chemical defence against consumers, with potential toxic effects to native rocky shore communities. This study aims to evaluate the potential impact of A. armata (gametophyte) exudate in a native species, the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis, in terms of biochemical and organismal effects. The 96 h-LC50 was 3.667% and based on it, exudate concentrations (0.25; 0.5; 1; 2%) were determined to further sublethal experiments. These sublethal concentrations caused no oxidative damage in the digestive gland since lipid peroxidation and protein carbonylation were not affected. Nevertheless, there was a significant rise in the electron transport system activity and total glutathione content in muscle, suggesting an increased non-enzymatic antioxidant capacity and consequent energy consumption to cope with potential pro-oxidant compounds. This might have contributed to the observed decline in cellular energy allocation of the exposed mussels. At the organismal level, clearance capacity declined along the concentration gradient. Moreover, the number of functional byssuses decreased with increasing concentrations and a significant reduction in their attachment strength was observed. These findings suggest that the presence of A. armata may compromise M. galloprovincialis integrity in the invaded coastal areas.
Content-Based Image Retrieval with Combined Features: Color and Gradient

Feature extraction is fundamental stage of effective content based image retrieval (CBIR). However, it remains challenging issue to extract low-level features for retrieval systems. This paper puts forward an effective solution proposal for the aforementioned problem. Initially, images and their gradients are clustered with multi-level thresholding. A codebook is generated with threshold values. The size of the codebook generated depends on the number of thresholds. Consequently, every pixel in color image is included in a cluster by means of the codebook. Color reduction is performed by assigning the average values of pixels in the same cluster. A cluster-based one-dimensional histogram (CBH) is created with the numbers of pixels in every cluster represented with a single color. Then the cluster-based feature vectors with histogram are extracted from original image and gradient image. Accordingly, relevant features are combined. The developed feature vector is called as combined feature vector (CFV). The most important advantages of CFV are that it performs an effective color reduction technique and feature presentation by processing texture information with gradient operator. Therefore, the main contribution of the combined feature vector suggested is its high accuracy and stability for image retrieval. The proposed method has been tested with Corel-1K, Corel-5K Corel-10K and GHIM-10K datasets. In addition, performances of different image histogram similarity techniques such as cosine, histogram intersection and Euclidean distance have been verified with the developed algorithm. Experimental results have been analyzed in two categories. Initially, CBIR results produced with combined feature vectors which are generated by Otsu, Kapur and center of gravity of histogram (CGH) procedures have been evaluated. Then, the CBIR strategy based on CGH method has been compared with CBIR systems with local binary pattern (LBP) and gradient-structures histogram (GSH). It was observed that CBIR approach based on CGH technique has significantly outperformed.
Water-based single-flow mixing condensation particle counter

ABSTRACT A novel water-based condensation particle counter has been developed using a patented, single-flow mixing (SFM) condenser that permits a conventional thermal approach of using a hot saturator followed by a cold condenser to activate and grow particles for counting with an optical detector. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the internal flow, temperature, and vapor profiles was used to predict the effectiveness of the SFM condenser. Using the results from the CFD model, the counting efficiency was numerically calculated for pure water droplets, and the CPC cut-point (i.e., 50% counting efficiency) was predicted to be 8.3 nm. The experimental performance of the new CPC was measured with differential mobility analyzer-classified, monodisperse particles. The measured cut-points were 8.2 nm for Ag particles and 3.9 nm for NaCl particles. The reduction in the cut-point for NaCl is the result of a compound effect: water uptake by NaCl particles, which increases their size before entering into the growth section (condenser), and the reduction of the equilibrium vapor pressure of water over NaCl-water droplets, resulting in a decrease of the activation diameter. Copyright © 2016 American Association for Aerosol Research
Flow-Induced Dendritic β-Form Isotactic Polypropylene Crystals in Thin Films

Flow-induced dendritic β-form isotactic polypropylene (iPP) lamellae in thin films have been investigated using optical microscopy (OM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Shear flow in a thin film was induced by scratching supercooled iPP melt with a sharp scalpel at a constant rate. After subsequent isothermal crystallization, an extremely high nucleation density of edge-on α-iPP crystals oriented perpendicular to the flow direction was observed. Increasing shear flow temperature from 130 to 190 °C led to a decrease in both number density of flow-induced edge-on α-iPP lamellae and subsequent β-iPP crystals. Interestingly, two distinct paths for the change in orientation of edge-on crystals could be identified. The most probable route was the transition from edge-on to leaf-shaped α-iPP flat-on crystals. The transition from edge-on α-iPP lamellae to β-iPP flat-on crystals with dendritic shape occurred less frequently. We suggest a stepwise process for flow-induced growth of β-iPP crystals associated with .
Mental rotation performance and circadian chronotype in university students: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to explore the influence of the chronotype on mental rotation performance in university students. Using the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ), 24 healthy volunteers were categorized as either early chronotype (ECT) or late chronotype (LCT). Participants completed a chronometric mental rotation task with three-dimensional stimuli at different times of day (8 AM and 8 PM). ECT participants showed a shorter reaction time in the morning trial than in the evening (p = 0.003), whereas LCT participants showed a shorter reaction time (p = 0.001) and increased accuracy (p = 0.031) in the evening compared to the morning session. Additionally, the MEQ score was positively correlated with the difference in reaction time between morning and evening trials (r = −0.589, p = 0.002). Two-way analysis of variance revealed an interaction between time and chronotype for the parameter reaction time in the evening trials (F(1, 22) = 28.27, p < 0.001). LCT participants showed higher speed and increased accuracy during their optimal time compared to ECT participants. This study explored diurnal alterations of visual-spatial abilities assessed as mental rotation performance, and the possible implications for certain life skills such as sports, car driving, and manual labor are discussed.
In-Depth Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Endangered Peruvian Amazon Rosewood Germplasm Using Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS) Technology

Research studies on conservative genetics of endangered plants are very important to establish the management plans for the conservation of biodiversity. Rosewood is an evergreen tree of the Amazon region and its essential oil has great acceptance in the medical and cosmetic industry. The present study aimed to explore the genetic diversity and population structure of 90 rosewood accessions collected from eight localities of Peruvian Amazon territory through DArTseq markers. A total of 7485 informative markers resulted from genotyping by sequencing (GBS) analysis were used for the molecular characterization of rosewood germplasm. Mean values of various calculated diversity parameters like observed number of alleles (1.962), the effective number of alleles (1.669), unbiased expected heterozygosity (0.411), and percent polymorphism (93.51%) over the entire germplasm showed the existence of a good level of genetic variations. Our results showed that the Mairiricay population was more diverse compared to the rest of the populations. Tamshiyacu-2 and Mairiricay-15 accessions were found genetically distinct accessions. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) reflected maximum variations (75%) are due to differences within populations. The implemented clustering algorithms, i.e., STRUCTURE, neighbor-joining analysis and principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) separated the studied germplasm on the basis of their geographical locations. Diversity indices for STRUCTURE-based populations showed that subpopulation A is more diverse population than the rest of the populations, for such reason, individuals belonging to this subpopulation should be used for reintroduction or reinforcement plans of rosewood conservation. We envisage that molecular characterization of Peruvian rosewood germplasm with DArTseq markers will provide a platform for the conservation, management and restoration of endangered rosewood in upcoming years.
Safe Reopening of Schools during COVID-19: An Evaluation of Handwash Facilities and Students’ Hand Hygiene Knowledge and Practices

Children are energetic and filled with vigour, the high rate of person-to-person contact at schools could leave the students susceptible to hygiene-related illnesses if appropriate measures are not put in place. The absence of adequate handwash facilities, inadequate hand hygiene knowledge, and poor hand hygiene practices have been reported to be prevalent among schools in Nigeria. The emergence of COVID-19 even makes it more important to provide recent and quality data as schools plan to reopen safely. This study aimed to assess the accessibility of public-school students in Badagry, Lagos State to basic handwash services, as well as their hygiene-related knowledge and practices. A 4-stage sampling method was used to select 5 wards, 5 schools, the classes, and 351 students. A mixed-method which included a semi-structured questionnaire, observational checklist, and a key informant interview guide was used to collect data. Data were inputted into SPSS version 20 and analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square, and logistic regression at a 95% confidence interval. The respondents had a mean age of 15.88± 1.54 years. All the available wash-hand stations (WHS) were in the toilet blocks. All the male toilet facilities had WHS as opposed to just 60% of the female facilities. None of the WHS had soap present, while a quarter of the WHS did not have water available. Based on the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) classification; none of the WHS provided basic hygiene service, 60% provided limited service and 40% provided no service. The majority (83%) of the students possessed a good knowledge of hand hygiene, however, only less than half (47%) reported washing their hands with soap and water at school. Factors like age (p=0.010) and their parents’ educational status (mother- p=0.002; father- p=0.011) significantly affected the students’ knowledge. The absence of basic handwash facilities in all the schools clearly shows the need for rapid intervention, particularly to eliminate gender disparities and to ensure the sustainable availability of sufficient soap and water.
Functional robustness of seed dispersal by a remnant frugivore population on a defaunated tropical island

We surveyed zoochorous seedlings at an urbanized site on Guam with a remnant population of frugivores, and an otherwise similar site lacking all frugivores. Both seedling richness and abundance were much higher at the site with frugivores, providing hope that small populations can retain or restore ecological function.