Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deformation of liquid drops containing ions in the presence of an electric field

The deformation and breakup of a conducting water drop immersed in hexadecane in the presence of an electric field is investigated using a numerical tool for a range of field strengths and ion concentrations. At low electric field strengths, the drop deformation is a linear function of the electric capillary number. For high electric field strengths, the dependence is no longer linear, and significant drop deformation occurs. The drop deformation increases with increasing ion concentration, due to a separation of ions within the drop, leading to a redistribution of charge at either end of the drop.
The context-dependent nature of the neural implementation of intentions

Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in intentional action. Yet, knowledge about what these networks exactly encoded is still scarce. In this study we look into the content of those processes. We ask whether the neural representations of intentions are context- and reason-invariant, or whether these processes depend on the context we are in, and the reasons we have for choosing an action. We use a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding to directly assess the context- and reason-dependency of the processes underlying intentional action. We were able to decode action decisions in the same context and for the same reasons from the fMRI data, in line with previous decoding studies. Furthermore, we could decode action decisions across different reasons for choosing an action. Importantly, though, decoding decisions across different contexts was at chance level. These results suggest that for voluntary action, there is considerable context-dependency in intention representations. This suggests that established invariance in neural processes may not reflect an essential feature of a certain process, but that this stable character could be dependent on invariance in the experimental setup, in line with predictions from situated cognition theory.
A Mathematical Model for Deep Bed Drying of Gelatinized White Yam (Dioscorea rotundata, Poir)

A mathematical model was developed for analyzing simultaneous heat and mass transfer in a deep bed of gelatinised white yam during a drying process. The model comprised three partial differential equations which were dynamic functions of the temperature and moisture content of the product as well as the temperature and humidity ratio of the drying air. The coefficients of the equations were continuous functions of the physical, thermal and hygroscopic properties of the product as well as the thermodynamic properties of air. The properties of the product were determined experimentally. Thin-layer drying data required for solving the differential equations were obtained experimentally by drying samples of the product in a convective air dryer at temperatures of 40 to 70°C and 10 to 50% relative humidity. Moisture desorption isotherms data also required for the solution of the model equation were obtained experimentally using static gravimetric method. The partial differential equations were solved numerically by using finite difference method. The deep bed drying model was validated by drying samples of gelatinized white yam in a convective air dryer; and the experimental drying data were compared with simulated data. Data obtained by the numerical simulation of the mathematical deep bed drying model agreed well with experimental data. As a result of its reasonable accuracy, therefore, the mathematical model provides many possibilities for predicting the relevant variables for a drying process. For example, the model permits the predetermination of the values of time-averaged moisture content as well as instantaneous distribution of the drying variables along the bed height. The model can also be used for predicting the product’s final moisture content and drying time, thereby making a drying process accurate, precise and amenable to automatic control using microcontrollers and computers.
A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Functions Predicting Employment of Individuals with Acquired Brain Injury

: Background: Only 20% of the hospitals in Japan currently provide work support services for patients with acquired brain injury (ABI). Since the new employment quota system in Japan requires private companies to hire individuals with psychiatric disabilities as of April 2018, the number of employees with ABI is expected to increase. This social background would encourage medical staff to rely more on neuropsychological assessment test scores to under-stand the cognitive abilities of those patients who need vocational support to transition from hospital to work. Purpose: The of the study was to clarify the subcategories of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale that would predict the work ability of individuals with ABI. Methodology: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to identify specific cognitive functions related to work ability. Four original articles from MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, CiNii, and the ICHUSHI database that met study inclusion criteria were analyzed. Results: Results showed that there were four tasks under the verbal test—“vocabulary,” “digit span,” “arithmetic,” and “similarities”—and two tasks under the performance test—“block design” and “coding”—that were predictive variables of work ability. Conclusion: Assessing cognitive functions of individuals with ABI, such as “working memory,” “continuous atten-tion,” “abstract thinking,” “vocabulary and expression,” and “time series processing,” could more effectively predict work ability.
8 Nerve Agent Bioscavengers: Progress in Development of a New Mode of Protection against Organophosphorus Exposure

I. Introduction 176II. Current Therapy for Nerve Agent Exposure 177III. Nerve Agent Bioscavengers: An Alternative to Conventional Approaches 177IV. Stoichiometric Scavengers and the Protection they Offer 179V. Catalytic Bioscavengers 185VI. Behavioral Effects 191VII. Behavioral Effects of Scavengers Alone 191VIII. Summary 192References 193Although treatment for intoxication by organophosphorus (OP) poisons exists, the treatmentregimen suffers from certain deﬁciencies. To overcome these disadvantages, the concept of usinga bioscavenger has emerged as a new approach to reduce the in vivo toxicity of chemical warfarenerve agents. Bioscavengers fall into two broad categories, stoichiometric, that is, proteins that bindand detoxify a poison in some ﬁxed molecular ratio, and catalytic, that is, proteins that can cause thebreakdown of a molecule of a poison, regenerate, and then repeat the process until all of the poisonmolecules have been destroyed. To be an improvement over current treatment, a biologicalscavenger should have minimal or no behavioral or physiological side effects, should provideprotection against exposure to as much as ﬁve LD
Properties of Black Charcoal Board Manufactured from Domestic Wood Waste by Using Serum Protein Adhesive

ABSTRACTThis study was carried out to manufacture black charcoal board from domestic wood waste by using serum protein adhesive which is natural, environment-friendly and human-friendly. For the preparation of the serum protein adhesive, pig blood from slaughterhouse was centrifuged and serum was separated from corpuscles and concentrated to 30% by dry weight basis. The particle size of charcoal from domestic wood waste for this stu dy was #6-60. Hot pressing schedule was 170℃ and 40kgf/cm 2 (1 min)-10kgf/cm 2 (2.5 min)-40kgf/cm 2 (5 min). The black charcoal board made by the addition of 13% serum protein adhesive on dry weight basis gave 41.76kgf/cm 2 of bending strength, 8.12kgf/cm 2 of internal bonding strength, and excellent gas adsorption and workability. Key words:serum adhesive, black charcoal board, bending strength, Interna l bonding strength, gas adsorption Ⅰ. 서 론 1) 현재 실내공기질 오염방지를 위한 각국의 정책으로 크게 두가지 제도를 운영하고 있다. 첫째는 건축자재 품질인증제도로서 건축자재로부터의 실내오염물질 방출의 영향이 직접적이므로 건축자재에 대한 품질인증제도를 시행하여 Sick house 대책으로 임하고 있으며 우리나라의 경우는 ‘다중이용시설 등의 실내공기질 관리법’(법률, 제6911호, 2003)이 환경부에 의하여 시행되고 있다. 둘째로 자재에 국한하지 않고 총체적인 건물의 환경인증의 방법으로 건물의 총체적 환경인증 성능에 입각해서 지구환경 및 자원의 이용, 주변환경과의 친화도, 실내환경의 질과 같은 환경요소(소음, 구조, 환경, 생활환경 및 화재․소방 등 5개 분야 총 20여개 항목)들을 모두 포함하여 다루고 있으며, 환경성과 건강성을 모두 갗추기 위한 목표달성을 위해 등급점수제(국내 주택성능 등급인정 및 관리기준(국토해양부 고시 제 2009-1191호, 2009)의 총체적인 평가를 시행하여 주택 구매시 소비자가 원하는 성능을 포함하고 있는 주택을 구입할 수 있는 이점이 있다 . 2010년 6월부터 시행예정인 새로 마련하는 청정건강주택 건설 기준은 기존의 기준을 더욱 세부적으로 차별화시켜 국민의 건강을 보호하고자
The Impact of Fixed Triple Therapy with Beclometasone/Formoterol/Glycopyrronium on Health Status and Adherence in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in an Italian Context of Real Life: The TRITRIAL Study Protocol

Background The fixed triple combination Beclometasone dipropionate/Formoterol fumarate/Glycopyrronium (BDP/FF/G, Trimbow®), an extrafine formulation in a unique pressurized metered dose inhaler, is indicated for the maintenance treatment in adult patients with moderate to severe COPD, not adequately treated by ICS/LABA or LABA/LAMA. Besides the evidence from three randomized controlled trials, the impact of fixed triple therapy has not been extensively evaluated in a real-world population of COPD patients. TRITRIAL (TRIple Therapy in Real life: Impact on Adherence and HeaLth status) is a non-interventional study to assess the effect of BDP/FF/G in a real world setting in Italy. Design TRITRIAL is a 12-month, multicenter, cohort, prospective, longitudinal observational study. Two follow-up visits will be performed at 6 and 12 months, respectively. The study includes the collection of anamnestic clinical and functional data before the start of BDP/FF/G. The study is built for digital conduction, from signature of the informed consent on a dedicated web platform, to the collection of questionnaires and clinical data on the eCRF. Population A total of 800 patients with COPD ranging from Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) stages 2 to 4, receiving therapy with BDP/FF/G according to the Summary of Product Characteristics and local clinical practice, will be recruited. All concomitant therapies will be permitted for the duration of the study. Evaluations The primary endpoint is the change of CAT score at 12 months versus baseline. Secondary endpoints are adherence, health-related quality of life, sleep quality, disease-related outcomes (lung function and COPD exacerbations), device usability, economic resources consumption, and safety. Conclusion TRITRIAL study is expected to give relevant information about effectiveness of BDP/FF/G fixed triple therapy in a real-life setting of patients with COPD, where adherence, usability of inhalers and patient’s preference of the device are crucial factors for the success of the therapy.
Étude par dynamique moléculaire de la micro-hétérogénéité dans les mélanges eau-alcools

In this thesis we focus on the structural refinements present in the associated liquids. Using the molecular dynamics simulations we probe the microstructure of these liquids, namely the neat systems and alcohol-water mixtures. From the correlation functions in direct and reciprocal space and as well as the cluster distribution functions we create a consistent picture of the structural specificity that exist in the associated liquids. We made a distinction between the structural organization in pure liquids and in binary systems, first defined through the local self-association of molecules, and second corresponding to a local segregation of the components of the binary system. In each case the highly anisotropic site-site hydrogen bonding has main role. In the pure liquids the association is induced through specific site-interactions that lead to an inhomogeneous distribution ofsites, while the molecular distribution preserves the liquid-like behavior. In the binary system the micro-heterogeneity is due to the local immiscibility of the species. Micro-heterogeneity appears to be universal feature of aqueous solutions, predominantly driven by hydrogen bonding. Micro-heterogeneous order does not quite fit in the class of disorder, but neither in that of order. It appears like a new form or order, and challenges our techniques to put this in evidence, both experimentally or through simulations
Tsarray: An Intelligent Access Control System Using Backscatter Communication

With the help of computer vision-based technology, current face recognition access control systems can effectively reduce the hassle of swiping cards. However, it is not suitable for special industry areas where privacy is concerned, and it cannot be used in environments where light conditions are not satisfied. In this paper, we propose Tsarray, an RFID-based method that intelligent senses access control events by vertically deploying large-scale passive tags to the attachment plane. By fully studying the correlation between access control events, and the received RF signals, we choose a tag array deployment strategy of 4 rows, and 15 columns to eliminate environmental interference, and extract distinctive time slot tag array maps for direction tracking. Besides, by setting the same direction conversion module, the signal feature differences caused by the direction are eliminated. Moreover, we built a model to extract the spatiotemporal characteristics, and explore the model structure that is most suitable for the access control event. We evaluate the performance of Tsarray in a real environment, and used a reserved unseen test sample as a system test. Results show that our system can achieve the optimal performance in direction tracking, the accuracy of the 10 volunteers’ recognition is 97.5%, the accuracy of the height recognition is 95%, and the accuracy of the weight recognition is 92.5%.
The Opportunities and Challenges of Silica Nanomaterial for Atherosclerosis

Abstract Atherosclerosis (AS) as the leading cause of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events has been paid much attention all the time. With the continuous development of modern medical drug treatment, surgical treatment, interventional treatment and other methods, the mortality rate of AS has shown a downward trend, while the morbidity rate is still increasing. Oral lipid-lowering or anti-inflammatory drugs are generally used for early AS, but the relatively low accumulation efficiency in lesions and the unavoidable side effects required researchers to develop more effective drug delivery approaches for the therapy of AS. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles as nanocarrier for drug delivery have received extensive attentions due to their flexible size, high specific surface area, controlled pore volume, high drug loading capacity and excellent biocompatibility. Series of good reviews about the mesoporous silica nanoparticles loaded drugs for cancer therapy have been well documented. However, their roles as nanocarrier for drug delivery to treat AS have few reports. In this review, the applications and challenges of mesoporous silica nanomaterials in the field of the diagnosis and therapy of AS have been summarized. The classification, synthesis, formation mechanism, surface modification and functionalization of mesoporous silica nanomaterials which were closely related to the theranostic effect of AS have also been included. Last but not the least, the future prospects’ suggestions of mesoporous silica nanomaterial-based drug delivery system for AS are also provided.
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not critical for behavior change without external reinforcement

Cue-approach training (CAT) is a novel paradigm that has been shown to induce preference changes towards items without external reinforcements. In the task the mere association of a neutral cue and a speeded button response has been shown to induce a behavioral change lasting months. This paradigm includes several phases whereby after the training of individual items, behavior change is manifested through binary choices of items with similar initial values. Neuroimaging data have implicated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during the choice phase of this task. However, it still remains unclear what are the underlying neural mechanisms during training. Here, we sought to determine whether the ventromedial frontal cortex (VMF) is critical for the non-reinforced preference change induced by CAT. For this purpose, eleven participants with focal lesions involving the VMF and 30 healthy age-matched controls performed the CAT. We found that at the individual level, a similar proportion of VMF and healthy participants showed a preference shift following CAT. The VMF group performed similarly to the healthy age-matched control group in the ranking and training phases. As a group the healthy age-matched controls exhibited a behavior change, but the VMF participants as a group did not. We did not find an association between individual lesion patterns and performance in the task. We conclude that a fully intact VMF is not critical to induce non-externally reinforced preference change and suggest potential mechanisms for this novel type of behavioral change.
Estimating Invasion Dynamics with Geopolitical Unit-Level Records: The Optimal Method Depends on Irregularity and Stochasticity of Spread

Biological invasions are an ongoing threat for sustainability of ecosystems, and estimating the spread of invasive species is critical for making management decisions. Geopolitical unit-level data (GULD) are often used to estimate invasions due to their wide availability, and researchers had evaluated the abilities of multiple methods to estimate invasion with GULD. However, earlier studies were case based and only addressed limited information on the spread, thus making it inadequate to determine which method to choose to estimate invasions with GULD under various spread scenarios. Here, we conducted a simulation study to (1) evaluate performances of eight methods on estimating expansion patterns, spread rates, and spread dynamics of invasive species with GULD; (2) assess the impact of size and homogeneity of size of geopolitical unit on the estimations by studied methods; (3) evaluate the similarities of all studied methods. Additionally, we presented a concave hull boundary displacement method (Ctd_BD) and an area-based regression method (SqrtNA_R) to estimate spread with GULD. Three regions with varying sizes of counties in the United States (U.S.) were selected to conduct the simulations, and three spread scenarios and three expansion patterns were simulated. AIC, and R2 and root mean square error (RMSE) were used to evaluate the accuracy of methods on estimating expansion pattern, and overall spread rate and spread dynamics, respectively. Correlation coefficient and RMSE were used to assess the similarity of eight methods. We found Ctd_BD and area-based regression methods consistently estimated the right expansion patterns. Boundary displacement and area-based regression methods estimated highly correlated spread rates and dynamics. Distance-based regression methods provided a high accuracy on estimating overall spread rate without long-distance jump dispersal but performed poorly on estimating the spread dynamics. We recommend boundary displacement method, especially Ctd_BD, for estimating spread with GULD, whereas for spread without clear infestation boundaries, distance-based regression can be used to estimate overall spread rate and area-based regression can be used to estimate spread dynamics.
Platform owners and complementors: the emergence and evolution of platform firms and the performance implications for organizational learning, strategic alliance, and vertical integration behaviors of platform participants

In recent years, platform firms have become an essential component of the business world. With the increasing number of studies, the impacts of platform firms on the traditional business environment are visible in many industry settings. Yet, little attention has been paid to the origin of these organizations. Analyzing 52 publicly available interviews with platform entrepreneurs, managers, and venture capitalists, I explore the emergence of platform firms. In a rigorous grounded theory-building study, I develop a theory and a process model showing how platform firms come into existence over four consecutive stages: (1) Inefficient Markets and Incumbents, (2) Entrepreneurial Motivation and Enabling Factors, (3) Efficiency-Enhancing Means, and (4) Platform Firms. The model illustrates that platform organizations’ impact on the traditional business environment results from developing efficiency-enhancing means. It also highlights the differences between platform firms and traditional firms, and yields important implications for existing theories of the firm.
Adaptive Convolution Neural Networks for Electrical Resistivity Inversion

Electrical Resistivity Inversion is an inverse problem that intends to infer the resistivity model from apparent resistivity data. The input and output have the format as the image but are with some unique characteristics that differ from the common natural images. The patterns in resistivity data are no longer spatial invariant. In this case, though the vanilla convolutional neural networks could build the mapping between images, their weight sharing kernels may cause ambiguous situations when coping with the resistivity data. To address this problem, in this work, we directly adapt convolutional kernels to fit for the electrical resistivity inversion task. By analyzing the resistivity data, we found the data patterns corresponding to the same abnormal body will vary with the vertical position change, correspondingly we learn extra offset and amplitude parameters for each vertical position the convolutional kernels applied, to make convolutional kernels transformed to capture the varying patterns. Unlike active convolution and deformable convolution, our learned offsets and amplitudes are sharing at each vertical position, which is neither too free nor too rigid. More importantly, it obeys the inherent characteristics of resistivity data. Finally, through adversarial training, the inversion results are more realistic as the resistivity model. From comprehensive comparisons and studies, our adaptive convolutional neural networks (ACN) outperform the baselines consistently, verifying our assumption and the effectiveness of our proposed method.
SALES CAPABILITY AND PERFORMANCE: ROLE OF MARKET ORIENTATION, PERSONAL AND MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES

ABSTRACT Purpose: This article aims to explain the relationships between sales capabilities, which are split into personal selling and sales force management, both from the manager’s point of view, and financial/customer performance in market-oriented firms. Originality/value: This research is the first that explores in-depth sales capabilities and demonstrated that these capabilities need a previous strategic orientation. It checks different types of performance that can be the result of these two capabilities. We applied the research in to two types of companies, providing a number of contributions to the theory and practice of marketing. Design/methodology/approach: We conducted a survey with 223 companies that were divided according to their activities: software/service developers and companies that only offer services in information technology and communication sector. Findings: First, the two sales capabilities (personal and managerial) induce different performance, even when they are influenced by the same strategic orientation. Second, the mediation effect reinforces that sales force management capability is stronger than personal selling capability. Third, in service companies, it is important to develop personal selling capabilities. Lastly, they show that software/service companies present a differentiated behavior of service companies.