Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revolving Codes: Overhead and Computational Complexity Analysis

Revolving codes (ReC) are a new family of network codes that reduce signaling overhead and maintain high decoding probability, which is key in applications with small payloads, e.g., IoT, Industry 4.0. However, they have only been studied using simulations. We present i) the first exact mathematical model for the total overhead and decoding probability of a set of ReCs, and ii) efficient encoders and decoders. Our analysis shows that ReC decoders’ number of multiplications scales as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(g)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the number of data packets being combined. In practice, this translates in several orders of magnitude fewer multiplications, half the number of additions, and lower transmission overheads compared to RLNC.
An Ultrahigh Sensitivity Microwave Sensor for Microfluidic Applications

This work shows an ultrahigh sensitivity microwave sensor for microfluidic applications. The proposed sensor is made of a microstrip line loaded with a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR). The meander slot is adopted in the CSRR to achieve high field confinement and is therefore covered with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic channel to enable strong interaction between the field and the liquid sample. The complex permittivity of the liquid sample can be retrieved by the variations in the resonant frequency and peak attenuation. The proposed design requires a very small liquid volume of $\sim 0.5~\mu \text{L}$ while offering a high sensitivity. A prototype is fabricated and tested, with a good agreement achieved between the extracted values and the reference data.
Real World Scrum A Grounded Theory of Variations in Practice

Scrum, the most popular agile method and project management framework, is widely reported to be used, adapted, misused, and abused in practice. However, not much is known about how Scrum actually works in practice, and critically, where, when, how and why it diverges from Scrum by the book. Through a Grounded Theory study involving semi-structured interviews of 45 participants from 30 companies and observations of five teams, we present our findings on how Scrum works in practice as compared to how it is presented in its formative books. We identify significant variations in these practices such as work breakdown, estimation, prioritization, assignment, the associated roles and artefacts, and discuss the underlying rationales driving the variations. Critically, we claim that not all variations are process misuse/abuse and propose a nuanced classification approach to understanding variations as standard, necessary, contextual, and clear deviations for successful Scrum use and adaptation.
Life quality and empathy in children with celiac disease

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate the associations between celiac disease (CD) and children’s life quality and empathy level. METHODS: In this study, all participants aged 8–14 years completed the Turkish version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory and Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents. Parents were also applied to the structured survey. RESULTS: This study included a study group consisting of 45 children with celiac disease and a control group with 48 healthy children. The total scores of PedsQL were significantly lower for children with celiac disease when compared to the control group (p<0.05). When the sub-scores of PedsQL were evaluated, scores except the school functioning score (ScFS) were significantly lower in the study group (p<0.05). When IECA was analyzed, total empathy scale scores (TESS) were measured significantly higher in the study group (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: This study supports the argument that the quality of life decreases in children with CD. Future studies should aim to develop support models to improve the life quality of celiac patients. To our knowledge, this is the first study proving the increased empathy levels of children with CD. The determinants of the increased empathy levels should be focussed on future studies.
Conceptualizing the Agile Work Organization: A systematic literature review, framework and research agenda

The ongoing discussion of the Agile Work Organization (AO) in research and practice permeates a multitude of research areas. However, no clear conceptualization of the AO has been provided. In this paper, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review to investigate what constitutes and defines the AO. The SLR reveals three dimensions in the research field of the AO: Strategic, Functional and Operative Agility. These dimensions define the AO through different unique capabilities by influencing and enhancing the overall goal of the AO in adaptation and flexibility. Building up on the insights from the review, we develop proposition which describe the interrelationship between the dimensions and towards the AO. Furthermore, implications for academia and practice as well as a research agenda are provided in order to trigger and guide further discussions and research surrounding the AO.
Synthesis of Multi-Port Filtering Power Divider for Mixed Topology Using Matrix Optimization

In this brief, a direct synthesis method is proposed to extract the coupling matrix of multi-port filtering power divider (FPD) for mixed topology for the first time. Different from the existing cross-coupled configuration, extracted pole based topology containing non-resonating nodes (NRN) is introduced into the multi-port FPD network to eliminate some inherent limitations. All the elements of coupling matrix are obtained directly in the synthesis process by optimizing the cost function with the deigned Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO) algorithm in this brief, avoiding evaluating the numerical value one by one from the conventional two-port filter synthesis method and eliminating the step of similarity transformations of the coupling matrix. Moreover, impedance matching has been considered to the FPD synthesis process to meet the comprehensive needs of more scenarios. Several numerical examples of FPD with equal/unequal power division ratios and arbitrary reference impedance, different responses for both symmetrical and asymmetrical mixed topologies are synthesized to verify the proposed synthesis method.
Phylogeny and diversity of lamiaceae based on rps14 gene in Pakistan

Phylogeny and diversity of Lamiaceae based on rps14 gene in Pakistan. - Genetika, Vol 52, No.2, 435-452. The present research work was carried out to conduct concordance between the molecular data and the phylogenetic relationship between the selected species of Lamiaceae. We studied 34 species collected from various phytogeographical areas of Pakistan. Molecular DNA was isolated from fresh leaf specimens of the selected taxa. The rps 14 gene was amplified for the isolation of DNA sequencing and the amplified products were sequenced and analyzed for phylogenetic analysis. The sequenced products were analyzed using bioinformatics tools such as MEGA7, I-TASSER (Iterative Threading Assembly Refinement) and SAVES (The Structure Analysis and Verification Server). ExPASY translate tool was used for the translation of nucleotide sequences to amino acid sequences. Phlomis cashmeriana with Origanum vulgare, and Lamium album with Lamium amplexicaul showed a close relationship in both phylogenetic trees with well-represented bootstrap (BS) values. The pairwise distance ranged from 0.013 to 0.19 with an overall mean distance of 0.068 was also observed. I-TASSER software was utilized to predict the 3D protein structures followed by stereochemical analysis. Based on the present finding it is determined that the rps 14 gene would be used as a DNA barcode for the identification of plant taxa. Additionally, it is needed for the development of additional reliable molecular markers to resolve the systematics issues in the family Lamiaceae.
Développement de nouvelles méthodologies par spectrométrie de masse à très haute résolution pour l’analyse structurale de complexes protéiques

The association of hydrogen/deuterium exchange and mass spectrometry (HDX/MS) has been emerged as a powerful analytical tool for probing structural and dynamic features of proteins. In classical bottom-up approach, the deuterated protein is digested by pepsin and the proteolytic digest is analyzed by mass spectrometry. Unfortunately, this approach suffers from two main drawbacks: (1) the resolution, which is limited by the size of the peptides after digestion and (2) the back-exchange that can take place in solution before the analysis by mass spectrometry. Classical tandem mass spectrometry cannot be used to improve resolution since Collision Induced Dissociation (CID) experiments on deuterated peptides have been shown for intramolecular deuterium migration before backbone cleavage ("scrambling"). Therefore, there is a great interest in the development of alternative HDX/MS approaches in order to improve back-exchange, scrambling and resolution problems. In this work, a complete optimized workflow for robust top-down HDX/MS has been set up. New system has been developed for introduction of the deuterated samples in the mass spectrometer, named "cryosource" and electron-based activation techniques, Electron Capture/Transfer Dissociation, were used. ECD and ETD have been shown recently to fragment, in proper experimental conditions, entire deuterated proteins with minimized scrambling and single residue resolution. The cryosource leads to negligible back-exchange during long periods of time and allows low flow rates. Optimization of all parameters was done using model peptides and protein. Our final goal was to use this methodology for the structural analysis of the complex aIF2.
First documentation of malaria parasites (genus Plasmodium) in the Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus) and patterns of infection with mercury exposure

1 Chapter 1: Introduction. 3 Literature Cited.6 Chapter 2: Diversity and Distribution of Malaria Parasites (genus Plasmodium) in Saltmarsh Sparrows (Ammodramus caudacutus). 8 Introduction . 8 Materials and methods.11 Results.14 Discussion.19 Literature Cited.25 Chapter 3: Patterns of Plasmodium Infection with Blood Mercury Levels in the Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus). 27 Introduction . 27 Materials and methods.30 Results.31 Discussion.33 Literature Cited.37 Chapter 4: Conclusions . 40 Acknowledgements.42
Photovoltaic Hosting Capacity Sensitivity to Active Distribution Network Management

The increasing integration of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems in low voltage (LV) distribution systems may result in technical problems such as over-voltage. Thus, utilities have been employing different active distribution network management schemes to enhance rooftop photovoltaic hosting capacity (PVHC) by mitigating the technical issues. As there are different control schemes to resolve the over-voltage issue and increase PVHC, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive method to compare their effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of autonomous voltage control strategies on the PVHC in LV distribution feeders. The investigated operation strategies are based on the active and reactive power control capabilities of PV systems as well as the on-load tap changer of transformers. We propose an optimization-based framework to determine the PVHC considering the voltage control capabilities. We do this by utilizing the linear mathematical model of the PVHC, in which the voltage control strategies are modeled as equality and inequality constraints. The proposed methodology is examined on IEEE 123-bus test system as well as 128 LV UK feeders to identify the potential of autonomous voltage control strategies in increasing the PVHC. Finally, the sensitivity of the obtained results to the R/X ratio of the feeders and size of PV systems is assessed.
A Self-Calibration Imaging Method for Microwave Staring Correlated Imaging Radar With Time Synchronization Errors

Microwave Staring Correlated Imaging (MSCI) technology has attracted increasing attentions for its ability to acquire high-resolution images in staring imaging geometry. The key point of MSCI is to construct the temporal—spatial stochastic radiation field which can be realized by multi-transmitter systems emitting frequency-hopping (FH) waveforms. However, time synchronization errors always exist in practice, which heavily deteriorates the imaging results. Therefore in this article, a two–step self–calibration imaging method for MSCI transmitting frequency-hopping waveforms is proposed to directly estimate the time synchronization errors. At the first step, a sparsity driven algorithm is proposed which utilizes a novel cluster sparse prior to improve the imaging performance. At the second step, a self–calibration operation is proposed the first time to directly compensate the time synchronization errors in MSCI. By alternately reconstructing the targets and estimating the time synchronization errors, the proposed method can reconstruct the target with high imaging quality and effectively compensate the time synchronization errors. Numerical simulations demonstrate the potential advantages of the proposed method to enhance the imaging quality and improve the time synchronization error estimation performance.
Recursive sequences and girard-waring identities with applications in sequence transformation

We present here a generalized Girard-Waring identity constructed from recursive sequences. We also present the construction of Binet Girard-Waring identity and classical Girard-Waring identity by using the generalized Girard-Waring identity and divided differences. The application of the generalized Girard-Waring identity to the transformation of recursive sequences of numbers and polynomials is discussed.
Ring-Artifact Correction With Total-Variation Regularization for Material Images in Photon-Counting CT

We propose a ring-artifact correction method with a compressed sensing for material images obtained with a photon-counting computed tomography (CT) system. The ring-artifacts are caused by nonuniformity of detector properties. Conventional ring-artifact correction methods tend to degrade the quality of images. In contrast, compressed sensing methods can correct ring-artifacts with less degradation of the image quality owing to a priori knowledge that ring-artifacts appeared as stripes in sinograms. In this study, we extend the compressed sensing methods for material sinograms obtained with a photon-counting CT system. This is because material sinograms tend to be simpler and sparser, for which a compressed-sensing method can be more effective. We introduced a cost function with a total variation-regularization term and positivity constraint, and optimized it with a prime-dual splitting method. The feasibility of this method was confirmed by simulations and an experiment. In both the simulations and experiment, the proposed method better corrected the ring artifacts than those on attenuation domain and without a priori knowledge. The comparison with previous methods in literature also showed the same results. These results suggest that our method is effective for correcting ring-artifacts in material images.
Electrocoagulation as a pre-treatment stage to reverse osmosis units

Reverse osmosis (RO) is used by coal seam gas (CSG) operators to treat produced water as it is a well-established and proven technology worldwide. Despite the suitability of RO, there are problems associated with RO technology such as membrane fouling which although not preventing use of RO does decrease effectiveness and increase operating costs. Hence, effective pre-treatment of water samples is essential. Electrocoagulation (EC) potentially can provide improved water purification compared to conventional coagulation prior to an RO unit. This paper provides the first reported study of EC for CSG water pre-treatment and compares the performance to a range of aluminium and iron based coagulants. It was found that EC was superior in terms of removal of silica, calcium, magnesium, barium and strontium in the produced water.
Efficient Scheduling, Caching, and Merging of Notifications to Save Message Costs in IoT Networks Using CoAP

Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are widely deployed and many of them have limited capabilities. Constrained application protocol (CoAP) is developed to integrate such devices into the Web environment. Specifically, client devices register their interested data with IoT devices, which will keep notifying them of the status of sensing data. However, client devices have different demands in terms of minimum and maximum periods to receive notifications, whereas IoT devices usually offer notifications at regular intervals. Some IoT devices would send many more notifications than necessary, which wastes bandwidth and energy. To conquer this problem, this article proposes a group-based message management (GMM) framework for CoAP proxies to efficiently coordinate the sending of notifications from IoT devices and forward them to client devices. GMM curtails superfluous notifications by three modules. The scheduling module groups client devices based on their demands and finds an optimal observation period for each group. The caching module adjusts the max-age value to allow a proxy reusing its cached notifications to answer requests. The merging module combines the notifications originated from different IoT devices queried by the same client device so as to save bandwidth. The simulation results show that GMM not only reduces unnecessary notifications but also conserves the energy of devices.
A Framework for Autonomous Impedance Regulation of Robots Based on Imitation Learning and Optimal Control

In this work, we propose a framework to address the autonomous impedance regulation problem of robots in a class of constrained manipulation tasks. In this framework, a human arm endpoint stiffness model is used to extract the task stiffness geometry along the constrained trajectory, which is then encoded offline and reproduced online by a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the Gaussian Mixture Regression (GMR), respectively. Furthermore, the full Cartesian impedance of the robot is formulated through an optimal control problem, i.e., the Linear-Quadratic Regulator (LQR), in which the task stiffness geometry (extracted from human demonstrations) is considered as the time-varying weighting matrix Q. The optimal impedance is eventually realised by the robot through a task geometry consistent Cartesian impedance controller. A tank-based passivity observer is implemented to give evidence on the stability of the system during online impedance variations. To evaluate the performance of the framework, a comparative experiment with three different impedance settings (i.e., the proposed framework, the framework without LQR and the framework without GMM/GMR) for Franka Emika Panda to perform a door opening task was conducted. The results reveal that our framework outperforms the other two, in terms of tracking error and the interaction forces.
The local environment of cobalt in amorphous, polycrystalline and epitaxial anatase TiO2:Co films produced by cobalt ion implantation

Amorphous, polycrystalline anatase and epitaxial anatase TiO2 films have been implanted with 5 at. % Co+. The magnetic and structural properties of different microstructures of TiO2:Co, along with the local coordination of the implanted Co atoms within the host lattice are investigated. In amorphous TiO2:Co film, Co atoms are in the (II) oxidation state with a complex coordination and exhibit a paramagnetic response. However, for the TiO2:Co epitaxial and polycrystalline anatase films, Co atoms have a distorted octahedral (II) oxygen coordination assigned to a substitutional environment with traces of metallic Co clusters, which gives a rise to a superparamagnetic behavior. Despite the incorporation of the implanted atoms into the host lattice, high temperature ferromagnetism is absent in the films. On the other hand, it is found that the concentration and size of the implantation-induced nanoclusters and the magnetic properties of TiO2:Co films have a strong dependency on the initial microstructure of Ti.
OurRocks: Offloading Disk Scan Directly to GPU in Write-Optimized Database System

The log structured merge (LSM) tree has been widely adopted by database systems owing to its superior write performance. However, LSM-tree based databases face vulnerabilities when processing analytical queries due to the read amplification caused by its architecture and the limited use of storage devices with high bandwidth. To flexibly handle transactional and analytical workloads, we proposed and implemented OurRocks taking full advantage of NVMe SSD and GPU devices, which improves scan performance. Although the NVMe SSD serves multi GB/s I/O rates, it is necessary to solve the data transfer overhead which limits the benefits of the GPU processing. The primary idea is to offload the scan operation to the GPU with filtering predicate pushdown and resolve the bottleneck from the data transfer between devices with direct memory access (DMA). OurRocks benefits from all the features of write-optimized database systems, in addition to accelerating the analytic queries using the aforementioned idea. Experimental results indicate that OurRocks effectively leverages resources of the NVMe SSD and GPU and significantly improves the execution of queries in the YCSB and TPC-H benchmarks, compared to the conventional write-optimized database. Our research demonstrates that the proposed approach can speed up the handling of the data-intensive workloads.
THE THERMODYNAMICS OF THE REDUCTION OF URANIUM COMPOUNDS TO URANIUM METAL

The thermodynamic study presented in this report was undertaken to guide the evaluation of new processes for the conversions of uranium compounds to uranium metal. The objective has been to show which processes might well justify experimental effort and which processes can be discarded from further consideration on the ground of thermodynamic impracticability. In this work, it has been necessary to evaluate critically the available experimental thermodynamic information so that the degree of reliance in the conclusions reached may be established. Also, because of the nonexistence of certain experimental values, estimations have been necessary. ' In all cases , these are so identified. The study shows that: 1. No thermodynamic ally practical gaseous reductant has been found for reducing any uranium oxide, fluoride, chloride, or bromide t o t h e EQCtal. 2. The reduction of UCl^ by Al to yield metal and a gaseous co-product was found not to be thermodynamically impractical. No statement of its feasibility can be made, however, in the absence of data on UCI3. 3. The reduction of all uranium halides to metal is thermodynamically possible with alkali metals such as sodium and potassium, with alkaline earths such as magnesium and calcium, and probably with the other members of these groups. 4. The reduction of uranium dioxide to metal by the alkali metals is not thermodynamically practical . 5. The reduction of uranium dioxide to metal proceeds, according to thermodynamics, with Ca, Mg, and probably the other alkaline earth metals, also. 6. The only uranium compound which has sufficient thermodynamic de composition partial p ressure to be of interest it UI^. Since therm.odynamics indicate that this compound would be difficult to prepare from the oxide or other halides, it is unworthy of further consideration.