Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydro‐Mechanical Measurements of Sheared Crystalline Rock Fractures With Applications for EGS Collab Experiments 1 and 2

We present hydro‐mechanical measurements that characterize shear on natural fractures in schist, amphibolite, and rhyolite specimens from the enhanced geothermal system (EGS) Collab Project's Experiment 1 and 2 sites (E1 and E2) at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. We employed a triaxial direct shear method augmented with X‐ray imaging to perform hydroshearing (injection‐induced shearing) and mechanical shearing on naturally fractured specimens at in situ stress conditions. Measurements included fracture permeability, strength, stress‐dependent aperture, shear dilation, and frictional strength. Results reveal that in situ natural fractures must be permeable, weak, and shear‐oriented to be hydrosheared, and only a subset of the observable in situ fractures were suitable. When sheared, the fracture permeability typically increased by a factor of 10 or more and this increase was retained over time. However, shear slip did not always result in permeability increase. High phyllosilicate content associated with exceptionally weak fractures exhibited poor or even decreased permeability after stimulation. These measurements in combination with site data were used to conduct a slip‐tendency analysis for different fracture sets, and we selected the top candidate natural fractures for hydroshearing at the EGS Collab sites. We also found that the lower in situ shear stress and stronger fractures at the E2 site make hydroshearing more challenging than at the E1 site. Overall, the methods and analysis used in our work can be applied to any geothermal project to identify in situ joint sets that are best suited for hydroshearing, which in turn can help to optimize well placement and energy production.
Research on Supply Chain Risk Transmission Mechanism Based on Improved SIRS Model

An improved SIRS model is constructed as a supply chain risk propagation model, based on the actual situation that node enterprises are eliminated in the supply chain network. From the perspective of the small-world network, simulation is carried out to analyze the risk transmission mechanism in the supply chain network and the influence of various parameters on the supply chain risk transmission and the node enterprises in the supply chain network. Research shows that the process of eliminating node enterprises is also a process of supply chain network’s adjustment and gradual stability. In order to reduce the negative impact of this process on the supply chain network, node enterprises should take effective measures based on their own conditions to improve risk prevention capabilities, coordinate risk transmission, and enhance risk immunity, so as to improve the resistance of the entire supply chain to risks.
Camera Self-Calibration from Two Ellipse Contours in Pipes

A tele-operated robot should be used to maintain and inspect nuclear power plants to reduce the radiation exposure to the human operators. During an overhaul of the nuclear power plants in Korea, a ROV(Remotely Operated Vehicle) may enter a cold-leg connected to the reactor to examine the state of the thermal sleeve and it's position in the safety injection nozzle. To measure the positions of the thermal sleeve or scratches from the video images captured during the examination, the camera parameters should be identified. However, the focal length of the CCD camera could be increased to a close up of the target and the aspect ratio and the center of the image could also be varied with capturing devices. So, it is desired to self-calibrated the intrinsic parameters of the camera and capturing device with the video images captured during the examination. In the video image of the safety injection nozzle, two or more circular grooves around the nozzle are shown as ellipse contours. In this paper, we propose a camera self-calibration method using a single image containing two circular grooves which are the greatest circles of the cylindrical nozzle whose radius and distance are known.
Tracing the emergence and deployment of the 'integrated water resources management' paradigm

The unequal distribution of water quantity and quality in space and time severely burdens the livelihoods of billions of people on this planet, the vast majority living in developing countries. ‘Integrated Water Resources Management’ (IWRM) is a normative policy paradigm that holds the promise of a holistic management of this unfair distribution. In two decades time the paradigm has gained an apparently hegemonic status in the network of water development actors worldwide. The article traces the emergence of the IWRM paradigm in the network of development actors and describes its deployment in Mali. Both the governmental and non-governmental pathway of deployment in Mali are accounted for. Harnessing Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as descriptive tool, the article describes how actors create alliances in support of the paradigm, including academics, multi-lateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, and actors in Mali’s water sector. ANT is helpful in showing that the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the development paradigm depends on the strength of the alliance, not the strength of the paradigm. It shows how policy making and practice are actively geared one to the other.
Emotional Discomfort Scale: Instrument Development and Association With General Self-Efficacy and Data From an Urban Primary Care Setting

Introduction: Sense of discomfort, which is experienced in daily encounters, can develop into stress, coexist with stress, or interplay with self-efficacy. This study presents two objectives, namely, to develop and test a new instrument called the Emotional Discomfort (EmoD) Scale and to compare the EmoD with the General Self-Efficacy (GSE) Scale. Methods: The study was conducted in an urban primary healthcare center in Greece over a three-week period in 2020. Out of 314 individuals invited to participate, 263 accepted and completed the questionnaire. The EmoD is a five-point Likert-type eight-item scale for assessing individual reaction and sense of discomfort in daily life situations. Results: Cronbach’s α for the new scale reached 0.730 (acceptable reliability). Participants who used psychotropic drugs scored higher in the EmoD scale compared with nonusers. GSE scores showed reverse associations with EmoD scores. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that an increase in self-efficacy, as measured using the GSE scale, was associated with a reduction in sense of discomfort, as measured by the EmoD scale. Conclusions: The use of the EmoD scale can aid health or social care providers in detecting levels of emotional discomfort, a finding that is demonstrated to interplay with self-efficacy. Future studies employing the use of this new instrument could examine emotional discomfort in relation to stress coping and social isolation.
Detecting deception using comparable truth baselines

ABSTRACT Baselining – comparing the statements of interest to a known truthful statement by the same individual – has been suggested to improve lie detection accuracy. A potential downside of baselining is that it might influence the characteristics of a subsequent statement, as was shown in previous studies. In our first experiment we examined this claim but found no evidence that a truthful baseline influenced the characteristics of a subsequent statement. Next, we investigated whether using a truthful baseline statement as a within-subject comparison would improve lie detection performance by investigating verbal cues (Experiment 1) and intuitive judgements of human judges (Experiment 2). Our exploratory analyses showed that truth tellers included more auditory and temporal details in their target statement than in their baseline than liars. Observers did not identify this verbal pattern. Exposure to a truthful baseline statement resulted in a lower truth accuracy but no difference in lie accuracy.
Visualizing surface marker expression and intratumoral heterogeneity with SERRS-NPs imaging

Cell surface marker expression in tumors dictates the selection of therapeutics, therapy response, and survival. However, biopsies are invasive, sample only a small area of the tumor landscape and may miss significant areas of heterogeneous expression. Here, we investigated the potential of antibody-conjugated surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering nanoparticles (SERRS-NPs) to depict and quantify high and low tumoral surface marker expression, focusing on the surface markers epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) in an intracerebral and peripheral setting with an inter- and intratumoral comparison of Raman signal intensities. Methods: ICR-Prkdc mice were injected with glioblastoma, epidermoid carcinoma, or breast tumor cell lines intracerebrally and peripherally. SERRS-NPs were functionalized with cetuximab or trastuzumab and administered via tail vein injection. Raman imaging was performed 18 hours post-injection in excised tumors and in vivo through the skull. Tumors were then fixed and processed for immunohistochemical evaluation. Results: Confirmed by MRI and immunohistochemistry for EGFR and HER2, our results demonstrate that antibody-conjugated SERRS-NPs go beyond the delineation of a tumor and offer clear and distinct Raman spectra that reflect the distribution of the targeted surface marker. The intensity of the SERRS-NP signal accurately discriminated high- versus low-expressing surface markers between tumors, and between different areas within tumors. Conclusion: Biopsies can be highly invasive procedures and provide a limited sample of molecular expression within a tumor. Our nanoparticle-based Raman imaging approach offers the potential to provide non-invasive and more comprehensive molecular imaging and an alternative to the current clinical gold standard of immunohistochemistry.
Health-related quality-of-life in the Swedish general population during COVID-19 based on pre- and post- pandemic outbreak measurements

The outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has resulted in various international and national strategies, including non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and travel bans, which have purportedly mitigated the health loss due to the pandemic but also given rise to a severe economic crisis. Both factors, the pandemic and the NPIs, can be expected to have an impact on the Health-Related Quality-of-Life (HRQoL) of the population. The objective of this study was to estimate the impact on HRQoL of the Swedish adult population during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. A webbased survey was sent to randomised samples of the adult Swedish population before the outbreak of the pandemic in Sweden in February 2020 (n=1,016) and during the outbreak of the pandemic. The first wave pandemic data was collected in April 2020 (n=1,003), one-month after the outbreak and, the second wave data was collected in January 2021 (n=1,013), after 10-months living under the pandemic. HRQoL was measured using the EQ-5D-5L in the pandemic surveys, whereas the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used in all surveys. The results suggested a reduction in average HRQoL as measured by VAS in the adult Swedish population, with 0.059 points reduction in VAS in April 2020 and 0.074 points reduction in January 2021, compared to the pre-pandemic measurement in February 2020. The loss in HRQoL was significant among respondents in the working age population (<65 years), suggesting that the social and economic impact of NPIs were the primary drivers for this specific cohort. Findings of this study supports a wide public health perspective and future HRQoL measurements at the population level throughout the pandemic. JEL classification: D6, I3
Comparable Outcomes in Acquired Severe Aplastic Anemia Patients With Haploidentical Donor or Matched Related Donor Transplantation: A Retrospective Single-Center Experience

Clinical data of patients with severe aplastic anemia (SAA) were retrospectively analyzed to evaluate the outcomes of haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HID-HSCT) with matched related sibling hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (MSD-HSCT) in complications and survivals. Thirty consecutive patients were enrolled in the study with a median follow-up of 50 months (range 4, 141), and the median age of the patients was 21 years (range 3, 49). All the patients achieved myeloid engraftment in the two cohorts. The cumulative incidences of platelet engraftment were 95.5 and 100% in HID cohort and MSD cohort, respectively. The median time for neutrophil and platelet recovery was 11 (range 9, 19) and 15 (range 10, 25) days in HID cohort, and 12 (range 10, 19) and 14 (range 8, 25) days in MSD cohort. The cumulative incidences of grade II–IV and grade III–IV acute graft vs. host disease (aGvHD) in HID cohort and in MSD cohort were 18.9 vs. 14.3% (p = 0.77) and 10.5 vs. 0% (p = 0.42), respectively. The cumulative incidences of chronic graft vs. host disease (cGvHD) was 22.7% in HID cohort and 25.5% in MSD cohort (p = 0.868). The 5-year overall survival (OS) rates and 5-year failure-free survival (FFS) rates in HID cohort and MSD cohort were 85.1 vs. 87.5% (p = 0.858), 80.3 vs. 87.5% (p = 0.635), respectively. The median time to achieve engraftment, cumulative incidence of aGvHD and cGvHD, and the 5-year OS and FFS rates were not significantly different between the two cohorts. We suggest that HID-HSCT might be a safety and effective option for SAA patients without a matched donor.
Perceived Functions of Playfulness in Adult English as a Foreign Language Learners: An Exploratory Study

Influenced by the flowering of positive psychology in the field of foreign language acquisition research in recent years, the present study aimed to explore the perceived functions of playfulness, as a personality construct, among English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this aim, an initial sample of 38 EFL learners were selected randomly from the private language institutes of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. They were interviewed about any perceived functions of playfulness in the EFL learning context. A qualitative content analysis of the collected data led to the extraction of four categories: Fun and laughter, creativity, mastery orientation, and cultivating relationships. A further in-depth analysis of the categories and comparison with the functions of adult playfulness in psychology (primarily Proyer’s 2014 and 2017 works of research) revealed that these four categories can be subsumed under two of the four structural components of adult playfulness; namely, other-directed playfulness and intellectual playfulness. The ability of EFL learners to turn language learning situations, tasks, and environment into enjoyable ones via their playfulness can have implications for the quality of their interpersonal interactions in class and eventually their language proficiency. The findings of this study can pave the way for the translation of the adult playfulness construct from developmental and personality psychology and family relations into the second language acquisition (SLA) domain and its conceptualization in future research in this domain.
Depression at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, and Income

Abstract The current study uses an intersectional framework to examine subgroup differences in the prevalence of depression among a community sample of predominantly low-income, racial/ethnic and sexual minority adults. Between May 2017-June 2018, participants (N = 1753) were recruited from and screened for depression in community organizations that predominantly serve sexual minority clients based in Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana. Twenty-six percent of people screened for study eligibility met criteria for depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-8≥10). As is true in higher-resourced populations, bisexual (Odds Ratio; OR: 1.50; 95% Confidence Interval; CI: 1.08, 2.09) and queer/questioning (OR: 1.86; 95% CI: 1.08, 3.19) individuals were more likely to be depressed than heterosexual and lesbian/gay individuals. These differences remained even when accounting for income. No differences in depression were observed between lesbian/gay and heterosexual adults. In terms of racial differences, bisexual Black (OR: .47; 95% CI: 0.21, 1.04) and Hispanic (OR: .51; 95% CI: 0.23, 1.12) adults were marginally less likely to be depressed than bisexual White adults. No racial differences emerged across other sexual orientations. Differences across some sexual minority subgroups may be race-specific, suggesting that intersectional frameworks may be the best way to understand how multiple marginalization affects different subgroups.
Predicting Energy Usage in a Supermarket

Very little is known about the energy using systems in commercial and retail stores, which consume 24.8% of the energy used by all commercial buildings [I]. This paper describes development of a change-point regression model for predicting the hourly and daily electrical use of a supermarket. Operational improvements already identified with the model can save the store over 4% of their electricity cost annually. Further analysis is expected to save the store additional energy costs.
Leveraging Topological Events in Tracking Graphs for Understanding Particle Diffusion

Single particle tracking (SPT) of fluorescent molecules provides significant insights into the diffusion and relative motion of tagged proteins and other structures of interest in biology. However, despite the latest advances in high‐resolution microscopy, individual particles are typically not distinguished from clusters of particles. This lack of resolution obscures potential evidence for how merging and splitting of particles affect their diffusion and any implications on the biological environment. The particle tracks are typically decomposed into individual segments at observed merge and split events, and analysis is performed without knowing the true count of particles in the resulting segments. Here, we address the challenges in analyzing particle tracks in the context of cancer biology. In particular, we study the tracks of KRAS protein, which is implicated in nearly 20% of all human cancers, and whose clustering and aggregation have been linked to the signaling pathway leading to uncontrolled cell growth. We present a new analysis approach for particle tracks by representing them as tracking graphs and using topological events – merging and splitting, to disambiguate the tracks. Using this analysis, we infer a lower bound on the count of particles as they cluster and create conditional distributions of diffusion speeds before and after merge and split events. Using thousands of time‐steps of simulated and in‐vitro SPT data, we demonstrate the efficacy of our method, as it offers the biologists a new, detailed look into the relationship between KRAS clustering and diffusion speeds.
Nanoformulated Remdesivir with Extremely Low Content of Poly(2‐oxazoline)‐Based Stabilizer for Aerosol Treatment of COVID‐19

The rise of the novel virus SARS-CoV2 which causes the disease known as COVID-19 has led to a global pandemic claiming millions of lives. With no clinically approved treatment for COVID-19, physicians initially struggled to treat the disease and there is still need for improved anti-viral therapies in this area. We conceived early in the pandemic that an inhalable formulation of the drug Remdesivir which directly targets the virus at the initial site of infection could improve therapeutic outcomes in COVID-19. We developed a set of requirements that would be conducive to rapid drug approval: 1) try to use GRAS or GRAS similar reagents 2) minimize excipient concentration and 3) achieve a working concentration of 5 mg/mL Remdesivir to achieve a deliverable dose which is 5-10% of the IV dose. In this work, we discovered that Poly(2-oxazoline) block copolymers can stabilize drug nanocrystal suspensions and provide suitable formulation characteristics for aerosol delivery while maintaining anti-viral efficacy. We believe POx block copolymers can be used as a semi-ubiquitous stabilizer for the rapid development of nanocrystal formulations for new and existing diseases.
The Impact of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty and Volatility on Stock Markets: Evidence from Islamic Countries

This study investigates the impact of uncertainty and volatility on ten Islamic stock returns using monthly data for from 2011:M5 to 2021:M5. We rely on the continuous wavelet transform and wavelet coherence ratios, which allows decomposition of time series across time scales to investigate the causal relationship between stock market returns, economic policy uncertainty and volatility. Our results provide some interesting insights. First, economic policy uncertainty, in general, has a negative effect on the majority of Islamic stock returns, except for the Dow Jones Islamic Market (DJIM). Second, volatility has a significant positive impact on most of the Islamic stock returns in various countries. Third, both economic policy uncertainty and volatility have a greater impact on the Islamic stock returns post-COVID-19 outbreak. These results should assist investors to re-evaluate their portfolios to fully maximize the potentials of these Islamic stock markets. Policymakers could use these results to design policies to reduce economic policy uncertainty as well as to cushion the impact of externally generated uncertainties.
Improving The Efficiency Of Thermal Equipments Of 210 MW TPS Through Thermal Audit

In the present work, energy analysis of a coal-based thermal power plant is done using the design data from a 210 MW thermal power plant under operation in India. The entire plant cycle is split up into three zones for the analysis: (1) main steam system, (2) steam turbine, condenser, feed pumps and the HP and LP heaters, (3) the entire analysis with boiler, turbo-generator, condenser, feed pumps, regenerative heaters and the plant auxiliaries. It helps to find out the contributions of different parts of the plant towards energy destruction. The energy efficiency is calculated using the operating data from the plant at different conditions, viz. at different loads, different condenser pressures, with and without regenerative heaters and with different settings of the turbine governing. Effect of regeneration on energy efficiency is studied by successively removing the high pressure regenerative heaters out of operation. Increase in the condenser back pressure decreases the energy efficiency. Successive withdrawal of the high pressure heaters show a gradual increment in the energy efficiency for the control volume excluding the boiler, while a decrease in energy efficiency when the whole plant including the boiler is considered. Keeping the main steam pressure before the turbine control valves in sliding mode improves the energy efficiencies in case of part load. The boiler efficiency is calculated by the indirect method (losses calculation method) and HP and LP heaters performance analysis has been done by the calculations. The net heat rate of the station is also calculated and target for the reduction to achieved the design value of the net station heat rate.