Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Realising the artificial chemical cell with vesicles

Responsive biomedical materials span a plethora of applications in the biomedical field, from stents, hydrogels, degradable implants to drug delivery systems, and are in constant further development to give properties that ultimately improve the quality of life and prevent disease. In an effort to develop cell-interacting constructs we sought to synthesize polymers with bioresponsive and even “life-like” properties. By exploiting living polymerization techniques we aim to build self-assembled capsule-mimicking structures (i.e. vesicles) that can serve as prototype copycats of natural cell membranes. Also, we aim to establish a primitive communication platform of the artificial structures with their natural counterparts (i.e. bacterial cells) by using the “glyco-code” as a means of biochemical language. First, model thermoresponsive polymers are utilized that bear carbohydrate moieties to study polymer-cell interactions via multivalency and ligand-receptor interactions. The glycopolymers were found to induce bacterial aggregation of a specific bacterial strain through specific molecular recognition effects. In chapter three, block-copolymer vesicles are synthesized that comprise sugar groups on their coronae and also interact with bacteria through multiple specific ligand-receptor interactions. Also, molecular transport of a model dye from the vesicles to the bacterial cells is facilitated by discrete vesicle-bacteria complex formation. Chapter four explores the communication networks employed by bacterial cells, that is quorum sensing, and simple polymers are tested as molecular quorum quenchers that modulate the quorum sensing response of bacteria through autoinducers scavenging. Ultimately, we seek for an integrated platform to set up an “imitation game” where artificial entities, such as the polymer vesicles, can act as prototype cell-mimics that can actively intervene to the bacterial communication networks. Aspects of the principles and practical requirements to prove the concept are discussed in the final chapter.
Indoor Heading Direction Estimation Using Rf Signals

Heading direction information is crucial to many ubiquitous computing applications. The main stream has been resorting to inertial sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer, which suffer from severe accumulative errors or large degradations indoors. In this paper, we utilize the radio frequency (RF) signals, received from the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) WiFi devices, to accurately estimate the heading direction in indoor environments. Based on the time- reversal (TR) technique, we make use of the channel state information (CSI) and the geometry of the antenna array to design the proposed algorithm. A prototype is built using a single access point (AP), without knowing its location, and a two dimensional (2D) antenna array to validate the proposed method. Experiments, conducted in strong non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios with rich multipaths indoors, have shown that the median error for heading direction estimation is 6.9°, which surpasses the inertial sensors. With the high accuracy and low cost, it illustrates the proposed system as a promising solution to large varieties of applications that require accurate heading direction information.
A Novel Hybrid Deep Neural Network Model to Predict the Refrigerant Charge Amount of Heat Pumps

Improper refrigerant charge amount (RCA) is a recurring fault in electric heat pump (EHP) systems. Because EHP systems show their best performance at optimum charge, predicting the RCA is important. There has been considerable development of data-driven techniques for predicting RCA; however, the current data-driven approaches for estimating RCA suffer from poor generalization and overfitting. This study presents a hybrid deep neural network (DNN) model that combines both a basic DNN model and a thermodynamic model to counter the abovementioned challenges of existing data-driven approaches. The data for designing models were collected from two EHP systems with different specifications, which were used for the training and testing of models. In addition to the data obtained using the basic DNN model, the hybrid DNN model uses the thermodynamic properties as a thermodynamic model. The testing results show that the hybrid DNN model has a prediction performance of 93%, which is 21% higher than that of the basic DNN model. Furthermore, for model training and model testing, the hybrid DNN model has a 6% prediction performance difference, indicating its reliable generalization capabilities. To summarize, the hybrid DNN model improves data-driven approaches and can be used for designing efficient and energy-saving EHP systems.
DEVELOPMENT OF PLASMA ENHANCED CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION REACTOR FOR PREPARATION OF OXYGEN CONTAINING ORGANOSILAZANE POLYMER THIN FILMS

In the present work we focused on the development of a low pressure capacitively coupled radio-frequency PECVD reactor for preparation of plasma-polymer thin films from organosilazane precursors. The dependence of the film growth from hexamethyldisilazane (HMDSZ, SiN 2 C 6 H 19 ) and oxygen containing mixtures on the deposition parameters was studied. The time evolution of the negative self bias voltage on the thin film growth was studied. It was found, that the changes in the self bias voltage significantly influenced the surface structure and the properties of the growing films. The mechanical properties of the films were studied using nanoindentation technique and the surface structure was studied using atomic force microscopy (AFM).
Control Design and Experimental Validation of a HB-NPC as a Shunt Active Power Filter

This work presents the design of a control law based on the average model of a shunt active power filter considering an H-bridge neutral point clamped topology and its experimental validation. Therefore, the proposed controller is formed by three control loops, namely current (inner), regulation (outer), and balance control loops. The current loop aims to compensate both the displacement power factor and the harmonic distortion produced by nonlinear loads connected to the point of common coupling. To deal with harmonic current distortion, the current loop involves an adaptive mechanism based on a bank of resonant filters tuned at odd harmonics of the fundamental grid frequency. The regulation and balance loops are aimed to maintain the voltage of the capacitors forming the DC-link at a desired constant level. For this, proportional-integral controllers are designed. The design of all three loops considers the average model of the system. The performance of the proposed multi-loop control law is evaluated through numerical results and real-time experimental implementation, both considering a 2 kW academic benchmark with a constant switching frequency of 7 kHz. In order to provide harmonic distortion, a nonlinear load based on an uncontrolled diode bridge rectifier is considered. Additionally, step-load changes from 0.5 kW to 1 kW are considered for the nonlinear load. As a result, a suitable current tracking, voltage regulation, and balance are observed despite parametric uncertainties, load variations, and harmonic distortion. As a consequence, in steady state, simulation results indicate that the compensated grid current THD is 1.75%; meanwhile, the nonlinear load current THD is 52.5%. Experimental results indicate that the compensated grid current THD is 2.32%; meanwhile, the nonlinear load current THD is 53.8%.
Crystal structure of atazanavir, C38H52N6O7

The crystal structure of atazanavir has been solved and refined using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data and optimized using density functional techniques. Atazanavir crystallizes in space group P21 (#4) with a = 15.33545(7), b = 5.90396(3), c = 21.56949(13) Å, β = 96.2923(4)°, V = 1941.134(11) Å3, and Z = 2. Despite being labeled as “atazanavir sulfate”, the commercial reagent sample consisted of atazanavir free base. The structure consists of an array of extended-conformation molecules parallel to the ac-plane. Although the atazanavir molecule contains only four classical hydrogen bond donors, hydrogen bonding is, surprisingly, important to the crystal energy. Both intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonds are significant. The hydroxyl group forms bifurcated intramolecular hydrogen bonds to a carbonyl oxygen atom and an amide nitrogen. Several amide nitrogens act as donors to the hydroxyl group and carbonyl oxygen atoms. An amide nitrogen acts as a donor to another amide nitrogen. Several methyl, methylene, methyne, and phenyl hydrogens participate in hydrogen bonds to carbonyl oxygens, an amide nitrogen, and the pyridine nitrogen. The powder pattern is included in the Powder Diffraction File™ as entry 00-065-1426.
Studying COVID-19 in light of critical approaches to risk and uncertainty: research pathways, conceptual tools, and some magic from Mary Douglas

This editorial is a response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and underlines the valuable role that critical social science approaches to risk and uncertainty can play in helping us understand how risk is being understood and mitigated. Drawing on Heyman’s approach to understanding risk as a configuration of probabilistic knowledge, time-framing, categories and values, I explore COVID-19 risk in relation to each of these features while also emphasising how different features stabilise one another. I suggest lines of inquiry into each of these features and their interrelatedness. I then move to present some important insights from the work of Mary Douglas which are especially germane to studying the risk of COVID-19 and, again, I raise possibilities for future research. Emphasising the centrality of ritual to Douglas’s theory, I develop these considerations to encourage an exploration of magic and magical thinking, alongside rational approaches to COVID-19 risk.
Analysis of the Spectra of Pd-like Ions from Xe IX Through Ce XIII

The VUV spectra of the Pd-like Xe IX, Cs X, Ba XI, La XII and Ce XIII ions were analyzed. The cascade 4d95s–4d95p–4d95d–4d95f transitions were classified in Ba XI, La XII and Ce XIII ions for the first time. The analysis of the 4d95s–4d95p transitions in Cs X ion was revised and the 4d95p–4d95d–4d95f transitions were classified in Xe IX and Cs X ions. The complete energy structures of the 4d95s, 4d95p and 4d95d configurations and most of the 4d95f energies were determined in every investigated ion. The energy structures of the 4d94f configurations were established by the analysis of the 4d94f–4d95d transitions in Ba XI, La XII and Ce XIII ions for the first time in a Pd I sequence. The experimental results were confirmed by semi-empirical calculations in the frames of Cowan code and Generalized Least-Squares techniques.
Social, commercial, or both? An exploratory study of the identity orientation of digital social innovations

The information systems literature has studied digital innovation extensively and focused primarily on its commercial related objectives. Yet, digital social innovations (DSIs) seek to solve social problems, while implementing commercially viable approaches. Drawing from the social entrepreneurship literature and using computational social science methods, we identify the peculiar utilitarian (commercial) and collectivistic (social) identity orientations that shape DSI. We use a sample of 292 DSI initiatives from Latin America and find that DSIs present both utilitarian and collectivist identity orientation. We also find that the collectivistic identity orientation tends to be more salient in less developed contexts. This allows us to discuss implications for the research on DSI and to open up a discussion on the role of context and possible tensions that may emerge in combining both identity orientations.
God Values the Lives of My Out-Group More Than I Do: Evidence From Fiji and Israel

Does God want people to favor coreligionists or to treat in-group and out-group members equally? To test people’s beliefs about God’s moral preferences, we conducted three preregistered studies. Study 1 was a field study with Christian and Muslim Fijians (N = 188). Study 2 was an online study with Jewish Israelis (N = 384). Study 3 was a field study with Christian and Hindu Fijians (N = 539). Across studies, participants indicated whether an in-group member should sacrifice his life to save five in-group members (in one dilemma) or out-group members (in a second dilemma). For each dilemma, they then indicated what God would prefer. Participants believed that, compared with themselves, God would more strongly approve of an in-group member saving out-group members. Results generalize results from previous studies with Muslim Palestinians, providing cross-cultural evidence that religious believers think God prefers more universal moral reasoning than they do themselves.
Active Gate Drive to Increase the Power Capacity of Hard-Switched IGBTs

The effect of the gate drive on the power-processing capacity of a hard-switched insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) in a bridge leg is investigated in this article. The performance of two active gate drive (AGD) techniques [variable ramp (VR) and push–pull (PP)] is compared against a conventional two-level [fast gate drive (FGD)] gate drive method. The two proposed techniques reduce the voltage overshoot, which allows the dc-bus voltage to be increased closer to the IGBT voltage rating, improving the utilization of the device’s blocking voltage. Consequently, the safe operating area of the IGBT is extended without exceeding the thermal limit of the device (limited by the maximum junction temperature). An experimental method, the first of its kind in the literature, is developed to determine whether using these AGDs can lead to an increase in the power that the IGBT can process. This article reveals that the PP-AGD technique can increase the IGBT power throughput by approximately 5%–8% across a range of switching frequencies. This better IGBT utilization allows a given device to process more power or may allow the designer to choose lower power rated devices potentially leading to higher converter power density.
Lupulus: A Flexible Hardware Accelerator for Neural Networks

Neural networks have become indispensable for a wide range of applications, but they suffer from high computationaland memory-requirements, requiring optimizations from the algorithmic description of the network to the hardware implementation. Moreover, the high rate of innovation in machine learning makes it important that hardware implementations provide a high level of programmability to support current and future requirements of neural networks. In this work, we present a flexible hardware accelerator for neural networks, called Lupulus, supporting various methods for scheduling and mapping of operations onto the accelerator. Lupulus was implemented in a 28nm FD-SOI technology and demonstrates a peak performance of 380GOPS/GHz with latencies of 21.4ms and 183.6ms for the convolutional layers of AlexNet and VGG-16, respectively.
Early Mesolithic hunting strategies for red deer, roe deer and wild boar at Friesack 4, a three-stage Preboreal and Boreal site in northern Germany

During the early Holocene the Mesolithic campsites at Friesack in northern Central Europe were located on an island amidst a wetland landscape: a swampy valley rich of reeds with generally slowly flowing water (with the exception of spring), forests dominated by birch and pine, sandy hills covered with pine, and open grasslands. Due to excellent preservation conditions thousands of mammal remains could be excavated in the refuse areas of the site Friesack 4 by B. Gramsch and his team between 1978 and 1989. 826 identified mammal remains derive from the oldest, mid-Preboreal layers of the station, 1200 bones from the following late Preboreal layers, and further 3082 remains from the subsequent early Boreal horizons. The main game species of the inhabitants of Friesack 4 were red deer, roe deer, and wild boar. Based on the bone weight, red deer was the most relevant and important species in all the Mesolithic stages of occupation. In the course of the c. 1500 years of habitation investigated on this site the economical relevance of wild boar increased gradually, whereas in particular elk lost its importance. Significantly, red deer hunting always focused on older juveniles or young adults. Based on the number of identified specimen, remains of roe deer dominate the mammal bone assemblage in all the occupation stages, and their frequency continuously increases from the oldest to the youngest Mesolithic horizon. Roe deer hunting occurred especially in May and June and was purposefully dedicated to young females. Similarly, hunting red deer was not focussed on strong, older deer, as at some contemporaneous sites, but on young adults. Both species show that the hunter’s strategy at Friesack 4 was in these cases not to get a maximum of food resources per hunting expedition, but rather to secure a successful hunt. In wild boar, in contrast, the analyses give evidence of a selective hunting of full-grown and quite old individuals, thus of wild boars for meat. Remarkably, the hunter’s wild boar prey was nearly all female. A résumé of all seasonal indications concerning the mammal bones shows that Mesolithic people stayed at the location nearly exclusively in the months between May and October. There is no evidence for human presence during late autumn and winter/early spring. The portions of the body parts of the different game species show concordantly that the animals were slaughtered elsewhere. Friesack 4 was only the place of consumption. Partly, however, some valuable parts of the prey are missing at the campsite – potentially these parts were reserved for the successful hunters, who consumed them already at the kill site. D. Groß/H. Lübke/J. Meadows/D. Jantzen (eds.): From Bone and Antler to Early Mesolithic Life in Northern Europe. Untersuchungen und Materialien zur Steinzeit in Schleswig-Holstein und im Ostseeraum 10 (Kiel / Hamburg 2019). ISBN 978-3-529-01861-9.
A semantically enriched text mining system for clinical decision support

Existing systems to support decision‐taking process based on textual information of clinical reports are insufficient. Currently, there are few systems that unify different subtasks in a single and user‐friendly framework, easing therefore the clinical work by automating complex and arduous tasks such as the detection of clinical alerts as well as clinical information coding. To address this issue, MiNerDoc is proposed as a new text mining (TM) system whose main objective is to support clinical decision‐taking processes by analyzing textual clinical reports in a unified framework. MiNerDoc is a really alluring TM system that includes two relevant tasks in the medical field, that is, detection of risk factors according to five medical entities (disease, pharmacologic, region/part body, procedure/test, and finding/sign) and automatic prediction of standardized diagnostic codes (MeSH descriptors associated with diseases). MiNerDoc integrates a combination of techniques from the TM discipline along with the terminological and semantic enrichment provided by the MetaMap tool and UMLS metathesaurus. Some study cases as well as a wide experimental analysis on real clinical reports have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and promising performance of MiNerDoc on two different tasks, that is, medical entities recognition (FMeasure 81.54%) and diagnostic classification (FMeasuremic 81.04%).
‘We are not poor things’: territorio cuerpo-tierra and Colombian women’s organised struggles

In this article, I use Lorena Cabnal’s notion of territorio cuerpo-tierra to analyse seventeen in-depth interviews with women leaders of rural social movements and other organisations in Colombia. In the interviews, social leaders condemn violence that is epistemic, systemic, militarised and that permeates all ambits of life. They denounce how the coloniality of power operates, while at the same time they propose alternatives for a better life from their own cosmovisions by enacting food sovereignty and constructing feminisms from ‘below’. I demonstrate how these social leaders’ actions are entangled in decolonial feminist struggles, which undermine the way in which women in the Global South have been constructed as ‘objects’ or ‘in need of saving’. These women are not ‘victims who need saving’, but politically active subjects who enact change locally and nationally through their ‘territories bodies-lands’. Not only do their narratives highlight the intimate relationship of the body with the land, but I argue that we must follow their lead in order to dismantle the coloniality of power.
NEW QUINAZOLINONE DERIVATIVES: SYTHESIS AND IN VITRO CYTOTOXIC ACTIVITY

The paper presents a simple synthesis of a series of new quinazolinone derivatives 13a-i. First, the reaction of 5-hydroxyanthranilic acid (11) with acetic anhydride at 160–180 o C for 2 h gave the intermediate 12 in high yield. This intermediate was then reacted with amines in acetic acid at 180 o C for 14 h to afford new quinazolinone derivatives 13a-i in 69–92%. Synthesized compounds were structurally confirmed using spectroscopic methods: 1 H, 13 CNMR and MS spectra. The bioassay result using three cancer cell lines including SKLU-1 (lung cancer), MCF-7 (breast cancer) and HepG-2 (liver cancer) showed that only compound 13e exhibited significant cytotoxic effect against cancer cell lines tested with IC50 values of 9.48, 20.39 and 18.04 μg/ mL, respectively.
Shaping the Design of Smartphone-Based Interventions for Self-Harm

Self-harm is a prevalent issue amongst young people, yet it is thought around 40% will never seek professional help due to stigma surrounding it. It is generally a way of coping with emotional distress and can have a range of triggers which are highly heterogeneous to the individual. In a move towards enhancing the accessibility of personalized interventions for self-harm, we undertook a three-stage study. We first conducted interviews with 4 counsellors in self-harm to understand how they clinically respond to self-harm triggers. We then ran a survey with 37 young people, to explore perceptions of mobile sensing, and current and future uses for smartphone-based interventions. Finally, we ran a workshop with 11 young people to further explore how a context-aware self-management application might be used to support them. We contribute an in-depth understanding of how triggers for self-harm might be identified and subsequently predicted and prevented using mobile-sensing technology.