Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and Characterization of Next Generation Flexible Dielectric and Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting Materials

This thesis presents the study of next generation Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) based flexible nanocomposite materials that can be used in future energy storage or harvesting applications. Composites were created by incorporating different types of nano-sized particles to tailor desired properties such as electrical and thermal performance. The study is divided into two major chapters and the findings can be summarized as the following: 1) improvement of composites electrical permittivity and dielectric properties via homogeneous dispersion of silane treated titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, 2) fabrication and characterization of polymer based Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) and Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs) blended solid thermoelectric materials via compounding processes, and 3) further improvement of the thermoelectric performance by utilizing super critical carbon dioxide (scCO2) foaming method. A variety of techniques were used to characterize the composites, including surface/internal morphologies, crystalline phase identification, electrical properties and lastly, thermal behaviors.
The dynamic chain event graph

In this paper we develop a formal dynamic version of Chain Event Graphs (CEGs), a particularly expressive family of discrete graphical models. We demonstrate how this class links to semi-Markov models and provides a convenient generalization of the Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). In particular we develop a repeating time-slice Dynamic CEG providing a useful and simpler model in this family. We demonstrate how the Dynamic CEG’s graphical formulation exhibits asymmetric conditional independence statements and also how each model can be estimated in a closed form enabling fast model search over the class. The expressive power of this model class together with its estimation is illustrated throughout by a variety of examples that include the risk of childhood hospitalization and the efficacy of a flu vaccine.
Zataria multiflora Boiss inhibits muscarinic receptors of incubated tracheal smooth muscle with propranolol

Objective(s): In the present study, the effect of tissue incubat ion with propranolol on functional antagonism of Zataria multiflora Boiss (Z. multiflora ) at muscarinic receptors of tracheal smooth muscle was examined. Materials and Methods: The effects of three concentrations of aqueous-eth anolic extract, 10 nM atropine, and saline on muscarinic receptors were t ested on incubated tracheal smooth muscle with propranolol (n=5). Results: The EC 50 of all concentration of the extract and atropine w as significantly higher than that of saline. There was parallel right ward shift in concentration response curves obtained in the presence of all concentrations of the extract. Ther e was not any significant difference in the maximum response and slope obtained in the presence of different concentrations of extract compared to saline. There was significant positive correlation between the concentrations and the values of EC 50 (p<0.001). The value of (CR-1) obtained in the pre sence of highest concentration of the extract was significantly higher than that of a tropine (p<0.05). Conclusion: These results indicated that functional antagonism of Z. multiflora at muscarinic receptors of tracheal smooth muscle was mainly due to β-adrenoceptor stimulatory effect of plant.
Knowledge and exploitation of small ruminant grading and pricing systems among Somaliland livestock producers

This study sought to determine the level of awareness of the informal indigenous livestock grading and pricing system among producers and the exploitation of this knowledge to increase market participation and realise better prices and returns for their animals. Data was collected from 144 small ruminant producers in 3 livelihood zones (West Golis pastoral, Togdheer agro-pastoral and Hawd pastoral regions) in the northern Togdheer region using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and econometric methods were used in the analysis of data. Results confirmed the importance of small ruminants as sources of income among livestock producers in Somaliland. On average, a household kept 53 sheep and goats with most of the producers (79-85%) having sold some animals (mean=10) during the preceding 12 months. It was also established that producers were generally well versed with the grading and pricing system except for the very fine details. However, this knowledge did not have significant effect on level of market participation, but rather, other supply influencing factors like the number of animals kept by the household, gender of sales decision maker, age of household head and livelihood zone in which the household resided significantly influenced household annual small ruminants sales volumes. Despite level of awareness of grading and pricing having no significant effect on the absolute annual household sales volumes due to other adjunct supply constraints, producers tended to avail more of the superior quality grades for sale. For example, Grades I and II of small ruminants accounted for the largest proportions of animals sold (40% and 29%, respectively) with inferior quality grades (grade III and the local grade) accounting for only 15% and 17% respectively. Furthermore, results of an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression showed that supply of higher grade animals had a positive effect on prices received. In addition, number of animals sold and involvement in other economic activities besides livestock production positively affected the level of prices received by producers. Although a significant number of producers (39%) said that they deliberately fatten animals before sale, the strategy employed simply involved grazing of animals in communal land during the rainy season. Sheep and goats producers in Somalia face formidable constraints of drought and the attendant lack of feed and water for livestock, and also animal health issues. This provides a justification for development agencies and research organisations to continue working to address these problems. 1 Knowledge and exploitation of small ruminant grading and pricing systems among Somaliland livestock producers
Representative concentration pathways and mitigation scenarios for nitrous oxide

The challenges of mitigating nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are substantially different from those for carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), because nitrogen (N) is essential for food production, and over 80% of anthropogenic N2O emissions are from the agricultural sector. Here I use a model of emission factors of N2O to demonstrate the magnitude of improvements in agriculture and industrial sectors and changes in dietary habits that would be necessary to match the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) now being considered in the fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Stabilizing atmospheric N2O by 2050, consistent with the most aggressive of the RCP mitigation scenarios, would require about 50% reductions in emission factors in all sectors and about a 50% reduction in mean per capita meat consumption in the developed world. Technologies exist to achieve such improved efficiencies, but overcoming social, economic, and political impediments for their adoption and for changes in dietary habits will present large challenges.
Microcutting and Hollow 3D Microstructures in Glasses by In-volume Selective Laser-induced Etching (ISLE)

3D microfluidic devices and assembled micro mechanics inside fused silica glass are produced directly from digital CAD data e.g. for markets like medical diagnostics. To exploit the potential productivity of new high average power fs-lasers (150 W – 1 kW) a modular high speed scanning system has been developed. Acousto-optical beam deflection, galvo-scanners and translation stages are controlled by CAM software. Using a lens with 10 mm focal length a focus radius of 1 μm is scanned with a velocity of 12 m/s on 400 μm track radius enabling the up-scaling of the ISLEprocess using large repetition rate and large average power.
UC Berkeley Other Recent Work Title The DVD vs . DIVX Standard War : Empirical Evidence of Vaporware Permalink

In this paper, we empirically measure the e ect of the DIVX preannouncement in the DVD market. We do this by measuring the e ect of potential (incompatible) competition on a network undergoing growth. We nd that there are network e ects in the DVD market and that the preannouncement of DIVX slowed down the adoption of DVD technology. This suggests that strategic preannouncements can indeed a ect the outcome of a standards competition.
L-space surgery and twisting operation

A knot in the 3-sphere is called an L-space knot if it admits a nontrivial Dehn surgery yielding an L-space, i.e. a rational homology 3-sphere with the smallest possible Heegaard Floer homology. Given a knot K, take an unknotted circle c and twist K n times along c to obtain a twist family { K_n }. We give a sufficient condition for { K_n } to contain infinitely many L-space knots. As an application we show that for each torus knot and each hyperbolic Berge knot K, we can take c so that the twist family { K_n } contains infinitely many hyperbolic L-space knots. We also demonstrate that there is a twist family of hyperbolic L-space knots each member of which has tunnel number greater than one.
The Impact of Accumulation of Intellectual Capital and Productivity on Financial Performance: Using Corporate Value as the Dual Mediator

The purpose of this study is to verify, using corporate value as the Dual Mediator, the impact of intellectual capital accumulation and productivity on the financial performance of the Taiwan-listed IC design industry. Research subjects and the primary interviewees are the section chiefs and managers of Taiwan-listed IC design industry. The sampling method adopted in this study is the Simple Random Sampling method; while Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to verify the overall research model and the fitting effect of its Structural Model and Measurement Model, followed by the use of Sobel Test, Boostrapping, and Mackinnon PRODCLIN2 methods to verify the Dual Mediating effects. The study results show that, to the Taiwan-listed IC design industry: (1) the accumulation of intellectual capital has a significant positive effect on corporate value; (2) corporate value also has a direct significant positive effect on financial performance; (3) the accumulation of intellectual capital has a significant effect on financial performance; (4) productivity has a significant positive effect on corporate value; and (5) productivity has a significant effect on financial performance. The above results show that "corporate value" has a "dual" mediating effect, which also implies that promoting corporate value plays an important role in improving financial performance. But, improving financial performance does not solely rely on promoting corporate value; a number of other channels may also contribute to it. Additionally, the study results may also serve to help the decision makers of Taiwan-listed IC design industry with their strategic thinking when considering improving the accumulation of intellectual capital, productivity, and corporate value, and hopefully improve their financial performance as a result.
Review of Clean Development Mechanism and use of Bundled Projects in Small and Medium Scale Enterprises

Carbon finance through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offers significant opportunity to a developing country like India for an array of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction projects. However, the transaction cost associated with the development of CDM project is a serious barrier to many small scale CDM (SSC) projects due to which these proponents face many difficulties in attracting international investors. To reduce this transaction cost, individual small projects with similar project context can be bundled together to form a single CDM project. These SSC bundled projects that reduce GHG emissions can claim Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) under the concept of bundling. This paper presents 98 bundled CDM projects registered and issued worldwide till October 2014, out of which India has 29 projects, along with a case study on small scale hydro-electric power generation project. The visited project is a good example of clean technology that helps to reduce stress on conventional energy sources and is an improvement of social and economic life of local people. Energy efficiency, grid connected electricity generation, fossil fuels switching, thermal energy production and methane recovery are some of the methodologies in these types of projects. These methodologies reduce GHG emissions without harming the environment.
Chapter 1 Metal – Ligand Interactions in Molecular Imprinting

Molecular imprinting enables the design of highly crosslinked polymeric materials that are able to mimic natural recognition processes. Molecularly imprinted polymers exhibit binding sites with tailored selectivity toward target structures ranging from inorganic ions to biomacromolecules and even viruses or living cells. The choice of the appropriate functional monomer, crosslinker, and the nature and specificity of template–monomer interactions are critical for a successful imprinting process. The use of a metal ion mediating the interaction between the monomer and template (acting as ligands) has proven to offer a higher fidelity of imprint, which modulates the molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) selectivity or to endow additional features to the polymer, such as stimuli-responsiveness, catalytic activity, etc. Furthermore, limitations in using nonpolar and aprotic solvents are overcome, allowing the use of more polar solvents and even aqueous solutions as imprinting media, opening new prospects toward the imprinting of biomacromolecules (proteins, DNA, RNA, antibodies, biological receptors, etc.). This chapter aims to outline the beneficial pairing of metal ions as coordination centers and various functional ligands in the molecular imprinting process, as well as to provide an up to date overview of the various applications in chemical sensing, separation processes (stationary phases and selective sorbents), drug delivery, and catalysis.
Analytical Model to Establish the Thermal Conductivity of Porous Structure

The presented research paper deals with analytical method to determine the thermal conductivity of porous material (intumescent coating) where the main objective is to assess whether it is possible to treat the voids in intumescent coating as having a uniform diameter. Considering the nature of intumescent coating, the mechanisms of its fire retardant properties are expansion and heat absorption. A predictive model should therefore include prediction of expansion behaviour, energy and mass conservation based on both physical and chemical behaviour, and also thermal conductivity of the coating. A 3-D analytical model will be developed to determine the thermal conductivity of intumescent coating. Finite Element simulations using ABAQUS also will be performed to assess the influence of different pore size distributions. The results of this numerical study indicate that, given the same porosity, the overall thermal conductivity of the porous structure is very close to that with uniform distribution of pores of the dominant size. This strongly suggests that, given the difficulty of obtaining precise pore size distribution, it is reasonable to treat an intumescent coating as having a uniform distribution of pores of the same size.
A Service-based Congestion Control Strategy for Content Centric Networking

Congestion control for Content Centric Networking is one of the hottest research point.Existing solutions mostly reference TCP congestion control.Most solutions didn’t distinguish the traffic classes,which reduce some services’ QoS.In order to address this problem,we propose in this paper a service-based congestion control strategy for CCN.We design the algorithm to choose service requester to feedback the congestion level of the network by monitoring queue of Interests in the CCN router.Our evaluation shows that our strategy can effectively increase QoS.
Transition towards Renewable Energy Production? Potential in Smallholder Agricultural Systems in West Bengal, India

Renewable energy (RE) production promotes the efficient and sustainable utilization of natural resources at the local level. This study assessed smallholder farmers’ perceptions of RE production in two villages in West Bengal, India. The availability and potential of renewable resources and livelihood characteristics of smallholders were explored. Relevant factors for the selection of appropriate RE technologies were identified, based on the participatory, bottom-up Integrated Renewable Energy Potential Assessment. The research area has abundant solar resources and substantial amounts of organic residues and waste suitable for biodigestion. Important factors for RE technology selection, as stated by farmers, are: ease of daily activities, government support, and limited land requirements. Solar-photovoltaic (PV) systems providing sufficient electricity for household use and irrigation are considered the most appropriate. Key informants focus on initial investment costs, government support, and reduced energy expenditure. They favor solar-PV systems for household electrification. Second choice was an integrated food and energy system that combines solar-PV for irrigation and vermicomposting of organic residues/wastes for fertilizer production. Smallholder famers’ motivation to produce and use RE is high. Their perspective should be integrated in the design of RE-supporting policies and related programs to utilize local natural resources effectively and promote the transition towards renewable energy.
Study of Serologic Response Rate to Pertussis after Administration of the Third Dose of Pentavalent Vaccine in Children 12 Months Old in Karaj City, Iran

Background: After substitution of Pentavalent vaccine with diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTP) in the Iranian National Vaccination program with 3 Pentavalent (three times vaccination with Pentavalent vaccine at months 2, 4, and 6) in 2014 and the lack of published research in the field of immunogenicity of pertussis component of this vaccine, the efficacy of pertussis vaccine was studied 6 months after the last dose of Pentavalent vaccine in Iranian infants. Materials and Methods: Five hundred blood samples were collected from healthy one-year-old children who attended 18 health care centers of Karaj, Iran for routine vaccination selected by cluster sampling (2016). Sampling checklists contained demographic information and risk factors. The blood samples were sent to the laboratory for determination of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgA anti-pertussis antibody titer by ELISA method. Data were analyzed by STATA software (version 14.0). Results: 82.7% (n=413) of children (95% confidence interval [CI]: 79.49-86.11) had IgG titer less than 16 IU/ml against pertussis (no immune response), and 17.3% (n=87) had equal or greater than 16 IU/ml IgG titer against pertussis (95% CI: 13.89-20.51). IgA titer against pertussis was less than 8U/ml in all cases. Anti-pertussis IgG geometric mean titer (GMT) was 15.80 U/ml (95% CI: 15.26-16.36), and IgA GMT was 6.26 U/ml (95% CI: 6.22-6.30). There was not a significant correlation between titer of pertussis antibody and demographic factors. Conclusion: Based on low IgG titer in vaccinated children, immunogenicity of pentavalent vaccine in Iranian children needs more investigation. In this study, 100 % of children had negative serologic response (IgA
Contingency Factors Influencing MAS Design of Manufacturing Firms in Malaysia

From a contingency framework, this paper empirically examines the relationship between decentralization, advanced manufacturing technology ( AMT ) and market competition on the adoption of sophisticated management accounting system ( MAS ) design among manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Using a structured questionnaire and regression analysis, data from 137 manufacturing firms from Malaysia show that the sophistication of MAS adopted is significantly and positively related with AMT adoption and market competition. The findings suggests that the adoption of sophisticated MAS design is parallel with the adoption of advanced manufacturing innovations and is able to assist firms to cope with the changes in the business environment. However, a positive but insignificant relationship was observed in the relationship between decentralization and MAS design. These results have contributed to the management accounting change literature by suggesting that attempts by the MAS designers to improve the timeliness and the scope of the information are of particular relevance to the managers of the firm.
VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENTUSING CONTINUATION POWER FLOW

This Paper presents voltage stability assessment through P-V curve and bus voltage sensitivity factor. It addresses a measure of how close the system is to voltage instability? Active power margin is used to measure the distance to instability. Continuation power flow is used to obtain P-V curve of power system. Continuation power flow starting with initial operating point and increasing load to the maximum loading point. Voltage stability index and weakest bus is found from the result. A power system analysis tool is used to run continuation power flow.
Comparative analysis of genetic and morphologic diversity among quinoa accessions (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) of the South of Chile and highland accessions

Quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a widely consumed food crop and a primary protein source for many of the indigenous inhabitants of the Andean region in South America. Identification of quinoa cultivars has been based on phenotypic characters. In the present work, the level of polymorphism and the genetic relationship were studied by means of molecular markers using the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique and twenty morphological characters. Fourteen accessions of quinoa collected in the Araucania and Los Rios Regions, three Andean accessions, and one commercial cultivar were analyzed. Two wild parents were included as outgroup controls. A similarity tree-diagram was made, based on all the AFLP bands generated in the range between 70 and 300 base pairs. With these tools, it was possible to identify molecular differences and similarities that might be associated with important morphological traits such as grain color, panicle color, phenology and geographic distribution.
Murphy, Gavin Bruce and Samuel, Aizaz Aamir and Counsell, John (2011) Enhancement of the UK Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) solar water heating prediction algorithm using parametric dynamical thermal simulations. In: Building Simulation

SAP is the UK Government’s method for calculation of a dwelling’s energy efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions. This paper presents a method of informing the SAP procedure regarding evaluation of the advantage given to SAP ratings by installation of typical domestic Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) systems. Comparable SDHW systems were simulated using the dynamic thermal simulation package TRNSYS and results were translated into empirical relations in a form that could be input into the SAP calculation procedure. Findings were compared against the current SAP algorithm and differences explained. Results suggest that calculation variances can exist between the SAP methodology and detailed dynamic thermal simulation methods. This is especially true for higher performance systems that can deviate greatly from default efficiency parameters. This might be due to SAP algorithms being historically based on older systems that have lower efficiencies. An enhancement to the existing SAP algorithm is suggested.