Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SAXS experiments on absolute scale with Kratky systems using water as a secondary standard

For small-angle scattering, of X-rays (SAXS) and neutrons (SANS), the importance of absolute calibration has been recognized since the inception of the technique. The work reported here focuses on SAXS measurements using Kratky slit systems. In former days, only molecular weights or scattering per particle were determined, but today absolute calibration implies the use of the unit of cm−1 for the scattering curve. It is necessary to measure the so-called absolute intensity, which is the ratio of the scattering intensity to the primary intensity P0. Basically there are two possible ways to determine the absolute intensity. The first one is the direct method, which involves the mechanical attenuation of the primary beam by a rotating disc or a moving slit. The second is the indirect method, using secondary standards. Water is well suited as a calibration standard because of the angle-independent scattering. The essential advantage is that the scattering of water only depends on the physical property of isothermal compressibility. Before presenting an example of the practical performance of this method, the most important theoretical equations for an SAS experiment on the absolute scale are summarized. With the slit collimation system, the scattering curve of water can be measured with high enough statistical accuracy. As a first example, the scattering curve of the protein lysozyme on the absolute scale is presented. The second example is the determination of the aggregation number of a triblock copolymer P94 (EO17–PO42–EO17). Taking into account that at least 10% of the polymer sample consists of diblocks, the accuracy of around 10% for the determined aggregation number is rather good. The data of P94 are also considered on the particle scale in order to obtain the radial scattering-length density distribution.
Reliability of AlGaN-based deep UV LEDs on sapphire

Deep UV LEDs emitting at on 280 nm with powers as high as 1 mW at 20 mA have been reported recently. These devices have mesa size of 100 μm x 100 μm to avoid current crowding due to the high Al-composition of the AlxGa1-xN buffer layers. Small mesa size results in pump current density of 200 A/cm2 for a device current of 20 mA. Small area of p-contact also leads to higher operating voltage and higher thermal impedance for the flip-chip packaged device. These factors limit the device lifetime for 50 % power reduction to only a few hundred hours. From temperature and bias dependent power degradation measurements we found the output power to decay with two characteristic time constants indicating two degradation mechanisms. The faster time constant is bias dependent and temperature independent. The slower time constant varies exponentially with junction temperature having the activation energy of 0.27 eV at 200 A/cm2 pump current density. For the devices with high thermal impedance this degradation mechanism controls the long term power degradation. To increase the device area for better reliability we used the interconnected micro-pixel device design with 10x10 array of 22 μm in diameter pixels. This design allowed for the four-fold increase of the junction area and thereby led to improved reliability performance with the operation life-time for 50 % power reduction of about 1000 hours. In this paper we will present the details of the reliability measurements and use the experimental results to determine possible degradation mechanisms.
Synthesis and characterization of size-controlled vanadium dioxide nanocrystals in a fused silica matrix

Vanadium dioxide single-crystal precipitates with controlled particle sizes were produced in an amorphous, fused SiO2 host by the stoichiometric coimplantation of vanadium and oxygen ions and subsequent thermal processing. The effects of the vanadium dioxide nanocrystal size, nanocrystal morphology, and particle/host interactions on the VO2 semiconductor-to-metal phase transition were characterized. VO2 nanoparticles embedded in amorphous SiO2 exhibit a sharp phase transition with a hysteresis that is up to 50 °C in width—one of the largest values ever reported for this transition. The relative decrease in the optical transmission in the near-infrared region in going from the semiconducting to the metallic phase of VO2 ranges from 20% to 35%. Both the hysteresis width and the transition temperature are correlated with the size of the precipitates. Doping the embedded VO2 particles with ions such as titanium alters the characteristics of the phase transition, pointing the way to control the hysteresis beha.
Ultrastructural Aspects of Wood Degradation by Sporotrichum pulverulentum - Observations on Spruce Wood Impregnated with Glucose

On etudie au microscope electronique a transmission l'ultrastructure du bois d'epicea attaque par le champignon de la pourriture blanche Sporotrichum pulverulentum, apres addition de glucose qui inhibe la formation d'enzymes cellulolytiques. On etudie plus specialement les associations lignine-hemicelluloses aux differents niveaux de l'attaque fongique
Kinetics of low pressure rf discharges with dust particles

The kinetics of dusty plasma in low pressure rf discharges is studied by solving self-consistently the time dependent electron Boltzmann and dust charging equations. The electron temperature, the excitation and ionization rate coefficients, and the dust particle charge are shown to be modulated in the periodic state. It is demonstrated that the presence of dust particles enhances the modulated amplitude, reduces the high energy content of the electron energy distribution, the corresponding effective electron temperature, and the electron excitation and ionization rate coefficients.
Electroextraction separation of dyestuffs

Electroseparation technologies have prospects for significant growth well into the next century. Electroextraction, a coupled separation technique of solvent extraction with electrophoresis, was used to remove dyestuffs from their aqueous stream. A study on the characteristics of the separation technique was carried out with n-butanol/acid-chrom blue K/water and n-butanol/methyl blue/water as working systems. A continuous separation equipment was designed and sued in this work. The influences of two-phase flow, field strength, and concentration of the feed on the recovery of solute were studied. The results showed that much higher recovery of solute with less solvent consumption could be achieved by using this technique to remove dyes from their aqueous streams, especially for the separation of the dilute solution. When the field strength is increased, the recovery and mass flux increase. When the feed flow rate and the initial solute concentration are increased, the recovery decreases and the mass flux increases.
Analiza sceny przy użyciu głębokich sieci neuronowych typu YOLO

traffic lights. The implemented system uses a deep neural network, whose structure is based on the YOLO (You Only Look Once) architecture. Low computing requirements of the chosen architecture allows performing real-time detection with satisfactory accuracy. The work also included a study on the selection of an appropriate optimizer used in the learning process. The program correctly detects objects with a large surface area, allowing the system to be used in traffic analysis. The work also showed that using the ADAM algorithm allowed significantly shorten the training time of the neural network. Systems of this type can be used in many types of video analysis systems such as autonomous vehicles, automatic video analysis systems with CCTV cameras
Physical Intensification Methods for Mineral Raw Materials Leaching

Review of investigations completed in the Institute of Steel and Alloys in the period from 1980 to 1993 concerning the intensification methods of hydrometallurgical decomposition of the mineral concentrates and intermediate products containing tungsten, molybdenum, zirconium, tantalum, niobium, rare-earth metals, beryllium, zinc, indium, and cadmium has been given. The thermoactivation, mechanoactivalion, mechano-chemical modification, radiation and ultrasonic action for chemical activity increasing of the materials have been used. In all cases, it has been shown that the solid phase defects of the same type were generated but at radiation action (gamma radiation) the point defects prevailed at thermoactivation and mcchanoactivation-the dislocations prevailed. The defects appear in the whole volume of the solids at mechanoactivation, thermoactivation and radiation action, but in the very thin surface layer at ultrasonic action in the cavitation regime. The methods of physical action may be chosen dependin.
Electrochemical Characteristics and Impedance Spectroscopy Studies of Carbon-Carbon Supercapacitors

This paper presents the results obtained on the electrochemical behavior of electrochemical capacitors assembled in nonaqueous electrolyte. The first part is devoted to the electrochemical characterization of carbon-carbon 4 cm 2 cells systems in terms of capacitance, resistance, and cyclability. The second part is focused on the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy study of the cells. Nyquist plots are presented and the impedance of the supercapacitors is discussed in terms of complex capacitance and complex power. This allows the determination of a relaxation time constant of the systems, and the real and the imaginary part of the complex power vs. the frequency plots give information on the supercapacitor cells frequency behavior. The complex impedance plots for both a supercapacitor and a tantalum dielectric capacitor cells are compared.
FloorplanNet: Learning Topometric Floorplan Matching for Robot Localization

Given a building floorplan, humans can localize themselves by matching the observation of the environment with the floorplan using geometric, semantic, and topological clues. Inspired by this insight, this paper proposes a learning- based topometric robot localization method FloorplanNet, which implements a match between a metric robot map and the potentially inaccurate building floorplan in nonuniform scales and different shapes by semantic information. The method uses a novel Graph Neural Network to learn descriptors of nodes from topometric graphs generated from the input maps. We demonstrate that our method can match the 3D point cloud sub-map generated by the robot during the SLAM process with the 2D map. Furthermore, we apply our map-matching algorithm for real-world robot localization. We evaluate our method on several publicly available real-world datasets. Even though our network is solely trained using simulation data, our method demonstrates high robustness and effectiveness in real- world indoor environments and outperforms the existing SOTA map-matching algorithms. We further develop a simulator that automatically creates and annotates the required training data to train our neural networks. The method and simulator are released at: https://github.com/fengdelin/FloorplanNet.git
Self-decomposition Method for Power Generators’ Medium- and Long-term Contract Based on Conditional Robust Profit

Under the requirement of time linkage between contract trading and market trading, power generators’ medium- and long-term contracted electricity must be decomposed to a short time scale. To address this problem, a self-decomposition model for a generator’s medium- and long-term contracted energy based on conditional robust profit is proposed, taking into consideration the uncertainty of spot market prices. This model aims to maximize the generator’s conditional robust profit in the spot market, and the generator’s operation and contract decomposition constraints are considered. In addition, an auxiliary variable is employed to transform the model into a tractable formulation. Finally, the effectiveness of the model is verified by numerical examples. It is shown that the proposed model can accommodate the risk preferences of the generator, which means sound strategies can be formulated according to the different levels of risk aversion.
Functional Groups on the Surfaces of Solids

Atoms or groups foreign to the structure of a solid are often bonded to its surface. On diamond, graphite, and even silicon dioxide, the foreign atoms are bonded covalently, whereas the bonding of the structural groups to titanium oxide and alumina is predominantly ionic. Oxides are normally covered with a monomolecular hydroxide layer. Changes in the valence of the metal atoms lead to changes in the acidity of the surface; for example, reduction of surface Ti4+ions gives the surface of TiO2 an acidic nature.
Nano n-propylsulfonated γ-Fe2O3 (NPS-γ-Fe2O3) as a magnetically recyclable heterogeneous catalyst for the efficient synthesis of 2-indolyl-1-nitroalkanes and bis(indolyl)methanes

Nano n-propylsulfonated γ-Fe2O3 (NPS-γ-Fe2O3) was used as a new magnetically recyclable heterogeneous catalyst for the efficient synthesis of indole derivatives, such as 2-indolyl-1-nitroalkanes and bis(indolyl)methanes.
Removal of EOG and EMG artifacts from EEG signals using blind source separation methods

Artifacts in EEG signals may be referred to as a disturbance in the EEG recordings that does not derive from the brain. EEG recording is in the millivolt range, and it includes the electrical activity from the muscles under the scalp. This recording often includes the artifacts due to power source, electrode movement, eyes movement, muscle movements, electrode pop, and sweating. This paper mainly concentrates on the artifacts which occurs during the eyes and muscle movement. In the proposed work, different BSS methods like FastICA, WASOBI, and EFICA algorithms are used to compare the reduction of artifacts in terms of MSE and PSNR in EEG signal. Different combinations using FastICA, WASOBI, and EFICA are evaluated and compared their performance to find the best COMBI method. Among the COMBI methods, the EFICA-WASOBI combination provides low MSE and high PSNR value, which indicates the high artifact reduction. In EFICA-WASOBI, the average value of MSE and PSNR are 0.021 and 42.78dB respectively for EMG artifact reduction and 0.060 and 32.97dB for EOG artifacts reduction using EEGdenoiseNet dataset. Similarly, the average MSE value is 0.018 and average PSNR value is 49.19dB for EOG artifact reduction using Mendeley dataset. The results show that by using the combination of EFICA-WASOBI, the effect of EOG and EMG artifacts can be reduced.
A DFT Study of the Effect of Natural Impurities on the Electronic Structure of Sphalerite

The electronic and reaction properties of natural sphalerite containing seven typical kinds of impurities is studied by the density-functional theory (DFT). Mn and Ga impurities result in the Mulliken charge of the Zn atom reduced and consequently might decrease the ionicity of sphalerite; while Fe, Cd, In, Ge and Tl impurities lead to the increase in the Mulliken charge of the Zn atom. The frontier orbital calculations show that Mn impurities might lead to the over-oxidization of sphalerite, which may cause the further oxidation of lead xanthate, and thus are unfavorable for the flotation of sphalerite.
The Enrichment of Condensed Arenes in Geting Bituminous Coal

Geting bituminous coal was sequentially and exhaustively extracted with petroleum ester, carbon disulfide, methanol, acetone, and isometric carbon disulfide/acetone mixed solvent at room temperature to afford extracts 1–5 (E1-E5). All the extracts were analyzed with a gas chromatography/mass spectrometer. As main components, a series of condensed arenes with 4–6 rings were detected in E2, but only extremely small amounts of the condensed arenes were detected in other extracts. The authors' experiment provides an effective approach for enriching condensed arenes from coals, especially from bituminous coals, such as GBC.
The Deflagration of Solid Propellant Oxidizers

Abstract Experimental results are reported of the self-deflagration of the solid oxidizers hydroxylammonium perchlorate and hydrazine nitroform. The burning rate-pressure relationships were measured and combustion temperatures were determined. Quenching diameters were also measured for these two oxidizers plus ammonium perchlorate. Two findings of significance have emerged: first, hydroxylammonium perchlorate exhibits a low-pressure deflagration limit of 146 atm, analogous to the 20 atm limit of ammonium perchlorate. This high value obtains in spite of aflame temperature for HAP that is 100° higher than that of AP; and in spite of the fact that at pressures at which HAP does burn, it burns two to three times more rapidly than AP. Comparison of results for several oxidizers suggests that AP should be regarded as exhibiting an unusually low low-pressure limit. The second item of importance is an hypothesis that ammonium perchlorate deflagration occurs by a cellular mechanism. A simplified analysis of the AP.
Robust Methods for Causal Inference Using Penalized Splines

Observational studies are important for evaluating treatment effects, especially when randomization of treatments is unethical or expensive. Without randomization, valid inferences about treatment effects can only be drawn by controlling for confounders. Propensity scores (PS) – the probability of treatment assignment as a function of covariates – are often used to control for confounders. PS-based methods are vulnerable to bias and inefficiency when outcome or propensity score models are misspecified or there is limited overlap in the propensity score distributions between treatment groups. In this dissertation, we develop new robust methods for estimating causal effects from observational studies and address two closely related topics on causal inference – the problem of limited overlap and variable selection for propensity score model. In Chapter 2, we propose a robust multiple imputation based approach to causal inference called Penalized Spline of Propensity Methods for Treatment Comparison (PENCOMP). PENCOMP estimates causal effects by imputing missing potential outcomes with flexible spline models, and draws inference based on imputed and observed outcomes. Under the standard causal inference assumptions, PENCOMP is doubly robust, that is, yields consistent estimates of causal effects if either the propensity or the outcome model is correctly specified. Simulations suggest that it tends to outperform doubly-robust marginal structural modeling, especially when the weights are highly variable. We apply our method to the Multicenter AIDS Cohort study (MACS) to estimate the short term effect of antiretroviral treatment on CD4 counts in HIV+ patients.
Electrode Design Based on Strain Mode Shapes for Configurable PMUTs

Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) with multiple electrodes can be utilized as multi-frequency transducers by exciting selected vibration modes of the diaphragm providing configurability that may be beneficial in modern ultrasound imaging and therapeutic techniques. This requires judicious arrangement of the electrode configuration to excite the desired modes or combination of modes. Optimization of the electrode pattern can be done using full electroacoustic Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations, but this is computationally intensive and gives limited insight into the underlying physics. This paper presents a simple and efficient approach based on the in-vacuum strain mode shapes of the PMUT diaphragm to optimize the electrode configurations for an arbitrary PMUT cell resonating at any flexural mode. Strain mode shapes are obtained both from an analytical model as well as FEM. The proposed method is compared to and verified by full electroacoustic FEM simulations of PMUTs radiating into water. The optimal electrode patterns for the first few flexural modes are found for rectangular PMUTs with three different length-to-width aspect ratios, and examples of configurable PMUTs are given by combining the optimal electrodes at two different modes.
Forms and Concentration of Phosphorus in Drainage Water of Twenty-Seven Tile-Drained Soils

In most mineral soils, P leaching is rarely viewed as an important environmental issue. However, P accumulation and decreased P sorption capacities in surface horizons of long-term fertilized soils may increase downward P movement. The objective of this study was to measure the concentration and characterize the P forms in drainage waters from nine soil series widely differing in clay content. Twenty-seven sites were sampled in 1994 and 1995 from an intensively cropped area of the province of Quebec, Canada. Drainage waters were characterized for their total P (TP), dissolved reactive P (DRP), dissolved organic P (DOP), and total particulate P (TPP) contents. The Quebec surface water quality standard of 0.03 mg TP L¹ was exceeded in 14 out of 27 sites in 1994 but only in 6 out of 25 sites in 1995. Of the 14 sites exceeding 0.03 mg TP L⁻¹ in 1994, 10 were clayey soils. Under these circumstances, more than 50% of the TP was as TPP whereas DOP forms represented <30%. In 1995, TPP forms accounted for, on average, <50% of TP and DOP accounted for more than 40% of the TP concentrations. This study suggests that flat clayey soils of medium to rich P status may be particularly at risk of exceeding water quality standards in subsurface runoff. Phosphorus losses in particulate form may be important in subsurface runoff from clayey soils when weather conditions favor rapid flow through cracks or macropores. Contribution of the Soils and Crops Research Centre no. 565.
Distributed formation trajectory planning for multi-vehicle systems

This paper addresses the problem of distributed formation trajectory planning for multi-vehicle systems with collision avoidance among vehicles. Unlike some previous distributed formation trajectory planning methods, our proposed approach offers great flexibility in handling computational tasks for each vehicle when the global formation of all the vehicles changes. It affords the system the ability to adapt to the computational capabilities of the vehicles. Furthermore, global formation constraints can be handled at any selected vehicles. Thus, any formation change can be effectively updated without recomputing all local formations at all the vehicles. To guarantee the above features, we first formulate a dynamic consensus-based optimization problem to achieve desired formations while guaranteeing collision avoidance among vehicles. Then, the optimization problem is effectively solved by ADMM-based or alternating projection-based algorithms, which are also presented. Theoretical analysis is provided not only to ensure the convergence of our method but also to show that the proposed algorithm can surely be implemented in a fully distributed manner. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by a numerical example of a 9-vehicle system.
Influence of the substitution on the electronic properties of perylene-3,4:9,10- bis(dicarboximides): density functional theory study

Geometries of the substituted perylene-3,4:9,10-bis(dicarboximides) (PDI) and their radical anions have been optimized at the B3LYP/6-31G** level of theory. The adiabatic and vertical electron affinities have been computed at the B3LYP/6-31+G*//B3LYP/6-31G** level. Substitution of the PDI with COOCF 3 reduces the energies of both the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) with the only exception of PDI4 derivative. Calculations predict a decrease in the electron injection barrier in the materials based on the proposed compounds comparing to the parent PDI. Taking into account the calculated electron affinities (EA), the air stability and ambipolar behavior of the materials under study can be expected. KEY WORDS : Organic field effect transistors, Highest occupied molecular orbitals, Lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals, Electron affinity, Air stability Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2014 , 28(1), 101-110. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4314/bcse.v28i1. 12