Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of potato peel-based bio-sorbent efficiency in reactive dye removal: Artificial neural network modeling and genetic algorithms optimization

Over the last few years, a number of investigations have been conducted to explore the low cost sorbents for the decontamination of toxic materials. Undoubtedly, agricultural waste mass is presently one of the most challenging topics, which has been gaining attention during the past several decades. Wastes are very cheap and easily available material in production of sorbent. Therefore, the Reactive Red 198 (RR198) removal efficiency from aqueous solutions by potato peel powder based sorbent (PP) was examined in this study. The Taguchi method was used in combination with full factorial methods to design the experiments. Based on the design of experiment outputs, 18 experimental sets were designed and the experiments were done in accordance with the experimental design. The sorption handmade batch reactor consists of a 200 ml beaker, 100 RPM magnetic stirrer, and a sampling port. Then, the experimental data were collected under desired conditions. In each sample sorbent was separated using a centrifuge (3000 rpm and 5 minutes). Then, dye concentrations were determined based on Beer’s law and calibration plots using a UV-visible spectrophotometer. The wavelength resolution and the bandwidth were, respectively, 1 and 0.4 nm. The length of the optical path in glass cell was 1 cm. The maximum absorption wavelength was determined in each run to compensate the matrix effects. The results revealed that PP is effective for the sorption of RR198 from aqueous solutions. The maximum sorption of PP from RR198 solution was determined as 93 mg/g. Artificial neural network (ANN) model of dye removal efficiency (DR%) was developed based on the experimental data sets. The ANN model was strongly validated using statistical tests. The R 2 and RMSE of the test set were 0.98 and 4.3, respectively. The results demonstrate that PP can be successfully used as sorbent for RR198 removal from aqueous solutions. The results revealed that experimental parameters strongly influence the DR% and different experimental conditions cause different DR% (from 0 to 93).
Autocorrelated errors explain the apparent relationship between disapproval of the US Congress and prosocial language

Frimer et al. (2015) claim that there is a linear relationship between the level of prosocial language and the level of public disapproval of US Congress. A re-analysis demonstrates that this relationship is the result of a misspecified model that does not account for first-order autocorrelated disturbances. A Stata script to reproduce all presented results is available as an appendix.
Processes limiting the emergence of detectable aerosol indirect effects on tropical warm clouds in global aerosol-climate model and satellite data

We use data from simulations performed with the global aerosol-climate model ECHAM5-HAM to test the proposition that shipping emissions do not have a statistically significant effect on water clouds over tropical oceans on climate scales put forward in earlier satellite based work. We analyse a total of four sensitivity experiments, three of which employ global shipping emissions and one simulation which only employs shipping emissions in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. To ensure comparability to earlier results from observations, we sample the model data using a method previously applied to satellite data aimed at separating ‘clean’ from ‘polluted’ oceanic regions based on i) the location of main shipping routes and ii) wind direction at 10 m above sea level. The model simulations run with realistic present-day shipping emissions show changes in the lower tropospheric aerosol population attributable to shipping emissions across major shipping corridors over tropical oceans. However, we find the resulting effect on cloud properties to be non-distinguishable from natural gradients and variability, that is, gradients of cloud properties sampled across major shipping corridors over tropical oceans are very similar among those simulations. Our results therefore compare well to the earlier findings from satellite observations. Substantial changes of the aerosol population and cloud properties only occur when shipping emissions are increased 10-fold. We find that aerosol advection and rapid aerosol removal from the atmosphere play an important role in determining the non-significant response in i) column integrated aerosol properties and ii) cloud microphysical properties in the realistic simulations. Additionally, high variability and infrequent occurrence of simulated low-level clouds over tropical oceans in ECHAM5-HAM limit the development of aerosol indirect effects because i) in-cloud production of sulphate from ship-emitted sulphuric species via aqueous oxidation pathways is very low and ii) a possible observational signal is blurred out by high variability in simulated clouds. Our results highlight i) the importance of adequately accounting for atmospheric background conditions when determining climate forcings from observations and ii) the effectiveness of buffering mechanisms on micro- and macroscopic scales which limit the emergence of such climate forcings.
THE DERIVATIVE ULTRACONVERGENCE FOR QUADRATIC TRIANGULAR FINITE ELEMENTS ∗1)

This work concerns the ultraconvergence of quadratic finite element approximations of elliptic boundary value problems. A new, discrete least-squares patch recovery technique is proposed to post-process the solution derivatives. Such recovered derivatives are shown to possess ultraconvergence. The keys in the proof are the asymptotic expansion of the bilinear form for the interpolation error and a “localized” symmetry argument. Numerical results are presented to confirm the analysis.
Sex ratio distortion in the Nesolynx thymus (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), an ecto-pupal parasitoid of uzifly, Exorista sorbillans (Diptera: Tachinidae)

The reproductive alterations induced by maternally inherited α-proteo-bacteria Wolbachia to their hosts is a well-document- ed phenomenon. In Nesolynx thymus, a gregarious hymenopterous ecto-pupal parasitoid of the uzifly, Exorista sorbillans, diagnostic PCR assay using specific primers revealed the presence of Wolbachia. Following genetic crossing experiments, we observed a female biased sex ratio of 1 : 9.5 at 25°C and 1 : 3 male to female ratio when the populations were exposed to heat shock 33°C for six hours. Furthermore, we found infection polymorphism, where female parasitoids are infected by Wolbachia but males are not infected. In- fected eggs develop into females, whereas uninfected eggs develop parthenogenetically into males. The results are discussed in the context of the possible mechanism of sex-ratio bias caused by Wolbachia.
Shape optimization and sensitivity of compliant beams for prescribed load-displacement response

Abstract. This paper presents the shape optimization of a compliant beam for prescribed load-displacements response. The analysis of the design is based on the isogeometric analysis framework for an enhanced fidelity between designed and analysed shape. The sensitivities used for an improved optimization procedure are derived analytically, including terms due to the use of nonlinear state equations and nonlinear boundary constraint equations. A design example is illustrated where a beam shape is found that statically balances a pendulum over a range of 180° with good balancing quality. The analytical sensitivities are verified by comparison with finite difference sensitivities.
Characterizing Foraging Patterns Among Cattle and Bonded and Non-bonded Small Ruminants Using Spatial Point Process Techniques

This paper uses the technique of spatial point processes to describe the spatial patterns of freeranging cattle and small ruminants. Two mixed-species livestock groups were monitored while foraging on 410 ha of brush-infested Southern New Mexico rangeland during July and August 1988. The groups consisted of crossbred Bos taurus and Bos indicus beef cattle with white-faced sheep (Ovis aries) and mohair goats (Capra hircus). The bonded group consisted of small ruminants that had their behaviours modified through socialization with cattle to form a ‘flerd’ in which small ruminants consistently remained near cattle. Small ruminants in the non-bonded group had not been socialized with cattle. A subset of animal location data measured during the morning and afternoon over five days for both the bonded and non-bonded groups was analyzed for spatial patterns. Only data for five morning periods (7:00-8:00 a.m.) are reported because morning and afternoon spatial patterns were similar. Observed nearest neighbor distances, mean number of small ruminant near an arbitrary cow, and point-to-animal distances were compared to Monte Carlo simulations of independently and uniformly distributed animal locations. Bonded and non-bonded groups were also compared. Results suggested bonded and non-bonded groups were similar in spatial patterns of intra-specific distances for both cattle and small ruminants. However, bonding changed the repulsive relationship observed between cattle and non-bonded small ruminants stocked together to one of inter-specific attraction. Bonded small ruminants remained close to and formed inter-specific clusters with cattle. In addition, the mean number of bonded small ruminants near an arbitrary cow was consistently higher than for non-bonded small ruminants. Finally, the spatial pattern of cattle across the paddock did not differ between bonded and non-bonded groups, while bonded small ruminants tended to disperse slightly more uniformly across the paddock than did non-bonded small ruminants. These findings indicate the usefulness of spatial point processes techniques to analyze such animal location data, substantiate on a larger scale conclusions of previous, replicated studies about the effect of bonding small ruminants to cattle, and suggest utilization of paddock landscapes may be positively influenced using flerds compared to flocks and herds.
A pilot ASKAP survey of radio transient events in the region around the intermittent pulsar PSR J1107 5907

We use observations from the Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA) of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope to search for transient radio sources in the field around the intermittent pulsar PSR J1107 5907. The pulsar is thought to switch between an “off" state in which no emission is detectable, a weak state and a strong state. We ran three independent transient detection pipelines on two-minute snapshot images from a 13 hour BETA observation in order to 1) study the emission from the pulsar, 2) search for other transient emission from elsewhere in the image and 3) to compare the results from the different transient detection pipelines. The pulsar was easily detected as a transient source and, over the course of the observations, it switched into the strong state three times giving a typical timescale between the strong emission states of 3.7hours. After the first switch it remained in the strong state for almost 40 minutes. The other strong states lasted less than 4 minutes. The second state change was confirmed using observations with the Parkes radio telescope. No other transient events were found and we place constraints on the surface density of such events on these timescales. The high sensitivity Parkes observations enabled us to detect individual bright pulses during the weak state and to study the strong state over a wide observing band. We conclude by showing that future transient surveys with ASKAP will have the potential to probe the intermittent pulsar population.
Improving the Performance of Hadoop Map reduce using Dynamic Slot Configurations

Hadoop have become the adequate platform for scalable analysis on large data sets with the map reduces technology. Primarily in Hadoop is how to minimize the completion length of a set of MapReduce jobs. Hadoop only allows static slot configuration, i.e., fixed numbers of map slots and reduce slots throughout the lifetime of a cluster. This static configuration may lead to low system resource utilizations as well as long computation length. So has to overcome this problem, this project proposes effective schemes which use Dynamic Slot Configurations for Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Clusters using Hadoop Map reduce. By leveraging the workload information of recently completed jobs, the proposed scheme dynamically allocates resources to map and reduce tasks. This scheme is more effective under both simple workloads and more complex mixed workloads.
BINAURAL SIMULATIONS USING AUDIO RATE FDTD SCHEMES AND CUDA

Three dimensional finite difference time domain schemes can be used as an approach to spatial audio simulation. By embedding a model of the human head in a 3D computational space, such simulations can emulate binaural sound localisation. This approach normally relies on using high sample rates to give finely detailed models, and is computationally intensive. This paper examines the use of head models within audio rate FDTD schemes, ranging from 176.4 down to 44.1 kHz. Using GPU computing with Nvidia’s CUDA architecture, simulations can be accelerated many times over a serial computation in C. This allows efficient, dynamic simulations to be produced where sounds can be moved around during the runtime. Sound examples have been generated by placing a personalised head model inside an anechoic cube. At the lowest sample rate, 44.1 kHz, localisation is clear in the horizontal plane but much less so in the other dimensions. At 176.4, there is far greater three dimensional depth, with perceptible front to back, and some vertical movement.
Preferences for Immigrants: An Empirical Analysis of Explanatory Variables

This paper investigates what factors influence the preferences for migrants. Lately, European countries are obliged to accept migrants due to EU policy, making this a relevant topic to examine. The study is focused on the Netherlands and analyzes data over a time span of 12 years. The analyses show that a higher level of education, a higher satisfaction about the state of the economy and belonging to a minority lead to higher preferences for migrants. Moreover, preferences for right-wing political parties negatively influence the attitude. Contrary to previous literature, we do not observe a significant effect of income on the preferences for migrants.
Data-Centric Situational Awareness and Management in Intelligent Power Systems

The rapid development of technology and society has made the current power system a much more complicated system than ever. The request for big data based situation awareness and management becomes urgent today. In this dissertation, to respond to the grand challenge, two data-centric power system situation awareness and management approaches are proposed to address the security problems in the transmission/distribution grids and social benefits augmentation problem at the distribution-customer lever, respectively. To address the security problem in the transmission/distribution grids utilizing big data, the first approach provides a fault analysis solution based on characterization and analytics of the synchrophasor measurements. Specifically, the optimal synchrophasor measurement devices selection algorithm (OSMDSA) and matching pursuit decomposition (MPD) based spatial-temporal synchrophasor data characterization method was developed to reduce data volume while preserving comprehensive information for the big data analyses. And the weighted Granger causality (WGC) method was investigated to conduct fault impact causal analysis during system disturbance for fault localization. Numerical results and comparison with other methods demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of this analytic approach.
Southern infrared proper motion survey I. Discovery of new high proper motion stars from first full hemisphere scan

We present the first results from the Southern Infrared Proper Motion Survey. Using 2 Micron All Sky Survey data along with that of the SuperCOSMOS sky survey we have been able to produce the first widefield infrared proper motion survey. Having targeted the survey to identify nearby M, L and T dwarfs we have discovered 70 such new objects with proper motions greater than 0.5 �� /yr with 10 of these having proper motions in excess of 1 �� /yr. The most interesting of these objects is SIPS1259-4336 a late M dwarf. We have calculated a trigonometric parallax for this object of π = 276±41 milliarcsec yielding a distance of 3.62 ± 0.54 pc. We have also discovered a common proper motion triple system and an object with a common proper motion with LHS 128. The survey completeness is limited by the small epoch differences between many 2MASS and UKI observations. Hence we only recover 22% of Luyten objects with favourable photometry. However the Luyten study is itself unquantifiably incomplete. We discuss the prospect of enhancing the survey volume by reducing the lower proper motion limit.
Impact of Non-idealities on the Performance of InAs/(In)GaAsSb/GaSb Tunnel FETs

Measured InGaAsSb/InAs nanowire TFETs showing both, sub-60mV/dec slope and high ON-current, are simulated using calibrated TCAD. The focus is laid on the impact of non-idealities, such as hetero-interface traps, oxide-interface traps, and bulk traps on device characteristics. Simulated temperature-dependent transfer curves are in good agreement with the measured data which validates the simulation set-up. It is found that trap-assisted tunneling involving bulk traps adjacent to the hetero-junction is primarily responsible for the degradation of the swing. Due to the small diameter of the nanowire, trap-assisted tunneling is inhibited at the InAs/oxide interface. Still, oxide interface traps reduce the electrostatic coupling between gate and channel, which further increases the swing. The TCAD analysis correctly predicts the negative transconductance observed at high gate bias. If the same simulation set-up is used to study the effect of gate alignment, a significant improvement of both ON-current and swing is found.
The Use of Metaphors and Tragic Pictures in Eugene O’Neill‘S American Drama

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of metaphors in Eugene O’Neil’s plays, particularly in depicting the tragic images of the plays. It is observed that there are some links on the use of metaphors to illustrate some heartbreaking scenes and acts. In this paper, tragic pictures include death, murder, and sadness in the craftsman of the plays, while the metaphorical expressions include simile, personification. The researcher intends to show how the tragic images are portrayed by the metaphorical expressions employed in the plays.
Impact of ASAR soil moisture data on the MM5 precipitation forecast for the Tanaro flood event of April 2009

Abstract. The representation of land-atmosphere interactions in weather forecast models has a strong impact on the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) and, in turn, on the forecast. Soil moisture is one of the key variables in land surface modelling, and an inadequate initial soil moisture field can introduce major biases in the surface heat and moisture fluxes and have a long-lasting effect on the model behaviour. Detecting the variability of soil characteristics at small scales is particularly important in mesoscale models because of the continued increase of their spatial resolution. In this paper, the high resolution soil moisture field derived from ENVISAT/ASAR observations is used to derive the soil moisture initial condition for the MM5 simulation of the Tanaro flood event of April 2009. The ASAR-derived soil moisture field shows significantly drier conditions compared to the ECMWF analysis. The impact of soil moisture on the forecast has been evaluated in terms of predicted precipitation and rain gauge data available for this event have been used as ground truth. The use of the drier, highly resolved soil moisture content (SMC) shows a significant impact on the precipitation forecast, particularly evident during the early phase of the event. The timing of the onset of the precipitation, as well as the intensity of rainfall and the location of rain/no rain areas, are better predicted. The overall accuracy of the forecast using ASAR SMC data is significantly increased during the first 30 h of simulation. The impact of initial SMC on the precipitation has been related to the change in the water vapour field in the PBL prior to the onset of the precipitation, due to surface evaporation. This study represents a first attempt to establish whether high resolution SAR-based SMC data might be useful for operational use, in anticipation of the launch of the Sentinel-1 satellite.
Copepod grazing in a subtropical bay: species-specific responses to a midsummer increase in nanoplankton standing stock

Ingestion rates of 4 small copepod species (Oithona simplex, O. nana, Acrocalanus inermis and Parvocalanus crassirostris) were investigated in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, during a midsummer increase of the pico- and nanoplankton communities. There was no evidence that adult female copepods fed significantly on picoplankton-sized cells. However, all the species responded behaviorally to variations in the concentration (10 to 110 pg C l -1 ) and size spectrum (relative increase of cells >5 μm) of nanoplankton prey. The copepods generally behaved as opportunistic particle feeders, demonstrating higher consumption rates on the most abundant cells (2-5 pm nanoplankton); however, autotrophs were usually selected over heterotrophs of similar size. Maximum ingestion rates were similar for the 2 calanoids and O. nana (around 120000 cells copepod -1 d -1 ) and lower for O. simplex (around 40000 cells copepod -1 d -1 ). but biomass-specific rates of O. simplex equaled those of the other species. At the highest nanoplankton concentrations, the ingestion rates of copepods appeared saturated, daily rations ranging from 100% body C d -1 for A. inermis to 260% body C d -1 for P. crassirostris. The differences between ingestion rates measured as cells per copepod per day and those converted to carbon suggested that ingestion might be held below potential by the cumulative handling times of individual prey rather than the physiological constraints of food consumption and digestive processing.
Why Issue Mandatory Convertibles? Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract Mandatory convertibles, which are equity-linked hybrid securities that automatically convert to common stock on a pre-specified date, have become an increasingly popular means of raising capital in recent years (about $20 billion worth issued in 2001 alone). This paper presents the first theoretical and empirical analysis of mandatory convertibles in the literature. We consider a firm facing a financial market characterized by asymmetric information, and significant costs in the event of financial distress. The firm can raise capital either by issuing mandatory convertibles, or by issuing more conventional securities like straight debt, common stock, and ordinary convertibles. We show that, in equilibrium, the firm issues straight debt, ordinary convertibles, or equity if the extent of asymmetric information facing it is large, but the probability of being in financial distress is relatively small; it issues mandatory convertibles if it faces a smaller extent of asymmetric information but a greater probability of financial distress. Our model provides a rationale for the three commonly observed features of mandatory convertibles: mandatory conversion, capped (or limited) capital appreciation, and a higher dividend yield compared to common stock. We also characterize the equilibrium design of mandatory convertibles. Our model also has implications for the abnormal stock returns upon the announcement of mandatory convertibles and for the post-issue operating performance of mandatory convertible issuers. We test the implications of our theory using a sample of firms which have chosen to issue either mandatory convertibles or ordinary convertibles, and we also study the long-term abnormal stock performance of mandatory convertible issuers. The evidence supports the implications of our theory.