Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
X-ray diffraction study of middlebackite [CuII2C2O4(OH)2, di-copper oxalate dihydroxide], using a mineral specimen from Mooloo Downs Station, Western Australia and chemically synthesized material

Additional crystallographic data are given for the recently reported mineral middlebackite, which has been described for discoveries at Iron Knob in South Australia and Passo di San Lugano near Trento, Italy. The material examined in the present study was from a third finding of the mineral, viz. from a quartz outcrop at Mooloo Downs Station in Western Australia within which it was co-located with the chemically- and structurally-related mineral moolooite, CuIIC2O4·nH2O, reported by Clarke and Williams (1986). In this study, the crystal structure was elucidated independently of the other studies using a combination of the a priori charge flipping and simulated annealing methods with synchrotron radiation diffraction (SRD) powder data. The principal crystal data for the Mooloo Downs material are: space group P21/c with lattice parameters a = 7.2659(18) Å, b = 5.7460(11) Å, c = 5.6806(11) Å, β = 104.588(3)°; Vc = 229.46(18) Å3; empirical formula CuII2C2O4(OH)2 with 2 formula units per unit cell; and calculated density = 3.605 g cm−3. The lattice parameters agree approximately with values given for the other studies, but not within the reported error estimates. The atom coordinates, interatomic distances, and angles for the Mooloo Downs material are compared with those from the other studies using single crystal data, with the values from all three studies agreeing approximately, but again not within the reported uncertainties. The crystal chemistry found for middlebackite received strong confirmation through the synthesis for the first time of di-copper oxalate di-hydroxide. Laboratory X-ray diffraction powder data for the synthetic form of the mineral from this study agree closely with the SRD data for the natural mineral.
Home education : the experience of parents in a divided community

This thesis focuses on the experiences of families who for a variety of reasons find themselves outside of the school system. It is concerned with families in one London borough who have decided not to send their children to school and to educate them at home. It examines the experiences of families who make a positive choice to home educate because of philosophical or religious beliefs but is particularly concerned with families who home educate following a series of difficulties with the school system, perhaps because their child has been bullied or because their child has special educational needs. The thesis contributes and adds to studies on home education as very little has been written about families who feel forced out of formal schooling. Only in the last few years has the diverse nature of the home educating population in the UK started to be acknowledged in the professional literature. The research for this study was carried out between 2003 and 2005. When the research was started there were 38 families with 55 children known to the local authority to be home educating. Of these 38 families, 17 were interviewed in order to gain the perceptions and experiences of parents. In this thesis, four key areas of home education are considered. Firstly, the reasons that parents give for home education are reviewed. Secondly, the educational experience of home education is considered, including the methods of teaching that parents choose, as well as the academic achievement of those home educated. Thirdly, this study examines the relationship between home education and state education and considers whether parents' own experiences of formal schooling influenced their decision to educate their own children. Finally, policies on home education are examined both in the UK and in other countries. The conclusion reached is that the community of home educators in the UK is indeed a deeply divided one in all the key areas studied.
The Influence of Riparian Corridor Land Use on the Pesquería River’s Macroinvertebrate Community (N.E. Mexico)

The Earth’s freshwater ecosystems are currently under threat, particularly in developing countries. In Mexico, intensive land use and inadequate monitoring policies have resulted in the severe degradation of the country’s freshwater ecosystems. This study assesses how the macroinvertebrate communities in the Pesquería River, located in Northeastern Mexico, are affected by riparian land use, in order to determine their potential use as bioindicators to evaluate the macroinvertebrate integrity of the Pesquería River. First, we characterized the land use cover in the riparian channel. Second, we sampled 16 sites for benthic macroinvertebrates along the main channel during the wet and dry seasons. Third, we evaluated the influence of the riparian channel land use on the macroinvertebrate community using 42 different biological metrics. The land use characterization depicted a riparian channel mainly influenced by agricultural and urban land use. Eighty-one invertebrate taxa were identified during the study. Permutational analysis of the variance analysis confirmed significant differences across the different land use classes and the macroinvertebrate community composition while no differences were found between seasons. The indicator species analysis revealed 31 representative taxa for natural land use, 1 for urban, and 4 for agricultural land use. Our modelling analysis showed that 28 of the 42 biological metrics tested responded significantly to land use disturbances, confirming the impact of land use changes on the Pesquería River’s macroinvertebrate communities and suggesting that these metrics may have a use as bioindicators. Finally, this study may provide significant biological information for further studies in similar conditions.
The methodology of fatigue lifetime prediction and validation based on accelerated reliability testing of the rotor pitch links

Because the industrial products have lifetimes, without failing, of up to millions of cycles, it is mandatory that the aerospace field puts into practice the accelerated testing techniques. The lifetime prediction methodology for industrial products presented in this paper was put into practice by performing accelerated reliability testing on an aerospace product (the pitch link of a helicopter). The results showed a significant reduction of the testing time and costs. One important aspect highlighted in this paper is the equivalence between accelerated reliability testing and the traditional reliability testing, by using the two fundamental principles of the accelerated experiments: first, the stresses applied must not alter the physical mechanism through which the defects are produced and second, the conservation of the distribution laws of the failure times. In this way, by equivalence of the accelerated experiments, the methodology contained in this paper was validated.
Audio Inpainting of Music by Means of Neural Networks

We studied the ability of deep neural networks (DNNs) to restore missing audio content based on its context, a process usually referred to as audio inpainting. We focused on gaps in the range of tens of milliseconds. The proposed DNN structure was trained on audio signals containing music and musical instruments, separately, with 64-ms long gaps. The input to the DNN was the context, i.e., the signal surrounding the gap, transformed into time-frequency (TF) coefficients. Our results were compared to those obtained from a reference method based on linear predictive coding (LPC). For music, our DNN significantly outperformed the reference method, demonstrating a generally good usability of the proposed DNN structure for inpainting complex audio signals like music.
Improvements of Dynamic Opial-Type Inequalities and Applications

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we present some new improvements of dynamic Opial-type inequalities of first and higher order on time scales. We employ the new inequalities to prove several results related to the spacing between consecutive zeros of a solution and/or a zero of its derivative of a second-order dynamic equation with a damping term. The main results are proved by making use of a recently introduced new technique for Opial dynamic inequalities, the time scales integration by parts formula, the time scales chain rule, the time scales Taylor formula, and classical as well as time scales versions of Hölder’s inequality.
Reliable Design for a Network of Networks with Inspiration from Brain Functional Networks

In realizing the network environment assumed by the Internet-of-Things, network slicing has drawn considerable attention as a way to enhance the utilization of physical networks (PNs). Meanwhile, slicing has been shown to cause interdependence among sliced virtual networks (VNs) by propagating traffic fluctuations from one network to others. However, for interconnected networks with mutual dependencies, known as a network of networks (NoN), finding a reliable design method that can cope with environmental changes is an important issue that is yet to be addressed. Some NoN models exist that describe the behavior of interdependent networks in complex systems, and previous studies have shown that an NoN model based on the functional networks of the brain can achieve high robustness, but its application to dynamic and practical systems is yet to be considered. Consequently, this paper proposes the Physical–Virtual NoN (PV-NoN) model assuming a network-slicing environment. This model defines an NoN availability state to deal with traffic fluctuations and interdependence among a PN and VNs. Further, we assume three basic types of interdependence among VNs for this model. Simulation experiments confirm that the one applying complementary interdependence inspired by brain functional networks achieves high availability and communication performance while preventing interference among the VNs. Also investigated is a method for designing a reliable network structure for the PV-NoN model. To this end, the deployment of network influencers (i.e., the most influential elements over the entire network) is configured from the perspective of intra/internetwork assortativity. Simulation experiments confirm that availability or communication performance is improved when each VN is formed assortatively or disassortatively, respectively. Regarding internetwork assortativity, both the availability and communication performance are improved when the influencers are deployed disassortatively among the VNs.
Full-Scale Physical Simulator of All SiC Traction Motor Drive With Onboard Supercapacitor ESS for Light-Rail Public Transportation

This article deals with the design and laboratory implementation of a full-scale physical simulator of an all-silicon carbide (SiC) traction motor drive for light-rail transit systems (LRTS) with onboard supercapacitor energy storage system (ESS). It consists of a pulsewidth modulation (PWM) rectifier representing the 750 V dc catenary line, a three-phase two-level PWM traction inverter to drive a three-phase squirrel-cage traction motor, a flywheel coupled to the motor shaft to represent the dynamic behavior of the transportation vehicle, a loading generator connected to the grid via a dc-link converter with active front-end, and a supercapacitor ESS containing a bidirectional dc–dc converter supplied from the common dc link. The PWM rectifier, a traction inverter, and a bidirectional dc–dc converter are all SiC power MOSFET-based converters for high efficiency and high power density. A physical simulator is a valuable tool in the design and testing of all SiC converters. It is equipped with software programs for a catenary model, rail track model, and vehicle model, and permits the performance verification of various control, modulation, and energy-saving strategies. The physical simulator system developed in this article also allows the performance verification of a vehicle formation on a prespecified real track and evaluation of benefits of the onboard supercapacitor ESS in real time.
Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Operation of Multi-Area Integrated Electricity and Natural Gas Systems With Renewable Energy Resources

With the proliferation of natural gas combined cycle units, the modern energy infrastructure has evolved into a coupled electricity and natural gas system, which often encompasses multiple large-scale and geographically-diverse energy areas. The similarity in electricity and natural gas consumption profiles in coupled systems gives rise to critical mandates for the coordinated optimization of electricity and natural gas operation. This paper presents a decentralized optimization framework, which considers wind energy and power-to-gas (P2G) technologies in the operation of integrated multi-area electricity and natural gas transmission system (IEGTS). First, a comprehensive optimal dispatch model is established for the multi-area IEGTS in a centralized manner where bi-directional flows of electricity and natural gas among multi-areas are optimized considering the stochastic nature of wind energy. In particular, a linearized transient-state gas flow model under mild assumptions is proposed to represent the dynamic characteristics of the natural gas sector. The centralized optimization problem is decomposed into a set of computationally-tractable subproblems that are solved independently in individual areas. The alternating direction multiplier method is employed to achieve a rapidly convergent solution while preserving the privacy of operation data shared among participating areas. Finally, case studies are carried out on two multi-area IEGTS with multiple wind generation scenarios which demonstrate the computational performance of the proposed method with P2G facilities operating in variable conditions.
The Exergy Costs of Electrical Power, Cooling, and Waste Heat from a Hybrid System Based on a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and an Absorption Refrigeration System

This paper applies the Exergy Cost Theory (ECT) to a hybrid system based on a 500 kWe solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack and on a vapor-absorption refrigeration (VAR) system. To achieve this, a model comprised of chemical, electrochemical, thermodynamic, and thermoeconomic equations is developed using the software, Engineering Equation Solver (EES). The model is validated against previous works. This approach enables the unit exergy costs (electricity, cooling, and residues) to be computed by a productive structure defined by components, resources, products, and residues. Most importantly, it allows us to know the contribution of the environment and of the residues to the unit exergy cost of the product of the components. Finally, the simulation of different scenarios makes it possible to analyze the impact of stack current density, fuel use, temperature across the stack, and anode gas recirculation on the unit exergy costs of electrical power, cooling, and residues.
The Consequences of Unilateral Withdrawals from the Paris Agreement

We develop a multi-sector structural trade model with emissions from production and a con- stant elasticity of fossil fuel supply function to simulate the consequences of unilateral withdrawals from the Paris Agreement. Taking into account both direct and leakage effects, we find that a US withdrawal would eliminate a third of the world emissions reduction (25.7% direct effect and 7% leakage effect), while a potential Chinese withdrawal lowers the world emission reduction by 19.4% (8.2% direct effect and 11.2% leakage effect). The substantial leakage is primarily driven by technique effects induced by falling international fossil fuel prices.
Balancing Distributed Key-Value Stores with Efficient In-Network Redirecting

Today’s cloud-based online services are underpinned by distributed key-value stores (KVSs). Keys and values are distributed across back-end servers in such scale-out systems. One primary real-life performance bottleneck occurs when storage servers suffer from load imbalance under skewed workloads. In this paper, we present KVSwitch, a centralized self-managing load balancer that leverages the power and flexibility of emerging programmable switches. The balance is achieved by dynamically predicting the hot items and by creating replication strategies according to KVS loading. To overcome the challenges in realizing KVSwitch given the limitations of the switch hardware, we decompose KVSwitch’s functions and carefully design them for the heterogeneous processors inside the switch. We prototype KVSwitch in a Tofino switch. Experimental results show that our solution can effectively keep the KVS servers balanced even under highly skewed workloads. Furthermore, KVSwitch only replicates 70 % of hot items and consumes 9.88 % of server memory rather than simply replicating all hot items to each server.
Low‐cost and easy manufactured dielectric rod antennas based on 3D printing technology

Novel dielectric rod antennas (DRAs) are proposed in this article with the merits of low‐cost and easy fabrication. The printed log‐periodic dipole array is introduced as a feeding source. The cylinder‐shaped rods are perforated with air holes of different shapes and sizes to vary the spatial effective permittivity distribution, which mimics the arrangement of traditional multilayer rod antennas. Comparing with traditional multilayer rods, the proposed DRAs use only a single type of dielectric material while achieving similar bandwidth and gain increment performances. Thanks to 3D printing technology, the proposed antennas can be designed with much increased flexibility. Meanwhile, the fabrication cost and complexity can be drastically reduced, since only a single type of dielectric material is needed. Furthermore, both rod antennas were fabricated and measured. The proposed rod antennas have peak gains of 13.32 to 13.45 dBi, 1‐dB gain bandwidth of 25.2% to 26% and average gains of 12 to 12.5 dBi.
DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF Q-ABSORBANCE RATIO SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHOD FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION OF RIFAMPICIN AND ITS BIOENHANCER; 3, 5'-DIHYDROXYFLAVONE-7-O-B-D-GALACTURONIDE-4'-O-B-D-GLUCOPYRANOSIDE; IN BULK AND FORMULATION

The present research work demonstrates an analytical method development for simultaneous estimation of Rifampicin (RIF) and its bioenhancer; 3’,5dihydroxyflavone-7-O-β-D-galacturonide-4’-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (CC-I) in combined dosage form using Q-absorbance ratio concept. While method development, two different wavelengths one representing Iso-absorptive point (370 nm) and other representing the λmax of Rifampicin (239 nm) were used. Optimum response was obtained in solvent system that comprises methanol and water in ratio of 80:20 v/v. Proposed UV method was found to be linear over the concentration range of 2-20 μg/ml for Rifampicin and that of 1-24 μg/ml for CC-I. On the basis of recovery studies after standard addition, accuracy of proposed method was found to be in between 99.94 to 100.30 and 99.90 to 99.96 % for RIF and CC-I respectively. Intra-day precision of the method in terms of % relative standard deviation was found to be in between 0.21 to 1.36 and 0.21 to 1.77 for RIF and CC-I respectively. Inter-day precision range of the method for RIF and CC-I was found to be in between 0.13 to 1.94 and 0.11 to 1.58 respectively. LOD and LOQ of proposed UV method were 0.043 and 0.014 μg/ml for RIF and 0.37 and 0.12 μg/ml for CC-I. Proposed UV method was robust and rugged in nature. Proposed method was successfully used for the estimation of RIF and CC-I contents of in-house formulation consisting of APIs and the common excipients.
Modeling and Control of SiC-Based High-Frequency Magnetic Linked Converter for Next Generation Solid State Transformers

The high-frequency magnetic linked solid-state transformer (SST) has the tremendous potential to solve the issues related to interfacing the grid with renewable energy sources and the non-linear loads as well as to provide the additional control functionalities. Several H-bridges are usually connected in series for the medium voltage grid integration of the SST. The number of the dual active bridge modules and the number of high-frequency magnetic links (HFMLs) usually increase with the increase of the number of series connected H-bridges. This increases the possibility of parameter mismatches and system instability. Therefore, the multiple-active bridge (MAB) dc-dc converter concept has been proposed for next generation SST, where multiple H-bridges share the same HFML. This configuration reduces the number of HFML and increases the cross-coupling power transfer capability. However, the design process of the MAB converter involves a multi-physics research in the field of power electronics, magnetics, switching, control, and energy management. In this paper, the detailed analytical modelling and the control technique of the silicon carbide (SiC)-based MAB converter are investigated. The small and large signal average models of the converter are developed and a voltage balance controller is designed for the better understanding of the controller characteristics. The effect of connecting several H-bridges to a single HFML is investigated in detail. Moreover, to reduce the switching loss, the converter topology adopts the SiC-based switching devices instead of the traditional silicon (Si)-based devices and the nanocrystalline magnetic material is used for the HFML design due to its low specific core loss. A scaled down laboratory prototype of the MAB converter is implemented in the laboratory and can be utilized as a basic building block for the next generation SST.
Half Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide Leaky Wave Antenna with Broadside Gain Enhancement for Ku-Band Applications

A miniaturized frequency scanned leaky wave antenna (LWA) based on half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) with open stop-band suppression is proposed. The modified cross-slot is etched on the top of HMSIW as the radiating element. The folded and unfolded ground plane designs of the proposed HMSIW LWA are compared and analyzed with respect to their Bloch impedance characteristics and it is found that further miniaturization and gain improvement at broadside by ~ 2 dBi are achieved for folded ground plane design. The proposed LWA scans a region from –40° to +24° as the frequency range increases from 12 to 17 GHz with broadside at 15.5 GHz. The HMSIW LWA with folded ground plane is fabricated and its performance is experimentally measured showing the close agreement between the simulation and the measured results.