Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between Elastic Properties and Gel-to-Sol Transition in Cyclodextrin-Based Hydrogel

In order to elucidate the effects of the nature of the cross-linker, of the hydration level and of the hydrophobic/ hydrophilic balance on the macro- and microscopic properties of a paradigmatic model of polysaccharide hydrogel, an integrated approach based on the combined use of low-frequency Raman scattering and FTIR-ATR absorption has been developed. The proposed methodology aims to explore the stability range of the liquid and gel phase diagram of the system. This approach was applied to cyclodextrin based nanosponges (CDNS), prepared by polymerization of α-, β-, and γ-cylcodextrins (CDNS) with an activated derivative of ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid. It revealed successful, on one side, for a comparative analysis of the elasticity, as mesoscopic parameter, of the dry polymeric network, measured by Raman spectroscopy in the low frequency (0 ÷ 150 cm–1) range, and, on the other side, for the investigation of the water holding capacity, as macroscopic parameter, through the analysis of the vibrational dynamics of water molecules in the swollen polymers, monitored by FTIR-ATR spectroscopy in two selected wavenumber regions, i.e. 2800 ÷ 3800 cm–1 and 1500 ÷ 1800 cm–1, where the O-H stretching and H-O-H bending vibrations respectively occur. As main result, the same evolution as a function of the molar ratio n, has been observed for the elasticity on mesoscopic scale, as described by the Boson Peak (ωBP) and the swelling ability on macroscopic scale, expressed by the mass ratio m describing the gel-to-sol transition in these systems. From the results, the way for a rational development of stimuli-responsive systems with specific performances, by modulating the stability range of the liquid suspension and gel phases properly changing the molar ratio n during the synthesis, is opened.
The Impact of Migration Policy on Migrants’ Education Structure: Evidence from Austrian Policy Reform

Abstract We ask how reform of migration law intended to increase the selectivity of migration (the so-called integration agreement regulation in 2003) in Austria impacted on the education structure of migrants to Austria. To identify the effects of this reform, we use the fact that it applied only to migrants from third countries and not those from EEA-countries.We find no compelling evidence that this regulation improved the education structure of migrants to Austria. Our interpretation of this is that the implicit positive impact of the reforms on the education structure of migrants was countervailed by the increased restrictiveness of the migration regime overall, or that other developments in the migration regime were more important for changes in education structure in the time period considered.
Device Physics of Polymer:Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells

Plastic solar cells bear the potential for large‐scale power generation based on materials that provide the possibility of flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, efficient solar cells. Since the discovery of the photoinduced electron transfer from a conjugated polymer to fullerene molecules, followed by the introduction of the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) concept, this material combination has been extensively studied in organic solar cells, leading to several breakthroughs in efficiency, with a power conversion efficiency approaching 5 %. This article reviews the processes and limitations that govern device operation of polymer:fullerene BHJ solar cells, with respect to the charge‐carrier transport and photogeneration mechanism. The transport of electrons/holes in the blend is a crucial parameter and must be controlled (e.g., by controlling the nanoscale morphology) and enhanced in order to allow fabrication of thicker films to maximize the absorption, without significant recombination losses. Concomitantly, a balanced transport of electrons and holes in the blend is needed to suppress the build‐up of the space–charge that will significantly reduce the power conversion efficiency. Dissociation of electron–hole pairs at the donor/acceptor interface is an important process that limits the charge generation efficiency under normal operation condition. Based on these findings, there is a compromise between charge generation (light absorption) and open‐circuit voltage (VOC) when attempting to reduce the bandgap of the polymer (or fullerene). Therefore, an increase in VOC of polymer:fullerene cells, for example by raising the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital level of the fullerene, will benefit cell performance as both fill factor and short‐circuit current increase simultaneously.
NEW APPROACHES TO DETERMINATION OF TEMPERATURE AND SALINITY OF SEAWATER BY LASER RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY

Laser Raman spectroscopy can be an effective method for simultaneous determination of temperature and salinity of nature waters. In this paper, a new way of processing spectra is suggested. Artificial neural networks are applied to solve the two-parameter inverse problem of determining temperature and salinity using the shape of the valence band of liquid water Raman scattering. Two approaches are used: training the neural network on experimental data and on model data. The errors of simultaneous determination of temperature and salinity are calculated; the ways of reducing these errors are specified.
Off-Line Handwritten Jawi Character Segmentation Using Histogram Normalization And Sliding Window Approach For Hardware Implementation

The task of segmenting text into characters is a necessary preprocessing step in the development of most character recognition systems because incorrectly segmented characters are likely to be incorrectly recognized. The segmentation of off-line handwritten Jawi text poses a higher challenge due to its cursive nature and various writing styles. In this paper, histogram normalization and sliding windows are used for hardware implementation of real-time off-line handwritten Jawi script character segmentation. Existing algorithms for character segmentation are compared with the proposed method. The hardware design is presented along with justifications of the proposed approach. The main advantage of the proposed algorithm is its simple design which enables it to be implemented in hardware without requiring a large amount of resources. The character segmentation algorithm was implemented and the results show a 98% segmentation accuracy.
A Miniaturized Patch Antenna by Using a CSRR Loading Plane

This paper presents a design methodology for the implementation of a miniaturized square patch antenna and its circuit model for 5.15 GHz ISM band. The miniaturization is achieved by employing concentric complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) structures in between the patch and ground plane. The results are compared with the traditional square patch antenna in terms of area, bandwidth, and efficiency. The area is reduced with a ratio of 1/4 with respect to the traditional patch. The miniaturized square patch antenna has an efficiency, bandwidth, and reflection coefficient of 78%, 0.4%, and −16 dB, respectively. The measurement and circuit modeling results show a good agreement with the full-wave electromagnetic simulations.
Electrical energy conversion system design with single-phase inverter and H5 transformerless topology

This paper presents the design of an electrical energy conversion system (EECS) for the use of solar energy and its conditioning for injection of energy to the commercial power grid. A single-phase full-bridge inverter with transformerless H5 topology coupled to an LCL filter is used. The system is identified using an averaged small-signal state space model; while the used cascade control scheme is tuned by pole placement and includes a maximum power disturb-observe tracking type algorithm of that increases efficiency by operating the system at the optimum operating point of the solar panel. This design describes essential technical aspects in the components sizing and selection for experimental development, as well as the control structure design for a good performance to face systems perturbations.
A review of 0.18-μm full adder performances for tree structured arithmetic circuits

The general objective of our work is to investigate the area and power-delay performances of low-voltage full adder cells in different CMOS logic styles for the predominating tree structured arithmetic circuits. A new hybrid style full adder circuit is also presented. The sum and carry generation circuits of the proposed full adder are designed with hybrid logic styles. To operate at ultra-low supply voltage, the pass logic circuit that cogenerates the intermediate XOR and XNOR outputs has been improved to overcome the switching delay problem. As full adders are frequently employed in a tree structured configuration for high-performance arithmetic circuits, a cascaded simulation structure is introduced to evaluate the full adders in a realistic application environment. A systematic and elegant procedure to scale the transistor for minimal power-delay product is proposed. The circuits being studied are optimized for energy efficiency at 0.18m CMOS process technology. With the proposed simulation environment, it is shown that some survival cells in stand alone operation at low voltage may fail when cascaded in a larger circuit, either due to the lack of drivability or unsatisfactory speed of operation. The proposed hybrid full adder exhibits not only the full swing logic and balanced outputs but also strong output drivability. The increase in the transistor count of its complementary CMOS output stage is compensated by its area efficient layout. Therefore, it remains one of the best contenders for designing large tree structured arithmetic circuits with reduced energy consumption while keeping the increase in area to a minimum.
The Evolutionary Algorithm to Find Robust Pareto-Optimal Solutions over Time

In dynamic multiobjective optimization problems, the environmental parameters change over time, which makes the true pareto fronts shifted. So far, most works of research on dynamic multiobjective optimization methods have concentrated on detecting the changed environment and triggering the population based optimization methods so as to track the moving pareto fronts over time. Yet, in many real-world applications, it is not necessary to find the optimal nondominant solutions in each dynamic environment. To solve this weakness, a novel method called robust pareto-optimal solution over time is proposed. It is in fact to replace the optimal pareto front at each time-varying moment with the series of robust pareto-optimal solutions. This means that each robust solution can fit for more than one time-varying moment. Two metrics, including the average survival time and average robust generational distance, are present to measure the robustness of the robust pareto solution set. Another contribution is to construct the algorithm framework searching for robust pareto-optimal solutions over time based on the survival time. Experimental results indicate that this definition is a more practical and time-saving method of addressing dynamic multiobjective optimization problems changing over time.
Acoustical imaging with bending waves based on sparse inversion

Bending waves can be employed in the context of acoustical imaging for the detection of material defects or localization of vibration sources. The obtainable spatial resolution is limited by the minimal wavelength contained in the excitation signal. The evanescent part of the wave field can usually not be used for the imaging of sources at distances exceeding a wavelength. Therefore only the propagating part of the field can be employed, which means that the minimum size of the region where energy can be focused is in the order of half a wavelength due to the diffraction limit. If the recovery of vibration sources and reflections is posed as an inverse problem, regularization techniques can be applied in order to force a sparse solution. Preliminary results indicate that the assumption of a sparse source distribution can be used to resolve features significantly smaller than half a wavelength. The approach is therefore applied as a high‐resolution imaging technique for bending wave fields.
Development of Sandglass Shape FBG Sensor to Reduce Cross Sensitivity Effect

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have received considerable attention in applications of temperature, axial strain, and transverse pressure measurement. However, the cross-sensitivity of strain and temperature measurement is the key problem of FBG sensors. In this paper, a sandglass shape FBG is proposed to divide cross-sensitivity of temperature and transverse pressure. The principle and structure of sandglass FBG are introduced, and the experiment results show cross-sensitivity avoidable in the transverse pressure sensor.
Hydrothermal synthesis, characterization, and visible light-driven photocatalytic properties of Bi 2 WO 6 nanoplates

In this research, the effects on reaction temperature and length of time on Bi2WO6 nanoplates by hydrothermal synthesis on morphologies and photocatalytic properties were studied. The products obtained at different reaction temperature and reaction time were characterized by XRD, Raman, FTIR, SEM, and TEM techniques. The photocatalytic properties of the samples were measured by decomposing the rhodamine-B organic dye. XRD pattern was specified as pure orthorhombic well-crystallized Bi2WO6 phase for the 180°C and 20 h synthesis. Its FTIR spectrum shows main absorption bands at 400-1000 cm-1, assigned to Bi-O stretching, WO stretching, and W-O-W bridging stretching modes. SEM and TEM analyses show that the product was composed of nanoplates. Photocatalytic activity of Bi2WO6 nanoplates shows the 98.24% degradation of rhodamine-B under the Xe light irradiation within 100 min.
Introduction: Intergenerational Transmissions of Infant Mortality using the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS)

It has previously been shown that infant mortality clusters in a subset of families, a phenomenon which was observed in historical populations as well as contemporary developing countries. A transmission of death clustering across generations has also been shown in Belgium, but it is unknown whether such effects are specific to the studied context or are also found in other areas. The current article introduces a special issue devoted to analysing intergenerational transmissions of infant mortality across the maternal line in Belgium, the Netherlands, northern and southern Sweden, and Norway. Taking advantage of the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS), the five empirical studies created datasets for analysis and ran statistical models using exactly the same programs, which are also published within the special issue. These works are the first set of studies using the IDS on several databases for comparative purposes. Consistent results across the studied contexts were shown: transfers of infant mortality across the maternal line were seen in all five areas. In addition, the works have shown that there are large advantages of adopting the IDS for historical demographic research. The structure has in fact allowed researchers to conduct studies which were fully comparable, transparent and replicable.
A next generation sequencing of Arctic bacteria in snow and frost flowers: identification, abundance and freezing nucleation

“Line 1: Seems like there should not be hyphens between “Ocean, Atmospheric Sea Ice Snowpack” Response: Thank you for your comment. Please note that in all their publications, they use hyphens, and thus to assure consistency and respect for the copyrights, we leave it as is. “Line 2: unclear what is meant by “population”. What about the “population” are you examining? ” Response: It is changed to “diversity of population”, as suggested. “Line 3: What is a “snow type”? Response: We used the classification of snow based on guidance provided by the American meteorological society (2009; reference is given below). However for accumulated snow, we use the definition provided by Freiz et al., 2009 (S2.3 and 2.4).
Phenotypic and genetic analysis of udder health using SCC in Valle del Belice dairy sheep

Riassunto Analisi fenotipica e genetica del contenuto in cellule somatiche sullo stato sanitario della mammella in pecore da latte di razza Valle del Belice. Le infezioni intramammarie (IMI) nell’allevamento dei piccoli ruminanti allevati per la produzione di latte rivestono una notevole importanza economica ed igienico sanitaria come evidenziato nelle direttive dell’Unione Europea 46/92 e 71/94. Nel presente lavoro è stata condotta una analisi fenotipica e genetica sulla suscettibilità di pecore da latte di razza Valle del Belice alle IMI. Con un threshold sire model sono state stimate le componenti della varianza e l’ereditabilità del carattere definito sulla base del contenuto in cellule somatiche del latte.
The Effects of Using Desktop Learning Modules on Engineering Students’ Motivation: A Work in Progress

Various reports have been published during the past decade highlighting a wide range of problems with engineering curricula, especially the lecture-dominated form of transmitting core engineering concepts to students. Researchers have called for active learning approaches for teaching engineering courses. However, little is known about the effects of active learning approaches on students’ motivation to learn engineering topics. Using data from 85 participants, the current study examined the effects of an active learning approach (using the Desktop Learning Modules DLMs) on students’ motivation and adoption of learning strategies in an engineering course compared with students who only had traditional lectures. Results from the analyses showed that participants who learned with DLMs reported statistically significant effects of DLMs for elaboration of core engineering ideas studied, and that DLMs fostered peer learning and critical thinking compared with lectures. No significant differences were found for intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientations, task value, self-efficacy for learning and performance as well as metacognitive self-regulation. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for instruction in engineering education.
The Association Between Alcohol Dependence and Craving in Response to Stress and Alcohol Cues : The ModeratingRole of Biopsychosocial Factors

Craving is a prominent feature of alcohol dependence, therefore getting a deeper understanding of craving is crucial to subsequently provide better treatment for alcoholics. Stress and alcohol cues are considerably increasing the risk of craving, however craving remains a complex and multifactorial phenomenon. To get more insight in the concept, this study investigated the effect of the biopsychosocial factors sex, age, educational level, drinks per week, years of problematic alcohol use and lifetime tobacco use on the relationship between alcohol dependence and stress and alcohol cue induced craving. The moderator analyses to do so were based on a stress and an alcohol cue induced craving scale generated from a craving questionnaire by several psychometric tests. The questionnaire contained data of 228 participants aged 21 to 75 years who took part in an online treatment programme for alcoholics based on own initiative who self-administered the craving questionnaire in an early programme phase. The moderator analyses revealed no significant results. Although this is not in line with previous research the uniqueness of the sample including alcohol dependent subjects who self-administered the questionnaire based on own initiative might have contributed to the discrepancy between the current study’s findings and past research. The results of the psychometric tests showed that stress induced craving was consistently mirrored in another dimension than alcohol cue induced craving, showing that they are distinct dimensions of the questionnaire. However, also latent constructs were disclosed, indicating that the scales may not be unidimensional. Regarding future research on stress and alcohol cue induced craving it is highly suggested to further examine biopsychosocial factors by applying similar, realistic samples to ultimately provide more tailored treatment for alcohol dependent individuals more susceptible for stress or alcohol cues.
Determinants of Farmland Values In the Rapidly Developing Boise, Idaho Metro Area: Applying Mathematical Modeling to Highest and Best Use Analysis

In areas where urban development is threatening quality farmland, zoning policies that encourage development on low productivity land have a significant influence on market forces, resulting in upward pressure on the prices of low productivity farmland. This helps identify potential permanent changes of use to a different highest and best use. Identifying the highest and best use of land is fundamental in estimating a vacant land value and identifying comparable sales of vacant land.
Biomarker Assessment of Environmental Contamination: In-Situ Studies with Freshwater Bivalves

Bivalves are effective pollution biomonitors in marine and freshwater environments because of their ability to bioconcentrate many environmental pollutants to levels that greatly exceed those found in water and sediments. However, most research efforts have focused on monitoring chemical accumulation by bivalves, and have not examined the toxic effects of accumulation or exposure to toxic chemicals. In addition, different phases of the mussel life cycle have been sparingly employed for toxicity evaluations. Our research has focused on developing biomarker assays for adult and juvenile bivalves, primarily DNA strand breakage and the nonspecific biomarkers, growth and condition index. Herein we describe a study using these biomarkers in juvenile and adult Corbicula fluminea exposed in a stream contaminated with urban and industrial runoff. Our ultimate goal is to develop and validate appropriate biomarkers for use in assessment of exposure and effects for risk assessments.
Prevalence, Patterns and Associated Factors of Injuries in School-aged Cameroonian Children

Few studies have addressed the patterns of injuries in Africa, and most of them were based on hospital data. The objectives of this study were to describe, on the basis of the "First Survey Health Young People" performed in 2008 in Cameroon, the prevalence and the patterns of injuries and to investigate the relationship between these injuries and some health behaviors. The dataset included 47327 pupils, aged 9 to 25 years, with a sex-ratio close to one. The prevalence of reported injuries during the past 12 months was 50.8% for boys and 42.1% for girls. Most injuries occurred at home for girls (43.6%) and during sports for boys (22.5%). Multivariable models, by gender, showed that age, alcohol consumption, exercise performed during free time, feelings about school, truancy, happiness, feeling alone, number of close friends, feeling of kindness and helpfulness of the other pupils, possibility to talk with parents or tutors, perception about one's own health, feeling tired on the morning of schooldays and some violent behaviors (fights, racket events and number of times students reported taking a weapon at school) were all associated with the occurrence of injuries. These results increase the knowledge of the epidemiology of injuries in Africa (in terms of morbidity and associated factors) and should lead to an integrated approach of the health behaviors in injury prevention.