Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Element Edge Based Discretization for TCAD Device Simulation

Technology computer-aided design (TCAD) semiconductor device simulators solve partial differential equations (PDE) using the finite volume method (FVM), or related methods. While this approach has been in use over several decades, its methods continue to be extended, and are still applicable for investigating novel devices. In this article, we present an element edge based (EEB) FVM discretization approach suitable for capturing vector-field effects. Drawing from a 2-D approach in the literature, we have extended this method to 3-D. We implemented this method in a TCAD semiconductor device simulator, which uses a generalized PDE (GPDE) approach to simulate devices with the FVM. We describe how our EEB method is compatible with the GPDE approach, allowing the modeling of vector effects using scripting. This method is applied to solve polarization effects in a 3-D ferro capacitor and a 2-D ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET). An example for field-dependent mobility in a 3-D MOSFET is also presented.
“Simpson's Law” and the Spectral Cancellation of Climate Feedbacks

We spectrally resolve the conventional clear‐sky temperature and water vapor feedbacks in an idealized single‐column framework, and show that the well‐known partial compensation of these feedbacks is actually due to an almost perfect cancellation of the spectral feedbacks at wavenumbers where H2O is optically thick. This cancellation is a natural consequence of “Simpson's Law”, which says that H2O emission temperatures do not change with surface warming if relative humidity (RH) is fixed. We provide an explicit formulation and validation of Simpson's Law, and furthermore show that this spectral cancellation of feedbacks is naturally incorporated in the alternative RH‐based framework proposed by Held and Shell (2012, https://doi.org/10.1175/jcli-d-11-00721.1) and Ingram (2012, https://doi.org/10.1029/2011jd017221, 2013b, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1294-3), thus bolstering the case for switching from conventional to RH‐based feedbacks. We also find a negligible RH‐based clear‐sky lapse rate feedback, suggesting that the impact of changing lapse rates depends crucially on whether relative or specific humidity is held fixed.
Overview of Nano-Fiber Mats Fabrication via Electrospinning and Morphology Analysis

Electrospun nano-fibers exhibit two significant properties: a high surface-to-volume ratio and a relatively defect-free molecular structure. Due to the high surface-to-volume ratio, electro-spun materials are well suited for activities requiring increased physical contact, such as providing a site for a chemical reaction or filtration of small-sized physical materials. However, electrospinning has many shortcomings, including difficulties in producing inorganic nanofibers and a limited number or variety of polymers used in the process. The fabrication of nanofiber bundles via electrospinning is explored in this analytical study and the relationship between all effective electrospinning parameters and the relative abundance of various fiber morphologies. Numerous variables could impact the fabrication of nanofibers, resulting in a variety of morphologies such as uniform, entangled, individual beads, beads-on-string, etc. Therefore, adequate ambient conditions and selecting the appropriate polymer and solvent for achieving a homogenous polymer solution and uniform with desired nanofiber properties for different applications of electro-spun materials are examined. Finally, the promising applications of nano-fine fibers in various fields achieved via electrospinning are studied in this paper.
Isotopic and Concentration Analyses of CO2 and CH4 in Association With the Eddy‐Covariance Based Measurements in a Tropical Forest of Northeast India

Among the natural ecosystems, forests and wetlands emit a sizable amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) through autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration and bacterial activities. Interestingly, some evidence suggests that a significant amount of CH4 is generated by the trees in forested ecosystems. The net ecosystem exchange (NEE), measured by the eddy covariance (EC) method, typically represents the net CO2 flux arising from the photosynthetic and respiration processes in the biosphere. This flux is subsequently partitioned into two components, the respired carbon and the assimilated carbon. However, the usual method of partitioning introduces significant errors in each of these fluxes. The present study was undertaken to address this issue where the NEE partitioning was constrained by using the carbon isotopic ratios of CO2. We used a real‐time in situ analyzer in a tropical forest in northeast India, the Kaziranga National Park. The greenhouse gas analyzer provided CO2 and CH4 concentrations, as well as their carbon isotopic ratios. The isotopic data were used to partition the EC‐derived NEE values and derive the isoflux values. Additionally, the isotopic data provided evidence of plant‐generated CH4 in conformity with some recent studies, which requires further investigation.
Charge Injection from Chronoamperometry of Platinum Electrodes for Bionic Devices

The chronoamperometric response of platinum under biologically relevant conditions was investigated to understand how charge transfer across the electrode-tissue interface occurs during potential pulsing. Platinum behaves as a non-ideal electrode, passing capacitance and faradaic charge. The faradaic reactions are associated with oxide formation and removal, hydrogen and anion adsorption. The capacitance charge decayed within μ s while the faradaic charge decay occurred over longer times. The total charge and the ratio of faradaic to capacitance charge was seen to vary with time, potential, electrode size, oxygen concentration, electrolyte and surface cleaning method. The charge transfer mechanisms result in an accumulation of charge during multiple potential pulses, mostly reductive charge under the conditions presented here. This modiﬁes the composition of the electrode/solution interface. An accurate understanding of charge transfer at the electrode/tissue interface must subsequently be obtained under biologically relevant conditions (an artiﬁcial perilymph with low oxygen concentration for cochlear implants electrodes and artiﬁcial cerebrospinal ﬂuid for neural implants) and with appropriate clinical electrodes.
Nanoporous Silicon-Assisted Patterning of Monolayer MoS2 with Thermally Controlled Porosity: A Scalable Method for Diverse Applications

Nanoscale pore formation on chemical vapor deposition grown monolayer MoS2 is achieved using oxygen plasma etching through a nanoporous silicon mask, creating round pores of ∼70 nm in diameter. The microscale areas with high porosity were successfully patterned via the usage of silicon masks. Thermal annealing in air after the pore formation in the monolayers results in the gradual enlargement of the pores, providing an effective method of controlling edge-to-area ratio of MoS2 crystals. The photoluminescence of the nanoporous MoS2 exhibits rapid increase and blue-shift due to facile p-doping during the thermal annealing process compared to pristine MoS2. This method of fabricating porous transition metal dichalcogenide layers with controlled edge densities presents opportunities in various applications that require atomically thin nanomaterials with controlled pore density and edge sites, such as filtration, electrocatalysis, and sensing.
Qualitative analysis of functional differential-algebraic systems with applications in control

Discipline : Sciences Physiques par Islam BOUSSAADA Analyse qualitative de systemes algebro-differentiels fonctionnels et son application en controle Qualitative analysis of functional differential-algebraic systems with applications in control Soutenue le 17 juin 2016 devant la Commission d'examen (ordre alphabetique) : Les travaux presentes s’inscrivent dans le domaine des systemes dynamiques de dimensions finie et infinie. Ils portent plus particulierement sur l’application de la theorie qualitative des systemes dynamiques aux problemes de stabilite (asymptotique) et de controle. Ces travaux s’articulent essentiellement autour de differentes versions du theoreme de la variete du centre et de differentes theories des formes normales pour les equations differentielles fonctionnelles. L’objectif commun a ces recherches est, d’une part, de prouver l’efficacite de ces methodes dans des applications emanant des problemes de controle, et d’autre part, d’etendre leur applicabilite a des systemes algebro-differentiels non-lineaires a retard et dependant de parametres. En particulier, des liens entre differents concepts ont ete etablis et ont, notamment, permis de mettre en evidence une nouvelle approche de stabilisation utilisant la commande retardee basee sur la multiplicite des valeurs spectrales. Ce paradigme a ete applique successivement a la stabilisation du pendule inverse, la stabilisation du quadrotor en presence de rafale de vent, le controle des vibrations se propageant le long d’un systeme de forage, le controle d’un modele de transmission de maladie et l’analyse de croissance du tournesol.
Investigating the formation of organic nitrogen species during the atmospheric oxidation of volatile organic compounds

Particulate matter less than 2.5 µm in diameter, termed PM2.5, lies within the respirable size range for humans and is therefore considered an important air quality standard. Within the respirable and often toxic chemical constituents in PM2.5 exist a range of organic nitrogen (ON) compounds. Atmospheric ON is difficult to characterize due to its various complexities; it spans a wide range of volatilities and polarities and originates from both biogenic and anthropogenic sources. This thesis details the use of two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) coupled to nitrogen chemiluminescence detection (NCD) for the analysis of ON compounds in atmospheric aerosol. The development of a highly sensitive analytical technique, relying on GC×GC-NCD, allowed for time-resolved measurements of carcinogenic nitrosamines in urban ambient PM2.5 to be made. The total nitrosamine concentrations in London exceeded the public health recommendations, prompting an estimation of the lifetime cancer risk from exposure to nitrosamines via inhalation to be made. The GC×GC-NCD technique was also used to investigate the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines and nitramines formed during the atmospheric degradation of amines relevant to CO2 capture. Implementation of amine-based CO2 capture technology results in small but significant amounts of amines being emitted to the atmosphere. The atmospheric photo-oxidation pathways of various amines were investigated during a series of chamber experiments at the European Photoreactor. Complementary techniques such as ion chromatography (IC) were also used, to monitor the formation of aminium nitrate salts for example. Later work in this thesis includes the use of IC to characterise water-soluble ions in aerosol on the East coast of Peninsular Malaysia, and to study the influence of highly industrialised regions on aerosol composition at rural coastal locations. Additionally, GC×GC coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) was used as part of a collaborative project focusing on the composition of gas and particle phase cooking emissions.
Hydrothermal Assisted Sol-Gel Process on Binary Mixtures of Aluminum and Titanium Alkoxides: A Novel Route for the Fabrication of Single Phase Tialite

Received 8 January 2017 Accepted 31 May 2017 Available online 15 December 2017 Combination of sol-gel and hydrothermal routes in the metal alkoxide binary system of Al(OR)3-Ti(OR)4 (R= -CH(CH3)2 or CH2CH2OCH3) was investigated to prepare single phase aluminum titanate (tialite). The effects of various parameters, such as hydrothermal processing temperature, solvent polarity and the type of alkoxide precursor, in phase development of the product powders have been investigated. Phase development of the product powders was examined by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA/DSC). The XRD results showed that when the polarity of solvent increased by using a mixture of toluene and isopropanol instead of pure toluene solvent, phase development of the product powder retarded and needed higher temperature (more than 1400°C) to produce single phase tialite. A similar effect was observed when aluminum 2-methoxyethoxide and titanium 2-methoxyethoxide were used instead of the aluminum iso-propoxide and titanium isopropoxide. These observations are attributed to the more controlled hydrolysis conditions in the hydrothermally assisted sol-gel process.
Chemical Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Aqueous Extracts of Some Wild Medicinal Plants in Southern Tunisia

Abstract- This study concerned four plants known for their use in traditional medicine in southeastern Tunisia (Rosmarinus -officinalis, Thymus capitatus, Artemisia herba-alba and Artemisia campestris) whose leaves are commonly consumed as tea. We aimed to determine the chemical composition and the antioxidant activity of these aqueous extracts prepared in accordance with the traditional method (50g/L of water). Because of the containment offlavonoids, polyphenols, tannins and saponins, all aqueous extracts have electrical conductivity (total salts) which ranged from 1.12 for the R. officinalis extract to 4.82 mS/cm for A. herba-alba. The last one is the richest species in potassium (575 mg/L) and especially sodium (400 mg/L). The content of total phenolics varied from 77.7 GAE mg/L of T. capitatus extract to 306.35 mg GAE/L of A. campestrisextract.The antioxidant activities expressed as IC 50 values varied from 3.17 μ L extract/mL of DPPH solution for the extract of A. campestris (the most active) to 14.33
Mining Academic Publications to Predict Automation

This paper proposes a novel framework of predicting future technological change. Using abstracts of academic publications available in the Microsoft Academic graph, co-occurrence matrices are generated to indicate how often occupation and technological terms are referenced together. This matrices are used in linear regression models to predict future co-occurrence of occupations and technologies with a relatively high degree of accuracy as measured through the mean squared error of the models. While this work is unable to link the co-occurrences found in academic publications to automation in the labor force due to a dearth of automation data, future work conducted when such data is available could apply a similar approach with the aim of predicting automation from trends in academic research and publications.
ACTIVIDAD ANTIOXIDANTE TOTAL EN PECHUGA DE CODORNIZ JAPONESA (Coturnix coturnix japonica) ALIMENTADA CON UNA DIETA SUPLEMENTADA CON HONGOS COMESTIBLES

La carne de codorniz japonesa (Coturnix coturnix japonica) se destina al consumo humano, por ello es importante mantener su calidad durante el almacenamiento. El objetivo fue evaluar la capacidad de la harina de Pleurotus ostreatus incluida en la dieta, para incrementar la actividad antioxidante total (AAT) de la carne. Para ello, se determino el contenido de fenoles (CFT) y flavonoides totales (CFVT), asi como actividad antiradical-DPPH• y ABTS•+, y poder reductor (PR) del extracto-acuoso de P. ostreatus (EAPO). Las codornices fueron alimentadas durante 35 dias con tres dietas: control y suplementadas con P. ostreatus (1 y 2 %). La pechuga (Pectoralis major) se almaceno (10 dias/2 °C/oscuridad) y se obtuvo un extracto-acuoso carnico (EAC) para determinar la AAT. Los resultados mostraron que el EAPO presento buen CFT y CFVT (27.3 mg EAG/g, y 16.1 mg EQc/g, respectivamente), asi como 35 y 49.1 % de actividad antiradical-ABTS•+ y DPPH•, y 35 % de PR. El EAC, presento valores de CFT, ABTS•+ y DPPH•, superiores al control (P≤0.05), no detectandose diferencias para el CFVT y PR (P≥0.05). En conclusion, la incorporacion de P. ostreatus en la dieta de codorniz, incremento la AAT del EAC durante su almacenamiento.
A novel method to obtain the treatment effect assessed for a completely randomized design: Multiple imputation of unobserved potential outcomes

In this paper a novel method to obtain the treatment effect called multiple imputation of unobserved potential outcomes is evaluated by comparing its performance to the Student’s t-test and ANCOVA. The novel method originates from Rubins potential outcomes framework which explicitly defines that each unit has a possible active treatment and control treatment outcome. Since every unit can only be assigned to one treatment, one of the potential outcomes is unobserved for each unit. To approximate calculating the treatment effect, the unobserved potential outcomes are multiple imputed. To start at the basics of group comparisons, the paper is restricted to completely random groups. The method is evaluated by a series of simulations using a realistic, empirical synthetic population. Overall, the results show that the novel method performs up to standards: bias is negligible compared to the standard error and 95 per cent confidence interval coverage is above 90 per cent. Also, the novel method is more efficient and powerful than the frequently used Student’s t-test when the relation between the covariates and potential outcomes is linear. Multiple imputation of potential outcomes performs approximatly equally well as classical ANCOVA. At a small sample size, the novel method is somewhat more powerful when the assumption of parallel slopes is violated, but it is slightly less efficient than ANCOVA for all used properties of covariates, sample sizes and
Rational design criteria for D–π–A structured organic and porphyrin sensitizers for highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

Increasing energy consumption worldwide and environmental concerns about global warming have attracted great interest in the development of renewable and eco-friendly energy technologies. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have attracted considerable attention over the last 25 years since they offer possible low-cost conversion of photovoltaic energy. The sensitizer is the most important component of a DSSC, as it is largely responsible for light harvesting and charge separation, as well as the dye regeneration process. As a result, there have been tremendous research efforts in developing sensitizers. However, many challenges remain, and a deeper understanding of the design rules of DSSC sensitizers is required to obtain efficient and long-term stable DSSCs. The purpose of this review is to discuss recent progress and the rational design criteria used in the structural design of organic dyes and porphyrin photosensitizers for use in DSSCs. The effects of molecular structural engineering on the photophysical and electrochemical properties, photovoltaic parameters, and efficiency of DSSCs are presented.
Energy loss of light ions (H+ and He+) in matter: high accuracy measurements and comparison with the FEG model

The phenomenon of energy loss that occurs when an ion interacts with matter, also called stopping power, has been investigated for more than a century, and has provided findings of interest. However, reliable procedures for obtaining accurate experimental measurements and a fully theoretical comprehension of the process are tasks still in high demand by the scientific community. Moreover, stopping power data are prerequisites in several applications in modern science, such as engineering, ion implantation and modification of materials, damage to electronics devices (e.g. space radiation), medical physics (e.g. proton therapy), among others. In this thesis we i) develop a rigorous experimental protocol to measure stopping power with high precision, and ii) investigate1 the collapse of the free electron gas (FEG) model in energy loss of light ions (protons) at a low energy range in transition and rare-earth metals. In the first part, we present an approach to obtain, with high accuracy, the stopping cross sections in the pure materials Al and Mo for protons in the energy range of [0.9−3.6] MeV by means of the transmission method. The traceability of the sources of uncertainties are fully evaluated and the final accuracy of the results is 0.63% (0.32% rand. and 0.54% syst.) for Al, and 1.5% (0.44% rand. and 1.4% syst.) for Mo, with both results primarily limited by the quality and homogeneity of the stopping foils. For Al, this high accuracy represents an improvement compared to the results obtained in previous studies and serves as a benchmark for our procedure. The most important sources of uncertainties were random the uncertainty in the peak positions and in the Gaussian fits; and systematic the non-uniformity thickness of the foils (a special procedure was developed to correct this). Even though the final uncertainty for Mo is higher than for Al, our results improve on the amount of data currently available for the energy range considered. Both data sets are compared with the most commonly employed theoretical models and Monte Carlo codes in the literature. In the second part, electronic stopping cross sections of nontrivial solids, that is, transition and rare earth metals (Ta and Gd) for slow protons are experimentally investigated, and the data were compared with the results for Pt and Au, to understand how energy losses in these metals are correlated with electronic band structures, and to understand the failure of the FEG model predictions. The higher stopping powers found for Ta and Gd cannot be explained by means of the FEG model; however, these effects are successfully correlated with the high density of states (DOS) of both the occupied and unoccupied electronic levels in these metals. For the case of Gd, the experimental data are extended in the energy range until the Bragg’s peak is reached. The two parts of this thesis were published in Physical Review A 93 022704 (2016), and in Physical Review Letters 18 103401 (2017), respectively. 1As suggested by Prof.Dr. Peter Bauer from Johannes Kepler University, Austria.
Discharge and corrosion behaviour of AP65 magnesium anode plates with different rolling reductions

AP65 with strong discharge activity is an attractive magnesium anode used for high-power seawater activated batteries. Herein, we adopt multi-pass rolling to tailor the microstructure of AP65 and systematically study the effect of rolling reduction on its discharge and corrosion behaviour. The results indicate that 63% reduction uniformly refines the grains and favours the formation of nanometer sub-grains that distribute homogeneously in the magnesium matrix, hence promoting the active dissolution of the AP65 plate at 180 mA cm−2 and leading to its more negative discharge potential along with higher anodic efficiency compared with other samples. Furthermore, the microstructure features corresponding to different rolling reductions and their impacts on the electrochemical response of AP65 are also analyzed.