Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polarization properties of vector solitons generated by modulation instability in circularly birefringent fibers

Common optical fibers are randomly birefringent, and solitons formatting and traveling in them are randomly polarized. However it is desirable to have solitons with a well-defined polarization. We analyzed the two coupled propagation equations in a circularly birefringent fiber. Our equations include SPM, XPM and the soliton self frequency shift. In a difference of previously published works we consider the polarization dependence of the Raman amplification. We have found that the difference between perpendicular and parallel Raman gain results in energy transform from slow to fast circularly polarized component. We have shown this effect analytically and by a numerical simulation. For analytical consideration we performed a transformation of equations which reduces them to a form of perturbed Manakov task. The perturbation method gives us equations for evolution of the polarization state of pulse which show that in a circularly birefringent fiber the cross–polarization Raman term leads to unidirectional energy transfer from the slow circularly polarized component to the fast one. The magnitude of this effect is determined by the product of birefringence and amplitudes of both polarization components. Thus, solitons with any initial polarization state will eventually evolve stable circularly polarized solitons. We also made numerical analysis of two coupled nonlinear Shrödinger equations using a split-step Fourier method. The parameters of a standard fiber were used with delay between left- and right- circular polarizations of 1 ps/km that corresponds to circular birefringence in a fiber twisted by 6 turns/m. Numerical analysis confirms the analytical approximation. We analyzed also the polarization of solitons generated by modulation instability. We used a 30-ps, 40-W pulse with noise imposed on them at the fiber input. We found that polarization ellipticity of solitons is distributed randomly; however the average polarization ellipticity is closer to the circular than the polarization ellipticity of the input pulse. In experiment we used 220-m SMF-28 fiber twisted by 6 turns/m. The fiber was pumped by 1-ns pulse. We have found that at circular polarization of the input pulse solitons at the fiber output have polarizations close to the circular.
Rates of Convergence of Adaptive Step-Size of Stochastic Approximation Algorithms

We propose a new adaptive algorithm with decreasing step-size for stochastic approximations. The use of adaptive algorithms in various applications is widely spread across fields such as system identification and adaptive control. We analyze the rate of convergence of the proposed algorithms. An averaging algorithm, on its optimality of the rate of convergence, is used to control the step sizes. Our proofs are based on recent results in stochastic approximations and Gaussian Approximation Theorem.
The Relationship between Obesity and Childhood Dental Caries in the United States

Background: Childhood obesity and dental caries are prevalent chronic, multifactorial conditions with adverse health consequences and considerable healthcare costs. The aims of this study were: (1) to evaluate the relationship between obesity and dental caries among young children using multiple definitions for both conditions, and (2) to evaluate the role of family socioeconomic status (SES) and the child’s intake of added sugars in explaining this association. Methods: Data from 2775 2–5-year-olds children from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011–2018 were analysed. Three different international standards were used to define obesity, namely the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). Dental caries was measured during clinical examinations and summarised as counts (dt and dft scores) and prevalence (untreated caries [dt > 0] and caries experience [dft > 0]). The association of obesity with dental caries was assessed in regression models controlling for demographic factors, family SES and child’s intake of added sugars. Results: In crude models, obesity was associated with greater dt scores when using the IOTF standards (RR: 2.43, 95% CI: 1.11, 5.29) but not when using the WHO and CDC standards; obesity was associated with greater dft scores when using the WHO (1.57, 95%CI: 1.11–2.22), CDC (1.70, 95%CI: 1.17–2.46) and IOTF standards (2.43, 95%CI: 1.73–3.42); obesity was associated with lifetime caries prevalence when using the WHO (1.55, 95%CI: 1.05–2.29), CDC (1.73, 95%CI: 1.14–2.62) and IOTF standards (2.45, 95%CI: 1.61–3.71), but not with untreated caries prevalence. These associations were fully attenuated after controlling for demographic factors, family SES and child’s intake of added sugars. Conclusions: The relationship between obesity and dental caries in primary teeth varied based on the definition of obesity and dental caries used. Associations were observed when obesity was defined using the IOTF standards and dental caries was defined using lifetime indicators. Associations were fully attenuated after adjusting for well-known determinants of both conditions.
Constant rate control algorithm for Wyner-Ziv video codec

In a distributed video coding (DVC) system, the total bit-rate depends on bit-rate of the key frames (Intra frames) and the Wyner-Ziv (WZ) frames. The key frames bit-rate is relatively easy to control since they are encoded with an Intra coding scheme (e.g. H.264/AVC Intra), and there are many proposed solutions in literature which address this issue1, 2. On the other hand, rate control (RC) of the WZ frames at the encoder is more difficult since the bit-rate of WZ frames is difficult to predict and control due to the absence of the side information at the decoder side. In this work, an RC algorithm developed within the VISNET II, the European Network of Excellence, is presented as an efficient solution to achieve and maintain the target bit-rate for the overall Intra frames and WZ bitstream, mainly by changing the degree of compression of the Intra frames which is controlled by quantization parameter (QP). In order to maintain a similar quality for the Intra and WZ frames, the WZ quantization index (QIndex) follows the QP changes. A statistical model is used to describe the relationship between QIndex and the WZ frames bit-rate. Additionally, an analysis of influence of the key frames residuum complexity on WZ frames bitrate was conducted. The proposed algorithm adapted to the VISNET2 WZ video codec3 confirms its efficiency in terms of achieving and maintaining the target bit-rate.
Effects of cleaning sports mouthguards with ethylene-vinyl acetate on oral bacteria

Background Sports mouthguards, worn in the oral cavity to prevent sports injuries, are constantly exposed to various microorganisms that cause oral infections. Hence, the optimal cleaning methods for sports mouthguards have been thoroughly examined. In this study, we evaluated the efficiency of cleaning effects with a mouthguard cleaner (MC) on microbial biofilm formation in sports mouthguards in vitro and in vivo. Methods We evaluated the cleaning effects of the discs produced by ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) on bacterial biofilms formed by the commensal bacterium Streptococcus oralis, the cariogenic bacterium Streptococcus mutans, and the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus in vitro. EVA discs with biofilm were subjected to sterile distilled water (CTRL) and ultrasonic washing (UW), followed by treatment with MC and sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) as positive controls. Thereafter, the viable bacterial cell counts were determined. The bacteria adhering to the sheets before and after the treatment were observed under an electron microscope. The degree of cleanliness and measurement of viable microbial cell counts for total bacteria, Streptococci and Candida, opportunistic fungi, were evaluated on the used experimental sports mouthguards with and without UW and MC treatment in vivo. Results The number of bacterial cells significantly decreased against all the tested biofilm bacteria upon treatment with MC, compared with CTRL and UW. Electron microscopy analysis revealed the biofilm formation by all bacteria on the EVA discs before cleaning. We observed fewer bacteria on the EVA discs treated with MC than those treated with CTRL and UW. Furthermore, the degree of cleanliness of the used experimental sports mouthguards cleaned using MC was significantly higher than that of the CTRL-treated mouthguards. Moreover, the viable microbial cell counts on the used experimental sports mouthguard were considerably lower than those on the CTRL ones. Conclusion The cleaning effect of MC against oral bacteria was more effective than that of UW. MC treatment might have a potential future application as a cleaning method for sports mouthguards to protect athletes from oral infection.
The Design Of A Game-based Software For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is commonly described as characterized by social-communicative impairment and for the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors. However, motor impairments seem to play an important role in ASD symptomatology. A growing number of studies suggested that these motor abnormalities often appear even before the typical social communication deficits. For individual considered at high risk of developing autism, the presence of early motor difficulties can be an important clue for timely diagnosis. In this work we will provide a preliminary description of the architecture and design of a Game-based software designed to obtain quantitative and automatic metrics to measure the difficulties of movement in ASD exploiting the potential of technology to engage children and, at the same time, assess them.
Experimental study of planar opposed jets with acoustic excitation

Oscillation behaviors of planar opposed jets with acoustic excitation were experimentally investigated. The flow regimes of planar opposed jets at various exit air velocities, nozzle separations, excitation frequencies, and excitation amplitudes have been identified by a flow visualization technique combining with a high-speed camera. Results show that planar opposed jets exhibit horizontal instability at L/H ≤ 4 (where L is the nozzle separation and H is the slit height of the planar nozzle) and deflecting oscillation at L/H ≥ 6. The deflecting oscillation is originally started by the antisymmetric structures in the planar jets and is self-sustained by the periodic changes of the velocity field and the pressure field. At L/H ≤ 4, the acoustic excitation results in the horizontal periodic oscillation, whose frequency is equal to the excitation frequency. The acoustic excitation of oscillation amplitude less than 10% has negligible influence on the deflecting oscillation; for synchronous or asynchronous ex.
Reinforcement Learning for Robust Neuro-Control of Constrained Nonlinear Systems

This article considers the robust neuro-control problem of unknown nonlinear systems subject to asymmetric input constraints. Initially, with a discounted value function being introduced for the nominal systems associated with the studied nonlinear systems, the robust constrained control problem is converted into a nonlinear-constrained optimal control problem. Then, in the reinforcement learning framework, an actor-critic architecture is employed to solve the nonlinear-constrained optimal control problem. Two neural networks (NNs) are utilized to implement such an architecture. Specifically, the actor and critic NNs are, respectively, constructed to approximate the control policy and the value function simultaneously. Meanwhile, the actor and critic NNs’ weights are determined via the least square method and the Monte-Carlo integration technique. Finally, simulations of a nonlinear plant are provided to validate the theoretical results.
Electrically driven quantum dot single-photon source at 2 GHz excitation repetition rate with ultra-low emission time jitter

The influence of the bias voltage on emission properties of a red emitting InP/GaInP quantum dot based single-photon source was investigated. Under pulsed electrical excitation, we can influence the band bending of the p-i-n diode with the applied bias voltage and thus the charge carrier escape by quantum tunneling. This leads to control over the non-radiative decay channel and allows carrier escape times as low as 40 ps, effectively reducing the time jitter of the photon emission. We realized high excitation repetition rates of up to 2 GHz while autocorrelation measurements with g(2)(0)-values of 0.27 attest dominant single-photon emission.
Application of differential anomalous x-ray scattering to structural studies of amorphous materials

A differential anomalous x-ray scattering technique has been developed for structural studies of disordered and amorphous systems. The results on amorphous GeSe/sub 2/ are consistent with the twofold coordination of Se and the fourfold coordination of Ge. The results on amorphous GeSe are consistent with threefold coordinated models of the structure but not with the fourfold-twofold models.
Embedding of Uncertainty Propagation: Application to Hierarchical Performance Analysis

The article proposes an approach to embed the propagation of structured uncertainty through a system in a system with one unstructured uncertainty. This embedding is interesting as it allows to use the classical analysis and design tools such H∞ design and μ-analysis or synthesis. A strong motivation is to improve the computational efficiency of the analysis for large-scale uncertain systems using a hierarchical approach. Examples are provided for both the embedding in the SISO and MIMO cases and for the hierarchical performance analysis of an uncertain Phase-Locked-Loop network.
The H to H2 transition in galaxies - Totally molecular galaxies

The transition from H to H 2 in the general interstellar medium is shown to depend sensitively on the pressure and radiation field, so even a slight increase in the ambient pressure can convert a whole cloud population into H 2 molecules without necessarily converting the diffuse clouds into self-gravitating clouds. Similarly, a slight increase in radiation can convert the clouds back to H. The calculation includes self-shielding and mutual shielding of line radiation between clouds, as well as dust extinction for diffuse and self-gravitating clouds with an M -1.5 mass distribution
A complete NICMOS map of the Hubble Deep Field

I present early results from a program to map of the complete Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N) at 1.1 μm amd 1.6 μm with NICMOS on HST. The near-infrared data allow us to study galaxies at 1 1. The optical-infrared multicolor parameter space can be used to refine photometric redshift estimates for galaxies, and to search for galaxies at very large redshifts (z>5). I present the observations, briefly discuss the morphological properties of the faint galaxy population, and illustrate one moderately bright object whose extremely unusual colors make it an interesting candidate for having a very large redshift.
A Group Feature Ranking and Selection Method Based on Dimension Reduction Technique in High-Dimensional Data

Group feature selection methods select the important group features by removing the irrelevant group features for reducing the complexity of the model. To the best of our knowledge, there are few group feature selection methods that provide the relative importance of each feature group. For this purpose, we developed a sparse group feature ranking method based on the dimension reduction technique for high dimensional data. Firstly, we applied relief to each group to remove irrelevant individual features. Secondly, we extract the new feature that represents each feature group. To this end, we reduce the multiple dimension of the group feature into a single dimension by applying Fisher linear discriminant analysis (FDA) for each feature group. At last, we estimate the relative importance of the extracted feature by applying random forest and selecting important features that have larger importance scores compared with other ones. In the end, machine-learning algorithms can be used to train and test the models. For the experiment, we compared the proposed with the supervised group lasso (SGL) method by using real-life high-dimensional datasets. Results show that the proposed method selects a few important group features just like the existing group feature selection method and provides the ranking and relative importance of all group features. SGL slightly performs better on logistic regression whereas the proposed method performs better on support vector machine, random forest, and gradient boosting in terms of classification performance metrics.
THE UNIFORM DIMENSION OF THE LEVEL SETS OF A BROWNIAN SHEET

Let WN(t) denote the N-parameter Brownian sheet (Wiener process) taking values in R'. For 0 < T < 1, set A(T) = {teRN: 0 < ti ? T, i = 1, * * *, N} and let E(x, T) = {t e A(T): WN(t) = x}, the set of t where the process is at the level x. Then we show that, with probability one, the Hausdorff dimension of E(x, T) equals N I for all 0 < T ? 1 and every x in the interior of the range of WN(t), t e A(T). This provides an answer to a question raised earlier by Pyke.
Category-Wise Fusion and Enhancement Learning for Multimodal Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation

This article presents a simple yet effective method called Category-wise Fusion and Enhancement learning (CaFE), which leverages the category priors to achieve effective feature fusion and imbalance learning, for multimodal remote sensing image semantic segmentation. In particular, we disentangle the feature fusion process via the categories to achieve the category-wise fusion based on the fact that the feature fusion in the same category regions tends to have similar characteristics. The disentangled fusion would also increase the fusion capacity with a small number of parameters while reducing the dependence on large-scale training data. For the sample imbalance problem, we design a simple yet effective category-wise enhancement learning scheme. In particular, we assign the weight for each category region based on the proportion of samples in this region over the whole image. By this way, the learning algorithm would focus more on the regions with smaller proportion. Note that both category-wise feature fusion and imbalance learning are only performed in the training stage, and the segmentation efficiency is thus not affected. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our CaFE against other state-of-the-art methods.
High-entropy functional materials

While most papers on high-entropy alloys (HEAs) focus on the microstructure and mechanical properties for structural materials applications, there has been growing interest in developing high-entropy functional materials. The objective of this paper is to provide a brief, timely review on select functional properties of HEAs, including soft magnetic, magnetocaloric, physical, thermoelectric, superconducting, and hydrogen storage. Comparisons of functional properties between HEAs and conventional low- and medium-entropy materials are provided, and examples are illustrated using computational modeling and tuning the composition of existing functional materials through substitutional or interstitial mixing. Extending the concept of high configurational entropy to a wide range of materials such as intermetallics, ceramics, and semiconductors through the isostructural design approach is discussed. Perspectives are offered in designing future high-performance functional materials utilizing the high-entropy concepts and high-throughput predictive computational modeling.
SCALE EFFECTS ON COMBUSTION PHENOMENA IN A MICROCOMBUSTOR

Investigation of the combustion phenomena in a constant volume microcombustor was carried out on a constant volume microcombustor that is subject to significant heat loss to the wall in order to estimate the effects of combustor dimension on flame propagation. A cylindrical combustor of a variable height that is comparable to quenching limit of the combustible mixture of H2 and air was built. Flame visualization and measurement of transient pressure during the flame propagation were made. Measurements were made at the chamber height ranging from 0.67 mm to 3 mm. A simple theoretical model that takes into account the heat loss to the wall during flame propagation was used to derive available work of the burnt gas from the pressure measurements. For a chamber depth of less than 1 mm, the pressure increase by combustion was negligible and the sensible heat in the burnt gas was not adequate to be converted to mechanical power. For a chamber height greater than 2 mm, however, the amount of heat generated by combustion was sufficient to produce a few Joules of theoretical work even after experiencing increased heat loss due to the small scale of the chamber.
Structure of the solar chromosphere. III. Models of the EUV brightness components of the quiet sun

Skylab observations of the quiet Sun in the EUV wavelength range 40--140 nm show the inhomogeneous structure of the chromosphere. We use these observations to determine separate chromospheric models for six observed brightness components, ranging from a dark cell center to a very bright network element. In each case we solve the non--LTE radiative transfer, statistical equilibrium, and hydrostatic equilibrium equations to determine the temperature-density stratification that produces a calculated spectrum in best agreement with the observed one. Our hydrogen calculations are carried out with an atomic model consisting of eight explicit levels and supplementary levels 9--12. We account for the effects of partial frequency redistribution in the formation of the hydrogen L.cap alpha. and L.beta. lines and the resonance lines of Ca II and Mg II. To obtain the results shown here we carry out non--LTE calculations for H, H/sup -/, C, Si, Fe, Mg, Al, He, He II, Ca II, Mg II, and several other atoms and ions. We obtain good agreement between observed and calculated intensities in the L.cap alpha. and L.beta. lines, the Lyman continuum, and other continua in the 40--140 nm range. We base our temperature minimum determination on continuum observations in the 135--168 nmmore » range but obtain minimum temperature values which are lower than implied by the Ca II and Mg II lines and recent microwave observations. In the upper chromosphere our models are in good agreement with those obtained by Basri et al. from a study of the observed L.cap alpha. line. However, the temperature reduction in the low chromosphere proposed by Basri et al. is a consequence of their assumption of LTE for the carbon continuum which causes a spurious enhancement of the computed intensity in the L.cap alpha. wings. Finally, we compute the net radiative cooling rates for the atoms and ions listed above. « less