Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Search for Nothing: Dark Matter and Invisible Decays of the Higgs Boson at the ATLAS Detector

This thesis presents a search for invisible decays of the Higgs boson using the vector boson fusion channel. This uses 36 fb^−1 of proton-proton collision data at √s = 13 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The experimental methods for understanding the signal and background processes as well as detector effects are described in detail. The search is carried out in several regions defined by kinematic requirements on the final-state objects, and the observed event yields are used in a profile-likelihood fit in order to constrain the backgrounds. The results are interpreted using a modified frequentist method and are found to be consistent with the Standard Model expectations. An upper limit of 34% (28% expected) at 95% C.L. is placed on the invisible branching ratio of the Higgs boson. Re-interpretation of these results in terms of dark matter is also discussed, in the context of the Higgs portal and other simplified models. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Physics & Astronomy First Advisor Elliot Lipeles
Influence of the stoichiometric ratio on the material properties and the aging behavior of anhydride-cured epoxy systems

When partial discharge and dielectric heating effects can be excluded, comparatively little is known about the aging behavior of polymeric insulation materials under combined environmental and electric field stress. Since it was found in an earlier study that hygroelectrical stress leads to a strong reduction in the residual breakdown strength of anhydride-cured epoxy samples, the goal of this contribution is to determine if a material modification could enhance the insulation performance under hygroelectrical stress. For this purpose, epoxy samples of different stoichiometric ratios (SRs) were manufactured and hygroelectrically stressed. The material properties were evaluated by AC breakdown strength measurements as well as by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy before and after each aging sequence. Gravimetric analysis quantified the water diffusion behavior and the (steady-state) water absorption during exposure to different relative humidity levels at room temperature. The breakdown strength decreases for both increasing and decreasing SR compared to SR=95% . Moreover, FTIR measurements revealed that an increase of the SR leads to a higher amount of unreacted anhydride which correlates with an increasing amount of absorbed water. Thus, the mutual presence of water in the atmosphere and of unreacted anhydride in the epoxy material is identified as the main risk factor for epoxy degradation under the influence of electrical stress, since unreacted anhydride favors stronger water absorption and the presence of water inside the material is attributed to a lowering of the potential barrier for molecular bond breaking. Remarkably, the breakdown strength of non-aged samples is lower at SR=80% compared to SR=95% , but the long-term performance with respect to insulation aging is enhanced, which correlates with the non-/less-existing unreacted anhydride in the material.
Calculation of Standardized Uptake Value (SUV) from PET-CT Image by Using In-House Developed MATLAB Software

The Standardized Uptake Value (SUV) is one of the fundamental parameters to determine whether a region may be considered a “tumor” or “malignant” from PET-CT-derived images. When a measured SUV value is around 2.5, it is non-malignant. Again small tumorous areas can also show a maximum SUV of <2.5. The main objective of this study is to develop a computer program based on MATLAB for calculating SUV from PET-CT-derived images. This study also projects the way of calculating SUVs in a facile way. The study was particularly concerned with the 2D PET-CT images which were initially derived from commercial medical image processing software. Unlike the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) formatted PET-CT produced image, the study calculated these images in JPG (Joint Photographic Group) format. Each command and instruction of this program produces the selection of a region of interest (ROI) sequentially. The programming code also extracted the recognition of the desired ROI in cancerous cells. In the study, we have loaded 13 different PET-CT image samples in the software as input. These inputs were used to reach the final result by using in-house developed MATLAB code. A correlation (polynomial expression) between the calculated SUV and the acquired SUV value from commercial software had been established in order to reduce the error. It is concluded that the in-house developed MATLAB program can be used for rapid estimation of SUV value within an acceptable error range.
Changes in functional connectivity among vestibulo-visuo-somatosensory and spatial cognitive cortical areas in persistent postural-perceptual dizziness: resting-state fMRI studies before and after visual stimulation

Introduction Persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) is a functional chronic vestibular syndrome with symptom exacerbation by upright posture, motion, and complex visual stimuli. Among these exacerbating factors, visual exacerbation is the most specific characteristic of PPPD requiring further investigation. We hypothesized that stimulus-induced changes occur in the functional connectivity (FC) rather than simple neural activation that is involved in visual stimulation. The present study aimed to identify the neural basis of PPPD by investigating FC before and after visual stimulation. Methods Eleven patients with PPPD and 11 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) underwent resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) before and after task-based fMRI with visual stimuli. Results At pre-stimulus, FC between the vestibular cortex and visual areas was low, while that between the somatosensory and visual areas was high in PPPD compared with that in HCs. FC between the visuospatial (parahippocampal gyrus) and spatial cognitive areas (inferior parietal lobule) was elevated in PPPD even in the pre-stimulus condition, which no longer increased at post-stimulus as observed in HCs. In the post-stimulus condition, FC between the visual and spatial cognitive areas and that between the visual and prefrontal areas increased compared with that in the pre-stimulus condition in PPPD. Task-based fMRI demonstrated that no brain regions showed different activities between the HC and PPPD groups during visual stimulation. Discussion In PPPD, vestibular inputs may not be fully utilized in the vestibulo-visuo-somatosensory network. Given that the FC between visuospatial and spatial cognitive areas increased even in HCs after visual stimuli, elevated status of this FC in combination with the high FC between the somatosensory and visual areas would be involved in the visual exacerbation in PPPD. An increase in FC from the visual areas to spatial cognitive and prefrontal areas after visual stimuli may account for the prolonged symptoms after visual exacerbation and anxious status in PPPD.
Metacognitive Awareness and the Hot Hand: When Winning, No Amount of Awareness Will Have Strong Believers Avoid the Heuristic

In some instances, such as in sports, individuals will cheer on the player with the “hot hand”. But is the hot hand phenomenon a fallacy? The current research investigated (1) whether the hot hand fallacy (HHF) was related to risky decisions during a gambling scenario, and (2) whether metacognitive awareness might be related to optimal decisions. After measuring for baseline tendencies of using the hot hand heuristic, participants were presented with a series of prior card gambling results that included either winning streaks or losing streaks and asked to choose one of two cards: a good card or a bad card. In addition, we examined whether high metacognitive awareness—as measured by the ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect responses—would be negatively related to the risky decisions induced by the hot hand heuristic. The results showed that our predictions were partially supported. For winning streaks, individuals who had a weak tendency for using the heuristic exhibited fewer risky decisions with higher metacognitive awareness. However, those with a strong baseline tendency for using the hot hand showed no sign of decrease with metacognitive awareness. On the whole, the complex data suggest that further research on the HHF would be helpful for implementing novel ways of avoiding the fallacy, if needed.
Research Progress Related to Aflatoxin Contamination and Prevention and Control of Soils

Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic compounds, mainly produced by fungi species of the genus Aspergillus in the soil. Because of their stability, they are difficult to remove completely, even under extreme conditions. Aflatoxin contamination is one of the main causes of safety in peanuts, maize, wheat and other agricultural products. Aflatoxin contamination originates from the soil. Through the investigation of soil properties and soil microbial distribution, the sources of aflatoxin are identified, aflatoxin contamination is classified and analysed, and post-harvest crop detoxification and corresponding contamination prevention measures are identified. This includes the team’s recent development of the biofungicide ARC-BBBE (Aflatoxin Rhizobia Couple-B. amyloliquefaciens, B. laterosporu, B. mucilaginosus, E. ludwiggi) for field application and nanomaterials for post-production detoxification of cereals and oilseed crops, providing an effective and feasible approach for the prevention and control of aflatoxin contamination. Finally, it is hoped that effective preventive and control measures can be applied to a large number of cereal and oilseed crops.
Resilience at Work among Healthcare Professionals in Oncology during and beyond the Pandemic: Report from A Deliberative Multi-Stakeholder Reflexive Symposium

The chronic distress faced by healthcare professionals (HCPs) in oncology was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening the need to improve their resilience. The Entretiens Jacques Cartier symposium provided an opportunity for participants from France and Quebec to share perspectives on resilience at work and discuss interventions at individual and organizational levels to support HCP health and well-being. Fifty-eight stakeholders were invited to the symposium, including HCPs, government decision-makers, researchers, and patient representatives. The symposium began with presentations on the nature of professional resilience at work in oncology and promising interventions developed in France and Quebec. Participants were then engaged in deliberation on how evidence and experiential knowledge could contribute to workplace strategies to strengthen resilience. Small-group reflexive sessions using the photovoice method, and an intersectoral roundtable, elicited the expression and deliberation of multiple perspectives on the nature and building blocks of resilience. Four main themes emerged from the discussions: (1) that resilience remains a muddy concept and can be associated pejoratively with “happycracy”; (2) that resilience must contend with bounded autonomy and captors; (3) that it relies on a sense of coherence at work; and (4) that patients play a role in improving HCP resilience. Stakeholders from healthcare systems in different countries view resilience at work as a means of equipping teams to handle chronic and punctual stresses in cancer care. The symposium emphasized the importance of better defining what resilience at work means and pursuing explorations of multicomponent interventions to support oncology HCPs and the patients they care for. The themes raised by participants at the symposium suggest pathways for furthering this exploration.
Simple, efficient, and accurate analysis of the flanged parallel-plate waveguide

The flanged parallel-plate waveguide is analysed based on the method of Kobayashi potential (KP) using Fourier function space. The presentation of the method is free from intricate mathematics. Standard integral identities are used for problem formulation, without direct use of Weber-Schafheitlin (WS) integrals. The Fourier function space is exploited for the construction of the governing linear equations instead of Jacobi polynomials. A simple strategy is suggested for the evaluation of the required improper integrals. Near-field results are validated through convergence analysis. Far-field patterns are compared with predictions of the surface equivalence theorem (SET).
Assessing Effectiveness of Mnemonics for Tertiary Students in a Hybrid Introductory Statistics Course

ABSTRACT Mnemonics (memory aids) are often viewed as useful in helping students recall information, and thereby possibly reducing stress and freeing up more cognitive resources for higher-order thinking. However, there has been little research on statistics mnemonics, especially for large classes. This article reports on the results of a study conducted during two consecutive fall semesters at a large U.S. university. In 2014, a large sample (n = 1487) of college students were asked about the usefulness of a set of 19 published statistics mnemonics presented in class, and in 2015, the students (n = 1468) were presented 12 mnemonics related to inference and then asked whether or not they used mnemonics on that exam. This article discusses how students assess the usefulness of mnemonics and evaluates the relationship between using mnemonics and reducing anxiety. Additionally, the relationship between mnemonic usage and learning outcomes achievement will be discussed, along with this study's limitations and implications for teaching.
Proximate nutrients of selected forage and the diet composition of adult elephants in Udawalawe National Park, Sri Lanka, a preliminary study

Asian Elephants feed predominantly on grass. The comparative nutritional contribution of grasses and other elephant forage is not known. Therefore, the proximate nutrition of food plants selected by elephants, and the relationship of their diet composition to body condition and gender were examined in this study. Proximate analysis was conducted on 11 plant species recognised upon 66h of opportunistic focal animal sampling. Five species among them were grasses, including the invasive Megathyrsus maximus. The micro-histological composition of freshly collected dung from 26 identified elephants was assessed against their body condition and gender. Associations, comparisons, and hypotheses were tested. Dicots were significantly high in dry matter and low in moisture, while monocots were high in moisture and low in dry matter (p <0.001). The average monocot: dicot ratio was 1: 0.73 in elephant diet. However, it was observed that the monocot composition in the male diet was significantly higher than dicots (p <0.001), while there was no significant difference in the female diet composition. Elephant body condition did not show any correlation with the abundance of monocot or dicot plant tissues. The preliminary study implies that dry matter nutrients in dicots and moisture in monocots influence diet selection of elephants. Their diet composition was associated with gender but did not correlate with body condition. M. maximus was not outstanding in nutrition from the selected plant species.
Current and Potential Applications of Green Membranes with Nanocellulose

Large-scale applications of nanotechnology have been extensively studied within the last decade. By exploiting certain advantageous properties of nanomaterials, multifunctional products can be manufactured that can contribute to the improvement of everyday life. In recent years, one such material has been nanocellulose. Nanocellulose (NC) is a naturally occurring nanomaterial and a high-performance additive extracted from plant fibers. This sustainable material is characterized by a unique combination of exceptional properties, including high tensile strength, biocompatibility, and electrical conductivity. In recent studies, these unique properties of nanocellulose have been analyzed and applied to processes related to membrane technology. This article provides a review of recent synthesis methods and characterization of nanocellulose-based membranes, followed by a study of their applications on a larger scale. The article reviews successful case studies of the incorporation of nanocellulose in different types of membrane materials, as well as their utilization in water purification, desalination, gas separations/gas barriers, and antimicrobial applications, in an effort to provide an enhanced comprehension of their capabilities in commercial products.
Fish Injured Rate Measurement Using Color Image Segmentation Method Based on K-Means Clustering Algorithm and Otsu’s Threshold Algorithm

This paper proposes two measurement methods for injured rate of fish surface using color image segmentation method based on K-means clustering algorithm and Otsu’s threshold algorithm. To do this task, the following steps are done. Firstly, an RGB color image of the fish is obtained by the CCD color camera and then converted from RGB to HSI. Secondly, the S channel is extracted from HSI color space. Thirdly, by applying the K-means clustering algorithm to the HSI color space and applying the Otsu’s threshold algorithm to the S channel of HSI color space, the binary images are obtained. Fourthly, morphological processes such as dilation and erosion, etc. are applied to the binary image. Fifthly, to count the number of pixels, the connected-component labeling is adopted and the defined injured rate is gotten by calculating the pixels on the labeled images. Finally, to compare the performances of the proposed two measurement methods based on the K-means clustering algorithm and the Otsu’s threshold algorithm, the edge detection of the final binary image after morphological processing is done and matched with the gray image of the original RGB image obtained by CCD camera. The results show that the detected edge of injured part by the K-means clustering algorithm is more close to real injured edge than that by the Otsu’ threshold algorithm.
A cost-sensitive ensemble deep forest approach for extremely imbalanced credit fraud detection

Credit fraud detection modeling helps prevent default risks and reduce economic losses, and increasingly sophisticated methods have been designed for predicting the default probability of clients. In such problems, the fact that the class of fraud clients is much smaller than the class of good clients makes it a challenge to detect the fraud class. To minimize the financial losses in extremely imbalanced datasets, this paper delivers a novel cost-sensitive ensemble model under the framework of deep forest. The model first introduces a cost-sensitive strategy to assign a higher cost to the fraud class, thereby improving the attention of the model to the fraud samples. As everyone knows, for the basic classifiers of ensemble learning, the greater their differences, the better the performance after ensemble. So the model adds superior cost-sensitive base classifiers into the cascade structure to improve the overall performance. The model also introduces Type II error as the convergence index to automatically adjust the depth of the cascade structure. The experiments conducted on the European credit dataset and a private electronic transaction dataset are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed model outperforms most benchmarks in detecting fraud samples.
Secure Internet of Things in Cloud Computing via Puncturable Attribute-Based Encryption With User Revocation

With significant achievements of Internet of Things (IoT) in cloud services, IoT devices are becoming primary targets of cyber attackers. To protect security of previous messages generated by IoT devices in cloud computing, puncturable attribute-based encryption (PABE) was introduced which achieves fine-grained access control and supports self-update to private keys to disable the decryption capability to existing ciphertexts. Users in PABE are identified by their attributes and authenticated via the attribute authority (AA) which issues them attribute keys. But PABE does not consider any attribute revocation which should be managed by the AA. To address such a concern, this article presents a primitive called PABE with user revocation (PAER) which is the first light-weight PABE scheme with the user revocation achieved by the AA broadcasting the information for the key update. In addition to the light calculation of users in the decrypting process, another prominent advantage in PAER is that the AA does not need to communicate with users to revoke their attributes but broadcasts regular updates in the network. We present a concrete construction of PAER, and then implement the given scheme to evaluate its practicability in the real world.
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) The neutron transmission of natFe, 197Au and natW

Neutron total cross sections of Fe, Au and W have been measured at the nELBE neutron time-of-flight facility in the energy range from 0.2 – 8 MeV with an uncertainty due to counting statistics of up to 2 % and a total uncertainty due to systematic effects of 1 %. The neutrons are produced with the superconducting electron accelerator ELBE using a liquid lead circuit as photo-neutron target. By periodical sample-in-sample-out measurements the transmission of the sample materials has been determined using a low-threshold plastic scintillation detector. The resulting effective total cross sections show good agreement with previously measured data that cover only part of the energy range available at nELBE. The results have also been compared to evaluated library files and recent calculations based on a dispersive coupled channel optical model potential. PACS. XX.XX. XX No PACS code given
The Immune Cells in the Development of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Simple Summary The cells of the immune system can exert a dual effect on cancer development and growth. On the one hand, the immune system can be activated by tumor antigens and can elicit an antitumor response. On the other, the inflammatory milieu in the tumor microenvironment can trigger immune effector mechanisms that promote tumor growth. In the oral cavity, the balance between protumor and antitumor immunity can influence the progression from premalignancy to carcinoma. In this article, we review the cells and mechanisms that are thought to be the most important immune determinants of oral cancer development and progression. Abstract A still unresolved issue surrounding tumor formation concerns the role that the immune system plays in preventing the formation and progression of neoplasia, including oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Antitumor immunity has historically been seen as a critical barrier for cancer cells to develop, grow and spread, and this can be modulated using immunotherapies to achieve antitumor clinical responses. However, it has recently become clear that tumor-associated immunity, particularly the inflammatory microenvironment, has the paradoxical effect of enhancing tumorigenesis and progression. In this review, we discuss the multifaceted function of infiltrating immune cells in suppressing or promoting premalignancy and cancer. In particular, we report on the evidence supporting a role for T lymphocytes, dendritic cells, macrophages, and neutrophils in the development and progression of oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMD) and OSCC. We also draw attention to the clinical relevance of immune cell phenotypes and associated molecules for use as biomarkers and to the translatability of current research findings to improve classification systems and precision medicine in patients with OSCC.