Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Laboratory study on the properties of plastering mortar modified by feather fibers

Abstract This laboratory study explores the development of plastering mortar modified by feather fibers, so as to lay the groundwork for utilizing poultry feathers in thermal-insulation materials and removing them from waste streams. The laboratory testing measured the consistency value, porosity, compressive strength and thermal conductivity of various cement mortar mixes as a function of feather fiber dosage. The experimental data were used to determine the appropriate weight fraction of feather fibers in the mortars for thermal insulation. The results indicate that the incorporation of feather fibers decreased the consistency value of fresh mortar and increased the surface roughness and porosity of hardened mortar. Under the investigated conditions, as the content of admixed fiber increased, both the compressive strength and thermal conductivity of hardened mortar decreased remarkably before leveling off. The desirable dosage of feather fibers falls in the range of 0.2–0.7% by mass of dry mixture.
Long term continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in children: Initiation criteria in real life

Long term noninvasive continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and noninvasive ventilation (NIV) are increasingly used in children but limited information is available on the criteria and conditions leading to the initiation of these treatments. The aim of the study is to describe the objective overnight respiratory parameters and clinical situations that led to the initiation of CPAP/NIV in a pediatric NIV unit.
Optimal Power Control and Load Balancing for Uplink Cell-Free Multi-User Massive MIMO

In this paper, we consider the problem of power control and load balancing in the uplink of the cell-free (CF) multi-user (MU) massive multiple-input multiple-output system. The power control problem is solved using three different criteria: 1) power minimization; 2) maximize min quality of service (QoS); and 3) maximize sum spectral efficiency (SE) under imperfect channel state information. While power minimization and min-QoS maximization problems can be solved in polynomial time, sum SE maximization is NP-hard. Hence, we apply a successive approach to convert it into a geometric program and achieve near optimum solution. As the number of connections in CF-MU system is large, we minimize the number of base stations (BSs) serving each user while maintaining the optimized power consumption and QoS from the previous stage. We propose an iterative elimination (IE) algorithm to remove ineffective BSs for each user. The system analysis is performed under two common BS receivers: maximum ratio combining and zero forcing. The simulation shows that our method is better than both maximum signal-to-noise ratio association and full-set joint transmission, especially in the high QoS regime. Another notable result is that the selection of the linear receiver becomes more influential than the association method.
Dose modification factors for 192Ir high‐dose‐rate irradiation using Monte Carlo simulations

A recently introduced brachytherapy system for partial breast irradiation, MammoSite, consists of a balloon applicator filled with contrast solution and a catheter for insertion of an I192r high‐dose‐rate (HDR) source. In using this system, the treatment dose is typically prescribed to be delivered 1 cm from the balloon's surface. Most treatment‐planning systems currently in use for brachytherapy procedures use water‐based dosimetry with no correction for heterogeneity. Therefore, these systems assume that full scatter exists regardless of the amount of tissue beyond the prescription line. This assumption might not be a reasonable one, especially when the tissue beyond the prescription line is thin. In such a case, the resulting limited scatter could cause an underdose to be delivered along the prescription line. We used Monte Carlo simulations to investigate how the thickness of the tissue between the surface of the balloon and the skin or lung affected the treatment dose delivery. Calculations were based on a spherical water phantom with a diameter of 30 cm and balloons with diameters of 4 cm, 5 cm, and 6 cm. The dose modification factor is defined as the ratio of the dose rate at the typical prescription distance of 1 cm from the balloon's surface with full scatter obtained using the water phantom to the dose rate with a finite tissue thickness (from 0 cm to 10 cm) beyond the prescription line. The dose modification factor was found to be dependent on the balloon diameter and was 1.098 for the 4‐cm balloon and 1.132 for the 6‐cm balloon with no tissue beyond the prescription distance at the breast–skin interface. The dose modification factor at the breast–lung interface was 1.067 for the 4‐cm balloon and 1.096 for the 6‐cm balloon. Even 5 cm of tissue beyond the prescription distance could not result in full scatter. Thus, we found that considering the effect of diminished scatter is important to accurate dosimetry. Not accounting for the dose modification factor may result in delivering a lower dose than is prescribed. PACS number: 87.53. Jw
REDUCING THE HEAVY METALS TOXICITY IN SLUDGE AMENDED SOIL USING VA MYCORRHIZAE

A pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the role of VA mycorrhizae as a biological agent in reducing the toxicity of heavy metals. A newly reclaimed soil from Ismaillia Governorate was supplemented with sewage sludge from two sources at five different rates 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0%. One half of each treatment was inoculated with VA mycorrhizae. Application of sewage sludge up to 2% increased faba bean growth, nodule number and weight, and phosphorus and nitrogen contents. Inoculation with VA mycorrhizae also induced significant increase in these parameters as compared with the uninoculated treatments. Plant Zn, Mn, Cu, Ni, Cd, Pb, and Co contents were increased with the application of sewage sludge. However, in the sewage sludge treated soil where the heavy metals were present in high concentrations, inoculation with VA mycorrhizae reduced the concentration of heavy metals. This indicates the role of VA mycorrhizae in reducing the hazardous effect of heavy metals when present in high levels in the media of growing plants.
Impact of windstorm on a community of centipedes (Chilopoda) in a beech forest in Western Poland

The study was carried out in the years 2016–2017, five years after a windstorm which destroyed 1/3 of the protected beech forest area in the west of Poland. The community of centipedes in the area affected by the windstorm was depleted in terms of the species richness, diversity, and population density. The dominance structures were shortened and the species composition was rebuilt. The areas that proved to be the richest in terms of species richness and diversity among the sites affected by the windstorm were the one where windfallen trees were left and the other where beech trees had been planted by humans. In total, the quantitative and qualitative samples collected four times throughout a year featured 608 specimens from 11 species of two centipede orders – Lithobiomorpha and Geophilomorpha. Lithobius curtipes and L. forficatus were found in all of the investigated areas. L. pelidnus and L. piceus were captured at control sites exclusively. Only one species –L. erythrocephalus was found solely at the damaged site. The most numerous and most frequently found species in the community were L. curtipes, L. mutabilis, and Strigamia acuminata respectively. Although windstorms are natural phenomena their consequences may lead to significant changes in the community of the investigated soil animals. The importance of coarse woody debris, significantly contributing to the improvement and maintenance of species richness and diversity of Chilopoda, has once again been confirmed.
Generating Workload for ERP Applications through End-User Organization Categorization using High Level Business Operation Data

For software companies performance testing is an essential part of new application development. In this paper we present a performance engineering method that extracts the workload of an existing legacy ERP application with more than 1 million users and generates workload for a radically new version of the application. The workload is used to classify groups of end user organizations, i.e., enterprises whose customers are end users of the application, with unsupervised machine learning techniques. The method shows that (1) workload for new application testing and architecture validation can be generated from legacy application behavior, (2) end user organizations have significantly different usage patterns, and (3) for ERP applications, high-level operations, such as a salary calculations, provide a useful method for analyzing and generating workload, as opposed to for instance low level page views. The method is evaluated within a Dutch software company, where it is found to be accurate and effective for performance engineering.
Securing Real-Time Cyber-Physical Systems Using WCET-Aware Artificial Diversity

Artificial software diversity is an effective way to prevent software vulnerabilities and errors to be exploited in code-reuse attacks. This is achieved by lowering the individual probability of a successful attack to a level that makes the attack unfeasible. Unfortunately, the existing approaches are not applicable to safety-critical real-time systems as they induce unacceptable performance overheads, they violate safety and timing guarantees, or they assume hardware resources which are typically not available in embedded systems. To overcome these problems, we propose a safe diversity approach that preserves the timing properties of real-time processes by controlling its impact on the worst case execution time (WCET). Our main idea is to use block-level diversity with a large, but fixed set of movable instruction sequences, and to use static WCET analysis to identify non-critical areas of code where it can safely be split into more movable instruction sequences.
A Hybrid Multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm Based on R2 Indicator

When dealing with complex multiobjective problems, particle swarm optimization algorithm is easy to fall into local optimum and lead to uneven distribution. Therefore, this paper presents a hybrid multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm based on R2 indicator (R2HMOPSO) for solving multiobjective optimization problem. The proposed algorithm uses the sigmoid function mapping method to adjust the inertia weight and learning factors in order to tradeoffs the exploration and exploitation process effectively. In addition, simulation binary crossover operator is designed to reinitialize the particles to improve the search capability of the algorithm and to prevent particles from falling into local optimum and premature convergence. R2 indicator is incorporated into the R2HMOPSO algorithm so as to deal with the solutions of uneven distribution on the true Pareto front. Besides, polynomial mutation is used to maintain diversity in the external archive. The improved algorithm is evaluated on standard benchmarks. By comparing it with four state-of-the-art multiobjective optimization algorithms, the simulation results show that R2HMOPSO algorithm is competitive and effective in terms of convergence and distribution.
Dependence of brain DTI maps of fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity on the number of diffusion weighting directions

The rotational variance dependence of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) derived parameters on the number of diffusion weighting directions (N) has been investigated by several Monte Carlo simulation studies. However, the dependence of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) maps on N, in terms of accuracy and contrast between different anatomical structures, has not been assessed in detail. This experimental study further investigated in vivo the effect of the number of diffusion weighting directions on DTI maps of FA and MD. Human brain FA and MD maps of six healthy subjects were acquired at 1.5T with varying N (6, 11, 19, 27, 55). Then, FA and MD mean values in high (FAH,MDH) and low (FAL,MDL) anisotropy segmented brain regions were measured. Moreover, the contrast‐to‐signal variance ratio (CVRFA,CVRMD) between the main white matter and the surrounding regions was calculated. Analysis of variance showed that FAL,FAH and CVRFA significantly (p<0.05) depend on N. In particular, FAL decreased (6%–11%) with N, whereas FAH (1.6%–2.5%) and CVRFA (4%–6.5%) increased with N.MDL,MDH and CVRMD did not significantly (p>0.05) depend on N. Unlike MD values, FA values significantly vary with N. It is noteworthy that the observed variation is opposite in low and high anisotropic regions. In clinical studies, the effect of N may represent a confounding variable for anisotropy measurements and the employment of DTI acquisition schemes with high N(>20) allows an increased CVR and a better visualization of white matter structures in FA maps. PACS number: 87.61. Tg, 82.56. Lz
The Training of Neuromodels for Machine Comprehension of Text. Brain2Text Algorithm

Nowadays, the Internet represents a vast informational space, growing exponentially and the problem of search for relevant data becomes essential as never before. The algorithm proposed in the article allows to perform natural language queries on content of the document and get comprehensive meaningful answers. The problem is partially solved for English as SQuAD contains enough data to learn on, but there is no such dataset in Russian, so the methods used by scientists now are not applicable to Russian. Brain2 framework allows to cope with the problem - it stands out for its ability to be applied on small datasets and does not require impressive computing power. The algorithm is illustrated on Sberbank of Russia Strategy's text and assumes the use of a neuromodel consisting of 65 mln synapses. The trained model is able to construct word-by-word answers to questions based on a given text. The existing limitations are its current inability to identify synonyms, pronoun relations and allegories. Nevertheless, the results of conducted experiments showed high capacity and generalisation ability of the suggested approach.
The unappreciated slowness of conventional tourism.

Most tourists are not consciously engaging in ‘slow travel’, but a number of travel behaviours displayed by conventional tourists can be interpreted as slow travel behaviour. Based on Danish tourists’ engagement with the distances they travel across to reach their holiday destination, this paper explores unintended slow travel behaviours displayed by these tourists. None of the tourists participating in this research were consciously doing ‘slow travel’, and yet some of their most valued holiday memories are linked to slow travel behaviours. Based on the analysis of these unintended slow travel behaviours, this paper will discuss the potential this insight might hold for promotion of slow travel. If unappreciated and unintentional slow travel behaviours could be utilised in the deliberate effort of encouraging more people to travel slow, ‘slow travel’ will be in a better position to become integrated into conventional travel behaviour.
Exciton–Exciton Annihilation in Mixed‐Phase Polyfluorene Films

Singlet–singlet annihilation is studied in polyfluorene (PFO) films containing different fractions of β‐phase chains using time‐resolved fluorescence. On a timescale of >15 ps after excitation, the results are fitted well by a time‐independent annihilation rate, which indicates that annihilation is controlled by 3D exciton diffusion. A time‐dependent annihilation rate is observed during the first 15 ps in the glassy phase and in the β‐phase rich films, which can be explained by the slowdown of exciton diffusion after excitons reach low‐energy sites. The annihilation rate in the mixed‐phase films increases with increasing fraction of β‐phase present, indicating enhanced exciton diffusion. The observed trend agrees well with a model of fully dispersedβ‐phase chromophores in the surrounding glassy phase with the exciton diffusion described using the line‐dipole approximation for an exciton wavefunction extending over 2.5 nm. The results indicate that glassy andβ‐phase chromophores are intimately mixed rather than clustered or phase‐separated.
Characterization of the Energetic Impact of Electrosprayed Nanodroplets on Inert Materials

The energetic bombardment of covalently bonded materials by electrosprayed nanodroplets causes sputtering, topographic changes and amorphization of the target's surface. The goal of this thesis is to investigate these phenomena using a variety of semiconductor materials and dielectric liquids. The electrosprays are characterized via time-of-flight spectrometry to determine the nanodroplet charge-to-mass ratio which, together with the acceleration voltage, yield the impact velocity, stagnation pressure, and kinetic energy of the projectiles. The damage caused by the beams on the surfaces of single-crystal targets such as Si, SiC, InAs, InP, Ge, GaAs, GaSb and GaN is characterized with different tools including a mechanical profilometer, an atomic force microscope, and scanning and transmission electron microscopy, measuring the sputtering yield (ejected atoms per projectile's molecule), sputtering rate, surface roughness, and the morphology of the surface affected by the beam. These figures of merit are quantified in terms of the projectile's size, molecular mass and kinetic energy. Nanodroplets are efficient sputtering projectiles, with maximum sputtering yields of 11.5 and 25.1 for the technological important but difficult to etch SiC and GaN. The maximum sputtering rates for SiC, GaN and GaSb are 720, 1750 and 2380nm/min. The surface roughness and sputtering yields typically increase with the projectile's kinetic energy for all targets, and exhibit sharp maxima for nanodroplets with high molecular mass. The very different sputtering by droplets that are macroscopically similar, and the strong dependence of the impact phenomenology on molecular mass, indicate that nanodroplet sputtering is intrinsically a molecular scale phenomenon, dominated by the transfer of energy under non equilibrium conditions, and hence not amenable to modeling with a continuum formulation. For the case of single-crystal silicon the influence of the projectile's velocity on amorphization is studied. The impacts of nanodroplets on a single-crystal silicon wafer at kinetic energies exceeding a threshold amorphatize a thin superficial layer, of thickness comparable to the droplet diameter. This thesis contributes to develop a new generation of energetic projectile sources in a previously unavailable particle size range, producing beams which can be electrostatically focused into submicrometric spots, similar to focused ion beams, or multiplexed for broad-beam batch fabrication.
Sensory Processing and Integration at the Carotid Body Tripartite Synapse: Neurotransmitter Functions and Effects of Chronic Hypoxia

Maintenance of homeostasis in the respiratory and cardiovascular systems depends on reflexes that are initiated at specialized peripheral chemoreceptors that sense changes in the chemical composition of arterial blood. In mammals, the bilaterally-paired carotid bodies (CBs) are the main peripheral chemoreceptor organs that are richly vascularized and are strategically located at the carotid bifurcation. The CBs contribute to the maintenance of O2, CO2/H+, and glucose homeostasis and have attracted much clinical interest because hyperactivity in these organs is associated with several pathophysiological conditions including sleep apnea, obstructive lung disease, heart failure, hypertension, and diabetes. In response to a decrease in O2 availability (hypoxia) and elevated CO2/H+ (acid hypercapnia), CB receptor type I (glomus) cells depolarize and release neurotransmitters that stimulate apposed chemoafferent nerve fibers. The central projections of those fibers in turn activate cardiorespiratory centers in the brainstem, leading to an increase in ventilation and sympathetic drive that helps restore blood PO2 and protect vital organs, e.g., the brain. Significant progress has been made in understanding how neurochemicals released from type I cells such as ATP, adenosine, dopamine, 5-HT, ACh, and angiotensin II help shape the CB afferent discharge during both normal and pathophysiological conditions. However, type I cells typically occur in clusters and in addition to their sensory innervation are ensheathed by the processes of neighboring glial-like, sustentacular type II cells. This morphological arrangement is reminiscent of a “tripartite synapse” and emerging evidence suggests that paracrine stimulation of type II cells by a variety of CB neurochemicals may trigger the release of “gliotransmitters” such as ATP via pannexin-1 channels. Further, recent data suggest novel mechanisms by which dopamine, acting via D2 receptors (D2R), may inhibit action potential firing at petrosal nerve endings. This review will update current ideas concerning the presynaptic and postsynaptic mechanisms that underlie chemosensory processing in the CB. Paracrine signaling pathways will be highlighted, and particularly those that allow the glial-like type II cells to participate in the integrated sensory response during exposures to chemostimuli, including acute and chronic hypoxia.
Direct stimulation of cytokines (IL-1 beta, TNF-alpha, IL-6, IL-2, IFN-gamma and GM-CSF) in whole blood: II. Application to rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an immune disease in which the pathological immune reaction is thought to be initiated by the presentation of an (auto) antigen or superantigen by MHC class II positive cells to CD4 T cells. These successive immunological events can be studied by the cytokines produced at the different stages. Cytokine secretion by stimulated cells in autologous diluted whole blood has allowed the study of the immune profile characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis. The pattern of RA patient whole blood cells cultured in autologous blood is characterized by hyperactivity of the mononuclear cells with high secretion of IL-1 beta, TNF-alpha and IL-6 and low production of IFN-gamma, in comparison with the normal (N) and osteoarthrosis (OA) populations. The IL-2 secretion pattern is unique, arising from production followed by consumption. This production-consumption turnover is the most elevated in the RA group. The T cells are indeed activated in rheumatoid arthritis but regulatory events suppress some of their functions. A correlation was found between the inflammatory proteins and mediators of cellular immunity and macrophagic function: IL-1 beta and the sedimentation rate; IL-6 and fibrinogen; TNF-alpha and the number of blood monocytes. The secretion of OA-stimulated whole blood cells was similar to RA for two monokines (overproduction of TNF-alpha and IL-6) and different for IL-1 beta, not different from normal in OA. Stimulated whole blood cell cytokine secretion profile from RA and OA groups, was the same as previously observed in synovial fluid. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)