Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selective-area GaAs growth using nitrogen passivation and scanning-tunneling-microscopy modification on a nanometer scale

A technique for the selective-area growth of GaAs on a nanometer scale is described. The technique comprises nitrogen (N)-passivation mask formation, scanning-tunneling-microscopy (STM) pattern modification, and metalorganic molecular-beam epitaxy. GaAs (001) surfaces are passivated with N radicals dissociated from N2 molecules and are modified by STM on a nanometer scale. GaAs nanostructures are then grown on the modified areas using trimethylgallium and tertiarybutylarsine. Uniform 6-nm-high and 50×50-nm2 dots were formed on 50×50-nm2 STM-modified areas. The advantage of the technique is that size-controlled nanostructures can be fabricated in specific positions and these nanostructures are free from contamination because all processes are performed in a vacuum.
A framework for CFD analysis of helicopter rotors in hover and forward flight

A framework is described and demonstrated for CFD analysis of helicopter rotors in hover and forward flight. Starting from the Navier–Stokes equations, the paper describes the periodic rotor blade motions required to trim the rotor in forward flight (blade flapping, blade lead‐lag and blade pitching) as well as the required mesh deformation. Throughout, the rotor blades are assumed to be rigid and the rotor to be fully articulated with separate hinges for each blade. The employed method allows for rotors with different numbers of blades and with various rotor hub layouts to be analysed. This method is then combined with a novel grid deformation strategy which preserves the quality of multi‐block structured, body‐fitted grids around the blades. The coupling of the CFD method with a rotor trimming approach is also described and implemented. The complete framework is validated for hovering and forward flying rotors and comparisons are made against available experimental data. Finally, suggestions for further development are put forward. For all cases, results were in good agreement with experiments and rapid convergence has been obtained. Comparisons between the present grid deformation method and transfinite interpolation were made highlighting the advantages of the current approach. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Augmented Reality-Assisted Ultrasound Breast Biopsy

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in the world and the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related death. Treatment is effective in the early stages. Thus, a need to screen considerable portions of the population is crucial. When the screening procedure uncovers a suspect lesion, a biopsy is performed to assess its potential for malignancy. This procedure is usually performed using real-time Ultrasound (US) imaging. This work proposes a visualization system for US breast biopsy. It consists of an application running on AR glasses that interact with a computer application. The AR glasses track the position of QR codes mounted on an US probe and a biopsy needle. US images are shown in the user’s field of view with enhanced lesion visualization and needle trajectory. To validate the system, latency of the transmission of US images was evaluated. Usability assessment compared our proposed prototype with a traditional approach with different users. It showed that needle alignment was more precise, with 92.67 ± 2.32° in our prototype versus 89.99 ± 37.49° in a traditional system. The users also reached the lesion more accurately. Overall, the proposed solution presents promising results, and the use of AR glasses as a tracking and visualization device exhibited good performance.
In the Making and Unmaking of Statehood. An Exploration of how the State and Petroleum Corporations Negotiate over the Generation of Socio-economic Development in Tanzania

Abstract This article explores how the state and transnational oil and gas corporations negotiate over socio-economic development in Tanzania. It focuses on how public–private and local–global boundaries are in constant reconfiguration between the actors. The article responds to two shortcomings in previous literature on corporate social responsibility, governments and development. First, state agency and power in the global South have been overlooked when the prevailing focus of research has been on community–business relations. Secondly, when states have been addressed, they have commonly been understood either as deviations from a Weberian, ‘modern’ state or as allied with corporate interests. This article departs from these approaches and analyses state–business relations through a focus on discourses and practices that make and unmake statehood. Building on the ‘negotiating statehood’ framework, the analysis focuses on the actors, repertoires, resources and modes of governance in the negotiation over development. The analysis shows how corporate-driven development becomes deeply entangled in the making of statehood, even if the corporate approach revolves around unmaking and improving statehood.
Multifunctional Profiling of Moringa oleifera Leaf Extracts for Topical Application: A Comparative Study of Different Collection Time

This research investigated plant extracts as a source of potential new actives in the nutritional, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical fields. Moringa oleifera, which is extensively known for its nutritional properties, has been investigated in this work by preparation, characterization, and evaluation of the antioxidant (FRAP, DPPH, ORAC, and PCL test), antifungal, photoprotective, and cytotoxicity profile against human melanoma Colo38 cell line of two different extracts (hydroalcoholic and methanolic) and one infusion of dry leaves collected from Paraguay in four distinct harvest times (February, March, April, and May 2017). The outcomes of this study highlight Moringa oleifera as a potential ally to counteract skin aging and oxidative stress, as indicated by the favorable antioxidant profile of the extracts and infusions of Paraguay, which was, in all cases, superior to that provided by the same plant species when collected from Senegal. Moreover, some samples were more efficient in preventing the photodegradation of UVA filter butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane (Avobenzone) compared to commercial filters, thus suggesting an interesting future role as natural additives in sunscreens.
Indoor 2D Positioning Method for Mobile Robots Based on the Fusion of RSSI and Magnetometer Fingerprints

Received signal strength indicator (RSSI)-based fingerprinting is a widely used technique for indoor localization, but these methods suffer from high error rates due to various reflections, interferences, and noises. The use of disturbances in the magnetic field in indoor localization methods has gained increasing attention in recent years, since this technology provides stable measurements with low random fluctuations. In this paper, a novel fingerprinting-based indoor 2D positioning method, which utilizes the fusion of RSSI and magnetometer measurements, is proposed for mobile robots. The method applies multilayer perceptron (MLP) feedforward neural networks to determine the 2D position, based on both the magnetometer data and the RSSI values measured between the mobile unit and anchor nodes. The magnetic field strength is measured on the mobile node, and it provides information about the disturbance levels in the given position. The proposed method is validated using data collected in two realistic indoor scenarios with multiple static objects. The magnetic field measurements are examined in three different combinations, i.e., the measurements of the three sensor axes are tested together, the magnetic field magnitude is used alone, and the Z-axis-based measurements are used together with the magnitude in the X-Y plane. The obtained results show that significant improvement can be achieved by fusing the two data types in scenarios where the magnetic field has high variance. The achieved results show that the improvement can be above 35% compared to results obtained by utilizing only RSSI or magnetic sensor data.
High Co-Expression of PDCD1/TIGIT/CD47/KIR3DL2 in Bone Marrow Is Associated with Poor Prognosis for Patients with Myelodysplastic Syndrome

Cellular immune disorder is a common characteristic of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Abnormal natural killer (NK) cell function has been reported in MDS patients, and this is closely related to disease progression and poor prognosis. However, little is known about the association between the abnormal immune checkpoint (IC) that results in abnormal immune NK cell function and the prognosis of MDS. In this study, RNA-sequencing data from 80 patients in the GSE114922 dataset and bone marrow (BM) samples from 46 patients with MDS in our clinical center were used for overall survival (OS) analysis and validation. We found that the NK cell-related IC genes PDCD1, TIGIT, CD47, and KIR3DL2 had higher expression and correlated with poor OS for MDS patients. High expression of PDCD1 or TIGIT was significantly associated with poor OS for MDS patients younger than 60 years of age. Moreover, co-expression of PDCD1 and TIGIT had the greatest contribution to OS prediction. Interestingly, PDCD1, TIGIT, CD47, and KIR3DL2 and risk stratification based on the Revised International Prognostic Scoring System were used to construct a nomogram model, which could visually predict the 1-, 2-, and 3-year survival rates of MDS patients. In summary, high expression of IC receptors in the BM of MDS patients was associated with poor OS. The co-expression patterns of PDCD1, TIGIT, CD47, and KIR3DL2 might provide novel insights into designing combined targeted therapies for MDS.
Strategy and Core Cognitive Training Effects on Working Memory Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT The field of cognitive training (CT) has been researched for over a century. However, there is still a debate regarding its ability to produce cognitive improvement, especially in working memory (WM) indices. This meta-analysis examined whether there is an advantage in training gains by comparing the results of two specific WM training approaches, Core Training (CRT) and Strategy Training (ST). Meta-analytic techniques were used to summarize 28 independent effect sizes from 24 studies with 1521 subjects, calculated only from studies that compared both training approaches in a single study. We found moderate effect sizes of trained tasks improvement with a clear advantage to ST over CRT, from which younger trainees benefitted the most. However, this advantage has almost disappeared for untrained tasks due to the limited improvement each approach produced on its own.
An efficient artificial compressibility (AC) scheme based on the characteristic based split (CBS) method for incompressible flows

In this paper, an artificial compressibility scheme using the finite element method is introduced. 2002 Zienkiewicz Silver Medal and Prize winning paper. The multi‐purpose CBS scheme is implemented in its fully explicit form to solve incompressible fluid dynamics problems. It is important to note that the scheme developed here includes split and velocity correction. The proposed method takes advantage of good features from both velocity correction and standard artificial compressibility schemes. Unlike many other artificial compressibility schemes, the proposed one works on a variety of grids and gives results for a wide range of Reynold's numbers. The paper presents some bench mark two‐ and three‐dimensional steady and unsteady incompressible flow solutions obtained from the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Self-assembly of colloidal spheres on patterned substrates

We report here on the self-assembly of polystyrene colloidal spheres on patterned substrates. The substrate was a grating with a periodic one-dimensional-height profile. The two-dimensional (2D) arrays of colloidal spheres were obtained by the convective self-assembly method. It is shown that these structures strongly depend on the ratio between the diameter of the sphere (d) and the period of the grating (p) (x=d/p). When 1<x<1.15, and 1.15<x<2, the 2D array showed a centered-rectangular symmetry. For x=1.15 and 2, the ordered 2D array had a hexagonal symmetry structure. The angle between the grating groove direction and the crystal lattice vector (θ) is given by θ=sin−1(d/p). It is suggested that the variety of the 2D structures are formed by the capillary forces and the self-shadowing effects during the drying process.
A new approach to power network synthesis

The impact of reliability on operation and cost of power systems has become a very important concept with the growth of energy needs. Systems' planners have become increasingly interested in the following two questions: how reliable are the new systems? and how to plan for reliability in the existing systems in the future? The reliability and cost of these systems are important and are largely determined by network topology. Network topology consists of nodes and the links between nodes. The selection of optimal network topology is an NP-hard combinatorial problem so that the classical enumeration-based methods grow exponentially with network size. In this paper, a rule based genetic algorithm (RBGA) is presented to solve the problem of power network synthesis considering cost and reliability. The algorithm is computationally efficient and highly effective on a large search space of test problems. Illustrative examples are included.
Construction of a New MgB2 Coating System for 1.3-GHz Superconducting RF Cavities at LANL

After many years of evaluating MgB2 films prepared with various techniques for the application to superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities, we have decided to build a system to coat full-size 1.3-GHz elliptical cavities. This paper describes the design and construction of the system. Additionally, we briefly describe experimental results with a small system and first tests with the new large system. We were able to obtain superconducting samples with a Tc of up to 38 K with the small system, but we have not been able to get any superconducting samples with the new system yet.
Minority Women Empowerment through Government and Non-Government Organization

Indian womenfolk are stressed for equivalence and the taking in a society that still bursts men at the high point of social hierarchy. Women may become more independent, exercise their sovereign right to manage resources, and establish themselves via the process of empowerment. The government of India has taken passable creativity to help females’ empowerment by presenting diverse minority schemes and policies, which not only advance the social status of the female population but also as a key to different troubles like maternal mortality, female infanticides, and female foeticide. In order to empower women, administration governments (NGOs) and self-help groups (SHG) provide vocational training, basic education, coaching for self-employment, legal assistance, and safety for women as well as programs for self-awareness. As a result, the advancement of women in society is a primary concern for these people.
A Multi-Source Transfer Joint Matching Method for Inter-Subject Motor Imagery Decoding

Individual differences among different subjects pose a great challenge to motor imagery (MI) decoding. Multi-source transfer learning (MSTL) is one of the most promising ways to reduce individual differences, which can utilize rich information and align the data distribution among different subjects. However, most MSTL methods in MI-BCI combine all data in the source subjects into a single mixed domain, which will ignore the effect of important samples and the large differences in multiple source subjects. To address these issues, we introduce transfer joint matching and improve it to multi-source transfer joint matching (MSTJM) and weighted MSTJM (wMSTJM). Different from previous MSTL methods in MI, our methods align the data distribution for each pair of subjects, and then integrate the results by decision fusion. Besides that, we design an inter-subject MI decoding framework to verify the effectiveness of these two MSTL algorithms. It mainly consists of three modules: covariance matrix centroid alignment in the Riemannian space, source selection in the Euclidean space after tangent space mapping to reduce negative transfer and computation overhead, and further distribution alignment by MSTJM or wMSTJM. The superiority of this framework is verified on two common public MI datasets from BCI competition IV. The average classification accuracy of the MSTJM and wMSTJ methods outperformed other state-of-the-art methods by at least 4.24% and 2.62% respectively. It’s promising to advance the practical applications of MI-BCI.
Land Surface Model Calibration Using Satellite Remote Sensing Data

Satellite remote sensing provides a unique opportunity for calibrating land surface models due to their direct measurements of various hydrological variables as well as extensive spatial and temporal coverage. This study aims to apply terrestrial water storage (TWS) estimated from the gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) mission as well as soil moisture products from advanced microwave scanning radiometer–earth observing system (AMSR-E) to calibrate a land surface model using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. For this purpose, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA) is used to improve the model’s parameters. The calibration is carried out for the period of two years 2003 and 2010 (calibration period) in Australia, and the impact is further monitored over 2011 (forecasting period). A new combined objective function based on the observations’ uncertainty is developed to efficiently improve the model parameters for a consistent and reliable forecasting skill. According to the evaluation of the results against independent measurements, it is found that the calibrated model parameters lead to better model simulations both in the calibration and forecasting period.
Assessment of Intra-Oral Repair Systems for Veneered Zirconia and Zirconia Only

The aim of this study was to compare bond strength resin composites to porcelain laminate veneers in the indirect repair method to composite resins used in the direct repair method for cases of porcelain veneer fracture of zirconia-based fixed dental prostheses. In the study, the groups were formed with different percentages of areas to be repaired to mimic porcelain fractures in the mouth. The experimental group of veneered zirconia were as follows: Group A = 100% Zr surface; Group B = 70% Zr, 30% porcelain surface; Group C = 50% Zr, 50% porcelain surface; Group D = 30% Zr, 70% porcelain surface; Group E = 100% porcelain surface. The repairs of the specimens were made using composite resin systems in half of the groups and using porcelain laminate veneers in the other half. Specimens were embedded in acrylic blocks before surface treatments and repairs were applied. After surface conditioning, laminate veneers were applied to the first half of the groups, and composite repair systems were applied to the second half of the groups. After all specimens were aged by thermal cycling, their bond strength values were measured using a Universal Testing Machine, and the obtained data were recorded. The specimens were examined with a stereomicroscope and classified according to failure types (adhesive/cohesive/mixed). Bond strength values were evaluated based on independent-samples t-test statistics. According to the comparisons among the groups, the bond strength of the indirect repairs made with the laminate material was higher than the bond strength of the repairs made with the composite. There was a statistically significant difference in favor of the indirect repair groups among all groups except for Group C. The highest bond strength was found in Group A in the indirect repair method, while the lowest bond was found in the direct repair method in Group E. Adhesive failure was mostly seen in the groups that were repaired with the composite.
Quasilinear theory of interchange modes in a closed field line configuration

Two important issues for any magnetic fusion configuration are the maximum achievable values of β and energy confinement time when ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes are excited. It is well known that the excitation of the MHD unstable modes typically can lead to violent restructuring of the plasma profiles. The particle and energy transport associated with these modes normally dominates all other transport mechanisms and can lead to plasma disruptions and a rapid loss of energy. This paper analytically investigates the transport of particle density, energy, and magnetic field due to the ideal MHD interchange mode in a closed-line system using the quasilinear approximation. The transport equations are derived for a static plasma in a hardcore Z-pinch configuration and generalized to an arbitrary axisymmetric toroidal closed poloidal field line configuration. It is shown that violation of the marginal stability criterion leads to rapid quasilinear transport that drives the pressure profile back to its m.
Fabrication of ambipolar field-effect transistor device with heterostructure of C60 and pentacene

Ambipolar field-effect transistor (FET) device was fabricated with heterostructure of thin films of C60 and pentacene. Three types of device structures in the C60∕pentacene heterostructure FET device were studied in order to realize the best ambipolar properties. In the middle-contact type FET device of C60 and pentacene, the mobility μ in p-channel operation was estimated to be 6.8×10−2cm2V−1s−1, while the μ in n-channel operation was 1.3×10−3cm2V−1s−1. This ambipolar FET device is available for a practical building-block to form CMOS integrated circuits with low-power consumption, good-noise margins, and ease of design.
‘Invested’ partnerships as key to high quality apprenticeship programmes as evidenced in on and off the job training

ABSTRACT In England, a new model of apprenticeship was initiated in whose stated intention was to ‘put employers in the driving seat’. Regulation of the new model was focused on the mandatory 20% of apprentices’ work time allocated to off-the-job training offered by colleges and other training providers. Based on case studies of employers and training providers across a range of industry sectors, this paper brings together data from two projects researching the on-the-job and off-the-job training elements of the new model. Three contrasting modes of apprenticeship emerged: developing apprentices to become experts in an industry-wide community of practice; apprenticeship as staff development; and apprenticeship as income stream. These resulted from different forms of employer-provider collaboration, enabled through a marketized landscape of training providers, and flexibility in regulations that requires very little of employers. Utilising Fuller and Unwin’s work on expansive and restrictive environments, we found that that the new model supports a range of apprenticeships some being excellent but also others that are not worthy of the me. The paper concludes that quality apprenticeships tended to be in traditional industries and relied on strong partnerships between employers and training providers that worked against the grain of competitive market relations.