Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural relaxation dynamics of a silicate glass probed by refractive index and ionic conductivity

Relaxation occurs spontaneously in all glasses and is a fundamental step of important technological processes, such as annealing, crystal nucleation, and chemical strengthening by ion exchange. Despite extensive studies over the past decades, there are still conflicting results on whether the kinetics of structural relaxation depends on the analyzed property. Thus, in this study, we used a lithium disilicate glass as a model composition to determine the structural relaxation kinetics during physical aging experiments by measuring the time evolution of the refractive index and ionic conductivity down to 35 K below the initial fictive temperature. In all cases, variations in these properties were adequate to capture the structural changes throughout the aging experiments. At each temperature, the experimental relaxation data fit quite well with the classical stretched exponential relation. We also found that the relaxation process starts faster when probed by ionic conductivity than by refractive index; however, they show similar average relaxation times. These very small structural rearrangements are always the same, but ionic conductivity changes faster than refractive index at the beginning of the process. Our comprehensive results strongly indicate that relaxation dynamics is indeed dependent on the analyzed property.
False Selection Rate Methods in the Cox Proportional Hazards Model

CHEN, YUN. False Selection Rate Methods in the Cox Proportional Hazards Model. (Under the direction of Dr. Dennis D. Boos and Dr. Leonard A. Stefanski.) Variable selection methods are useful for distinguishing informative variables from uninformative variables. Many variable selection methods have been studied in linear regression models. Some methods have been extended to the Cox proportional hazards model based on the partial likelihood function. The False Selection Rate (FSR) variable selection method introduced by Wu, Boos and Stefanski (2006) is a new method applied to forward selection that controls the false selection rate of uninformative variables in the model by adding a number of phony variables to the original variables and calculating the proportions of the phony variables selected. In this work, we adapt the False Selection Rate procedure with the forward selection method (Forward-FSR) to the Cox proportional hazards model. In addition, we propose a new approach to estimate the tuning parameters in the penalty functions of the LASSO and the SCAD methods based on the False Selection Rate variable selection criterion. Under the Cox proportional hazards model, the three FSR methods, Forward-FSR, LASSO-FSR, and SCAD-FSR, are compared to forward selection with information criteria, to the LASSO and to the SCAD methods in simulation studies. False Selection Rate Methods in the Cox Proportional Hazards Model
Application of plant specialized metabolites to modulate soil microbiota

Plant specialized metabolites (PSMs) are considerably diverse compounds with multifaceted roles in the adaptation of plants to various abiotic and biotic stresses. PSMs are frequently secreted into the rhizosphere, a small region around the roots, where they facilitate interactions between plants and soil microorganisms. PSMs shape the host-specific rhizosphere microbial communities that potentially influence plant growth and tolerance to adverse conditions. Plant mutants defective in PSM biosynthesis contribute to reveal the roles of each PSM in plant–microbiota interactions in the rhizosphere. Recently, various approaches have been used to directly supply PSMs to soil by in vitro methods or through addition in pots with plants. This review focuses on the feasibility of the direct PSM application methods to reveal rhizospheric plant–microbiota interactions and discusses the possibility of applying the knowledge gained to future engineering of rhizospheric traits.
Online Rail Surface Inspection Utilizing Spatial Consistency and Continuity

Rail surface inspection using visual inspection system is an important part of railway maintenance. However, accurate and efficient identification of possible defects remains challenging. This paper proposes a background-oriented defect inspector (BODI) to improve defect detection by considering specified characteristics of the track during inspection. Reformulating the inspection task in this manner offers a new way to model rail surface images. More specifically, BODI features a random sampling stage to obtain a compact background representation without any prior information. A sufficient number of random selections generates adequate and diverse background statistics, and defect-determination and a fusion of procedures then determine whether current pixel belongs to the background. Finally, a background update mechanism and parallelism ensure real-time applicability. The proposed BODI is evaluated on a working railway line. The experimental results demonstrate that it outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Quality of home public service in a drinking water, cleaning and sewage company in the south Colombian region

La presente investigación evalúa la calidad de servicio (CS) de los servicios de agua potable, aseo y alcantarillado que presta una empresa se servicios públicos en una región periférica de Colombia. El estudio es cuantitativo, y se realiza bajo el método deductivo y de tipo descriptivo. Durante la investigación se adapta la escala SERVPERF propuesta por Cronin y Taylor (1994) para la construcción del instrumento. En total, se realizaron y procesaron 702 encuestas según los estratos socioeconómicos de las viviendas en la ciudad. Los resultados indican que la escala obtenida es un instrumento fiable y válido para medir la calidad percibida (Alfa de Cronbach de 0,89); y que la encuesta es válida en cuanto a contenido, pragmática y concepto, lo que explica el 51,60% de la varianza a través de seis factores, a saber: Confiabilidad (30,50%), Empatía (7,50%), Facilidades (4,10%), Instalaciones I (4,00%), Capacidad de Respuesta (2,80%), e Instalaciones II (2,70%).
Brand Image Benefit And Satisfaction: Roles of Symbolic, Functional, Social, And Experiential Benefits

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of brand image benefits of symbolic, functional, social, and experiential on the overall satisfaction. A survey using 400 respondents is used to measure these effects. The theoretical and statistical relationship among these constructs are developed and verified by Smart Partial Least square (PLS) statistical software. Result show that symbolic, experiental, and function benefit are significant predictor of overall satisfaction, with experiential benefit as the most important followed by functional benefits. This study provides important implications on marketing and brand positioning.
Nonconstant periodic solutions with any fixed energy for singular Hamiltonian systems

In the past years, there were very few works on the existence of nonconstant periodic solutions with fixed energy of singular second-order Hamiltonian systems, and now we attempt to ingeniously use Ekeland's variational principle to prove the existence of nonconstant periodic solutions with any fixed energy for singular second-order Hamiltonian systems, and our results greatly generalize some well known results such as [ 1 ,Theorem 3.6]. Moreover, we exhibit two simple and instructive singular potential examples to make our result more clear, which have not been solved by known results.
Serotype and antimicrobial resistance of Salmonella from poultry meats in 2021 in Shanghai, China

ABSTRACT Salmonella is a major cause of food poisoning, and its infection and antimicrobial resistance vary regionally due to different sanitary standards and the use of antimicrobials. The aim of this study is to evaluate the microbiological contamination and antimicrobial resistance of Salmonella in Shanghai, providing references for supervision over food safety and clinical treatment. This study analysed the distribution of serotypes, the distribution of antimicrobial resistance in different poultry meats and serotype of Salmonella, the correlation between different antimicrobial resistance, and multiple drug resistance (MDR) of 139 strains of Salmonella from poultry meats. The results showed that the proportion of Salmonella detected in pigeons was high, which could cause severe diseases to humans. The most common resistance was observed to TET (about 60%), and resistance was even found to IPM. Resistance to two or more antimicrobials was accounted for 75.5%, indicating a wide spreading MDR.
Extracting body surface dimensions from top-view images of pigs

Continuous live weight and carcass traits estimation are important for the pig production and breeding industry. It is widely known that top-view images of a pig’s body (excluding its head and neck) reveal surface dimension parameters, which are correlated with live weight and carcass traits. However, because a pig is not constrained when an image is captured, the body does not always have a straight posture. This creates a big challenge when extracting the body surface dimension parameters, and consequently the live weight and carcass traits estimation has a high level of uncertainty. The primary goal of this study is to propose an algorithm to automatically extract pig body surface dimension parameters, with a better accuracy, from top-view pig images. Firstly, the backbone line of a pig was extracted. Secondly, lengths of line segments perpendicular to the backbone line were calculated, and then feature points on the pig’s contour line were extracted based on the lengths variation of the perpendicular line segments. Thirdly, the head and neck of the pig were removed from the pig’s contour by an ellipse. Finally, four length and one area parameters were calculated. The proposed algorithm was implemented in Matlab® (R2012b) and applied to 126 depth images of pigs. Taking the results of the manual labeling tool as the gold standard, the length and area parameters could be obtained by the proposed algorithm with an accuracy of 97.71% (SE=1.64%) and 97.06% (SE=1.82%), respectively. These parameters can be used to improve pig live weight and carcass traits estimation accuracy in the future work. Keywords: body surface dimension, image analysis, skeleton, triangulated network, ellipse fitting DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe. 20181105.4054 Citation: Lu M Z, Norton T, Youssef A, Radojkovic N, Fernandez A P, Berckmans D. Extracting body surface dimensions from top-view images of pigs. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2018; 11(5): 182–191.
Formation and break-up of rigid agglomerates in turbulent channel and pipe flows

We have developed and applied an Eulerian–Lagrangian model for the transport, formation, break-up, deposition and re-entrainment of particle agglomerates. In this paper, we focus on agglomeration and break-up. Simulations were carried out to investigate what changes in the turbulent flow are inflicted by the presence of the agglomerates. Also, the dependence of the properties of the agglomerates on the Reynolds number of the flow and on the strength of the bonds between the primary particles is studied. The presence of the agglomerates attenuates the turbulence and thereby lowers the Reynolds stresses. As a result, the flow rate increases at constant pressure drop when agglomerates are formed (up to a certain dimension). If the agglomerates surpass this dimension, long-distance viscosity effects become dominant and a flow rate decrease occurs. The characteristics of the agglomerates are largely insensitive to the Reynolds number, provided the flow is turbulent. The agglomerates have an open and porous structure, and a fractal dimension of 1.8–2.3. Their mean mass scales exponentially with the strength of the internal bonds. Contrary to assumptions that are typically made in engineering models in the literature, agglomerates do not preferentially break into two fragments of similar size.
Sliding Mode Control Strategy for Solar Charging of High Energy Lithium Batteries

Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries have been widely used in Electric vehicle (EV) and several other applications for their lightness and high performance. However, they imply a strict charging procedure. When a photovoltaic (PV) energy source is used, the charging task becomes more sensitive and necessitates a robust control strategy. In fact, the photovoltaic generator (PVG) is a highly nonlinear current source and depends on climatic variations. In this paper, a sliding mode control (SMC) strategy for solar charging of a high energy Li-Ion battery is presented. The control scheme is based on a cascaded control of a Current Fed (CF) synchronous buck converter powered with a PVG. It allows both Maximum Power Point tracking (MPPT) and output voltage or current regulation of the converter. The regulation is principally done by using the (PV) voltage as a control parameter. A charging algorithm providing the suitable PV reference voltage to the SM controller was proposed. Study and stability analysis of the proposed SMC were also included. The main feature of the proposed SMC is to include the PV reference voltage information in both the sliding surface, and in the equivalent control expression using the integral function. The validity of the control strategy was demonstrated through simulations under different radiation levels in both MPPT and constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) charging modes.
Análise cienciométrica de pesquisas de enfermagem sobre fratura de quadril: tendências, tópicos e perfis

Abstract Objective: Bibliometrics, scientometrics and other related methodologies can be used to reveal the basic patterns, links to different subjects and areas, and demographic elements of a particular topic within the literature. The aim of this study is to reveal the patterns and trends in nursing research on hip fracture. Methods: This descriptive exploratory study can be classified in methodologies of bibliometrics, scientometrics and business intelligence. The Web of Science was the main data source. Related articles published between 1990 and 2020 were considered. In addition to tables, text analytics, and network models used in bibliometric mapping, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) enriched by business intelligence was utilized in the analysis of abstract data.
Pattern classification method

For assigning a test pattern to the class of the default class set and calculates the confidence interval of the class membership probability based and class membership probability for the test pattern, the number of training patterns in the neighborhood of the test pattern in the feature space. The number of training patterns in the neighborhood of the test pattern, the convolution of the probability density function of the training patterns using a Gaussian smoothing function centered on the test pattern is obtained by calculation. In this calculation, the probability density function of the training patterns is represented as a mixture of Gaussian functions. Convolution of mixed smooth function and Gaussian function can be expressed analytically.
Symmetry for an integral system with general nonlinearity

In this paper, we study the radial symmetry of the solution to the following system of integral form: \begin{document}$\left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{l}}{{u_i}(x) = \int_{{{\bf{R}}^n}} {\frac{1}{{|x - y{|^{n - \alpha }}}}} {f_i}(u(y))dy,\;\;x \in {{\bf{R}}^n},\;\;i = 1, \cdots ,m,}\\{0 Here \begin{document}$f_i(s)∈ C^1(\mathbf{R^m_+})\bigcap$\end{document} \begin{document}$ C^0(\mathbf{\overline{R^m_+}})$\end{document} \begin{document}$(i = 1,2,···,m)$\end{document} are real-valued functions, nonnegative and monotone nondecreasing with respect to the variables \begin{document}$s_1$\end{document} , \begin{document}$s_2$\end{document} , \begin{document}$···$\end{document} , \begin{document}$s_m$\end{document} . We show that the nonnegative solution \begin{document}$u = (u_1,u_2,···,u_m)$\end{document} is radially symmetric in the general condition that \begin{document}$f_i$\end{document} satisfies monotonicity condition which contains the critical and subcritical homogeneous degree as special cases. The main technique we use is the method of moving planes in an integral form. Due to our condition here is more general, the more subtle method is needed to deal with this difficulty.
Experimental constraint on the radial mode number of the geodesic acoustic mode from multi-point Langmuir probe measurements in MAST Ohmic plasma

Reciprocating Mach probe data is used to estimate the radial wave number of oscillatory zonal flows in Ohmic MAST plasma. An intermittent ∼10 kHz mode, previously identified as a geodesic acoustic mode (GAM), is detected in the wavelet decomposition and windowed spectra of plasma potential fluctuations of the MAST tokamak edge plasma. Two-points phase differencing technique is then applied to probe pins with radial and poloidal separations giving an estimate of the radial wave number at the desired range of frequencies. The phase velocity of propagation and an estimate of the shearing rate of the GAM is obtained. We measure the radial mode number range kr ≈ 0.3–1.0 cm−1 and a radial propagation speed of up to ∼1 km s−1. The GAM shearing rate is an order of magnitude smaller than the growth rate of drift-like turbulence. These results are consistent with the estimates obtained previously from multi-fluid numerical simulations of GAM in MAST.
Timing of Annual Output Calibration of Radiotherapy Linear Accelerators

The output of radiotherapy Linear Accelerators (Linacs) is calibrated following national or international protocols like TG-51 by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine [1] or TRS-398 by the International Atomic Energy Agency [2], annually on or before the anniversary date of the commissioning of each Linac.
A comparison between the hierarchical clustering methods for postgraduate students in Iraqi universities for the year 2019-2020 using the cophenetic and delta correlation coefficients

The educational sector is one of the important sectors in the world, and it is considered one of the means of community development. In addition, it is one of the means of making the country’s renaissance and development because it represents the factory of thinking minds that make change. There is no doubt that this sector is the same as any other sector. The deficit in the studied scientific planning has been prolonged, which led to its deterioration, and the problems of education remain diverse and inherited from previous time periods, where the hierarchical cluster analysis was used on postgraduate students in universities in Iraq, except for Kurdistan region, and the number of universities that were included in the study was (30) universities. In the whole of Iraq for the year 2020, when using the comparison measures the Cophenetic Correlation Coefficient (CCC) and the Coefficient Delta (DC), it was found that the Complete Linkage Method is the best among the hierarchical methods, as the value of (CCC) is 0.952061, and the value of (DC(0.1)) it is 0.288973, and in the case (DC(0.5)) it is 0.26877, then followed by Median method, Ward's method and finally Single Linage Method.
Post-Operative Physical Therapy Following Cervical Spine Surgery: Analysis of Patient-Reported Outcomes

Introduction Post-operative physical therapy (PT) following anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) surgery is often performed to improve a patient's functional ability and reduce neck pain. However, current literature evaluating the benefits of post-operative PT using patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is limited and remains inconclusive. Here we compare post-operative improvement between patients who did and did not undergo formal PT after ACDF using Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) scores. Methods A retrospective observational study examining patients who underwent one- or two-level primary ACDF or cervical disc replacement (CDR) at an academic orthopedic hospital and who had PROMIS scores recorded pre-operatively and through two-year follow-up. Patients were stratified according to whether or not they attended formal postoperative PT. PROMIS scores and patient demographics were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test, Fisher’s exact test, chi-square test of independence, and Student’s t-test within and between cohorts. Results Two hundred and twenty patients were identified. Demographic differences between PT and no PT groups include age (PT 54.1 vs. no PT 49.5, p=0.005) and BMI (PT 28.1 vs. no PT 29.8, p=0.028). The only significant difference in post-operative PROMIS scores was in physical health scores at three months post-operatively (no PT 43.9 vs. PT 39.1, p=0.008). Physical health scores improved from baseline to one-year follow-up in both cohorts (PT +3.5, p=0.025; no PT +6.6, p=0.008). There were no significant differences when comparing improvements in physical health scores between groups at six months and one year. Conclusion In conclusion, there was no significance to support the benefits of post-operative PT as measured by PROMIS scores. No significant differences in PROMIS were observed between groups from pre-operative baseline scores to six-month and one-year follow-ups.
Supermatrix analyses reveal the importance of outgroup, gene and taxon sampling in Onosma (Boraginaceae) phylogenetics

Tribe Lithospermeae (Boraginaceae) consists of ca. 26 genera and 470 species, in which Onosma constitutes approximately one third of the species (~150). Although the tribe is strongly supported as monophyletic, both generic and species boundaries remain ambiguous. Among them, not only the phylogenetic position of Eastern Asian Onosma species, but also the taxonomic limits of the genus remain unclear. Whether Eastern Asian Onosma is monophyletic, or the genus should be widened to include Maharanga, and maybe Cystostemon, are still open questions. For these reasons, I performed 16 phylogenetic analyses with different taxon coverages, alignments, gene regions and outgroups, with up to 746 taxa of tribe Lithospermeae and with five DNA regions, using data from GenBank. The results, with the widest taxon coverage to date, show that while genus Onosma is not monophyletic in any of the analyses, the phylogenetic relationships among Onosma s.s. , Eastern Asian Onosma, Maharanga and Cystostemon differ among analyses. However, the approximately unbiased (AU) test showed that the topology (((Eastern Asian Onosma+Maharanga) Cystostemon) Onosma s.s. ) is overwhelmingly supported. Therefore, the current study highlights the importance of taxon, gene and outgroup sampling in Onosma phylogenetics.
Focussed electron beam induced deposition of platinum plasmonic antennae

The direct write of photonic elements onto substrates presents opportunities for rapid prototyping and novel sensing architectures in domains inaccessible to traditional lithography. In particular, focussed electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) of platinum is a convenient technology for such direct-write applications with the advantage of relatively controlled deposition parameters and sub-10 nm resolution. One issue for FEBID of platinum is that the precursor gas contains a relatively high carbon content, which in turn leads to carbonaceous deposits in the final structure. Here we explore the creation of plasmonic nanoantennae using FEBID platinum. We compare as-deposited and annealed antenna with heights of 40 nm and 56 nm, showing the effect of annealing on the carbon concentration and hence the optical properties. These results are compared with modelling using Mie scattering theory. Our results show that FEBID platinum is a useful material for the direct-write of plasmonic nanoantenna.