Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microwave Assisted Acid Digestion of Siliceous and Organically Based Matrices 1.0 Scope and Application

1.1 This method is applicable to the microwave assisted acid digestion of siliceous matrices, and organic matrices and other complex matrices. If a total decomposition analysis (relative to the target analyte list) is required, the following matrices can be digested: ashes, biological tissues, oils, oil contaminated soils, sediments, sludges, and soils. This method is applicable for the following elements: Aluminum Cadmium Iron Molybdenum Sodium Antimony Calcium Lead Nickel Strontium Arsenic Chromium Magnesium Potassium Thallium Boron Cobalt Manganese Selenium Vanadium Barium Copper Mercury Silver Zinc Beryllium Other elements and matrices may be analyzed by this method if performance is demonstrated for the analyte of interest, in the matrices of interest, at the concentration levels of interest (see Sec. 8.0). Note: This technique is not appropriate for regulatory applications that require the use of leachate preparations (i. This method is appropriate for those applications requiring a total decomposition for research purposes (i.e., geological studies, mass balances, analysis of Standard Reference Materials) or in response to a regulation that requires total sample decomposition. 1.2 This method is provided as a rapid multi-element, microwave assisted acid digestion prior to analysis protocol so that decisions can be made about the site or material. Digests and alternative procedures produced by the method are suitable for analysis by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FLAA), cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry (CVAA), graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAA), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and other analytical elemental analysis techniques where applicable. Due to the rapid advances in microwave technology, consult your manufacturer's recommended instructions for guidance on their microwave digestion system and refer to this manual's "Disclaimer" when conducting analyses using Method 3052. 1.3 The goal of this method is total sample decomposition and with judicious choice of acid combinations this is achievable for most matrices (see Sec. 3.2). Selection of reagents which give the highest recoveries for the target analytes is considered the optimum method condition.
A compact triangular slotted microstrip Antenna for multiband operation

This paper describes a Multiband Antenna which radiates in four frequency bands which can be used for the applications which works in WLAN and WIMAX frequencies. The first three WLAN and WIMAX frequency bands can be achieved by using a rectangular slot and and SRR. Further by adding one triangular slot in the main patch provides one more frequency band to the microstrip Antenna. The antenna is very compact in size with the dimension of 26.5×24.5 mm.
Generalizations of Wei's Duality Theorem

Wei's celebrated Duality Theorem is generalized in several ways, expressed as duality theorems for linear codes over division rings and, more generally, duality theorems for matroids. These results are further generalized, resulting in two Wei-type duality theorems for new combinatorial structures that are introduced and named {\em demi-matroids}. These generalize matroids and are the appropriate combinatorial objects for describing the duality in Wei's Duality Theorem. A new proof of the Duality Theorem is thereby given that explains the theorem in combinatorial terms. Special cases of the general duality theorems are also given, including duality theorems for cycles and bonds in graphs and for transversals.
An Imaging and Spectral Study of 10 X-Ray Filaments around the Galactic Center

We report the detection of 10 new X-ray filaments using the data from the Chandra X-ray satellite for the inner 6′ (~15 pc) around the Galactic center (GC). All these X-ray filaments are characterized by nonthermal energy spectra, and most of them have pointlike features at their heads that point inward. Fitted with the simple absorbed power-law model, the measured X-ray flux from an individual filament in the 2-10 keV band is ~2.8 × 10−14 to 10−13 ergs cm−2 s−1, and the absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity is ~1032-1033 ergs s−1 at a presumed distance of 8 kpc to the GC. We speculate the origin(s) of these filaments by morphologies and by comparing their X-ray images with the corresponding radio and infrared images. On the basis of the combined information available, we suspect that these X-ray filaments might be pulsar wind nebulae associated with pulsars of ages 103 to 3 × 105 yr. The fact that most of the filament tails point outward may further suggest a high-velocity wind blowing away from the GC.
Drosophila Lipophorin Receptors Mediate the Uptake of Neutral Lipids in Oocytes and Imaginal Disc Cells by an Endocytosis-Independent Mechanism

Lipids are constantly shuttled through the body to redistribute energy and metabolites between sites of absorption, storage, and catabolism in a complex homeostatic equilibrium. In Drosophila, lipids are transported through the hemolymph in the form of lipoprotein particles, known as lipophorins. The mechanisms by which cells interact with circulating lipophorins and acquire their lipidic cargo are poorly understood. We have found that lipophorin receptor 1 and 2 (lpr1 and lpr2), two partially redundant genes belonging to the Low Density Lipoprotein Receptor (LDLR) family, are essential for the efficient uptake and accumulation of neutral lipids by oocytes and cells of the imaginal discs. Females lacking the lpr2 gene lay eggs with low lipid content and have reduced fertility, revealing a central role for lpr2 in mediating Drosophila vitellogenesis. lpr1 and lpr2 are transcribed into multiple isoforms. Interestingly, only a subset of these isoforms containing a particular LDLR type A module mediate neutral lipid uptake. Expression of these isoforms induces the extracellular stabilization of lipophorins. Furthermore, our data indicate that endocytosis of the lipophorin receptors is not required to mediate the uptake of neutral lipids. These findings suggest a model where lipophorin receptors promote the extracellular lipolysis of lipophorins. This model is reminiscent of the lipolytic processing of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins that occurs at the mammalian capillary endothelium, suggesting an ancient role for LDLR–like proteins in this process.
Internet-Based Technology Adoption along Chinese Vegetable Supply Chain

Rapid development of Internet-based technology has profoundly changed the operation and management activities in supply chains. This study discusses the adoption of Internet-based technology among vegetable enterprises along the supply chain and analyses the factors affecting the utilization of the technology along Chinese vegetable supply chain. The survey result shows that the technology has not widely used in vegetable enterprises, and the utilization level varies between different companies along the chain. Lack of funds, security and limited education are the main factors prohibiting the use of Internet. Managers also have no plan to adopt or extent the utilization level of Internet technology in the near future.
A Rendering Pipeline for Real-Time Crowds

In motion picture movies, large crowds of computer-generated characters are usually included to produce battle scenes of epic proportions. In video games, it is common to find crowds that conform armies controlled by users (or AI) in real-time strategy games, or crowds made of non-player characters (e.g., groups of spectators in a stadium). In virtual environments, it is common to find crowd simulations that interact with other characters and with their surrounding environment. In all cases, optimizations such as level of detail and culling should be performed to render the crowds. In this chapter, we propose a parallel approach (implemented on the GPU) for level of detail selection and view frustum culling, allowing us to render crowds made of thousands of characters.
Classification Techniques in the Strong Intermittent Sequences of Vegetation Species and Bare Soil

The arid zone of the south-eastern Kazakhstan is characterized with the strong heterogeneity of spatial and spectral distributions for neighbouring sites. The sites of bare soil and different species of vegetation form the strong intermittent pattern. Applications of the signal theory methods and modern software allow one to solve the problem of classification in such intermittent environment. For a high dimensional space, as dimensionality increases, the volume of a hypercube concentrates in the corners. On this basis techniques have been developed to extract endmember spectra from remotely sensed data set. The final outputs of this work are classification maps of site distributions for vegetation and bare soil, suitable for input into a GIS project that will be able to provide the tools for the problems of effective ecosystem planning.
Creating Boolean Functions for the Five-EPR-Pair, Single-Error-Correcting Code

A quantum single-error-correcting scheme can be derived from a one-way entanglement purification protocol in purifying one Bell state from a finite block of five Bell states. The main issue to be concerned with in the theory of such an error-correction is to create specific linear Boolean functions that can transform the sixteen error syndromes occurring in the error-correcting code onto their mappings so that one Bell state is corrected whenever the other four in the finite block are measured. The Boolean function is performed under the effect of its associated sequence of basic quantum unilateral and bilateral operations. Previously, the Boolean function is created in use of the Monte Carlo computer search method. We introduce here a systematic scenario for creating the Boolean function and its associated sequence of operations so that we can do the job in an analytical way without any trial and error effort. Consequently, all possible Boolean functions can in principle be created by using our method. Furthermore, for a deduced Boolean function, we can also in the spirit of our method derive its best associated sequence of operations which may contain the least number of total operations or the least number of the bilateral XOR operations alone. Some results obtained in this work show the capability of our method in creating the Boolean function and its sequence of operations.
Adaptive appearance face tracking with alignment feedbacks

Adaptive appearance approaches are popular for tracking non-rigid objects, such as faces. However, these approaches usually lack direct mechanisms for correcting spatial misalignments (e.g., translation, scaling and rotation errors) existing in the tracking outputs. The unwanted errors are then accumulated in the target's appearance model. This inevitably has negative effects on tracking performance. Besides, many of these approaches rely on video-specific parameter setting. In this paper, we first adopt a self-adaptive dynamical model to predict the candidates of target. Hence, our tracker is able to work with identical parameters for various situations. Moreover, we introduce a multi-view joint face alignment stage to decrease the impact of mis-alignment. Aligned faces are further used as feedbacks to update the appearance model. We test the proposed algorithm on outdoor surveillance videos and real-world YouTube videos. Experimental results prove the effectiveness of our method in tracking faces under uncontrolled conditions.
Facial expression spatial charts for representing of dynamic diversity of facial expressions

This paper presents a method to generate individual Facial Expression Spatial Charts (FESC) using Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) networks. We specifically examine the dynamic diversity of facial expressions in time-series facial images after conversion using Gabor wavelet filters. The proposed method consists of three steps: the first step is to extract topological features from time-series facial image datasets using SOMs; the second step is to integrate weights of SOM into categories using Fuzzy ART networks; the third step is to create FESCs integrated by all arousal levels produced from categories of facial expressions in each basic facial expression. For considering the influence that stress gives an expression, we measured the psychological emphasis that a subject feels at that time. The result shows a negative correlation for psychological stress and the expanse of FESC, which means that the expression became poor during feelings of stress.
Cycling induced degradation of a 65nm FPGA flash memory switch

We present a study of cycling induced degradation of a two transistor Flash memory cell with a shared floating gate. The cell directly serves as a configurable interconnection switch in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) fabricated with a 65 nm embedded-Flash process. By optimizing the poly re-oxidation, LDD implant and spacer module, the cell endurance is significantly improved at both the single cell and 1 Mbit test-array levels.
Vision and touch in relation to foraging and predator detection: insightful contrasts between a plover and a sandpiper

Visual fields were determined in two species of shorebirds (Charadriiformes) whose foraging is guided primarily by different sources of information: red knots (Calidris canutus, tactile foragers) and European golden plovers (Pluvialis apricaria, visual foragers). The visual fields of both species showed features that are found in a wide range of birds whose foraging involves precision pecking or lunging at food items. Surprisingly, red knots did not show comprehensive panoramic vision as found in some other tactile feeders; they have a binocular field surrounding the bill and a substantial blind area behind the head. We argue that this is because knots switch to more visually guided foraging on their breeding grounds. However, this visual field topography leaves them vulnerable to predation, especially when using tactile foraging in non-breeding locations where predation by falcons is an important selection factor. Golden plovers use visually guided foraging throughout the year, and so it is not surprising that they have precision-pecking frontal visual fields. However, they often feed at night and this is associated with relatively large eyes. These are anchored in the skull by a wing of bone extending from the dorsal perimeter of each orbit; a skeletal structure previously unreported in birds and which we have named ‘supraorbital aliform bone’, Os supraorbitale aliforme. The larger eyes and their associated supraorbital wings result in a wide blind area above the head, which may leave these plovers particularly vulnerable to predation. Thus, in these two shorebirds, we see clear examples of the trade-off between the two key functions of visual fields: (i) the detection of predators remote from the animal and (ii) the control of accurate behaviours, such as the procurement of food items, at close quarters.
Shallow lithospheric contribution to mantle plumes revealed by integrating seismic and geochemical data

Using an integrated geophysical and geological approach based on a comparative analysis of 27 different parameters, we investigate both the location and origin of the source material for hot spot volcanoes. We report a significant correlation between extreme geochemical compositions of lavas with both shallow seismic velocities and the depth extent to which a hot spot source can be traced with seismic tomography. These relationships provide the first integrated evidence for buoyantly rising plumes of mantle material (plume depth extent correlation), incorporating thermally eroded continental material in the shallow mantle (anti‐correlation with slow shallow seismic velocities). The extreme geochemical composition of the lavas is successfully modeled with this process, placing constraints on dynamical processes in the mantle and explaining the origin of a significantly debated mantle compositional end‐member (enriched mantle; EM1).
A comparative evaluation of an ontological medical decision support system (OMeD) for critical environments

Modern medical decision making systems require users to manually collect and process information from distributed and heterogeneous repositories to facilitate the decision making process. There are many factors (such as time, volume of information and technical ability) that can potentially compromise the quality of decisions made for patients. In this work we demonstrate and evaluate a new medical decision making support system, called OMeD, which automatically answers medical queries in real time, by collecting and processing medical information. OMeD utilizes a natural-language-like user interface (for querying) and semantic web techniques (for knowledge representation and reasoning) to answer queries. We compare OMeD to a set of standard machine learning techniques across a series of benchmarks based on simulated patient data. The conventional techniques attempt to learn the answer to a query by analyzing simulated patient records. The sparsity of the simulated data leads conventional techniques to frequently misidentify the relationships between medical concepts. In contrast, OMeD is able to reliably provide correct answers to queries. Unlike conventional automated decision support systems, OMeD also generates independently verifiable proofs for its answers, providing healthcare workers with confidence in the system's recommendations.
Implementing Linear Algebra Algorithms for Dense Matrices on a Vector Pipeline Machine

This paper examines common implementations of linear algebra algorithms, such as matrix-vector multiplication, matrix-matrix multiplication and the solution of linear equations. The different versions are examined for efficiency on a computer architecture which uses vector processing and has pipelined instruction execution. By using the advanced architectural features of such machines, one can usually achieve maximum performance, and tremendous improvements in terms of execution speed can be seen over conventional computers.
Optimal scaling of the random walk Metropolis on unimodal elliptically symmetric targets.

Scaling of proposals for Metropolis algorithms is an important practical problem in MCMC implementation. Criteria for scaling based on empirical acceptance rates of algorithms have been found to work consistently well across a broad range of problems. Essentially, proposal jump sizes are increased when acceptance rates are high and decreased when rates are low. In recent years, considerable theoretical support has been given for rules of this type which work on the basis that acceptance rates around 0.234 should be preferred. This has been based on asymptotic results which approximate high dimensional algorithm trajectories by diffusions. In this paper we develop a novel approach to understanding 0.234 which avoids the need for diffusion limits. We derive explicit formulae for algorithm efficiency and acceptance rates as functions of the scaling parameter. We apply these to the family of elliptically symmetric target densities, where further illuminating explicit results are possible. Under suitable conditions, we verify the 0.234 rule for a new class of target densities. Moreover, we can characterise cases where 0.234 fails to hold, either because the target density is too diffuse in a sense we make precise, or because the eccentricity of the target density is too severe, again in a sense we make precise. We provide numerical verifications of our results.
Relative Efficacy of Buprenorphine, Nalbuphine and Morphine in Opioid-Treated Rhesus Monkeys Discriminating Naltrexone

Efficacy is one determinant of whether a drug is an agonist or an antagonist under a particular set of conditions. Relative efficacy among the μ opioid receptor (MOR) ligands buprenorphine, nalbuphine, and morphine was examined in monkeys dependent on morphine (3.2 mg/kg/day) or l-α-acetylmethadol (LAAM) (1.0 mg/kg twice daily) and that discriminated naltrexone (0.0178 mg/kg) from saline. In morphine-treated monkeys, buprenorphine and not nalbuphine substituted for naltrexone. When administered before naltrexone in morphine-treated monkeys, morphine and nalbuphine shifted the naltrexone dose-effect curve to the right, while buprenorphine shifted the naltrexone dose-effect curve to the left. Under conditions of acute morphine deprivation, naltrexone-lever responding was slightly attenuated by buprenorphine and markedly attenuated by nalbuphine and morphine. In LAAM-treated monkeys, buprenorphine substituted completely for naltrexone in only one monkey, while nalbuphine and morphine failed to substitute in any monkey. When administered before naltrexone in LAAM-treated monkeys, buprenorphine, nalbuphine, and morphine dose dependently shifted the naltrexone dose-effect curve to the right, with the exception of one monkey in which buprenorphine shifted the naltrexone dose-effect curve to the left. These results demonstrate that a low efficacy MOR ligand can exert agonist or antagonist actions in the same animal depending on immediate pharmacologic history. The qualitatively different effects of buprenorphine in morphine- and LAAM-treated monkeys might be related to magnitude of dependence insofar as dependence can determine the efficacy required for agonist activity. Thus, buprenorphine has markedly different effects across different levels of opioid dependence.
Conducting qualitative research in audiology: A tutorial

Abstract Objective: Qualitative research methodologies are being used more frequently in audiology as it allows for a better understanding of the perspectives of people with hearing impairment. This article describes why and how international interdisciplinary qualitative research can be conducted. Design: This paper is based on a literature review and our recent experience with the conduction of an international interdisciplinary qualitative study in audiology. Results: We describe some available qualitative methods for sampling, data collection, and analysis and we discuss the rationale for choosing particular methods. The focus is on four approaches which have all previously been applied to audiologic research: grounded theory, interpretative phenomenological analysis, conversational analysis, and qualitative content analysis. Conclusions: This article provides a review of methodological issues useful for those designing qualitative research projects in audiology or needing assistance in the interpretation of qualitative literature.
Bottom-up EA Management Governance using Recommender Systems

Enterprise Architecture (EA) Management is an activity that seeks to foster the alignment of business and IT, and pursues various goals further operationalizing this alignment. Key to effective EA Management is a framework that defines the roles, activities, and viewpoints used for EA Management in accordance to the concerns that the stakeholders aim to address. Consensus holds that such frameworks are organization-specific and hence they are designed in governance activities for EA Management. As of today, top-down approaches for governance are used to derive organization-specific frameworks. These usually lack systematic mechanisms for improving the framework based on the feedback of the responsible stakeholders. We outline a bottom-up approach for EA Management governance that systematically observes the behavior of the actors to learn user concerns and recommend appropriate viewpoints. With this approach, we complement traditional top-down governance activities.