Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accumulator Isothermal Compressed Air Energy Storage ( OA-ICAES ) System

Cost-effective, scalable and dispatchable energy storage systems is the key to integrating unpredictable and intermittent green energy, such as wind and solar energy, into the electrical grid. This chapter describes a novel Open Accumulator Isothermal Compressed Air Energy Storage (OA-ICAES) system for wind turbines that stores excess energy in the form of high pressure (210 bar) compressed air before conversion to electricity. The stored energy is then used to generate electricity when demand exceeds supply. The Open Accumulator architecture increases the system’s energy density, whereas the isothermal compressor/expander increases the efficiency and power-density. They result in an efficient, cost-effective, hydrocarbon fuel-free energy storage system not restricted by geographic features to replace today’s natural gas “peaker” plants. Since the system can turn on/off within a second, it can store and dispatch power rapidly on demand and can be used for frequency regulation. Because storage is prior to conversion to electricity, downstream electrical components (e.g. generator, transmission and interconnects) can be downsized for mean power instead of peak power. To realize isothermal compression/expansion, a liquid piston with porous media inserts, optimized trajectory and chamber designs, efficient power take-off, and water droplet sprays, are used. Plant and supervisory levels control systems coordinate and optimize the system performance.
LASER: a living analytics experimentation system for large-scale online controlled experiments

Tracking user browsing data and measuring the effectiveness of website design and web services are important to businesses that want to attract the consumers today who spend much more time online than before. Instead of using randomized controlled experiments, the existing approach simply tracks user browsing behaviors before and after a change is made to website design or web services, and evaluate the differences. To address the effects caused by hidden factors (e.g. promotion activities on the website) and to give fair comparison of different website designs, we propose the LASER system, a unified experimentation platform that enables randomized online controlled experiments to be easily conducted with minimal human effort and modifications to the experimented websites. More importantly, the LASER system manages the various aspects of online controlled experiments, namely the selection of participants into groups, exposure of different user interface features or recommendation algorithms to these groups, measuring their responses, and summarizing the results in the visual manner.
14 Quantized Mechanics of Nanotubes and Bundles

In this chapter, the mechanics of carbon nanotubes and related bundles is reviewed, with an eye to their application as ultra-sharp tips for scanning probe “nanoscopy”. In particular, the role of thermodynamically unavoidable, atomistic defects with different sizes and shapes on the fracture strength, fatigue life, and elasticity is quantified, thanks to new quantized fracture mechanics approaches. The reader is introduced in a simple way to such innovative treatments at the beginning of the chapter.
Cholinergic Modulation of Large-Conductance Calcium-Activated Potassium Channels Regulates Synaptic Strength and Spine Calcium in Cartwheel Cells of the Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus

Acetylcholine is a neuromodulatory transmitter that controls synaptic plasticity and sensory processing in many brain regions. The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) is an auditory brainstem nucleus that integrates auditory signals from the cochlea with multisensory inputs from several brainstem nuclei and receives prominent cholinergic projections. In the auditory periphery, cholinergic modulation serves a neuroprotective function, reducing cochlear output under high sound levels. However, the role of cholinergic signaling in the DCN is less understood. Here we examine postsynaptic mechanisms of cholinergic modulation at glutamatergic synapses formed by parallel fiber axons onto cartwheel cells (CWCs) in the apical DCN circuit from mouse brainstem slice using calcium (Ca) imaging combined with two-photon laser glutamate uncaging onto CWC spines. Activation of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) significantly increased the amplitude of both uncaging-evoked EPSPs (uEPSPs) and spine Ca transients. Our results demonstrate that mAChRs in CWC spines act by suppressing large-conductance calcium-activated potassium (BK) channels, and this effect is mediated through the cAMP/protein kinase A signaling pathway. Blocking BK channels relieves voltage-dependent magnesium block of NMDA receptors, thereby enhancing uEPSPs and spine Ca transients. Finally, we demonstrate that mAChR activation inhibits L-type Ca channels and thus may contribute to the suppression of BK channels by mAChRs. In summary, we demonstrate a novel role for BK channels in regulating glutamatergic transmission and show that this mechanism is under modulatory control of mAChRs.
Semi-blind CDMA code estimation in the downlink

Signal processing in the CDMA downlink is a challenging task since the codes of the disturbing users are unknown. Blind source separation methods could be used for this task, but they fail when the fading process is Gaussian, which is often the case in CDMA. In this paper, we try to solve the problem by using a semi-blind approach: only the code alphabet is assumed to be known, i.e. s/sub k//spl isin/{-1,1}, but the codes themselves are unknown. We introduce an iterative subspace algorithm which is used for code estimation. Simulations show that the convergence of the algorithm is fast compared to the more straightforward approaches. In addition, the algorithm yields very good estimates to the codes and their delays.
Market-Oriented Culture in Nollywood Industry : An Empirical Investigation of Film Makers and Producers in Nigeria

The collapse of movie-theatre going culture and the incessant harassment of innocent citizen by criminals, the country’s economic downturn and various problems affecting celluloid film production gave rise to video films in Nigeria. It is on record that the industry rakes gross estimate of about 200 million dollars every year with a popularity that cuts across the entire continent of Africa to Europe and North America. Efforts have been made to investigate the effects of market orientation and performance of the Nollywood industry. As part of these efforts, this study employed market-oriented culture as a competitive strategy in the creative industry and based on reviews of relevant literature, developed relationship between market-oriented culture and performance, and finally verified the relationships from the entire industry. It was found out that, market orientation has direct effects on performance of the Nollywood industry. The findings of this study add new understanding to the literature on market orientation and performance in entertainment industry.
PRIMER African trypanosomes

African trypanosomes cause human African trypanosomiasis and animal African trypanosomiasis. They are transmitted by tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa. Although most famous for their mechanisms of immune evasion by antigenic variation, there have been recent important studies that illuminate important aspects of the biology of these parasites both in their mammalian host and during passage through their tsetse fly vector. This Primer overviews current research themes focused on these parasites and discusses how these biological insights and the development of new technologies to interrogate gene function are being used in the search for new approaches to control the parasite. The new insights into the biology of trypanosomes in their host and vector highlight that we are in a ‘golden age’ of discovery for these fascinating parasites.
Performing Hierarchical Clustering on Distance Matrices in OptiML

Since it became evident that domain-specific languages are able to follow the trends of language design evolving demands, they became increasingly popular. This is resulting in the need for a convenient host languages, that can satisfy and ease the aspects of DSL development. Scala is highly flexible, virtualised language, serving as a great ground for different DSLs. In this paper, we used some of the languages, developed on top of Scala, namely Lightweight Modular Staging, Delite and OptiML, to start the development of our own data-mining DSL. Our main aim is to develop a highly efficient DSL for some important data-mining algorithms. As a starting point, we implemented hierarchical clustering in OptiML, with Scala code generation. We also performed testing, based on experimental data, gained from a psychological experiment, related to human behavior analysis and artificial agent development. We compared the results of our hierarchical clustering, to results gained from R on the same data set. This algorithm serves as a starting point towards parallel code generation for a set of data-mining algorithms.
A method to improve the robustness of grasping pattern recognition for prosthetic hands

Myoelectric control can achieve the bionic motion function of prosthetic hand by using the subjective thinking of upper limb amputation patients. To implement different grasping forces by prosthetic hand users usually needs to change the muscle contraction evaluate (MCE) of residual limb. MCE change causes the enhancements of the non-stationary of surface electromyographic (sEMG), which leads to the reduction of grasping pattern recognition rate. According to the above problem, considering the variation of MCE in the experiment, ten subjects grasp objects by employing eight grasping patterns with small, medium, and big forces respectively and the corresponding sEMG is collected. It is found that the grasping pattern recognition rate is declined after adding disturbances. This paper considers three solutions, namely, increasing the range of training sample set, choosing the characteristics of stability, and choosing robust classifier. The increase of training sample range can improve the effect of classification but increase the training time and complexity. In this paper, robustness index of sEMG pattern recognition method is proposed under the small training sets, based on which the characteristics of stability and robustness of the classifier are chosen in 102 groups of characteristics.
Economic analysis of production and marketing of cotton under contract and non-contract farming: a case study in Tamil Nadu.

Agriculture is continued to be the prime mover of the Tamil Nadu State economy supporting 60 percent of the population and contributing 13 percent of state economy in 2005-06. Besides providing employment opportunities to rural population, it supplies raw materials to agrobased industries. Cotton is an important input for the textile industry. In Tamil Nadu, total production of cotton is usually lower than its requirement. This crop is extensively being cultivated in the districts of Virudhunagar, Salem, Madurai and Coimbatore and these districts combined together accounted for 43 percent of the total area under cotton in the state as of 2005-06. The study revealed that the percentage share of transaction cost in total cost for non-contract farmers was Rs.1545 which accounted 14.45 percent. The productivity of cotton for contract farmers was 32.23 percent more than that of the non-contract farmers. The net revenue realization by contract producers was 51 percent higher than that of the non-contract farmers.
LOFAR as a probe of the sources of cosmological reionization

We propose use of the thickness of the ionization front as a discriminant between alternative modes of reionization in the early Universe, by stars or by miniquasars. Assuming a photoionization‐recombination balance, we find that for miniquasar sources the transition from neutral to ionized intergalactic medium is extended and has two features. The first is a sudden steep increase in the neutral fraction with a typical width of 5‐10 comoving megaparsecs, depending on the miniquasar power. The second feature is a long wing that represents a much slower transition from a neutral fraction of ≈ 0.8 to 1. The angular resolution of LOFAR is expected to resolve these scales and will, therefore, play an important role in discriminating the hard sources of ionizing photons from the stellar ones. Ke yw ords: quasars: general ‐ cosmology: theory ‐ diffuse radiation ‐ large-scale structure of Universe ‐ radio lines: general.
Non-commercial Research and Educational Use including without Limitation Use in Instruction at Your Institution, Sending It to Specific Colleagues That You Know, and Providing a Copy to Your Institution's Administrator. All Other Uses, Reproduction and Distribution, including without Limitation Comm

Yohe and Tol (2002. Global Environmental Change 12, 25–40) built an indexing method for vulnerability based on the hypothesis that the adaptive capacity for any system facing a vector of external stresses could be explained by the weakest of its underlying determinants—the so-called ''weakest link'' hypothesis. Their structure noted eight determinants, but the approach could handle any number. They quoted analogies in support of the hypothesis, but loose inference is hardly sufficient to confirm such a claim. We respond to this omission by offering an empirical investigation of its validity. We estimate a structural form designed to accommodate the full range of possible interactions across sets of underlying determinants. The perfect complement case of the pure ''weakest-link'' formulation lies on one extreme, and the perfect substitute case where each determinant can compensate for all others at constant rates is the other limiting case. For vulnerability to natural disasters, infant mortality and drinking water treatment, we find qualified support for a modified weakest link hypothesis: the weakest indicator plays an important role because other factors can compensate (with increasing difficulty). For life expectancy, sanitation and nutrition, we find a relationship that is close to linear—the perfect substitute case where the various determinants of adaptive capacity can compensate for each other with relative and persistent ease. Moreover, since the factors from which systems derive their adaptive capacities are different for different risks, we have identified another source of diversity in the assessment of vulnerability.
Adaptive MANET Multipath Routing Algorithm Based on the Simulated Annealing Approach

Mobile ad hoc network represents a system of wireless mobile nodes that can freely and dynamically self-organize network topologies without any preexisting communication infrastructure. Due to characteristics like temporary topology and absence of centralized authority, routing is one of the major issues in ad hoc networks. In this paper, a new multipath routing scheme is proposed by employing simulated annealing approach. The proposed metaheuristic approach can achieve greater and reciprocal advantages in a hostile dynamic real world network situation. Therefore, the proposed routing scheme is a powerful method for finding an effective solution into the conflict mobile ad hoc network routing problem. Simulation results indicate that the proposed paradigm adapts best to the variation of dynamic network situations. The average remaining energy, network throughput, packet loss probability, and traffic load distribution are improved by about 10%, 10%, 5%, and 10%, respectively, more than the existing schemes.
ISOTHERMAL AND ISOCHRONAL ANNEALING OF GAMMA-RAY IRRADIATED n-CHANNEL POWER VDMOS TRANSISTORS UDC 538 . 9 + 6 1 3 . 648 . 4

The behaviour of densities of the oxide trapped charge and the interface traps in gamma-ray irradiated n-channel power VDMOS transistors during isothermal and isochronal annealing has been investigated. The experimental results have revealed the existence of latent interface trap buildup (LITB) process. By using of numerical modeling, based on the H-W model, the LITB process during isothermal annealing has been successfully simulated. The interface trap densities have been determined by both the midgap and the charge pumping methods, and results have shown good qualitative agreement between these two methods.
Practice of Epidemiology Hierarchical Distributed-Lag Models : Exploring Varying Geographic Scale and Magnitude in Associations Between the Built Environment and Health

It is well known that associations between features of the built environment and health depend on the geographic scale used to construct environmental attributes. In the built environment literature, it has long been argued that geographic scales may vary across study locations. However, this hypothesized variation has not been systematically examined due to a lack of available statistical methods. We propose a hierarchical distributed-lag model (HDLM) for estimating the underlying overall shape of food environment–health associations as a function of distance from locations of interest. This method enables indirect assessment of relevant geographic scales and captures area-level heterogeneity in the magnitudes of associations, along with relevant distances within areas. The proposed model was used to systematically examine area-level variation in the association between availability of convenience stores around schools and children’s weights. For this case study, body mass index (weight kg)/ height (m)) z scores (BMIz) for 7th grade children collected via California’s 2001–2009 FitnessGram testing program were linked to a commercial database that contained locations of food outlets statewide. Findings suggested that convenience store availability may influence BMIz only in some places and at varying distances from schools. Future research should examine localized environmental or policy differences that may explain the heterogeneity in convenience store–BMIz associations.
Customer Equipment Configuration Manager for Managed Network Service Providers

Nowadays, many enterprises want to deploy Managed Network Services (MNS) so that their corporate resources are dedicated to their core businesses. Configuration management of network elements (NE) is a prerequisite of other parts of MNS, though it requires onsite personnel and is labor-intensive, so those systems that remotely and automatically manage NE configurations in behalf of MNS Providers (MNSPs)1 onsite personnel can help reduce service cost. However, the existing systems for this purpose, in which a monolithic server daemon serves for the entire customer base, cannot necessarily ensure independence of the service continuity for each customer, because an unexpected halt of service to a customer can bring the entire system down with it. We offer a customer equipment configuration management system (CECM), which allows MNSPs to remotely and automatically manage configurations of thousands of NEs geographically scattered in many sites simultaneously, while ensuring the independence of the service continuity CECM achieves this by adopting a novel Process-Per-Service (PPS) architecture, in which a set of independent system processes is exclusively used for the management of a customer's NE configurations. We also implement a prototype system to show the worst-case performance of CECM. The result shows that the configuration of 1000 emulated NEs for 100 customers can be simultaneously set within 45 seconds. While these results are preliminary, they suggest that CECM can help reduce service cost of providing MNSs.
Accelerating Relational Clustering Algorithms With Sparse Prototype Representation

In some application contexts, data are better described by a matrix of pairwise dissimilarities rather than by a vector representation. Clustering and topographic mapping algorithms have been adapted to this type of data, either via the generalized Median principle, or more recently with the so called relational approach, in which prototypes are represented by virtual linear combinations of the original observations. One drawback of those methods is their complexity, which scales as the square of the number of observations, mainly because they use dense prototype representations: each prototype is obtained as a virtual combination of all the elements of its cluster (at least). We propose in this paper to use a sparse representation of the prototypes to obtain relational algorithms with sub-quadratic complexity.
EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL POST-BUCKLING STUDY OF STEEL SHEAR WALLS

Steel shear walls has been extensively used as a lateral force bearing system in the design of new buildings, and retrofitting of existing structures. Seismic response evaluation of steel shear walls has the subject of extensive analytical and experimental research work during last decades. In this research, theoretical and experimental post-buckling study of steel shear walls has been considered. Thus, study has two parts. In the first part the available theoretical relations based on strip method have been improved and used to predict yield displacement and yield strength of a steel panel. The second part describes experimental results of a 30 50 cm cm × panel with hinged boundary frame under cyclic loading in order to evaluate force-displacement relation and post-buckling behavior of test specimen accurately. The experimental results especially at plastic range show much higher displacement than the available theories. The obtained drift during the rupture of panel is 5%. Included in the second part is a finite element analysis of the tested shear wall panel which, accurately predicts the pre-yielding and post-buckling behavior of the panel, and shows good agreement with experimental results. For the finite element analysis of the test panel, ABAQUS 6.5 has been used. The first stage in the simulation is a linear eigen-value buckling analysis. About 30 modes of the panel have been considered in the analysis. The second stage involves introducing the imperfection into the structure. A combination of modes is used to construct the imperfection. To compare the results obtained with different imperfections, the imperfection size must be fixed. The measure of the imperfection size used in this study is the out of plane distance, which is computed as the normal distance from mid-surface of panel to the perturbed node minus normal distance from mid-surface of the perfect structure. The scale factor associated with each eigen-mode used to seed the imperfection has to be computed. The results produced by the linear analysis must be used and scale factors must be determined so that the out of plane distance is equal to a specified value. This value is usually taken as a fraction of the panel thickness. The final stage of the analysis simulates the post-buckling response of the panel for a given imperfection, and to determine the static buckling load. The modified Riks method is used to obtain a solution since the problem under consideration is unstable. The simulation results have shown good agreement with experimental results.
Faithful expression of a heterologous gene carried on an artificial macronuclear chromosome in Euplotes crassus.

Macronuclear chromosomes of hypotrichous ciliates are gene-sized molecules carrying the coding sequence flanked by short non-translated regions and bounded by telomeres. We have constructed artificial chromosomes for investigation of transcription in the macronucleus of Euplotes crassus. The neo gene was put under the control of the 5"-non-translated region of the TBP gene of E.crassus. These molecules were introduced into the cell with the help of liposomes. The cells were transformed and survived high concentrations of geneticin. The artificial chromosomes were kept in the macro-nucleus for at least 50 days at a copy number of about 200 per macronucleus. Expression of the gene was shown by reverse transcription of the neo messenger. The transcription start was mapped and found to coincide with that found on the natural macronuclear chromosome encoding TBP in E.crassus.