Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intensity interferometry measurements with hard x-ray FEL pulses at the Linac Coherent Light Source

Intensity interferometry measurements were carried out to study the spatial coherence properties of a Free-Electron Laser (FEL) in the Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) mode in the hard X-ray regime. Statistical analyses based on ensemble averages of the spatial intensity correlation function were performed on a large number of pulses, overcoming challenges associated with the FEL beam being non-stationary in time and highly collimated. The second-order intensity correlation functions consistently show deviations from unity, reminiscent of the classical Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. They also exhibit a slow decaying spatial dependence at length-scales larger than the width of the beam, indicating a high degree of spatial coherence. These measurements are consistent with the behavior of a highly brilliant but chaotic source obeying Gaussian statistics as expected for a SASE FEL. Our study could be used to devise an in-line diagnostic capable of providing quasi real-time feedback for understanding and tuning the FEL process.
Pulsed charged sprays: application to DISI engines during early injection

Numerical predictions of the temporal evolution of pulsed sprays, typical of those used in gasoline direct injection spark ignition engines are presented, with the novelty that the drops are electrically charged. The rate of spray expansion, in terms of the fraction of maximum possible spray charge for a typical engine timescale, is investigated. The engine timescale chosen is the time available between spray injection and ignition, and for a low‐speed engine operation, with injection during the intake stroke. The aim is to quantify the amount of electric charge, required to spread the spray throughout the engine cylinder, without causing excessive piston and wall impingement, prior to hypothetical ignition. It is found that experimentally realizable amounts of electric charge are sufficient to cause spray expansion throughout the engine cylinder within the timescale permitted. Also noted is a segregation of the smaller drops from their larger cousins, by virtue of the known non‐linear variation in drop charge with drop mass. Since it is known that pulsed fuel injectors producing charged sprays of insulating liquids are a reality then electric charge seems to be a viable route to control and optimize in‐cylinder mixture distribution and hence engine performance, robustness and emissions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Instrumental Music Education in Rural North Carolina: A Descriptive Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate secondary instrumental music education in rural North Carolina. This descriptive study investigated the experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that rural instrumental music educators (n = 55) held about their schools, students, and communities. Furthermore, the researchers examined how participants defined success for their programs, what challenges and rewards they experienced in their positions, and what skills they considered most important for themselves as teachers. Results indicate that although rural music educators find the musical aspects of their positions rewarding, they believe that their nonmusical skills related to teaching, such as developing relationships with students and advocating for their programs, were more important than their own musical skills. Participants also considered student personal growth and experiences to be larger markers of success than musical performance abilities and reported moderately high levels of job satisfaction. The three greatest challenges named by participants were lack of support, limited funding or resources, and limited student involvement. Conversely, the most frequently reported rewards were musical experiences with students and witnessing students’ musical growth. Implications for music teacher education and recommendations for future research are discussed.
A Cross-Cultural Investigation on Consumer Responses to Failures of Domestic and Foreign Products

Abstract This research examines how consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and product failure type affect consumers’ attitudes toward domestic and imported product failures. It also explores product failure’s impacts on country-of-origin (COO) image, and cultural difference in product failure tolerance. Two experiments in the U.S. and China were conducted. Hypotheses were tested using both regressions and structural equation modeling analyses. Findings include, first, CET affects attitudes toward product failures; second, failure type has both main and moderating effects; third, COO image fluctuates with failure experience, regardless of failure type and product origin (domestic or imported); and finally, Chinese consumers are more failure tolerant than U.S. consumers. Theoretically, as the first study, this research differentiates two product failure types (competence versus ethical) and confirms that failure type has both main and moderating effects on attitudes. It also extends the scope of CET’s predictive power by empirically confirming that CET can affect attitudes toward products even with failures. Managerially, more effort is needed in handling ethical than competence failures. When a firm’s product fails, other firms from the same country should react proactively. If a product fails in both the U.S. and Chinese markets, more recovery efforts should be invested in the U.S. market.
Morphological Changes of Glial Lamina Cribrosa of Rats Suffering from Chronic High Intraocular Pressure

Deformations or remodeling of the lamina cribrosa (LC) induced by elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) are associated with optic nerve injury. The quantitative analysis of the morphology changes of the LC will provide the basis for the study of the pathogenesis of glaucoma. After the chronic high-IOP rat model was induced by cauterizing episcleral veins with 5-Fluorouracil subconjunctival injection, the optic nerve head (ONH) cross sections were immunohistochemically stained at 2 w, 4 w, 8 w, and 12 w. Then the sections were imaged by a confocal microscope, and six morphological parameters of the ONH were calculated after the images were processed using Matlab. The results showed that the morphology of the ONH changed with the duration of chronic high IOP. The glial LC pore area fraction, the ratio of glial LC pore area to the glial LC tissue area, first decreased at 2 w and 4 w and then increased to the same level as the control group at 8 w and continued to increase until 12 w. The number and density of nuclei increased significantly at 8 w in the glial LC region. The results might mean the fraction of glial LC beam increased and astrocytes proliferated at the early stage of high IOP. Combined with the images of the ONH, the results showed the glial LC was damaged with the duration of chronic elevated IOP.
Engineered biomembrane-derived nanoparticles for nanoscale theranostics

Currently, biological membrane-derived nanoparticles (NPs) have shown enormous potential as drug delivery vehicles due to their outstanding biomimetic properties. To make these NPs more adaptive to complex biological systems, some methods have been developed to modify biomembranes and endow them with more functions while preserving their inherent natures. In this review, we introduce five common approaches used for biomembrane decoration: membrane hybridization, the postinsertion method, chemical methods, metabolism engineering and gene engineering. These methods can functionalize a series of biomembranes derived from red blood cells, white blood cells, tumor cells, platelets, exosomes and so on. Biomembrane engineering could markedly facilitate the targeted drug delivery, treatment and diagnosis of cancer, inflammation, immunological diseases, bone diseases and Alzheimer's disease. It is anticipated that these membrane modification techniques will advance biomembrane-derived NPs into broader applications in the future.
Silicon-Based Stretchable Structure via Parylene Kirigami Interconnection

High-performance stretchable electronics are attracting great attention due to the mechanical adaptability, but are still limited to achieving highly-integrable, high density, high-performance stretchable silicon-based electronics. This paper proposed a Parylene Kirigami structure as a stretchable interconnection to connect silicon (Si) units in an array. The equivalent Young’s modulus and stretchability model of the Parylene Kirigami were developed and verified numerically and experimentally. As a preliminary demonstration, a Parylene Kirigami structure-based stretchable Si array (Parylene KiSS array) was successfully fabricated by the wafer-scale microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) process with a high Si areal coverage of 68.8 % and the stretchability of 31.0 ± 1.1%. The equivalent Young’s modulus of this Parylene KiSS array was 130.88 ± 6.75 MPa, which was estimated precisely by the proposed model and was around 1000 times smaller than that of the intrinsic silicon. This MEMS process compatible stretchable electronics strategy can integrate Si-based high-performance chiplets, sensors and actuators to realize high-performance stretchable microsystems. [2022-0157]
Disentangling Morphological and Environmental Drivers of Foraging Activity in an Invasive Diurnal Gecko, Phelsuma laticauda

Abstract. In recent years, substantial variation in foraging behavior has been documented in lizards, including within and between closely related species. However, the exceptionally variable Gekkota still suffers from low sampling effort and historical averaging of foraging mode values across taxonomic levels. Herein, we address the gap in foraging modes of geckos by parsing out environmental and morphological sources of variation in foraging mode within the diurnal arboreal gecko, Phelsuma laticauda. Foraging behavior was examined at two sites on the island of Mo'orea, French Polynesia. In fall 2018, we made observations for a maximum duration of 30 min on 31 individual geckos. We found that P. laticauda exhibits a sit-and-wait strategy and that its foraging behavior is influenced by several ecological and morphological correlates: sex, body size, temperature, and date of observation. Notably, we found a trend for more active foraging by females than by males, challenging the notion that only nocturnal geckos exhibit sexual foraging diergism. The amount of time spent pausing and the maximum single movement exhibited a negative relationship with the body size of an individual. At higher temperatures, the amount of head movements, likely pertaining to locating prey, increased. Several foraging metrics varied with date of observation. Our results emphasize the need to consider multiple ecological correlates when studying foraging behavior as well as the importance of measuring multiple behavioral metrics beyond the standard percent time moving and moves per minute.
An Ultrawideband Frequency Selective Surface Absorber With High Polarization-Independent Angular Stability

An ultrawideband frequency selective surface (FSS) absorber with high angular stability and polarization independency applied in a microwave band is proposed. The absorber is composed of three identical Teflon layers and dual FSS layers with distinct patterns. The miniaturized FSSs with unique patterns demonstrate advantages of facile manipulation of the impedance and multiple resonances in an ultrawide frequency range. The use of identical dielectric substrate greatly reduces the complexity in the absorber design, compared with the conventional way that requires variable dielectric constants for a multilayer structure. Experimental results reveal that more than 90% absorption rate in the frequency range of 2.79–20.62 GHz for normal incidence is achieved. The absorption rate can still retain more than 80% in the range of 4.41–20.93 GHz for both TE and TM polarizations with an incidence of 60°.
QUANTIZED GRAVITATIONAL FIELD

BS>A gravitational action operator is constructed that is invariant under general coordinate transformations and local Lorentz (gauge) transformations. To interpret the formalism, the arbitrariness in description must be restricted by introducing gauge conditions and coordinate conditions. The time gauge is defined by locking the time axes of the local coordinate systems to the general coordinate time axis. The resulting form of the action operator, including the contribution of a spinless matter field, enables canonical pairs of variables to be identified. There are four field variables that lack canonical partners, in virtue of differential constraint equations, that can be interpreted as space-time coordinate displacements. In a physically distinguished class of coordinate system the gravitational field variables are not explicit functions of the coordinate displacement parameters. There remains the freedom of Lorentz transformation. The generators of spatial translations and rotations have the correct commutation properties. The question of Lorentz invariance is left undecided since the energy density operator is only given implicitly. (auth)
Challenges for Future Robotic Sorters of Mixed Industrial Waste: A Survey

To achieve recycling of mixed industrial waste toward an advanced sustainable society, waste sorting automation through robots is crucial and urgent. For this purpose, a robot is required to recognize the category, shape, pose, and condition of different waste items and manipulate them according to the category to be sorted. This survey considers three potential difficulties in the sorting automation: 1) End-effector: to robustly grasp and manipulate different waste items with dirt and deformations; 2) Sensor: to recognize the category, shape, and pose of existing objects to be manipulated and the wet and dirty conditions of their surfaces; and 3) Planner: to generate feasible and efficient sequences and trajectories. This survey includes 76 references to studies related to automatic waste sorting and 159 references to worldwide waste recycling attempts. This pioneering investigation reveals the possibility and limitations of conventional systems; thus, providing insights on open issues and potential technologies to achieve a robot-incorporated sorter for the chaotic mixed waste is one of its contributions. This paper further presents a system design policy for readers and discusses future advanced sorters, thereby contributing to the field of robotics and automation. Note to Practitioners—Most automated sorting systems operate for limited target waste items. This study is motivated by the automation of mixed industrial waste treatment facilities using advanced robotic sorters. Emerging advances and increasing functionalities of robot system components will widen system applicability and increase use cases in the chaotic mixed industrial waste domain. This paper surveys the research conducted to date, discusses open issues and potential approaches, and presents user guides that provide practitioners with a system design policy. The user guides created according to the strengths and weaknesses of each system configuration provide future researchers and developers with a useful a priori design policy that has been thus far validated on efficiency, quality, productivity, and reliability. A question-and-answer style guide and a sorting-target-aware previous study reference list allows users to find the desired system configuration, including the investigated components according to their purpose.
Effects of High-Intensity Circuit Training in Obese and Overweight Population: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: Obesity is a serious risk for various cardiovascular diseases and is often managed with increased physical activity and exercise. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a minimal dose, High-Intensity Circuit Training (HICT) program on a range of cardiovascular risk factors in obese and overweight individuals. Methods: The trial was prospectively registered with Cyprus National Bioethics Committee ΕΕΒΚ/ΕΠ/2017/38 29 th October 2017. A total of 30 participants were randomly allocated to HICT-group (n = 15) or to a no exercise control-group (n = 15). Participants in the HICT-group trained for 36-minutes, twice a week (18-minutes per session) for 8 weeks in total. The program consisted of 2 circuits of 6 exercise stations of 1min at 50-60% of Heart Rate Reserve (HRR) which progressed to 70-85% of HRR after the first two weeks, alternating with 1min active rest at 40-50% of HRR which progressed to 50-60% of HRR. Approximately 12 repetitions were performed per station. Body composition, blood markers and physiological variables, cardiorespiratory fitness and isometric strength were measured at baseline and post-intervention. Findings: Significant and meaningful improvements were demonstrated in cardiorespiratory fitness, several body composition variables, isometric strength of the left (non-dominant) lower limb and several physiological variables. No significant changes were revealed to the biochemical parameters or the strength of the right (dominant) limp. Conclusion: The results of the study suggest that a low-frequency, circuit training program with high intensity lasting only for 18-minutes twice a week is the minimum required dose in reducing at least some of the cardiovascular risk factors, in obese and overweight population.
Global optimization of semi-infinite programs via restriction of the right-hand side

An algorithm is proposed for the global solution of semi-infinite programs (SIPs) without convexity assumptions. It terminates finitely with a guaranteed feasible point, and a certificate of ϵ f -optimality. The only assumptions are continuity of the functions and existence of an ϵ f -optimal SIP-Slater point. The lower and upper bounds are obtained by the solution of two nonconvex nonlinear programs (NLP) each, thus shifting the nonconvexity to the global NLP solver. The main contribution of this article is a new procedure for the generation of feasible points. These are obtained by a restriction of the constraints right-hand side by ϵ g > 0 and a successively finer discretization of the parameter set. A suitable decreasing sequence of ϵ g → 0 leads to convergence of the generated upper bound. The converging lower bound is obtained by successively tighter discretization, following the principle of Blankenship and Falk [Infinitely constrained optimization problems, J. Optim. Theory Appl. 19 (1976), pp. 261–281]. A proof of convergence is given along with a prototype implementation in general algebraic modelling system. The algorithm is extended to problems with multiple constraints as well as mixed-integer problems. Literature and new problems are solved numerically. The algorithm is extremely simple to implement, but nevertheless very efficient compared to existing methods for nonconvex lower level programs.
Application of Double Wash Technique for Species DNA Isolation in Soft Capsule Shell Samples

The presence of gelatin components can be identified through fat, protein and DNA. DNA can be obtained through the DNA isolation process which is the process of separating DNA from other components of the cell. The DNA purification stage is the most important thing in DNA isolation because at this stage it can reduce to a minimum the number of contaminants in DNA isolates to determine the purity and concentration of the DNA isolate obtained. The purpose of this technique is to produce DNA isolates that are low inhibitors or are in the purity range of 1.7-2.1. The extraction method used in this study used the double wash technique, the technique was modified from the test stage following the manual kit used, it's just that the technique used was modified at the washing stage with each washing done twice in the washing section. first and second washing so that a total of four items of washing were carried out. The results of the DNA isolates were then analyzed for the purity and concentration of DNA obtained using a nanophotometer, the DNA isolates obtained were in the range of 4,400 - 5,500 ng/µL with an average of 4,950 ng/µL. As for the purity value measured at the wavelength A260/A280, the results were obtained with a purity range between 1,760 - 1,840 with an average of 1,800. This research concludes that all the extracted samples show the results of DNA isolates that fall into the category of good DNA and meet the requirements needed in molecular analysis.
State‐tracking iterative learning control in frequency domain design for improved intersample behavior

Iterative learning control (ILC) yields perfect output‐tracking performance at sampling instances for systems that perform repetitive tasks. The aim of this article is to develop a framework for a state‐tracking ILC that mitigates oscillatory intersample behavior, which is often encountered in output tracking ILC. As a framework for the analysis, the stability of the iterative domain including the robustness filter and the asymptotic signal is formulated. In addition, as a framework for the design, the design method using frequency response data to reduce the modeling effort, the learning filter design based on inversion, and the specific design procedure of the robustness filter are presented. The designed method is successfully applied to a motion system and it is shown that the presented state‐tracking ILC provides better intersample behavior than the standard output‐tracking ILC.
Kinetics of Lactic Acid Fermentation during Dahi Preparation

Dahi with 4.15% fat and 11% solids-not-fat (SNF) was prepared from cow milk, pasteurized at 85℃ for 15 min and cooled to 25℃. Fermentation kinetics was studied to study the effects of sugar concentration (2 to 10%) and starter-level (1 to 3%) on cell growth, lactic acid production and its rate, pH, and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) count which was monitored every 3 h until the total of 15 h fermentation time. The biomass growth rate was very high for 10% sugar at 2% inoculum levels i.e., lnX/Xt = 30.74. Similarly, the lactic acid production rate was maximum (0.17%) for 2% sugar at 1% inoculum level. The overall maximum growth rate was observed at 6% sugar concentration for all inoculum concentrations. The highest growth rate of 0.8 per hour was seen for 1% inoculum at 6% sugar concentration and the pH for the entire process decreased from 6.5 to 4.4 when fermented at room temperature (28℃). The decrease was steep and a gradual fall in pH was obtained at 8 h of fermentation in 2% and 8% sugar levels at all inoculum levels. From the study, inoculation and sugar levels showed a significant effect on the specific growth rate, pH, and the total lactic acid bacterial counts thereby heading one step possibility of commercialization of indigenous product dahi through optimization of the process variables.
42nd Bulletin of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

After two years of an in-person pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 21st International Neuropsychoanalysis Congress was held in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Important approaches to the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis were presented. Some regional groups of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society have carried out various activities regarding this topic. Groups such as Madrid, Ireland, Manchester, Sweden, Lithuania and the United Kingdom have organized or participated in events, readings and research with approaches to theoretical and clinical aspects of neuropsychoanalysis. Other groups have also organized seminars to read Prof. Mark Solms’ book The Hidden Spring (Solms, 2021) both as individual groups and together with other regional groups. This bulletin reports on these and other exciting activities carried out by regional groups all around the world.