Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geometry and supersymmetry in type II string theory

My thesis is associated with the field of D6-brane model building in type IIA string theory, where the fractional D6-brane stacks are wrapped on special Lagrangian cycles in backgrounds of factorisable toroidal orientifolds T6/(Z2xZ2MxΩR) with 2M=2,6,6' and with discrete torsion. I develop an explicit formalism for complex structure deformations of the Z2 orbifold singularities and observe how the volumes of the special Lagrangian cycles change under deformations. I show that, depending on the concrete model, this procedure can be used to stabilise several or all twisted complex structure moduli, or that, alternatively, the sizes of gauge couplings can be varied. As a starting point, I introduce the orientifold T6/(Z2xZ2xΩR) on square torus lattices, now expressed as hypersurface in a complex weighted projective space. I demonstrate the process of concrete deformations and discuss how explicit volumes of fractional cycles, bulk cycles, and exceptional cycles can be computed. These can be used to determine physical quantities like gauge couplings. My investigations also show if the cycles keep their special Lagrangian property under deformations. After that, I present the orientifold T6/(Z2xZ6'xΩR) with underlying hexagonal tori, which is very interesting for model building with intersecting D6-brane stacks. For the concrete construction, I start again with T6/(Z2xZ2xΩR) and mod out an additional Z3 symmetry by hand, which implies that the deformation parameters are organised in Z3 and ΩR invariant orbits. In this setup, new technical difficulties arise. In addition, I show first results for the phenomenologically very appealing orientifold T6/(Z2xZ6xΩR) on one rectangular and two hexagonal tori, whose underlying structure is much more complicated than in the previous examples. Hence, so far only local descriptions are found. In concrete models, there exist stacks of N coincident D6-branes, wrapped on fractional cycles, which carry gauge groups SO(2N), USp(2N), and/or U(N). I show that, depending on the model, the impact of the deformations can be divided into three different cases. Firstly, the brane stack does not couple to a certain deformation, which gives rise to a flat direction in the moduli space. Secondly, the branes couple only to the orientifold-even part of the deformed exceptional cycle, but not to the orientifold-odd part, in which case one can adjust the corresponding gauge couplings by changing the volume of the exceptional cycle. Thirdly, if the brane stack couples to the orientifold-odd part, one finds that the respective complex structure modulus is stabilised, which is a desirable property to find a unique vacuum. For D6-branes with SO(2N) or USp(2N) gauge group, by construction all orientifold-odd contributions are zero and no moduli are stabilised. On the other hand, in a Pati-Salam model with three particle generations and only U(N) gauge groups all three cases can be observed, and actually ten out of 15 twisted complex structure moduli can be stabilised at the orbifold point.
Manipulation of magnetic ionic liquid droplets and their application in energy harvesting

Controlling discrete fluid droplets using magnetic fields on a hydrophobic surface offers new opportunities in microfluidics. Manipulation of two pure magnetic ionic liquids (MILs) [Emim][FeCl4] and [Bmim][FeCl4] was investigated on a hydrophobic surface under the influence of an external magnetic field. The effects of increasing and decreasing magnetic field strength on the shape of the MIL droplets were first studied at three different temperatures. Both MILs showed good robustness to temperature variations. Moreover, the hysteresis phenomena of height and contact line diameter were observed for both MIL droplets with different volumes. Next, the movement of the MIL droplets under the actuation of a horizontal moving magnet was investigated. It was found that the maximum attainable speed increased linearly with the droplet volume, and it was up to 22 mm s−1 for a 10 µl [Emim][FeCl4] droplet when the surface magnetic field strength was 400 mT. Finally, a electrostatic energy harvester using conductive MIL droplets rolling across a charged electret film was studied. An average output power of 78 nW was obtained with a 20 µl droplet. The manipulation of individual real pure MIL droplets without adding or dispersing magnetic particles was persistent and neither evaporation nor phase separation took place.
Risk Factors Associated With Hearing Impairment in Infants and Children: A Systematic Review

The purpose of the present systematic review was to synthesize evidence on associated risk factors of hearing loss (HL) in children. Evidence-based research articles on HL published between January 2013 and December 2022 using PubMed, Cochrane, and Scopus databases were searched. The study included children between zero and three years of age who have permanent bilateral/unilateral HL (BHL/UHL) by employing case-control studies, randomized controlled trials, nonrandomized studies, prospective or retrospective cohort studies, and studies with or without comparison groups. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklist for longitudinal and cross-sectional studies were used to rate the quality of the chosen studies. The studies that would be considered were reviewed by two independent authors, and a third author was contacted if there was a dispute. A preliminary literature search uncovered 505 articles from the electronic search and 41 studies by hand searching. Duplicate records were eliminated, leaving 432 records. The abstract and title were read, and 340 studies were eliminated. There were 92 articles in total that qualified for full-text screening. Among these, 75 articles were disregarded since they lacked information or failed to assess the risk factors for HL. The qualitative synthesis, therefore, included 17 articles. Most often, cross-sectional study designs were used in the studies that were reviewed, which were then followed by longitudinal studies. Three of the studies that were reviewed used a prospective cohort design. The quality of all the included studies was rated to be good. The current review revealed that the primary statistically significant risk factors for HL included ventilator support; craniofacial anomalies; low birth weight (LBW); forceps delivery; loop diuretics; meningitis; asphyxia; intensive care; consanguinity; sepsis; Apgar scores between 0 and 4 at one minute; toxoplasmosis, other agents, rubella, cytomegalovirus, and herpes (TORCH) infections; and hyperbilirubinemia.
Optimally scheduling interfering and non‐interfering cranes

This article treats the problem of scheduling multiple cranes processing jobs along a line, where cranes are divided into different groups and only cranes in the same group can interfere with each other. Such crane scheduling problems occur, for example, at indented berths or in container yards where double rail‐mounted gantry cranes stack containers such that cranes of the same size can interfere with each other but small cranes can pass underneath larger ones. We propose a novel algorithm based on Benders decomposition to solve this problem to optimality. In a computational study, it is shown that this algorithm solves small and medium‐sized instances and even many large instances within a few seconds or minutes. Moreover, it improves several best known solutions from the literature with regard to the simpler problem version with only one crane group. We also look into whether investment in more complicated crane configurations with multiple crane groups is actually worthwhile.
Productivity, Bioconversion Capacity, Protein and Fat Contents of Black Soldier Fly Larvae (<i>Hermetia illucens)</i> Fed with Jatropha Curcas Pressed Cake

: The use of black soldier flies (BSF) for biofuel production and fish feeding is nowadays presented as an ecological alternative. Several biomasses have been used to nurture BSF, however Jatropha curcas pressed cake obtained from biofuel production using jatropha seeds is a nutrient-rich biomass that has not yet been fully used as feed for BSF, probably due to its toxicity (not used in animal feeding). The aim of this study was to assess the bioconversion of this cake by black soldier flies ( Hermetia illucens ) following different detoxification treatments. The study was conducted in a greenhouse. Three detoxification treatments were applied on Jatropha curcas pressed cakes (whitch was obtained by cold pressing of Jatropha cusas seeds with a residual oil content of 24.64±0.05%): the treatments consisted of a control, thermal, biological and thermo-biological treatments. Resulting cake samples were used to feed 4 treatments of 550 BSF larvae in each. Each treatment had 4 repetitions, making a total of sixteen repetitions. The BSF larvae were four-day-old and were fed with 90 g of cakes every 4 days during 15 days. Assessed parameters included survival rate of larvae, meal reduction rate, bioconversion rate, organic matter, fats, crude protein, and ash contents of larvae. Results showed that the highest (p>0.05) larval survival rate (98,42±1,22%) was obtained with the biological treatment. The best bioconversion rate (37.1±60.68%) was recorded with the control treatment. No significant difference was observed between treatments with regard to organic matter (94.25±0.13%), fats (32.08±0.25%), crude protein (45.33±0.14%) and in ash (5.75±0.13%) contents. It was concluded that Jatropha curcas cakes , although toxic for monogastric, are appropriate feed material for black soldier fly larvae and can be used without any prior detoxification treatment.
Optimal H Infinity Controller Applied to a Stewart Platform

In recent years there has been great interest in studying parallel manipulators, mainly applied in flight simulators, with six degrees of freedom. The interest in parallel kinematic structures is motivated by its high stiffness and excellent positioning capability in relation to serial kinematic structures. This work presents the kinematic and dynamic modeling, design, development and identification of the parameters of motion platform with six degrees of freedom, electrically powered, for studies of flight simulators, is known as a Stewart Platform. It also presents the design of an H infinity controller with output feedback. The actuator model was obtained by a step voltage input to the engines and measuring its displacement by the encoders coupled, in each of the respective axes of the motors. Knowing the relation of motion transmission mechanism between the motor shaft and each actuator is obtained by the displacement rod from the rotation of motor which are measured by the corresponding encoder. The kinematics and dynamics platform's data compose the whole systems models simulations that are applied in the Stewart platform to validate the model and show the effectiveness of control techniques in which was applied to control the position and orientation of the platform were performed. An inertial sensor Xsens MTi-G measurement of the Euler angles of the platform was performed. The result obtained by the controller was satisfactory and illustrate the performance and robustness of the proposed methodology.
Measurement dynamic feedback output regulation in hybrid linear systems with state jumps

This work investigates the problem of designing a hybrid dynamic feedback regulator that forces the output of a hybrid linear system to asymptotically converge to the reference generated by a hybrid exogenous system, asymptotically rejects the exogenous disturbance, and attains global asymptotic stability of the compensated hybrid linear dynamics. The class of hybrid linear systems addressed exhibits a continuous‐time linear behavior except at isolated points of the time axis, where the state is subject to discontinuities that are caused by a jump behavior. In the presence of possibly unequally spaced state jumps, under the only constraint that the minimum time between any two consecutive jumps is no smaller than a given positive real constant, both implicit and explicit sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution to the stated problem are shown. The explicit condition is constructive, in the sense that it outlines the algorithmic procedure for the synthesis of the hybrid feedback regulator, provided that a certain output‐nulling hybrid controlled invariant subspace be known. Then, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such subspace is proven, so that a computational means to derive it, if any exists, is given. Finally, the devised approach is applied to a numerical example borrowed from the literature, with the twofold aim of illustrating its implementation and making a comparison with the available method.
Communication Security of Autonomous Ground Vehicles Based on Networked Control Systems: The Optimized LMI Approach

This study focuses on the networked control systems (NCSs) under Denial of Service (DoS) attacks with periodicity and attack intensity. A DoS attack with attack strength is studied, which has important research significance for establishing a suitable defense mechanism. First, the construction of appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals (LKFs) can reduce the constraints of the basic conditions and help lower the criterion's conservatism. Then, the selection problem of the trigger threshold is transformed into an optimization problem with constraints, and the gradient descent algorithm (GDA) is used to select the trigger threshold to save sampling resources better. Next, an intelligent event-triggered controller (IETC) is designed to ensure the safe operation of the system under DoS attacks. Finally, the correctness of the method is verified through the experiment of the autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) system based on the Simulink platform.
Kerr/CFT correspondence in a 4D extremal rotating regular black hole by treating the regularization effect up to the first cubic-order expansion

In this study, as an extension of Kerr/CFT correspondence to more realistic black holes, we carry out Kerr/CFT correspondence in a four-dimensional rotating regular black hole in which there is no singularities at the extremal limit. Then if we treat the equation to obtain the horizon radii, it turns out that it is given as a fifth-order equation due to the regularization effect for the core of black holes. In order to handle this situation, in this study we treat the regularization effect in perturbative way by expanding the regularized mass in terms of the parameter for the regularization effect up to the first cubic-order. We call this expansion as first cubic-order expansion. As a result, the equation becomes forth-order, and we can obtain the NHEK geometry up to the first cubic-order expansion. Then obtaining the Virasolo algebra with the central charge and the Frolov-Thorne temperature in chiral half of 2D CFT dual for the NHEK geometry with the ASG, we compute entropy in the dual CFT using the Cardy formula. We can see that it agrees with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of our rotating regular black hole. Here these central charge, the CFT temperature and the entropy are computed with the correction of the first cubic-order expansion. As the interesting point in this study, it is taken that this study would be a more realistic Kerr/CFT, since regular black holes could correspond to actual black holes.
A novel ranking distance measure combining Cayley and Spearman footrule metrics

Defining the appropriate ranking distance measures among rankings is a classic area of study. The goal of our work is to identify a combination of methodologies, which is proven to be capable for the determination of a proper ranking system. In our study, we used 3 well‐established metrics: Kendall tau, Spearman footrule, and Cayley distance and a novel metric created by the combination of Cayley and Spearman footrule metrics. The results of the newly introduced metric depend on how fast we can trade a permutation of items to the reference permutation according to the Spearman footrule. On the other hand, the distance also depends on the number of cycles and the inversions in the cycle. Two case studies—chemometric data of phytonutrients of tomato varieties and sensometric data of orange juices—were used to test the performance of the studied ranking distance metrics. The properties of the new metric were compared to the traditional metrics regarding the normality of their distributions, significant number of differences between the rating objects, and the quality of the rankings. Results were validated by leave‐one‐out cross‐validation and significant differences by Wilcoxon matched pairs test.
Intelligent measurement and compensation of linear motor force ripple: a projection-based learning approach in the presence of noise

Due to their structural simplicity, linear motors are increasingly receiving attention for use in high velocity and high precision applications. The force ripple, as a space-periodic disturbance, however, would deteriorate the achievable dynamic performance. Conventional force ripple measurement approaches are time-consuming and have high requirements on the experimental conditions. In this paper, a novel learning identification algorithm is proposed for force ripple intelligent measurement and compensation. Existing identification schemes always use all the error signals to update the parameters in the force ripple. However, the error induced by noise is non-effective for force ripple identification, and even deteriorates the identification process. In this paper only the most pertinent information in the error signal is utilized for force ripple identification. Firstly, the effective error signals caused by the reference trajectory and the force ripple are extracted by projecting the overall error signals onto a subspace spanned by the physical model of the linear motor as well as the sinusoidal model of the force ripple. The time delay in the linear motor is compensated in the basis functions. Then, a data-driven approach is proposed to design the learning gain. It balances the trade-off between convergence speed and robustness against noise. Simulation and experimental results validate the proposed method and confirm its effectiveness and superiority.
Fixed-time stabilization and consensus of nonholonomic systems

This paper focuses on the design of fixed-time consensus for multiple unicycle-type mobile agents. A distributed switched strategy, based on local information, is proposed to solve the leader-follower consensus problem for multiple nonholonomic agents in chained form. The switching times and the prescribed convergence time are explicitly given regardless of the initial conditions. Simulation results highlight the efficiency of the proposed method.
Students’ career capital resource needs for employability in the technology-driven work world

The present study assessed the world of work awareness of a random sample of (N = 486) higher education undergraduate students from an emerging country. In addition, the study explored these students’ needs for information they need from their studies about the technology-driven world of work. The needs were evaluated in terms specific career capital resources that should be addressed in the higher education curriculum to foster the employability of graduates in a rapid evolving digital-era workplace. A mixed methods concurrent triangulation design was employed to analyse quantitative (numeric descriptive statistics and correlations) and qualitative (text) data from the same sample. The quantitative descriptive findings suggested an open-mindedness toward new technology, being responsive to changing work conditions and a need for continuous upskilling opportunities. The participants exhibited sound awareness of the impact of technology on their future employability and careers. Predominantly, the qualitative findings indicated a strong need for 'knowing how' career capital resource development in the form of career planning and job search guidance and gaining deeper knowledge and understanding of the impact of technology on the job market, job and occupation opportunities and employability requirements. Participants expressed a need to understand the relevance of the qualification curriculum and content to the digital-era world of work and shifting employer expectations. The findings also revealed a need for 'knowing what', 'knowing why' and 'knowing whom' career capital resource development for employability as part of university studies. Recommendations are made for incurriculating career and employability development in university courses.
A Climatology of Weakly Forced and Pulse Thunderstorms in the Southeast United States

AbstractWeakly forced thunderstorms (WFTs), convection forming in the absence of a synoptic forcing mechanism and its associated shear regime, are the dominant convective mode during the warm season in the Southeast United States. This study uses 15 years (2001–2015) of warm season (May-September) composite reflectivity images from 30 WSR-88D sites in the Southeastern United States to detect WFTs and pulse thunderstorms, defined as WFTs associated with a severe weather event. Thunderstorms were identified as regions of contiguous reflectivities greater than or equal to 40 dBZ using connected neighborhoods labeling. Ward’s clustering was then performed upon the duration, size, strength, initiation time, and solidity of the approximately 1.9 million resulting thunderstorms. Of the 10 clusters of morphologically similar storms, five groups, containing 885,496 thunderstorms, were designated as WFTs.In line with previous work, WFT development mirrors landscape features, such as the Appalachian Mountains and Mi.
5G Channel Models in mm-Wave Frequency Bands

This paper addresses the requirements imposed on 5G channel models which aim to support frequencies up to 100 GHz. It describes the initial channel model used in the mmMAGIC project as basis for link and system level investigations. The model is compliant to the 3GPP-3D model, but provides first extensions to support the mm-wave frequency range.
Angle estimation for bistatic MIMO radar with unknown mutual coupling based on three-way compressive sensing

The problem of angle estimation for bistatic multiple-input multiple-output radar in the present of unknown mutual coupling (MC) is investigated, and a three-way compressive sensing (TWCS) estimation algorithm is developed. To exploit the inherent multi-dimensional structure of received data, a trilinear tensor model is firstly formulated. Then the de-coupling operation is followed. Thereafter, the high-order singular value decomposition is applied to compress the high dimensional tensor to a much smaller one. The estimation of the compressed direction matrices are linked to the compressed trilinear model, and finally two over-complete dictionaries are constructed for angle estimation. Also, Cramer-Rao bounds for angle and MC estimation are derived. The proposed TWCS algorithm is effective from the perspective of estimation accuracy as well as the computational complexity, and it can achieve automatically paired angle estimation. Simulation results show that the proposed method has much better estimation accuracy than the existing algorithms in the low signal-to-noise ratio scenario, and its estimation performance is very close to the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) algorithm at the high SNR regions.