Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combating Climate Change Through Enhanced Weathering of Agricultural Soils

Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are driving increases in global temperatures. Enhanced weathering of silicate rocks is a CO2 removal technology that could help mitigate anthropogenic climate change. Enhanced weathering adds powdered silicate rock to agricultural lands, accelerating natural chemical weathering, and is expected to rapidly draw down atmospheric CO2. However, differences between enhanced and natural weathering result in significant uncertainties about its potential efficacy. This article summarizes the research into enhanced weathering and the uncertainties of enhanced weathering due to the key differences with natural weathering, as well as future research directions.
SCHC over Sigfox LPWAN

The Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) specification describes a header compression scheme and a fragmentation functionality for Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies. SCHC offers a great level of flexibility that can be tailored for different LPWAN technologies. The present document provides the optimal parameters and modes of operation when SCHC is implemented over a Sigfox LPWAN.
Providing personalised information based on individual interests and preferences

The main aim of personalised Information Retrieval (IR) is to provide an effective IR system whereby relevant information can be presented according to individual users' interests and preferences. In response to their queries, all Web users expect to obtain the search results in a rank order with the most relevant items at the lowest ranks. Effective IR systems rank the less relevant documents below the relevant documents. However, a commonly stated problem of Web browsers is to match the users' queries to the information base. The key challenge is to return a list of search results containing a low level of non-relevant documents while not missing out the relevant documents.To address this problem, keyword-based search of Vector Space Model is employed as an IR technique to model the Web users and build their interest profiles. Semantic-based search through Ontology is further employed to represent documents matching the users' needs without being directly contained in the users' specified keywords. The users' log files are one of the most important sources from which implicit feedback is detected through their profiles. These provide valuable information based on which alternative learning approaches (i.e. dwell-based search) can be incorporated into the IR standard measures (i.e. tf-idf) allowing a further improvement of personalisation of Web document search, thus increasing the performance of IR systems.To incorporate such a non-textual data type (i.e. dwell) into the hybridisation of the keyword-based and semantic-based searches entails a complex interaction of information attributes in the index structure. A dwell-based filter called dwell-tf-ldf that allows a standard tokeniser to be converted into a keyword tokeniser is thus proposed. The proposed filter uses an efficient hybrid indexing technique to bring textual and non-textual data types under one umbrella, thus making a move beyond simple keyword matching to improve future retrieval applications for web browsers. Adopting precision and recall, the most common evaluation measure, the superiority of the hybridisation of these approaches lies in pushing significantly relevant documents to the top of the ranked lists, as compared to any traditional search system. The results were empirically confirmed through human subjects who conducted several real-life Web searches.
An Overview Study of Software Defined Networking

Recent technological advances have determined the emergence of several limitations that the traditional networks have. This situation lead the networking industry to rethink network architectures in order to solve these issues. This paper presents a short overview and history of the new paradigm that appeared in this context, Software Defined Networking (SDN). First of all, this concept is briefly presented. After that, the ideas that form the fundaments of SDN are introduced. They appeared from previous research in the industry: active networks, data and control planes separation and OpenFlow protocol. Afterwards, the motivation behind SDN is exposed by displaying the limitations that traditional networks have and the concepts that promote this new paradigm. Next, we present a few details about the SDN paradigm and some techno-economic aspects. The paper concludes with future research directions, which are related to the definition of use cases for Wireless & Mobile applications and possibly development and even implementation of SDN applications that optimize the wireless networks.
Measuring and comparing in-situ CO2 and CO profiles with satellite observations and model data

ABSTRACT Accurate measurements of the vertical distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are critical to validate the vertical columns recorded by satellite and ground-based spectrometers and to estimate sources and sinks of CO2. This work describes an in-situ air-sampler system (Aircore). Profiles of CO2 and carbon monoxide (CO) were retrieved from two soundings of this system in Xilin Hot on 13 and 14 June 2018, and compared with observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). The column-averaged mixing ratio of CO (XCO) monitored by TROPOMI agreed well with that calculated from the in-situ CO profile, with a small mean difference of 5 ± 1.89 ppb. The column-averaged mixing ratio of CO2 (XCO2) monitored by OCO-2 also agreed well with that calculated from the in-situ CO2 profile, with a slight bias of 0.4 ± 0.6 ppm. The OCO-2 a posteriori profile had an obvious bias compared with the in-situ CO2 profile on 13 June, with an underestimation between 600 hPa and 250 hPa and an overestimation below 600 hPa. CAMS also had the same bias compared with the in-situ CO profile; however, CAMS agreed well with the in-situ CO profile on 14 June in the troposphere because a weak cold vortex passed Xilin Hot on 13 June and disappeared on 14 June. In the stratosphere, there were significant biases in the vertical degradation. The striking agreement between the column-averaged mixing ratios and the differences in the vertical distribution suggests new exciting applications for the profile product. Graphical abstract
Investigation of the Date Palm Fiber for Green Composites Reinforcement: Thermo-physical and Mechanical Properties of the Fiber

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the chemical and thermo-physical characterization of date palm fiber, which can be used in the reinforcement of green composites. Alkaline solutions with different concentrations of NaOH (0.5, 1, 2 and 3%) and various immersion times (0.5, 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8h) at room temperature were used to treat fibers obtained from date palm fruit branches. In total, 750 samples were tested, and the results obtained show that the chemical treatment of the fibers can lead to an increase, up to 3 times, of their mechanical properties (strength and Young’s modulus) in quasi-static tensile tests. Due to the dispersion in the experimental data, a statistical approach is required to evaluate the mechanical properties. To better understand the phenomena related to the physico-chemical properties of these fibers, several characterization techniques have been used, namely Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction. The data have been compared with results reported in the literature for other lignocellulosic fibers.
MICROSTRUCTURE-BASED SIMULATIONS OF QUASISTATIC DEFORMATION USING AN EXPLICIT DYNAMIC APPROACH

Microstructure-based simulations of the deformation processes require substantial computational resources due to the necessity of using detailed meshes with a large number of elements. An approach that considerably reduces the computational costs implies simulation of quasistatic deformation within a dynamic approach involving a solution of the motion equations rather than the equilibrium equations. It enables a transition from implicit to explicit time integration providing a significant gain in the computational capacity. In this paper, we show that the explicit dynamic approach can be successfully used in the microstructure-based simulations of quasistatic deformation, considerably reducing the computational costs without losing the information and solution accuracy. The following conditions have to be met to ensure a close agreement between the dynamic and static solutions: (i) the load velocity in the dynamic calculations must be smoothly increased to its amplitude value and then kept constant to minimize the acceleration term appearing in the equation of motion and (ii) the constitutive model employed must describe a quasi-rate-independent response. An examination of the mesh convergence and the strain-rate dependence for a polycrystalline aluminum model has supported this conclusion.
Exfoliation of scalable few layer biocompatible graphene nanosheets using a protein-assisted mechano-chemical technique

The ubiquitous applications in which graphene plays an integral role has made it essential to develop a facile, cheap, environmentally-friendly and scalable manufacturing technique, that can meet its ever-growing demand. This thesis investigates a mechanochemical method to exfoliate Few-Layered Graphene (FLG) dispersions. A common protein, Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) is implemented that has been found to improve the effectiveness of the exfoliation process as well as prevent graphene layers from aggregating back after it has been separated. Moreover, Astrocytes cells were brought in contact with the developed BSA-FLG dispersions in order to test for cell cytotoxicity as a part of a preliminary study. The results indicate that cells thrived when subjected to BSA-FLG dispersions up until a certain concentration. In addition, an exhaustive literature review on existing ball milling techniques used to synthesize graphene has been included.
The Effect of Human Walking on Distribution Characteristics of Indoor Particulate Matter

In modern society, house dust particulate matters pollution had become serious. Ventilation is an important method for removing house dust particulate matters and it is very important to explore the removal efficiency of house dust particulate matters under different ventilation modes. This study analyses the removal effect of house dust particulate matters under the two typical ventilation modes called ceiling exhaust and slit exhaust strategy through experiments and date analysis. In the process of experiments, riboflavin particles were used as the house dust particulate matters, instantaneous microbial detection (IMD) was used to measure the house dust particulate matters. Walking test was carried on after the ventilation system running for some time, which aimed to explore the influence of human behaviour on the house dust particulate matters distribution under two different ventilation modes. It is concluded that larger size particles had larger sedimentation velocity and sedimentation velocity of particles would be faster significantly after the ventilation system working. After walking experiment, particles concentration returned to background concentrations due to the effect of the ventilation system. Particles concentration in slit exhaust strategy was lower than ceiling exhaust so that the effect of slit exhaust strategy is superior to the ceiling exhaust.
Effect of Alkali on the Efficiency and Reliability of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells

EFFECT OF ALKALI ON THE EFFICIENCY AND RELIABILITY OF Cu(In,Ga)Se2 SOLAR CELLS Shankar Karki Old Dominion University, 2019 Co-Directors: Dr. Desmond Cook Dr. Sylvain Marsillac The incorporation of alkali metal has contributed tremendously in a bid to realize greater than 20% efficient Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) solar cells. Achieving high efficiency is one key parameter for the success of a photovoltaic technology but so is its longterm stability. In this thesis, the relationship between the performance of alkali treated Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells and their physicochemical, electronic and structural properties are explored through a comparative study between standard devices and alkali (K, Rb) treated devices. The alkali treated devices tend to have a lower concentration of Ev+0.98 eV trap, higher majority carrier concentration and improved minority carrier lifetime, contributing to the experimentally observed improvement in open circuit voltage. Critical changes in alkali elemental profile occur throughout the film, while no other major physicochemical or structural properties are modified. Furthermore, we explored the long-term stability of CIGS solar cells due to damp heat treatment. We specifically study the influence on the molybdenum back contact and the CIGS absorber layer itself, with an emphasis on the role played by sodium. Molybdenum thin films showed drastic micro-structural, surface morphology, electrical and optical properties deterioration leading to the degradation of the solar cell performance. In the case of bare CIGS thin films, we observed surface oxidation and degraded electronic properties, also leading to degradation of solar cell performance. In both cases, alkali migration is responsible for the most part of the degradation, along with surface oxidation.
Development of Lightweight Organic Aerogels for Thermal Insulation Applications

Organic aerogels provide the solutions for many sectors, due to their extremely unique feature and their unique structure that are spread-out at different length scale. Organic aerogels are considered the next generation materials due to their high tunability and adaptability by the tailoring of their final properties. Tailoring of organic aerogels properties is the theme of many nanocellular and low-density materials research, however, such process experiences many challenges. The main two challenges of tailoring such materials are: (I) the synthesis of monolithic aerogels with strong mechanical properties while preserving their unique features, and (II) the deep understanding of the origin of such features and correlating each feature to a structural parameter. This work addressed both these challenges to have a deep understanding of organic aerogels and to integrate them into many sectors. The synthesis process focused mostly on pure organic aerogels without any composites, at first, to correlate the processing conditions to the micromorphological parameters. The micromorphological parameters were further studied to quantify each parameter that controlled the assembly of the aerogel three-dimensional network. Then, each parameter was correlated to the structural final property to better understand the uniqueness of the organic aerogels features. With the correlation build-up between the processing-structure-properties of organic aerogels, a heat transfer model was conducted on the structure. In such model, each heat
Multilabel Image Annotation Menggunakan Metode Convolutional Neural Network

Dengan berkembangnya sosial media terutama yang memiliki fitur untuk mengunggah foto dan gambar menyebabkan banyaknya gambar yang diunggah pada sosial media. Gambar tersebut dapat digunakan untuk membangun sistem pencarian gambar berbasis isi atau content-base image retrieval . Namun, banyak gambar yang diunggah tidak diberikan label atau tag sesuai dengan isi dari citra yang diunggah, sehingga sangat sulit untuk dikelola. Untuk dapat mewujudkan sistem pencarian gambar berbasis isi maka setiap obyek pada gambar harus dikenali terlebih dahulu. Jika pengenalan obyek tersebut dilakukan secara manual maka akan sangat sulit karena akan memakan waktu yang lama dan makna dari setiap orang terhadap suatu gambar berbeda, yang menimbulkan pengenalan obyek yang subyektif. Oleh karena itu dibangunlah sistem penganotasian gambar secara otomatis. Dalam penelitian ini diajukan sebuah metode Convolutional Neural Network untuk menangani sistem penganotasian gambar multilabel. metode Convolutional Neural Network telah terbukti memiliki performansi yang baik pada kasus klasifikasi gambar, ditunjukkan dengan performansi pada kasus klasifikasi gambar pada ILSVRC yang semakin membaik setiap tahunnya. Performansi tertinggi terhadap data uji pada penelitian ini adalah 81.24%.
The Seasonality and Regionality of MJO Impacts on North American Temperature

It is widely accepted that the Madden‐Julian Oscillation's (MJO) influence on North American temperature is strongest in winter. A growing body of literature demonstrates that the MJO also influences North American weather in other seasons. Here we use observations to investigate the seasonality and regionality of the MJO's impact on weather station daily maximum air temperature over North America (NA). Consistent with previous work, we find the strongest MJO signal in temperatures over eastern NA and Alaska during winter. However, the peak MJO signals over much of central NA, western NA, and south Texas occur outside of winter. We investigate how this translates to forecast skill and conduct leave‐one‐out cross‐validated empirical forecasts of maximum surface air temperature using the phase of the MJO and lead time as predictors. Our results suggest the potential for more skillful long‐range forecasts of weather over NA during spring, summer, and fall.
The Effects of Adding Pyramidal and Convex Diffusers on Room Acoustic Parameters in a Small Non-Diffuse Room

This paper presents an investigation of the effects of relatively large-scale pyramidal and convex-shaped diffusers on the acoustical properties of a small non-diffuse rectangular room. Room impulse responses (RIRs) were measured in various room configurations to extract the early decay time (EDT), reverberation time (T20), early-to-late arriving sound ratio (C50), and clarity (C80). The difference between the parameters measured in the empty room were chosen to be the reference, and those measured in other room configurations was calculated. Statistical analysis of the measurement results supplements the investigation to determine whether the coverage and type of diffusers contribute significantly to the variation of the acoustical parameters. The results show that adding diffusers in the room generally decreases EDT as well as T20, and increases C50 as well as C80 for both diffuser types. The statistical analysis shows that the coverage of diffusers significantly contributes to the variation of the acoustical parameters in most conditions (octave band, diffuser type). The effect of the diffuser shape is only significant for some of the conditions (at 4 kHz, the number of diffusers). The data presented demonstrate that in a small non-diffuse room the reverberation can be controlled efficiently by redirecting the sound energy towards the most absorbing surfaces.
Thermal effusivity determination of carbon fibre-reinforced polymers by means of active thermography

ABSTRACT We present a new imaging approach to determine porosity in carbon fibre-reinforced polymers by active thermography in the reflection mode. The infrared radiation is excited with help of a semiconductor laser. We use rectangular pulses for the excitation light – either single pulses or a sequence of a couple of pulses – and measure the succeeding temperature transients. These signals are transferred to the frequency domain by means of a discrete Laplace transformation. The evaluation of the thermal effusivity is done by a linear fitting process which gives unequivocal results with comparatively small error bars. The method is fast and robust, and the results compare well with prior experiments carried out with ultrasonic-testing, X-ray computed tomography or other approaches of thermography, where the thermal diffusivity has been determined.
Formalizing UML Behavioral Diagrams with B

An appropriate approach for translating UML to B formal specifications allows one to use UML and B jointly in an unified, practical and rigorous software development. We formally analyze UML specifications via their corresponding B formal specifications. This point is significant because B support tools like \atelierb{} are available. We can also use UML specifications as a tool for building B specifications, so the development of B specifications become easier. This paper reports our recent results on formalizing UML behavioral diagrams in B notations. We are planning to present automatic derivation schemes from UML behavioral diagrams to B specifications. Our proposal together with the formalization in B of UML structure specifications provide a complete frameworks to translate UML specifications into B. We discuss also the perspectives for analyzing UML behavioral specifications via the derived B specifications.
Ultrasonic Power and Data Transfer through Multiple Curved Layers Applied to Pipe Instrumentation

Ultrasonic power and data transfer through multilayered curved walls was investigated using numerical and experimental analysis. The acoustic channel used in this paper was formed by two concentric pipes filled with water, aiming for applications that involve powering and monitoring sensors installed behind the pipe walls. The analysis was carried out in the frequency and time domains using numerical and experimental models. Power and data were effectively simultaneously transferred through the channel. A remote temperature and pressure sensor was powered and interrogated throughout all the layers, and the power insertion loss was 10.72 dB with a data transmission rate of 1200 bps using an amplitude modulated scheme with Manchester coding. The efficiency of the channel was evaluated through an experimental analysis of the bit error rate (BER) with different values of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), showing a decrease in the number of errors compared with detection without Manchester coding.
Microbiological insights into ecology and taphonomy of prehistoric wetlands.

In the course of this dissertation, I present investigations of the microbial constituents of fossil plants preserved at an anatomical level of detail, and detail the results of an ecological survey of root-endogenous fungi within the cosmopolitan emergent macrophyte, Typha. These studies together elucidate processes in the taphonomy of fossil plants. Biostratinomy is addressed through descriptions of saprotrophic communities within the Eocene Princeton Chert mire assemblage, and within a Carboniferous fern which previous studies had suggested contained fossilized actinobacteria. Re-investigation of the ‘actinobacteria’ suggests instead that the structures are disordered ferrous dolomites, raising implications for the contribution of sulfatereducing bacteria to the early-diagenesis mineralization of plants preserved in carbonaceous concretions. The fossilized remains of saprotrophic and putatively endophytic fungi within roots of in-situ plants from the Princeton Chert also provide insight into early diagenesis. Some of the fungi described herein are preserved in several co-occurring developmental phases, providing evidence that early phases of silicification in this assemblage were rapid. As the Princeton Chert is not a hot-spring sinter deposit, these data conflict with prior hypotheses for the preservation of this peat-forming wetland assemblage. Understanding the microbial paleoecology of this system, and other wetland assemblages that constitute paleobotanical Konservat-lagerstätten, will provide important foundations upon which to improve hypotheses of plant-microbe interactions in the fossil record. Research into fossil plant-microbe interactions must, however, be conducted with reference to appropriate biogeochemical analogues. The concluding component of this dissertation establishes that endogenous fungi in contemporary wetland plant roots are affected by persistent inundation. Although the constituents of rootendogenous communities do not appear to change between inundated roots and those growing in