Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of silane surface treatment of cellulose nanocrystals on the tensile properties of cellulose-polyvinyl chloride nanocomposite

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from mengkuang leaves (Pandanus tectorius) were investigated as potential reinforcement in poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) matrix. The surface of CNC was modified with silane coupling agent to improve filler-matrix adhesion. Solution casting method was used to prepare PVC nanocomposites with various amounts of modified (SCNC) and unmodified (CNC) nanocrystals. Both SCNC and CNC were examined by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) which showed that surface chemical modification has occurred. An increase in tensile strength was observed with the addition of SCNC compared to the CNC. However, the elongation at break of the nanocomposites was found to decrease with the increase of both fillers loading. An increasing trend was observed in the tensile modulus with the addition of CNC to the PVC matrix, but decreasing with the addition of SCNC. The morphology of a fractured surface of nanocomposites showed silane modification reduced the number of voids in the structure of PVC. The observation indicated the adhesion between the fiber and the matrix had improved upon surface modification of the nanocrystals with silane.
Tweeting in the Debate about Catalan Elections

The paper introduces a new annotated Spanish and Catalan data set for Sentiment Analysis about the Catalan separatism and the related debate held in social media at the end of 2015. It focuses on the collection of data, where we dealt with the exploitation in the debate of two languages, i.e. Spanish and Catalan, and on the design of the annotation scheme, previously applied in the development of other corpora about political debates, which extends a polarity label set by making available tags for irony and semantic oriented labels. The annotation process is presented and the detected disagreement discussed.
Modeling the Social and Human Capital Factors Effect on the Cross-Country Income Differences

The paper is devoted to the investigation the effec t of social and human capital factors on the cross-country income dif ferences among countries that have similar with Ukraine income levels based on the economic and mathematical models construction. It was constructed fo ur panel data models to estimate the effect of human capital accumulation on cross-country income differences. To study the influence of social factors on the dynamics of gross national income per capita of the countries and the c auses of its volatility it was constructed the panel vector autoregression model.
Dynamic behaviors for a hybrid leg-wheel mobile platform

A hybrid platform for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), one with legs and wheels, was initially considered to yield a design that possessed a high degree of intrinsic mobility. Integrating a high level of mobility reduces the UGV's perception and computational requirements for successful semi-autonomous or autonomous terrain negotiation. An investigation into the dynamic capabilities of the hybrid design revealed a large amount of otherwise impossible behaviors. The widened scope of maneuvers enabled the simulated robot to negotiate higher obstacles, clear larger ditches and generally improved its rough terrain mobility. A scalability study was also undertaken to predict dynamic potential of various platform sizes and to aid in the selection of design specifications such as motor torque-speed curves. The hybrid design of the platform (legs with active wheels) proved invaluable in achieving these dynamic behaviors and revealed that the leg-wheel design was as fundamental to dynamic capabilities, as it was to intrinsic mobility.
Inefficient Banking

The core banking activities of extending and monitoring loans and issuing low yielding short-term liabilities are functionally similar to investing in high quality credit and maturity spread trades funded with short-term brokerage loans in the capital market. We find that the unlevered return on assets for the US aggregate banking sector has averaged 2.7% per year over 1999-2015, while similar exposures sourced passively in the capital market earn 3.7% per year. Banks that underperform their size and asset risk matched peers tend to use higher leverage to increase their return on equity. The stock market rewards these banks with high valuations. * Begenau (jbegenau@hbs.edu) and Stafford (estafford@hbs.edu) are at Harvard Business School. We especially thank David Scharfstein for many fruitful discussions. We also thank Malcolm Baker, Robin Greenwood, Sam Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, and Adi Sunderam for helpful comments and discussions. Harvard Business School’s Division of Research provided research support. 1 The economic activities of banks are widely viewed to be special relative to other areas of the capital market. Banks invest in specialized knowledge (Leland and Pyle (1977)) and monitoring technologies (Diamond (1984)) to overcome the difficulties of credit provision to a large number of heterogeneous borrowers. These activities are funded primarily through deposits, which are believed to provide a funding advantage relative to alternative forms of short-term borrowing (e.g. Gorton and Pennacchi (1990), Diamond and Rajan (2000, 2001). Practitioner explanations of bank leverage choices are difficult to reconcile with standard tradeoff theories of capital structure and the pricing of systematic risks (Admati, DeMarzo, Hellwig, and Pfleiderer (2013)), suggesting that managers view themselves to be optimizing over real world frictions outside of these neoclassical models, further confirming the perceived specialness of banks. The essence of banks’ specialness is that it allows banks to execute various forms of maturity spread trades, involving illiquidity and high quality credit risk, more efficiently than others using less specialized technologies. This paper investigates the possibility that banks are no longer special relative to capital markets and that the widespread belief that they are special leads to the functional inefficiency of banking. We evaluate the performance of the aggregate banking sector from the functional perspective of capital markets (Merton and Bodie (1993, 1995)) and the law of one price. We assume that the economic exposures inherent in the core activities of banks can be sourced passively in the capital market. Similar exposures should be priced similarly, such that our passive exposures can be viewed as capital market based opportunity costs. Specialization may lead banks to require higher returns due to their concentrated exposures (Merton (1987)) and allow banks to earn economic rents, such that bank returns, net of costs, should be at least as
Temporal Gestalt Perception in Music

For the historian, time is not the undifferentiated "continuum" of the theoretical physicist, but a hierarchically ordered network of moments, incidents, episodes, periods, epochs, eras, etc.-i.e., time-spans whose conceptual "boundaries" are determined by the nature of the events or processes occurring within them (or of the historian's interpretation of these events or processes). Similarly for the musician, a piece of music does not consist merely of an inarticulate stream of elementary sounds, but a hierarchically ordered network of sounds, motives, phrases, passages, sections, movements, etc.-i.e., time-spans whose perceptual boundaries are largely determined by the nature of the sounds and sound-configurations occurring within them. What is involved in both cases is a conception of distinct spans of timeat several hierarchical levels-each of which is both internally cohesive and externally segregated from comparable time-spans immediately preceding and following it. Such time-spans (and the events or processes which define them) will here be called temporal gestalt-units (or "TGs").
Erreurs d'identification des agents biologiques à cote de sécurité élevée du groupe de risque 3 par SM MALDI-TOF au Canada : de novembre 2015 à octobre 2017

Contexte : La spectrométrie de masse à désorption-ionisation laser assistée par matrice avec analyseur de temps de vol (SM MALDI-TOF) est une technologie de plus en plus utilisée pour l’identification des microorganismes aux fins diagnostiques. Toutefois, des observations empiriques laissent penser que cette technologie est associée à des erreurs d’identification des agents biologiques à cote de sécurité élevée (ABCSE) du groupe de risque 3 (GR3), ce qui augmente le risque d’exposition pour le personnel en laboratoire.
Spatial Consumer Behaviour in Small and Medium-sized Towns

Van Leeuwen E. S. and Rietveld P. Spatial consumer behaviour in small and medium-sized towns, Regional Studies. Small and medium-sized towns are often recognized as important components of the rural economy. This paper focuses on the current function of small and medium-sized towns in providing retail services to local households in five European countries. Furthermore, it analyses the spatial shopping behaviour of these households. It appears that towns are still important places for shopping: more than half of the purchases of households living in town or the direct hinterland are bought in town. Van Leeuwen E. S. et Rietveld P. Le comportement géographique du consommateur dans les villes petites et moyennes, Regional Studies. Les villes petites et moyennes sont souvent considérées comme d’importants rouages de l’économie rurale. Cet article porte sur la fonction actuelle des villes petites et moyennes comme pourvoyeuses du commerce de detail aux ménages locaux dans cinq pays européens. Qui plus est, on analyse le comportement commercial géographique de ces ménages. Il semble que les villes sont toujours d’importants endroits où on fait les courses: plus de la moitié des achats des ménages qui habitent les villes ou l’arrière-pays immédiat se font dans les villes. Comportement commercial Villes Analyse géographique Choix discret Faire les courses au dehors de la ville Van Leeuwen E. S. und Rietveld P. Räumliches Verbraucherverhalten in kleinen und mittelgroßen Städten, Regional Studies. Kleine und mittelgroße Städte werden oft als wichtige Komponenten der Wirtschaft im ländlichen Raum anerkannt. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir die momentane Funktion von kleinen und mittelgroßen Städten hinsichtlich des Anbietens von Einzelhandelsdiensten für lokale Haushalte in fünf europäischen Ländern. Darüber hinaus wird das räumliche Einkaufsverhalten dieser Haushalte analysiert. Es hat den Anschein, dass es sich bei den Städten nach wie vor um wichtige Einkaufsorte handelt: Mehr als die Hälfte der Einkäufe von Haushalten, die in der Stadt oder im unmittelbaren Hinterland leben, werden in der Stadt getätigt. Einkaufsverhalten Städte Raumanalyse Discrete Choice Auswärts einkaufen Van Leeuwen E. S. y Rietveld P. Comportamiento espacial de compra en ciudades pequeñas y medianas, Regional Studies. Con frecuencia se reconoce que las ciudades pequeñas y medianas son componentes importantes en la economía rural. En este artículo analizamos la función actual de las ciudades pequeñas y medianas de cinco países europeos en cuanto a sus servicios minoristas a hogares locales. Asimismo analizamos el comportamiento espacial de compra en estos hogares. Parece ser que este tipo de ciudades todavía son centros importantes de compra: más de la mitad de las compras de personas que viven en ciudades o directamente en el interior se hacen en las ciudades. Comportamiento de compra Municipios Análisis espacial Elección discreta Compras fuera del centro
Regulation of Escherichia coli pyrBI Gene Expression in Pseudomonas fluorescens

Pseudomonas fluorescens does not appear to regulate the enzymes of de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis at the level of gene expression. Little or no apparent repression of pyr gene expression is observed upon addition of exogenous pyrimidines to the growth medium. The Escherichia coli pyrBI genes for aspartate transcarbamoylase (ATCase) were sized down and cloned into the broad host range plasmid, pKT230. Upon introduction into a P.fluorescenspyrB mutant strain, ATCase showed repression in response to exogenously fed pyrimidine compounds. Thus, it was possible to bring about changes in pyrimidine nucleotide pool levels and in transcriptional regulation of gene expression at the same time.
Adolescent Emotional Development and the Emergence of Depressive Disorders: Shame, self-criticism, and self-compassion in adolescence

The transition from childhood to adolescence is a time of rapid maturation of neurophysiological systems which regulate affect and self-identity (Schore, 1994). In addition, this transition is accompanied by an elevated focus on peer-group relationships, sense of belonging, and acceptance. The outcome of these changes clearly impact on mental health. It is estimated that in any 12-month period approximately 1% of pre-pubertal children, rising to 3% of post-pubertal adolescents, suffer from depression, with gender differences in rates beginning to emerge post-puberty (Angold & Costello, 2001). In a major review, Hankin (2006) notes that 20–50% of adolescents report sub-syndromal symptoms of depression. In addition, there is a major increase in the rate of depression from midto late adolescence. There are many processes that can underpin affective disorders, but one critical group of processes relate to the emerging sense of self and self-to-self relating (e.g. self-criticism). Shame and self-criticism are associated with a range of psychological difficulties, including various forms of depression, substance misuse, eating disorder, social anxiety, and psychosis (see Gilbert & Irons, 2005; Zuroff et al., 2005 for review). These disorders have in common shame, self-criticism, feelings of inferiority (unfavorable social comparison), and submissive behavior. This chapter will explore these processes in relation to mood, and in particular, the way they are linked to children’s and adolescents’ experience of social place and acceptance.
Bluetooth and IEEE 802 . 11 b / g Coexistence Simulation

This paper deals with the coexistence simulation of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi physical layers. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems share the same ISM 2.4 GHz frequency band and therefore using both systems in the same area may cause interference. A model of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b/g physical layers was made in Mathworks Matlab Simulink environment. A new simulation of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi coexistence is presented. The results in graphical form are introduced as a dependence of BER on E b /N 0 and BER on power ratio of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems.
Anaerobic Digestion of Sewage Sludge Mixture for the Reduction of Indicator and Pathogenic Microorganisms

Anaerobic digestion is a technique used for the sanitizing the sewage sludge before its final disposal. We determined the fate of indicators and pathogens in sewage sludge mixture subjected to mesophilic anaerobic digestion (MAD) and ambient anaerobic digestion (AAD) for 30 and 35 days respectively by culture based microbiological methods (bacteria) and formal-ether sedimentation technique (parasites). While monitoring the organisms at five days intervals, MAD effectively reduced most of the bacteria and parasites to undetectable levels than AAD. Interestingly, the highest reductions in load were observed for faecal coliforms (5.16 log 10 cfu/ml) in the sewage sludge mixture of MAD which met the class A biosolid standard (USEPA). Like wise, the bacterial load reductions were negatively correlated and statistically significant (p< 0.005) with days of both digestions and the relation between total coliforms load and days of MAD experienced higher correlation coefficient (r= -0.992) and R 2 (0.984) values which shows higher validity in regression model. Therefore, MAD can be considered as a promising method for reduction of indicator and pathogenic microorganisms in sewage sludge mixture. Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Correlation coefficient; Regression model; Sewage sludge. DOI: 10.3126/sw.v8i8. 3848 Scientific World Vol.8(8) 2010 pp.47-50
Low-level accretion in neutron star X-ray binaries

We search the literature for reports on the spectral properties of neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries when they have accretion luminosities between 1034 and 1036 erg s−1, corresponding to roughly 0.01-1 per cent of the Eddington accretion rate for a neutron star. We found that in this luminosity range the photon index (obtained from fitting a simple absorbed power law in the 0.5-10 keV range) increases with decreasing 0.5-10 keV X-ray luminosity (i.e. the spectrum softens). Such behaviour has been reported before for individual sources, but here we demonstrate that very likely most (if not all) neutron star systems behave in a similar manner and possibly even follow a universal relation. When comparing the neutron star systems with black hole systems, it is clear that most black hole binaries have significantly harder spectra at luminosities of 1034-1035 erg s−1. Despite a limited number of data points, there are indications that these spectral differences also extend to the 1035-1036 erg s−1 range, but above a luminosity of 1035 erg s−1 the separation between neutron star and black hole systems is not as clear as below. In addition, the black hole spectra only become softer below luminosities of 1034 erg s−1 compared to 1036 erg s−1 for the neutron star systems. This observed difference between the neutron star binaries and black hole ones suggests that the spectral properties (between 0.5 and 10 keV) at 1034-1035 erg s−1 can be used to tentatively determine the nature of the accretor in unclassified X-ray binaries. More observations in this luminosity range are needed to determine how robust this diagnostic tool is and whether or not there are (many) systems that do not follow the general trend. We discuss our results in the context of properties of the accretion flow at low luminosities and we suggest that the observed spectral differences likely arise from the neutron star surface becoming dominantly visible in the X-ray spectra. We also suggest that both the thermal component and the non-thermal component might be caused by low-level accretion on to the neutron star surface for luminosities below a few times 1034 erg s−1.
Role of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin in the early accurate diagnosis of perioperative acute myocardial infarction

Background: Clinical assessment of myocardial ischemia risk and early rapid and accurate diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are lacking. Methods: Surgical patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) or its risk factors were recruited. According to the perioperative chest pain, severe myocardial ischemia related changes in ECG, and vital signs, blood samples were collected at different time points for the detection of hs-cTnT and cTnT. Results: The hs-cTnT area under receiver operating curve (AUC) of all patients with postoperative chest pain or severe myocardial ischemia within 3 h and 6 h was 0.902 and 0.941, respectively, diagnostic accuracy for AMI was 86.3% and 92.6%, respectively, sensitivity was 89.1% and 93.8%, respectively, and specificity was 83.5% and 92.5%, respectively. The cTnT AUC within 3 h and 6 h was 0.623 and 0.820, respectively, diagnostic accuracy for AMI was 38.5% and 85.0%, respectively, sensitivity was 32.6% and 81.0%, respectively, and specificity was 37.8% and 83.8%, respectively. Postoperative incidence of AMI in patients with CHD was significantly higher than in other patients. At 3 h and 6 h after chest pain, hs-cTnT concentration higher than 99th percentile of healthy controls was observed in 77.4% and 89.6% of high risk patients, respectively, and >20% change in plasma hs-cTnT was found in 51.2% and 82.5% of high risk patients, respectively. Conclusion: Patients with high risk had higher hs-cTnT than other groups. Continuous peri-operative detection of hs-cTnT is able to assess the risk for myocardial ischemic injury and help the early accurate diagnosis of AMI. It is especially important for patients with clinically invisible chest pain.
Reformulating Oversubscription Planning Tasks

Most modern heuristics for classical planning are speci ﬁ ed in terms of minimizing the summed operator costs. Heuristics for oversubscription planning (OSP), on the other hand, maximize the utility on states. In this work we aim to provide the grounds for the adaptation of existing heuristics for classical planning to the OSP setting. To this end, we re-formulate the OSP task to a classical planning task extended with an additional operator costs function, re ﬂ ecting the utility information fully. We exemplify how existing heuristics from classical planning can be adapted to such a setting with a merge-and-shrink heuristic and empirically validate the feasibility of our approach.
Accurate and efficient computation of the Boltzmann equation for Kramer's problem

In this work, a novel synthetic iteration scheme (SIS) is developed for the LBE to find solutions to Kramer's problem accurately and efficiently: the velocity distribution function is first solved by the conventional iterative scheme, then it is modified such that in each iteration i) the flow velocity is guided by an ordinary differential equation that is asymptotic-preserving at the Navier-Stokes limit and ii) the shear stress is equal to the average shear stress. Based on the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook model, the SIS is assessed to be efficient and accurate. Then we investigate the Kramer's problem for gases interacting through the inverse power-law, shielded Coulomb, and Lennard-Jones potentials, subject to diffuse-specular and Cercignani-Lampis gas-surface boundary conditions. When the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient (TMAC) is not larger than one, the Knudsen layer function is strongly affected by the potential, where its value and width increase with the effective viscosity index of gas molecules. Moreover, the Knudsen layer function exhibits similarities among different values of TMAC when the intermolecular potential is fixed. For Cercignani-Lampis boundary condition with TMAC larger than one, both the viscous slip coefficient and Knudsen layer function are affected by the intermolecular potential, especially when the "backward" scattering limit is approached. With the asymptotic theory by Jiang and Luo for the singular behavior of the velocity gradient in the vicinity of the solid surface, we find that the whole Knudsen layer function can be well fitted by power series.
A Case for Atmospheric Transmittance: Solar Energy Prediction in Wireless Sensor Nodes

In this paper, we propose four novel schemes for solar energy prediction in wireless sensor nodes. Two of the schemes (WCMA-T and ProEnergy-T)are extensions of state-of-the-art schemes, while the remaining schemes (EWMA-T and Delta-T)are new. The proposed strategies leverage the extraterrestrial solar model [5] to get better prediction accuracy compared to state-of-the-art. We restrict our scope to schemes that only employ local information. Thus, leveraging external information, such as weather forecasts, is not permitted. In our comparison, we acknowledge that wireless sensor nodes are resource constrained. In such systems, runtime computation complexity and memory footprint of the prediction schemes is of high importance. Therefore, these overheads are also considered in our comparison. ProEnergy-T achieves an average improvement of 14.5% in accuracy compared to state-of-the-art. Delta-T achieves an average improvement of 8.3% with lower runtime computation complexity.