Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Long-Run Effects of Trade Openness on Carbon Emissions in Sub-Saharan African Countries

Using a panel cointegration model developed based on the data extracted from the World Bank indicators, this study quantified the relationship between carbon emissions, energy consumption, economic growth, and trade openness in sub-Saharan African countries. It discovered from our analysis that there exists a long-run causality association amongst CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic growth, and trade openness. The study noted the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in the panel using the square term for trade openness; it was found to have a negative impact, thus trade in the long run will somewhat decrease the environmental pollution in this region. The study results imply that there should be stringent policies and rigorous enforcement in sub-Saharan African to ensure sustainable growth without associative environmental issues.
Multi-strengthening-mechanisms in a novel titanium alloy with (TiHf)5Si3 particle-reinforcement

The microstructure and mechanical properties of Ti-2Si-2Nb-2Fe-1Hf-1Ta-1W alloy with (TiHf)5Si3 particle-reinforcement and their underlying relations have been studied. Electron microscope observations and correlative statistical analysis have been made to analyze microstructure evolution with heat treatments. The (TiHf)5Si3 particles with 800 nm in diameter were found uniformly distributed at α/β boundaries and triple junctions and turned out to be stable even after heat treatments at high temperature for a long period, inhibiting grain growth and dislocation motion. In addition, multi-strengthening-mechanisms including particle strengthening, solid-solution strengthening, grain boundary strengthening and dislocation strengthening have been discussed.
CO2 emissions of the construction sector in Spain during the real estate boom: Input–output subsystem analysis and decomposition

The construction sector is of special interest within the Spanish economy, given its large economic dimension and environmental impact, particularly during the real estate boom prior to the last economic crisis that started in 2008. We study the CO2 emissions of construction activities in 2007, at the height of the construction boom, in the context of the productive structure of Spain. For this, we use an input–output subsystem method, which allows us to study the productive structure of the subsystem's activities, taking into account its links with the rest of the sectors. The decomposition of total emissions in four explanatory components allows us to make a classification of the different sectors according to the type of relationships that are established between the subsystem and the rest of the economy. Besides providing a better understanding of the environmental consequences of real state booms, we derive some implications for environmental policy from the analysis of these interrelations.
Preventing and Treating Neurological Disorders with the Flavonol Fisetin

Neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases, have a significant negative impact on both patients and society at large. Since the prevalence of most of these disorders increases with age, the consequences for our aging population are only going to grow. It is now acknowledged that neurological disorders are multi-factorial involving disruptions in multiple cellular systems. While each disorder has specific initiating mechanisms and pathologies, certain common pathways appear to be involved in most, if not all, neurological disorders. Thus, it is becoming increasingly important to identify compounds that can modulate the multiple pathways that contribute to disease development or progression. One of these compounds is the flavonol fisetin. Fisetin has now been shown in preclinical models to be effective at preventing the development and/or progression of multiple neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, stroke (both ischemic and hemorrhagic) and traumatic brain injury as well as to reduce age-associated changes in the brain. These beneficial effects stem from its actions on multiple pathways associated with the different neurological disorders. These actions include its well characterized anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects as well as more recently described effects on the regulated cell death oxytosis/ferroptosis pathway, the gut microbiome and its senolytic activity. Therefore, the growing body of pre-clinical data, along with fisetin’s ability to modulate a large number of pathways associated with brain dysfunction, strongly suggest that it would be worthwhile to pursue its therapeutic effects in humans.
Descripción y comparación entre morfotipos de Fusarium brachygibbosum, F. falciforme y F. oxysporum patogénicos en sandía cultivada en Sonora, México

Recientemente se ha identificado a Fusarium brachygibbosum, F. falciforme y F. oxysporum como causantes de marchitez y muerte en plantas de sandía en Sonora, México. Debido a la escasa información morfológica acerca de F. brachygibbosum y con el fin de establecer las características macroscópicas y microscópicas distintivas entre las especies, en el presente trabajo se realizó la descripción de cuatro morfotipos F. brachygibbosum y su comparación con tres de F. falciforme y dos de F. oxysporum. La categorización de los morfotipos se realizó, con base en la forma de crecimiento, tonalidades del micelio y el color desarrollado en agar-dextrosa-papa, a partir de 32 aislados de Fusarium patogénicos en sandía. Los cuatro morfotipos de F. brachygibbosum presentaron clamidosporas sencillas o dobles, de pared gruesa, intercalares y terminales. Monofiálides cortas y escasas polifiálides. Macroconidios con células apicales en ligera forma de gancho y células basales con forma típica o ligera forma de pie. El mayor grosor de paredes fue distintivo en las clamidosporas de F. brachygibbosum. La morfología de los macroconidios fue diferente en las tres especies. Una característica distintiva en los morfotipos de F. falciforme fueron las monofiálides largas y delgadas; mientras que en los de F. oxysporum fue la ausencia de septos en los microconidios. El tamaño de los macroconidios y microconidios fue significativamente diferente entre los morfotipos, pero no entre las especies.
Disturbance Observer-Based Active Vibration Suppression and Attitude Control for Flexible Spacecraft

In this article, active vibration suppression and attitude control for flexible spacecraft under model uncertainty and external disturbance are investigated. First, an adaptive disturbance observer (ADO) and flexible vibration observer (FVO) are proposed to estimate the lumped uncertainty and flexible vibration. It is shown that the proposed ADO is nonoverestimated and the first derivative upper bound of disturbance is unknown. Then, based on the proposed observers, a novel controller is designed to suppress flexible vibration and realize attitude control. The remarkable feature of the designed algorithm is that flexible vibration is suppressed and attitude tracking is guaranteed simultaneously without intelligent materials which are used to suppress flexible vibration in the previous work. In addition, high-precision attitude control can be achieved. The rigorous proof of closed-loop system stability is presented using Lyapunov techniques. Finally, numerical simulations are given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
A Brownian ratchet model explains the biased sidestepping movement of single-headed kinesin-3 KIF1A

The kinesin-3 motor KIF1A is involved in long-ranged axonal transport in neurons. In order to ensure vesicular delivery, motors need to navigate the microtubule lattice and overcome possible roadblocks along the way. The single-headed form of KIF1A is a highly diffusive motor that has been shown to be a prototype of Brownian motor by virtue of a weakly-bound diffusive state to the microtubule. Recently, groups of single-headed KIF1A motors were found to be able to sidestep along the microtubule lattice, creating left-handed helical membrane tubes when pulling on giant unilamellar vesicles in vitro. A possible hypothesis is that the diffusive state enables the motor to explore the microtubule lattice and switch protofilaments, leading to a left-handed helical motion. Here we study microtubule rotation driven by single-headed KIF1A motors using fluorescene-interference contrast (FLIC) microscopy. We find an average rotational pitch of ≃ 1.4 μm which is remarkably robust to changes in the gliding velocity, ATP concentration and motor density. Our experimental results are compared to stochastic simulations of Brownian motors moving on a two-dimensional continuum ratchet potential, which quantitatively agree with the FLIC experiments. We find that single-headed KIF1A sidestepping can be explained as a consequence of the intrinsic handedness and polarity of the microtubule lattice in combination with the diffusive mechanochemical cycle of the motor.
Opportunities, Challenges, and Potential Solutions in the Application of Fast-Switching SiC Power Devices and Converters

Power devices based on wide-bandgap material such as silicon carbide (SiC) can operate at higher switching speeds, higher voltages, and higher temperatures compared to those based on silicon material. This article highlights some opportunities brought by SiC devices in existing and emerging applications in terms of efficiency and power density improvement. While the opportunities are clear, there are also design challenges that must be met in order to realize their full potential. For example, the fast switching speeds and high dv/dt of SiC devices can cause increased electromagnetic interference, current overshoot, cross-talk effect, and have a negative impact on loads such as motors. This article presents several potential solutions to tackle the application challenges and to fully exploit the superior characteristics of SiC devices and converters while attenuating their negative side effects. This article provides an overview of recent SiC device research and development activities based on academic literature, work carried out by the authors and collaborators as well as input from industry. It aims to provide benchmark results and a timely and useful reference to accelerate the adoption and deployment of SiC devices and converters.
Wideband Wide Beamwidth Full-Wavelength Sectorial Dipole Antenna Under Dual-Mode Resonance

In this article, a novel design approach to wide beamwidth dual-resonant, wideband sectorial dipole antennas is advanced. At first, a 1-D, full-wavelength dipole is evolved into a 2-D, sectorial dipole, so as to determine its two usable resonant modes. Then, both wideband and wide beamwidth characteristics are simultaneously attained under dual-mode resonance. Next, dual-resonant sectorial dipole antennas with flared angle of 270° and 240° are designed and studied. As experimentally validated, the proposed antenna exhibits an omnidirectional pattern with its impedance bandwidth over 70.4%. A few prototypes mounted above a ground plane are further investigated, so as to achieve a broad H-plane half-power beamwidth (HPBW) to over 120°. In addition, the antennas exhibit stable gain frequency response with fluctuation less than 2.2 dB within the entire impedance bandwidth. Thus, the advanced design approach based on 2-D dual-resonant, full- wavelength dipole leads to the formulation of novel wide beamwidth antennas with low frequency dispersion and simple configuration within a wide radiation bandwidth over 53.3%. Finally, a dual-polarized dipole antenna with port-to-port isolation higher than 34.5 dB and available radiation bandwidth of over 49% is implemented to further validate its potential for practical applications.
AQ360: UAV-Aided Air Quality Monitoring by 360-Degree Aerial Panoramic Images in Urban Areas

Driven by the increasingly serious air pollution problem, nowadays different systems can be used to achieve the monitoring task of air quality index (AQI) in urban areas. In this article, we design a novel unmanned aerial vehicle-aided (UAV-aided) AQI monitoring system, called AQ360, which detects the air quality level from the 360-degree aerial panoramic images taken by the onboard camera. Specifically, we first present our own AQI recognition approach based on the physical form of the haze pictures, where the AQI is jointly decided by the images captured along six directions over the target location. Then, we study the UAV placement problem of selecting UAV’s flight altitude and 2-D coordinates during the monitoring process. The objective is to save the system energy consumption while maintaining the accuracy of estimating AQI distribution. For practical considerations, we implement and evaluate the proposed system in real-world scenarios. The results show that our system can provide a lower AQI recognition error compared with existing vision-based monitoring approaches, and energy consumption is also reduced when applying for large-area tasks.
Fonctionnalisation de Nanotubes de Carbone Multi-Parois par des Polymères

This thesis deals with the surface modification of multi-walled carbon nanotubes with polymers with the aim to achieve a high level of dispersion in polymer matrices. Chapter I gives a comprehensive review of the state of the art of hybrids of ionic liquids with carbon nanomaterials, particularly, nanotubes and more recently, graphene. Chapter II starts with a general overview of the non-covalent adsorption of polymers onto the CNT surfaces followed by a detailed description of the study carried out on the non-covalent functionalization of CNTs with various imidazolium based polymerized ionic liquids (PIL). For this purpose, we further compare the two experimental methods: in situ polymerization and solution mixing. One of the most important applications of CNT is in polymer/CNT composites. Chapter III describes the formation of polyetherimide/CNT composites starting from PIL-CNT hybrids obtained in Chapter II. The preparation and characterization of composites using solvent casting methods have been detailed. Pristine, acid oxidized and PIL functionalized CNTs have been compared. Mechanical, thermal and electrical property measurements on these composites have also been described. The last chapter – Chapter IV, divided into two sections, discusses the covalent functionalization of CNTs with a variety of polymers using two main approaches: “grafting from” and “grafting to”. Using the first approach we have grown polyamide (PA) chains from the surface of caprolactam grafted CNTs by anionic ring opening polymerization. The tensile properties of the PA based composites prepared therefrom containing pristine, amine- and PA-functionalized CNTs have been investigated. The radical polymerization of vinyl imidazolium based IL monomers attached to the activated CNT surface is also given in this section. In the second part of Chapter IV, we have reported several “grafting to” functionalization strategies including radical addition and “defect site” grafting used for the preparation of CNTs covalently attached with polymers intended to blend well with epoxy matrices.
FOOD MATRICES FOR THE DELIVERY OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE PEPTIDES IN FUNCTIONAL FOODS

Many food-derived peptides with antihypertensive activity have been reported. However, a reduced number of studies have been conducted to prove in vivo the efficacy of most of the currently reported antihypertensive peptides. Thus, just a few of these bioactive peptides are utilized as supplements or ingredients for functional foods production. In addition to in vivo evaluations, another challenging task is the delivery of bioactive peptides in physiological conditions, but studies about this topic are scarce. Notably, some proteins are able to form gels that have different characteristics related to the pH of the environment. Bioactive peptides can be entrapped into such gels structure and be released in different physiological environments (e. g. low pH in the stomach and neutral in the intestine). Thus, the selection of macronutrients could play a critical role in the design of food matrices intended to be used as containers and releasers of antihypertensive peptides.
Habitat filtering influences plant–pollinator interactions in prairie ecosystems

The xeric hypothesis is that bees are more abundant pollinators than anthophilous flies in dry, temperate biomes, and the habitat filtering hypothesis is that differences in the proportions will impact plant community composition because different pollinators favour different floral traits. However, few studies have examined the predictive value of these hypotheses. In particular, differences in plant–pollinator compositions within biomes, such as the Prairie Ecozone, have not been compared. We documented plant–pollinator interactions and plant abundance in three Canadian prairie types. Flower visits in moist tall grass prairie were mainly by flies in the Syrphidae, whereas visits in the drier fescue and mixed grass prairie were mainly by long-tongued bees in the Apidae. Short-tongued bee visits were not significantly different between the prairie types. Insect visits to tubular, zygomorphic, violet/blue-, and white-flowered plants were higher in drier fescue and mixed grass prairie than in moister tall grass prairie. Further, proportions of plants with these features were lower in the tall grass prairie. Thus differences in the proportion of flies and long-tongued bees, likely affected by habitat conditions including moisture levels, appear to be influencing the types of plants that dominate each prairie type, providing some support for these hypotheses.
INVESTIGATION OF NEW SECTORED HEMISPHERICAL DIELECTRIC RESONATOR ANTENNAS OPERATING AT TM101 AND TE111 MODE FOR CIRCULAR POLARIZATION

—This article discusses the eﬀect of sectorization technique in a hemispherical dielectric resonator antenna (HDRA) for the ﬁrst time with its signiﬁcant eﬀects on electromagnetic modes and various antenna parameters. The sector angle ( β ) forms an additional framework for better optimization of HDRA. The resonance frequency, impedance bandwidth, co-cross polarization characteristics have been investigated in new sectored HDRA geometries excited at their TE 111 and TM 101 modes. Further, examination of circular polarization (CP) is carried out by detuning of degenerate orthogonal modes in HDRAs, and β = 180 ◦ has been particularly examined in details for CP. Based on the results, appropriate values of ‘ β ’ and probe position ( P r ) are chosen followed by modelling a prototype and experimental.
Risk-Adapted Access Control with Multimodal Biometric Identification

2020. ABSTRACT The presented article examines the background of biometric identification. As a technical method of authentication, biometrics suffers from some limitations. These limitations are due to human nature, because skin, appearance and behavior changes more or less continuously in time. Changing patterns affect quality and always pose a significantly higher risk. This study investigated risk adaption and the integration of the mathematical representation of this risk into the whole authentication process. Several biometrical identification methods have been compared in order to find an algorithm of a multimodal biometric identification process as a possible solution to simultaneously improve the rates of failed acceptations and rejections. This unique solution is based on the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System and the Bayesian
Energy-Aware Marine Predators Algorithm for Task Scheduling in IoT-Based Fog Computing Applications

To improve the quality of service (QoS) needed by several applications areas, the Internet of Things (IoT) tasks are offloaded into the fog computing instead of the cloud. However, the availability of ongoing energy heads for fog computing servers is one of the constraints for IoT applications because transmitting the huge quantity of the data generated using IoT devices will produce network bandwidth overhead and slow down the responsive time of the statements analyzed. In this article, an energy-aware model basis on the marine predators algorithm (MPA) is proposed for tackling the task scheduling in fog computing (TSFC) to improve the QoSs required by users. In addition to the standard MPA, we proposed the other two versions. The first version is called modified MPA (MMPA), which will modify MPA to improve their exploitation capability by using the last updated positions instead of the last best one. The second one will improve MMPA by the ranking strategy based reinitialization and mutation toward the best, in addition to reinitializing, the half population randomly after a predefined number of iterations to get rid of local optima and mutated the last half toward the best-so-far solution. Accordingly, MPA is proposed to solve the continuous one, whereas the TSFC is considered a discrete one, so the normalization and scaling phase will be used to convert the standard MPA into a discrete one. The three versions are proposed with some other metaheuristic algorithms and genetic algorithms based on various performance metrics such as energy consumption, makespan, flow time, and carbon dioxide emission rate. The improved MMPA could outperform all the other algorithms and the other two versions.
1/10th scale autonomous vehicle based on convolutional neural network

Abstract A vehicle capable of using sensors to detect and control its driving actions is called an autonomous vehicle. The development of autonomous vehicles caters to many application areas in the technological advancement of society. This research paper shows a demonstration and implementation of an autonomous vehicle based on a convolutional neural network. The vehicle uses a 1/10th scale RC car as its primary base for the system control with the camera as its primary input. For the computing platform, a Raspberry Pi 4 microprocessor board is used. To enhance the capabilities, the ultrasonic sensor has been implemented in the system as well. The unique aspect of this project is the system design, the CAD modeling, and the track built used to train and test the self-driving capability of the car. The CNN model and the software algorithm also are exclusive to this research project. This research has potential in a variety of application areas in education and also for robotics and autonomous car enthusiasts.