Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lewis Acid Induced Functionalization of Photoluminescent 2D Silicon Nanosheets for the Fabrication of Functional Hybrid Films

Various Lewis acids are found to efficiently catalyze hydrosilylation reactions of hydride‐terminated 2D silicon nanosheets at room temperature. The hydride‐terminated nanosheets can be functionalized with a variety of unsaturated functional substrates and still possess their unique characteristic (opto)electronic properties (e.g., photoluminescence). This is demonstrated by successfully implementing the readily functionalized materials into new silicon/semiconducting polymer‐based field‐effect transistors (FETs). Surface modification of the freestanding silicon nanosheets opens new possibilities to form highly homogeneous blends with the already broadly used conventional polymers poly(3‐hexylthiophene‐2,5‐diyl). The consequential combination of the different properties of the materials enables the enhancement of the sensitivity of the solution‐gated FETs and increases the transconductance of the operating device.
Isolation, identification, and characterization of a novel chemolithoautotrophic bacterium with high potential in biodesulfurization of natural or industrial gasses and biogas

ABSTRACT Biological processes of hydrogen sulfide removal are extensively used as a result of their health, safety, and environment (HSE), efficiency, and economy. The most significant aspect in microbial desulfurization of natural or industrial gasses and biogas is the utilization of effective bacteria that have the ability to remove sulfur compounds particularly hydrogen sulfide. The recent research is aimed at isolating and applying the bacterium for the removal of H2S. Therefore, the bacterium which has the ability to oxidize thiosulfate was isolated from contaminated soil with sulfur compounds and identified by physiological, biochemical, morphological, and genetic techniques. Phylogenetic identification of the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicates that ISOB 14 is closely connected with the Halothiobacillus neapolitanus DSM 581. The isolated bacterium which was named Halothiobacillus sp. ISOB 14 is Gram negative, motile, and non-spore forming. Cells of ISOB 14 were small, rod-shaped, and 0.45–0.64 µm in size. This strain is strictly aerobic and obligately chemolithoautotrophic and can use thiosulfate as an electron donor. This bacterium grew faster in Postgate medium with 0.7% thiosulfate than in sulfur and sodium sulfide. The removal of thiosulfate and production of sulfate were measured by ion chromatography, a sensitive method, with conductivity detection. ISOB 14 can remove thiosulfate 100% after 18–24 h and produce sulfate up to 89.14% and 93.14% after 24 h and 72 h, respectively, under the optimum conditions of bacterium growth. These findings introduce the unique ability and high potentiality of this efficient bacterium for usage in the removal of hydrogen sulfide.
Étude des propriétés mécaniques des aérogels de silice : modélisation en dynamique moléculaire

Les aerogels de silice se classent parmi les materiaux dits superisolants grâce a leurs proprietes thermiques exceptionnelles. Leur tres faible conductivite thermique (< 15 mW.m-1.K-1) represente un pouvoir d’isolation convoite par de nombreux secteurs d’activite comme l’isolation thermique du bâtiment, l’aerospatial, le transport, l’emballage, etc.Ces materiaux amorphes nanostructures atteignent des taux de porosite superieurs a 90% et sont architectures sur plusieurs ordres de grandeur. Leur structure se compose d’un reseau poreux tridimensionnel de silice a l’echelle nanometrique. Celui-ci forme un agregat de plusieurs centaines de nanometres qui est lui-meme la brique elementaire d’un second reseau poreux a l’echelle mesoscopique. L'architecture 3D nanometrique imbriquee pores / particules, dont la taille est proche du libre parcours moyen des phonons, est a l’origine des proprietes thermiques exceptionnelles des aerogels de silice, cependant, elle est aussi la source de leurs faibles proprietes mecaniques.Cette these se focalise sur l’etude a l’echelle nanometrique du comportement mecanique des aerogels de silice par dynamique moleculaire. La premiere partie porte sur le potentiel interatomique utilise comme parametre d’entree des simulations et plus particulierement sur sa capacite a reproduire les surfaces de silice amorphe. Ce potentiel, developpe pour modeliser les proprietes structurales et energetiques de la silice amorphe dense, demontre une bonne transferabilite quant aux proprietes de surface. Il permet de simuler avec fiabilite des materiaux de grandes surfaces specifiques avec des temps de calcul acceptables. La seconde partie s'interesse successivement a la generation de la nanostructure des aerogels, a la caracterisation des textures formees et a l'etude du comportement mecanique. Les resultats montrent l’influence de la vitesse de deformation et des effets de taille sur l’etude du comportement mecanique en traction et en compression. Les proprietes elastiques sont correctement caracterisees et les mecanismes de deformation identifies. Enfin des agregats spheriques de l’ordre de la centaine de nanometres sont generes afin d’etudier leur comportement mecanique sous compression. Les lois de comportement de ces agregats, comparables en taille a ceux observes experimentalement, pourront ensuite servir de parametres d’entree et nourrir les simulations aux echelles superieures
H-bond/ionic coordination switching for fabrication of highly oriented cellulose hydrogels

Various strategies for preparing highly oriented architectures in hydrogels remain challenging as the regulation of macromolecular chains is often restricted by electrostatic, hydrogen bond and other interactions, and a single strategy is not capable of breaking the equilibrium limits. In this study, a highly aligned cellulose hydrogel was fabricated with high birefringence (∼6.4 × 10−3) and high water content (∼72%) by alternately immersing the hydrogel in water and CaCl2 solution. By a H2O/Ca2+ exchange, the dominant interaction of cellulose molecules switched between H-bond and ionic coordination, so as to achieve continuous regulation of orientation. Moreover, using flexibly programmable exchange strategies, bilayer, gradient anisotropic, opposite anisotropic and adjacent anisotropic cellulose hydrogels were fabricated with precise control of local orientation. Diverse self-shaping gels including rings, hollow rectangles, hollow triangles and elastic springs can be prepared on variable surfaces without any inverted molds. This principle may provide new ideas and inspirations for constructing highly oriented structures and develop new avenues to produce versatile stimulus-responsive anisotropic materials.
Clima organizacional en el sector público Latinoamericano

El clima organizacional es considerado tanto en el sector publico como privado como un conjunto de percepciones globales basada en emociones que presenta el colaborador en su puesto de trabajo; sin embargo, para conocer lo que representa la variable investigada hay que comprender el comportamiento humano, estructura y procesos organizacionales. Por tal motivo, se establece como objetivo describir los resultados de los articulos cientificos procedente de los paises de Colombia, Mexico, Peru, otros, sobre clima organizacional en el sector publico a nivel latinoamericano comprendido entre los anos 2016 a 2020; efectuandose bajo el enfoque cualitativo de tipo descriptivo con un diseno de revision documental que permitio el analisis a un total de 15 documentos cientificos y academicos obtenidos de bases de datos como: Scielo, Redalyc, Scopus, y el buscador Google academico, entre otros. Los principales resultados indican que el periodo con mayor indice de publicacion fue el ano 2017, Colombia represento el pais con mas divulgacion de articulos, seguidamente Peru y Mexico; ademas, se reconoce la existencia de factores psicologicos individuales, grupales y organizacionales que afecta directamente el clima de la empresa, alterando la correlacion entre compromiso, motivacion y clima organizacional. A su vez, se determina que la percepcion de un clima alto se asocia a un elevado nivel de satisfaccion laboral, por ende, la suma de las dos variables genera un importante desempeno de los empleados.
Public Trust in State-Run News Media in Rwanda

This study examined public trust in the media through focus groups with young, educated urbanites in Rwanda. Despite the fact media in Rwanda incited violence during the 1994 genocide, results revealed that the Rwandan public highly trust their local news, especially state-run media. The findings suggest frameworks for studying media trust should consider the public’s trust in government, as the two might be linked, and also suggest scholars think deeply about conceptualizations of trust in different socio-political contexts, as trust is part of the culture of a polity, not simply a citizen’s judgment on how well news media are doing.
Minkowski Sommon Feature Map‐based Densely Connected Deep Convolution Network with LSTM for academic performance prediction

Student academic performance prediction plays a major role in the current educational systems to improve the quality of education. The conventional single classifier‐based predictive analysis is not efficient to provide accurate results. In this paper, a novel technique called Minkowski Sommon Feature Map Densely connected Deep Convolution Network with LSTM (MSFMDDCN‐LSTM) is introduced to predict the academic performance of students with higher accuracy and lesser time consumption. The MSFMDDCN‐LSTM technique uses a densely connected deep convolution network to learn the given input for accurate prediction. The student activities are collected and stored in the organization dataset. The MSFMDDCN‐LSTM technique starts with the data collection followed by performing the attributes selection and classification. The collected data are given to input layer to predict the students' academic achievement at the end of study program. Secondly, the importance of numerous dissimilar attributes or “features” is considered for student performance prediction using steepest descent Minkowski sommon mapping. After that, the classification is performed using LSTM to classify the input instances for accurate prediction. Finally, the classification results are observed in the output layer. The quantitative outcomes inferred that MSFMDDCN‐LSTM technique performs well in terms of achieving higher precision, recall, f‐measure, and lesser time consumption than the state‐of‐the‐art methods.
Modeling the Influence of Temperature, Light Intensity and Oxygen Concentration on Microalgal Growth Rate

Dissolved oxygen plays a key role in microalgal growth at high density. This effect was so far rarely quantified. Here we propose a new model to represent the combined effect of light, oxygen concentration and temperature (LOT-model) on microalgae growth. The LOT-model introduces oxygen concentration in order to represent the oxidative stress affecting the cultures, adding a toxicity term in the expression of the net growth rate. The model was validated with experimental data for several species such as Chlorella minutissima, Chlorella vulgaris, Dunaliella salina, Isochrysis galbana. It successfully predicted experimental records with an average error lower than 5.5%. The model was also validated using dynamical data where oxygen concentration varies. It highlights a strong impact of oxygen concentration on productivity, depending on temperature. The model quantifies the sensitivity to oxidative stress of different species and shows, for example, that Dunaliella salina is much less affected than Chlorella vulgaris by oxidative stress. The modeling approach can support an optimization strategy to improve productivity, especially for managing high oxygen levels.
Time-Dependent Performance of a Multi-Hop Software Defined Network

It has been recently observed that Software Defined Networks (SDN) can change the paths of different connections in the network at a relatively frequent pace to improve the overall network performance, including delay and packet loss, or to respond to other needs such as security. These changes mean that a network that SDN controls will seldom operate in steady state; rather, the network may often be in transient mode, especially when the network is heavily loaded and path changes are critically important. Hence, we propose a transient analysis of such networks to better understand how frequent changes in paths and the switches’ workloads may affect multi-hop networks’ performance. Since conventional queueing models are difficult to solve for transient behaviour and simulations take excessive computation time due to the need for statistical accuracy, we use a diffusion approximation to study a multi-hop network controlled by SDN. The results show that network optimization should consider the transient effects of SDN and that transients need to be included in the design of algorithms for SDN controllers that optimize network performance.
Nomogram-Based Prediction of the Risk of Macrosomia: A Prospective Cohort Study in a Chinese Population

Objective: This study aimed to establish a nomogram for predicting the risk of macrosomia in early pregnancy.Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study involving 1,549 pregnant women. According to the birth weight of newborn, the subjects were divided into two groups: macrosomia group and non-macrosomia group. Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the risk factors for macrosomia.Results: The prevalence of macrosomia was 6.13% (95/1549) in our hospital. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed the risk factors of macrosomia were prepregnancy overweight (OR: 2.126, 95% CI: 1.181-3.826)/obesity (OR: 3.536, 95% CI: 1.555-8.036), multiparity (OR:1.877, 95% CI: 1.160-3.039), the history of macrosomia (OR: 36.971, 95% CI: 19.903-68.674), the history of GDM/DM (OR: 2.285, 95% CI: 1.314-3.976), the higher levels of HbA1c (OR: 1.763, 95% CI: 1.004-3.097) and TC (OR: 1.360, 95% CI: 1.004-1.842). A nomogram was developed for predicting macrosomia based on maternal factors related to the risk of macrosomia in early pregnancy. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the nomogram was 0.807 (95% CI: 0.755–0.859), the sensitivity and specificity of the model were 0.716 and 0.777, respectively.Conclusion: The nomogram model provides an accurate mothed for clinicians to early predict macrosomia.
From e-learning to s-learning: A Review

With technology changing at fast rates, learning has transformed a lot. Technology has been incorporated into education, to enable better learning and teaching. Every kind of information is now available just a click away. Education is not limited to just simple YouTube lectures. Interactive apps, quizzes, discussions, software have now enhanced learning and expanded the field to include topics like e-learning, s-learning, u-learning, m-learning. This work reviews the work done in these fields to highlight how education sector has evolved from basic e-learning to smart campuses and s-learning. This will enable educators, policy makers, students and researchers to gain insight into the latest trends in this sector. The paper also categorizes the various techniques to create some categories and find out the advantages and research gaps in this field.
A Robust Tracking Algorithm Based on Modified Generalized Probability Data Association for Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is composed of many micro sensor nodes, and the localization technology is one of the most important applications of the WSN technology. At present, many positioning algorithms have high positioning accuracy in line-of-sight environment, but poor positioning accuracy in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environment. In this article, we propose a modified generalized probability data association algorithm based on arrival of time. We divided the range measurements into N different groups, and each group obtained the corresponding position estimation, model probabilities, and covariance matrix of the mobile node through IMM-EKF. We used model probability and hypothesis test to perform NLOS identification for N groups, in which the model probability provided by each group was used for the first NLOS identification, and the innovation and innovation covariance matrix were used for the second NLOS identification in the hypothesis test. Position estimation contaminated by NLOS error is discarded. The correct position estimation is weighted with the corresponding association probability. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can mitigate the influence of NLOS errors and achieve higher localization accuracy when compared with the existing methods.
Numerical Phase-Field Model Validation for Dissolution of Minerals

Modelling of a mineral dissolution front propagation is of interest in a wide range of scientific and engineering fields. The dissolution of minerals often involves complex physico-chemical processes at the solid–liquid interface (at nano-scale), which at the micro-to-meso-scale can be simplified to the problem of continuously moving boundaries. In this work, we studied the diffusion-controlled congruent dissolution of minerals from a meso-scale phase transition perspective. The dynamic evolution of the solid–liquid interface, during the dissolution process, is numerically simulated by employing the Finite Element Method (FEM) and using the phase–field (PF) approach, the latter implemented in the open-source Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). The parameterization of the PF numerical approach is discussed in detail and validated against the experimental results for a congruent dissolution case of NaCl (taken from literature) as well as on analytical models for simple geometries. In addition, the effect of the shape of a dissolving mineral particle was analysed, thus demonstrating that the PF approach is suitable for simulating the mesoscopic morphological evolution of arbitrary geometries. Finally, the comparison of the PF method with experimental results demonstrated the importance of the dissolution rate mechanisms, which can be controlled by the interface reaction rate or by the diffusive transport mechanism.
Reservoir Management by Reducing Evaporation Using Floating Photovoltaic System: A Case Study of Lake Nasser, Egypt

The shortage of water is a major obstruction to the social and economic development of many countries, including Egypt. Therefore, there is an urgent need to properly manage water resources to achieve optimum water use. One way of saving available water resources is to reduce evaporation that leads to the loss of a large amount of water from reservoirs and open lakes. This paper aims to use a floating photovoltaic system (FPVS) to cover a lake’s water surface to reduce evaporation and also for energy production. This methodology was applied to Lake Nasser as one of the largest lakes in the world where much evaporation happens due to its large area, arid environments, and the shallow depths of some parts of the lake. The estimated evaporation from the lake was 12.0 × 109 m3/year. The results show that covering 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the lake can save about 2.1, 4.2, 6.3, 7.0, and 8.4 × 109 m3/year and produce energy of 2.85 × 109, 5.67 × 109, 8.54 × 109, and 11.38 × 109 MWh/year, respectively. Covering areas of shallow water depth was more efficient and economical. The results show that covering 15% of the lake’s area (depths from 0.0 to 3.0 m) can save 2.66 × 109 m3/year and produce 1.7 MWh/year. Covering 25% of the lake’s area (depths from 0.0 to 7.0) can save 3.5 × 109 m3/year and produce 2.854 MWh/year. Using an FPVS to cover parts of Lake Nasser could help manage water resources and energy production for Egypt to overcome the likely shortage of water resources due to population growth. This system could be applied in different locations of the world which could help in increasing water resources and energy production, especially in arid and semi-arid regions.
Cytokines in Pediatric Pilocytic Astrocytomas: A Clinico-Pathological Study

Pilocytic astrocytomas (PCA) are WHO Grade I tumors with a favorable prognosis. Surgical resection is usually curative. Nonetheless, progressive and/or metastatic disease occurs in 20% of patients. For these patients, treatment options are limited. The role of the immune system in PCA has not previously been reported. We hypothesize that the circulating cytokines contribute to tumorigenicity in PCA. This is an exploratory study with a focus on the identification of circulating cerebrospinal (CSF) cytokines associated with PCA. The primary objective is to demonstrate that CSF cytokines will be differentially expressed in the subset of PCAs that are difficult to treat in comparison to their surgically amendable counterparts. This is a single-institution, retrospective study of prospectively collected data. Patients with a confirmed histological diagnosis of PCA who have simultaneous intraoperative CSF sampling are included. Cerebrospinal fluid samples are subjected to multiplex cytokine profiling. Patient-derived PCA lines from selected patients in the same study cohort are cultured. Their cell culture supernatants are collected and interrogated using the sample multiplex platform as the CSF. A total of 8 patients are recruited. There were two patients with surgically difficult tumors associated with leptomeningeal involvement. Multiplex profiling of the cohort’s CSF samples showed elevated expressions of IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-12p70, IL-1β, IL-4, and TNF-α in these two patients in comparison to the remaining cohort. Next, primary cell lines derived from the same PCA patients demonstrated a similar trend of differential cytokine expression in their cell culture supernatant in vitro. Although our findings are preliminary at this stage, this is the first study in pediatric PCAs that show cytokine expression differences between the two groups of PCA with different clinical behaviors.
Carbon Sink of a Very High Marshland on the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is home to the most extensive alpine permafrost, where there are over 30% of China's marshlands. Though climate warming of 0.26°C per decade may have altered the carbon (C) balance by promoting permafrost C release. To date, most studies have been conducted in the eastern TP region (<3,500 m in altitude), even though 51% of the TP's marshlands are located at altitudes above 4,500 m, where climate warming is even faster than at lower altitudes. Thus, we set up an eddy covariance system at a very high marshland (4,760 m in altitude) in the hinterland of the TP and recorded observations for three consecutive years. The results showed that the marshland functioned as a net C sink (187 ± 29 g C m−2 yr−1, Mean ± SD), which is even stronger than at lower altitude marshlands, possibly because of cold‐constraints on respiration. Temperature and vapor pressure deficit together dominated the variation in C exchanges. Moreover, the ecosystem functioned as a net C sink when the average daily temperature exceeded 8°C. Photosynthesis was consistently more sensitive to temperature variation, compared with C release, at the annual, seasonal, and daily scales, which was then validated across other marshlands on the TP. All these pieces of evidence suggest that high‐altitude marshlands on the TP are still functioning as C sinks, and photosynthesis is more sensitive to temperature than C release implies that a warmer climate will benefit the C accumulation, before there is too much soil C loss.