Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phonon transport and thermoelectricity in defect-engineered InAs nanowires

There have been reports of improvements in the thermoelectric figure of merit through the use of nanostructured materials to suppress the lattice thermal conductivity. Here, we report on a fundamental study of the combined effects of defect planes and surface scattering on phonon transport and thermoelectric properties of defect-engineered InAs nanowires. A microfabricated device is employed to measure the thermal conductivity and thermopower of individual suspended indium arsenide nanowires grown by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy. The four-probe measurement device consists of platinum resistance thermometers and electrodes patterned on two adjacent SiNx membranes. A nanowire was suspended between the two membranes, and electrical contact between the nanowire and the platinum electrodes was made with the evaporation of a Ni/Pd film through a shadow mask. The exposed back side of the device substrate allows for characterization of the crystal structure of the suspended nanowire with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) following measurement. The 100-200 nm diameter zincblende (ZB) InAs nanowire samples were grown with randomly spaced twin defects, stacking faults, or phases boundaries perpendicular to the nanowire growth direction, as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. Compared to single-crystal ZB InAs nanowires with a similar lateral dimension, the thermal conductivity of the defect-engineered nanowires is reduced by fifty percent at room temperature.
The Influence of the Preparation on Layer Properties of Transparent Indium–Tin Oxide Electrodes

The influence of the sputtering conditions on the sheet resistance, electrochemical behaviour, and on the chemical composition of transparent indium–tin oxide electrodes is investigated. It is shown that the optimal annealing temperature for the indium–tin oxide layers is 300°C. By all experiments a significant difference is found between layer compositions of electrodes and target composition of indium and tin. The results show that the layers are homogeneous and have a good long-time stability for electrochemical experiments. Es wird der Einflus der Sputterbedingungen auf den Oberflachenwiderstand, auf elektrochemische Eigenschaften und auf die chemische Zusammensetzung von transparenten Indium–Zinn-Mischoxid-Elektroden untersucht. Dabei wird gezeigt, das die optimale Tempertemperatur fur diese Indium–Zinn-Mischoxidschichten bei 300°C liegt. Bei allen Untersuchungen wird ein bedeutender Unterschied an Indium und Zinn im Target und in den Schichten der Elektroden gefunden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, das die Schichten homogen sind und eine gute Langzeitstabilitat fur elektrochemische Untersuchungen besitzen.
INFLUÊNCIA DO pH NA SORÇÃO DE ÍONS METÁLICOS EM SÍLICA GEL

RESUMO – A sílica gel é conhecida pela sua capacidade de adsorção e muito utilizada na remoção de metais de soluções aquosas. Quando a sílica gel é submetia à soluções com cargas positivas ou negativas pode ocorrer interações fracas. Esta interação pode ser responsável pela liberação de alguns cátions novamente para as águas residuais, o que pode comprometer a qualidade da água. Assim, este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar a real contribuição dos fenômenos de sorção. Os experimentos de cinética e de equilíbrio foram realizados utilizando sílica gel como adsorvente, a partir de soluções sintéticas de íons de Ca 2+ e de Mg 2+ . A sílica gel foi caracterizada de acordo com o seu ponto de carga zero (pHPCZ). O estudo foi realizado em diferentes condições de pH: pH < pHPCZ; pH = pHPCZ e pH > pHPCZ. Pode-se concluir que a contribuição da sorção foi maior quando o pH > pHPCZ. Justificado pela atração das cargas negativas que foram criadas na superfície do material pelas cargas positivas dos cátions da solução.
Artiﬁcial Neural Networks for Tours of Multiple Asteroids

Designing multiple near-Earth asteroid (NEA) rendezvous missions is a complex global optimization problem, which involves the solution of a large combinatorial part to select the sequences of aster-oids to visit. Given that more than 22,000 NEAs are known to date, trillions of permutations between asteroids need to be considered. This work develops a method based on Artiﬁcial Neural Networks (ANNs) to quickly estimate the cost and duration of low-thrust transfers be-tween asteroids. The capability of the network to map the relationship between the characteristics of the departure and arrival orbits and the transfer cost and duration is studied. To this end, the optimal network architecture and hyper-parameters are identiﬁed for this application. An analysis of the type of orbit parametrization used as network inputs for best performance is performed. The ANN is employed within a sequence-search algorithm based on a tree-search method, which identiﬁes multiple rendezvous sequences and selects those with lowest time of ﬂight and propellant mass needed. To compute the full trajectory and con-trol history, the sequences are subsequently optimized using an optimal control solver based on a pseudospectral method. The performance of the proposed methodology is assessed by investigating NEA sequences of interest. Results show that ANN can estimate the cost or duration of optimal low-thrust transfers with high accuracy, resulting into a mean relative error of less than 4%.
Dioxins: Sources of environmental load and human exposure

Polychlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF) represent a class of tricylic, almost planar, aromatic ethers with 1 to 8 chlorine atoms. Congeners with substituents in the positions 2, 3, 7, and 8 are of special concern due to their toxicity, stability, and persistence. These compounds have been identified in almost all environmental compartments and humans. Dioxins are a potent carcinogen for animals and—at the moment—considered a probable carcinogen for humans. Actual toxicological risk assessment for humans are based on 2,3,7,8‐Cl4DD carcinogenicity studies on rodents. Tumorigenic effects were found for 2 strains of rats and 2 strains of mice. All dioxins and furans elicit common toxic and biological responses, starting with a specific binding to a protein receptor, but existing epidemiologic data do not provide definitive data on human health effects. Toxicity equivalency factors (TEFs) have been developed by several agencies as a provisional method of risk assessmen.
Case Report of Possible Intra-Operative Diabetes Insipidus during Cerebral Revascularisation in a Patient with Moyamoya Syndrome

Moyamoya (MM) is a rare cerebrovascular occlusive disease affecting the terminal portion of the internal carotid artery. It can be of primary idiopathic origin or secondary, where it is associated with other conditions such as Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). We present the anaesthetic management of a 16 year old female with SCD and MM undergoing a cerebral revascularisation procedure which was complicated by possible Central Diabetes Insipidus (CDI) intra-operatively. We hope to raise awareness of this rare disorder and add to the paucity of literature describing the anaesthetic management and potential peri-operative challenges posed by such patients.
Learning Coflow Admissions

Data-parallel applications are developed using different data programming models, e.g., MapReduce, partition/aggregate. These models represent diverse resource requirements of application in a datacenter network, which can be represented by the coflow abstraction. The conventional method of creating hand-crafted coflow heuristics for admission or scheduling for different workloads is practically infeasible. In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based coflow admission scheme – LCS – that can learn an admission policy for a higher-level performance objective, i.e., maximize successful coflow admissions, without manual feature engineering. LCS is trained on a production trace, which has online coflow arrivals. The evaluation results show that LCS is able to learn a reasonable admission policy that admits more coflows than state-of-the-art Varys heuristic while meeting their deadlines.
Analysing the Problem of Transitivity in Instance Matching Tasks on Linked Data

In the last years, the number of data sources providing Linked Data has grown to over 300. Joining this data to obtain a holistic view of some entity is one of the key promises of Linked Data. But integrating data from different stores has become one of the biggest challenges for the vision of a Semantic Web. Especially the inter-linkage of instances describing the same real-world object is not as extensive as it should be. To overcome this drawback, instance matching systems that automatically create owl:sameAs links between the data stores have been proposed. According to existing benchmarks, the matching quality have reached a satisfying level. However, our analysis has shown that, comprising data from just one or two data stores, these benchmarks are not really representative for the existing Linked Data. No transitive links are possible on such data. For a more accurate measurement, we have created a large real-world data set, containing 9 data stores from the Linked Open Data cloud, and evaluate the performance of two state-of-the-art instance matching systems. The results show that the quality, indeed, has reached a high precision. However, an analysis of the transitive closures shows that more than half of the created links are wrong. Focusing on the error sources, we propose several approaches to tackle these quality issues. Out of all analyzed approaches, Markov Clustering leads to an improvement of over 30% of precision on the owl:sameAs links in the transitive closure.
A VR/AR Environment for Multi-User Liver Anatomy Education

We present a Virtual and Augmented Reality multi-user prototype of a learning environment for liver anatomy education. Our system supports various training scenarios ranging from small learning groups to classroom-size education, where students and teachers can participate in virtual reality, augmented reality, or via desktop PCs. In an iterative development process with surgeons and teachers, a virtual organ library was created. Nineteen liver data sets were used comprising 3D surface models, 2D image data, pathology information, diagnosis and treatment decisions. These data sets can interactively be sorted and investigated individually regarding their volumetric and meta information. The three participation modes were evaluated within a user study with surgery lecturers (5) and medical students (5). We assessed the usability and presence using questionnaires. Additionally, we collected qualitative data with semistructured interviews. A total of 435 individual statements were recorded and summarized to 49 statements. The results show that our prototype is usable, induces presence, and potentially support the teaching of liver anatomy and surgery in the future.
Uses and properties of whey

Whey is a by-product of the dairy industry, which has a high nutritional value due to the presence of protein, lactose, vitamins and minerals that have nutritional functions of interest. Whey can be use directly as an ingredient in various products or it can be fractioned into its different components to be use for various purposes, thus given added value to this by-product, however the lack of information about is use has led producers to end up for discarding it, thus losing value nutritional components. Therefore this research offers a brief review of the uses and properties of whey.
Tight binding molecular dynamics studies of boron assisted nanotube growth

In this paper we report a theoretical study of the effects of the presence of boron in growing carbon nanotubes. We employ a well established tight binding model to describe the interactions responsible for the energetics of these systems, combined with the molecular dynamics simulation technique and structural relaxation calculations. We find, in agreement with the previous theoretical/experimental work of Blase et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 5078 (1999)], that boron favors (n,0) (zig-zag) tubular structures over (n,n) (arm-chair) ones by stabilizing the zig-zag edge. Furthermore, it is shown that boron has the effect of delaying the tube closure process, a fact which could explain the improved aspect ratio experimentally observed in nanotubes synthesized in the presence of boron. Our dynamical simulations lead us to propose a mechanism through which this extension of the closure time can be explained.
The influence of ferrous iron on bacterial corrosion

The rate of corrosion of cast iron by the action of sulphate-reducing bacteria is increased by the addition of ferrous iron alone or the combined addition of ferrous iron and yeast extract. The addition of yeast extract alone, however, has a retarding effect upon corrosion. The specific action of the added ferrous iron is discussed and the rates of corrosion in heterotrophic conditions are compared with those in autotrophic conditions.
A Review of the Effects of Dietary Restriction, Dehydration, and Caffeine Withdrawal on Cognition: Implications for a Disabled Submarine Scenario

In the event that submariners become trapped aboard a disabled submarine (DISSUB), they must perform a multitude of cognitively demanding tasks in order to maximize their likelihood of survival. During this time, submariners will also be forced to endure poor living conditions, including drastic changes to their nutrition. These nutritional changes have the potential to impair submariners’ cognitive functioning and affect operational performance, which could jeopardize survival; however, the effects of DISSUB nutrition on cognitive performance are not well understood. This review first describes the unique nutritional conditions that submariners will experience in a DISSUB scenario, including the change to a high-fat/low-calorie diet, restricted water availability, and cessation of caffeine consumption. The known effects of diet (including a high-fat diet and caloric restriction), dehydration, and caffeine withdrawal on cognition are then separately reviewed, with a discussion of how these effects may impact survivability in a DISSUB scenario.
Asymptotic analysis of the critical dynamics of spherical gaseous detonations

Abstract The critical dynamics of supersonic combustion waves is studied in the context of the direct initiation of detonation in a spherical geometry. The study is performed by an asymptotic analysis in the limit of small heat release, including unsteadiness, curvature and the gradient of the burnt-gas flow. Derivation of analytical expressions for the rarefaction wave in the burnt-gas flow, combined with numerical studies, provides the basis of the analysis. The critical trajectories ‘detonation velocity vs front radius’ $\mathcal {D}(r_f)$ are characterized by a decay well below the Chapman–Jouguet (CJ) velocity at a small radius (however, larger than the detonation thickness), followed by a re-acceleration process back to a CJ detonation. The phenomenon is explained by the dynamics of the sonic point inside the inert rarefaction wave behind the reaction zone. The key mechanism is a critical slowdown as soon as the sonic condition (relative to the lead shock) approaches the reaction zone from behind, leading to an increase of the time delay in the nonlinear response of the combustion wave to the rarefaction-wave-induced decay. Detonation fails if the rate of decay is strong enough to prevent the sonic point catching the reaction zone. Concerning successful initiation, the link between the trajectories $\mathcal {D}(r_f)$ of the fully unsteady problem and of the self-similar CJ solution of the discontinuous model is deciphered in the long-time limit.
Water Soluble Polymers for Pharmaceutical Applications

Advances in polymer science have led to the development of novel drug delivery systems. Some polymers are obtained from natural resources and then chemically modified for various applications, while others are chemically synthesized and used. A large number of natural and synthetic polymers are available. In the present paper, only water soluble polymers are described. They have been explained in two categories (1) synthetic and (2) natural. Drug polymer conjugates, block copolymers, hydrogels and other water soluble drug polymer complexes have also been explained. The general properties and applications of different water soluble polymers in the formulation of different dosage forms, novel delivery systems and biomedical applications will be discussed.
Genome-wide identification and analysis of the heat shock transcription factor 1 family in moso bamboo ( Phyllostachys edulis ) 2 3

12 Heat shock transcription factors (Hsfs) are central elements in the regulatory 13 network that controls plant heat stress response. They are involved in multiple 14 transcriptional regulatory pathways and play important roles in heat stress signaling and 15 responses to a variety of other stresses. We identified 41 members of the Hsf gene 16 family in moso bamboo, which were distributed non-uniformly across its 19 17 chromosomes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the moso bamboo Hsf genes could be 18 divided into three major subfamilies; Hsfs from the same subfamily shared relatively 19 conserved gene structures and sequences and encoded similar amino acids. All Hsf 20 genes contained Hsf signature domains. Subcellular localization prediction indicated 21 that about 80% of the Hsf proteins were located in the nucleus, consistent with the 22 results of GO enrichment analysis. A large number of stress response–associated cis23 regulatory elements were identified in the Hsf upstream promoter sequences. Synteny 24 analysis indicated that the Hsfs in the moso bamboo genome had greater collinearity 25 with those of rice and maize than with those of Arabidopsis and pepper. Numerous 26 segmental duplicates were found in the moso bamboo Hsf gene family. Transcriptome 27 data indicated that the expression of a number of PeHsfs differed in response to 28 exogenous gibberellin (GA) and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA). A number of Hsf genes 29 were highly expressed in the panicles and in young shoots, suggesting that they may 30 have functions in reproductive growth and the early development of rapidly-growing 31 shoots. This study provides fundamental information on members of the bamboo Hsf 32 gene family and lays a foundation for further study of their biological functions in the 33 regulation of plant responses to adversity. 34 35
Solvothermal synthesis of nano-sized skutterudite Co1−xNixSb3 powders

Nanostructuring is one of the effective approaches to lower the thermal conductivity of thermoelectric materials for improving its figure of merit. The nano-sized uniform skutterudite Co1−xNixSb3 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.075, 0.125, 0.15, and 0.25) thermoelectric powders were synthesized in triethylene glycol solution by using CoCl2, NiCl2, and SbCl3 as precursors and NaBH4 as the reductant. Different synthesis conditions were studied to pursue pure and uniform skutterudite CoSb3 powders. The powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscope, and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. Experimental results show that a Ni-doped skutterudite Co1−xNixSb3 single phase was obtained at 290 °C for 12 h. The powders are spherical, small, and uniform. As x increases from 0 to 0.25, the unit-cell parameter a increases from 0.9044 to 0.9065 nm and the particle size increases from 10 to 30 nm.
Misinterpretations in the Modeling of Contaminant Desorption from Environmental Solids When Equilibrium Conditions Are Not Fully Understood

For systems of sediments, soils, and subsurface solids that involve aggregations of fine-grained materials and zones of immobile water, the desorption of organic contaminants is often controlled by aqueous diffusion within the immobile water of a sorption domain. Accurate modeling in such systems requires not only a rational conceptual model for rates, but also good understanding of the equilibrium condition and of the initial conditions that existed at the onset of desorption. In this work, numerical modeling was used to obtain synthetic experimental results with a hypothetical (yet realistic) system in which rates were controlled by sorption-retarded diffusion. Batch sorption and desorption experiments are simulated at a variety of time scales and the results interpreted through modeling. Results show that even 50 days can be far too short to obtain equilibrium isotherms, and that the associated isotherm interpretations cause incorrect kinetic interpretations and predictions. In particular, 4- week batc.
A WATER FUNCTION APPROXIMATION TO DEGREE OF ANAEROBIOSIS ASSOCIATED WITH DENITRIFICATION

Using the acetylene blockage method, we measured denitrification gas flux at 64 locations along a 45-m transect on Yolo loam (Typic Xerorthents) soil, to develop an empirical function indirectly accounting for the degree of anaerobiosis in the field. The function was dependent upon the relative soil-water saturation. In addition to dentrification gas fluxes, we measured soil-water content, water-soluble organic carbon, and nitrate at all locations. The empirical water function was developed from a simple equation assuming that denitrification rate occurs according to a first-order reaction with respect to both nitrate and carbon. A water function was obtained that compared reasonably with other investigations. Using a fitted equation for the water function to calculate denitrification from measured values of water content, nitrate, and carbon resulted in a reasonable reconstruction of the denitrification spatial patterns and mean value. A rigorous test of the empirical function, however, will require extensive measurements for other soils and environmental situations.
Speciation of mercury using capillary electrophoresis coupled to volatile species generation-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

The development and analytical characterisation of an on-line coupled capillary electrophoresis (CE)-volatile species generation (VSG)-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) system for the separation and determination of different species of mercury is described. The mercury species studied (inorganic mercury, methylmercury and ethylmercury) are separated as mercury–cysteine complexes by capillary zone electrophoresis (CE) in a 100 cm × 75 µm id fused silica capillary at 25 kV and using a 20 mM sodium tetraborate decahydrate buffer (pH = 9.3). The detection is carried out on-line by both quadrupole (Q) and double focusing (DF) ICP-MS using a VSG system with NaBH4 reduction as the sample introduction device. The CE-VSG-ICP-MS interface construction provides an electrical connection for stable electrophoretic separations and allows on-line volatile species formation, these being separated from the liquid in a gas–liquid separator, allowing for final transport of the volatile analyte derivatives into the plasma. Characterisation and optimization of operation parameters of this interface are discussed. The analytical performance characteristics of the developed CE-VSG-ICP-MS methodology were evaluated and detection limits in the low µg l−1 range were achieved. The accuracy of the method has also been checked by analysing a certified biological reference material (DOLT-2) with satisfactory results.
Practical microwave-induced hydrothermal synthesis of rectangular prism-like CaTiO3

The crystalline phase transition from tetragonal TiO2 anatase and rutile structures to an orthorhombic unit cell of CaTiO3 was achieved using a microwave-assisted hydrothermal process. FESEM and HRTEM Images show a well faceted CaTiO3 rectangular-prism morphology. The use of a urea solution during the hydrothermal process allows the direct transformation of TiO2 to perovskite-like with exposed (111) and (202) facets.