Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tribological Properties of TMP ester View project OPTICAL DETECTION SYSTEM FOR FREE FATTY ACIDS IN CRUDE PALM OIL BASED ON ENZYMATIC METHOD View project

This paper provides a comprehensive review on ester based drilling fluid (EBDF). It is no secret that esters with biodegradability and bioaccumulation attributes are among the promising alternatives to synthetic base oil in drilling fluids. The findings from the literature explained the critical parameters for drilling fluid base which are i) kinematic viscosity, ii) pour point and iii) flash point iv) thermal stability and v) hydrolytic stability and vi) elastomer compatibility. In an ideal case, an EBDF requires base oil with low viscosity, low pour, high flash point, high thermal and hydrolytic stability and compatibility with existing elastomer. However in the real application, these requirements may not be the same as the bottom hole condition which is always subjected to high pressure and high temperature environment. At the moment, the performance of EBDF is considered outstanding for normal borehole depth and complexity. Nevertheless the constraints such as low temperature at the seabed while high temperature and high pressure at the bottom hole may be slightly different when dealing with an EBDF. This is due to its unique molecular structure of ester. Affected parameters include i) high kinematic viscosity, ii) hydrolytic degradation and iii) thermal stability. Failure in managing these parameters may lead to detrimental impacts on the drilling fluid performances and the fluid's stabilities. The application of low viscosity, high thermal and hydrolytic properties of esters and combination with unique carbon based nanomaterials into formulation might be able to close the gap of current EBDF performances.
ON THE FIXED-POINT IMPLEMENTATION OF A SUBBAND ACOUSTIC ECHO CANCELER BASED ON A MODIFIED FAP ALGORITHM

We investigate quantization effects in the fixed-point implementation of a subband AEC system based on a FAP-RLS algorithm. The latter uses a sliding window RLS (instead of FRLS) to compute the normalized residual echo vector. Subband decomposition is performed with modified uniform DFT filter banks, realized efficiently via the weighted overlap-add (WOA) technique for flexibility in oversampling. We characterize the main sources of errors in both the FAP-RLS and the DFT filter banks, and propose simple and effective solutions for stable operation of the subband AEC system. Our findings are supported experimentally.
Stomatos 43.indd

Knowledge of possible morphological variations of the root canal system is crucial to achieve endodontic success. The radiographic apex is traditionally used as a reference point for establishing the apical limit of root canal instrumentation and obturation. However, frequently it does not coincide with the major apical foramen. This article describes the rare case of a mandibular molar with necrotic pulp and apical periodontitis exhibiting an unusual foraminal position with a distance from the radiographic apex of about 7 mm. The left mandibular molar of a 46-year-old female patient was referred for endodontic treatment. Following radiographic suspicion of apical calcifi cation, comparison with the mandibular molar on the opposite side, electronic working length determination and visualization of a size #15 fi le emerging through the foramen in the working length radiograph, the anatomical variation was confi rmed, and endodontic procedures were performed according to conventional techniques. Following chemomechanical preparation, intracanal medication with calcium hydroxide, and obturation, total regression of the periapical lesion was verifi ed after 7 years of follow-up. According to the literature, the distance between the root canal foramen and the root apex may range from 0 to 3 mm, but in this specifi c case the distance reached 7 mm. Dentists should be aware of this atypical anatomical situation when treating mandibular molars.
Optical Forces in Silicon Nanophotonics and Optomechanical Systems: Science and Applications

Light-matter interactions have been explored for more than 40 years to achieve physical modulation of nanostructures or the manipulation of nanoparticle/biomolecule. Silicon photonics is a mature technology with standard fabrication techniques to fabricate micro- and nano-sized structures with a wide range of material properties (silicon oxides, silicon nitrides, p- and n-doping, etc.), high dielectric properties, high integration compatibility, and high biocompatibilities. Owing to these superior characteristics, silicon photonics is a promising approach to demonstrate optical force-based integrated devices and systems for practical applications. In this paper, we provide an overview of optical force in silicon nanophotonic and optomechanical systems and their latest technological development. First, we discuss various types of optical forces in light-matter interactions from particles or nanostructures. We then present particle manipulation in silicon nanophotonics and highlight its applications in biological and biomedical fields. Next, we discuss nanostructure mechanical modulation in silicon optomechanical devices, presenting their applications in photonic network, quantum physics, phonon manipulation, physical sensors, etc. Finally, we discuss the future perspective of optical force-based integrated silicon photonics.
Factors affecting the choice of fast food among teenagers of Sabour block in Bhagalpur district of India

In recent days, there is rapid shift in consumer’s life-style due to change in standard of living, work culture, hectic work schedule, and free-thinking and global perspective, as a consequence, fast foods impact our dietary pattern and routine food consumption. As fast food is generally considered rich in calorie, fat, sugar, salt and poor in other nutrients, it has contributed to rise of many non- communicable diseases, metabolic diseases such as obesity and over-weight, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases among more common. The present study was conducted to find the factors affecting the choice of fast food (Indian Fast Food, IFF; Western Fast Food, WFF) among teenagers using questionnaire-cum-structured interview schedule. In response to the influence of nutritional information about fast foods on the teenager’s choice of fast food, in case of IFF, the response was rarely (girls, 30%, boys, 19.6%), sometimes (girls, 40.4%, boys, 45.6%), most of time (girls, 20%, boys, 20.8%), and always (girls, 9.6%, boys, 6.4%), while in case of WFF, the response was rarely (girls, 20%, boys, 19.2%), sometimes (girls, 45.2%, boys, 42.4%), most of time (girls, 17.2%, boys, 20.8%), and always (girls, 15.2%, boys, 6.4%). In response to query on awareness for chemicals and preservatives present in fast food, respondents considered fast food as a healthy food in case of IFF response was yes (girls, 61.2%, boys, 53.6%), and no (girls, 37.2%, boys, 49.2%); while in case of WFF Always (girls, 57.6%, boys, 46.4%) and no (girls, 37.2%, boys, 49.2%). Regarding having prior knowledge of nutritive value of fast foods, in case of IFF, the response was as follows, “Yes, it has high nutritive value” (girls, 40.4%, boys, 44.4%), and “Yes, it has low nutritive value” (girls, 22%, boys, 19.6%), “no I don’t know” (girls, 35.2%, boys, 26.8%); while in case of WFF, “Yes it is high in calorie” (girls, 17.6%, boys, 17.2%), “Yes it has low calorie” (girls, 35.6%, boys, 31.2%), and “ no I don’t know” (girls, 43.2%, boys, 45.6%). This valuable information would be useful for preparing strategies related to fast food consumption among teenagers and their social, health and economical issues.
Generationary or: “How We Went beyond Word Sense Inventories and Learned to Gloss”

Mainstream computational lexical semantics embraces the assumption that word senses can be represented as discrete items of a predefined inventory. In this paper we show this needs not be the case, and propose a unified model that is able to produce contextually appropriate definitions. In our model, Generationary, we employ a novel span-based encoding scheme which we use to fine-tune an English pre-trained Encoder-Decoder system to generate glosses. We show that, even though we drop the need of choosing from a predefined sense inventory, our model can be employed effectively: not only does Generationary outperform previous approaches in the generative task of Definition Modeling in many settings, but it also matches or surpasses the state of the art in discriminative tasks such as Word Sense Disambiguation and Word-in-Context. Finally, we show that Generationary benefits from training on data from multiple inventories, with strong gains on various zero-shot benchmarks, including a novel dataset of definitions for free adjective-noun phrases. The software and reproduction materials are available at http://generationary.org.
Modeling transpiration with sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence via water use efficiency and stomatal conductance

Successfully applied in the carbon research area, sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has raised the interest of researchers from the water research domain. However, the mechanism between SIF emitted by plants and transpiration (T) has not been fully explored. To improve the understanding of the relationship between SIF and T, we developed two SIF-T models, the WUE model and the conductance model, based on carbon-water coupling framework. Hourly data were used to build and validate the models we developed. Correlation analysis shows that the T modeled by our model outperforms the traditional empirical linear model with higher R2 and lower RMSE. The models we built further show the potential and mechanism in estimating water flux by SIF.
Serial Robot Collision Reaction using Joints Data at Stationary Position

This paper present a method for detecting collision occurs in the robot manipulator and reacting according to collision direction. An experiment was conducted to read the joints speed during collision of the UR3 robot at static position, where the joints speeds are supposed to be zero. The experiment showed that when collision occurs within the manipulator there is oscillatory speed produced in joints, which is suggested to be duo to the stiffness of the harmonic drive. The harmonic drive is a flexible transmission generates stiffness behavior, as a spring, between the motor and the link. The collision is determined from the oscillatory speed produced in robot joints at static position. The method successfully identified the collision impact at joints, and reacted according to the collision direction. The experimental setup and the results are presented in this paper. Keywords— Collision Detection and Reaction, Flexible Robot, Harmonic Drive, Human Robot Interaction.
Evaluation of Cytotoxic Potentials of Microalgae on Hela, Hepg-2, HT-29 and EACC Cells to Develop Anticancer Agents

Finding more effective methods to treat cancer remains a challenge, and development of new therapeutic agents for cancer treatment is essential for continued progress against the disease. This study was conducted to evaluate the in vitro antiproliferative activity of methanolic extracts of Chlorella vulgaris and Nostoc muscorum against Human cervical Cancer cells (HeLa), liver hepatocellular cells (HepG-2), Human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells (HT-29) and Ehrlich Ascites Carcinoma Cells (EACC) in order to determine the bioacitivities of microalgae. Morphological changes of cancer cells treated with the selected extract were observed by phase contrast microscopy. The cells were incubated with increasing concentrations of microalgal extracts for 24, 48, and 72 h, and cell viability was determined by the Sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. After treatment of cancerous cells with microalgal extract for 48 h, 55% of the cells were viable, 38% were in early apoptosis, 5% were in late apoptosis, and 1% exhibited necrosis. Further studies are needed to discover the mechanisms underlying the antiproliferative activity of microalgal extracts against cancer cell lines and to identify specific bioactive compounds that are responsible for the observed activities
A sparse iteration space transformation framework for sparse tensor algebra

We address the problem of optimizing sparse tensor algebra in a compiler and show how to define standard loop transformations---split, collapse, and reorder---on sparse iteration spaces. The key idea is to track the transformation functions that map the original iteration space to derived iteration spaces. These functions are needed by the code generator to emit code that maps coordinates between iteration spaces at runtime, since the coordinates in the sparse data structures remain in the original iteration space. We further demonstrate that derived iteration spaces can tile both the universe of coordinates and the subset of nonzero coordinates: the former is analogous to tiling dense iteration spaces, while the latter tiles sparse iteration spaces into statically load-balanced blocks of nonzeros. Tiling the space of nonzeros lets the generated code efficiently exploit heterogeneous compute resources such as threads, vector units, and GPUs. We implement these concepts by extending the sparse iteration theory implementation in the TACO system. The associated scheduling API can be used by performance engineers or it can be the target of an automatic scheduling system. We outline one heuristic autoscheduling system, but other systems are possible. Using the scheduling API, we show how to optimize mixed sparse-dense tensor algebra expressions on CPUs and GPUs. Our results show that the sparse transformations are sufficient to generate code with competitive performance to hand-optimized implementations from the literature, while generalizing to all of the tensor algebra.
Can information that raises voter expectations improve accountability? A field experiment in Mali

This paper studies the political effects of a particular type of information intervention: one that improves voter expectations of government capacity. I argue that if citizens systematically underestimate what their government is capable of, then voting on the basis of performance is of little consequence, and politicians in turn have little incentive to perform well. I report evidence from a randomized field experiment in Mali that tests whether improving voter information about the scope of government effects voting behavior. A civic education course was provided to 370 villages in 64 randomly assigned municipalities dispensing information on the responsibilities of local government and the basics of democratic accountability to all treated villages, with an additional component on relative government performance to half of treated villages. A survey was then conducted in the 64 treated and 31 control municipalities. Voting simulations show that people in treated villages are more likely to vote based on performance: a poor-performing candidate had to pay more to buy votes of citizens in treated communities, and the votes of citizens in control communities were more easily swayed by dimensions such as kinship or gift-giving. Suggestive evidence points to two possible mechanisms underlying this behavior: treatment raised expectations of local government and improved coordination among voters. A behavioral outcome measure – the likelihood that villagers challenge local leaders at a town hall meeting – confirms the positive treatment effects found in the survey measures. ∗Email: jgott@stanford.edu. Website: www.stanford.edu/~jgott. I am grateful for invaluable guidance and support from James Fearon, Beatriz Magaloni, Jeremy Weinstein, and Saumitra Jha, and for comments and suggestions from members of the IGC Working Group on Political Economy, FSI Action Fund seminar, and Stanford Comparative Politics Workshop. This research would not have been possible without the superior research assistance of Sidi Zeda and Peter LeFrancois as well as the tireless efforts of the Malian instructors and enumerators who crossed rivers and mountains to collect data. I thank the National Science Foundation, the International Growth Centre, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and Stanford University for financial support. All errors are my own.
Designing and Analysis of Single Stage and Two Stage PV Inverter Connected to Weak Grid System

In this research paper design, analysis and comparison of single stage and two stages Photovoltaic inverter connected to weak grid system is executed in terms of their maximum power point tracking, DC link voltage regulation, power factor and overall efficiency. Majority of the commercial and industrial loads are inductive in nature and result in a very low lagging power factor. However renewable energy sources have no reactive power generation and lagging power factor results in a weak grid system. For this purpose control mechanism comprises of three objectives is proposed in this research paper. These objectives are to obtain highest amount of power from photovoltaic array, the power must be deliver from photovoltaic array into the utility grid at unity power factor and to maintain desired voltage at the input of the inverter. In order to achieve these objectives nonlinear control mechanism of Photovoltaic inverter connected to weak grid system is established and implemented based on accurate mathematical modeling and by using Backstepping technique and Lyapunov Stability analysis. PI controller is used for the purpose to maintain desired voltage at input of the inverter according to the requirement of inverter. Both single stage and two stage models are developed and simulated in Simulink/Matlab environment. Keywords— Photovoltaic (PV), Maximum power point tracking (MPPT), Power factor control (PFC)
A Novel Query Suggestion Method Based On Sequence Similarity and Transition Probability

— Query suggestion plays an important role in search engines which helps to improve user experience by suggesting related terms. Conventional query suggestion methods usually employ pair-wise contextual correlation evaluation or complete sequence matching. However, when confronted with a long or newly appeared sequence, these methods cannot guarantee satisﬁed performance. This paper presents a novel query suggestion method to solve this problem. We ﬁrst evaluate the similarities between current query sequence and each sequence in the training set, then calculate the transition probabilities from each sequence to its subsequent query. We can calculate relevance of each candidate query to the current query sequence with these interim results and retrieve the most relevant candidates for suggestion. We evaluated our method against four commonly used methods with a dataset from a commercial search engine. The experimental result shows that our method provides more relevant suggestion queries and offers better recall and precision.
Scalability and Efficiency Challenges in Large-Scale Web Search Engines

Commercial web search engines need to process thousands of queries every second and provide responses to user queries within a few hundred milliseconds. As a consequence of these tight performance constraints, search engines construct and maintain very large computing infrastructures for crawling the Web, indexing discovered pages, and processing user queries. The scalability and efficiency of these infrastructures require careful performance optimizations in every major component of the search engine. This tutorial aims to provide a fairly comprehensive overview of the scalability and efficiency challenges in large-scale web search engines. In particular, the tutorial provides an in-depth architectural overview of a web search engine, mainly focusing on the web crawling, indexing, and query processing components. The scalability and efficiency issues encountered in these components are presented at four different granularities: at the level of a single computer, a cluster of computers, a single data center, and a multi-center search engine. The tutorial also points out some open research problems and provides recommendations to researchers who are new to the field.
TRANSPARENT CONDUCTIVE CNT/POLYMER NANOCOMPOSITES FOR ORGANIC SOLAR CELL APPILICATION

Current widely used transparent conductive films (TCFs) for various applications such as display, solar cell, optoelectronic devices are the indium tin oxides (ITOs). ITOs have the high optical transmission about 80% in visible wavelength at low sheet resistance about 60 ~ 90 Ohm/sq. However, price of ITOs have been gradually increasing due to insufficient supply of indium, so development of alternating materials is required for TCFs. Polymer nanocomposites using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a filler material have recently received much attention as new candidate materials for TCF applications. CNTs have low electrical percolation threshold at very small amounts of CNTs due to their one dimensional nanostructure and excellent electrical conductivity [1, 2]. It is believed that CNTs are the excellent filler materials in conductive polymer matrix for TCFs. However, CNTs show the high agglomeration states due to their large van der Walls force between each rope of CNTs. To solve this problem, functionalization of CNTs should be employed [3, 4]. Covalent functionalization of CNTs by chemical oxidation in strong acid is widely used to disperse CNTs in matrix. However, this method results in the lower electrical properties of CNTs due to the damage of CNTs during the covalent functionalization [5, 6]. In this study, we fabricated transparent conductive polymer nanocomposites from single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). Covalent functionalization by strong acid treatment and non-covalent functionalization by π-π stacking were employed to functionalize the each of the SWNTs. SWNT/PEDOT:PSS solutions were spin coated on quartz substrates to obtain TCF. Incorporation of SWNTs in PEDOT:PSS matrix showed the enhancement of electrical conductivity without significant decrease of optical transmittance compared to raw PEDOT:PSS. Especially, noncovalently functionalized SWNT/PEDOT:PSS nanocomposites showed the higher electrical conductivity than covalently functionalized SWNT/PEDOT:PSS nanocomposites. FT-Raman and TEM results of covalently functionalized SWNTs revealed that collapsing the walls and shortening the length of SWNTs are critical to decrease the electrical property of nanocomposites. Furthermore, we applied non-covalently functionalized SWNT/PEDOT:PSS nanocomposites as a hole conducting layer in organic solar cell (OSC). Power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSC using non-covalently functionalized SWNT/PEDOT:PSS nanocomposites showed 30% enhancement compared to OSC using raw PEDOT: PSS. This enhancement was mainly originated from effective charge collection of high conductive SWNTs in PEDOT: PSS matrix.