Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-conventional bonding between organic molecules. The ‘halogen bond’ in crystalline systems

The intermolecular interaction in organic crystals, when close contact between a halogen atom and an oxygen or nitrogen atom is present, is investigated by surveys of existing crystal structure determinations in the Cambridge Structural Database and by theoretical methods. Short halogen–oxygen and–nitrogen contacts are restricted to systems with peculiar electronic and steric properties. Energy well depths for sample systems range from almost nil to about 20 kJ mol−1, considerably less than for hydrogen bonding, with which halogen bonding can hardly compete. The width of the energy wells suggests that some short contacts may correspond to just permissive (i.e. energetically neutral) approach, or even to compressed bonding. The strongest bond is attainable only by aromatic iodine, highly activated by electron-attracting substituents, in molecular complexes with strong and sterically unhindered Lewis bases; only in such special cases is the halogen bond the most relevant cohesive factor in the crystal structure. In the PIXEL energy dissection scheme, the largest contribution to halogen bonding comes from Coulombic plus first-order polarization terms. Dispersive interactions between parallel aromatic systems are often more stabilizing and should not be neglected in assessing the tendency of halogen compounds to form linear aggregates in polar crystal structures.
Effect of irrigation and lactic acid bacteria inoculants on the phenolic fraction, fermentation and sensory characteristics of olive (Olea europaea L. cv. Ascolana tenera) fruits

Plant productivity, phenolic profile and natural fermentation, with and without lactic acid bacteria inoculants, were investigated in olive fruit of Ascolana tenera growing under different irrigation regimes. A rainfed control and two treatments receiving a water depth equivalent to 33 and 66% of the estimated crop evapotranspiration (ETc) from the pit hardening stage and a treatment with 66% of ETc during the entire season (25 May-4 October), were tested. Olive vigour increased with irrigation, which also induced a fresh yield enhancement, mainly due to the increase in fruit size. The differences between treatments were less evident for fruit number per tree and pulp/stone ratio. The phenolic content increased in water deficit-stressed olives and differences were detected in the concentrations of individual phenolic compounds. Olive oil content and fatty acids composition appeared scarcely affected by irrigation. Values of pH, acidity, sugars, phenolic composition and microbial population were monitored during olive fermentation. Extracts of freshly harvested olive fruits exhibited significantly higher phenolic content than extracts of processed olives. The interaction of irrigation and fermentation appeared to have a significant effect on the chemical and sensory characteristics of the end product. The bitter taste of olive fruit was positively correlated with the level of total phenolics, but negatively correlated with the overall acceptability for direct consumption. The fermentation process was accelerated in the presence of lactic acid bacteria inoculants, indicating the potential use of these microorganisms as quality control markers in table olives during processing. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry
Multi-Directional Laplacian Pyramids for Completion of Missing Data Entries

A common pre-processing task in machine learning is handling missing data entries, also known as imputation. Standard techniques use mean values, regression or optimization based techniques for predicting the missing data values. In this paper, a kernel based technique is utilized for imputing data in a multi-scale manner. The construction is based on Laplacian pyramids, which operate on the row and column spaces of the data in several scales. Experimental results demonstrate the approach on publicly available datasets, and highlight its simple computational construction and convergence stability.
TiO2-supported copper nanoparticles prepared via ion exchange for photocatalytic hydrogen production

Ion exchange (IE) has been used to prepare Cu/TiO2 for photocatalytic hydrogen generation. The IE Cu/TiO2 particles comprised a mixture of large and fine copper/copper oxide deposits which were well dispersed across the TiO2 surface. Hydrogen generation photoactivity by the IE Cu/TiO2 was ∼44% greater than the activity displayed by Cu/TiO2 prepared via wet impregnation (WI) at a similar copper loading. Temperature programmed reduction studies indicated the IE Cu/TiO2 possessed a greater portion of highly dispersed fine copper deposits than the WI Cu/TiO2 which may account for the higher photoactivity. The hydrogen generation activity of IE Cu/TiO2 was maintained over three 5 h reaction cycles.
Similarities between policy gradient methods in reinforcement and supervised learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) is about sequential decision making and is traditionally opposed to supervised learning (SL) and un-supervised learning (USL). In RL, given the current state, the agent makes a decision that may inﬂuence the next state as opposed to SL where the next state remains the same, regardless of decisions taken. Although this diﬀerence is fundamental, SL and RL are not so diﬀerent. In particular, we emphasize in this paper that gradient policy methods can be cast as a SL problem where true label are replaced with discounted rewards. We provide a simple experiment where we interchange label and pseudo rewards to show that SL techniques can be directly translated into RL methods.
Mobile Malware Behavior through Opcode Analysis

: As the popularity of mobile devices are on the rise, millions of users are now exposed to mobile malware threats. Malware is known for its ability in causing damage to mobile devices. Attackers often use it as a way to use the resources available and for other cybercriminal benefits such stealing users’ data, credentials and credit card number. Various detection techniques have been introduced in mitigating mobile malware, yet the malware author has its own method to overcome the detection method. This paper presents mobile malware analysis approaches through opcode analysis. Opcode analysis on mobile malware reveals the behavior of malicious application in the binary level. The comparison made between the numbers of opcode occurrence from a malicious application and benign shows several significant traits. These differences can be used in classifying the malicious and benign mobile application.
Frontiers in Reservoir Computing

Reservoir computing (RC) studies the properties of large recurrent networks of artiﬁcial neurons, with either ﬁxed or random connectivity. Over the last years, reservoirs have become a key tool for pattern recognition and neuroscience problems, being able to develop a rich representation of the temporal information even if left untrained. The common paradigm has been instantiated into several models, among which the Echo State Network and the Liquid State Machine represent the most widely known ones. Nowadays, RC represents the de facto state-of-the-art approach for eﬃcient learning in the temporal domain. Besides, theoretical studies in RC area can contribute to the broader ﬁeld of Recurrent Neural Networks research by enabling a deeper understanding of the fundamental capabilities of dynamical recurrent models, even in the absence of training of the recurrent connections. RC paradigm also allows using diﬀerent dynamical systems, including hardware, for computation. This paper is intended to give an overview on the RC research ﬁeld, high-lighting major frontiers in its development and ﬁnally introducing the contributed papers to the ESANN 2020 special session.
On the long-term learning ability of LSTM LMs

We inspect the long-term learning ability of Long Short-Term Memory language models (LSTM LMs) by evaluating a contextual extension based on the Continuous Bag-of-Words (CBOW) model for both sentence- and discourse-level LSTM LMs and by analyzing its performance. We evaluate on text and speech. Sentence-level models using the long-term contextual module perform comparably to vanilla discourse-level LSTM LMs. On the other hand, the extension does not provide gains for discourse-level models. These findings indicate that discourse-level LSTM LMs already rely on contextual information to perform long-term learning.
Softmax Recurrent Unit: A new type of RNN cell

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have been very successful in many state-of-the-art solutions for natural language tasks like machine translation. However, LSTM, the most common RNN cell, is complex and utilizes a lot of components. We present the Softmax Recurrent Unit (SMRU), a novel and elegant design of a new type of RNN cell. The SMRU has a simple structure, which is solely based around the softmax function. We present four diﬀerent variants of the SMRU and compare them to both the LSTM and GRU on various tasks and datasets. These experiments show that the SMRU achieves competitive performance, surpassing either the LSTM or the GRU on any the given task, while having a much simpler design.
Language Grounded Task-Adaptation in Reinforcement Learning

Over its lifetime, a Reinforcement Learning agent is often instructed to perform diﬀerent tasks. How to eﬃciently adapt a previously learned control policy from one task to another, remains an open research question. In this paper, we investigate how instructions formulated in natural language can enable faster and more eﬀective task adaptation. Our proposed method is capable of assessing, given a set of developed base control policies, which base policy will be the most qualiﬁed to adapt to a new unseen task.
Pyramidal Graph Echo State Networks

We analyze graph neural network models that combine iterative message-passing implemented by a function with untrained weights and graph pooling operations. In particular, we alternate randomized neural message passing with graph coarsening operations, which provide multiple views of the underlying graph. Each view is concatenated to build a graph embedding for graph-level classiﬁcation. The main advantage of the proposed architecture is its speed, further improved by the pooling, in computing graph-level representations. Results obtained on popular graph classiﬁcation benchmarks, comparing diﬀerent topological pooling techniques, support our claim.
Analysis of agronomic and chemical-nutritional variability of fruits in Amazon germplasm of Capsicum chinense

Fruits of Capsicum chinense, a native species of Amazon Basin, express high levels of bioactive components such as vitamin C and carotenoids; some of them with pronounced pro-vitamin A activity such as β-carotene, which confers high economic potential to this species. The characterization of C. chinense germplasm helps in its management and conservation. Therefore, this practice is considered crucial for the identification of genotypes with superior characteristics, especially in relation to agronomic aspects and chemical-nutritional characteristics of fruits. This study aimed to characterize 55 C. chinense accessions collected from the Brazilian Amazon in terms of their agronomic and chemical-nutritional descriptors aiming to identify superior genotypes for these traits. The characterization was performed in a completely randomized design with 5 replications in non-heated environment. There was significant difference for all descriptors, confirming the variability among accessions. High heritability estimates for descriptors, such as fruit yield (95.1%) and vitamin C content of fruit (92.4%), was found to be associated with high CVg/CVe ratios of these traits, indicating a favorable condition for the selection of superior genotypes for these characteristics. A considerable part of the accessions expressed averages higher than the checks, notably for the fruit yield and the content of vitamin C. The cluster analysis resulted in the formation of 11 groups, corroborating the high variability of accessions for the agronomic and chemical-nutritional aspects of fruits. The evaluated C. chinense germplasm thus expressed high fruit yield and vitamin C content in the fruits, which makes it a promising source for the selection of superior genotypes.
Size dependent properties of Au particles: Coherent excitation and dephasing of acoustic vibrational modes

Ultrafast laser spectroscopy has been used to characterize the low frequency acoustic breathing modes of Au particles, with diameters between 8 and 120 nm. It is shown that these modes are impulsively excited by the rapid heating of the particle lattice that occurs after laser excitation. This excitation mechanism is a two step process; the pump laser deposits energy into the electron distribution, and this energy is subsequently transferred to the lattice via electron–phonon coupling. The measured frequencies of the acoustic modes are inversely proportional to the particle radius; a fit to the data for the different sized particles yields vR=0.47cl/Rc, where R is the particle radius, cl is the longitudinal speed of sound in Au, and c is the speed of light. This functional relationship exactly matches the prediction of classical mechanics calculations for the lowest frequency radial (breathing) mode of a free, spherical particle. The inverse dependence of the frequency on the radius means that the modula.
Effects of the measuring circuit on broadband piezo and pyroelectric measurements

Broadband dielectric measurements often are made under conditions approximating open or short circuit conditions by choosing the source and amplifier impedances such that the input time constant is either very short or very long compared to the time scales (frequency bandwidth) of the events measured. The time-domain equations expressing the relationship between the ideally desired open circuit voltage (or short circuit current) and the actually measured voltage (or current) are examined for a simple model circuit and are generalized for circuits with an arbitrary number of loops. A general data treatment procedure for calculating the desired responses (open circuit voltage or short circuit currents) is suggested and is illustrated in a simple case. Time-domain calibration methods are discussed also. >
Preparation of highly luminescent and color tunable carbon nanodots under visible light excitation for in vitro and in vivo bio-imaging

Carbon nanodots (CDs) have generated enormous excitement because of their superiority in water solubility, chemical inertness, low toxicity, ease of functionalization and resistance to photobleaching. Here we report a facile thermal pyrolysis route to prepare CDs with high quantum yield (QY) using citric acid as the carbon source and ethylene diamine derivatives (EDAs) including triethylenetetramine (TETA), tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) and polyene polyamine (PEPA) as the passivation agents. We find that the CDs prepared from EDAs, such as TETA, TEPA and PEPA, show relatively high photoluminescence (PL) QY (11.4, 10.6, and 9.8%, respectively) at λ_ex of 465 nm. The cytotoxicity of the CDs has been investigated through in vitro and in vivo bio-imaging studies. The results indicate that these CDs possess low toxicity and good biocompatibility. The unique properties such as the high PL QY at large excitation wave length and the low toxicity of the resulting CDs make them promising fluorescent nanoprobes for applications in optical bio-imaging and biosensing.
Facile Synthesis of Monodisperse Spherical MCM-48 Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles with Controlled Particle Size

A rapid and facile synthesis route to the monodisperse spherical MCM-48 mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) with cubic Ia3d mesostructure is developed based on the modified Stober method. The phase domain of MCM-48-type MSNs can be extended by controlling the stirring rate and molar ratios of silica source and surfactant. The formation of monodispersed spherical MCM-48-type MSNs is obtained using triblock copolymer Pluronic F127 as a particle size designer. The average size of monodisperse spherical MSN can be controlled within the range of 70−500 nm depending on the amount of F127. Moreover, the pore diameter of MSNs can be precisely controllable in pore diameters from 2.3 to 3.3 nm using different alkyl chain surfactants and simple posthydrothermal treatment. An investigation of MCM-48-type MSN materials using powder X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and nitrogen physisorption clearly reveals that MSNs show high specific surface area, high pore volumes.
Isolation, Identification, and Characterization of New Color-Stable Anthocyanins Occurring in Some Red Wines

Four new anthocyanin pigments were found in red wines in trace amounts and are thought to be formed in wines during maturation. Their structures were established by FAB-MS and NMR. Two pigments were identified as the 3-glucoside (vitisin A) and the 3-acetylglucoside (acetylvitisin A) of malvidin containing a C3H2O2 grouping, linking carbon 4 and the 5-hydroxyl group of its molecule (vitisidin A). The other two anthocyanins were identified as the 3-glucoside (vitisin B) and the 3-acetylglucoside (acetylvitisin B) of malvidin containing a CHCH moiety linking carbon 4 and the 5-hydroxyl group of its molecule (vitisidin B or decarboxyvitisidin A). Unlike other anthocyanins these novel compounds were found to be wholly or partly resistant to bleaching by sulfur dioxide and express more color up to pH 7 than malvidin 3-glucoside. Detailed spectral measurements from 250 to 770 nm up to pH 7, including the use of CIELAB 76 measurements, indicate the formation of stable quinonoidal bases, confirming that there cou.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF UNIFIED POWER FLOW CONTROLLER (UPFC) USING 3 LEVEL CASADED H BRIDGE (CHB) INVERTERS WITH SPWM AND PI CONTROLLERS T.JaganMohanRaju

Unified Power Flow Controllers are very much known for their versatality in independently controlling the Active and Reactive Power Flow in a transmission line 1 This paper proposes a unique combination of Advanced MLIs like Cascaded H Bridge Inverters in the Converters of UPFCs and a Control Strategies like PI CONTROLLERS for Alleviating the Performance Capabilities of UPFCs. This paper presents the detailed results showing the Improvement in Performance Capabilities of UPFC using the Proposed New Combination of CHB Inverters and Advanced Control Strategy over the Six Pulse Converters. Different Shunt Faults like LG (on Phase A) , LL (on Phases A-B) , LLG (on Phases A B Ground) and LLL (on Phases A-B-C) are created at bus number 4 . between bus 3-4 , and the capability of the PI Controller in restoring the system normalcy is also tested. The parameters used for analysing the controller’s performance Settling Time. The test is carried out on a Standard IEEE 5 Bus System. The PWM Technique used is Sine Triangle PWM (SPWM). Simulations pertaining to the entire test procedures are done using MATLAB software.
Structure of a Controlled Ducted Flame

Abstract The structure of self-excited and controlled ducted flames was studied by imaging the CH emission and analyzing the pressure and CH intensity time variation. Self-excited combustion oscillations occur when the flame interacts with the large-scale vortices which are excited in the shear layer by the acoustic forcing at the duct resonance modes. The periodic heat release produced by the combustion inside the vortices further excite the duct acoustics. The fuel to air mixture ratio is shown to have an important effect on the interaction between the flame and vortices. The effect on the flame structure of pressure and CH control systems is described. The transition from controlled conditions lo uncontrolled and vice versa is visualized. The roll-up of coherent structures dominating the flame in the self-excited conditions is disrupted by the controller; the shear layer is forced at the exact phase necessary to cancel the perturbation due to the duct acoustic pressure. This is done more effectively wi.
Dynamic viscosity of mixtures of benzene, ethanol, and n-heptane at 298.15 K

Experimental dynamic viscosities and densities are reported for the binary and ternary mixtures of benzene, ethanol, and n-heptane at 25 {sup 0}C. The data are correlated with the generalized corresponding states method of Teja and Rice by treating the ternary system as pseudobinary and by using only binary information. A van Laar type mixing rule is used for the pseudocritical temperature of the binary mixtures. Experimental and calculated viscosities for the ternary system are in satisfactory agreement.
Methanogenic Decomposition ofFerulic Acid, aModelLignin Derivative

Ferulic acid, amodellignin derivative, wasobserved tobebiodegradable to methane andcarbon dioxide understrict anaerobic conditions. Thisconversion appears tobecarried outbyaconsortium ofbacteria similar tothatpreviously described forthemethanogenic degradation ofbenzoic acid. Atemporary buildup ofacetate inthese cultures indicates thatitisalikely intermediate andprecursor formethane formation. Ananalog ofcoenzyme M,2-bromoethanesulfonic acid (BESA), inhibited gasproduction andenhanced thebuildup ofpropionate, butyrate, isobutyrate, andisovalerate. Phenylacetate, cinnamate, 3-phenylpropionate, benzoate, cyclohexane carboxylate, adipate, andpimelate werealso detected inBESA-inhibited cultures. Apathway isproposed whichincludes these various acids aspossible intermediates inthemethanogenic degradation offerulic acid. Thismodeloverlaps previously described benzoic aciddegradation pathways,suggesting thatthis typeofanaerobic degradation maybecommonfor aromatic compounds.
Prognostic Significance of Abnormal Ankle–Brachial Index Among Long-term Hemodialysis Patients in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Objective Early identification of atherosclerosis using a non-invasive tool like ankle–brachial index (ABI) could help reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease among long-term hemodialysis patients. The study objective was to assess the frequency and impact of abnormal ABI as a marker of subclinical peripheral artery disease (PAD) in chronic hemodialysis patients. Methods This was a historic cohort study of kidney failure patients on long-term hemodialysis for at least 6 months. The ABI, measured with two oscillometric blood pressure devices simultaneously, was used to assess subclinical atherosclerosis of low limb extremities. Abnormal ABI was defined as ABI <0.9 or >1.3 (PAD present). Survival was defined as time to death. Independent factors associated with abnormal ABI were assessed using multiple logistic regression analysis. Kaplan–Meier method (log-rank test) was used to compare cumulative survival between the two groups; a P value <0.05 was statistically significant. Results Abnormal ABI was noted in 50.6% (n=43) of the 85 kidney failure patients included in the study; 42.4% (n=36) had a low ABI, and 8.2% (n=7) had a high ABI. Factors associated with PAD present were cholesterol (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01–1.04; P=0.019), inflammation (AOR, 9.44; 95% CI, 2.30–18.77; P=0.002), phosphocalcic product (AOR, 6.25; 95% CI, 1.19–12.87; P=0.031), and cardiac arrhythmias (AOR, 3.78; 95% CI, 1.55–7.81, P=0.009). Cumulative survival was worse among patients with PAD present (log-rank; P=0.032). Conclusion The presence of PAD was a common finding in the present study, and associated with both traditional and emerging cardiovascular risk factors as well as a worse survival rate than patients without PAD.
Long-wavelength (Ga, In)Sb/GaSb strained quantum well lasers grown by molecular beam epitaxy

The molecular beam epitaxy growth of strained (Ga, In)Sb/GaSb quantum wells is investigated. In a narrow range of growth conditions, (Ga, In)Sb quantum well structures exhibiting excellent structural properties as well as intense and narrow photoluminescence transitions are obtained. Stimulated emission at 1.98 m is observed at room temperature from laser diodes with strained quantum wells as the active zone. The lasers exhibit threshold current densities as low as 280 A and a characteristic temperature of 75 K.