Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined Alkyl and Sulfonic Acid Functionalization of MCM-41-Type Silica: Part 2. Esterification of Glycerol with Fatty Acids

The esterification of glycerol with lauric and oleic acids (1 : 1 molar ratio) has been carried out by using hybrid MCM-41 materials containing simultaneously alkyl (methyl or propyl) and sulfonic acid groups as catalysts. It has been found that for each fatty acid the catalyst activity is affected by the concentration of methyl groups, and maximum activity per sulfonic acid group is achieved by tuning the methyl/sulfonic acid ratio. A monolaurin yield of 63% is obtained with the most active catalyst, whereas for oleic acid the maximum monoolein yield was 45%. Reduction of the average pore size (determined by N2 adsorption) from 14 to below 10 A has a detrimental influence on the catalyst activity for both acids.
On Optimal Filtering for Speech Decomposition

Optimal linear filtering has been used extensively for speech enhancement. In this paper, we take a first step in trying to apply linear filtering to the decomposition of a noisy speech signal into its components. The problem of decomposing speech into its voiced and unvoiced components is considered as an estimation problem. Assuming a harmonic model for the voiced speech, we propose a Wiener filtering scheme which estimates both components separately in the presence of noise. It is shown under which conditions this optimal filtering formulation outperforms two state-of-the-art speech decomposition methods, which is also revealed by objective measures, spectrograms and informal listening tests.
Challenges of Testing Machine Learning Applications

Machine learning applications have achieved impressive results in many areas and provided effective solution to deal with image recognition, automatic driven, voice processing etc. problems. As these applications are adopted by multiple critical areas, their reliability and robustness becomes more and more important. Software testing is a typical way to ensure the quality of applications. Approaches for testing machine learning applications are needed. This paper analyzes the characteristics of several machine learning algorithms and concludes the main challenges of testing machine learning applications. Then, multiple preliminary techniques are presented according to the challenges. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how these techniques can be used to solve the problems during the testing of machine learning applications.
UTILIZATION OF COAL FLY ASH AS LOW-COST ADSORBENT MATERIAL FOR NICKEL REMOVAL APPLICATIONS

Bu calismada, komur ucucu kulu sulu cozeltilerden nikel(II) iyonlarinin gideriminde dusuk maliyetli adsorban olarak degerlendirilmistir. pH, adsorban miktari, temas suresi ve baslangic agir metal derisimi gibi adsorpsiyon islemini etkileyen deneysel parametrelerin optimizasyonu gerceklestirilmistir. Elde edilen deneysel veriler Langmuir, Freundlich ve Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) izotermleri kullanilarak modellenmistir. Langmuir modelinin adsorpsiyon verilerine daha iyi uydugu belirlenmistir. Ucucu kulun en yuksek tek tabaka adsorpsiyon kapasitesi 294,00 mg/g olarak bulunmustur. Yapilan calisma, ticari adsorbanlarla karsilastirildiginda ucucu kulun sulu cozeltilerden agir metallerin gideriminde etkin ve ekonomik bir adsorban malzemesi olabilecegini gostermistir
The Effects of Training on Preservice Teachers using Computerized Systematic Observation

Although systematic observation software systems are being used in teacher preparation programs. research investigating the type and amount of training pre-service educators need to use this software to code teaching behaviors is lacking. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in three training protocols for prescrvice physical educators using the Behavioral Evaluation Strategies and Taxonomy software system for the first time. Participants were 3 1 pre-service physical education teacher education students enrolled in a methods of elementary physical education instruction course at a midsized college located in western New York State. Data were collected using a function from the BEST software system that automatically chaiied frequencies of each behavior recorded by the user. Data were analyzed using SPSS (version 17.0). Descriptive statistics were obtained and an ANOV A was used to determine whether there were differences (and level or significance) between four different training group means. Each experimental group was compared to the control group using Dunnett post-hoc tests. An unpaired t-test (two-tailed) was used to determine whether there were differences (and level of significance) between the participants who received a training video and the participants who did not. Results of ANOV A determined differences to be significant at p =0.060 between the four groups. Dunnett post-hoc tests determined significance levels for the following comparisons between the Control Group (CG) and Training Protocol I (p =0.284), CG and Training Protocol 2 (p =0.041), and CG and Training Protocol 3 (p = 0.075). Results of the unpaired t-test (two-tailed) indicated participants viewing the training video increased their ability ~o identify a greater amount or feedback at p = 0.025. The results of this study suggest using v ideo training
Occurrence of phthalate acid esters ( PAEs ) in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea and the 1 Rhone River 2 3 4 5 6

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Occurrence of phthalate acid esters (PAEs) in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone River Andrea Paluselli, Yann Aminot, François Galgani, Sopheak Net, Richard Sempere
RANS and LES Investigations of Vertical Flows in the Fuel Passages of Gas-Cooled Nuclear Reactors

Coolant flows in the cores of current gas-cooled nuclear reactors consist of ascending vertical flows in a large number of parallel passages. Under post-trip conditions such heated turbulent flows may be significantly modified from the forced convection condition by the action of buoyancy, and the thermal-hydraulic regime is no longer one of pure forced convection. These modifications are primarily associated with changes to the turbulence structure, and indeed flow laminarization may occur. In the laminarization situation heat transfer rates may be as low as 40% of those in the corresponding forced convection case. The heat transfer performance of such ‘mixed’ convection flows is investigated here using a range of refined Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models. While all belong to the broad class of Eddy Viscosity Models (EVMs), the various RANS closures have different physical parameterizations and might therefore be expected to show different responses to externally-imposed conditions. Comparison is made against experimental and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data. In addition, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results have been generated as part of the study. Three different CFD codes have been employed in the work: ‘CONVERT’, ‘STAR-CD’, and ‘Code_Saturne’, which are respectively in-house, commercial, and industrial packages. It is found that the early EVM scheme of Launder and Sharma [1] is in the closest agreement with consistently-normalized DNS results for the ratio of mixed-to-forced convection Nusselt number (Nu/Nu0). However, in relation to DNS and experimental data for forced convection Nusselt number, other models perform better than the Launder-Sharma scheme. The present investigation has revealed discrepancies between direct-simulation, experimental, and the current LES studies.
Stock Selection and Timing Ability of the Taiwan Equity Funds—The Application of Stochastic Beta, GARCH, and Nonlinear GLS

This study simultaneously examines funds’ selectivity, beta stationary, and timing decisions by the modified method of Chen and Stockum (1986). We adopt GARCH, generalized least square (GLS), and a nonlinear parameter-estimator model to increase the estimate efficiency. The results indicate that up to 86% of the funds have stochastic betas, over 99% show positive but insignificant selectivity, and 83% indicate negatively significant market-timing ability. This suggests that Taiwan domestic-equity fund managers, on average, do not have stock selectivity and timing ability, which seems to support the efficient market hypothesis.
Disrupting Injustice: Principals Narrate the Strategies They Use to Improve Their Schools and Advance Social Justice

Background/Context A group of educators have demonstrated success not only with White middle-class and affluent students but also with students from varied racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, ability, and cultural backgrounds. A reoccurring theme from these schools and from the literature on school change is that exemplary leadership helps create the necessity for change and helps make the realities of change happen. More specifically, leaders at these schools where students traditionally marginalized are thriving come to administration with a commitment, or larger “call,” to focus their leadership on issues of equity and justice. Purpose Scholars and administrators alike have called for “constructive models” of this kind of leadership. This article provides examples of these accomplishments in practice. It also provides insight into the realities of leading for social justice by revealing what principals sought to accomplish and how they approached that work. Participants This article focuses on 6 principals—2 elementary, 2 middle, and 2 high school—who (1) led a public school, (2) possessed a belief that promoting social justice is a driving force behind what brought them to their leadership position, (3) advocated, led, and kept at the center of their practice/vision issues of race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and/or other historically marginalizing conditions, and (4) had evidence to show that their work has produced a more just school. Research Design The qualitative study in which these analyses are grounded used a positioned subject approach. The method of data collection took place over one school year and included in-depth interviews with the principals, a review of documents and materials, site visits, discussions/interviews with school staff, a detailed field log, and a group meeting of the principal participants. This article is a focused discussion of aspects of a larger study, using the principals’ voices to illustrate key themes. Findings These leaders narrate the strategies they used to disrupt four kinds of school injustice: (1) school structures that marginalize, segregate, and impede achievement, such as pullout programs; (2) a deprofessionalized teaching staff who could benefit from focused staff development; (3) a school climate that needed to be more welcoming to marginalized families and the community; and (4) disparate student achievement levels. Recommendations A series of lessons emerged from this research: that social justice in schools is more than rhetoric—indeed, it can be achieved; that inclusive schooling is a necessary and enriching component to enacting justice; that increasing staff capacity is essential to carry out a comprehensive agenda focused on equity; and that creating a climate that deeply values racial, cultural, and economic diversity is a key strategy to enacting justice.
Distributed Best Response Algorithms for Potential Games

In this paper we design and analyze distributed algorithms to compute a Nash equilibrium in potential games. Our algorithms are based on best-response dynamics, with suitable revision sequences (orders of play). We compute the average complexity over all potential games of best response dynamics under a random i.i. d. revision sequence, since it can be implemented in a distributed way using Poisson clocks. We obtain a distributed algorithm whose execution time is within a constant factor of the optimal centralized one.We then show how to take advantage of the structure of the interactions between players in a network game: non-interacting players can play simultaneously. This improves best response algorithm, both in the centralized and in the distributed case.
A New Web Server for the Rapid Identification of Microorganisms

Small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) gene sequences are now widely used to identify microbial organisms. However, the public databases now comprise mostly rRNA gene sequences resulting from PCR and cloning of DNA isolated from environmental samples. Most of these sequences are poorly annotated and do not bear proper taxonomic assignments. As a result, this fl ood of sequences makes routine identifi cations often very tedious. We propose a new web server for fast and reliable identifi cations of microbial isolates. It allows retrieving related sequences and their taxonomies, in order to proceed to phylogenetic analyses. This web tool is based on specifi c databases of cultured species for Bacteria, Archaea and Protozoa. In addition, various data helping the identifi cation procedure can be downloaded. The server also includes online software to automatically display annotated phylogenetic trees.
Robust Stochastic Maximum Likelihood Algorithm for DOA Estimation of Acoustic Sources in the Spherical Harmonic Domain

The direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of the sound sources has been a popular signal processing research topic due to its widespread applications. Using spherical microphone array, DOA estimation can be applied in the spherical harmonic (SH) domain without any spatial ambiguity. However, the environment reverberation and noise can degrade the estimation performance. In this paper, we propose a novel iterative stochastic maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm for DOA estimation of multiple sound sources in the presence of spatially nonuniform noise in the SH domain. The main idea of the proposed algorithm is considering the general model of the received signal in the SH domain. We reduce the complexity of the ML estimation by breaking it down to two separate problems: noise parameters and DOA estimation problems. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm improves the robustness of estimation, i.e, the root mean square error, by at least 7dB compared to the recent methods in the reverberant and noisy environments.
Nonlinear temperature response of lake ice breakup

A uniquely comprehensive set of four decades of ice breakup data from 196 Swedish lakes covering 13° of latitude (55.7°N to 68.4°N) shows the relationship between the timing of lake ice breakup and air temperature to be an arc cosine function. The nonlinearity inherent in this relationship results in marked differences in the response of the timing of lake ice breakup to changes in air temperature between colder and warmer geographical regions, and between colder and warmer time periods. The spatial and temporal patterns are mutually consistent, suggesting that climate change impacts on the timing of lake ice breakup will vary along a temperature gradient. This has potentially important ramifications for the employment of lake ice phenologies as climate indicators and for the future behavior of lacustrine ecosystems.
Inter-dependencies and Causality in the Macroeconomic Variables: Evidence from Pakistan (1960-2005). Sarhad J. Agric. 24 (1): 199-205

This paper critically evaluates the inter-relationship, vulnerability to innovation, and causality among the macroeconomic variables (budget deficit, economic growth, unemployment and poverty). Annual data for the period 1960-2005 is used, taken from Economic Survey of Pakistan and International Financial Statistics. Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with impulse response function (IRF), error variance decomposition and Granger Causality test is used for the analysis. The study revealed that any innovation of one standard deviation took seven years for economic growth and budget deficit, eight years for unemployment and more than ten years for poverty reduction. The response of the macroeconomic variables to innovation or impulses introduced is mostly explained in their own. Only two unilateral causality are found. Bilateral causality is not found, and mostly independent type relationships are detected. Based on the finding of the study it is recommended, that target oriented fiscal policies should be focused on and the gap between policy formation and implementation must be reduced.
Killing Effect of Ad 5 / F 35-APE 1 siRNA Recombinant Adenovirus in Combination with Hematoporphrphyrin Derivative-Mediated Photodynamic Therapy on Human Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer

emain goal of this work is to investigate the killing effects and molecular mechanism of photodynamic therapy (PDT) mediated by the Ad5/F35-APE1 siRNA recombinant adenovirus in combination with a hematoporphrphyrin derivative (HpD) in the A549 human lung adenocarcinoma cell line in vitro to provide a theoretical reference for treating lung cancer by HpD-PDT. By using the technologies of MTT, �ow cytometry, ELISA, and western blot, we observed that the proliferation inhibition and apoptosis of the A549 cells were signi�cantly higher than the control group (PP P PPPP) aer HpD-PDT was performed. e inhibitory efficiency is dependent on the HpD concentration and laser intensity dose. e inhibitory effect on the proliferation of A549 cells of Ad5/F35-APE1 siRNA is more signi�cant aer combining with PDT, as indicated by a signi�cant elevation of the intracellular ROS level and the expression of in�ammatory factors (PP P PPPP). e HpD-PDT-induced expression of the APE1 protein reached the peak aer 24 h in A549 cells. e inhibition of APE1 expression in A549 cells was most signi�cant aer 4� hours of infection by Ad5/F35-APE1 siRNA recombinant adenovirus (10MOI). In conclusion, the Ad5/F35-APE1 siRNA recombinant adenovirus could efficiently inhibit the HpD-PDT-induced APE1 expression hence could signi�cantly enhance the killing effect of HpD-PDT in lung cancer cells.
Consumer's Environmental Awareness and the Role of (Green) Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Environmental Quality Competition and R&D Activities for Environmental Policy

In the recent last years, in particular in the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis, many countries initiated economic recovery plans with a major focus on stimulating green entrepreneurial activities to revive economic growth. Further, the recovery plans intend to improve a country's awareness for a direct orientation towards (strong) sustainability and green growth. Before discussing strategies towards green growth, in this paper we propose a novel framework to increase our understanding of the interplay of process R&D activities, the strategic price and environmental quality setting of heterogeneous entrepreneurs in a market where consumers feel up to paying for environmental quality improvement of a vertically differentiated good. In the paper we decompose an entrepreneur's incentive conducting process R&D in four parts. In particular we show that an entrepreneur's incentive of conducting own process R&D is reduced due to the existence of knowledge-spillovers. Moreover, due to the strategic complementarities, both in prices as well as in environmental quality, a strategic effect reinforces the negative consequences of the spillover-effect. We show that the externalities in the model require corrections based upon a mixture of fiscal policies and a process R&D subvention scheme establishing a first-best solution. We further thoroughly discuss the implementation of a second-best solution and derive environmental policy implications.
Works Title Phase Noise in MIMO Systems : Bayesian Cramer-Rao Bounds and Soft-Input Estimation Permalink

This paper addresses the problem of estimating time varying phase noise caused by imperfect oscillators in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The estimation problem is parameterized in detail and based on an equivalent signal model its dimensionality is reduced to minimize the overhead associated with phase noise estimation. New exact and closed-form expressions for the Bayesian Cramér–Rao lower bounds (BCRLBs) and soft-input maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimators for online, i.e., filtering, and offline, i.e., smoothing, estimation of phase noise over the length of a frame are derived. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed MAP estimators’ mean-square error (MSE) performances are very close to the derived BCRLBs at moderate-to-high signal-to-noise ratios. To reduce the overhead and complexity associated with tracking the phase noise processes over the length of a frame, a novel soft-input extended Kalman filter (EKF) and extended Kalman smoother (EKS) that use soft statistics of the transmitted symbols given the current observations are proposed. Numerical results indicate that by employing the proposed phase tracking approach, the bit-error rate performance of a MIMO system affected by phase noise can be significantly improved. In addition, simulation results indicate that the proposed phase noise estimation scheme allows for application of higher order modulations and larger numbers of antennas in MIMO systems that employ imperfect oscillators.
Experimental density data and excess molar volumes of coconut biodiesel + n-hexadecane and coconut biodiesel + diesel at different temperatures

The density of the pure component (n-hexadecane), pure pseudo-components (coconut biodiesel and diesel) and pseudo-binary mixtures of coconut biodiesel with n-hexadecane (or + diesel) were measured at temperatures 293.15, 313.15, 333.15, 353.15 and 373.15 K and atmospheric pressure, over the entire composition range (mole fractions from 0.1 to 0.9, with a step de 0.1). Densities were determined using an Anton Paar SVM 3000 viscodensimeter. Experimental density values decreased with the increase of the temperature. The excess molar volumes of the pseudo-binary mixtures were calculated by using the experimental values of density. Excess molar volumes were correlated with the Redlich-Kister polynomial expansions. Excess molar volumes show positive and negative values in the two systems studied. Excess partial volumes at infinite dilution were calculated for coconut biodiesel, n-hexadecane and diesel in the mixtures studied.
Assessing Fiscal Sustainability for SAARC and IMT-GT Countries

This study examines the fiscal sustainability of SAARC and Asian Growth-Triangle countries using Fisher and IPS tests of panel unit root and Pedroni test of panel cointegration. The tests are applied to the relationships, in terms of GDP ratios, between, i) the debt and primary surplus, and ii) government expenditure and revenues. Both models show consistent results suggesting that fiscal policy for the low-income countries is sustainable whereas it may not be sustainable for the high-income countries. This also indicates that the fiscal policy can be sustainable (non-sustainable) even for the debt above (below) 60 percent of the GDP.