Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Nanoparticles Functionalization on Partial Discharge Activity within PVC/SiO2 Nanocomposites

Partial discharges (PDs) diagnostics are necessary to monitor and detect any abnormal conditions such as; impurities or cavities during the manufacturing process of insulating materials of power cables. This paper aims to enhance PD activity of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) with the insertion of chemically functionalized silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoparticles through using the solution casting method. The surface functionalization of SiO2 was performed using amino silane as a coupling agent after activating their surfaces with methanesulfonic acid. Then, PVC/SiO2 nanocomposites, with different loadings of nanoparticles (0.5, 3%), were synthesized with the aid of ultra-sonication for better dispersion of nanoparticles. After that, the internal discharge measurements were performed using the traditional needle-plane configuration with the help of phase resolved partial discharge analyzer (PRPDA) that analyzes the statistical characteristics of PDs pattern. It is found that the PD activity of PVC/SiO2 amino-functionalized nanocomposite samples that represented by discharge magnitude, inception voltage, extinction voltage, and the PD generation rate was enhanced compared to that of the PVC/SiO2 un-functionalized nanocomposites or neat PVC samples. This is because the addition of SiO2 nanoparticles was increased the trapping sites inside the insulating material and the generation rate of initial electrons will be reduced, resulting in further decrease in PD activities.
Apnea Testing for the Determination of Brain Death in Patients Supported by Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

The neurological criteria for brain death include coma, absent brain stem reflexes, and apnea. For patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), routine apnea testing is not possible because gas exchange occurs entirely through the membrane oxygenator. We describe the protocol we used to perform the apnea test and declare brain death in a patient on ECMO and review the literature of brain death testing in patients on ECMO. A 39-year-old female presented with cardiogenic shock followed by pulseless electrical activity (PEA) and eventually started on veno-arterial (VA) ECMO. Neurology was consulted for prognostication. Initial exam 48 hours after arrest showed absent brain stem reflexes. Another neurological exam 72 hours after arrest was compatible with brain death, so apnea test was performed. The apnea test involved preoxygenation, then she was disconnected from ventilator and the gas sweep rate decreased to 1 L/minute while maintaining the same blood flow rate. At 10 minutes, the PCO 2 level needed to declare brain death was achieved. With increasing use of ECMO to support critically ill patients, physicians should become familiar with the challenges this technology has created when testing for apnea in the determination of brain death. In this case report, we showed that apnea testing can be done in patients on ECMO without the need for ancillary testing. The mainstay of performing apnea testing on these patients is decreasing the gas sweep rate to 0.5 - 1 L/minute while maintaining the same blood flow rate. J Neurol Res. 2016;6(1):28-34 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.14740/jnr376w
Effects of a Reduced Effective Active Region Volume on Wavelength-Dependent Efficiency Droop of InGaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

In this study, wavelength-dependent efficiency droop phenomena in InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) by a reduced effective active region volume were investigated. Different effective active region volumes can be extracted from theoretical fitting to the efficiency-versus-current curves of standard high efficiency InGaN near-ultraviolet, blue, and green LEDs. It has been found that the effective volume of the active region reduces more significantly with increasing emission wavelength, resulting in a lower onset-droop current density, as well as a more severe droop. Increasing the quantum well (QW) thickness to reduce carrier density is proposed as an effective way to alleviate the efficiency droop.
Incorporating Data Link Features into a Multi-Function Display to Support Self-Separation and Spacing Tasks for General Aviation Pilots

One objective of the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) Higher Volume Operations (HVO) project is to increase the capacity and utilization of small non-towered, non-radar equipped airports by transferring traffic management activities to an automated Airport Management Module (AMM) and separation responsibilities to general aviation (GA) pilots. Implementation of this concept required the development of a research Multi-Function Display (MFD) to support the interactive communications between pilots and the AMM. The interface also had to accommodate traffic awareness, self-separation, and spacing tasks through dynamic messaging and symbology for flight path conformance and conflict detection and alerting (CDA). The display served as the mechanism to support the examination of the viability of executing instrument operations designed for SATS designated airports. Results of simulation and flight experiments conducted at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Langley Research Center indicate that the concept, as facilitated by the research MFD, did not increase pilots subjective workload levels or reduce their situation awareness (SA). Post-test usability assessments revealed that pilots preferred using the enhanced MFD to execute flight procedures, reporting improved SA over conventional instrument flight rules (IFR) procedures.
Semantic Workflow Architecture for Petroleum Techniques

In the petroleum industry, many engineering studies are conducted to evaluate the potential of the geological structures to be exploited as hydrocarbon reservoirs. They are realized following series of complex workflows composed by activities realized by geologists. Nowadays these workflows are build mainly according to the experience gained by experts along their previous realizations. It is not possible to share this experience between geologists by reusing and composing activities if a minimum of semantics is not applied to describe them and the workflows that use them. The focus of our work is to evaluate the benefit of using semantics to make the geologist daily work easier. In this article, we first explain how we can operate today without semantics. Then, we enrich such complex workflows and the data they manipulate with semantic annotations through ontology-based characterizations (Geological Data and Activities Ontologies). As future work, we plan to use these annotations for a full architecture that would assist geologists in building their workflows.
Restructuring the geography of domestic tourism in South Africa

Abstract Domestic tourism is relatively under-represented in tourism scholarship. This article attempts to analyse the role of domestic tourism in one of the ‘emerging world regions’ of tourism. In the case of South Africa domestic tourism represents a significant element of the country’s tourism economy. The objectives are to provide (i) an analysis of the growth, contemporary spatial patterns and restructuring of domestic tourism in South Africa; and (ii) an assessment of emerging policy debates issues taking place about domestic tourism. Using a detailed local level data base on tourism flows this paper provides fresh insight into the character and changing geography of domestic tourism in South Africa. The nature and dynamics of domestic tourism are shown to have shifted since democratic transition. The restructured geography of domestic tourism exhibits a number of continuities and changes with earlier times. Government is seeking to use domestic tourism as a basis for addressing spatial unevenness in patterns of tourism development. In terms of recent spatial change it is revealed the most significant developments are the strengthening of Ethekwini as the country’s leading domestic tourism destination and the relative demise of Cape Town as a hub for domestic tourists.
Neural Organization of Language : Clues From Sign Language Aphasia

A central issue in understanding the neural organization of language is the extent to which this organization is dependent on the sensory and motor modalities through which language is perceived and produced. There are many reasons to think that the neural organization of language should be profoundly influenced by extrinsic factors in development such as sensory and motor experience. The temporal processing demands imposed by the auditory system have been argued to favor left hemisphere systems (Tallal, Miller, & Fitch, 1993), which could, in turn, determine aspects of the lateralization pattern of auditory-mediated language. Superior temporal lobe regions thought to be important for language comprehension are situated in and around auditory cortices—a natural location given auditory sensory input of language. Likewise, Broca’s area, which is classically thought to play a role in speech production, is situated just anterior to motor cortex controlling the speech articulators. Thus, it would not be unreasonable to hypothesize that the neural organization of language— including its lateralization and within hemisphere organization—is determined in large part by the particular demands imposed by the sensory and motor interface systems. By studying the functional neuroanatomy of the signed language of the deaf, we can test this hypothesis in a straightforward manner. It has been shown that signed languages share much of the formal linguistic structure found in spoken languages, but differ radically in the sensory and motor systems through which language is transmitted (Bellugi, Poizner, & Klima, 1989; Emmorey, 2002; Klima & Bellugi, 1979). In essence, signed language offers a kind of natural experimental manipulation: central linguistic structure and function are held constant, while peripheral sensory and motor experience is varied. Thus, a comparison of the neural organization of signed versus spoken language will provide clues concerning factors that drive the development of the functional neuroanatomy of language. Here we provide a summary of the findings from studies of the neural organization of the signed languages of the deaf.
Impact of Prenatal Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Management Intervention on Maternal Anxiety and Depression and Newborns’ Apgar Scores

Background: Motherhood is a transformative and pleasing experience in a woman’s life. However, given the physical and psychological changes, it can induce a degree of stress and anxiety in mothers. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of cognitive-behavioral stress management (CBSM) on maternal anxiety and depression during pregnancy and newborns’ Apgar scores. Methods: This semi-experimental study was performed by applying a pretest-posttest control-group design. Overall, 30 primiparous mothers were selected among women referring to health clinics of Kerman, Iran, using convenience sampling. Subjects were randomly allocated to experimental and control groups. Data were collected, using Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Questionnaire. After completing the pretest, the experimental group was subjected to 12 sessions of CBSM training; posttest data were collected after the intervention. Multivariate analysis of covariance was performed, using SPSS version 16. P-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The obtained results revealed a significant decrement in the average posttest scores of anxiety and depression in the experimental group, compared to pretest scores and the control group. Moreover, differences in 1- and 5-minute Apgar scores between the two groups were statistically significant. These findings indicated the effectiveness of CBSM during pregnancy in reducing maternal anxiety and depression. Conclusion: Pregnant women can benefit from psychological interventions such as CBSM in medical and health care centers.
Egg burial depth by sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka): implications for survival of embryos and natural selection on female body size

We studied the relationship between female sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) body size and egg burial depth in a small Alaskan stream to better understand the ways in which stream-bed scour or digging by other females might destroy embryos. Two different measurements of egg burial depth were taken: depth from the original stream-bed surface to the top of the egg pocket and depth from the disturbed substrate directly above the egg pocket to the top of the egg pocket. The former may represent the depth to which stream-bed scouring would have to go to reach the eggs, but the latter represents the depth to which a second female would have to dig to disturb the egg pocket. Larger females buried their eggs deeper, relative to the original substrate level, than smaller females. This suggests that streams with frequent scour events would select for larger females. However, mean depth from the disturbed substrate level was significantly shallower than mean depth from the original stream-bed level, suggesting tha.
Epigenetics as aesthetic instrument in a generative virtual ecosystem

The work we describe here, adopts epigenetics as one of the design strategies. The system considers the available free-memory of the computer where the model runs as an environmental feature affecting the population’s morphology. In an implementation that builds on Latham et al.’s FormGrowth system [8], where the shapes of the creatures are inscribed in DNA-like ‘blue-prints’, curving and bending 3D shapes are generated from L-systems created in the translation process that decodes the genetic information. Depending on the computer’s memory availability, the shape of the newborn creature becomes more or less complex. We also have implemented a classifier system, inspired by Holland’s Echo [6], to generate and control the creature’s behaviour. In the first years of life they mimic and learn the behaviours from their parents; and afterwards the system rewards their actions according to the positive or negative consequences that the actions have triggered.
Il coefficiente di pressione laterale a riposo di sabbie pomicee.

Si riportano i risultati di una ricerca sperimentale sul coefficiente di spinta a riposo K0 di sabbie pomicee ottenute artificialmente per frantumazione dal materiale naturale. Lo studio è stato condotto fino ad alte pressioni efficaci verticali (100 MPa). Per questo studio è stato utilizzato un edometro speciale strumentato con estensimetri elettrici circonferenziali e verticali per la determinazione delle tensioni orizzontali e per la valutazione delle forze d’attrito all’interfaccia sabbia-parete interna dell’edometro. La sperimentazione è stata eseguita su sabbie “asciutte” ossia con contenuto d’acqua minore dell’1% (contenuto d’acqua in ambiente controllato). Il coefficiente K0 è variabile nell’intervallo 0,25 e 0,5 fino a valori della tensione verticale efficace v di 10 MPa circa. Per valori maggiori di v e fino ai valori massimi raggiunti K0 si mantiene all’incirca costante con valori dell’ordine di 0,35-0,5. Per le sabbie sovraconsolidate K0 è legato all’indice di sovraconsolidazione OCR mediante una relazione monomia del tipo di Schmidt. I valori di K0 misurati per queste particolari sabbie, aventi doppio ordine di pori, sono simili a quelli di altre sabbie (di quarzo e carbonatiche) molto differenti per natura e costituzione mineralogica.
Capacitor Voltage Estimation Scheme With Reduced Number of Sensors for Modular Multilevel Converters

This paper presents a new method to measure the voltage across the submodule (SM) capacitors in a modular multilevel converter (MMC). The proposed technique requires only one voltage sensor per arm. This reduces the number of sensors required compared with conventional sensor-based methods. Therefore, the cost and complexity of the system are reduced, which in turn improves the converter’s overall reliability. The proposed method employs an exponentially weighted recursive least square algorithm to estimate the SM capacitor voltages through the measured total arm voltage and the switching patterns of each SM. There is thus no need for extra sensors to measure these control signals as they are directly provided from the controller. The robustness of the proposed method is confirmed via introducing deviations for the capacitance values, dynamic load changes, dc voltage change, and startup transient condition. Simulation and experimentally validated results based on a single-phase MMC show the effectiveness of the proposed method in both, steady-state and dynamic operations.
Near-source contributions to teleseismic p waves and p-wave coda for underground explosions. (Reannouncement with new availability information)

Characterization of near-source crustal properties for underground nuclear explosions using distant seismic observations can potentially improve nuclear test monitoring capabilities. Previous analyses of the relative spectral content of direct P waves and P-wave coda have suggested that important physical parameters such as source overburden velocity and shot point velocity can be inferred from teleseismic signals. Such observations have the potential to both improve yield estimation (by indicating coupling conditions) and to shed light on the basic mechanisms of coda excitation. Reliable isolation of any near-source influences requires thorough suppression of propagation and near-receiver effects on the signals, which are shown herein to be significant for comparisons of P and P coda. A spectral factoring procedure is used to determine eventaveraged source spectra from which propagation and receiver terms have been removed for both direct P signals and early P coda. A large short-period waveform data set (2457 signals) for 71 events at the Nevada and Novaya Zemlya test sites is analyzed with the event-averaging procedure. Spectral ratios and slopes of spectral ratios for the event-averaged P and P-coda source terms are examined for dependence on event magnitude, burial depth, overburden velocity, and other known source characteristics. The slopes of P I P-coda ratios over the frequency band 0.3 to 2.5-Hz for NTS events show only weak dependence on near-source properties for the event-averaged spectra, while individual stations sometimes show strong systematic trends, as discovered by Gupta and Blandford (1987). The tendency is for larger, deeper events (with higher average overburden velocities) to have relative enrichment of high frequency P-wave energy compared to the coda. Single-frequency PIP-coda spectral amplitude ratios increase with increasing magnitude, depth, and overburden velocity for frequencies less than 0.5 Hz, with these trends being reversed near 0.8 Hz. For Novaya Zemlya, the slope of P/P-coda shows a strong variation with magnitude, but P waves from larger events have relatively depleted high-frequency content. Differences in magnitude-depth scaling may contribute to this difference between test sites. Single-frequency PIP-coda spectral ratios at frequencies less than 1.0 Hz increase with magnitude for Novaya Zemlya similarly to the NTS events, possibly as a result of enhanced coda excitation for shallower events combined with low-frequency pP interference. These variations are not yet quantitatively understood but may ultimately provide empirical procedures for characterizing the near-source environment of isolated events or additional test site explosions.
Linearized Modeling and Controller Design of the Nonlinear Inductors in αβ-frame

The nonlinearity of the inductor affects the stability of the system and the bandwidth of the controller. This paper proposes a linearized method for linearizing the nonlinear inductor in the αβ- frame under given load condition. A current controller design method is also proposed in this paper to adapt the equivalent inductance change. The equivalent inductance of a nonlinear inductor depends on the peak current flowing through the inductor in the αβ-frame but dissociates to the power factor of the output current. Simulation results and experiment results verify the theoretical derivation.
Bi-Circular UWB differential antenna for wideband coverage

UWB (Ultra wide band antenna) systems is used to provide low-complexity, low power consumption and high data rate at low cost with high efficiency. In recent years, UWB antenna system attracts most of the researchers and it is widely use in Wireless sensor networks and WLAN for production of large frequencies. It can also be used in mobile transceivers and laptops etc. In this paper novel circular UWB antenna which works at a frequency range of several Giga Hertz is proposed. The performance characteristics of the proposed antenna with the help of its radiation pattern and intensity plot are analyzed. Keywords—UWB,Wireless, circular, patch
mIVA : Why to use Mobile Agents in Virtual Environments and Wireless Devices ?

This paper is focused on a special type of agent which provides us with the interesting feature of mobility in order to perform its tasks in different machines: mobile agents. We will show some of the current uses of mobile agents and we will suggest how we can use these agents along with Virtual Environments and Wireless Devices in order to open a new world of possibilities for the users of these applications.
Stance Detection in Fake News A Combined Feature Representation

With the uncontrolled increasing of fake news and rumors over the Web, different approaches have been proposed to address the problem. In this paper, we present an approach that combines lexical, word embeddings and n-gram features to detect the stance in fake news. Our approach has been tested on the Fake News Challenge (FNC-1) dataset. Given a news title-article pair, the FNC-1 task aims at determining the relevance of the article and the title. Our proposed approach has achieved an accurate result (59.6 % Macro F1) that is close to the state-of-the-art result with 0.013 difference using a simple feature representation. Furthermore, we have investigated the importance of different lexicons in the detection of the classification labels.
The best of both worlds: how rural entrepreneurs use placial embeddedness and strategic networks to create opportunities

Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore imperative to understand how different contexts enable entrepreneurs to create opportunities. In this paper, we focus on the spatial context of rural entrepreneurs and explore how the rural context impacts on their opportunity creation. Based on a multiple case study, we find that rural entrepreneurs mix what we refer to as placial embeddedness – an intimate knowledge of and concern for the place – with strategically built non-local networks, i.e. the best of two worlds. Notably, the entrepreneurs seek to exhaust the localized resource base before seeking out non-local resources. Our findings thus contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship in context and challenge future research to explore how different forms of contexts are bridged in different settings to create varieties of entrepreneurial activities.