Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Conceptual Overview on Sustainable Technologies for the Defluoridation of Drinking Water

Water is precious to us, as it supports every spheres of human life. The increasing reports on pollution of this “sacred resource” from different sources show our scant regard to this pivotal issue. People in more than 35 nations across the globe face issues of excess fluoride in drinking water, the intensity and severity of which varies with the environmental settings in terms of their geographical and economical status. It has been observed that very few proven sustainable options are available for fluoride removal, especially in developing countries, where the impact of the issue is highly intense. Though the considerable amount of research undertaken worldwide has thrown up many technologies, each having its own advantages and limitations, a lasting solution is still at large. The coagulation and adsorption/ion-exchange processes are the most widely opted defluoridation techniques practiced in fluoride-endemic areas. The Nalgonda technique and adsorption by bone char, or a combination of both, have been used in many developing countries like India and Tanzania, at both domestic and community levels. The membrane processes assure good quality water, but are “higher technology and higher cost” options for most of the fluoride-endemic nations. Electrochemical techniques are “energy-intensive” options but offer excellent fluoride removal. However, the lack of concise conceptual reviews is visibly felt in defluoridation research, which prompted us to carry out this study. This article highlights the underlying basic principles and processes involved in existing fluoride removal technologies so as to catalyze further research in this area.
OSTWALD RIPENING : A STOCHASTIC APPROACH

The phenomenon of Ostwald ripening is examined theoretically for precipitates in solution, crystallites on a substrate, and islands of insoluble surfactant molecules at the liquid–air interface. The classical theory of Ostwald ripening, developed by Lifshitz and Slyozhov and independently by Wagner, employs a continuum approach in which the size distribution is a continuous function of particle size and the conservation equation is formulated as in hydrodynamics with the particle growth rate serving as a velocity in size space. It was derived for the case in which the diffusion fields of the individual particles do not overlap and provides asymptotic expressions at large times for the two extreme cases of diffusion controlled and kinetic controlled growth. In this paper, the validity of this continuum (hydrodynamic) approach is examined using a more rigorous stochastic microscopic approach (MCE). A detailed comparison is made between the numerical and asymptotic results obtained using the Lifshitz, Slyozh.
A de Haas-van Alphen effect study of the Fermi surface of lithium

The de Haas-van Alphen effect is used to study the Fermi surface of BCC lithium. The lithium is in the form of a dispersion of micrometre sized grains embedded in wax in order to suppress the low temperature martensitic transformation. A full characterisation of the lithium Fermi surface geometry is not possible, but the overall distortion in area is found to be 3.00+or-0.02%, from which the radial distortion is estimated as 4.8+or-0.3%. These distortions are significantly higher than those found by the many-body density functional calculations of Macdonald and the positron annihilation experiments of Oberli et al. The authors obtain from the measurements a probability distribution of de Haas-van Alphen frequencies over the whole Fermi surface. The cyclotron electron effective mass is measured as (2.10+or-0.06)m0. This work is an attempt to improve on the earlier work of Randles and Springford by exploiting the higher magnetic fields (13 T) and lower temperatures (20 mK) now available.
Chitosan Microspheres Prepared by Emulsification and Ionotropic Gelation

An attempt was made to prepare chitosan microspheres by an emulsion-phase separation technique but without the usual use of glutaraldehyde as a cross-linking agent. Instead, ionotropic gelation was employed in a w/o emulsion. The effect of formulation factors was examined. The results showed that microspheres so formed were spherical, free-flowing, and had smooth surfaces. The rate of addition of counterions was important. Gelation of chitosan droplets should take place before the destabilizing effect of the counterions occurred. This effect is associated with the increase in aqueous phase volume when the counterion solution is incorporated.
Retail Raw: Wisdom of the Robinhood Crowd and the COVID Crisis

Small retail investors at the Robinhood (RH) retail brokerage firm from 2018 to 2020 shared with Finnish and larger US investors from the 1990s a preference for extreme recent winners and losers. Interestingly, this preference held even for the overall stock market during the March-2020 Covid crisis, indicating an absence of panic and margin calls. Thus, RH investors acted as a (small) market-stabilizing force. They were also unusually interested in some “experience” stocks (e.g., Cannabis stocks). Nevertheless, the narrative of pure irrational exuberance is misleading. Collectively, RH investors bought and held stocks with large past share-volume and dollar-volume, making them invest overwhelmingly in large rather than in obscure stocks. A portfolio constructed on the basis of just these two variables can make it possible to mimick the investments of RH traders, plausibly even beyond the sample. The collective RH crowd portfolio also did not underperform with respect to standard academic benchmark models.
The Influence of Knowledge Management Processes on Intellectual Capital and Innovation Performance

The organisational ability to utilise its knowledge is inseparably linked to its innovation performance. Knowledge is characterized as valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable (VRIN) resources. Those characteristics are key resources to achieve organisational performance (Ferreira & Hamilton, 2010; Wang, 2014; Hussinki, Ritala, Vanhala, and Kianto, 2017). Within literature, there are two streams of academics discussion relating to knowledge in organisation. Those are intellectual capital (IC) literature, and knowledge management (KM) literature (Ramadan, Dahiyat, Bontis, & Al-dalahmeh, 2017; Kianto, Ritala, Spender, & Vanhala, 2014). The first stream considers IC as static resources or materials for organisational value creation. While the later sees KM as processes to create organisational value. Even though many studies have considers the important role of IC and KM Processes (KMPs) in creating values, however there are only limited studies examine IC and KMPs interaction to support innovation performance (IP) (Hsu & Sabherwal, 2012; Cabrilo and Dahms, 2018). Most of the existing studies have contented themselves with assessing IC or KM value level, and then correlating those two to IP. There are far less studies examining to what extent KMPs are consciously implemented within organisations, and furthermore, how the implementation of KMPs impacts the quality of IC leading to the success of IP. To bridge these gaps in the existing knowledge, the current paper examines how KMPs impacts on organisational IC and IP. This study suggested that IC as static resources could be examined as a mediation of KMPs influence on IP. The idea is that KMPs have the abilities to renew IC, leading to support organisational IP. Accordingly, the rationale for this study is to develop a conceptual model of KMPs-IC-IP causal relationship, and provide empirical evidence on the model. This study is expected to contribute to a broader knowledge of the extent IC that can mediate KMPs and IP relationship. Keywords: Knowledge Management Process, Intellectual Capital, Innovation Performance
Effect of tin-doped indium oxide film on electrodeposition of ZnO nanostructures

Surface studies are reported for the deposition of ZnO nanostructures by one-step electrodeposition method. The electrosynthesis was perfomed at the surface of tin doped indium oxide coated glass substrates in the absence of any buffer layer. The growth of ZnO nanostructures was investigated with the morphology of substrate and the deposition mode. Combined nucleation mode was observed for the ZnO independently of substrate. The results indicated the growth, morphology and density of the ZnO nanostructures are markedly influenced by both the substrate and the deposition conditions. It was observed the ZnO formation is defect site driven in case of galvanostatic deposition mode, while in case of potentiostatic deposition mode, it is dependent on the roughness of the substrate.
Slow solvation dynamics near an aqueous micellar surface

Solvation dynamics of an ion near an aqueous micellar interface are studied in an atomistic molecular dynamics simulation of cesium pentadecafluorooctanoate (CsPFO) in water. The long time part of the polar solvation energy time correlation function $(C_s(t))$ of a tagged cesium ion at the micellar surface is found to decay very slowly-the long time decay at the surface is slower by 2-3 orders of magnitude compared to that in bulk water. Through an analysis of partial solvation time correlation functions, we find that the slow decay originates mostly from the interaction of the cesium ions with the polar headgroups; the slow orientational dynamics of water molecules on the surface seem to play only a secondary role. The probability distribution of the polar energy of ions show a non-Gaussian distribution with a tail toward the low-energy states.
Control of roughness at interfaces and the impact on charge mobility in all-polymer field-effect transistors

The interfacial roughness at a buried dielectric–semiconductor interface in an all-polymer field-effect transistor (FET) is characterised by specular neutron reflectivity. Using a mixed solvent (toluene–cyclohexane) to deposit poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-alt-bithiophene) (F8T2) directly on top of poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), we are able to fabricate bilayer FET architectures with systematically controlled roughness at the buried polymer–polymer interface over a range of approximately 1 to 3 nm, simply by changing the solvent ratio. This system has the advantage that these two solvents are completely miscible and the mixture can dissolve F8T2, but the solvent quality of the mixture with respect to PMMA can be continuously varied by changing the ratio of toluene to cyclohexane from 100% toluene (good solvent for PMMA) to 100% cyclohexane (non-solvent for PMMA). By also fabricating F8T2 FETs from the same mixed solvents, but with silicon oxide (SiO2) as the dielectric layer, we are able to compare the effects of solvent quality and interface roughness on field-effect mobility. We find that the solvent ratio strongly affects mobility in F8T2–SiO2 FETs. In contrast charge mobility in F8T2–PMMA FETs shows relatively little dependence on solvent ratio, indicating that, to a first approximation, the effects of solvent quality and interfacial roughness cancel one another out in this system.
Mid-infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy for Discriminant Analysis of Food Ingredients

The objective was to determine if mid-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy could be used to discriminate various food ingredients. Samples (n = 106) consisting of buttermilk, cheese, dehydrated onion and milk-egg powders, wheat flours, and two powdered seasonings (cheese and ranch) were scanned as neat powders using diffuse reflectance on Digilab FTS-60 and Perkin-Elmer model 2000 Fourier transform spectrometers. Discriminant analysis, using mean centering and multiplicative scatter-corrected spectra, was performed using Mahalanobis distance by principal component analysis using the averaged predicted distance or F-test indicator to select factors obtained from a one-out cross-validation analysis. Results from the two spectrometers demonstrated that discriminant analysis of food ingredient powders based on spectra of neat powders can be successfully carried out. In general, it was found that results using 4-cm-1 resolution spectra were somewhat superior to those based on lower 16-cm-1 resolution spec.
Hydrolysis of Sodium Borohydride and Ammonia Borane for Hydrogen Generation Using Highly Efficient Poly(N-Vinyl-2-Pyrrolidone)-Stabilized Ru–Pd Nanoparticles as Catalysts

The catalytic use of highly efficient poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone)-stabilized Ru–Pd nanoparticles (3.2 ± 1.0 nm) in the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride and ammonia borane is reported. These were prepared by the co-reduction of two metal ions in ethanol/water mixture by the alcohol reduction method and characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and UV-Vis spectroscopy. These are recyclable and highly active for hydrogen generation from the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride and ammonia borane even at very low concentrations and temperature, providing a record number of average turnover frequency values (762 mol H2/mol cat.min−1 and 308 mol H2/mol cat.min−1) and maximum hydrogen generation rates (22,889 L H2 min−1 (mol cat)−1 and 9364 L H2 min−1 (mol cat)−1) for sodium borohydride and ammonia borane, respectively. Poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone)-stabilized Ru–Pd nanoparticles provide activation energies of 52.4 ± 2 and 54.5 ± 2 kJ/mol for the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride and ammonia borane, respectively.
Mechanism of charge transport in self-organizing organic materials

Currently there is great interest in the use of organic materials as the active component in opto-electronic devices such as field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, solar cells and in nanoscale molecular electronics. Device performance is to a large extent determined by the mobility of charge carriers, which strongly depends on material morphology. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the relation between the mechanism of charge transport and chemical composition and supramolecular organization of the active organic material is essential for improvement of device performance. Self-assembling materials are of specific interest, since they have the potential to form well defined structures in which molecular ordering facilitates efficient charge transport. This review gives an overview of theoretical models that can be used to describe the mobility of charge carriers, including band theory for structurally ordered materials, tight-binding models for weakly disordered systems and hopping models for localized charges in strongly disordered materials. It is discussed how the charge transport parameters needed in these models; i.e. charge transfer integrals, site energies and reorganization energies, can be obtained from quantum chemical calculations. Illustrative examples of application of the theoretical methods to charge transport in self-assembling materials are discussed: columns of discotic molecules, stacks of oligo(phenylene-vinylene) molecules and strands of DNA base pairs. It is argued that the mobility of charge carriers along stacks of triphenylene and oligo(phenylene-vinylene) molecules can be significantly enhanced by improvement of molecular organization. According to calculations, the mobility of charge carriers along DNA strands is strongly limited by the large charge induced structural reorganization of the nucleobases and the surrounding water.
Distribution of Volatiles in Artemisia cana.

Abstract The chemical composition of essential oils isolated from aerial parts of wild sage, Artemisia cana. Pursh (Asteraceae), was investigated. Analyses were performed by GC and GC/MS using two columns of different polarities, polyethylene glycol (DB-Wax) and 5% phenyl 95% polydimethylsiloxane (HP-5), which enabled the separation of several co-eluting components. Up to 2.3% of oil (w/w, dry basis) was obtained by hydrodistillation of aerial parts, excluding leafless woody stalks. The stalks of Artemisia. species contained insignificant amounts of essential oils. Flowers, leaves, and stalks yielded 2.8%, 2.4%, and 0.1% of oil, respectively. A total of 34 components were identified accounting for 92.6–87.6% of the oils. The chemical composition of the oils extracted from different plant parts was very similar. High contents of 1,8-cineole (20.8–11.0%) and camphor (55.2–37.4%) were found in Artemisia cana. oils. For pilot-scale testing purposes, aerial parts were separated from leafless woody stalks and processed in a 10L DIG-Maz extractor. The chemical composition of the recovered product was similar to that of the lab-distilled oil. The oil was characterized by a light yellow to green liquid with an herbaceous, balsamic, and fresh-camphoraceous odor.
The Tip of the Iceberg

In this article, we investigate a fundamental question regarding software security: Is the security of SW releases increasing over time? We approach this question with a detailed analysis of the large body of open-source software packaged in the popular Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Contrary to common intuition, we find no clear evidence that the vulnerability rate of widely used software decreases over time: Even in popular and “stable” releases, the fixing of bugs does not seem to reduce the rate of newly identified vulnerabilities. The intuitive conclusion is worrisome: Commonly employed development and validation procedures do not seem to scale with the increase of features and complexity—they are only chopping pieces off the top of an iceberg of vulnerabilities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation into the problem that studies a complete distribution of software, spanning multiple versions. Although we can not give a definitive answer, we show that several popular beliefs also cannot be confirmed given our dataset. We publish our Debian Vulnerability Analysis Framework (DVAF), an automated dataset creation and analysis process, to enable reproduction and further analysis of our results. Overall, we hope our contributions provide important insights into the vulnerability discovery process and help in identifying effective techniques for vulnerability analysis and prevention.
Pressurized hot water extraction coupled to molecularly imprinted polymers for simultaneous extraction and clean-up of pesticides residues in edible and medicinal plants of the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Abstract In this study, an in-cell extraction and clean-up approach, employing pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) coupled to a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) is proposed. The selectivity of PHWE was improved through the use of a chlorophyll MIP (PHWE-MIP) for the determination of organochlorine pesticides residue levels in various edible and medicinal plants of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The PHWE-MIP method achieved simultaneous extraction and clean-up. PHWE employed an optimal temperature of 260 °C, pressure of 90 bar and flow rate of 1 mL min-1 in 10 min for the extraction of the pesticides from plants while the MIP selectively overcame the interfering chlorophyll prior to analysis with gas chromatograph coupled to electron capture detector or mass spectrometer (GC-ECD/MS). The results obtained were compared to the QuEChERS Official Method 2007:01 for pesticides residue analysis. The proposed method seems to be nearly fully automated, environmental friendly, selective, simple and quick. Moreover, the recoveries of planar pesticides were improved (93-95%) with relative standard deviations (%RSD) of less than 10%.
Temperature dependence of the rate constants for reactions of the sulfate radical, SO4-, with anions

Rate constants have been measured as a function of temperature over the range 10-60{degree}C for the reactions of the sulfate radical, SO{sub 4}{sup {minus}}, with azide, chloride, cyanate, cyanide, acetate, and carbonate anions. Room-temperature rate constants ranged from about 5 {times} 10{sup 6} to 5 {times} 10{sup 9} M{sup {minus}1} s{sup {minus}1}. The variation of the rate constant with substrate depended mainly on the Arrhenius preexponential factor and less on the activation energy. For the reaction of SO{sub 4}{sup {minus}} with Cl{sup {minus}}, the dependence of the rate constant on ionic strength was determined to be in agreement with the theoretical prediction.
Taking Advantage of Disorder: Amorphous Calcium Carbonate and Its Roles in Biomineralization

Amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) in its pure form is highly unstable, yet some organisms produce stable ACC, and cases are known in which ACC functions as a transient precursor of more stable crystalline aragonite or calcite. Studies of biogenic ACC show that there are significant structural differences, including the observation that the stable forms are hydrated whereas the transient forms are not. The many different ways in which ACC can be formed in vitro shed light on the possible mechanisms involved in stabilization, destabilization, and transformation of ACC into crystalline forms of calcium carbonate. We show here that ACC is a fascinating form of calcium carbonate that may well be of much interest to materials science and biomineralization.
Effects of Semicontinuous and Batch System Ozonation on Wheat and Corn Starches

Wheat starch-water and corn starch-water suspensions (10%; w/w) were exposed to ozone gas by using two different contact systems; semicontinuous and batch systems. In semicontinuous contact mode, fresh ozone was applied to starch suspensions at a concentration of 4.2 mg dissolved ozone L−1 water for 30 min, while in closed batch contact mode, starch suspensions were stirred with ozone gas at a rate of 60 g/h for 30 min. Gelatinization temperatures and enthalpies of wheat and corn starch were increased in a semicontinuous system. However, no change was observed for the gelatinization characteristics of starch samples ozonated- in batch system. Structures and birefringences of wheat and corn starch ozonated in both semicontinuous and batch operations were not differentiated clearly. Higher lightness and whiteness values were observed for both wheat and corn starch ozonated in semicontinuous system than the controls and ozonated samples in batch system. Corn starch ozonated in semicontinuous system has lower chroma and yellowness values than the others. Total color difference for the samples ozonated in semicontinuous system is significantly different from the samples ozonated in batch system. Semicontinuous ozonation system is more effective on the thermal and color properties of wheat and corn starches than the batch ozonation system.
Ab initio fragment molecular orbital calculations on the specific interactions between human, mouse and rat PPARα and GW409544

To elucidate the specific interactions between the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPARα) and ligand GW409544 (GW), we obtained the solvated structures of the PPARα+GW complexes for human, mouse and rat by classical molecular mechanics calculations, and investigated their electronic properties by ab initio fragment molecular orbital calculations. The results indicate that the positively charged amino acids (Lys and Arg) of PPARα make a major contribution to the binding between PPARα and GW. In addition, it was clarified that Ser280 and Tyr314 of human and rat PPARα have a large attractive interaction with GW, while Ser280, Tyr314 and His440 of mouse PPARα have large interaction. These results on the difference in specific interactions between human and mouse/rat PPARα will be useful for predicting the effects of new chemicals on the human body based on the biomedical studies for the experimental animals such as mouse and rat.
Crystal and molecular structure of 2,6‐bis(4‐chlorophenyl)‐3‐phenylpiperidin‐4‐one

The crystal structure of the title compound is described. The chemical formula of the compound is C23H19Cl2NO. The compound is found to crystallize in monoclinic system with space group P21/c, Z = 4. The unit cell dimensions are a = 15.137(3) Å, b = 8.9171(18) Å, c = 14.779(3) Å, β = 91.461(4)° and V = 1994.2(7) Å3, Dcalc = 1.320 gcm‐3. The final R factor is 4.4%. The central piperidone ring of the molecule adopts a slightly distorted chair conformation, the mean torsion angle being 52.3°; the phenyl rings are planar. (© 2003 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)