Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis of Ultra-Homogeneous Gold Nanoparticles

Extended Abstract Gold nanoparticles are widely used in many fields, especially in analytical chemistry, medicine and engineering. In the literature, many methods provide easy and reproducible ways to synthesize these nanoparticles with different sizes and forms [1]. However, narrowing the size distribution is still a challenge, particularly in aqueous methods of synthesis. Ideally, it is desirable to have uniform nanoparticles; however, the nucleation and growth mechanism tend to produce a broad size distribution. For large particles, some authors propose controlling size by a kinetical seed-growth approach, but the challenge remains in the synthesis of the initial uniform seeds [2,3]. The present work focuses on the synthesis of ultrauniform gold nanoparticles by a combined strategy of a modified Turkevich method and filtration step. The results showed that the synthesis follows a complex mechanism where the ratio between the gold (III) and sodium citrate, and the pH play a major role in the final size distribution. The synthesized ultra-narrow size distribution was achieved by adjusting the pH of the solvent between 7.5 and 8. The results were confirmed by High-Resolution Transmission Electron microscopy (HRTEM) images, spectrophotometry (UV-Vis), and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). The synthetized nanoparticles have an average diameter of 15 nm and 26 nm by HRTEM and DLS, respectively. The average polydispersity index was <0.05 giving a strong evidence of the monodisperse nature of the synthesized nanoparticles. In addition, we study the particle stability with different capping agents and conditions such as temperature, salt concentration, and storage time. The Nanoparticles were stable at temperatures lower than 40oC and only a small change in size was observed at higher temperatures. Molecules with thiol groups such as 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid increased the nanoparticle stability with the salt concentration. However, it was less effective in preserving the nanoparticle size and polydispersity with the storage time. With the proper capping agent (polyethylene glycol and citrate), the nanoparticles were stored without any change in the homogeneous size distribution for at least one month.
Noise and Gain Characterization of Interband Cascade Infrared Photodetectors

Infrared (IR) detectors are an enabling technology for a broad and growing list of applications including gas detection, night vision, and space-based missile warning. There are ongoing efforts in IR detector research to explore the potential of new material systems and energy band structures in addition to continuously improving their sensitivity through increasing their quantum efficiency and lowering their dark current and noise. This dissertation examines an emerging class of IR detectors known as Interband Cascade Infrared Photodetectors (ICIPs). ICIPs contain multiple regions to facilitate the collection of photogenerated electrons and to limit unwanted dark current. Theory regarding their performance also indicates that multi-stage ICIPs may have lower noise than single-stage ICIPs and may provide improved detectivity in cases where the absorption coefficient of a material system is small and/or where the diffusion length in the material is short or degraded.
Improved mechanical, physical and biological properties of chitosan films using Aloe vera and electrospun PVA nanofibers for wound dressing applications

Natural polymers such as chitosan and Aloe vera are widely used in novel wound dressings due to their biocompatibility and biodegradability. A problem associated with these polymers is their poor mechanical behavior. Efforts have been made to improve the mechanical properties by mixing synthetic polymers such as PVA, but the role of chitosan and Aloe vera in the final dressing is dimmed. The techniques are also time-consuming and costly and there is still a need for an acceptable and affordable wound dressing which can be made through easily accessible techniques. A new but very simple method is introduced in this work for incorporating PVA nanofibers with Aloe vera-containing chitosan films. Using this method the levels of Aloe vera and chitosan in the system can be optimized at higher scales while benefiting from PVA best mechanical properties as a composite layer. Higher amounts of Aloe vera and chitosan in the system lead to lower product costs and more biocompability. The biological properties of films were examined through cell cytotoxicity and antibacterial tests and compared with Atomic force microscopy results. Physical and mechanical properties of films containing PVA nanofibers were characterized by water vapor permeability, swelling ratio, and tensile tests. The morphology of fibers before and after applying on the films was also observed by scanning electron microscopy. According to the results, this combination of natural and synthetic polymers has led to an affordable, biocompatible, and flexible film for wound dressing applications.
Impact of the implementation of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards on time allocation for elementary mathematics instruction

Angela Napoliello-Ivory Survey ofAllocated Time for Elementary Mathematics Classes since the Implementation of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards. May 2000 Dr. Eric Milou, Thesis Advisor Masters Degree in Mathematics Education The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for mathematics instruction three years after their approval by the State Board of Education. A survey methodology was used. The survey was mailed to the New Jersey school districts that include an elementary school. In addition to demographic information, the districts were asked how much time is allocated to mathematics instruction daily. The districts were also asked how much time is spent in direct instruction, in seatwork, and in problem solving each day, and has there been a change over the last three years. And the districts were asked if they have revised their mathematics curriculum to reflect the mathematics Standards. The findings indicate that the amount of time allocated daily may have declined since the last federal survey conducted in the state. The findings also indicate that districts are using more cooperative learning and problem solving strategies in their mathematics instruction. Time in seatwork has decreased but time in direct instruction has not changed. The length of the school day has remained constant. Finally, a majority of districts have revised their curriculum to implement the Standards.
RODITELJSKO PONAŠANJE ZAPOSLENIH RODITELJA: POVEZANOST S OBJEKTIVNIM OBILJEŽJIMA POSLA I SUBJEKTIVNIM DOŽIVLJAJEM ODNOSA RODITELJSKE I RADNE ULOGE

Polazeci od modela determinanti roditeljskog ponasanja (Belsky, 1984.), u ovom radu ispitana je povezanost roditeljskoga ponasanja zaposlenih roditelja s objektivnim obilježjima posla i roditeljevim subjektivnim doživljajem odnosa između roditeljske i radne uloge. U istraživanju su sudjelovala 162 zaposlena oca i 380 zaposlenih majki, koji su imali djecu od 3 do 16 godina. Podaci su prikupljeni online upitnicima primijenjenim na internetu. Rezultati su pokazali da su karakteristike posla u nesto vecoj mjeri povezane s roditeljskim ponasanjem oceva nego majki, osobito kad se razmatra negativno roditeljstvo. U roditelja obaju spolova subjektivni doživljaj posla jace je povezan s roditeljskim ponasanjem od objektivnih obilježja posla. Najznacajniji prediktori roditeljskoga ponasanja roditelja obaju spolova bili su doživljaj ometanja radne uloge roditeljskom i procjena važnosti roditeljske uloge. Majcino roditeljstvo bilo je znacajno povezano i s procjenom važnosti radne uloge. Raspravljene su teorijske i prakticne implikacije dobivenih nalaza i dane smjernice za buduca istraživanja.
Influence of Sound-Absorbing Material Placement on Room Acoustical Parameters

The reverberation of a room is often controlled by installing sound absorption panels to the ceiling and on the walls. The reduced reverberation is particularly important in classrooms to maximize the speech intelligibility and in open-plan offices to make spaces more pleasant. In this study, the impact of the placement of the absorption material in a room was measured in a reverberation room and in a mockup classroom. The results show that absorption material is less efficient if it is mounted to the corners or on the edges between the walls and ceiling, if the sound field is more or less diffuse. If the room modes dominate the sound field, the most efficient location for the sound-absorbing material was found at one of the surfaces causing the modes. The results help acoustical consultants to place the absorption material in optimal locations and, generally, minimize the amount of material and save costs.
Measurement of respirable dust concentration and assessment of health risk due to metals around an opencast coal mine of Talcher, Odisha

Atmospheric pollution due to particulate matter in opencast coal mining area is a very important environmental problem and is fetching the attention of researchers worldwide since few decades. The particulate matter not only affects human but also have tremendous effects on nearby flora and fauna by degrading the ecological environment in many ways. High mechanization in mining operations leads to add heavy load of dust to the surrounding area. The adverse effects of dust depend on the quantity as well as the characteristics of the dust and the exposure dose. Taking the importance of the dust pollution in mines, a coal mine area of Talcher coalfield, was selected, which is one of the oldest coalfields of India and a very limited work has been carried out in that area on the regards of assessment of health risk due to metals on the local population. Monitoring of respirable dust (PM10 & PM2.5) were performed at eight monitoring stations around a high mechanised opencast coal mine for three seasons i.e., post monsoon, winter, and summer in the year 2015 as per the standard criteria of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India. The seasonal variation of dust concentration was found in the order of winter > summer > post monsoon. Ten trace metals were analysed from the dust samples. Statistical analysis, such as, univariate (correlation study) and multi-variate analysis were carried out including principal component analysis (PCA) for source identification and respective contribution to particulate matter. Finally, the health risk in terms of hazards quotient (HQ) and hazards index (HI) were calculated for both children and adults for the three exposure path ways (Inhalation, ingestion and dermal exposure). The carcinogenic effects due to the presence of trace metals in the PM10 were evaluated for both children and adults in terms of excess cancer risk (ECR). The combined carcinogenic effects of all the trace metals also calculated (ECRTotal). The HQ values for Cr and Cd were found above the safe limit in that area for both children and adults. Likewise the ECR values for Cr and Cd also were at a very risk level for both the age group. However the risk related to other metals were found well within the safe limit. The HI and ECRTotal values were found above the safe limit which indicates the combined effect of trace metals on the children and adult were at and very high risk level in the study area.
A user-customized self-paced brain computer interface

Much attention has been directed towards synchronous Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs). For these BCIs, the user can only operate the system during specific system-defined periods. Self-paced BCIs, however, allow users to operate the system at any time he/she wishes. The classification of Electroencephalography (EEG) signals in self-paced BCIs is extremely challenging, as the BCI system does not have any clue about the start time of a control task. Also, the data contains a large number of periods during which the user has no intention to control the BCI. For sensory motor self-paced BCIs (focus of this thesis), the brain of a user goes through several well-defined internal state changes while performing a mental task. Designing classifiers that exploit such temporal correlations in EEG data can enhance the performance of BCIs. It is also important to customize these BCIs for each user, because the brain characteristics of different people are not the same. In this thesis, we first develop a unified comparison framework to compare the performance of different classifiers in sensory motor BCIs followed by rigorous statistical tests. This study is the largest of its kind as it has been performed on 29 subjects of synchronous and self-paced BCIs. We then develop a Bayesian optimization-based strategy that automatically customizes a synchronous BCI based on the brain characteristics of each individual subject. Our results show that our automated algorithm (which relies on less sophisticated feature extraction and classification methods) yields similar or superior results
Multiscale Fluidic Channels via Internal Oxidation and Oxide Etching of Self-Assembled Silicon-on-Nothing Structures

This paper reports a novel fabrication method for multiscale fluidic channels ranging from sub-20 nm to a few <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> in their hydraulic diameters, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${D} _{\mathbf {h}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, exhibiting height-to-width ratio [or aspect ratio (AR)] close to unity only relying on internal oxidation and oxide etching of self-assembled silicon-on-nothing (SON) structures. We find that internal oxidation occurs uniformly along the longitudinal direction of the SON microchannels and time-controlled thermal oxidation can offer nanochannels with the minimum <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${D} _{\mathbf {h}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of ~10 nm. Third, the enlarged circular microchannels with the maximum <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${D} _{\mathbf {h}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of ~4500 nm are achieved through wet etching of internal silicon dioxide. The smallest nanochannel demonstrated exhibits the length-to-diameter ratio of ~60 000 and the ratio of the largest microchannel cross section to the smallest nanochannel cross section is ~200 000. [2019-0118]
Unicode Explained

Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. There are hundreds of different encoding systems for mapping characters to numbers, but Unicode promises a single mapping. Unicode enables a single software product or website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It's no wonder that industry giants like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM andMicrosoft have all adopted Unicode.Containing everything you need to understand Unicode, this comprehensive reference from O'Reilly takes you on a detailed guide through the complex character world. For starters, it explains how to identify and classify characters - whether they're common, uncommon, or exotic. It then shows you how to type them, utilize their properties, and process character data in a robust manner.The book is broken up into three distinct parts. The first few chapters provide you with a tutorial presentation of Unicode and character data. It gives you a firm grasp of the terminology you need to reference various components, including character sets, fonts and encodings, glyphs and character repertoires.The middle section offers more detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes. It explains the principles and methods of defining character codes, describes some of the widely used codes, and presents code conversion techniques. It also discusses properties of characters, collation and sorting, line breaking rules and Unicode encodings. The final four chapters cover more advanced material, such as programming to support Unicode.You simply can't afford to be without the nuggets of valuable information detailed in Unicode Explained.
AUTOMATED HYBRID ALGORITHM FOR BLOOD CELL SEGMENTATION, RBC & WBC DETECTION

: Detection and diagnosis of a disease, at the appropriate early stage and time is crucial to save is in the field of medicine. The time in sever as emergency cased for non-automated tests such as blood tests can load a significant increase in mortality rates. As imaging techniques are widely used in the field of medical sciences for the detection of various diseases, classification of famous cancers, etc. Also the existing system used by pathologists for the identification and classification of blood parameters is expensive and time-consuming. As the main power included in non-transformed festivals is high, they tend to be costly and are not affordable for an average patient. Therefore, in this thesis we propose a novel image processing technique that can be automated by identifying the blood parameters such as red blood cell count, white blood cell count and other parameters with precision compared to other existing techniques. The white blood cell count, two algorithms we use each and its weighted average according to the user's performance is treated as final result. Red blood cell count is achieved by Hough's circular transformation and segmented red blood cell count. Similarly, the white blood cell count is achieved using the k-media pool and the segmented blood count in the blue channel with the area response. The proposed technique also helps segregate blood cells into different categories
The Role of Catalysts on Composites Properties: A Case Study on Motorcycle Body Cover

Today, modification on motorcycle body cover has become a new automotive business. The main components for modifying the motor body cover are glass fibre, resin and catalyst. Catalysts are substances that can accelerate reactions, the more catalyst composition, the less time it takes to react. Therefore, this study aims to determine the effect of variations in catalysts on composite properties. The test is carried out by giving the catalyst in 4 variations (2.5%, 5%, 10%, and 20%) to 157 BQTN resin. The specimen was tested using ASTM D-256 for impact/hardness, ASTM D-790 for bending, and ASTM D-638 for tensile strength. During this study, we found that the 2.5% catalyst give good results for impact, bending, tensile strength, and also modulus young.
Ag-doped Ti-RH-MCM-41 synthesis using rice husk silica and its antibacterial efficiency

Ag-Ti-RH-MCM-41 samples were prepared via rice husk silica with in-situ (one-pot) and ex-situ (sequence) methods to improve the antibacterial property on RH-MCM-41 and Ti-RH-MCM-41. Thus, this work proposed to investigate the antibacterial property of these materials using gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and compared with TiO2 (rutile), RH-MCM-41 and Ti-RH-MCM-41. The XRD represented MCM-41 showed the broad peak of 100 at 2 theta equal to 2.2° after adding Titanium and Silver on RH-MCM-41. The XRD spectrum represented Titanium and Silver showed the characteristic peaks of anatase TiO2 but Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) diffraction peaks did not clearly present in Ag-Ti-RH-MCM-41 (in-situ). On the other hand, the XRD spectrum of Ag-Ti-RH-MCM-41 (ex-situ) presented the small peaks of AgNPs according to the formation of AgNPs during calcination. Antibacterial efficiency of samples was tested via inhibited zone test (clear zone). The Ag-Ti-RH-MCM-41 (in-situ) and Ag-Ti-RH-MCM-41 (ex-situ) exhibited the antibacterial against while RH-MCM-41 and Ti-RH-MCM-41 did not present the antibacterial performance. Thus, Ag-doped Ti-RH-MCM-41 can improve the antibacterial property on RH-MCM-41 and Ti-RH-MCM-41.
Simple Non-Destructive Method of Ultrathin Film Material Properties and Generated Internal Stress Determination Using Microcantilevers Immersed in Air

Recent progress in nanotechnology has enabled to design the advanced functional micro-/nanostructures utilizing the unique properties of ultrathin films. To ensure these structures can reach the expected functionality, it is necessary to know the density, generated internal stress and the material properties of prepared films. Since these films have thicknesses of several tens of nm, their material properties, including density, significantly deviate from the known bulk values. As such, determination of ultrathin film material properties requires usage of highly sophisticated devices that are often expensive, difficult to operate, and time consuming. Here, we demonstrate the extraordinary capability of a microcantilever commonly used in a conventional atomic force microscope to simultaneously measure multiple material properties and internal stress of ultrathin films. This procedure is based on detecting changes in the static deflection, flexural and torsional resonant frequencies, and the corresponding quality factors of the microcantilever vibrating in air before and after film deposition. In contrast to a microcantilever in vacuum, where the quality factor depends on the combination of multiple different mechanical energy losses, in air the quality factor is dominated just by known air damping, which can be precisely controlled by changing the air pressure. Easily accessible expressions required to calculate the ultrathin film density, the Poisson’s ratio, and the Young’s and shear moduli from measured changes in the microcantilever resonant frequencies, and quality factors are derived. We also show that the impact of uncertainties on determined material properties is only minor. The validity and potential of the present procedure in material testing is demonstrated by (i) extracting the Young’s modulus of atomic-layer-deposited TiO2 films coated on a SU-8 microcantilever from observed changes in frequency response and without requirement of knowing the film density, and (ii) comparing the shear modulus and density of Si3N4 films coated on the silicon microcantilever obtained numerically and by present method.
Atomic-scale Observation of Hydroxyapatite Nanoparticle

1. Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Sydney, Australia. 2. School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, Australia. 3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Illinois, USA. 4. School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, Australia. * Corresponding author: yi-sheng.chen@sydney.edu. au
Effect of Electric Field on Interfacial Thermal Resistance Between Silicon and Water at Nanoscales

In this study, heat transfer rate of a nano-confined liquid is controlled by applying an electric field parallel to the heat transfer direction. Molecular Dynamics simulations are performed for deionized water confined between silicon slabs, where their surfaces oppositely charged to create an electric field perpendicular to the silicon wall to promote the electrowetting. Electric field strengths used in this study are 0, 0.18 and 0.35 V/nm. To investigate the effect of electric field on heat transfer, first water density profiles near the silicon walls are examined. Results shows that by applying electric field, water molecules near the silicon walls develop layering, which indicates the increased solid/liquid coupling. With the increasing electric field strength, an increase in the peak of the density layering is observed. Furthermore, heat transfer at the solid/liquid interface is characterized with the Kapitza length values. The results show that applying electric field reduces the interfacial thermal resistance between water and silicon due to the increased solid/liquid coupling and doubles the total heat flux.