Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autonomous In Situ Measurements of Noncontaminant Water Quality Indicators and Sample Collection with a UAV

The objective of this research was to conduct in situ measurements of electrical conductivity (EC), pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), and temperature, and collect water samples simultaneously at different depths using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The UAV system consists of a hexacopter, water sampling cartridges (WSC), and a sensor node. Payload capacity and endurance of the UAV were determined using an indoor test station. The UAV was able to produce 106 N of thrust for 10 min with 6.3 kg of total takeoff weight. The thrust-to-weight ratio of the UAV was 2.5 at 50% throttle. The decision for activating the water sampling cartridges and sensor node was made autonomously from an onboard microcontroller. System functions were verified at 0.5 m and 3.0 m depths in 6 locations over a 1.1 ha agricultural pond. Average measurements of EC, pH, DO, and temperature at 0.5 m depth were 42 µS/cm, 5.6, 8.2 mg/L, and 31 °C, while the measurements at 3 m depth were 80 µS/cm, 5.3, 5.34 mg/L, and 24 °C, respectively. The UAV-assisted autonomous water sampling system (UASS) successfully activated the WSC at each sampling location. The UASS would reduce the duration of water quality assessment and help practitioners and researchers to conduct observations with lower operational costs. The developed system would be useful for sampling and monitoring of water reservoirs, lakes, rivers, and ponds periodically or after natural disasters.
The American Way to the Kyoto Protocol: an Economic Analysis to Reduce Carbon Pollution. A Study for World Wildlife Fund

This report presents a study of policies and measures that could dramatically reduce US greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades. It examines a broad set of national policies to increase energy efficiency, accelerate the adoption of renewable energy technologies, and shift energy use to less carbon-intensive fuels. The policies address major areas of energy use in residential and commercial buildings, industrial facilities, transportation, and power generation.
The Impact of Self-Selection on Performance

In many natural environments, carefully chosen peers influence individual behavior. In this paper, we examine how self-selected peers affect performance in contrast to randomly assigned ones. We conduct a field experiment in physical education classes at secondary schools. Students participate in a running task twice: first, the students run alone, then with a peer. Before the second run,we elicit preferences for peers. We experimentally vary the matching in the second run and form pairs either randomly or based on elicited preferences. Self-selected peers improve individual performance by . 14-. 15 SD relative to randomly assigned peers. While self-selection leads to more social ties and lower performance differences within pairs, this altered peer composition does not explain performance improvements. Rather, we provide evidence that self-selection has a direct effect on performance and provide several markers that the social interaction has changed.
Targeting Telomeres for Cancer Therapy

An almost universal hallmark of all cancer types is telomerase activation [1, 2]. Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein holoenzyme complex responsible for elongating telomeres that protects the integrity of chromosome ends. While absent in most normal adult human cells, telomerase is active in cancer cells, allowing continuous cell divisions and immortality [1]. How telomerase is activated as part of aging and cancer remains a central question but some new insights are emerging [3]. We determined that the nucleoside analogue 6-thio-dG (6-thio-2’-deoxyguanosine) is preferentially recognized by the telomerase holoenzyme (activated in ~90% of all advanced malignancies) and is incorporated into de novo synthesized telomeres. This results in structurally and functionally modified telomeres leading to uncapped dysfunctional telomeres and rapid cell death, but only in cells expressing telomerase [4].
Implementation of palliative care as a mandatory cross-disciplinary subject ( QB 13 ) at the Medical

Background: By means of the revision of the Medical Licensure Act for Physicians (ÄAppO) in 2009, undergraduate palliative care education Christian Schulz Ursula Wenzel-Meyburg (UPCE) was incorporated as a mandatory cross sectional examination subject (QB13) in medical education in Germany. Its implementation André Karger still constitutes a major challenge for German medical faculties. There is a discrepancy between limited university resources and limited patient Alexandra Scherg availabilities and high numbers ofmedical students. Apart from teaching Jürgen in der Schmitten theoretical knowledge and skills, palliative care education is faced with the particular challenge of imparting a professional and adequate attitude towards incurably ill and dying patients and their relatives. Thorsten Trapp Project description: Against this background, an evidence-based longitudinal UPCE curriculum was systematically developed following Kern’s Andreas Paling Simone Bakus Cycle [1] and partly implemented and evaluated by the students partiGesa Schatte cipating in the pilot project. Innovative teaching methods (virtual standardised/simulated patient contacts, e-learning courses, interdisEva Rudolf ciplinary and interprofessional collaborative teaching, and group sesUlrich Decking sions for reflective self-development) aim at teaching palliative careStephanie Ritz-Timme related core competencies within the clinical context and on an interdisciplinary and interprofessional basis. Matthias Grünewald Results: After almost five years of development and evaluation, the UPCE curriculum comprises 60 teaching units and is being fully impleAndrea Schmitz 1,11 mented and taught for the first time in the winter semester 2014/15. The previous pilot phases were successfully concluded. To date, the 1 Heinrich-Heine-University, Medical Faculty, pilot phases (n=26), the subproject “E-learning in palliative care” (n=518) and the blended-learning elective course “Communication with dying patients” (n=12) have been successfully evaluated. Interdisciplinary Centre for Palliative Medicine, Düsseldorf, Germany Conclusion: All conducted development steps and all developed programmes are available for other palliative care educators (Open Access). 2 Department of Psychiatry, HarvardMedical School and The integrated teaching formats andmethods (video, e-learningmodule, interprofessional education, group sessions for reflexive self-developDepartment of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative ment) and their evaluations are intended to make a contribution to an evidence-based development of palliative care curricula in Germany. Care, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, USA
Damage detection using piezoelectric transducers and the Lamb wave approach: II. Robust and quantitative decision making

The propagation of Lamb waves generated by piezoelectric transducers in a one-dimensional structure has been studied comprehensively in part I of this two-paper series. Using the information embedded in the propagating waveforms, we expect to make a decision on whether damage has occurred; however, environmental and operational variances inevitably complicate the problem. To better detect the damage under these variances, we present in this paper a robust and quantitative decision-making methodology involving advanced signal processing and statistical analysis. In order to statistically evaluate the features in Lamb wave propagation in the presence of noise, we collect multiple time series (baseline signals) from the undamaged beam. A combination of the improved adaptive harmonic wavelet transform (AHWT) and the principal component analysis (PCA) is performed on the baseline signals to highlight the critical features of Lamb wave propagation in the undamaged structure. The detection of damage is facilitated by comparing the features of the test signal collected from the test structure (damaged or undamaged) with the features of the baseline signals. In this process, we employ Hotelling’s T2 statistical analysis to first purify the baseline dataset and then to quantify the deviation of the test data vector from the baseline dataset. Through experimental and numerical studies, we systematically investigate the proposed methodology in terms of the detectability (capability of detecting damage), the sensitivity (with respect to damage severity and excitation frequency) and the robustness against noises. The parametric studies also validate, from the signal processing standpoint, the guidelines of Lamb-wave-based damage detection developed in part I.
First passage times and sojourn times for Brownian motion in space and the exact Hausdorff measure of the sample path

also with probability 1. This result is proved in ? 5. The difficulty in proving lower bounds like (1.2) is that one has to consider all possible coverings of the path by small convex sets in the definition of 4-measure. In the past the only successful method has been to use the connection between Hausdorff measures and generalized capacities. The first result of this kind appears in [16] where it is proved that for k >2, the Hausdorff measure with respect to ta is infinite for all a 3 we obtain a "law of the iterated logarithm" for the total time Tk(a, co) spent by the path X in a sphere of radius a as a-* 0+. We also determine the local behavior of the first passage time Pk(a, co) out of a sphere of radius a for k > 1. In order to obtain the required asymptotic results we required good estimates of the distribution functions for the random variables Tk(a, co), Pk(a, c). We use the method developed by Mark Kac to compute these dis-
1 FACTORS AFFECTING THE SMOOTH PURSUIT OF A MOVING TARGET

In the past few years there has been little study on the role of shape, color, and attention during the smooth pursuit of a moving object. In this experiment, we sought to show that these factors greatly affect the subjects’ abilities to accurately follow a moving target. In this paper we review the results from our own recent study using a paradigm modeled after the shell game, where the subjects are asked to follow a specific shell throughout the game and then identify at the end which shell they had been following. The results of this study is consistent with the hypothesis that shape, color, and attention affect the subjects’ abilities to correctly identify which shape they followed during the smooth pursuit. However, it was discovered that blinking also had an impact on the final results. Color had a more significant effect than shape in identifying the correct shape, but attention and blinking played a higher role in the subjects’ abilities to continue following the shape.
Temporal logic robustness for general signal classes

In multi-agent systems, robots transmit their planned trajectories to each other or to a central controller, and each receiver plans its own actions by maximizing a measure of mission satisfaction. For missions expressed in temporal logic, the robustness function plays the role of satisfaction measure. Currently, a Piece-Wise Linear (PWL) or piece-wise constant reconstruction is used at the receiver. This allows an efficient robustness computation algorithm - a.k. a. monitoring - but is not adaptive to the signal class of interest, and does not leverage the compression properties of more general representations. When communication capacity is at a premium, this is a serious bottleneck. In this paper we first show that the robustness computation is significantly affected by how the continuous-time signal is reconstructed from the received samples, which can mean the difference between a successful control and a crash. We show that monitoring general spline-based reconstructions yields a smaller robustness error, and that it can be done with the same time complexity as monitoring the simpler PWL reconstructions. Thus robustness computation can now be adapted to the signal class of interest. We further show that the monitoring error is tightly upper-bounded by the L∞ signal reconstruction error. We present a (non-linear) L∞-based scheme which yields even lower monitoring error than the spline-based schemes (which have the advantage of being faster to compute), and illustrate all results on two case studies. As an application of these results, we show how time-frequency specifications can be efficiently monitored online.
Twelve-Week Protocatechuic Acid Administration Improves Insulin-Induced and Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1-Induced Vasorelaxation and Antioxidant Activities in Aging Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

Protocatechuic acid (PCA), a strong antioxidant, has been reported for its cardiovascular-protective effects. This study aimed to investigate the effects of PCA administration on vascular endothelial function, mediated by insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), and antioxidant activities in aging hypertension. Thirty-six-week-old male aging spontaneously hypertensive rats were randomly divided into vehicle control (SHR) and PCA (SHR+PCA) groups, while age-matched Wistar–Kyoto rats (WKY) served as the normotensive vehicle control group. The oral PCA (200 mg/kg/day) was administered daily for a total of 12 weeks. When the rats reached the age of 48 weeks, the rat aortas were isolated for the evaluation of vascular reactivity and Western blotting. Also, nitric oxide (NO) production and antioxidant activities were examined among the three groups. The results showed that, when compared with the SHR group, the insulin-induced and IGF-1-induced vasorelaxation were significantly improved in the SHR+PCA group. There was no significant difference in the endothelium-denuded vessels among the three groups. After the pre-incubation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) or NO synthase (NOS) inhibitors, the vasorelaxation was abolished and comparable among the three groups. The protein levels of insulin receptors, IGF-1 receptors, phospho-protein kinase B (p-Akt)/Akt, and phospho-endothelial NOS (p-eNOS)/eNOS in aortic tissues were significantly enhanced in the SHR+PCA group when compared with the SHR group. Moreover, significant improvements of nitrate/nitrite concentration and antioxidant activities, including superoxide dismutase, catalase, and total antioxidants, were also found in the SHR+PCA group. In conclusion, the 12 weeks of PCA administration remarkably improved the endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation induced by insulin and IGF-1 in aging hypertension through enhancing the PI3K–NOS–NO pathway. Furthermore, the enhanced antioxidant activities partly contributed to the improved vasorelaxation.
Chemical Reactivity Properties of Standard Aromatic Amino Acids Studied by Means of Conceptual Density Functional Theory

This study assessed eight density functionals that include CAMB3LYP, LC⍵PBE, M11, MN12SX, N12SX, ⍵B97, ⍵B97X and ⍵B97XD related to the Def2TZVP basis sets together with the SMD solvation model in the calculation of the molecular properties and structures of the four standard aromatic amino acids: Histidine, Phenylalanine, Tryptophan and Tyrosine. The global chemical reactivity descriptors for the systems are calculated via the Conceptual Density Functional Theory (CDFT). The prediction of the maximum absorption wavelength directly from the HOMO-LUMO tends to be considerably accurate relative to the experimental values for the MN12SX density functional. Additionally, the ability of the studied molecules in acting as efficient inhibitors of the formation of Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) (perhaps as neutraceuticals), which constitutes a useful knowledge for the development of drugs for fighting Diabetes, Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases. Finally, the bioactivity scores for the four standard aromatic amino acids are predicted through different methodologies.
Flowering, Forage Value, and Insect Pollination in Borage (Borago Officinalis L.) Cultivated in Se Poland

Abstract The three-year study on borage was conducted in Lublin, SE Poland. The aims were to investigate the flowering pattern and abundance, and the attractiveness (in terms of nectar and pollen production) for flower-visiting insects, mainly bees. Insect visitation and the effect of pollinators on fruit set and seed set were assessed as well. Flowering of borage started in the latter half of June and lasted eight weeks. The mean number of flowers · m−2 of the crop was 4570 per season. A borage flower produced on average 4.0 mg of nectar with a mean sugar concentration of 31.5%. The mean total sugar amount secreted in nectar was 1.2 mg. The pollen amount · flower−1 was 1.1 mg. A borage plant can supply insects with 1.1 g of nectar sugars and 1.1 g of pollen. The estimated nectar sugar yield and pollen yield per 1 m2 of the crop were similar, i.e. 5.2 g. Bees accounted for 73.0% of all insect visits to the borage flowers. The presence of insect pollinators increased the fruit set by 43.3% and seed set by 26.8%.
Synthesis of Titanium Dioxide via Surfactant-Assisted Microwave Method for Photocatalytic and Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Applications

In this study, titania nanoparticles were obtained using the microwave-assisted technique. Moreover, different surfactants (PEG (Mn = 400), Pluronic P123 and Triton X−100) were used during the synthesis in order to determine their impact on the crystallinity and morphology of the final products. Subsequently, techniques such as XRD, SEM and TEM (performed in high contrast and high-resolution mode), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), low temperature N2 sorption (BET model), FTIR and TGA were carried out. Based on the crystallinity analysis of the obtained materials, it was established that the addition of surfactants results in greater (PEG and Triton X−100) or smaller (Pluronic P123) average crystallite size. The main purpose of this study was to use the synthesized nanomaterials in the photodegradation process (in the UV light range) of the model organic pollutants – phenol (20 mg/L) and etodolac (15 mg/L). Furthermore, it was also pointed out that the dye-sensitized solar cells can be a second application for the synthesized titania nanomaterials. The photo-oxidation and photovoltaic tests have shown that the titanium dioxide obtained using the surfactant-assisted microwave method is characterized not only by better photodegradation efficiency of phenol and etodolac, but also by higher photocurrent density compared to the reference titania samples—the pristine TiO2 and commercial P25.
Introduction: manufacturing matters: space, place, time and production

Manufacturing has undeniably transformed the world; from new inventions and technical improvements in machinery and manufactured products to the development of new production systems (Best, 2001; Owen, 2000). Manufacturing has played a critical role in creating the evolving global or international economy and in economic development. The ongoing formation of a global economy would be impossible without products produced by manufacturing production systems. The development of global commodity chains required innovations in logistics and the introduction of containers and container ports. While manufacturing dominated the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries as a significant component of developed market economies, it is sometimes considered to be of less importance from the 1970s. From the 1970s, developed market economies underwent a process of deindustrialization which involved a relative decline in industrial employment and a rise in service employment (Bazen and Thirlwall, 1991; Bluestone and Harrison, 1982). Many accounts of developed market economies assume that manufacturing no longer matters. In a recent British guide for parents, written by an awardwinning teacher, it is claimed that: “Britain’s manufacturing industry is spent. We are in an age where our chief export is intellectual property. To design fantastic things that people will want to buy, we need a nation of people who can dream things up, not simply regurgitate and obey” (Beadle, 2007: 10). This claim misrepresents the role that manufacturing continues to play in developed market economies. Knowledgebased employment has become important, but making rather than just designing products is still important for developed market economies. Employment in manufacturing has declined with productivity improvements and the development of capitaland knowledgeintensive production, but manufacturing still forms a major element of exports from developed market economies and in the creation of gross domestic product (Bryson et al., 2013; Cohen and Zysman, 1987; Fingleton, 1999; Moretti, 2013). Accounts of the decline of manufacturing in the US and UK (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982) and the transfer of production to lowercost production locations have tended to focus too much on the decline in employment. Much of the academic debate has emphasized the emergence of new global commodity chains and the continued fragmentation of production (Dicken et al., 2001). Deindustrialization was explained by differentials in factor inputs with a focus on labor costs and the transfer of production from highto lowcost labor locations. Nevertheless, labor is only one production input and not all manufacturing is labor intensive (Loch et al., 2007). While 1966 is etched in the United Kingdom’s historical consciousness due to exploits with a football, it is also significant as the highpoint of manufacturing employment in the country. In 1966 manufacturing accounted for 35 percent of Gross Domestic Product
Human Health and Nutritional Value of Walnut and Evaluation of its Sensory, Peroxidase and Acid

Sensory evolution of walnut fruit sere testes by groups of assessors some lecturer in my department whomthey have perfectly experience of this purpose. Acid value and Peroxidase value are tested to illustrate changein oiliness and changing in the taste, flavor, odor,texture and kernel color and to notice the differences amongtwo storage condition in two different temperature (4°C, 25°C), in zero time after 18months of storage visualproperties of kernel walnuts there were some properties evaluated in walnut (appearance of kernel, to assessits flavor, bitterness, astringency, texture, crispness and oiliness. Visual appearance of Kernel of walnutswas evaluated similarly by both groups of assessors. However, each group of assessors had quite differentperceptions for tasting internal traits of the kernels. In the present study useful data of sensory characteristicsof walnut fruits were obtained.