Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Porous Biochar Materials for Sustainable Water Treatment: Synthesis, Modification, and Application

In the current world, the increasingly developed industries of mankind have caused huge pollution to the earth on which we live. And the water resources, which are the source of human life, are also being seriously polluted and destroyed. Water pollution has become an urgent need to deal with in today’s world. In order to achieve sustainable development, people are constantly using new materials in the process of water treatment. Biochar material is one of them. In the thermochemical process, biomass produces a common by-product coke, which is also called biochar as a result of biomass decomposition. Due to the low price and large specific surface area which can reach over 1000 m2·g−1, it has many applications and advantages in catalysis, adsorption, fuel cell, soil improvement, etc., and has a wide range of application prospects. Therefore, effectively prepared and used biochar in water treatment has become a method to improve the efficiency and economic benefits of thermochemical processes. In this overview, we first introduced the preparation methods of different new types of biomass materials, we then classified and discussed the various modification strategies, and finally discussed the application potential of biochar material for wastewater treatment.
Goos–Hänchen and Imbert–Fedorov shifts of the Airy beam in dirac metamaterials

We theoretically derive the expression for the Goos–Hänchen (GH) and Imbert–Fedorov (IF) shifts of the Airy beam in Dirac metamaterial. In this work, the large GH and IF shifts can be found when the Airy beam is reflected near the Dirac and Brewster angles. Compared to the Gaussian beam, the GH shifts of the Airy beam are more obvious in the vicinity of the Brewster angle. Interestingly, it is found that the ability to produce an Airy vortex beam at the Dirac point. In addition, the magnitude and the direction of the GH shifts can be controlled by the rotation angles of the Airy beam. We take advantage of this property to design a reflective optical switch based on the rotation angle-controlled GH shifts of the Dirac metamaterial. Our solutions provide the possibility to implement light-tuned optical switches. Moreover, our model can also be used to describe the GH and IF shifts generated by novel beams in other similar photonic systems.
Band gap and Schottky barrier heights of multiferroic BiFeO3

BiFeO3 is an interesting multiferroic oxide and a potentially important Pb-free ferroelectric. However, its applications can be limited by large leakage currents. Its band gap is calculated by the density-functional based screened exchange method to be 2.8eV, similar to experiment. The Schottky barrier height on Pt or SrRuO3 is calculated in the metal induced gap state model to be over 0.9eV. Thus, its leakage is not intrinsic.
Toward Correlated Data Trading for Private Web Browsing History

The trading of social media data has attracted wide research interests over years. In particular, the trading for Web browsing histories, when being applied to targeted advertising, produces tremendous economic value for data consumers. However, the disclosure of entire browsing histories, even in form of anonymous data sets, poses a huge threat to user privacy. Although some existing solutions have investigated privacy-preserving outsourcing of social media data, unfortunately, they neglected the impact on the data consumer’s utility. In this article, we propose CEATSE, a correlated data trading framework for various kinds of private Web browsing histories. CEATSE first models the correlation among multiple dimensional features, and then generates the optimal feature clustering scheme. Combined with this scheme, CEATSE next incorporates a correlated data perturbation strategy on each feature cluster, in order to balance the privacy-utility tradeoff. It then quantifies each chosen data contributor’s privacy loss on optimal feature clusters. Through real-data-based experiments, our analysis and evaluation results demonstrate CEATSE indeed achieves user privacy protection, the data consumer’s accuracy requirement, and truthfulness, individual rationality as well as budget balance.
Large tunnel magnetoresistance with plasma oxidized MgO barrier

This work focuses on magnetic tunnel junctions with a polycrystalline MgO barrier, prepared by plasma oxidation. Combined with Co50Fe50 ferromagnetic electrodes, a large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of 60% is obtained at room temperature. The TMR effect is comparable to state-of-the-art Al oxide barriers with amorphous CoFeB electrodes. It is also found to decrease with the MgO thickness. Two most significant advantages of the MgO junctions are pointed out: (a) The resistance-area product is approximately two orders of magnitude lower than for AlOX− based junctions of the same thickness. (b) MgO presents unsurpassed thermal stability for high annealing temperatures (up to 370 °C) and long annealing periods. In addition, for small, patterned elements, we have tested the switching behavior of the soft electrode grown on the polycrystalline MgO barrier.
Fortnightly variability of Chl a in the Indonesian seas

Abstract. Twenty years of daily MODIS-Aqua ocean color observations (2002–2022) are used to identify periodic variability of near-surface chlorophyll (Chl a) in the Indonesian seas. The frequency spectrum of Chl a is dominated by the mean and low-frequency monsoonal variability; however, a prominent peak around the fortnightly tidal period, MSf, is present. Harmonic analysis is used to quantify and map the fortnightly Chl a signal, which is discovered to be significant along the continental shelves of NW Australia and at several sites associated with narrow passages between the Lesser Sunda Islands, within the Sulu Archipelago, and at a few other sites in the Philippines Archipelago. Fortnightly variability at the shallow coastal sites is attributed to the spring–neap cycle of barotropic ocean currents, while we hypothesize that the variability in deeper water near the island passages is due to the modulation of vertical nutrient fluxes by baroclinic tidal mixing. The results document the significance of tidal mixing and highlight the heterogeneous character of biophysical processes within the Indonesian seas.
Parametrically driven nonlinear oscillator at a few-photon level

Abstract We consider quantum dynamics of a parametrically driven anharmonic oscillator (PDAO) at a few-photon level. In this scheme the oscillatory mode is excited through the degenerate down-conversion process. This scheme could be experimentally realized in superconducting solid-state devices based on the nonlinearity of the Josephson junction or in cooled nano-mechanical oscillators. We investigate PDAO in the strong quantum regime that means strong Kerr-nonlinearity of the mode with respect to the mode’s dissipation for two cases of excitations: by a monochromatic driving field or by a train of Gaussian pulses. We demonstrate production of the nonclassical oscillatory states with two-fold symmetry in phase-space which are approximately close to the lower pure Fock states. Production of the superposition of the Fock states for time-intervals exceeding the characteristic time of decoherence and dissipation is also shown.
A comprehensive open-source course for teaching applied hydrological modelling in Central Asia

Abstract. Numerical modelling is often used for climate impact studies in water resources management. It is, however, not yet highly accessible to many students of hydrology in Central Asia. One big hurdle for new learners is the scripting requirement for the preparation of relevant data prior to the actual modelling. We present a robust, open-source workflow and comprehensive teaching material that aim at bridging the gap between theoretical hydrological modelling know-how and applied modelling for climate impact studies in Central Asia. The teaching material has been refined over 2 consecutive years and is being taken up by several professors teaching hydrological modelling in Central Asia.
A comparison of sustainability attitudes and intentions across generations and gender: a perspective from U.S. consumers

As firms increasingly focus on corporate sustainability initiatives and offer more sustainability-related products, there is a need to continually assess consumer attitudes towards and involvement in sustainable consumption. Additionally, there is a need to determine if some consumer characteristics may typify how they think, feel, and behave towards sustainability initiatives. Based on an online sample of 1,250 U.S. consumers, this present research utilizes a cross-sectional design to examine whether generational cohort and gender help explain variations in how consumers react to the notion of sustainability. This research is also focused on sustainability in the food and grocery industry. The findings suggest that attitudes towards sustainability and the degree to which consumers feel sustainability is important is more positive for younger consumers and women. The Baby Boomer generation is less interested in sustainable consumption and less likely to be persuaded by sustainability claims. The main limitations of this study are that data were collected only through self-reporting from consumers in the United States. For marketers promoting sustainability-related products, this data should help them better understand segments of the U.S. market and develop more successful promotional initiatives. Knowing the nuances of how generational cohorts think about sustainability and how they may consider it when making purchase decisions should motivate marketers to utilize these differences when creating their marketing mix. Though some marketers are moving away from gender-based promotional tactics, the findings also suggest that gender segmentation could still be useful when it comes to sustainability-related products.
Regenerating Arbitrary Video Sequences with Distillation Path-Finding

If the video has long been mentioned as a widespread visualization form, the animation sequence in the video is mentioned as storytelling for people. Producing an animation requires intensive human labor from skilled professional artists to obtain plausible animation in both content and motion direction, incredibly for animations with complex content, multiple moving objects, and dense movement. This paper presents an interactive framework to generate new sequences according to the users' preference on the starting frame. The critical contrast of our approach versus prior work and existing commercial applications is that novel sequences with arbitrary starting frame are produced by our system with a consistent degree in both content and motion direction. To achieve this effectively, we first learn the feature correlation on the frameset of the given video through a proposed network called RSFNet. Then, we develop a novel path-finding algorithm, SDPF, which formulates the knowledge of motion directions of the source video to estimate the smooth and plausible sequences. The extensive experiments show that our framework can produce new animations on the cartoon and natural scenes and advance prior works and commercial applications to enable users to obtain more predictable results.
INTEGRATE-AND-FIRE MODELS OF NERVE MEMBRANE RESPONSE TO OSCILLATORY INPUT.

Nerve membranes exhibit curious responses to alternating current stimulation, among which are phase locking, as well as responses without apparent periodic pattern. We investigate these phenomena by presenting a complete analysis of the response to periodic input of an integrate-and-fire model, which is a simplified version of the Hodgkin–Huxley theory for space clamped nerves.
The physics of neoclassical magnetohydrodynamic tearing modes

Neoclassical effects alter the nonlinear evolution properties of magnetic islands in toroidal plasmas. While the perturbed bootstrap current effects tend to dominate the nonlinear evolution and mode saturation properties in tokamak plasmas, a number of additional effects complicate the picture. A novel aspect of the mode evolution properties is the appearance of a nonlinear threshold width, below which island formation is suppressed. The structure and strength of various closure relations for the ion viscosity and heat fluxes impact the size and scaling of the threshold width. The potential impact of this physics on low aspect ratio tokamaks and stellarator configurations is also discussed.
Radiative magnetized thermal conduction fronts

The evolution of plane-parallel magnetized thermal conduction fronts in the interstellar medium (ISM) was studied. Separating the coronal ISM phase and interstellar clouds, these fronts have been thought to be the site of the intermediate-temperature regions whose presence was inferred from O VI absorption-line studies. The front evolution was followed numerically, starting from the initial discontinuous temperature distribution between the hot and cold medium, and ending in the final cooling stage of the hot medium. It was found that, for the typical ISM pressure of 4000 K/cu cm and the hot medium temperature of 10 to the 6th K, the transition from evaporation to condensation in a nonmagnetized front occurs when the front thickness is 15 pc. This thickness is a factor of 5 smaller than previously estimated. The O VI column densities in both evaporative and condensation stages agree with observations if the initial hot medium temperature Th exceeds 750,000 K. Condensing conduction fronts give better agreement with observed O VI line profiles because of lower gas temperatures. 66 refs.
Motion of a Test Particle in a Plasma

The motion of a charged test particle in a completely ionized gas without a magnetic field is investigated. The possible trajectories of this test particle are described by a distribution function that spreads out in phase space as time increases. A convergent kinetic equation which accounts for long‐range collective effects and short‐range collisions in a consistent manner is derived to describe the time evolution of the distribution function. Expressions for the energy loss rate and dynamical friction are calculated from appropriate moments of the kinetic equation, and they show how the Coulomb logarithm, ln Λ, varies with the velocity of the test particle. The errors introduced by the use of a convergent kinetic equation are estimated, and these indicate that the kinetic equation method gives the test particle's diffusion in phase space only on coarse grained time and spatial scales. For the case of a fast electron, the time scale must be larger than the electron plasma period and the spatial scale lar.
Intra mode decision and frame layer Lagrange multiplier adjustment scheme for H.264 based on structural similarity

Abstract H.264 takes rate distortion optimisation (RDO) technique to perform intra and inter mode decision and achieves higher coding efficiency, but the objective distortion metric such as mean square error (MSE) is employed in traditional RDO framework, which cannot acquire optimal subjective quality. In this paper, structural similarity (SSIM)-based subjective distortion is applied to RDO-based intra mode decision in H.264 I frame video coding, and a linear SSIM distortion model is firstly proposed and SSIM-based rate distortion cost function for intra mode decision is defined. Furthermore, a content adaptive frame layer Lagrange multiplier adjustment scheme is proposed to balance the tradeoff between rate and SSIM distortion better. Experimental results show that, the proposed method encodes image structural information more effectively and thus acquires better perceptual quality and subjective RDO performance compared with objective distortion-based RDO method. Under the same perceptual quality, our scheme achieves about 8·03% I frame bit rate reduction on average for various sequences over MSE-based RDO employed in JM reference software.
Recent Observed Interdecadal Climate Changes in the Northern Hemisphere

The largest increases in surface temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere in the decade prior to 1988 were in Alaska, while substantial decreases occurred in the North Pacific Ocean. This illustrates the considerable geographic spatial structure to interdecadal temperature variations associated with changes in the atmospheric circulation. In particular, from 1977 to 1988, there was a deeper and eastward-shifted Aleutian low-pressure system in the winter half year, which advected warmer and moister air into Alaska and colder air over the North Pacific. Associated changes in surface-wind stress and wind-stress curl altered the North Pacific Ocean currents, as revealed by the Sverdrup transport. The North Pacific changes appear to be linked through teleconnections to tropical atmosphere–ocean interactions and the frequency of El Nino versus La Nina events. Consequently, the question of why it was so warm in Alaska becomes changed to one of why there were three tropical Pacific Warm Events, but no Cold Event.
The electronic structure of genome editors from the first principles

Ab-initio molecular dynamics enables following the dynamics of biological systems from the first principles, describing the electronic structure and offering the opportunity to “watch” the evolution of biochemical processes with unique resolution, beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art experimental techniques. This article reports the role of first-principles (ab-initio) molecular dynamics (MD) in the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing revolution, achieving a profound understanding of the enzymatic function and offering valuable insights for enzyme engineering. We introduce the methodologies and explain the use of ab-initio MD simulations to establish the two-metal dependent mechanism of DNA cleavage in the RuvC domain of the Cas9 enzyme, and how a second catalytic domain, HNH, cleaves the target DNA with the aid of a single metal ion. A detailed description of how ab-initio MD is combined with free-energy methods—i.e., thermodynamic integration and metadynamics—to break and form chemical bonds is given, explaining the use of these methods to determine the chemical landscape and establish the catalytic mechanism in CRISPR-Cas9. The critical role of classical methods is also discussed, explaining theory and application of constant pH MD simulations, used to accurately predict the catalytic residues’ protonation states. Overall, first-principles methods are shown to unravel the electronic structure and reveal the catalytic mechanism of the Cas9 enzyme, providing valuable insights that can serve for the design of genome editing tools with improved catalytic efficiency or controllable activity.
Quantum conductance of a single magnetic atom: An ab initio study

Our ab initio study explains recent puzzling experiments on the conductance of a single Co adatom deposited either on Cu(111) or on ferromagnetic Co islands and contacted with both magnetic and nonmagnetic electrodes [N. N\'eel, J. Kr\"oger, and R. Berndt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 086805 (2009)]. We provide clear evidence that the conductance of a single atomic junction in the contact regime is close to ${G}_{0}/2$ (${G}_{0}$ is the quantum of conductance) for ferromagnetic electrodes and to ${G}_{0}$ for nonmagnetic ones. Spin-dependent calculations reveal that a conductance of ${G}_{0}/2$ originates from a combination of partially open majority and minority channels. The bonding between the Co adatom and the Co island reduces significantly the contribution of the minority $d$ electrons to the conductance, leading to the observation of half-integer conductance.
The Impact of Insulin Staging in the Context of Pharmaceutical Care on Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Purpose The problem of polypharmacy and the nature of the disease make patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus highly vulnerable to drug therapy problems, especially those who are on insulin therapy. Despite this challenge, reaching the desired clinical outcome and using an appropriate insulin regimen are also considered a controversial issue among clinicians. The current study is designed to explore the impact of insulin staging regimens in the context of pharmaceutical care on patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Patients and Methods This study is a randomized interventional comparative study of a few groups. It was conducted at the Diabetes and Endocrine Centre in Sulaymaniyah City in Iraq from January to August 2022. Patients with T2DM who were on insulin therapy were enrolled in this trial. The participants were divided into two groups, the interventional and non-interventional groups. The insulin regimen was modified, and pharmaceutical care process was performed for the intervention group. Drug therapy problems (DTPs) and clinical parameters were monitored both groups over the course of six months. Results A total of 67 patients with T2DM on insulin were included in this study, and of them, 73% were females, with a mean age of 57.34 ± 7.825 years. The groups were randomly divided into intervention and non-intervention groups. After six months of applying insulin staging in the context of pharmaceutical care, FPG (Mean Diff.= 72.25, 95% CI of diff.= 20.44 to 124.1), HbA1c (Mean Diff.= 2.087, 95% CI of diff.= 1.151 to 3.023) and DTP were significantly improved in the intervention group. Conclusion Implementing the insulin staging approach within the context of the pharmaceutical care process showed a significant impact on controlling plasma glucose levels.
Transflective Liquid Crystal Display with Single Cell Gap and Single Gamma Curve

The vertical electric field-driven transflective nematic liquid crystal display with dual orientation has a problem that the voltage-dependent transmittance and reflectance curves do not match each other. Thus a dual driving circuit is required. This study shows that optimization of the surface pretilt angle in the transmittance solves this problem so that the transflective display with a single cell gap and single gamma curve for reflective and transmissive region is possible.