Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Techno-Economic Comparison of Stationary Storage and Battery-Electric Buses for Mitigating Solar Intermittency

The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power generation has led to more and more installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power. However, the high intermittency of these generators poses a threat to electrical grid stability. The power output of solar photovoltaic (PV) installations, for instance, depends on the solar irradiance, and consequently on weather conditions. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of solar intermittency, storage such as batteries can be deployed. However, the cost of a stationary energy storage system (SESS) is high, particularly for large PV installations. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are an alternative to SESS. With increasing number of BEVs, more and more storage capacity becomes available while these vehicles are charging. In this paper, we compare stationary batteries to mobile batteries of battery electric buses (BEBs) in a public bus terminus for balancing fluctuations of solar PV installations. Public buses have been chosen due to their large batteries and because they are more easily manageable than private cars. An optimisation model has been developed considering both the bus operator’s and the PV operator’s objectives. Cycle ageing of batteries is included in the investigation. Our analysis reveals that utilising public BEBs with high battery capacity to balance solar PV fluctuations can present a positive financial case.
Stationary bootstrapping realized volatility under market microstructure noise

Large-sample validity is proved for stationary bootstrapping of a bias-corrected realized volatility under market microstructure noise, which enables us to construct a bootstrap confidence interval of integrated volatility. A finite-sample simulation shows that the stationary bootstrap- ping confidence interval outperforms existing ones which are constructed ignoring market microstructure noise or using asymptotic normality for the bias-corrected realized volatility.
Magnetic instability of MgB2 thin film triggered by the various sweeping rates of an applied magnetic field

Up to now, the vortex avalanche is known to depend critically on the changing of some external parameters, such as the applied magnetic field, the temperature, and the demagnetization factor. In this study, we found the sweeping rate (SR) of the applied magnetic field to be another parameter that contributed to the appearance of the vortex avalanche. For example, a fast SR 500 Oe/s enhanced the vortex avalanche quietly compared to the case of a slow SR of 3 Oe/s. The dependence of the appearance of the vortex avalanche on the SR was quite strong, especially at low temperatures. A H-T phase diagram that distinguishes the regions of magnetic stability and instability is drawn for each SR.
Intrinsic defects and hydroxyl groups in a-SiO2

A consistent model of the intrinsic and hydrogen-related defects of amorphous (a-)SiO2 is presented. The author shows that the identical to Si-Si identical to bond is the diamagnetic precursor of the E' defect. The intrinsic defects can now be considered as the products of two equilibria: fluctuations in chemical order producing Si-Si and O-O bonds, and the breaking of Si-O bonds. The broken bond defects are converted to hydroxyl groups in 'wet' silica while the Si-Si and O-O (peroxyl) groups dominate in dry silicas. Peroxyl groups participate in a second equilibrium with H2, forming pairs of OH groups.
Hydrogen diffusion in polycrystalline silicon thin films

Grain boundaries in undoped polycrystalline silicon (poly‐Si) thin films are shown to act as efficient hydrogen traps rather than as paths of enhanced diffusion. A comparison of hydrogen diffusion in poly‐Si and undoped single‐crystal silicon (c‐Si) demonstrates that the diffusion in poly‐Si is significantly suppressed compared to c‐Si. These results have significant implications for hydrogenation of poly‐Si thin‐film transistors.
Predicting Individualized Joint Kinematics Over Continuous Variations of Walking, Running, and Stair Climbing

Goal: Accounting for gait individuality is important to positive outcomes with wearable robots, but manually tuning multi-activity models is time-consuming and not viable in a clinic. Generalizations can possibly be made to predict gait individuality in unobserved conditions. Methods: Kinematic individuality—how one person's joint angles differ from the group—is quantified for every subject, joint, ambulation mode (walking, running, stair ascent, and stair descent), and intramodal task (speed, incline) in an open-access dataset with 10 able-bodied subjects. Four N-way ANOVAs test how prediction methods affect the fit to experimental data between and within ambulation modes. We test whether walking individuality (measured at a single speed on level ground) carries across modes, or whether a mode-specific prediction (based on a single task for each mode) is significantly more effective. Results: Kinematic individualization improves fit across joint and task if we consider each mode separately. Across all modes, tasks, and joints, modal individualization improved the fit in 81% of trials, improving the fit on average by 4.3${}^{\circ }$ across the gait cycle. This was statistically significant at all joints for walking and running, and half the joints for stair ascent/descent. Conclusions: For walking and running, kinematic individuality can be easily generalized within mode, but the trends are mixed on stairs depending on joint.
An analysis of simplified muscle activation profile parameterization

This paper analyzes a simplified method for rough identification of muscle activation profiles of general motor tasks by means of dynamic optimization. Muscle activation profiles are parameterized with six parameters per muscle, using linear combinations of two smooth C ∞ functions closely related to the GAUSSian distribution function used in stochastics and fuzzy control. The method is applied to a simplified subsystem of the human leg consisting of pelvis, thigh shank and foot, interconnected by planar joints at hip, knee and ankle. The system comprises one antagonistic muscle pair at the knee for knee flexion and extension (vastus intermedius and biceps femoris caput brevis). To simulate the swing phase of gait, rheonomic constraints are imposed on pelvis (translation and rotation), hip (rotation) and ankle (rotation). The optimization results show that, (1) the method is suitable to map typical muscle activation time histories that are recorded via EMG, (2) the method can reduce the number of design parameters and CPU‐time consumption significantly in comparison to other parameterizations and (3) this reduction in CPU‐time consumption additionally coinncides with an improved approximation quality to the target motion. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
InGaN-Based Near-Ultraviolet and Blue-Light-Emitting Diodes with High External Quantum Efficiency Using a Patterned Sapphire Substrate and a Mesh Electrode

We markedly improved the extraction efficiency of emission light from the InGaN-based light-emitting diode (LED) chips grown on sapphire substrates. Two new techniques were adopted in the fabrication of these LEDs. One is to grow nitride films on the patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) in order to scatter emission light. Another is to use the Rh mesh electrode for p-GaN contact instead of Ni/Au translucent electrode in order to reduce the optical absorption by the p-contact electrode. We fabricated near-ultraviolet (n-UV) and blue LEDs using the above-mentioned techniques. When the n-UV (400 nm) LED was operated at a forward current of 20 mA at room temperature, the output power and the external quantum efficiency were estimated to be 22.0 mW and 35.5%, respectively. When the blue (460 nm) LED was operated at a forward current of 20 mA at room temperature, the output power and the external quantum efficiency were estimated to be 18.8 mW and 34.9%, respectively.
Functions of GATA-3 Expression in Regulatory T Cells During Type 1 and Type 2 Inflammation

The transcription factor GATA-3 is not only responsible for effector CD4 T cell differentiation, but also essential for the homeostasis and stability of regulatory T cells (Tregs). Previous study from our group has shown that mice with both T-bet and GATA-3 deletion in Tregs developed severe autoimmune disease correlated with Tregs switching from Tregs to Th17-like cells. However, mice with only GATA3 deletion in Tregs were normal at steady state. To determine the role of GATA-3 in Tregs during inflammation, we used Th1 and Th2 mouse models. Our results suggest that GATA-3-deficient Tregs lose their Treg phenotype during a Th1 inflammation induced by scurfy fetal liver transplantation. However, in an asthma model GATA-3 (fl/fl) Foxp3 YFP Cre mice displayed reduced asthma symptoms, without affecting Th2 cell accumulation, or IL-4 and IL-13 cytokine production in the lung. Therefore, we propose that the expression of GATA-3 in Tregs may prevent Tregs from converting into other Th subsets during type 1 inflammation. On the other hand, GATA-3 expression in Tregs may contribute to Th2 responses by switching Tregs into Th2 cells under type 2 environment.
Biomarkers of Drug Resistance in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Adults

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most common type of focal epilepsy in adults. Experimental and clinical data indicate that neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration accompanying epileptogenesis make a significant contribution to the chronicity of epilepsy and the development of drug resistance in TLE cases. Changes in plasma and serum concentrations of proteins associated with neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration can be predictive biomarkers of the course of the disease. This study used an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay of the following plasma proteins: brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFa), and high-mobility group protein B1 (HMGB1) in patients with mesial TLE to search for biomarkers of the disease. The objective of the study was to examine biomarkers of the neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration of plasma: BDNF, TNFa, and HMGB1. The aim of the study was to identify changes in the concentration of circulating pro-inflammatory and neurotrophic factors that are prognostically significant for the development of drug resistance and the course of TLE. A decrease in the concentration of BDNF, TNFa, and HMGB1 was registered in the group of patients with TLE compared with the control group. A significant decrease in the concentration of HMGB1 in patients with drug-resistant TLE was observed. Aberrations in plasma concentrations of BDNF, TNFa, and HMGB1 in patients with TLE compared with the controls have been confirmed by earlier studies. A decrease in the expression of the three biomarkers may be the result of neurodegenerative processes caused by the long course of the disease. The results of the study may indicate the acceptability of using HMGB1 and TNFa as prognostic biological markers to indicate the severity of the disease course and the risk of developing drug resistance.
Waves in a Slab of Uniaxial Bw Medium

Certain isotropic and anisotropic media with negative permittivity and/or permeability parameters have been recently labeled as BW-media due to their capability of supporting backward waves. Various suggestions for constructing composite materials realizing such media (also called metamaterials) have also been recently suggested. The present analysis considers guidance of waves in a slab of uniaxially anisotropic BW medium with at least one of the four medium parameters negative. It is shown that there exist odd and even TE and TM modes in such a slab capable of carrying energy in opposite directions inside and outside the slab with backward waves inside the slab.
A Miniaturized Ultrasonic Micro-Hole Perforator for Minimally Invasive Craniotomy

Objective: Micro-hole perforation on skull is urgently desired for minimally invasive insertion of micro-tools in brain for diagnostic or treatment purpose. However, a micro drill bit would easily fracture, making it difficult to safely generate a micro-hole on the hard skull. Methods: In this study, we present a method for ultrasonic vibration assisted micro-hole perforation on skull in a manner similar to subcutaneous injection on soft tissue. For this purpose, a high amplitude miniaturized ultrasonic tool with a 500 μm tip diameter micro-hole perforator was developed with simulation and experimental characterization. In-depth investigation of micro-hole generation mechanism was performed with systematic experiments on animal skull with a bespoke test rig; effects of vibration amplitude and feed rate on hole forming characteristics were systematically studied. It was observed that by exploiting skull bone's unique structural and material properties, the ultrasonic micro-perforator could locally damage bone tissue with micro-porosities, induce sufficient plastic deformation to bone tissue around the micro-hole and refrain elastic recovery after tool withdraw, generating a micro-hole on skull without material. Results: Under optimized conditions, high quality micro-holes could be formed on the hard skull with a force (<1 N) even smaller than that for subcutaneous injection on soft skin. Conclusion: This study would provide a safe and effective method and a miniaturized device for micro-hole perforation on skull for minimally invasive neural interventions.
A novel role of human lung endothelial cells in allergic airway disease by producing and responding to IL-33

Allergic asthma affects more than 300 million people worldwide and is characterized by airway hypersensitivity and eosinophilia. A prevalent feature of allergic asthma is increased serum IL-33 levels, and asthma GWAS have demonstrated that SNPs in the IL-33 locus are significantly associated with disease. While IL-33 and its downstream type 2 responses have been extensively studied in murine models of asthma, much less is known about the regulation of human IL33. Analysis of the mouse and human IL33 loci reveals little genomic conservation between the two species in non-coding regions. We generated a novel BAC transgenic mouse strain containing the human IL-33 locus with a fluorescent reporter to interrogate the regulation and expression of human IL-33. Surprisingly, the mice expressed human IL-33 primarily in endothelial cells, whereas murine IL-33 was expressed primarily in epithelial cells. These results mirror the expression profiles of IL-33 in primary human lung cells from the LungGENS database, thus demonstrating that our novel mouse model faithfully replicates human IL-33 expression. To understand how human IL-33 in the lung is regulated and expressed during inflammation, we examined BAC transgenic mice challenged with either house dust mite extract (HDM) or poly(I:C). In contrast to murine IL-33, expression of human IL-33 was reduced during allergic inflammation. We tested whether IL-33 is able to autoregulate itself via a negative feedback loop. Indeed, IL-33 administration downregulated the expression of human IL-33 in lung endothelial cells. Together, these data emphasize a distinct and novel role in humans for lung endothelial cells in allergic airway disease by producing and responding to IL-33.
Dry Etch Properties of ZTO Thin Films Using Inductively Coupled Plasma

In this study, we investigated the surface reaction of zinc tin oxide (ZTO) thin films at N2/BCl3/Ar plasma. The maximum etch rate of 136 nm/min for the ZTO thin films was obtained at N2/BCl3/Ar (3/6/14 sccm) gas mixing ratio. The etch conditions were the RF power of 600 W, the DC-bias voltage of –150 V, the process pressure of 2 Pa, and the substrate temperature of 40°C. Corresponding to these etching conditions, chemical reaction of the etched ZTO surface has been studied by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurement to investigate the chemical reactions between the surfaces of ZTO thin film and etch species. Surface morphology of the etched ZTO thin films was characterized using atomic force microscope.
Optimal fleet design in a ship routing problem

Abstract The problem of deciding an optimal fleet (the type of ships and the number of each type) in a real liner shipping problem is considered. The liner shipping problem is a multi-trip vehicle routing problem, and consists of deciding weekly routes for the selected ships. A solution method consisting of three phases is presented. In phase 1, all feasible single routes are generated for the largest ship available. Some of these routes will use only a small portion of the ship’s capacity and can be performed by smaller ships at less cost. This fact is used when calculating the cost of each route. In phase 2, the single routes generated in phase 1 are combined into multiple routes. By solving a set partitioning problem (phase 3), where the columns are the routes generated in phases 1 and 2, we find both the optimal fleet and the coherent routes for the fleet.
Prevalence of Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria (Enteropathogens) Recovered from a Blend of Pig Manure and Pinewood Saw Dust during Anaerobic Co-Digestion in a Steel Biodigester

South Africa adopts intensive livestock farming, embracing the employment of huge quantities of antibiotics to meet the increased demand for meat. Therefore, bacteria occurring in the animal products and manure might develop antibiotic resistance, a scenario which threatens public health. The study investigated the occurrence of Gram-negative bacteria from eighteen pooled samples withdrawn from a single-stage steel biodigester co-digesting pig manure (75%) and pine wood saw dust (25%). The viable counts for each bacterium were determined using the spread plate technique. The bacterial isolates were characterised based on cultural, morphological and biochemical characteristics, using the Analytical Profile Index 20 e test kit. In addition, isolates were characterised based on susceptibility to 14 conventional antibiotics via the disc diffusion method. The MAR index was calculated for each bacterial isolate. The bacterial counts ranged from 104 to 106 cfu/mL, indicating manure as a potential source of contamination. Overall, 159 bacterial isolates were recovered, which displayed diverse susceptibility patterns with marked sensitivity to amoxicillin (100% E. coli), streptomycin (96.15% for Yersinia spp.; 93.33% for Salmonella spp.) and 75% Campylobacter spp. to nitrofurantoin. Varying resistance rates were equally observed, but a common resistance was demonstrated to erythromycin (100% of Salmonella and Yersinia spp.), 90.63% of E. coli and 78.57% of Campylobacter spp. A total of 91.19% of the bacterial isolates had a MAR index > 0.2, represented by 94 MAR phenotypes. The findings revealed multidrug resistance in bacteria from the piggery source, suggesting they can contribute immensely to the spread of multidrug resistance; thus, it serves as a pointer to the need for the enforcement of regulatory antibiotic use in piggery farms. Therefore, to curb the level of multidrug resistance, the piggery farm should implement control measures in the study area.
Stochastic dynamics of a layered neural network. Exact solution

We extend our previous solution of a network with deterministic parallel dynamics to stochastic dynamics. Stochasticity is controlled by a "temperature" variable. An exact solution for the dynamics of the network at any temperature is presented. A region of good recall is found, separated from a region of no recall by a first-order line terminating at a critical point. The exact time-evolution of mixtures of patterns is given as well.
Using optical wavelet packet transform to improve the performance of an optoelectronic iris recognition system

Iris, one important biometric feature, has unique advantages: it has complex texture and is almost unchanged for the lifespan. So iris recognition has been widely studied for intelligent personal identification. Most of researchers use wavelets as iris feature extractor. And their systems obtain high accuracy. But wavelet transform is time consuming, so the problem is to enhance the useful information but still keep high processing speed. This is the reason we propose an opto-electronic system for iris recognition because of high parallelism of optics. In this system, we use eigen-images generated corresponding to optimally chosen wavelet packets to compress the iris image bank. After optical correlation between eigen-images and input, the statistic features are extracted. Simulation shows that wavelet packets preprocessing of the input images results in higher identification rate. And this preprocessing can be fulfilled by optical wavelet packet transform (OWPT), a new optical transform introduced by us. To generate the approximations of 2-D wavelet packet basis functions for implementing OWPT, mother wavelet, which has scaling functions, is utilized. Using the cascade algorithm and 2-D separable wavelet transform scheme, an optical wavelet packet filter is constructed based on the selected best bases. Inserting this filter makes the recognition performance better.
Structure function for aliasing patterns in $\boldsymbol{2^{l-n}}$ design with multiple groups of factors

A general approach to studying fractional factorial designs with multiple groups of factors is proposed. A structure function is generated by the defining contrasts among different groups of factors and the remaining columns. The structure function satisfies a first-order partial differential equation. By solving this equation, general results about the structures and properties of the designs are obtained. As an important application, practical rules for the selection of optimal single arrays for robust parameter design experiments are derived.
Tracking the Biostimulatory Effect of Fractions from a Commercial Plant Protein Hydrolysate in Greenhouse-Grown Lettuce

Protein hydrolysate biostimulants are environmentally friendly options for the reduction of nitrogen input, but their plant growth-promoting mechanisms are still not completely unveiled. Here, to put the “signaling peptide theory” to the test, a greenhouse experiment was undertaken using low (1 mM) and optimal (8 mM) NO3-treated butterhead lettuce and three molecular fractions (PH1 (>10 kDa), PH2 (1–10 kDa) and PH3 (<10 kDa) fractions), in addition to the whole product Vegamin®: PH, in a randomized block design. PH1 and PH3 significantly increased fresh yield (+8%) under optimal (lighter leaves), but not under low (darker leaves) NO3 conditions. Total ascorbic acid, lutein and β-carotene increased with PH3, and disinapoylgentobiose and kaempferol-3-hydroxyferuloyl-sophorosie-7-glucoside content increased with PH (whole/fractions) treatments, particularly under low NO3 conditions. The complete hydrolysate and analyzed peptide fractions have differential biostimulatory effects, enhancing the growth and nutritional quality of lettuce.