Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CMOS-Compatible Ultralow-Loss Three-Step Silicon Edge Coupler with Substrate Substitution in the Whole Communication Band

Edge coupler is a key component of silicon-based optoelectronic chips, which dramatically reduces the coupling loss between fibers and transmission waveguides. Here, we propose an ultralow-loss three-step silicon edge coupler based on a 130 nm CMOS process. By replacing the silicon substrate with a material with a lower refractive index than silicon oxide, the silicon leakage loss and polarization-dependent loss can be significantly improved. This structure avoids the existence of a cantilever, which enhances the mechanical strength of the edge coupler. Coupling with standard single-mode fiber, the simulation results demonstrate that the TE/TM mode has an ultralow loss of 0.63/1.08 dB at 1310 nm and 0.57/1.34 dB at 1550 nm, and the 0.5 dB bandwidth covering the entire communication band is about 400 nm. In the entire communication band, the polarization-dependent loss is less than 0.8 dB. Furthermore, we propose a taper shape design method based on mode analysis, which can be adapted for any taper to improve its compactness. Compared with the parabolic shape, the coupling loss of the edge coupler with a length of 460 μm for the TE mode is improved by 0.3 dB on average, this edge coupler provides a feasible solution for fiber-to-chip coupling and is perfectly suitable for wavelength division multiplexing applications in optical communications.
Experimental Investigation of Milling Performance of Silicon Nitride Ceramic Subject to Different Assisted Systems

In this study, silicon nitride milling experiments are carried out using Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD) end mill rods under unassisted, hybrid-assisted (combination of laser assisted and three axis ultrasound), and laser-assisted systems to examine the cutting performance and machined surface quality of different cutting tools. The best combination of process parameters for silicon nitride composites milling are obtained using the Taguchi method. The effects of spindle speed, radial depth of cut, and feed rate on surface roughness, cutting force, edge topography, and tool wear of silicon nitride surfaces are investigated. The results reveal that hybrid-assisted produces superior surface roughness, longer tool life, fewer machining defects, and lower cutting force than unassisted. Best results of triaxial ultrasonic-assisted combined with laser on cutting performance are achieved as the ultrasonic waves help to vibrate the cutting tool and workpiece simultaneously, which helps to effectively remove chips and lowers the cutting force. When compared to unassisted milling, laser-assisted and hybrid-assisted milling improve total average surface roughness by 42% and 66%, and total cutting forces by 26% and 46%, respectively. The best processing parameters obtained in this study are high spindle speed (12,000 rpm), low feed rate (500 mm/min), and low cutting depth (0.02 mm).
The Anxiety Level of Students about the Future: Case of Education College of Sharazur at the University of Halabja

This article aims to understand the level of future anxiety for the students at College of Education in Sharazur. To achieve these goals, researchers have used the method of description. The sample of the study comprised 100 Students of both male and female gender in three different departments (Human Development, Kindergarten, and Kurdish Language). The academic level of the participants was (first year, second year, third year, and fourth year). The tool of the study was the survey questionnaire consisting of 51 items were collected. The researchers analyzed the statistical materials (census center and T-test) For one sample and two samples, they used one directional analysis and one way ANOVA. The results of the study showed that the future anxiety exists among female students of Sharazur Education College more significantly than male students. However, there is an insignificant difference between the departments of Kurdish language and Human Development. So, the anxiety cannot be ascertained among students of those departments.
Development of ferroelectric correlations in the quantum paraelectric and antiferrodistortive regimes in BaxSr1-xTiO3 (x ≤ 0.10)

The dielectric response e(T) of BaxSr1-xTiO3 (x ≤ 0.1) for compositions at and below the critical composition for the ferroelectric transition has been studied. With progressive Ba substitution, the growth of ferroelectric correlations and the weakening of the Antiferrodistortive (AFD) and the quantum paraelectric (QPE) effects have been studied by monitoring the changes in both the in and out of phase parts of the dielectric response. For the compositions close to pure SrTiO3 (x = 0 and x = 0.02), the temperature dependence exhibits a continuous rise in the in-phase part and no ferroelectric peak, consistent with the QPE behavior. With increasing Ba substitution, the low temperature behavior of the in phase part e′ progressively changes from a continuous rise to exhibit a weak maximum and finally to a well developed cusp. For higher Ba concentrations, the low temperature peak (T ∼ 50K), which corresponds to ferroelectric correlations, becomes increasingly sharper until at the critical composition, x = 0.
The TELE-DD Randomised Controlled Trial on Treatment Adherence in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Comorbid Depression: Clinical Outcomes after 18-Month Follow-Up

Clinical depression is associated with poorer adherence to hypoglycaemic medication in patients with diabetes mellitus, leading to poorer glycaemic control, diabetes management, and increased complications. The main aim of the TELE-DD trial was to demonstrate the efficacy of a proactive and psychoeducational telephonic intervention based on motivational interviewing and collaborative care to reduce nonadherence and improve prognosis in individuals with diabetes mellitus and concurrent depression. Design: The TELE-DD project is a three-phased prospective study including a nested randomised controlled trial. Methods: The baseline cohort included the entire population of adult patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and concurrent depression. A randomised controlled trial was conducted in a selection of patients from the baseline cohort, distributed into a control group (n = 192) and an intervention group (n = 192). Monthly telephonic interventions delivered by specifically trained research nurses were centred on a psychoeducational individualised monitoring protocol including motivational interviewing and collaborative care strategies. Clinical and patient-centred data were systematically collected during an 18-month follow-up including HbA1c, Patient Health Questionnaire, and the Diabetes Distress Scale. Results: During the trial, 18-month follow-up HbA1C levels significantly (p < 0.001) decreased in the intervention group at every follow-up from an average of 8.72 (SD:1.49) to 7.03 (SD:1.09), but slightly increased in the control group from 8.65 (SD:1.40) to 8.84 (SD:1.38). Similar positive results were obtained in depression severity and diabetes distress, LDL-cholesterol, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, but only at the 18-month follow-up in body mass index reduction. Conclusions: This is the first trial to concurrently decrease biological and psychological outcomes with a monthly brief telephonic intervention, pointing out that a combined biopsychosocial intervention and collaborative care strategy is essential for current world health challenges. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04097483. Patient or Public Contribution: Diabetic patients not belonging to the TELE-DD population or trial sample were consulted during the study design to review and guarantee the clarity and understanding of the trial psychoeducational materials.
Femtosecond light distribution at skin and liver of rats: analysis for use in optical diagnostics

In this study we investigated the light distribution under femtosecond laser illumination and its correlation with the collected diffuse scattering at the surface of ex-vivo rat skin and liver. The reduced scattering coefficients μ's for liver and skin due to different scatterers have been determined with Mie-scattering theory for each wavelength (800, 630, and 490 nm). Absorption coefficients μa were determined by diffusion approximation equation in correlation with measured diffused reflectance experimentally for each wavelength (800, 630, and 490 nm). The total attenuation coefficient for each wavelength and type of tissue were determined by linearly fitting the log based normalized intensity. Both tissues are strongly scattering thick tissues. Our results may be relevant when considering the use of femtosecond laser illumination as an optical diagnostic tool.
Construction of a Hierarchical Gene Regulatory Network to Reveal the Drought Tolerance Mechanism of Shanxin Poplar

Drought stress is a common adverse environment that plants encounter, and many drought-tolerant genes have been characterized. The gene regulatory network (GRN) is important in revealing the drought tolerance mechanism. Here, to investigate the regulatory mechanism of Shanxin poplar (Populus davidiana × P. bolleana) responding to drought stress, a three-layered GRN was built, and the regulatory relationship between genes in the GRN were predicted from expression correlation using a partial correlation coefficient-based algorithm. The GRN contains 1869 regulatory relationships, and includes 11 and 19 transcription factors (TFs) in the first and second layers, respectively, and 158 structural genes in the bottom layers involved in eight enriched biological processes. ChIP-PCR and qRT-PCR based on transient transformation were performed to validate the reliability of the GRN. About 88.0% of predicted interactions between the first and second layers, and 82.0% of predicted interactions between the second and third layers were correct, suggesting that the GRN is reliable. Six TFs were randomly selected from the top layer for characterizing their function in drought, and all of these TFs can confer drought tolerance. The important biological processes related to drought tolerance were identified, including “response to jasmonic acid”, “response to oxidative stress”, and “response to osmotic stress”. In this GRN, PdbERF3 is predicted to play an important role in drought tolerance. Our data revealed the key regulators, TF-DNA interactions, and the main biological processes involved in adaption of drought stress in Shanxin poplar.
Microwave transition radiation in solar flares and in astrophysics

We consider the role of transition radiation in astrophysical sources of radio emission. The principal results of the theory of transition radiation by relativistic particles in a magnetoactive turbulent plasma are presented. Such plasmas are frequently encountered in astrophysical conditions, particularly in solar flares. We show that transition radiation in solar flares is generated most effectively in the frequency range f∼(0.5-10) GHz with fluxes possibly exceeding 1000 solar flux units. We show that transition radiation can be the main radiation mechanism in both weak and strong solar flares at certain frequency bands in dense (ω Be ω p ) plasmas
Combining Fractional Derivatives and Machine Learning: A Review

Fractional calculus has gained a lot of attention in the last couple of years. Researchers have discovered that processes in various fields follow fractional dynamics rather than ordinary integer-ordered dynamics, meaning that the corresponding differential equations feature non-integer valued derivatives. There are several arguments for why this is the case, one of which is that fractional derivatives inherit spatiotemporal memory and/or the ability to express complex naturally occurring phenomena. Another popular topic nowadays is machine learning, i.e., learning behavior and patterns from historical data. In our ever-changing world with ever-increasing amounts of data, machine learning is a powerful tool for data analysis, problem-solving, modeling, and prediction. It has provided many further insights and discoveries in various scientific disciplines. As these two modern-day topics hold a lot of potential for combined approaches in terms of describing complex dynamics, this article review combines approaches from fractional derivatives and machine learning from the past, puts them into context, and thus provides a list of possible combined approaches and the corresponding techniques. Note, however, that this article does not deal with neural networks, as there is already extensive literature on neural networks and fractional calculus. We sorted past combined approaches from the literature into three categories, i.e., preprocessing, machine learning and fractional dynamics, and optimization. The contributions of fractional derivatives to machine learning are manifold as they provide powerful preprocessing and feature augmentation techniques, can improve physically informed machine learning, and are capable of improving hyperparameter optimization. Thus, this article serves to motivate researchers dealing with data-based problems, to be specific machine learning practitioners, to adopt new tools, and enhance their existing approaches.
The Effect of Low Positive Temperatures on the Formation of Secondary Metabolites in Rhodiola quadrifida (Pall.) Fisch. et C.A. Mey. In Vitro Cultures

Global warming is one of the most serious problems leading to changes in the distribution areas of species and biodiversity. Rhodiola quadrifida is a rare plant with adaptogenic properties and grows in the highlands in a narrow temperature range of 2–15 °C. The aim of our work was to study the growth and content of the main metabolites in two in vitro cultures of Rhodiola quadrifida at temperatures of 5, 15 and 25 °C. Hairy roots and calli were cultivated on agar medium for 28 days. The maximum values of the growth index were observed at 25 °C (2.32 and 2.12 for calli and hairy roots, respectively). HPLC-MS showed the absence of tyrosol and rosarin in both cultures, and rosin in the root culture. The content of salidroside changed slightly in calli and roots. Cultivation at 5 °C significantly stimulated the formation of rosin in calli. Only a residual amount of rosavin was noted in the roots, regardless of temperature. The content of rosin was higher in calli at 15 °C with a maximum content at the end of the cultivation cycle 25 µg/g DW. Thus, Rhodiola quadrifida will be able to grow with an increase in temperature by 10 °C but this will be accompanied by a significant reduction in its medicinal value
New intensity-hue-saturation pan-sharpening method based on texture analysis and genetic algorithm-adaption

Abstract Pansharpening aims to fuse a low-resolution multispectral image with a high-resolution panchromatic image to create a multispectral image with high spatial and spectral resolution. The intensity-hue-saturation (IHS) fusion method transforms an image from RGB space to IHS space. This paper reports a method to improve the spectral resolution of a final multispectral image. The proposed method implies two modifications on the basic IHS method to improve the sharpness of the final image. First, the paper proposes a method based on a genetic algorithm to find the weight of each band of multispectral image in the fusion process. Later on, a texture-based technique is proposed to save the spectral information of the final image with respect to the texture boundaries. Spectral quality metrics in terms of SAM, SID, Q-average, RASE, RMSE, CC, ERGAS and UIQI are used in our experiments. Experimental results on IKONOS and QuickBird data show that the proposed method is more efficient than the original IHS-based fusion approach and some of its extensions, such as IKONOS IHS, edge-adaptive IHS and explicit band coefficient IHS, in preserving spectral information of multispectral images.
Sex- and Age-Dependent Changes in the Adiponectin/Leptin Ratio in Experimental Diet-Induced Obesity in Mice

Biological sex and aging impact obesity development and type 2 diabetes, changing the secretion of leptin and adiponectin. The balance between these factors has been propounded as a reliable biomarker of adipose tissue dysfunction. Our proposal was to study sexual differences and aging on the adiponectin/leptin (Adpn/Lep) ratio in order to acquire a broader view of the impact of consuming an high-fat diet (HFD) on energy metabolism according to sex and age. Male and female C57BL/6J mice were fed a normal chow diet or an HFD for 12 or 32 weeks (n = 7–10 per group) and evolution of body weight, food intake and metabolic profile were registered. The HFD triggered an increase in body weight (p < 0.001), body weight gain (p < 0.01) and adiposity index (p < 0.01) in both sexes at 32 weeks of age, but female mice fed the HFD exhibited these changes to a significantly lower extent than males. Aged female mice showed an increase (p < 0.01) in the Adpn/Lep ratio, which was negatively correlated with body weight gain, changes in different fat depots and insulin resistance. Females were more metabolically protected from obesity development and its related comorbidities than males regardless of age, making the Adpn/Lep ratio a relevant factor for body composition and glucose metabolism.
Mobile Payment Application and Rural Household Consumption—Evidence from China Household Finance Survey

How to release rural consumption potential is currently of great significance for the sustainable economic growth of the developing world. Using representative survey data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this paper studied the impacts of mobile payments on rural household consumption and its mechanisms. This study constructed instrumental variables from the perspective of induced demand for mobile payments to overcome the endogeneity problem and found that the application of mobile payments significantly promoted rural household consumption by 29.8–52.3%. Mechanism analysis indicated that mobile payments could ease liquidity constraints, enrich consumption choice, and improve payment convenience for rural households, which are the main channels behind the above finding. Heterogeneous analysis showed that the impact of mobile payments on household consumption of the elderly and less educated was relatively higher. Moreover, this study found that mobile payments are conducive to promoting the consumption upgrading of rural households by significantly improving their enjoyment consumption. In addition, although it encourages rural households to consume more online and mobile payment methods, it does not crowd out the effect of rural households’ offline consumption. The findings of this paper provide new insight into the role of technical progress in promoting total consumption and consumption upgrading in rural areas.
Discrete Inverse Problems: Insight and Algorithms

Inverse problems arise when we reconstruct a sharper image from a blurred one or reconstruct the underground mass density from measurements of the gravity above the ground. When we solve an inverse problem, we compute the source that gives rise to some observed data using a mathematical model for the relation between the source and the data. This book gives an introduction to the practical treatment of inverse problems by means of numerical methods, with a focus on basic mathematical and computational aspects. To solve inverse problems, we demonstrate that insight about them goes hand in hand with algorithms. Discrete Inverse Problems: Insight and Algorithms includes a number of tutorial exercises that give the reader hands-on experience with the methods, difficulties, and challenges associated with the treatment of inverse problems. It also includes examples and figures that illustrate the theory and algorithms. Audience: This book is written for graduate students, researchers, and professionals in engineering and other areas that depend on solving inverse problems with noisy data. The aim is to provide readers with enough background that they can solve simple inverse problems and read more advanced literature on the subject. Contents: Preface; List of Symbols; Chapter 1: Introduction and Motivation; Chapter 2: Meet the Fredholm Integral Equation of the First Kind; Chapter 3: Getting to Business: Discretizations of Linear Inverse Problems; Chapter 4: Computational Aspects: Regularization Methods; Chapter 5: Getting Serious: Choosing the Regularization Parameter; Chapter 6: Toward Real-World Problems: Iterative Regularization; Chapter 7: Regularization Methods at Work: Solving Real Problems; Chapter 8: Beyond the 2-Norm: The Use of Discrete Smoothing Norms; Appendix A: Linear Algebra Stuff; Appendix B: Symmetric Toeplitz-Plus-Hankel Matrices and the DCT; Appendix C: Early Work on Tikhonov Regularization ; Bibliography; Index
Grid Refinement for Lattice-BGK Models

Lattice? Boltzmann models, proposed at the end of the 1980s as the noise-free version of lattice? gas models, are based on gas-kinetic representation of fluid flow. Their recent modifications, the lattice BGK models, provide especially simple, effective and stable algorithms for the solution of hydrodynamical problems. A local second-order grid refinement scheme for the lattice? BGK model is proposed in this work. The refinement scheme and a boundary-fitting scheme for complicated geometries are applied to simulate a benchmark problem of flow past a cylinder in a channel with small and moderate Reynolds numbers.
Pathological complete response in multimodal treatment of esophageal cancer: a retrospective cohort study

Summary To evaluate pathological complete response (pCR, ypT0ypN0) after neoadjuvant treatment compared with non-complete response (non-CR) in patients with esophageal cancer (EC), and 393 patients were retrospectively analyzed. Survival probability was analyzed in patients with: (i) pCR vs non-CR; (ii) complete response of the primary tumor but persisting lymphatic metastases (non-CR-T0N+) and (iii) pCR and tumor-free lymphnodes exhibiting signs of postneoadjuvant regression vs. no signs of regression. (i) Median overall survival (mOS) was favorable in patients with pCR (pCR: mOS not reached vs. non-CR: 41 months, P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed that grade of regression was not an independent predictor for prolonged survival. Instead, the achieved postneoadjuvant TNM-stage (T-stage: Hazard ratio [HR] ypT3-T4 vs. ypT0-T2: 1.837; N-stage: HR ypN1-N3 vs. ypN0: 2.046; Postneoadjuvant M-stage: HR ypM1 vs. ycM0: 2.709), the residual tumor (R)-classification (HR R1 vs. R0: 4.195) and the histologic subtype of EC (HR ESCC vs. EAC: 1.688) were prognostic factors. Patients with non-CR-T0N+ have a devastating prognosis, similar to those with local non-CR and lymphatic metastases (non-CR-T + N+) (non-CR-T0N+: 22.0 months, non-CR-T + N-: mOS not reached, non-CR-T + N+: 23.0 months; P-values: non-CR-T0N+ vs. non-CR-T + N-: 0.016; non-CR-T0N+ vs. non-CR-T + N+: 0.956; non-CR-T + N- vs. non-CR-T + N+: <0.001). Regressive changes in lymphnodes after neoadjuvant treatment did not influence survival-probability in patients with pCR (mOS not reached in each group; EAC-patients: P = 0.0919; ESCC-patients: P = 0.828). Particularly, the achieved postneoadjuvant ypTNM-stage influences the survival probability of patients with EC. Patients with non-CR-T0N+ have a dismal prognosis, and only true pathological complete response with ypT0ypN0 offers superior survival probabilities.