Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of C IV Absorption Lines from Clouds at High Redshifts

From a theoretical study of published QSO spectra, it is concluded that the Lyman-alpha forest lines and the most prevalent metal-line systems (those optically thin at the Lyman limit) arise in very different absorber populations. It is found for these systems that the observed increase with redshift of the C IV 1548, 1550A doublet ratio can be explained as being due to slowly changing metagalactic ionization conditions; there is no need to invoke any cosmic chemical evolution. No correlation is found between equivalent widths of Ly-alpha and C IV lines having the same absorption redshift, and consequently it is suggested that these C IV absorption-line systems arise in clouds strongly ionized by OB stars, presumably in young galaxies. The possibility that the clouds, which are known to exhibit clustering on a velocity scale of few hundred km/s, are protoglobular clusters is explored in some detail. 85 refs.
Optimum Phase Count in a 5.4-W Multiphase Buck Converter Based on Output Filter Component Energies

This article presents an analysis of low-power, multiphase interleaved buck converters to illustrate the extent to which adding more phases is beneficial for reducing the passive components’ sizes. The analysis focuses on a typical converter application with a wide operating duty cycle range and requires good load transient. It is shown that by restricting the phase current ripple, the theoretical reduction in total inductor peak energy predicted for increased phase numbers is limited. The article assesses the benefit of inductor coupling and presents guidelines for coupling factor selection to avoid steady-state inductance roll-off over the wide input voltage range. Standard printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing design rules are shown to place a practical phase count limit considering the reduction in total inductor size. PCB integrated, air-core solenoid and spiral inductors are implemented in both single- and two-phase 5.4 W, 20 MHz buck converter prototypes. When compared with single-phase designs, two-phase spiral inductors are 44% smaller, and the two-phase solenoid has a 54% lower loss. The two-phase prototype converter achieves better overall efficiency and peaks at almost 90% at VIN = 4.5 V, VOUT = 1.8 V, and FSW = 20 MHz.
The text complexity of local government annual reports

ABSTRACT This study explores the factors that contribute to the text complexity of local government communication and whether text complexity varies with governments’ financial performance. We first identify factors associated with text complexity, including the local government’s size, external monitoring, organisational complexity, and financial complexity. We then explore if text complexity varies with the financial performance of local governments. We find that the annual reports of poor-performing governments are less understandable, but that performance is not related to the amount of information content. Our findings contribute to research on local government communication, accountability, and transparency and have practical implications for those who interact with local governments through government documents.
A systematic mapping study: The new age of software architecture from monolithic to microservice architecture—awareness and challenges

Microservice architecture (MSA) is an emerging architectural style as an innovative approach that is growing in quality over time. Microservices are endorsed by various researchers to shatter the issues and limitations encountered by the use of aging approaches for monolithic legacy architecture styles. Nonetheless, there exists no state of the research exhaustive study on migration to MSA from monolithic architecture. MSA has made the need to design the development methods of software and styles of architectures that satisfy these demands. The design of software architecture is the ongoing rise of MSA to address the independent deployment, scalability, and maintenance requirements. In this article, a systematic mapping study (SMS) was performed, including the literature on the migration approaches published between 2010 and 2021 to evaluate the contemporary state of the art and practice of software architecting. This study outlines the awareness and importance of MSA. Seventy‐three studies were finally selected in this SMS. The following perspectives of this study are publication trends, main venues, the focus of research, migration approaches, migration challenges, successful factors after migration, and the potential for industrial adoption. We synthesize the data and give a summary of the state of the art. This study also provides future research directions and applications for adopting microservices.
Delineating Purinergic Signaling in Drosophila

Simplistic models can aid in discovering what is important in the context of normal and pathological behavior. First recognized as a genetic model more than 100 years ago, to date, fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) still remain an astonishingly good laboratory stand-in for scientists to study development and physiology and to investigate the molecular mechanisms of human diseases. This is because fruit flies indeed represent a simplistic model. Furthermore, about 75% of human disease-related genes have their counterparts in the Drosophila genome, added to the fact that fruit flies are inexpensive and extremely easy to maintain, being invertebrates and, moreover, lacking any ethical concern issues. Purinergic signaling is, by definition, mediated by extracellular purinergic ligands, among which ATP represents the prototype molecule. A key feature that has progressively emerged when dissecting the purinergic mechanisms is the multilayer and dynamic nature of the signaling sustained by purinergic ligands. Indeed, these last are sequentially metabolized by several different ectonucleotidases, which generate the ligands that simultaneously activate several different purinergic receptors. Since significant purinergic actions have also been described in Drosophila, the aim of the present work is to provide a comprehensive picture of the purinergic events occurring in fruit flies.
Brazil’s Bolsa Família: Neighborhood and Racial Group Networks

Abstract Are families that live in the same neighborhood and share similar characteristics more likely to participate in welfare programs? Using a unique administrative data set, we study beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família – a Brazilian cash transfer program – from 2013 to 2015. We analyze data containing information on the living conditions of the most vulnerable families, such as income, household characteristics, schooling, and disability. An eight-digit zip code defines a neighborhood. Families form a network if they live in the same neighborhood and belong to the same racial group. We provide evidence that place of residence and racial group networks are important determinants of the family participation in the program. Individuals in a neighborhood-racial group network are more likely to to participate in the Bolsa Família than not to participate. In areas where program coverage is low, families of the same racial composition and zip code are more likely to be beneficiaries. For a given neighborhood-racial group network, the presence of one additional beneficiary implies that the probability that a non-beneficiary family will become a beneficiary is, on average, 6.5% higher than otherwise. We conduct several robustness checks, e.g., controlling for network density and coverage.
Estimating Households’ Expenditures on Disability in Africa: The Uses and Limitations of the Standard of Living Method

People with disabilities face extra costs of living to participate in the social and economic lives of their communities on an equal basis with people without disabilities. If these extra costs are not accounted for, then their economic wellbeing will be overestimated. The Standard of Living (SOL) method is a way of generating these estimates and is thus useful for determining the economic impact of those costs in the current environment. However, previous studies have used different indicators for disability and different measures of the standard of living, so it is hard to compare estimates across different countries. This study applies a consistent set of indicators across seven African countries to produce comparable estimates. Our estimates of the extra costs of living in these lower-income countries are much lower than the results produced for higher-income countries in prior work. We argue that this finding highlights the limitations of the SOL method as a useful source of information for developing inclusive systems of social protection in lower-income countries because it captures what households spend but not what the person with a disability needs to fully participate in the social and economic lives of their community. In lower-income countries, people with disabilities are likely to have fewer opportunities to spend on needed items thus resulting in substantial unmet need for disability-related goods and services. Failing to account for these unmet needs can lead to inadequate systems of social protection if they are based solely on SOL estimates.
Electromagnetic radiation mixer based on electron heating in resistive state of superconductive Nb and YBaCuO films

A theory of an electron-heating mixer which makes it possible to calculate all the characteristics of the device is developed. It is shown that positive conversion gain is possible for such a mixer in the millimeter to near-infrared wavelength range. The dynamic range and the optimum heterodyne power can be selected from a very wide interval by varying the mixing element volume. Measurements made for Nb within the frequency range of 120-750 GHz confirm the theory. The conversion loss obtained at T=1.6 K and normalized to the element reaches 0.3 dB in the intermediate frequency band of 40 MHz; the possible noise temperature is 50 K. The estimation of noise temperature and output band for YBaCuO at T=77 yields 200 K and more than 10 GHz, respectively.
“You can get clarity that other students may feel the same way you do”: exploring students’ decision-making around and motivations for engaging in evaluative talk about instructors

ABSTRACT This multimethod study was conducted to explore students’ decision-making to approach or avoid interactions with peers about instructors and investigate motivations for instructional dissent. Participants (N = 124 college students) responded to measures of instructional dissent behavior and motivations for social gossip, then responded to an open-ended question about the risks and benefits of talking about instructors with other students. Quantitative results indicated that expressive and vengeful dissent were related to the following motives for gossiping about instructors: information gathering and validation, group protection, negative influence and social enjoyment. Regression analyses revealed negative influence and group protection account for unique variance in expressive dissent, while social enjoyment and negative influence account for unique variance in vengeful dissent. Qualitative results suggest students’ decision-making to engage in interactions with other students about instructors is informed by concerns for self and others, and reflects social motivations for gossip. The implications of these findings on instructor and student communication are discussed.
Fixed-Time Synchronization of Coupled Oscillator Networks with a Pacemaker

This paper investigates the fixed-time synchronization problem of a Kuramoto–oscillator network in the presence of a pacemaker. Based on the framework of the cyber-physical system (CPS), fixed-time synchronization criteria of such network are presented respectively for identical and non-identical oscillators. In virtue of Lyapunov stability analyses, sufficient conditions are deduced for achieving phase agreement and frequency synchronization for arbitrary initial phases and/or frequencies under distributed control strategies. Theoretical analysis shows that synchronization can be achieved in a fixed time, which is unrelated to initial phases/frequencies. Furthermore, the upper bounds of synchronization time are also obtained. Finally, the numerical simulations also verify the effectiveness of the derived results.
Prediction of DNA Binding Sites Bound to Specific Transcription Factors by the SVM Algorithm

In gene regulation, transcription factors (TFs) play a key function. It transmits genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA during the process of DNA transcription. During this step, the transcription factor binds to a segment of the DNA sequence known as Transcription Factor Binding Sites (TFBS). The goal of this study is to build a model that predicts whether or not a DNA binding site attaches to a certain transcription factor (TF). TFs are regulatory molecules that bind to particular sequence motifs in the gene to induce or restrict targeted gene transcription. Two classification methods will be used, which are support vector machine (SVM) and kernel logistic regression (KLR). Moreover, the KLR algorithm depends on another regression algorithm, namely kernel ridge regression (KRR). Discovering binding sites for a transcription factor can help determine genes which it regulates, analyze its functions, comprehend regulation in living organisms, recognize causal disease variations, and, most importantly, manufacture pharmaceutical drugs.
Crocin inhibits KBTBD7 to prevent excessive inflammation and cardiac dysfunction following myocardial infarction.

Myocardial infarction (MI) refers to myocardial ischemic necrosis that is caused by coronary artery disease. Notably, crocin has protective effects on the heart. The present study aimed to i) investigate the protective effect of crocin, an active ingredient in Gardenia jasminoides Ellis and Crocus sativus L. , on myocardial ischemia and ii) to verify the interaction between crocin and kelch repeat and BTB domain‑containing protein 7 (KBTBD7), which is a novel member of the BTB‑kelch protein family. In the present study, the left anterior descending coronary artery was ligated to establish a myocardial ischemia‑reperfusion injury (MIRI) model in rats and the protective effect of crocin on rat myocardial tissue was observed. The levels of the inflammatory cytokines, interleukin (IL)‑1β, IL‑6 and tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), in the sham, MI model, MI + crocin (100 mg/kg) and MI + crocin (200 mg/kg) groups were compared in the rat myocardial tissue. The TUNEL assay was used to detect apoptosis of myocardial cells. In addition, RAW264.7 cells were stimulated with the inflammatory factors recombinant mouse high mobility group box 1 (rmHMGB1) and recombinant mouse heat shock protein 60 (rmHSP60). The inhibitory effect of crocin on inflammatory cytokine levels was observed using ELISA. Western blotting was used to detect the inhibitory effect of crocin on KBTBD7. The inhibitory effect of KBTBD7 knockdown on MAPK and nuclear factor (NF)‑κB signaling pathways was also analyzed. The expression levels of IL‑1β, IL‑6 and TNFα were significantly decreased in the crocin‑treated groups compared with in the model group. Crocin significantly reduced the apoptosis of myocardial cells and significantly inhibited the release of inflammatory cytokines induced by rmHMGB1 and rmHSP60. KBTBD7 was determined to be a target of crocin. Knockdown of KBTBD7 significantly inhibited p38 and NF‑κB signaling pathways. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that KBTBD7 knockdown significantly reduced the production of inflammatory cytokines induced by rmHMGB1 and rmHSP60. KBTBD7 knockdown also significantly reduced p38 and NF‑κB signaling in the rmHMGB1‑ and rmHSP60‑treated groups. The present study demonstrated the potential protective effect of crocin on MIRI in rats. The underlying mechanism may be through direct inhibition of KBTBD7, thereby inhibiting excessive inflammatory responses and myocardial cell apoptosis following myocardial infarction.
Free‐electron laser with electrostatic wiggler

A new free‐electron laser (FEL) scheme, using a periodic electrostatic field superposed on an electrostatic centrifugal system, is presented. By means of linear fluid theory, the Raman FEL dispersion equation is derived. We show that there is a new FEL instability near the electron transverse resonance besides the usual one near the beam resonance. The operating conditions, emission frequencies, and maximum growth rates of these two kinds of instabilities are obtained analytically. It is found that these results are in quite good agreement with numerical solutions of the dispersion equation.
A 1-ps Bin Size 4.87-ps Resolution FPGA Time-to-Digital Converter Based on Phase Wrapping Sorting and Selection

A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) high-resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) based on phase-wrapping, sorting, and selection to achieve an extremely fine bin size of 1 ps is proposed in this paper. Based on Nutt interpolation method, a wide measurement range with a high resolution can be realized at the same time. The input signal is fed into tapped delay lines (TDL) with regularized and automated cell placements to generate a multitude of delayed signals with plenty of regularized phase shifts. Due to periodicity, those phase shifts will be equivalently wrapped within a reference clock period and then phase sorting, ROM-based selection are applied to construct a merged TDL with uniform phase division across the reference clock period. The FPGA TDC was implemented successfully on both Altera Stratix IV to achieve a resolution as fine as 1ps with a measurement range of 1s. The short-range integral non-linearity errors (INL) are measured as −1.470– 1.676 LSB for Stratix IV to demonstrate its excellent linearity.
α-Ag2Se as a Degenerate Semiconductor

The electron concentration n in α Ag 2 Se (high temperature phase) is varied from 0.6 to 6×10 19 cm -3 by sending a current across the galvanic cell Ag | AgI | Ag 2 Se specimen | Pt. The electron gas in the specimen is fairly highly degenerate. The surface potential V , the electrical conductivity σ, the Hall coefficient R , the thermoelectric power \(\varTheta\), the Nernst coefficient Q , other transport coefficients, and the magnetic susceptibility, etc. are measured as functions of the electromotive force E of the cell, as n is varied. The fact that d V / d E is nearly unity shows that E represents the relative height of the Fermi level. We notice the discrepancies between \(\varTheta e/k\) and \(\frac{1}{3}\pi^{2}\partial\log\sigma/\partial(eE/kT)\) and between Q e / k and \(\frac{1}{3}\pi^{2}\partial(R\sigma)/\partial(eE/kT)\) which suggest that the conduction band is not rigid. Taking these discrepancies into consideration, the experimental data are analized with the formal theory of the degenerate.
Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Resource Allocation in Multi-UAV-Aided MEC Networks

Resource allocation for mobile edge computing (MEC) in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks has been a popular research issue. Different from existing works, this paper considers a multi-UAV-aided uplink communication scenario and investigates a resource allocation problem of minimizing the total system latency and the energy consumption, subject to constraints on transmit power of mobile users (MUs), system latency caused by transmission and computation. The problem is confirmed to be a challenging time-series mixed-integer non-convex programming problem, and we propose a joint UAV Movement control, MU Association and MU Power control (UMAP) algorithm to solve it effectively, where three sub-problems are optimized iteratively. Specifically, UAV movement and MU association are optimized utilizing deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to decrease the energy consumption and system latency. Next, a closed-form solution of the MU transmit power is derived. Finally, simulation results show that the UMAP algorithm can significantly decrease the system latency and energy consumption and increase the coverage rate compared with benchmark algorithms.
Diseño de un sistema de control de inventario de una tienda de juguetes

El objetivo de este artículo fue diseñar un sistema de control de inventario de una tienda de juguetes de la ciudad de Puyo, Ecuador. Entre noviembre de 2018 y febrero de 2019, se realizó una etapa de caracterización de la situación real de la gestión de inventario en la empresa y otra etapa de diseño del sistema de inventario. Para el análisis y diseño del sistema de gestión de inventario de la juguetería se combinaron dos procedimientos, uno no relacionado con la caracterización del sistema de inventario existente y otro relacionado con la planificación del inventario. Se encontró que en la empresa mercadería no se encuentra codificada, que no cuenta con un sistema de almacenamiento que facilite su organización y no se pudo identificar el stock del que se disponía. Además, se determinaron los parámetros de inventario como base para el diseño del sistema automatizado. A partir de una adecuada gestión de inventario, se garantizará un abastecimiento oportuno de los productos de venta y la minimización del costo total de las actividades logísticas en el control de inventario, lo que asegurará mayor rentabilidad y mejor atención al cliente.
The thickness of the magnetosheath: Constraints on the polytropic index

A statistical analysis of 351 independent bow shock crossings and 233 independent magnetopause crossings by the ISEE-1 spacecraft from 1977 to 1980 was performed to determine the average positions and shapes of the bow shock and magnetopause. The standoff distance between the magnetopause and the bow shock depends on the compressibility of the plasma which in the polytropic' approximation is related to the ratio of specific heats, {gamma}. Standoff distances for the bow shock and magnetopause were found to be 13.7 R{sub E} ({plus minus} 0.2 R{sub E}) and 10.3 R{sub E} ({plus minus} 0.3 R{sub E}), respectively. These distances are smaller than those observed during earlier epochs. The observed thickness of the magnetosheath is that expected for the compression of a gas whose polytropic index, {gamma}, is 1.76 {plus minus} 0.15. This value, representative of the entire magnetosheath, is consistent with the value of 1.67 deduced from the behavior of the plasma across individual shock transitions. A value of 1.67 is expected for an adiabatic process in a collisional, monatomic gas with three degrees of freedom with lower values for non-adiabatic processes and higher values for anisotropic heating at the shock. The observed value of 1.76 indicates that heatmore » flux does not much affect the position of the shock while the downstream anisotropy may have a small effect. « less