Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Science courses in the online environment: A needs assessment of instructor attitudes that affect the design process

The purpose of this study was to identify the attitudes of college and university science instructors regarding the online delivery of science courses as part of the needs assessment process. Instructor attitudes regarding science courses were examined in three areas: curriculum, instructional design of the course, and the laboratory component. A quantitative research methodology was followed to identify the attitudes of science instructors regarding the online delivery of general introductory science courses as part of the needs assessment process. The study utilized descriptive research to identify common patterns in the attitudes of science instructors. An online survey questionnaire (STOIC) was developed and administered to 103 science instructors currently teaching in one of the four science disciplines (biology, chemistry, geology, or physics) at a public community college or university. Pearson chi square test of independence was performed using the four different science disciplines as variables. The results of the study showed no significant relationship between the science disciplines and the attitudes of instructors regarding the online delivery of science courses in the areas of curriculum, instructional design, or the laboratory component. It was also found that no significant relationship existed between the science disciplines and the instructor acceptance of science courses offered online for non-science majors. The study concluded that science instructors in all four science disciplines were unified in their opinions regarding the laboratory component of an online science course. The majority believe that the laboratory component should be conducted on campus in a live setting as opposed to alternative scenarios, such as simulations or in the student’s home. Science instructors do not perceive a science course designed for online delivery to be capable of including the same instructional design components utilized in a science course delivered live in the classroom. For the field of instructional design, the implications are that college and university science instructors are unified in their attitudes regarding science courses designed for online delivery and they are resistant in the acceptance of these courses.
Oceanic turbulence from a planktonic perspective

The potential influences of turbulence on planktonic processes such as nutrient uptake, grazing, predation, infection, and mating have been explored in hundreds of laboratory and theoretical studies. However, the turbulence levels used may not represent those experienced by oceanic plankton, bringing into question their relevance for understanding planktonic dynamics in the ocean. Here, we take a data‐centric approach to understand the turbulence climate experienced by plankton in the ocean, analyzing over one million turbulence measurements acquired in the open ocean. Median dissipation rates in the upper 100 m were < 10−8 W kg−1, with 99% of the observations < 10−6 W kg−1. Below mixed layers, the median dissipation rate was ~ 10−10 W kg−1, with 99% of the observations < 10−7 W kg−1. Even in strongly mixing layers the median dissipation rates rarely reached 10−5 W kg−1, decreasing by orders of magnitude over 10 m or less in depth. Furthermore, episodes of intense turbulence were transient, transitioning to background levels within 10 min or less. We define three turbulence conditions in the ocean: weak (< 10−8 W kg−1), moderate (10−8–10−6 W kg−1), and strong (> 10−6 W kg−1). Even the strongest of these is much weaker than those used in most laboratory experiments. The most frequent turbulence levels found in this study are weak enough for most plankton—including small protists—to outswim them, and to allow chemical plumes and trails to persist for tens of minutes. Our analyses underscore the primary importance of planktonic behavior in driving individual interactions.
Clinical miscarriage from the perspective of multifaceted contexts of procreative loss

The phenomenon of clinical miscarriage sparks increasing interest of researchers from non-medical disciplines. Although there is still a significant disproportion between the voluminous literature on spontaneous miscarriage from a medical perspective compared to the growing number of studies conducted in the social and philosophical sciences, the process of changing the research orientation of early procreative losses is gradually progressing. The hitherto dominant one-sided biomedical approach is giving way to holistic axiomedical approaches. This study contributes to the axiomedical model of clinical miscarriage. It aims to provide an in-depth analysis of four key contexts of procreative loss occurring at early stages of prenatal development - anthropological, relational (parental attachment), psychological and supportive. As a result of the research conducted, it is concluded that the main dominant characteristic of clinical miscarriage as a thanatic event is the level of anthropological settlements regarding the status of the foetus and its ethical implications.
Discussion: some results from wave pulse experiments

Figures 1 to 3 represent a condensed account of some wave pulse experiments carried out in a long tank equipped with a wavemaker. The object of the experiments was to observe the effects of finite amplitude on the shape and frequency distribution of wave pulses propagated on deep water. Each pulse was generated by varying the wavemaker stroke smoothly from an amplitude of zero to some maximum value and back down to zero again. The resulting surface displacement was then recorded electrically at various positions along the centreline of the wave tank. The wavemaker frequency was 2·5 c/s throughout (corresponding to a regular wavelength of about 10in.). The pulse periods, which were selected to represent rapid and slow rates of modulation, were 12½ and 25 wavemaker periods.
Intercept time and its prediction

Intercept time is a key factor in the performance of electronic warfare (EW) surveillance and reconnaissance equipments. Interception relates to the probability of time coincidence of two or more parametric windows; scanning antennas, sweeping or stepping receivers and frequency-agile emitters give examples of such windows, where alignment or coincidence is required before detection can occur. Formulas summarised in the paper give a representative basis to the calculation of intercept time statistics, as well as allowing the duration of an intercept to be evaluated. Predicted results from computer modelling indicate that these new formulas give a much better representation of the intercept problem than that given in previous studies.
Artifacts Associated with Measuring Cardiac Electrical Currents in a Post-mortem Pig Using Current Density Imaging

0c ABSTRACT: After 50 years of clinical use of external defibrillation of the heart, current flow through the torso remains poorly understood. We urrent flow in the torso of a post-mortem pig using current density imaging (CDI). CDI maps magnetic fields, produced by externally applied current, onto MRI phase images. CDI measurements were made by passing current through the tissue via defibrillation electrodes. Results of this experiment are presented followed with a discussion of artifacts associated with the CDI technique. Artifacts include nonlinear gradient image distortion, susceptibility, RF shielding, registration, high phase gradients and phase unwrapping. investigated c
Multiband double‐folded PIFA design for mobile applications

A compact size (15 × 40 mm2) microstrip‐fed printed planar inverted‐F antenna (PIFA) for mobile applications operating in the GSM/DCS/PCS/UMTS/WLAN and WiMAX bands is proposed. The main structure of this antenna is simply a double‐folded PIFA with two wide open‐ended radiating sections. By tuning the dimensions of the shorter open‐ended section, optimum impedance matching can be achieved, while additional slits loaded to the longer open‐end section are for the inclusion of universal mobile telecommunications system band. To allow shifting of the higher frequencies modes so that a wide impedance bandwidth from 5 to 6 GHz can be achieved, the technique of adjusting the position of the shorting post horizontally along the ground plane is also introduced. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:2952–2960, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26429
MONITORING OF ANTIBIOTIC RESIDUE IN RAW AND PASTEURISED MILK IN EAST AZERBAIJAN OF IRAN BY DELVOTEST METHOD

Despite of beneficial effects of antibiotics in treatments of infectious diseases, antibiotic residues in milk, meat and their products can cause serious side effects for human health. The objective of this study was to monitor antibiotics residues in raw and pasteurised milk produced in Eastern Azerbaijan province of Iran. For this purpose, 10 industrial dairy farms as well as 10 local milk collection centers and 6 dairy processing plants were randomly selected. Raw milk samples were collected in 5 and pasteurised milk samples in 10 replications. Residual antibiotic of milk samples were monitored by Delvotest (version SP) kits. The results showed that 26% of raw milk samples collected from industrial dairies and 16% of raw milk of collection centers showed detectible antibiotic residues. In addition, 30% of pasteurised milk samples showed positive Delvotest results. Concluding, the antibiotic residue in milk and dairy products has to be monitored as routine test due to their side effects on human health.
CMOS integrated luminescence oxygen multi-sensor system

A miniaturised luminescence multi-sensor system is reported, which combines addressable micro-light emitting diodes (LEDs) for optical excitation, sol-gel derived xerogel recognition elements for encapsulation of luminophores, and a CMOS integrated circuit for photodetection and signal processing. As a prototype, three surface-mount type micro-LEDs coated with oxygen (O 2 ) sensitive xerogel thin films are presented. Each xerogel sensor operates satisfactorily over the entire range of O 2 concentrations but has a different sensitivity and response profile to O 2 . The described integrated system establishes the viability for low-cost and low-power biochemical sensor systems with improved accuracy and certainty
Illuminating the Persistence and Departures of Previously Disadvantaged Students at an Engineering Faculty

The low success rate of many students from previously disadvantaged groups endangers the face and fate of many tertiary institutions, hence an Engineering Faculty’s explorations into the causes of these students’ persistence at and departures from the Faculty. By using the theory of acculturation and agency the research group explored students’ opportunity of freedom towards self-actualisation. Three sample groups were used and the noteworthy findings of the persistence groups’ questionnaire and the focus group findings were explored. The data suggest that the previously disadvantaged students experience a general sense of isolation and physical segregation.
Volatile Fatty Acids (VFA) Production from Wastewaters with High Salinity—Influence of pH, Salinity and Reactor Configuration

The hydrocarbon-based economy is moving at a large pace to a decarbonized sustainable bioeconomy based on biorefining all types of secondary carbohydrate-based raw materials. In this work, 50 g L−1 in COD of a mixture of food waste, brine and wastewater derived from a biodiesel production facility were used to produce organic acids, important building-blocks for a biobased industry. High salinity (12–18 g L−1), different reactors configuration operated in batch mode, and different initial pH were tested. In experiment I, a batch stirred reactor (BSR) at atmospheric pressure and a granular sludge bed column (GSBC) were tested with an initial pH of 5. In the end of the experiment, the acidification yield (ηa) was similar in both reactors (22–24%, w/w); nevertheless, lactic acid was in lower concentrations in BSR (6.3 g L−1 in COD), when compared to GSBC (8.0 g L−1 in COD), and valeric was the dominant acid, reaching 17.3% (w/w) in the BSR. In experiment II, the BSR and a pressurized batch stirred reactor (PBSR, operated at 6 bar) were tested with initial pH 7. The ηa and the VFA concentration were higher in the BSR (46%, 22.8 g L−1 in COD) than in the PBSR (41%, 20.3 g/L in COD), and longer chain acids were more predominant in BSR (24.4% butyric, 6.7% valeric, and 6.2% caproic acids) than in PBSR (23.2%, 6.2%, and 4.2%, respectively). The results show that initial pH of 7 allows achieving higher ηa, and the BSR presents the most suitable reactor among tested configurations to produce VFA from wastes/wastewaters with high salinity.
MEMS-based Vibration-to-Electric Energy Converter

When the capacitor is at a maximum value, a certain amount of charge is placed on it. The capacitor is disconnected from the source and external vibrations cause the fingers to move apart. The voltage and the energy stored in the capacitor increases. When the fingers have finished moving, the charge is removed at the higher voltage and returned to the source with a net increase in energy. The addition of the fixed C par in parallel with the variable MEMS capacitor results in a higher energy yield for a given maximum voltage. Figure 22.1. 3 shows the timing for the conversion process. The controller IC generates this timing [1]. The ultra-low-power sensor DSP chip is targeted at classification and detection algorithms. An example biomedical application is to detect and classify heartbeats using data from an acoustic sensor. The signal x[k] is passed through a linear matched filter. The filter output is then divided into time segments which contain discrete events that must be analyzed by the classifier. Each segment is passed to a block to create a feature vector which contains all the important information relevant to classification. The classifier then assigns the event to an output class z. Figure 22.1. 4 shows the architecture of the sensor DSP chip. The discrete-time linear matched filter is implemented using the distributed arithmetic unit. Its output is then passed to a nonlinear filtering unit to calculate quantities used in segmentation. The final segmentation, feature extraction, and classification is by the programmable microcontroller. The buffer provides a mechanism for synchronization between the front-end filtering and the back-end processing. The front-end filters the input and writes important results to the buffer. A small loop is continuously executed in the microcontroller, checking if a full segment is written to the buffer. When a segment is detected, the microcontroller executes-feature extraction and classification code. To meet real-time performance demands, the front-end filtering is at 1.2kHz while this back-end processing uses a 250kHz clock.
Insulators for High Voltages

This book provides a guide to the whole field of high voltage insulators as used in electrical power networks, traction and production. It covers historical development of the shapes - sometimes strange ones - of modern types, describes the principles materials both ceramic and polymeric and their fabrication, explains the physical principles of contamination and flashover, and reviews the mass of data on research and testing.
Direct Policy Search Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Underwater Cable Tracking

Abstract This paper proposes a field application of a high-level Reinforcement Learning (RL) control system for solving the action selection problem of an autonomous robot in a cable tracking task. The learning system is characterized by using a Direct Policy Search method for learning the internal state/action mapping. Policy only algorithms may suffer from long convergence times when dealing with real robotics. In order to speed up the process, the learning phase has been carried out in a simulated environment and, in a second step, the policy has been transferred and tested successfully on a real robot. Future steps plan to continue the learning process on-line while on the real robot while performing the mentioned task. We demonstrate its feasibility with real experiments on the underwater robot ICTINEU AUV .
Double bridge resonant DC link converter with variable input and output frequency

A bi-directional resonant DC link (RDCL) converter is presented for use as a variable frequency to variable frequency (VF-VF) sinusoidal three phase power converter for aerospace (aircraft) applications. Three phase sinusoidal input up to 750 Hz and sinusoidal output up to 400 Hz is achieved using second order filters on the input and output of the converter. The results demonstrate active damping of the input and output resonance conditions. Input and output conducted current emissions, which contribute to inductively coupled EMI, are shown to be low. High efficiency, high power density, small DC bus capacitance and unity input power factor are some of the attributes of this converter topology.
Distributed Optimization for Second-Order Discrete-Time Multiagent Systems With Set Constraints

The optimization problem of second-order discrete-time multiagent systems with set constraints is studied in this article. In particular, the involved agents cooperatively search an optimal solution of a global objective function summed by multiple local ones within the intersection of multiple constrained sets. We also consider that each pair of local objective function and constrained set is exclusively accessible to the respective agent, and each agent just interacts with its local neighbors. By borrowing from the consensus idea, a projection-based distributed optimization algorithm resorting to an auxiliary dynamics is first proposed without interacting the gradient information of local objective functions. Next, by considering the local objective functions being strongly convex, selection criteria of step size and algorithm parameter are built such that the unique solution to the concerned optimization problem is obtained. Moreover, by fixing a unit step size, it is also shown that the optimization result can be relaxed to the case with just convex local objective functions given a properly chosen algorithm parameter. Finally, practical and numerical examples are taken to verify the proposed optimization results.
Concepts for modern optics software

In modern optical engineering the simulation of imaging and non-imaging optical systems on the basis of wave optics is of increasing importance. A simulation based on wave optics means on one hand to use everywhere in the optical system a wave-optical description of light. This allows the evaluation of more general merit functions for the description of the system quality which requires, for example, access to amplitude, phase, polarization, coherence information of light. On the other hand, including wave optics in optical simulations means to model the light propagation exact enough to describe wave-optical propagation effects. That means in general not to perform all simulations without physical approximations but to use light propagation models that work with sufficient physical precision within the optical system. The authors will discuss which needs follow for modern optical simulation software. This discussion includes a flexible handling of different models for simulation of light propagation, descriptions of different wave-optical light representations and considerations of numerical and physical simulation precision.
Parallel (quasi-periodic) ferroresonant oscillations in electrical power systems

Quasi-periodic oscillation, hitherto unobserved in power systems, was first experienced in the French grid. Besides obtaining the numerical solution of a set of differential equations or using the method of circle maps, there are no known simple analytical tools available to study conditions for the occurrence of quasi-periodic oscillations. In this paper, quasi-periodic oscillations are analyzed by first neglecting all losses which in effect reduces the dimension of the system. The unperturbed solution for the reduced system is obtained using the method of harmonic balance. The effect of perturbations (losses) on the unperturbed solution are then considered one at a time by using Melnikov function. The geometrical interpretation is confirmed by numerical solution on the original set of differential equations. >
A Tuning of PID Regulators via LQR Approach

This paper proposes a PID controller design method for the second order systems to satisfy the design specifications in time domain via an LQR design technique. The optimal tuning method of the PID controller is developed by establishing relationships between the exploited design parameters and the weighting factors Q and p. Then the weighting factors are determined to meet the design requirement. And an extension to the time delay systems is made.
Study on Key Aroma Compounds and Its Precursors of Peanut Oil Prepared with Normal- and High-Oleic Peanuts

High-oleic acid peanut oil has developed rapidly in China in recent years due to its high oxidative stability and nutritional properties. However, consumer feedback showed that the aroma of high-oleic peanut oil was not as good as the oil obtained from normal-oleic peanut variety. The aim of this study was to investigate the key volatile compounds and precursors of peanut oil prepared with normal- and high-oleic peanuts. The peanut raw materials and oil processing samples used in the present study were collected from a company in China. Sensory evaluation results indicated that normal-oleic peanut oil showed stronger characteristic flavor than high-oleic peanut oil. The compounds methylpyrazine, 2,5-dimethylpyrazine, 2-ethyl-5-methylpyrazine and benzaldehyde were considered as key volatiles which contribute to dark roast, roast peanutty and sweet aroma of peanut oil. The initial concentration of volatile precursors (arginine, tyrosine, lysine and glucose) in normal-oleic peanut was higher than in high-oleic peanut, which led to more characteristic volatiles forming during process and provided a stronger oil aroma of. The present research will provide data support for raw material screening and sensory quality improvement during high-oleic acid peanut oil industrial production.
Classifying Corner Defects from Square Ceramic Tile at Production Phase

Ceramic tile is largely used in construction of floor at home, offices and shops and many other places. The image processing is playing an important role for find defect from the ceramic tile and industry maintaining the demand of market. In this paper we study classification of corner defect of square ceramic tile. Each corner follows the Pythagorean Theorem.