Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical Analysis of Long-Term Aging Parameters of Laboratory- and Field-Aged Asphalt Binders Considering Rheological and Chemical Properties

Aging has long been recognized as an important factor that accelerates damage to flexible pavements. This study investigates the effects of long-term aging protocols on critical rheological and chemical parameters in the laboratory and field by focusing on the evaluation of aged binders under various aging conditions. To fabricate aged binders with various long-term aging levels, five laboratory aging protocols were considered, including a standard pressure aging vessel for binder and loose-mix aging protocols (70°C, 85°C, 95°C, and 135°C) with various aging durations. The rheological properties and chemical composition of laboratory-aged binders were extensively evaluated. For comparison, field-aged binders were extracted from 14 top layers and measured in a similar manner. A general linear model statistical analysis was conducted on the relationship between the rheological and chemical parameters to explore the potential differences between various aging protocols. Loose-mix aging in the range of 70–95° was found to be relatively closer to the in situ aging trend using statistical analyses. The results of this work provide a reasonable simulation of long-term-aged in-service asphalt pavement that can assist in material selection, mixture design, and maintenance operations.
CONTEMPORARY BLENDED LEARNING BACKGROUNDS OF TEACHING ENGLISH FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

The article is devoted to the implementation of contemporary blended learning backgrounds into teaching English for specific purposes in the higher educational establishments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The analysis of the method’s usage in the special conditions of the war state is introduced. It is underlined that the implementation of such kind of technology will benefit not only the possibility to hold an educational process in the distant form in stressful conditions but also give the opportunity to the formation of a specific discipline’s knowledge using inter­disciplinary ways, to support the skills and abilities of the active self and group work. The contemporary background of using blended learning technology is worked out in the paper. Special attention is paid to the respectful points of the international language learning centers that work in the sphere of new technologies implemented into teaching English in higher educational establishments. The peculiarities of the special cadets and officers’ regimes of study and daily routine are analyzed, and their advantages and disadvantages for the organization of the educational process are implemented in the process of the model’s building. Many possibilities to make the model flexible with the help of supporting the educational process through the different structural elements and units of the educational establishment are introduced. Active participation and correlation of all the members of the educational process on each level of the model’s organization are considered to be the central idea of the study. The organization of interdisciplinary events and the realization of creative and scientific directions of the educative work are also crucial for the successful realization of the model.
Dynamics Preserving Size Reduction Mappings for

A probabilistic Boolean network (PBN) is a discrete network composed of a family of Boolean networks such that at each time instant the transition of the PBN is governed by one of its constituent networks. A random variable determines when the governing Boolean network switches and, when a switch oc- curs, a new constituent network is chosen according to a selec- tion distribution to govern the PBN transitions until another switch is called for. As nonlinear models of genetic regulatory networks, PBNs incorporate the indeterminacy owing to latent variables ex- ternal to the model that have biological interaction with genes in the model. Besides being used to model biologically phenomena, such as cellular state dynamics and the switch-like behavior of cer- tain genes, PBNs have served as the main model for the application of intervention methods, including optimal control strategies, to fa- vorably effect system dynamics. An obstacle in applying PBNs to large-scale networks is the computational complexity of the model. It is sometimes necessary to construct computationally tractable subnetworks while still carrying sufficient structure for the appli- cation at hand. Hence, there is a need for size reducing mappings. This paper proposes a reduction strategy that preserves the dy- namical structure of the network, a crucial requirement for the development of intervention strategies based on control theory. In particular, we focus on the following two issues when deleting a gene from the network: 1) maintaining the same number of con- stituent Boolean networks, and 2) preserving, in an optimal sense, the attractor structure, the relative sizes of the basins of attraction, and the level structures of the state transition diagrams of the con- stituent Boolean networks. Preservation of the attractor structure is critical because the attractors of a PBN determine its steady-state behavior.
WIYN OPEN CLUSTER STUDY. LXVI. SPECTROSCOPIC BINARY ORBITS IN THE YOUNG OPEN CLUSTER M35 (NGC 2168)

The young (150 Myr) open cluster M35 (NGC 2168) has been one of the core clusters of the WIYN Open Cluster Study since 1997. Over these 17 years we have obtained approximately 8000 radial-velocity (RV) measurements of stars in the M35 field, which we provide here. Our target sample consists of 1355 photometrically selected stars in the field of M35 within the main sequence and binary sequence of the cluster and within 13 ≤ V ≤ 16.5 ? > and ( B − V ) ≥ 0.6 ? > . Using our RV measurements we cleanly separate likely cluster members from field stars. We calculate RV membership probabilities for over 1200 stars in our sample. 418 are probable cluster members, of which 64 are velocity-variable (binary) systems. Here we present 52 orbital solutions for binary members of M35. This sample defines the hard binary population of M35 that dynamically powers the cluster. We also present XMM-Newton X-ray detections within the cluster. We use our large binary sample to search for interacting binaries among the X-ray sources, investigate M35's period–eccentricity distribution, and determine binary frequency. We find a circularization period of 9.9 ± 1.2 days and a binary frequency of 24% ± 3% for main-sequence binaries with P < 10 4 ? > days. Determining these properties in a young cluster like M35 is key to defining the initial conditions used in models of cluster dynamical evolution.
Quick and Easy Application Method of TachoSil®️ During Laparoscopic and Robotic Liver Resections

TachoSil®️, a fibrin sealant patch, is a sheet-type hemostatic agent. Therefore, it is technically demanding to put it on the target place especially in laparoscopic surgeries due to the motion restriction of straight-fixed instruments. This article describes a quick and easy technique of TachoSil application during laparoscopic liver surgeries, by sewing it to the laparoscopic gauze in advance. This method allows for one-handed operation and stress-free application even in the situation of active bleeding.
Alternative mean-squared error estimators for synthetic estimators of domain means

ABSTRACT In forest management surveys, the mean of a variable of interest (Y) in a population composed of N equal area spatial compact elements is increasingly estimated from a model linking Y to an auxiliary vector X known for all elements in the population. It is also desired to have synthetic estimates of the mean of Y in spatially compact domains (forest stands) with no or at most one sample-based observation of Y. We develop three alternative estimators of mean-squared errors (MSE) that reduce the risk of a serious underestimation of the uncertainty in a synthetic estimate of a domain mean in cases where the employed model does not accounts for domain effects nor spatial autocorrelation in unobserved residual errors. Expansions of the estimators including anticipated effects of a spatial autocorrelation in residual errors are also provided. Simulation results indicate that the conventional model-dependent (MD) population-level estimator of variance in a synthetic estimate of a domain mean underestimates uncertainty by a wide margin. Our alternative estimators mitigated, in settings with weak to moderate domain effects and relatively small sample sizes, to a large extent, the problem of underestimating uncertainty. We demonstrate applications with examples from two actual forest inventories.
The Geochemistry of Pliocene Volcanism in the Shahba region, South of Syria

Pliocene volcanic rocks are considered as dominant rocks and form an important part of igneous succession in this region. The architecture type of Pliocene basalt is various as it consists of several diverse lithological formations, which vary from continuous basalts flow to scoria materials. The Pliocene basaltic rocks consist of several lava flows, which are divided into three primary petrographic groups: alkali basalt, augite alkali basalt and the basanite. The three petro-types can be classified geochemically from alkaline to sub-alkaline and termed as alkali olivine basalt. They have similar compositional ranges of major and trace elements. The geochemical composition shows that the basaltic Pliocene rocks consist of both partial melting and crystal fractions signatures. So the geochemical changing components can be considered as a result of crystal fractions that developed after partial melting process. تتكشف تشكيلات البليوسين النارية على مساحات واسعة من جنوب سوريا، وهي تشكل جزء هام من التتابع الناري في المنطقة. تتكون التوضعات البركانية البليوسينية في منطقة شهبا من تشكيلات ليتولوجية مختلفة، تتراوح بين صبات بازلتية دفقية مستمرة الى توضعات خبثية متماسكة سميكة أحيانا،ً تتضمن توضعات بيروكلاستية متنوعة. يُبنى التتابع البليوسيني الناري في منطقة شهبا من عدد متغير من الصبات البازلتية، المكونة بتروغرافيا من ثلاث مجموعات رئيسية هي: البازلت القلوي والبازلت الاوجيتي القلوي والبازانيت. يُظهر التركيب الجيوكيميائي للصخور البليوسينية، أن الصخور البازلتية المدروسة تبدي تغيرات على المحتوى التركيبي، يمكن اعتبارها أنها ناتجة عن عملية تجزؤ بلوري كان قد تطور عن عملية انصهار جزئي.
Covid-19: How is the Sharia Hospitality Industry and Health Industry Survive in Indonesia?

Fama & French explained that company size affects the risk of return on its shares. The larger the size of a company, the more established the company is.Hence, it is not easily swayed by crisis pressures, not only financial pressure but also social pressure. The Covid-19 outbreak hitting the world, especially Indonesia, also had an impact on performance in the capital market. The test results showed that during the Covid-19 outbreak period, the JCI performance decreased by 30 percent. However, further test results showed that the hotel and resort industry did not necessarily show worse performance. Moreover, the results of the panel data regression test using data from 16 companies and 29 weeks period of timeshowed that during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in Indonesia from March to June, although it is not statistically significant, the performance of the hotel and resort industry outperforms the health industry, while the performance of the Islamic stock category for the two industries is outperformed by the performance of its alternative stocks. The results of this test strengthen the three-factor model Fama & French as well as the five-factor model Fama & French that companies with large assets in the hotel and resort industry included in the research sample are able to withstand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, beating companies which are inferior in terms of company size such as the healthcare industry in Indonesia.
Study on the Method of Image Non-watermark in DWT Domain

In order to protect the copyright of the image in the condition of the image quality,It brings forward a kind of the image non watermarking method. It introduces the non watermarking scheme,then it discusses the concrete process of this scheme at length. This method changes the traditional doings that the copyright of the image is protected by embedding the watermarking into the image to the method that the watermarking is drew out from the image, The central idea of this method is: the image wavelet coefficients are selected correctly firstly, then they are located and managed as the basic informations of the image.When the authentication image is to be identified,the same process is done to draw the informations out from the authentication image and those informations will be analyzed and detected to judged the copyright and the ownership of the image.It demonstrates this method is right by some tests. These tests prove that the method could make image distortion free and be robust,simple,easy to use. Lastly, it makes the method broaden and watermarking can be drew out from the image and embedded outside the image.This method not only can satisfy the need of the image authentication,but also can be used to hide the data.
Reduction of lattice thermal conductivity of pseudogap intermetallic compound Al3V

One of the obstacles to the widespread use of thermoelectric (TE) generators is the toxicity of current TE materials. Hence, we focused on Al‐based materials as candidate low‐toxicity TE materials. Although Al‐based materials have high power factor (PF), the achievement of high TE performance is difficult because of the high lattice thermal conductivity (κlat). The aims of the present study are to investigate the TE properties of Al3V, and to enhance TE performance by κlat reduction. We found that Ti substitution decreases the κlat and increases the PF of Al3V.
Frequency-following response effect according to gender using a 10-Hz binaural beat stimulation

BACKGROUND: Several studies have continuously investigated FFRs using binaural beat (BB) stimulations and their related effects. However, only a few studies have investigated the differences in BB stimulation effects according to basic demographic characteristics, such as gender and age. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the alpha wave activity after a 10-Hz BB stimulation and subsequently identify differences according to gender across all brain areas (frontal, central, parietal, temporal, and occipital areas). METHODS: A total of 23 healthy adults (11 male and 12 female), aged 20–29, participated in the study. For the 10-Hz BB stimulation, pure tone auditory stimuli of 250 and 260 Hz were given to the left and right ear, respectively. Through a power spectrum analysis of the phase-excluding BBs (non-BBs) and phase-including 10-Hz BBs (α-BBs), the alpha power at each brain area was estimated. These values were compared using a mixed-design ANOVA. RESULTS: With the exception of the temporal area, all other brain areas showed a significant increase in alpha power for α-BBs compared to those of non-BBs. However, the difference according to gender was not significant. CONCLUSION: The results indicated the lack of gender effects in alpha wave generation through a 10-Hz BB stimulation.
Structural Topology Optimization Based on the Smoothed Finite Element Method

IN THIS PAPER, THE SMOOTHED FINITE ELEMENT METHOD (S-FEM), INCORPORATED WITH THE LEVEL SET METHOD, IS EMPLOYED TO CARRY OUT THE TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION OF CONTINUUM STRUCTURES. THE STRUCTURAL COMPLIANCE IS MINIMIZED SUBJECT TO A CONSTRAINT ON THE WEIGHT OF MATERIAL USED. THE CELL-BASED SMOOTHED FINITE ELEMENT METHOD (CS-FEM) IS EMPLOYED TO IMPROVE THE ACCURACY AND STABILITY OF THE STANDARD FINITE ELEMENT METHOD (FEM). SEVERAL NUMERICAL EXAMPLES ARE PRESENTED TO PROVE THE VALIDITY AND UTILITY OF THE PROPOSED METHOD. THE OBTAINED RESULTS ARE COMPARED WITH THOSE OBTAINED BY SEVERAL STANDARD FINITE ELEMENT-BASED EXAMPLES IN ORDER TO ACCESS THE APPLICABILITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROPOSED METHOD. THE COMMON NUMERICAL INSTABILITIES OF THE STRUCTURAL TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS SUCH AS CHECKERBOARD PATTERN AND MESH DEPENDENCY ARE STUDIED IN THE EXAMPLES.
Innate Immune Memory in Macrophages

Macrophages have been recognized as the primary mediators of innate immunity starting from embryonic/fetal development. Macrophage-mediated defenses may not be as antigen-specific as adaptive immunity, but increasing information suggests that these responses do strengthen with repeated immunological triggers. The concept of innate memory in macrophages has been described as “trained immunity” or “innate immune memory (IIM). ” As currently understood, this cellular memory is rooted in epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming. The recognition of IIM may be particularly important in the fetus and the young neonate who are yet to develop protective levels of adaptive immunity, and could even be of preventive/therapeutic importance in many disorders. There may also be a possibility of therapeutic enhancement with targeted vaccination. This article presents a review of the properties, mechanisms, and possible clinical significance of macrophage-mediated IIM.
GF-1/6 Satellite Pixel-by-Pixel Quality Tagging Algorithm

The Landsat and Sentinel series satellites contain their own quality tagging data products, marking the source image pixel by pixel with several specific semantic categories. These data products generally contain categories such as cloud, cloud shadow, land, water body, and snow. Due to the lack of mid-wave and thermal infrared bands, the accuracy of traditional cloud detection algorithm is unstable when facing Chinese Gaofen-1/6 (GF-1/6) data. Moreover, it is challenging to distinguish clouds from snow. In order to produce GF-1/6 satellite pixel-by-pixel quality tagging data products, this paper builds a training sample set of more than 100,000 image pairs, primarily using Sentinel-2 satellite data. Then, we adopt the Swin Transformer model with a self-attention mechanism for GF-1/6 satellite image quality tagging. Experiments show that the model’s overall accuracy reaches the level of Fmask v4.6 with more than 10,000 training samples, and the model can distinguish between cloud and snow correctly. Our GF-1/6 quality tagging algorithm can meet the requirements of the “Analysis Ready Data (ARD) Technology Research for Domestic Satellite” project.
Preparation of iron oxide nanoparticles by laser ablation in DMF under effect of external magnetic field

We have studied the effect of applying an external magnetic field on the characteristics of iron oxide (IO) nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by pulsed laser ablation in dimethylformamide (DMF). The NPs synthesized with and without applying of magnetic field were characterized by Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV–Vis absorption, scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). SEM results confirmed that the particle size was decreased after applying magnetic field.
A Homomorphic Polynomial for Oriented Graphs

In this article, we define a function that counts the number of (onto) homomorphisms of an oriented graph. We show that this function is always a polynomial and establish it as an extension of the notion of chromatic polynomials. We study algebraic properties of this function. In particular we show that the coefficients of these polynomials have the alternating sign property and that the polynomials associated to the independent sets have relations with the Stirling numbers of the second kind.
Learning Audio and Video Bitrate Selection Strategies via Explicit Requirements

Mobile video streaming dominates today's network traffic, and adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms have been routinely adopted for transmitting media content across dynamic mobile networks. State-of-the-art ABR algorithms mainly alter video bitrate without considering audio bitrate as they consider the impact on the video negligible due to their small size. However, to bring users an immersive experience, recent content providers have applied high-quality audio with large sizes, like stereophonic sound. Therefore, improper audio bitrate selection will adversely affect video bitrate selection, leading to undesirable audio/video combinations (the highest video quality with the lowest audio quality, and vice versa) and frequent playback interruptions. To address these inefficiencies, we propose a Self-Play reinforcement learning-based Audio-aware ABR algorithm named SPA to learn strategies for audio and video bitrate selections. By learning from explicit goals, SPA can match the actual requirements and attain good performance. By conducting trace-driven and testbed-based experiments, we observe SPA's considerable superiority compared to existing approaches, including reducing the undesirable combinations by up to 34.17× and achieving zero stall time across 88.57% of traces. We also invite 35 volunteers to join a subjective test, and the result shows that 33/35 people consider SPA provides them with a satisfactory viewing experience.
Bandwidth enhancement and further size reduction of a class of miniaturized elliptic-function low-pass filter

In this paper, a new model for further reducing the size and increasing the bandwidth (BW) of a class miniaturized elliptic-function low-pass filter has been presented. A compact elliptic-function low pass filter using microstrip stepped-impedance semi-hairpin resonators has been developed and a multiple cascaded filter using semi-hairpin resonators has been designed. The overall BW of the proposed low-pass filter has been shown to be increased by more than 40% with a size reduction about 80% compared with the conventional ones.
Study on void reduction in direct wafer bonding using Al2O3/HfO2 bonding interface for high-performance Si high-k MOS optical modulators

We have investigated the direct wafer bonding (DWB) method with a thin bonding dielectric interface to fabricate Si high-k MOS optical modulators with a thin equivalent oxide thickness (EOT). To suppress void generation on the bonded wafer during high-temperature annealing, we examined the high-k dielectric bonding interfacial layers, such as Al2O3 and HfO2. We found that the Al2O3/HfO2 bilayer enables void-less wafer bonding in conjunction with pre-bonding annealing at 700 °C. By using the 0.5-nm Al2O3/2.0-nm HfO2 bonding interface, the density of voids is reduced by three orders of magnitude as compared with that in the case of using the Al2O3 bonding interface. We achieved a density of voids of approximately 2 × 10−3 cm−2 even when the bonded wafer is annealed at 700 °C. By thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS), we found that degassing from the bonding interface is successfully suppressed by the introduction of the HfO2 layer and the pre-bonding annealing at 700 °C, which are considered to suppress void generation. Wafer bonding with thin Al2O3/HfO2 high-k bonding interface is promising for Si high-k MOS optical modulators.