Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Delaunay simplex analysis of the structure of equal sized sphere packings

We investigate the origin of the Bernal’s limiting density of 64% in volume fraction associated with the densest non-crystalline phase (random close packing limit) in equal sphere packings. To this end, we analize equal sphere packings obtained both from experiments and numerical simulationsuse by using a Delaunay simplexes decomposition. We show that the fraction of ‘quasi-perfect tetrahedra’ grows with the density up to a saturation fraction of ∼ 1/3 reached at the Bernal’s limit. Aggregate ‘polytetrahedral’ structures, made of quasi-perfect tetrahedra which share a common triangular face, reveal a clear sharp transition occurring at the density 0.646. These results are consistent with previous findings concerning numerical investigations.
Radiometric Correction with Topography Influence of Multispectral Imagery Obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This article aims to present the methods of the radiometric correction of multispectral images—a short review of the existing techniques. The role of radiometric correction is essential to many applications, especially in precision farming, forestry, and climate analysis. Moreover, this paper presents a new relative approach, which considers the angle of inclination of the terrain and the angle of incidence of electromagnetic radiation on the imaged objects when obtaining the baseline data. This method was developed for data obtained from low altitudes—for imagery data acquired by sensors mounted on UAV platforms. The paper analyses the effect of the correction on the spectral information, i.e., the compatibility of the spectral reflection characteristics obtained from the image with the spectral reflection characteristics obtained in the field. The developed method of correction for multispectral data obtained from low altitudes allows for the mapping of spectral reflection characteristics to an extent that allows for the classification of terrestrial coverage with an accuracy of over 95%. In addition, it is possible to distinguish objects that are very similar in terms of spectral reflection characteristics. This research presents a new method of correction of each spectral channel obtained by the multispectral camera, increasing the accuracy of the results obtained, e.g., based on SAM coefficients or correlations, but also when distinguishing land cover types during classification. The results are characterized by high accuracy (over 94% in classification).
Dynamic Stability of a Hawkmoth-scale Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicle during Forward Flight

This study investigates dynamic stability during forward flight of a hawkmoth-scale Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicle (FWMAV). Dynamic modes in the longitudinal and lateral planes of motion during forward flight are identified by Eigen mode analyses from the author’s previous work, and these dynamic responses from a linearized system model are compared with the responses obtained by direct time integrations of nonlinear multibody dynamic equations of motion. The results show that the forward flight of FWMAV is unstable due to an unstable longitudinal oscillatory mode (forward/backward motion coupled with inphase pitching motion) and a marginally stable lateral oscillatory mode (sideslip motion coupled with out-of-phase roll and in-phase yaw motion). A comparison between the linear and fully nonlinear multibody model shows that the linearized system model well represents dynamic modal structure in the longitudinal plane, whereas the dynamic modes in the lateral plane are not well captured by the linearized model due to a coupling between flight states (roll and yaw rate with sideslip speed) and a coupling between planes of motion (lateral disturbances excite longitudinal flight states).
Discrete wavelet transform based branched deep hybrid network for environmental noise classification

With ever growing urbanization, the environmental noise is becoming hazardous. Vehicular traffic, locomotives, heavy machinery in industry, and construction processes are the major sources of noise pollution. It has adverse effects on the health of humans as well as that of the wild life. World Health Organization (WHO) puts noise pollution as the second major cause of illness due to environmental reasons. The effects of noise pollution on the quality of life are usually ignored. Due to this reason it is common, even in the first world countries, to have the WHO's peak noise standards violated in residential areas. Therefore, there is a need to have a real time, portable and easy to replicate, mechanism to monitor the noise sources. In this work, we propose a novel architecture of a deep neural network to classify a 10‐class environmental noise data called URBANSOUND8K. This network is comprised of three components, (1) one dimensional two level Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) component, (2) branched component for feature extraction through auto‐encoders, and (3) LSTM and fully‐connected layers based classification component. With all components combined, we call this network DWTNet. By embedding the DWT component as a part of network, we eliminate the need of prior data conversion into spectral and/or spectro‐temporal domains. The efficiency of DWTNet is comparable to the state of the art networks with significantly lower number of trainable parameters. We analyze the contribution of classification accuracy. We further study some of the classification results individually and show that some of the mis‐classifications are actually multi‐class classifications with distributed decision confidence.
Multiple Roles of cAMP in Vertebrate Retina

cAMP is a key regulatory molecule that controls many important processes in the retina, including phototransduction, cell development and death, growth of neural processes, intercellular contacts, retinomotor effects, and so forth. The total content of cAMP changes in the retina in a circadian manner following the natural light cycle, but it also shows local and even divergent changes in faster time scales in response to local and transient changes in the light environment. Changes in cAMP might also manifest or cause various pathological processes in virtually all cellular components of the retina. Here we review the current state of knowledge and understanding of the regulatory mechanisms by which cAMP influences the physiological processes that occur in various retinal cells.
A Review of Graphene-Based Materials/Polymer Composite Aerogels

The fabrication of composite materials is an effective way to improve the performance of a single material and expand its application range. In recent years, graphene-based materials/polymer composite aerogels have become a hot research field for preparing high-performance composites due to their special synergistic effects in mechanical and functional properties. In this paper, the preparation methods, structures, interactions, properties, and applications of graphene-based materials/polymer composite aerogels are discussed, and their development trend is projected. This paper aims to arouse extensive research interests in multidisciplinary fields and provide guidance for the rational design of advanced aerogel materials, which could then encourage efforts to use these new kinds of advanced materials in basic research and commercial applications.
Omnidirectional Video Super-Resolution Using Deep Learning

Omnidirectional Videos (or 360° videos) are widely used in Virtual Reality (VR) to facilitate immersive and interactive viewing experiences. However, the limited spatial resolution in 360° videos does not allow for each degree of view to be represented with adequate pixels, limiting the visual quality offered in the immersive experience. Deep learning Video Super-Resolution (VSR) techniques used for conventional videos could provide a promising software-based solution; however, these techniques do not tackle the distortion present in equirectangular projections of 360° video signals. An additional obstacle is the limited 360° video datasets to study. To address these issues, this paper creates a novel 360° Video Dataset (360VDS) with a study of the extensibility of conventional VSR models to 360° videos. This paper further proposes a novel deep learning model for 360° Video Super-Resolution (360° VSR), called Spherical Signal Super-resolution with a Proportioned Optimisation (S3PO). S3PO adopts recurrent modelling with an attention mechanism, unbound from conventional VSR techniques like alignment. With a purpose-built feature extractor and a novel loss-function addressing spherical distortion, S3PO outperforms most state-of-the-art conventional VSR models and 360° specific super-resolution models on 360° video datasets. A step-wise ablation study is presented to understand and demonstrate the impact of the chosen architectural sub-components, targeted training and optimisation.
Composite magnetic 3D-printing filament fabrication protocol opens new perspectives in magnetic hyperthermia

Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has emerged as a promising tool for meticulously fabricated scaffolds with high precision and accuracy, resulting in intricately detailed biomimetic 3D structures. Producing magnetic scaffolds with the aid of additive processes, known as 3D printing, reveals multitude and state-of-the-art areas of application such as tissue engineering, bone repair and regeneration, drug delivery and magnetic hyperthermia. A crucial first step is the development of innovative polymeric composite magnetic materials. The current work presents a fabrication protocol of 3D printed polymer-bonded magnets using the Fused Deposition Modeling 3D printing method. Polymer-bonded magnets are defined as composites with permanent-magnet powder embedded in a polymer binder matrix. By using a low-cost mixing extruder, four (4) different filament types of 1.75 mm were fabricated using commercial magnetite magnetic nanoparticles mixed with a pure polylactic acid powder (PLA) and a ferromagnetic PLA (Iron particles included) filaments. The powder mixture of the basic filaments was compounded mixed with the nanoparticles (NPs), and extruded to fabricate the 3D printing filament, which is subsequently characterized structurally and magnetically before the printing process. Magnetic polymer scaffolds are finally printed using composite filaments of different concentration in magnetite. Our results demonstrate that the heating efficiency (expressed in W g−1) of the 3D printed magnetic polymer scaffolds (ranging from 2 to 5.5 W g−1 at magnetic field intensity of 30 mT and field frequency of 365 kHz) can be tuned by choosing either a magnetic or a non-magnetic filament mixed with an amount of magnetite NPs in different concentrations of 10 or 20 wt%. Our work opens up new perspectives for future research, such as the fabrication of complex structures with suitable ferromagnetic custom-made filaments adjusting the mixing of different filaments for the construction of scaffolds aimed at improving the accuracy of magnetic hyperthermia treatment.
How do Preschool Teachers Teach Cultural Diversity Using Picture Books?

Cultural diversity is endorsed by many educators as a major teaching concept due to its significance for the achievement of social equity in education. Recently, the use of picture books to promote cultural diversity has become a trend in early-childhood education. This study examines the attitudes of Chinese preschool teachers toward using picture books to teach topics related to cultural diversity, and their reported practices. Seven preschool teachers from four institutions in Shanghai, China, were surveyed, with three key findings. 1) Teachers interpret cultural diversity in a narrow way, and are usually unaware that they are teaching the concept; 2) Teachers adopt a multifaceted approach to selecting the picture books used for teaching cultural diversity, and see the illustrations as the most important criteria; 3) Teachers often supplement the reading of picture books with their experiences. These results have important implications for preschool teachers, curriculum designers, and organizations that provide training to pre- and in-service early-childhood educators.
Evaluation of Pathological Perspectives Related to Alzheimers Disease

Alzheimers disease (AD), one of the degenerative diseases and dementias, caused more than millions of people to suffer from it. Over the past few decades, scientists have been putting much effort to study this particular disease in the hope of finding the drug to cure AD. In this condition, two significant hallmarks were discovered, senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), furthermore leads scientists to focus on A and tau protein to study the pathogenesis of AD. However, the real culprit contributing to AD still remains unknown. Although many amyloid-targeted drugs and tau-targeted drugs are developed, they all failed, causing scientists to cast doubt on the amyloid-related perspective and tau-related perspective. This article will mainly discuss the amyloid hypothesis and the tau hypothesis, the factors driving the formation of senile plaques and NFTs, the scientific data supporting and opposing these two perspectives, the criticisms they are facing, and most importantly the future orientation for scientists to study. Here, after understanding the amyloid-related perspective, tau-related perspective, and other perspectives proposed for AD, we extrapolate that the pathogenesis of AD is multifactorial; moreover, the future AD study should take multiple factors into account.
The Impact of Official Art Training on Face Recognition Ability

Face recognition is an essential ability in peoples social lives and is widely thought to be equally mastered by the majority of people. However, more and more recent studies have discovered individual differences in this skill, which may be related to various factors in everyday experience. Given that portraits artists tend to have a better face recognition ability compared to others, this correlational study investigated whether the official art training that individuals have received influences how well they recognize and memorize faces. The hypothesis is that regular practice in visual art could enhance visual memory capacity in individuals, therefore enabling them to be better at recognizing human faces than their peers. To assess participants art training level and face recognition ability, the current study included an online survey and employed the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). The results failed to demonstrate an association that was proposed. Limitations in the study and potential future directions were discussed.
Automatic reconstruction of interstitial needles using CT images in post-operative cervical cancer brachytherapy based on deep learning

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the precision of deep learning (DL)-based auto-reconstruction in localizing interstitial needles in post-operative cervical cancer brachytherapy (BT) using three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography (CT) images. Material and methods A convolutional neural network (CNN) was developed and presented for automatic reconstruction of interstitial needles. Data of 70 post-operative cervical cancer patients who received CT-based BT were used to train and test this DL model. All patients were treated with three metallic needles. Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), 95% Hausdorff distance (95% HD), and Jaccard coefficient (JC) were applied to evaluate the geometric accuracy of auto-reconstruction for each needle. Dose-volume indexes (DVI) between manual and automatic methods were used to analyze the dosimetric difference. Correlation between geometric metrics and dosimetric difference was evaluated using Spearman correlation analysis. Results The mean DSC values of DL-based model were 0.88, 0.89, and 0.90 for three metallic needles. Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated no significant dosimetric differences in all BT planning structures between manual and automatic reconstruction methods (p > 0.05). Spearman correlation analysis demonstrated weak link between geometric metrics and dosimetry differences. Conclusions DL-based reconstruction method can be used to precisely localize the interstitial needles in 3D-CT images. The proposed automatic approach could improve the consistency of treatment planning for post-operative cervical cancer brachytherapy.
Design fabrication and characterisation of polyaniline and multiwall carbon nanotubes composites-based patch antenna

This study presents the conception, simulation, realisation and characterisation of a patch antenna made of a composite based on polyaniline (PANI) and multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The antenna is designed to operate at the frequency of 4.5 GHz; the dielectric substrate used is Rogers RT/Duroid® 5870 which has a dielectric permittivity of 2.33 and a loss tangent of 0.0012. The conductive polymer (PANI/MWCNTs) fabricated has a conductivity of 4500 S/m. The performance of the proposed antenna is investigated as a function of the thickness of the conductive polymer. The experimental results show an antenna gain of 5.18 dB for a PANI/MWCNTs thickness of 110 μm. The results obtained suggest that this kind of conductive polymers are good candidates for future applications based on organic electronics.
A simple diagnostic based on sea surface height with an application to central Pacific ENSO

Abstract. We use output from a freely running NEMO model simulation for the equatorial Pacific to investigate the utility of linearly removing the local influence of vertical displacements of the thermocline from variations in sea surface height. We show that the resulting time series of residual sea surface height, denoted ηnlti, measures variations in near-surface heat content that are independent of the local vertical displacement of the thermocline and can arise from horizontal advection, surface heat flux, and diapycnal mixing processes. We find that the variance of ηnlti and its correlation with sea surface temperature are focused on the Niño4 region. Furthermore, ηnlti averaged over the Niño4 region is highly correlated with indices of central Pacific El Niño–Southern Oscillation (CP ENSO), and its variance in 21-year running windows shows a strong upward trend over the past 50 years, corresponding to the emergence of CP ENSO following the 1976/77 climate shift. We show that ηnlti can be estimated from observations, using satellite altimeter data and a linear multi-mode model. The time series of ηnlti, especially when estimated using the linear model, show pronounced westward propagation in the western equatorial Pacific, arguing for an important role for zonal advective feedback in the dynamics of CP ENSO, in particular for cold events. We also present evidence that the role of the thermocline displacement in influencing sea surface height increased strongly after 2000 in the eastern part of the Niño4 region, at a time when CP ENSO was particularly active. Finally, the diagnostic is easy to compute and can be easily applied to mooring data or coupled climate models.
Stretching Polymers in Droplet-Pinch-Off Experiments

Droplet pinch off, which occurs when a drop of liquid detaches from a capillary, can be strongly modified in the presence of polymers, giving rise to long and slender filaments that thin slowly in time. However, little is known experimentally about the molecular conformations of the polymers in the filament itself. Since the thinning dynamics of these filaments can be used to extract macroscopic quantities of interest such as the elongational viscosity of polymer solutions, which is of importance in a variety of physical processes (electrospinning, spraying, or drag reduction), the link with the molecular scale dynamics would be an important step towards understanding the extensional properties of such solutions. We show here, experimentally, that the polymers are highly extended within this filament region and that the distribution of these extensions is stationary in time. We then determine the elongational viscosity from the full filament dynamics. Such a determination turns out to be consistent with the polymer extensions observed and also consistent with simple models of polymer elongational viscosities. The direct observation of stretched macromolecules within such suspended liquid filaments suggests that these filaments may be useful for preparing polymeric materials with specific anisotropy or for optical screening of biopolymers such as DNA.
REVISITING ARCHIVED RYE GRAINS DISCOVERED AT THE NEOLITHIC SITE CUNEŞTI (ROMANIA)

ABSTRACT Direct accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating is crucial for a correct integration of plant remains in the (pre)history of crops, particularly for those that do not belong to the Neolithic package and are known to arrive in Europe much later. This paper reviews one of the earliest records of rye from Romania. The grains were discovered in the tell settlement of Cunești, which belongs to the Gumelnița communities (ca. 4600–3900 BC). In 1954, due to Danube flooding, a large portion of the south part of the tell collapsed, and between the burnt dwelling visible in the resulting profile, a large number of sherds from three typical Gumelnița pots were identified. According to the excavation’s author, rye grains were found in association with those sherds, and it was assumed that a batch was stored in these Eneolithic vessels. Consequently, the rye was published as belonging to the Gumelnița period. Our reanalysis led to two radiocarbon (14C) dates, from two different laboratories, which indicate that the Cunești rye is not prehistoric but dates to the medieval period. To correct this error concerning this rye batch and the implications for European archaeology, we decided to republish these grains in an updated chronological framework. In addition, we performed stable isotope analyses on the charred grains, confirming they were cultivated on dry land, as well as a 3D morphometric investigation. Our research brings new and original data on rye cultures from the medieval period in southeastern Europe.
Development of an Experimental Method for Understanding the Effects of the Coriolis Force on the Typhoon Genesis and its Movement

A simple experimental method was developed to help students understand the effect of the Coriolis force on typhoon genesis and movement. It consists of rotating tanks with and without a sloping bottom, and a small stirrer to produce cyclonic typhoon-like vortices by locally stirring the water. Vortices were able to last for more than 3 minutes without dissipation in the rotating tank. However, vortices were hardly maintained without rotation, and would rather disappear as soon as the stirrer stopped mixing. Since the dynamical properties of the rotating water are similar to those of the atmosphere influenced by the Coriolis force, the experiments show that the Coriolis force is indispensable to the typhoon genesis. When the tank had both the sloping bottom and rotation, vortices would move in a particular direction. Considering the topographical beta effect, this result indicates that typhoons are drifted not only by the steering wind but also by the meridional gradient of the Coriolis force. The methodology developed in this study, would be useful for both students and teachers to better the relationship between the Coriolis force and the typhoon genesis.