bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A second‐order isoparametric element method to solve plane linear elastic problem
Authors: Song Shicang , Liu Zhixin 
Published: October 2020

AbstractConsidering the both effect of boundary approximation and numerical quadrature, a second‐order isoparametric element method is given to solve the homogeneous isotropic plane linear elasticity problem in domain Ω with curved boundary. By using technically analysis, the optimal error estimate with is obtained, where the function is an extension of the true solution to . It yields better accuracy than traditional quadratic finite element method. Finally, two numerical examples are presented, which further illustrate the analytical result and show the scheme is effective.
Ranger perceptions of, and engagement with, monitoring of elephant poaching
Authors: Kuiper Timothy , Massé Francis , Ngwenya Nobesuthu A. , Kavhu Blessing , Mandisodza‐Chikerema Roseline L. , Milner‐Gulland Eleanor J. 
Published: October 2020

Abstract

Ranger‐based monitoring has enormous potential to inform conservation globally, with hundreds of thousands of rangers patrolling extensive areas and recording observations of illegal activities and biodiversity. Much quantitative research has demonstrated the pitfalls and potential of data collection by rangers, but little work has considered its human dimensions. Yet poor engagement with, and ownership of, monitoring by those undertaking it may compromise data quality and thereby limit evidence‐based conservation.

We interviewed rangers and supervisors involved in a programme for monitoring and managing elephant poaching in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. We assess the importance that rangers ascribed to data collection within their broader occupation, and their level of engagement with data management and use.

We found that rangers saw the collection of biodiversity data as a routine duty that helped guide patrol strategy. Reporting these data was perceived as a primary way of demonstrating fulfilled responsibilities to their supervisors. Rangers did not, however, engage actively with data management and use. Ranger sentiment was evenly divided between those who said feedback on how the data they collected were used would motivate more engaged data collection, and those who said they would continue collecting data regardless, out of duty.

Three elements of the occupational culture of rangers at our site—a strong sense of duty, deference to authority and knowing their defined responsibilities within the organizational hierarchy—were identified as key drivers of their engagement with monitoring.

Building on these findings, we develop a theory of change to develop more meaningful engagement of rangers with monitoring. We argue that more effective and sustainable monitoring can be achieved by building on existing ranger culture while also fostering rangers' appreciation of data collection and utilization. Addressing key challenges around ranger well‐being, and resource and capacity needs, is also essential.

A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Electrical conductivity and fiber orientation of poly(methyl methacrylate)/carbon fiber composite sheets with various thickness
Authors: Luo Xiaoling , Qu Muchao , Schubert Dirk W. 
Published: October 2020

AbstractPoly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) composites containing carbon fibers (CFs) with the controlled aspect ratio (AR) at various concentrations were produced and hot pressed into rectangular sheets with a variety of thickness. The orientation of CFs on the surface and inside the specimen was obtained, and the conductivity σ in three different directions (X‐length, Y‐width, Z‐thickness) were investigated. A preferential orientation of CFs in XY plane was found inside the samples, resulting in higher σX and σY. The orientation of CFs in Z direction increases with the sample thickness increasing, leading to an increasing σZ. Thus the anisotropic conductivity between σX (or σY) and σZ reduces from three orders of magnitude to one order of magnitude. The percolation thresholds (Φc) in three directions of the samples were revealed by fitting with McLachlan GEM equation, which lead to Φc,X ≈ Φc,Y ≈ Φc,Z, independent of the thickness and the measuring direction. The values of exponent t in GEM equation were found to be tX > tY > tZ, while tZ increases with the sample thickness. For the first time, the relationship between the exponent t and the sample thickness was revealed and discussed.
On the low‐velocity and high‐velocity impact behaviors of aramid fiber/epoxy composites containing modified‐graphene oxide
Authors: Safamanesh Ali , Mousavi Seyed Mostafa , Khosravi Hamed , Tohidlou Esmaeil 
Published: October 2020

AbstractThis work evaluates the effects of modified‐graphene oxide (M‐GNs) loading and graphene nanoplatelets (GNs) modification on the low‐velocity and high‐velocity impact (LVI and HVI) behaviors of aramid fiber/epoxy composites. Aminopropyltrimetoxysilane compound was used to modify the surface of the GNs. The epoxy resin was incorporated with 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 wt%M‐GNs to fabricate the multiscaleM‐GNs/aramid fiber/epoxy composites via the hand lay‐up route. The obtained results from the LVI and HVI tests revealed that the highest impact resistance was related to the multiscale specimen having 0.3 wt%M‐GNs. For example, under LVI conditions (impact energy of 60 J), the addition of 0.3 wt%M‐GNs enhanced the force peak and absorbed energy of the composite by 44% and 95%, respectively. The addition of 0.3 wt%M‐GNs increased the ballistic limit and absorbed energy of the composite (exposed to the HVI) by 23% and 52%, respectively. The fracture surface of the specimens was evaluated by scanning electron microscopy to find the dominant mechanisms. It was also found that the incorporation of theM‐GNs reduced the damaged area and enhanced damage tolerance. The results demonstrated that modification of the GNs enhanced the LVI and HVI properties of the multiscale composites.
Mandatory voice: Implementation of a district‐led student‐voice program in urban high schools
Authors: Giraldo‐García Regina J. , Voight Adam , O'Malley Meagan 
Published: October 2020

AbstractThis qualitative case study explores how urban high schools implement a district‐initiated student‐voice program, referred to as Student Advisory Committees, intended to improve school climate. The study uses an implementation science framework to analyze interview data from principals and advisors in 22 urban high schools. An iterative, top–down thematic analytic procedure was used for analysis and interpretation of the data. The results suggest wide variation in how the program was implemented in terms of fidelity, dosage, quality, program reach, and adaptation, with contextual school factors—namely, principal and school characteristics—that help to explain this variation. In addition, the findings indicate that these contextual factors had a significant influence on how the school district implemented the student advisory committees. The authors discuss the implications for program implementation in the context of urban school districts and for school psychologists.
Role of Arabidopsis RAB5 GEF vps9a in maintaining potassium levels under sodium chloride stress
Authors: Rajagopal Divya , Mathew M. K. 
Published: October 2020

AbstractSalt stress is one of the major factors impacting crop productivity worldwide. Through a variety of effector and signaling pathways, plants achieve survival under salinity stress by maintaining high cytosolic potassium/sodium ion (K+/Na+) ratios, preventing Na+ cytotoxicity, and retaining osmotic balance. Ras‐related protein 5 (Rab5) members are involved in the trafficking of endosomes to the vacuole or plasma membrane (PM). The vacuolar protein sorting‐ associated protein 9 (vps9a) encodes the single guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that activates all three known Rab5 proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana. Previous work from our group has reported the critical function of vps9a for the operation of salt‐induced endocytic pathway, as well as the expansion of endomembrane compartments under saline stress conditions. Here we show an additional role of vps9a in plant response to salt stress via maintenance of K+ status of the cell rather than Na+ homeostasis. Our results show that roots from vps9a‐2 mutant, subjected to 100 mM NaCl, display alterations in transcript levels of genes involved in the K+ homeostasis pathway. Concurrent with the observed sensitivity of vps9a‐2 mutant under NaCl stress, exposure to low K+ environments resulted in growth retardation, and reduced rate of endocytosis. Furthermore, vps9a‐2 mutant displays reduced expression of auxin reporter, Direct Repeat‐5 (DR5), and alterations in polarity and abundance of auxin efflux carrier PIN‐ FORMED2 (PIN2). Imposition of NaCl stress was found to be restrictive to the elongation capacity of cells in the root elongation zone of vps9a‐2 mutant. Together our results indicate that alterations in K+ homeostasis and associated cellular changes causing increased cell wall pH, contribute to diminished root growth and compromised survival of vps9a‐2 mutant under salt stress conditions.
Improvement of yield and grain quality by periodic cold plasma treatment with rice plants in a paddy field
Authors: Hashizume Hiroshi , Kitano Hidemi , Mizuno Hiroko , Abe Akiko , Yuasa Genki , Tohno Satoe , Tanaka Hiromasa , Ishikawa Kenji , Matsumoto Shogo , Sakakibara Hitoshi , Nikawa Susumu , Maeshima Masayoshi , Mizuno Masaaki , Hori Masaru 
Published: October 2020

AbstractThe application of cold plasma has attracted considerable attention in the field of agriculture. We examined the effects of plasma irradiation and treatment with plasma‐activated Ringer's lactate solution (PAL) on rice seedlings in a paddy field. Irradiation during the vegetative growth period increased seedling growth, panicle number, and grain yield. In contrast, treatment during the reproductive growth period had a negative or no effect. Moreover, treatment with PAL solution promoted the growth of the main stem, such as grain number and panicle weight, and grain quality, but the grain yield from the whole plant was decreased. The results suggest that cold plasma treatment of rice seedlings is effective for improving plant growth, grain yield, and grain quality.
Effect of human umbilical cord‐derived mesenchymal stem cells on murine model of bronchiolitis obliterans like injury
Authors: Lin Jilei , Deng Huarong , Zhang Yin , Zou Lin , Fu Zhou , Dai Jihong 
Published: October 2020

AbstractBackgroundBronchiolitis obliterans is a fatal respiratory disease characterized by the obliteration of small airways. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a promising candidate for cell‐based therapy.ObjectiveTo evaluate the therapeutic effect of human umbilical cord‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (HUC‐MSCs) on a murine model of bronchiolitis obliterans like injury (BOLI).MethodThe murine model of BOLI was established by administrating of diacetyl (DA) via intratracheal instillation. Treatment of HUC‐MSCs or HUC‐MSCs culture medium (HUC‐MSCs‐CM) was conducted in the BOLI model.ResultsThe pathogenic manifestations, lung function, and the number of neutrophils were similar between the oropharyngeal inhalation DA group (OPI‐DA), intratracheal instillation group (ITI‐DA); however, less reduction of weight and higher survival rate were observed in ITI‐DA groups. Compared with the control groups, the trend of weight loss was significantly reduced (p < .05), and the pulmonary function was significantly improved (p < .05) in HUC‐MSCs and HUC‐MSCs‐CM groups. Masson staining and hematoxylin and eosin staining showed that the deposition of collagen around bronchioles and blood vessels is less and airway epithelial cells and basal cells in lung tissue repaired better in HUC‐MSCs and HUC‐MSCs‐CM groups compared with the control groups. Immunofluorescence shows the expression of E‐cadherin and cytokeratin 5 (CK‐5) were significantly higher in HUC‐MSCs and HUC‐MSCs‐CM groups compared with control groups, while HUC‐MSCs themselves did not express E‐cadherin or CK‐5. The DiI label showed HUC‐MSCs gradually reduced after 2 days in the bronchus and 4 days in bronchiole.ConclusionHUC‐MSCs could help to repair airway epithelial cells in a murine model of BOLI. It might be related to paracrine factors of HUC‐MSCs.
Graphene Quantum Dot Crystal Serving as a Multi‐Qubit Circuit Operating at High Temperatures
Authors: Shafraniuk Serhii E. 
Published: October 2020

AbstractLocalized states (LS) of electrons are studied in clusters and in periodic arrays of graphene quantum dots (GQD) formed using narrow graphene stripes with either armchair or zigzag shape of atomic edges. Basic electronic parameters of the system such as the LS energies , inter‐level splitting , wavefunction coherence, and the inter‐dot coupling are controlled by applying the electric potentials to the electrodes. The electron density of states of the periodic quantum dot array regarded as 1D crystal (GC) represents a sequence of very sharp peaks corresponding to LS levels. The spatial coherence parameter (d is the GC period and κ is the electron wave vector) is estimated as , suggesting that the electron coherence involves large clusters of GQD by spreading over 5–20 periods in the artificial crystal. Furthermore, the coherence time τc, which is determined by inelastic electron–phonon collisions is remarkably long, ns even at temperatures K. The above properties of GC open new opportunities for building of the all‐electrically controllable multi‐qubit circuits operating at high temperatures.
A novel loop closure detection method with the combination of points and lines based on information entropy
Authors: Han Junyu , Dong Ruifang , Kan Jiangming 
Published: October 2020

AbstractVisual simultaneous localization and mapping (visual‐SLAM) is a prominent technology for autonomous navigation of mobile robots. As a significant requirement for visual‐SLAM, loop closure detection (LCD) involves recognizing a revisited place, thereby helping visual‐SLAM eliminate accumulated errors and obtain consistent maps. Conventional LCD approaches mainly rely on point features to detect the loop. In challenging environments, the performance of point‐based LCD degrades, especially in low‐texture and perceptual aliasing environments. This paper presents a novel point and line‐based LCD. This approach allows for more robust LCD under an environment where point features are scarce and false‐positive loops are easily detected. First, point and line features are extracted to construct visual vocabularies (a point‐based vocabulary and a line‐based vocabulary) by using the bag‐of‐visual‐words model. Second, a novel weighting scheme is proposed by leveraging information entropy to combine the point‐based similarity score and line‐based similarity score to further improve the similarity evaluation accuracy of two images. Finally, a feature matching coherence check is added to determine the loop closure candidate searching area, which avoids false‐positive loops caused by a decrease in the robot's velocity or because the system is still. We compare the proposed method with point‐based LCD, line‐based LCD, and PL‐based (combining points and lines with the feature's number and dispersion) methods on public data sets in terms of precision and recall. The results reveal that the proposed method offers impressive results compared to other approaches.
A new model for soil water vapor sorption isotherms considering adsorption and condensation
Authors: Chen Chong , Arthur Emmanuel , Zhou Hu , Wang Xiang , Shang Jianying , Hu Kelin , Ren Tusheng 
Published: October 2020

AbstractA new model, which was based on the Do and Do (2000) model, was developed to describe soil water vapor sorption isotherms (SWSIs) including both adsorption and condensation processes. The model performance was evaluated using measured SWSIs of 33 soil samples with a wide range of clay contents (0.08–0.72 g g−1), clay mineralogy (montmorillonite, kaolinite, and mixed clay samples), and organic C contents (0.001–0.070 g g−1). The new model produced satisfactory fits to measured SWSIs, with the mean relative percentage deviation modulus less than 6.2%. For a given clay mineral type, the adsorption sites and condensation capacity increased with increasing clay content. At a given clay content, the number of adsorption sites was in the order of montmorillonitic samples (ML)>mixed clay samples (MX)>kaolinitic samples (KA), and the condensation capacities of ML and MX were lower than that of KA. For soils with low clay content (<0.12 g g−1) and similar clay mineralogy, the adsorption sites and condensation capacities were positively related to organic C. The model parameter S0 had the potential for deriving cation exchange capacity, specific surface area, and clay content. The C/S0 values could potentially be used as a proxy of the dominant clay mineral type in a sample.
A novel method to inverse the water retention curves with consideration of volume change during centrifuge testing
Authors: Lai Yanyin , Garg Ankit , Chang Kai , Xing Xuguang , Fan Junliang , Liang Jiaping , Yu Miao 
Published: October 2020

AbstractMeasuring the soil water retention curve (SWRC) using the centrifuge method often results in compressibility and an increase in bulk density. The compressibility and bulk density of the specimen are always assumed to be constant while deducing the SWRC from centrifuge testing, which may cause inaccurate SWRCs. This study proposed an improved genetic algorithm (GA) to inverse the hydraulic parameters and further constructed the SWRC by taking bulk density into account for soils with varying grain size compositions. For this study, sandy loam soils (i.e., seven treatments T1–T7) were prepared based on different volume ratios of coarse (0.075–2 mm) to fine (<0.075 mm) particles. SWRCs including compressibility and bulk density changes were measured using the centrifuge method. For verification, SWRCs were also independently deduced from one‐dimensional infiltration experiments by inverse analysis using the improved GA that combined multi‐objective optimization and elitist strategy. Upon the final shrinkage ratio of 18.32 to ∼26.38%, the bulk density during centrifugation increased by 22.33 to ∼35.72% correspondingly, thereby causing a difference in soil moisture of 9.58 to ∼16.53% between the corrected and uncorrected SWRCs. The comparison between simulated SWRC and two types of measured SWRCs (i.e., corrected and uncorrected SWRC) demonstrated that the corrected SWRC was more reasonable regardless of soil particle compositions. The findings suggest the corrected SWRC considering bulk density changes provides more accurate hydraulic parameters, which can be inversed from the infiltration data using the improved GA.
Scalable network estimation withL0penalty
Authors: Kim Junghi , Zhu Hongtu , Wang Xiao , Do Kim‐Anh 
Published: October 2020

AbstractWith the advent of high‐throughput sequencing, an efficient computing strategy is required to deal with large genomic data sets. The challenge of estimating a large precision matrix has garnered substantial research attention for its direct application to discriminant analyses and graphical models. Most existing methods either use a lasso‐type penalty that may lead to biased estimators or are computationally intensive, which prevents their applications to very large graphs. We propose using anL0penalty to estimate an ultra‐large precision matrix (scalnetL0). We applyscalnetL0to RNA‐seq data from breast cancer patients represented in The Cancer Genome Atlas and find improved accuracy of classifications for survival times. The estimated precision matrix provides information about a large‐scale co‐expression network in breast cancer. Simulation studies demonstrate thatscalnetL0provides more accurate and efficient estimators, yielding shorter CPU time and less Frobenius loss on sparse learning for large‐scale precision matrix estimation.
Readiness model for DevOps implementation in software organizations
Authors: Rafi Saima , Yu Wu , Akbar Muhammad Azeem , Mahmood Sajjad , Alsanad Ahmed , Gumaei Abdu 
Published: October 2020

AbstractDevOps is a new software engineering paradigm adopted by various software organizations to develop the quality software within time and budget. The implementation of DevOps practices is critical, and there are no guidelines to assess and improve the DevOps activities in software organizations. Hence, there is a need to develop a readiness model for DevOps (RMDevOps) with an aim to assist the practitioners for implementation of DevOps practices in software firms. To achieve the study objective, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) study to identify the critical challenges and associated best practices of DevOps. A total of 18 challenges and 73 best practices were identified from the 69 primary studies. The identified challenges and best practices were further evaluated by conducting a survey with industry practitioners. The RMDevOps was developed based on other well‐established models in software engineering domain, for example, software process improvement readiness model (SPIRM) and software outsourcing vendor readiness model (SOVRM). Finally, case studies were conducted with three different organizations with an aim to validate the developed model. The results show that the RMDevOps is effective to assess and improve the DevOps practices in software organizations.
Settlement networks and river navigation in the Rioni—Western Georgia. From Strabo toJean‐FrançoisGamba and back again
Authors: Intagliata Emanuele E. 
Published: October 2020

AbstractBefore the advent of steam power and railroads, rivers acted as important highways for trade and transport, allowing for considerable reductions in the time spent moving people and goods inland from the coast. However, ancient written sources provide little information about how this transport was conducted in fluvial systems of local or regional significance, focusing instead on major rivers like the Nile or the Tiber. A good example of this is the Rioni River (known in ancient literature as the Phasis) in western Georgia, which functioned as a crucial route for communication and trade throughout history. Travel reports from 16th to 19th century describe in detail the navigation of this river. This contribution aims to use these sources to provide perspectives on how such a fluvial network might have functioned in antiquity. In addition to suggesting that a transport network must have needed a closely‐knit set of river stations to operate, the examination of these sources has important implications for the approach of archeologists to the study of anthropogenic activities in this riverine environment. It calls for a research methodology that goes beyond the site‐based approach currently followed by modern scholarship and explores riverine settlement patterns from a landscape and network perspective.This article is categorized under:Human Water > Human Water