bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Piezoelectric energy harvests by the usage of a laminar pulsating flow circulating in a rectangular channel
Authors: García-Mora L Alejandro , Méndez Federico 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This work develops a theoretical study of a piezoelectric energy harvester, perturbed through a fully developed laminar flow with an oscillating pressure gradient. Considering a fully developed hydrodynamic flow, the electric energy generated in the piezoelectric element is due only to shear stresses yielded at the inner surfaces of the channel. In this manner, a fraction of the viscous forces is converted into unitary deformations at the piezoelectric, and the other fraction is transformed to induced electric piezoelectric energy. Using dimensionless analysis, the formulation of resulting dimensionless governing equations for the fluid and the corresponding deformation and electric potential fields for the piezoelectric material constitute a conjugate problem, solved by considering harmonic solutions. Although the dimensionless power output is a multi-parametric function, due to the large number of dimensionless parameters involved, we find that the main behavior of the electrical power depends very sensitively on two fundamental dimensionless parameters: the Womersley number, α, associated with the oscillating flow and a parameter that measures the physical importance of the electrical energy produced by the action of the velocity field. For the first case, it is seen that the power increases if the Womersley number is decreased while for the second case, the inverse behavior is predicted. Therefore, there is a clear operation of the physical system for which better conditions can be reached by selecting and varying appropriately the assumed values of different dimensionless parameters.
Enhanced deep learning-based water area segmentation for flood detection and monitoring
Authors: Pham Thang M , Do Nam , Bui Hanh T , Hoang Manh V 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This study presents a hybrid architecture tailored for semantic segmentation challenges, mainly targeting the water area extraction for flood detection and monitoring. The model integrates an efficient transformer-based encoder, utilizing an efficient multi-head self-attention module for capturing hierarchical feature maps through a ‘downsample-upsample’ strategy. The proposed decoder architecture comprises one feature refinement head block and three CNN-based dual-branch context blocks. The convolutional block attention module is employed within the feature refinement head block to refine feature representation. The depth-wise separable atrous spatial pyramid pooling module is central to this architecture, facilitating efficient multi-scale contextual information capture. Compared to the state-of-the-art models, our model and the PSPNet model obtained the highest precision, recall, and F1-scores of above 80%, and mIoU surpassing 70%. The proposed method outperformed PSPNet in recall, F1-score, mIoU, and pixel accuracy, albeit with a slight deficit in precision. In terms of scale and efficiency, compared to the PSPNet model, our model has lower complexity and slightly higher inference speed, highlighting its effectiveness and efficiency in the water area segmentation for flood detection. The source code is available at https://github.com/manhhv87/mmsegmentation.git.
Optimal replacement of coal with wind and battery energy storage
Authors: Peng Jing , King Jennifer , Mathieu Johanna L 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Electric utilities are considering replacing their coal power plants with renewables and energy storage to reduce emissions. However, they have also expressed concerns about operational changes and system reliability brought by these replacements. Utilities in remote rural areas face more challenges as they also face energy insecurity while having limited interconnections to wider systems and reliance on imported fuels. Therefore, it is critical for remote utilities to understand different coal replacement approaches and their impacts on system expansion, operation and energy security. In this paper, we define and investigate three approaches to replace coal using wind and batteries: (1) replacing exact coal generation, (2) replacing at least coal generation, and (3) replacing total energy provided by coal. We develop a case study inspired by the small remote grid in Fairbanks, Alaska, which has a single limited interconnection with the grid south of it. We utilize a power system expansion and economic dispatch model that co-optimizes the capacities of wind and batteries required for each approach and the hourly dispatch of energy and reserves for one year. We further analyze the operational cost variability under fixed and fluctuating fuel prices. We find that replacing the exact coal generation requires minimal operational changes, but also significantly more wind and battery capacities. In contrast, replacing total energy provided by coal induces more cycling in other resources, challenging grids with limited flexibility-providing resources. However, replacing total energy provided by coal allows more generation variability in response to fuel price fluctuations, enhancing energy security.
Introduction
Authors: Newbery Samantha 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The Introduction highlights the issues that are central to the book. First and foremost is the apparent tension between using informers to collect intelligence for counter-terrorism and the need to uphold the law by arresting, charging, and prosecuting such individuals for the offences they commit in order to access that intelligence. ‘Terrorist informers’—a term adopted by this book—and ‘intelligence’ are defined in this Introduction. Next, the security and intelligence agencies involved in ‘the troubles’ are introduced, comprising the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, a number of units within the British armed forces, and the Security Service (MI5). The wide variety of sources used for the book are also evaluated here. Finally, an outline of the structure of the book is provided along with a summary of its findings.
Agent Stakeknife
Authors: Newbery Samantha 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Agent Stakeknife was a terrorist informer active within the IRA for over a decade, a remarkably long period of time. His role within the IRA was to root out fellow informers. Agent Stakeknife is the subject of the first chapter because his is a case that raises many of the key issues seen throughout the rest of this book. These issues are: handlers’ knowledge of terrorist informers committing offences; the value assigned to protecting informers’ identities; the value placed on protecting informers’ lives by reducing the chances of them being exposed as informers; protecting informers from prosecution for offences allegedly committed either in the course of their role as informers or outside of that; and retrospective investigations into these informers’ activities and therefore into the security and intelligence agencies that handled them.
Heated Debates
Authors: Newbery Samantha 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The enactment of the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 is the focus of this chapter. This Act put existing practices for authorising informers to commit offences onto a statutory footing. Parliamentary debates on the Bill were intense, hard-fought, and covered such pressing matters as human rights, justice, protecting the vulnerable, and equal application of the law. The implications for the principle of the rule of law—a key feature of a democratic state—may be large: this Act means that not only can informers be given permission to engage in criminal activity, but provided specified procedures are followed and the informer abides by the instructions given, there will be no repercussions for them. The Scottish Parliament voted not to pass the Bill at all, leaving it to come into force in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland only.
Obstructing and Accepting Criminal Investigations
Authors: Newbery Samantha 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Chapter 12 addresses the three large-scale criminal investigations concerning terrorist informers. All three were led by senior police officers from English police forces. Appointing people from outside of Northern Ireland aimed to bring credibility to these investigations by lending them a degree of independence. It does, however, open the door for allegations that they did not understand the Northern Ireland context. The Stalker investigation, Stevens Inquiries, and the Operation Kenova investigation into Agent Stakeknife faced varying levels of cooperation in obtaining information from the security and intelligence agencies. Some successes were achieved in this respect, but all three suffered from the negative effects of secrecy surrounding intelligence.
Victorian Alphabet Books and the Education of the Eye
Authors: Hoffman A Robin 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Victorian Alphabet Books and the Education of the Eye shows how the familiar genre went beyond mere reading instruction to offer nineteenth-century British writers, illustrators, and publishers a site for reflecting on literacy itself. This interdisciplinary study traces the ways that individuals throughout the Victorian era deployed alphabet books to promote visual literacy or oral culture as a vital complement to textual literacy. Their strategies ranged from puns and political allusions to elaborate designs that addressed adult audiences alongside or even instead of children. George Cruikshank, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Cole, and Edward Lear were key figures in the process of codifying and popularizing as well as reimagining the enduring format and its associations with childhood. This critical history pivots around the mid-1860s and 1870s, when the production of illustrated alphabet books exploded thanks to evolving printing technology and national education reform. A revolution in picture books, undergirded by laws assuring children’s access to schooling, enabled Walter Crane to develop alphabetical illustration from a utilitarian mid-century product into an aesthetically rich, yet accessibly priced, “education of the eye.” By contrast, Kate Greenaway, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), and their publishers tended to leverage commercialized nostalgia against pedagogy. The latter trend culminated in satirical interpretations of the alphabet at the fin de siècle, including works by Rudyard Kipling and Hilaire Belloc that reflected growing ambivalence about industrialized print culture.
Mid-Century Alphabets and Waiting for the Revolution
Authors: Hoffman A Robin 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
“Chapter 2: Mid-Century Alphabets and Waiting for the Revolution” follows the illustrated alphabet into Victorian print culture of the 1840s by focusing on the earliest issues of Punch and Henry Cole’s An Alphabet of Quadrupeds (1844). The periodical’s parodic nursery rhymes reinscribed textual literacy as a middle-class privilege while its “pictorial capitals” reflected a growing adult interest in elaborate alphabets and other neo-medieval visual forms, such as manuscript illumination. Design history shows complementary trends in print media marketed to children, and Henry Cole’s Home Treasury series of the 1840s and 1850s (which he published as “Felix Summerly”) reflects his instrumental role in reforming English art education. His Alphabet of Quadrupeds was, like the Great Exhibition that Cole helped organize, a vehicle for public instruction in the principles of good design. Through mid-century, the publishers of cheap toy books raced to develop color printing techniques to suit those evolving tastes.
Exposure to cooking fumes in cafeteria workers in Korean schools: a pilot study
Authors: Lim Daesung , Cho Yong Min 
Published: October 2024

Abstract

Objectives
This study measured cooking fumes to which workers in school cafeterias may be exposed.

Methods
The measurement items were respirable dust, formaldehyde, and carbon monoxide. A total of 111 samples were obtained from 55 schools. Data on variables such as school size and daily cooking oil usage were collected. Correlation and association analysis were performed.

Results
The median of concentrations of respirable dust was 38.37 µg/m3 (min–max: 20.73–49.71 µg/m3). The concentrations of formaldehyde and carbon monoxide also showed levels that did not exceed 20% for occupational exposure limits. The increase in school size was significantly correlated with the increase in daily cooking oil usage and had a significant correlation with respirable dust concentration (Spearman’s correlation coefficient, 0.36; P &lt;0.05). The linear regression test results adjusting for other variables were also similar.

Conclusions
Cooking food by frying at high heat using cooking oil can increase the exposure of kitchen workers to respirable dust.
Two subtle problems with overrepresentation analysis
Authors: Ziemann Mark , Schroeter Barry , Bora Anusuiya 
Published: October 2024

Abstract

Motivation
Overrepresentation analysis (ORA) is used widely to assess the enrichment of functional categories in a gene list compared to a background list. ORA is therefore a critical method in the interpretation of ’omics data, relating gene lists to biological functions and themes. Although ORA is hugely popular, we and others have noticed two potentially undesired behaviours of some ORA tools. The first one we call the ‘background problem’, because it involves the software eliminating large numbers of genes from the background list if they are not annotated as belonging to any category. The second one we call the ‘false discovery rate problem’, because some tools underestimate the true number of parallel tests conducted.

Results
Here, we demonstrate the impact of these issues on several real RNA-seq datasets and use simulated RNA-seq data to quantify the impact of these problems. We show that the severity of these problems depends on the gene set library, the number of genes in the list, and the degree of noise in the dataset. These problems can be mitigated by changing packages/websites for ORA or by changing to another approach such as functional class scoring.

Availability and implementation
An R/Shiny tool has been provided at https://oratool.ziemann-lab.net/ and the supporting materials are available from Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/13823301).
k-nonical space: sketching with reverse complements
Authors: Marçais Guillaume , Elder C S , Kingsford Carl 
Published: October 2024

Abstract

Motivation
Sequences equivalent to their reverse complements (i.e. double-stranded DNA) have no analogue in text analysis and non-biological string algorithms. Despite this striking difference, algorithms designed for computational biology (e.g. sketching algorithms) are designed and tested in the same way as classical string algorithms. Then, as a post-processing step, these algorithms are adapted to work with genomic sequences by folding a k-mer and its reverse complement into a single sequence: The canonical representation (k-nonical space).

Results
The effect of using the canonical representation with sketching methods is understudied and not understood. As a first step, we use context-free sketching methods to illustrate the potentially detrimental effects of using canonical k-mers with string algorithms not designed to accommodate for them. In particular, we show that large stretches of the genome (“sketching deserts”) are undersampled or entirely skipped by context-free sketching methods, effectively making these genomic regions invisible to subsequent algorithms using these sketches. We provide empirical data showing these effects and develop a theoretical framework explaining the appearance of sketching deserts. Finally, we propose two schemes to accommodate for these effects: (i) a new procedure that adapts existing sketching methods to k-nonical space and (ii) an optimization procedure to directly design new sketching methods for k-nonical space.

Availability and implementation
The code used in this analysis is available under a permissive license at https://github.com/Kingsford-Group/mdsscope.
Feasibility of ultra-low-activity 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in children
Authors: Wu Ha , Liu Guobing , Yu Haojun , Zheng Zhe , He Yibo , Shi Hongcheng 
Published: October 2024

Abstract

Objectives
To investigate the feasibility of paediatric 18F-FDG total-body PET/CT imaging with an ultra-low activity and explore an optimized acquisition time range.

Methods
A total of 38 paediatric patients were prospectively enrolled and underwent dynamic total-body PET/CT imaging using ultra-low 18F-FDG activity (0.37 MBq/kg). The 60-minute list-mode raw data were acquired and then reconstructed as static PET images by using 50-51, 50-52, 50-53, 50-54, 50-55, 50-58, 50-60, and 45-60 minutes data, which were noted as G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G8, G10, and G15, respectively. Image qualities were subjectively evaluated using the Likert scale and were objectively evaluated by the quantitative metrics including standard uptake value (SUV), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), target-to-background ratio (TBR), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR).

Results
The injected activity of FDG was 13.38 ± 5.68 MBq (4.40–28.16 MBq) and produced 0.58 ± 0.19 mSv (0.29–1.04 mSv) of effective dose. The inter-reader agreement of subjective image quality was excellent (kappa = 0.878; 95% CI, 0.845–0.910). The average scores of image quality for G1–G15 were 1.10 ± 0.20, 2.03 ± 0.26, 2.66 ± 0.35, 3.00 ± 0.27, 3.32 ± 0.34, 4.25 ± 0.30, 4.49 ± 0.36, and 4.70 ± 0.37, respectively. All image scores are above 3, and all lesions are detectable starting from G8. SNRs of backgrounds, TBRs, and CNRs were significant differences from the control group before G8 (all P &lt; 0.05).

Conclusion
The image quality of the 8 min acquisition for paediatric 18F-FDG total-body PET/CT with an ultra-low activity could meet the diagnostic requirements.

Advances in knowledge
This study confirms the feasibility of ultra-low dose PET imaging in children, and its methods and findings may guide clinical practice. Paediatric patients will benefit from reduced radiation doses.
Duodenal compressions from non-superior mesentery artery structures in the same patient causing superior mesentery artery-like syndrome: a rare case report
Authors: Andour Hajar , Naggar Amine , Khatibi Wafae , Zahi Hiba , Imrani Kaoutar , Moatassim Billah Nabil , Nassar Itimade 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Superior mesentery artery (SMA)-like syndrome is an increasingly used term to describe vascular compression of the third duodenal portion between structures other than the superior mesenteric artery and aorta. Although rare, this clinical condition is as serious as true SMA syndrome and requires similar management. However, the diagnostic criteria are not well established yet and require a case-by-case analysis, including a review of various clinical symptoms, especially evolving ones, as well as radiological imaging and effectiveness of conservative therapeutic manoeuvres.
The presented case involves a double vascular compression in a 50-year-old woman with no medical history, one of which is between 2 venous structures. The patient had been experiencing recurrent abdominal pain, vomiting, and distension for a long time. Laboratory tests were normal, and gastroesophageal endoscopy revealed Barrett’s oesophagus. CT-enterography revealed 2 duodenal vascular compressions. Dietary measures were initiated with close follow-up. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case in the world literature and adds to the existing body of SMA-like syndromes.
Coronary stent imaging in photon counting computed tomography: improved imaging of in-stent stenoses in a phantom with optimized reconstruction kernels
Authors: Michael Arwed Elias , Schoenbeck Denise , Becker-Assmann Jendrik , Haag Nina Pauline , Niehoff Julius Henning , Schmidt Bernhard , Panknin Christoph , Baer-Beck Matthias , Hickethier Tilman , Maintz David , Bunck Alexander C , Gertz Roman Johannes , Borggrefe Jan , Kroeger Jan Robert 
Published: October 2024

Abstract

Objectives
Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) is becoming increasingly important in the workup of coronary artery disease. Imaging of stents and in-stent stenoses remains a challenge. This work investigates the assessability of in-stent stenoses in photon counting CT (PCCT) using ultra-high-resolution (UHR) imaging and optimized reconstruction kernels.

Methods
In an established phantom, 6 stents with inserted hypodense stenoses were scanned in both standard resolution (SRM) and UHR in a clinical PCCT scanner (NAEOTOM Alpha, Siemens Healthineers, Germany). Reconstructions were made both with the clinically established and optimized kernels. The visible stent lumen and the extent of stenosis were quantitatively measured and compared with the angiographic reference standard. Also, region-of-interest (ROI)-based measurements and a qualitative assessment of image quality were performed.

Results
The visible stent lumen and the extent of stenosis were measured more precisely in UHR compared to SRM (0.11 ± 0.19 vs 0.41 ± 0.22 mm, P &lt; .001). The optimized kernel further improved the accuracy of the measurements and image quality in UHR (0.35 ± 0.23 vs 0.47 ± 0.19 mm, P &lt; .001). Compared to angiography, stenoses were overestimated in PCCT, on average with an absolute difference of 18.20% ± 4.11%.

Conclusions
Photon counting CCTA allows improved imaging of in-stent stenoses in a phantom using UHR imaging and optimized kernels. These results support the use of UHR and optimized kernels in clinical practice and further studies.

Advances in knowledge
UHR imaging and optimized reconstruction kernels should be used in CCTA in the presence of cardiac stents.