pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Residual effect of organic carbon as a tool for mitigating nitrogen oxides emissions in semi-arid climate

Residual effects of different fertilizers (mineral and organic) on the first pulses of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitric oxide (NO), and nitrous oxide (N2O) after rewetting dry soil with or without application of a mineral N fertilizer were studied in a laboratory experiment. Six months before this study was conducted the fields had received either manure + urea, manure, urea or no fertilizer. In the first phase the soil was rewetted with water simulating a summer shower (heavy rainfall in short time) and in the second phase with a urea solution simulating a mineral fertilization. There were not significant differences in trace gas emissions between earlier field treatments after soil was rewetted with water addition. However, after urea addition, plots that had received manure 6 months earlier showed smaller total emissions of N2O and NO compared to plots that had only received urea. The residual effect of manure can play an important role in carbon poor soils under arid-semiarid climate in mitigating atmospheric pollutants such us NO and N2O
Bargaining under Incomplete Information, Fairness, and the Hold-Up Problem

In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relation-specific investments to be allocated by ex-post bargaining. The present paper investigates the efficiency of incomplete contracts if individuals have heterogeneous preferences implying heterogeneous bargaining behavior and - equally important - preferences are private information. As the sunk investment costs can thus potentially signal preferences, they can influence beliefs and consequently bargaining outcomes. The necessities of signalling are shown to generate very strong investment incentives. These incentives are based on the desire not to reveal information that is unfavorable in the ensuing bargaining. After finding all perfect Bayesian equilibria in pure strategies, the paper derives the necessary and sufficient conditions under which it is optimal to invest and trade efficiently.
Continuous software engineering – a microservices architecture perspective

From its earliest days, software development has been beset with challenges in relation to timely delivery, appropriateness of features and quality of deliverables. Many advances in software development processes have helped to address these concerns. For example, agile software development has helped to deliver working software more frequently and capability maturity frameworks have brought about improved consistency in quality levels. However, the age-old challenge of better, cheaper, faster software has continued to beguile developers. In this paper, we discuss an emerging approach to software development, continuous software engineering (CSE), wherein software of operational quality may be delivered on a very frequent basis, up to many times in a given day. This approach employs a complex set of independent tools that together reduce the lead time in delivering commercial-grade software. Having examined the situational context of one industrial organisation applying CSE, we conclude that the approach may not presently be appropriate to all manners of software development. Nonetheless, the authors are of the view that CSE represents a significant progression in software engineering and that software development settings of all types stand to gain from aspects of the CSE approach
Negotiation of space in Second Life newbie interaction

Interaction in virtual worlds takes place in a spatial context. The interactants respond in various ways to this context but they also discursively create various spaces in their interaction. They negotiate spatial orientation through the use of linguistic deictic elements, create co-presence and joint attention through the gestures and positioning of their avatars and they need to handle screen space as well as the physical space of their surrounding. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the interdependence of interaction and space and its application to one specific virtual world, Second Life. We focus on a group of newbies, who participated in a workshop to experience computer-mediated communication in a virtual world and had to engage in ‘classroom interaction’ and group work. We discuss how the participants try to organize themselves in the virtual reality of Second Life, while situated in different locations in the physical world, and we demonstrate how the interactants rely on space for their orientation and interaction within the virtual world and how the physical world is brought into the online interaction
Shape Memory Effect and Properties Memory Effect of Polyurethane

The relationship between shape and properties memory effect, especially viscoelastic properties of polyurethane under study is the main aim of this research work. Tensile tests have been performed in order to introduce 100% of deformation in the polyurethane samples. Under this deformation, stress–relaxation experiments have been performed in order to eliminate the residual stresses. This deformation of the samples has been fixed by cooling. Recovery tests, then, were carried out at different isothermal temperatures that varied from 30 C to 60  C. Viscoelastic behavior has been studied by a biparabolic model and by using the Cole–Cole
method. It was shown that this model describes the behavior of the polymer at the different states of shape memory tests. The constants of this model then have been determined. This study leads to a better understanding of the mechanism of shape memory effect. The comparison between the virgin polymer and the polymer after a recovery test by DMTA (dynamic mechanical thermal analysis) and by Cole–Cole method has illustrated that the polymer does not obtain its initial properties even when it was totally regained its initial shape. These results have been confirmed by three successive shape memory tests on the same sample and by comparing
the mechanical characteristics of different cycles because ‘‘shape memory effect’’ and ‘‘properties memory effect’’ do not follow the same mechanisms
Single or multiple injections of methamphetamine increased dopamine turnover but did not decrease tyrosine hydroxylase levels or cleave caspase-3 in caudate-putamen

Methamphetamine (METH), leading to striatal dopamine (DA) nerve terminal toxicity in mammals, is also thought to induce apoptosis of striatal neurons in rodents. We investigated the acute effects induced by multiple injections of METH (4 × 5 mg/kg, i.p.) at 2-h intervals or a single injection of METH (20 mg/kg, i.p.) on terminal dopaminergic toxicity markers, including DA levels, DA turnover, and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) immunoreactivity in rat caudate-putamen (CPu). We further investigated whether both treatment paradigms would change Bax and activate caspase-3 expression, thus triggering striatal apoptotic mitochondria-dependent biochemical cascades. The first injection of METH (5 mg/kg, i.p.) produced a significant release of DA that peaked 30 min and stayed above control levels up to 1.5 h within CPu. In another set of experiments, rats were killed 1 and 24 h following the last injection, for tissue DA and metabolite content measurement and Western blot analysis (24 h). Multiple doses induced DA depletion and increased turnover at both endpoints. Single-dose METH reproduced these effects at 24 h; however, turnover was significantly higher than that evoked by the multiple doses at 24 h. Although both paradigms evoked similar DA depletion, however, none of the dosing regimens induced changes in TH expression at 24 h. The former paradigm produced an increase in Bax expression in CPu not sufficient to induce cleavage of caspase-3 proenzyme at 24 h. This study suggests that both paradigm induced changes in striatal dopaminergic markers that are independent of terminal degeneration and striatal apoptotic mitochondria-dependent caspase-3 driven cascade within 24 h. Synapse 60:185-193, 2006. Published 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/syn.2028
Robust Control for Steer-by-Wire Vehicles

The design and analysis of steer-by-wire systems at the actuation and operational level is explored. At the actuation level, robust force feedback control using inverse disturbance observer structure and active observer algorithm is applied to enhance the robustness vs non-modelled dynamics and uncertain driver bio-impedance. At the operational level, the robustness aspects vs parameter uncertainties in vehicle dynamics and driver bio-impedance are issued and for a given target coupling dynamics between driver and vehicle the design task is converted to a model-matching problem. H8 techniques and active observer algorithms are used to design the steer-by-wire controller. Robustness issues at both levels are covered by mapping stability bounds in the space of physical uncertain parameters.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10514-005-0608-
Identifying metabolic pathways for production of extracellular polymeric substances by the diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus inhabiting sea ice

Diatoms are significant primary producers in sea ice, an ephemeral habitat with steep vertical gradients of temperature and salinity characterizing the ice matrix environment. To cope with the variable and challenging conditions, sea ice diatoms produce polysaccharide-rich extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that play important roles in adhesion, cell protection, ligand binding and as organic carbon sources. Significant differences in EPS concentrations and chemical composition corresponding to temperature and salinity gradients were present in sea ice from the Weddell Sea and Eastern Antarctic regions of the Southern Ocean. To reconstruct the first metabolic pathway for EPS production in diatoms, we exposed Fragilariopsis cylindrus, a key bi-polar diatom species, to simulated sea ice formation. Transcriptome profiling under varying conditions of EPS production identified a significant number of genes and divergent alleles. Their complex differential expression patterns under simulated sea ice formation was aligned with physiological and biochemical properties of the cells, and with field measurements of sea ice EPS characteristics. Thus, the molecular complexity of the EPS pathway suggests metabolic plasticity in F. cylindrus is required to cope with the challenging conditions of the highly variable and extreme sea ice habitat
Development of wireless bruxism monitoring device based on pressure-sensitive polymer composite

A wireless pressure sensing bite guard has been developed for monitoring the progress of bruxism (teeth grinding during sleep); as well as protecting the teeth from damages. For sensing the pressure effectively in the restricted space and hostile environment, a pressure sensitive polymer composite has been fabricated and encapsulated into a conventional bite guard which is safe for in-situ applications. The device is anticipated to give real-time data through wireless data transmission and to have a long working life (weeks). A microcontroller-based electronic circuit has been built in-house for data collection and transmission. A low power approach is configured to increase the working life of the device. This device is a useful tool for understanding and treating bruxism
Dublin City University at CLEF 2005: Experiments with the ImageCLEF St Andrew’s collection

The aim of the Dublin City University participation in the CLEF 2005 ImageCLEF St Andrew’s Collection task was to explore an alternative approach to exploiting text annotation and content-based retrieval in a novel combined way for pseudo relevance feedback (PRF). This method combines evidence from retrieved lists generated using\ud
text and content-based retrieval to determine which documents will be assumed relevant for the PRF process. Unfortunately the results show that while standard textbased\ud
PRF improves upon a no feedback text baseline, at present our new approach to combining evidence from text and content-based retrieval does not give further improve\ud
improvement
Plant defence peptides

Eight families of antimicrobial peptides, ranging in size from 2 to 9 kD, have been identified in plants. These are thionins, defcnsins, so-called lipid iransfer proteins, hevein- and knottin-Iike peptides, MBPJ, lb AMP, and the recently reported snakins. All of them have compact structures that are stabilized by 2-6 disulfide bridges. They are part of both permanent and inducible defense barriers. Transgenic overe.xpression of the corresponding genes leads to enhanced tolerance to pathogens, and peptide-sensitive pathogen mutants have reduced virulence
RESTART Simulation of Non-Markov Consecutive-K-Out-of-N: F Repairable Systems

The reliability of consecutive-k-out-of-n: F repairable systems and (k−1)-step Markov dependence is studied. The model analyzed in this paper is more general than those of previous studies given that repair time and component lifetimes are random variables that follow a general distribution. The system has one repair service which adopts a priority repair rule based on system failure risk. Since crude simulation has proved to be inefficient for highly dependable systems, the RESTART method was used for the estimation of steady-state unavailability, MTBF and unreliability. Probabilities up to the order of 10−16 have been accurately estimated with little computational effort. In this method, a number of simulation retrials are performed when the process enters regions of the state space where the chance of occurrence of a rare event (e.g., a system failure) is higher. The main difficulty for the application of this method is to find a suitable function, called the importance function, to define the regions. Given the simplicity involved in changing some model assumptions with RESTART, the importance function used in this paper could be useful for dependability estimation of many systems
Numerical simulation of Ge solar cells using D-AMPS-1D code

A solar cell is a solid state device that converts the energy of sunlight directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect. When light with photon energies greater than the band gap is absorbed by a semiconductor material, free electrons and free holes are generated by optical excitation in the material. The main characteristic of a photovoltaic device is the presence of internal electric field able to separate the free electrons and holes so they can pass out of the material to the external circuit before they recombine. Numerical simulation of photovoltaic devices plays a crucial role in their design, performance prediction, and comprehension of the fundamental phenomena ruling their operation. The electrical transport and the optical behavior of the solar cells discussed in this work were studied with the simulation code D-AMPS-1D. This software is an updated version of the one-dimensional (1D) simulation program Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Devices (AMPS) that was initially developed at The Penn State University, USA. Structures such as homojunctions, heterojunctions, multijunctions, etc., resulting from stacking layers of different materials can be studied by appropriately selecting characteristic parameters. In this work, examples of cells simulation made with D-AMPS-1D are shown. Particularly, results of Ge photovoltaic devices are presented. The role of the InGaP buffer on the device was studied. Moreover, a comparison of the simulated electrical parameters with experimental results was performed
Effectiveness of safety-based incentives in Public Private Partnerships: Evidence from the case of Spain

Many countries around the world are implementing Public?Private?Partnership (PPP) contacts to manage road infrastructure. In some of these contracts the public sector introduces economic incentives to the private operator to foster the accomplishment of social goals. One of the incentives that have been introduced in some PPP contracts is related to safety in such a way that the better the safety outcome the greater will be the economic reward to the contractor. The aim of this paper is at identify whether the incentives to improve road safety in highway PPPs are ultimately effective in improving safety ratios. To this end Poisson and negative binomial regression models have been applied using information from highway sections in Spain. The findings indicate that even though road safety is highly influenced by variables that are not much controllable by the contractor such as the Average Annual Daily Traffic and the percentage of heavy vehicles, the implementation of safety incentives in PPPs has a positive influence in the reduction of fatalities, injuries and accidents
Quantitative evaluation of patient-specific conforming hexahedral meshes of abdominal aortic aneurysms and intraluminal thrombus generated from MRI

A novel method for generating patient-specific high quality conforming hexahedral meshes is presented. The meshes are directly obtained from the segmentation of patient magnetic resonance (MR) images of abdominal aortic aneu-rysms (AAA). The MRI permits distinguishing between struc-tures of interest in soft tissue. Being so, the contours of the lumen, the aortic wall and the intraluminal thrombus (ILT) are available and thus the meshes represent the actual anato-my of the patient?s aneurysm, including the layered morpholo-gies of these structures. Most AAAs are located in the lower part of the aorta and the upper section of the iliac arteries, where the inherent tortuosity of the anatomy and the presence of the ILT makes the generation of high-quality elements at the bifurcation is a challenging task. In this work we propose a novel approach for building quadrilateral meshes for each surface of the sectioned geometry, and generating conforming hexahedral meshes by combining the quadrilateral meshes. Conforming hexahedral meshes are created for the wall and the ILT. The resulting elements are evaluated on four patients? datasets using the Scaled Jacobian metric. Hexahedral meshes of 25,000 elements with 94.8% of elements well-suited for FE analysis are generated
Generation of human computational models with machine learning

Services in smart environments pursue to increase the quality of people?s lives. The most important issues when developing this kind of environments is testing and validating such services. These tasks usually imply high costs and annoying or unfeasible real-world testing. In such cases, artificial societies may be used to simulate the smart environment (i.e. physical environment, equipment and humans). With this aim, the CHROMUBE methodology guides test engineers when modeling human beings. Such models reproduce behaviors which are highly similar to the real ones. Originally, these models are based on automata whose transitions are governed by random variables. Automaton?s structure and the probability distribution functions of each random variable are determined by a manual test and error process. In this paper, it is presented an alternative extension of this methodology which avoids the said manual process. It is based on learning human behavior patterns automatically from sensor data by using machine learning techniques. The presented approach has been tested on a real scenario, where this extension has given highly accurate human behavior models
OSIRIS – The scientific camera system onboard Rosetta

The Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System OSIRIS is the scientific camera system onboard the Rosetta spacecraft (Figure 1). The advanced high performance imaging system will be pivotal for the success of the Rosetta mission. OSIRIS will detect 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of more than 106 km, characterise the comet shape and volume, its rotational state and find a suitable landing spot for Philae, the Rosetta lander. OSIRIS will observe the nucleus, its activity and surroundings down to a scale of ~2 cm px−1. The observations will begin well before the onset of cometary activity and will extend over months until the comet reaches perihelion. During the rendezvous episode of the Rosetta mission, OSIRIS will provide key information about the nature of cometary nuclei and reveal the physics of cometary activity that leads to the gas and dust coma.\ud
OSIRIS comprises a high resolution Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) unit and a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) unit accompanied by three electronics boxes. The NAC is designed to obtain high resolution images of the surface of comet 7P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko through 12 discrete filters over the wavelength range 250–1000 nm at an angular resolution of 18.6 μrad px−1. The WAC is optimised to provide images of the near-nucleus environment in 14 discrete filters at an angular resolution of 101 μrad px−1. The two units use identical shutter, filter wheel, front door, and detector systems. They are operated by a common Data Processing Unit. The OSIRIS instrument has a total mass of 35 kg and is provided by institutes from six European countrie
Comparing supervised learning methods for classifying sex, age, context and individual Mudi dogs from barking

Barking is perhaps the most characteristic form\ud
of vocalization in dogs; however, very little is known about\ud
its role in the intraspecific communication of this species.\ud
Besides the obvious need for ethological research, both in\ud
the field and in the laboratory, the possible information\ud
content of barks can also be explored by computerized\ud
acoustic analyses. This study compares four different\ud
supervised learning methods (naive Bayes, classification\ud
trees, k-nearest neighbors and logistic regression) combined\ud
with three strategies for selecting variables (all\ud
variables, filter and wrapper feature subset selections) to\ud
classify Mudi dogs by sex, age, context and individual\ud
from their barks. The classification accuracy of the models\ud
obtained was estimated by means of K-fold cross-validation.\ud
Percentages of correct classifications were 85.13 %\ud
for determining sex, 80.25 % for predicting age (recodified\ud
as young, adult and old), 55.50 % for classifying contexts\ud
(seven situations) and 67.63 % for recognizing individuals\ud
(8 dogs), so the results are encouraging. The best-performing\ud
method was k-nearest neighbors following a\ud
wrapper feature selection approach. The results for classifying\ud
contexts and recognizing individual dogs were better\ud
with this method than they were for other approaches\ud
reported in the specialized literature. This is the first time\ud
that the sex and age of domestic dogs have been predicted\ud
with the help of sound analysis. This study shows that dog\ud
barks carry ample information regarding the caller’s\ud
indexical features. Our computerized analysis provides\ud
indirect proof that barks may serve as an important source\ud
of information for dogs as well
Optimising the design of textured surfaces for reducing lubricated friction coefficient

Under operating conditions which are unfavourable for lubrication, such as high load and low velocity, the use of textured surfaces significantly promotes the formation of a thick lubricant film and an improvement of the friction coefficient. This paper relates to the manufacture of textures using a photolithography and chemical etching process. Different surface geometries, texturing densities and depths were designed to analyse the influence of these parameters. The friction coefficient was measured in a ball-on-disc tribometer under different lubrication regimes, and the results have been used to develop an artificial neural network with texturing optimisation potential
Triaxiality in the interacting boson model

Accepted for publication in Nuclear Physics AThe signature splitting of the $\gamma$-vibrational band of several Ru, Pd, Xe, Ba, Os and Pt isotopes is analyzed in the framework of the interacting boson model (IBM). The nuclei studied are close to the $\gamma$-unstable SO(6) limit of the IBM and have well-known $\gamma$ bands. It is shown that in most nuclei the signature splitting is better reproduced by the inclusion of a three-body interaction between the $d$ bosons. In none of the nuclei evidence for a stable, triaxial ground-state shape is found